Ellie and the Harpmaker

by Hazel Prior

  I sigh. “I wish Dad was still with us.”

  Not many people would have put up with Mum the way he did. He never went against her, but he provided Vic and me with that quiet encouragement we so much craved and needed. It was Dad who made childhood bearable.

  “I miss him every day,” says Vic.

  “Me too.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I ring Mum. “How are you, Mum?”

  “Who are you?”

  “It’s me. It’s Ellie.”

  “Ellie who?”

  I nearly say, Ellie Jacobs, the Exmoor Housewife.

  “Ellie your daughter,” I tell her.

  “Ah, the older one.”

  This is promising.

  “Mum, can I ask you something?”

  A slight pause. “She’s very likely to, whether it rains or not.”

  “Mum, listen! Do you . . . Do you wish you’d never had children?”

  “Children? Children?”

  “Yes. Children.”

  Has she forgotten the meaning of the word?

  “Children,” she repeats. “Yes, I did have children. I had two.”

  I take a breath and try again. “Mum, tell me: Are you glad at all, ever . . . that you had children?”

  “Why, yes, of course! It was the best thing I ever did!”

  Her voice conveys a fervor I haven’t heard in months.

  “I’ll ring again later.” I put the phone down. My body is racked with sobbing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jo is shorter and stumpier than Dan, but she has the same jet-black hair and round, dark eyes. Her hair is cropped close to her head and she’s wearing jeans and a scarlet sweater. Her face is completely free of makeup, but she’s one of those women who don’t need it at all. Her features are strong and speak for themselves.

  I feel a little threatened by her at first, and not sure I’ve made the right decision. But she comes over and squeezes my hand warmly.

  “And how did you and Dan meet?” she asks.

  “A coincidence,” I tell her. “I stumbled across the Harp Barn and then I started having harp lessons with Rhoda.” I notice her scowl at that word. “I come up here to practice. I’m borrowing one of Dan’s harps,” I add.

  She glances at his face. I can see that she’s assessing the probability of my buying a harp and warning him to stay out of the transaction, should it occur.

  Dan has bits of sawdust in his hair and his shirtsleeves are rolled up. He stands close to his sister and I observe a sort of tolerant affection between them.

  Dan mimes a little harp playing. “Ellie is a very fast learner.”

  There’s something like pride in his voice. My heart swells. “Rhoda has put me through a lot of technique in a very short space of time.”

  I’m not sure if the topic of Rhoda is still horribly painful to Dan, but his smile gives me a gleam of reassurance.

  “Shall I get sandwiches, then?” he asks. “And while I’m making them you two can have your woman-to-woman chat.”

  Jo looks as alarmed as I feel. I laugh nervously.

  “Oh, it’s nothing important,” I bluster. “Just something I was wanting to ask you.”

  She relaxes again. She evidently thinks I’m going to question her about harp prices, too delicate a matter to discuss in Dan’s presence.

  “Right you are! Lots of sandwiches, please, then, Dan,” she says briskly.

  He heads upstairs to the kitchen, his leg delaying him slightly. I watch him all the way to the top, wondering if this was such a good idea after all.

  Jo folds her arms. “Fire away!”

  There’s no easy way to say it, even though I’ve rehearsed a thousand different versions in my head.

  “Go on, spit it out. I won’t bite!”

  I brace myself. “Sorry to spring this on you, but is there any chance that . . . ah, some years ago, Rhoda might have had a baby? Um, Dan’s baby?”

  She sits down abruptly. I stay standing. I’m too nervous to sit.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, the first thing is that her parents seem to be looking after a little boy. I’ve seen him. He would be about the right age. And the resemblance to Dan is striking.”

  She stares at me, her eyes penetrating. I can see thoughts chasing each other around in her head.

  “It’s possible, it’s possible,” she mutters.

  It’s a relief to share it. I rapidly tell her about the phone calls I’ve overheard during harp lessons, how my suspicions grew, how I engineered to meet Rhoda’s parents at the concert and followed them home.

  “There was a child’s swing in the front garden, so it was obvious a child lived there,” I tell her. “I knew the child was Rhoda’s, but I couldn’t be sure about the father. So I went back the following day and sat in the car by the road, watching. At around three, I saw Rhoda’s mother leaving the house. She walked down the road in the direction of the local school. About half an hour later she returned to the house. She was hand in hand with the little boy. He had jet-black hair and eyes that . . .”

  Now that I see Jo’s wide eyes fixed on me, I feel a fresh certainty. I carry on. “I watched him stoop and pick up a pebble from the driveway. He showed it to his grandma and then stuck it in his pocket. There was something about the gesture . . .”

  “Holy shit!”

  “I’m sorry. I may be wrong, but . . .”

  I know I’m not.

  Jo shakes her head. “No. No, you’re . . . I bet you’re right. It makes sense, thinking about it. Dan and Rhoda were so close for a while and then she suddenly distanced herself. Now I see why. Conniving little cow!”

  “She was trying to keep it a secret from him.”

  “And still is, I take it.”

  “Yes, so it seems,” I reply. I can’t believe how calm my voice is sounding. “But why? If she didn’t want Dan to be involved as a father, why keep seeing him at all? And why did she let him carry on thinking she was his girlfriend for so long?”

  “She’s not stupid. She stood to gain quite a lot from Dan. Didn’t you know two of her harps were gifts from him?”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know that. I try not to let my face register my dismay.

  “And he’s always sending harp students her way. She earns a lot of money through them.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “And Rhoda loves to be doted on. Dan dotes on her. He did, anyway, when he thought she was his girlfriend. Rhoda just sopped up all the admiration. She’s one of those people who are fueled by the admiration of others.”

  Jo is much clearer in her convictions than I am. I’ve been muddled about Rhoda all along, not trusting my own instincts. I see it now.

  “She seems to be very good at hiding the fact that she’s a mother,” I comment. “I’m not sure anyone knows about it apart from her parents.”

  “And the lad himself?”

  I shrug. “Goodness only knows what they’ve told him! I don’t know how much of a mother Rhoda is to the poor boy. It seems to be her parents who run his life.”

  “Unbelievable! I suppose she thinks having a child might get in the way of her glam, independent, everyone-has-to-admire-me lifestyle.”

  “Maybe. I don’t suppose getting pregnant was ever part of her plan.”

  There’s a slight pause while we both try to construe Rhoda’s thought processes. “Well, she didn’t get rid of the baby,” says Jo. “At least that’s something. But she’s been incredibly devious to hide it—him—from Dan for all these years.”

  I grimace. “Yes, it’s horrible, isn’t it?”

  Jo’s fists are clenched. “I’d like to wring her neck!”

  We can hear Dan clunking about in the kitchen upstairs.


  “I didn’t know what to do,” I explain. “I probably should have spoken to Rhoda about it, but I just couldn’t. I don’t think she would have taken too kindly to the fact that I’d been spying on her parents.”

  “She’d kill you!”

  “I know,” I whisper. I can’t pull my eyes away from Jo’s face. I’m terrified about the consequences of my revelation, but I can’t take back what I’ve told her. I’ve transferred the responsibility now.

  “I thought about just doing nothing, but that seemed wrong too. I’m sure the boy needs a father in his life. God, I certainly did! And, Jo, I haven’t known Dan for that long, but I’m very fond of him,” I confide. “I can’t help feeling that if he’s a father he should know about it. He’d want to know about it, for sure. I know parenthood is no easy task, but, from what I gather, it does enrich your life in all sorts of ways.” I permit myself a little sigh. “But there’s no way I could tell him. And, well, as Dan’s sister, I thought you might have the best idea what to do.”

  I gaze at her helplessly.

  “Are you certain the boy is Dan’s son?”

  “Yes. I am. Ninety-nine point nine percent.”

  She stands up, steel in her eyes.

  “Well, in that case, I know exactly what to do,” she says.

  “What?”

  “We tell him.”

  “What, now?”

  “Now.”

  “But . . . won’t it be rather a shock?”

  “It will be a shock, yes. But my brother is strong. Sensitive, but very strong. He’ll deal with it his own way.”

  “Shouldn’t we . . . well, wait a bit? Maybe you want to check it out first?”

  “You said you were ninety-nine point nine percent sure. That’s good enough for me. There’s no way you’d come and tell me like this unless it was true.”

  “But for his own sake . . . ?”

  Jo is having none of it. She is filled with righteous indignation. “Think about it, Ellie: Hasn’t it been kept from Dan long enough? Isn’t he the first person who should have known? What right have we got to treat him like a mug, hide it from him an instant longer? He’s a father, for God’s sake!”

  | 27 |

  Dan

  I made thirty-three sandwiches. This is the same number as my age and also means that we could eat eleven each. I did wonder whether thirty-three might have been on the overgenerous side, but Ellie and Jo seemed to be talking earnestly in hushed voices and I guessed that they probably weren’t ready to be disturbed yet and they wouldn’t want a male person barging in on them while they were in the middle of discussing lingerie, even if he did have a mountain of triangular, crust-free sandwiches. The fillings of the sandwiches were these: seven with peanut butter, seven with hummus, four with blue cheese and cucumber, four with cheddar and pickle and eleven with plum jam, the jam that Ellie made from my plums.

  Once the sandwiches were completed and arranged on the plate in a tall tower I made coffee for the nice smell. I wafted it around the kitchen a bit, then poured some out for Ellie, who likes to drink it. I also poured out three glasses of my favorite: water.

  Normally when I make sandwiches it is to the strains of harp music, but there was no harp music today. It was a very unusual day.

  My sister Jo marched into the kitchen.

  “Aren’t those sandwiches ready yet?” she thundered. “I’m starving!”

  I said that the sandwiches were indeed ready if she and Ellie were ready to receive them.

  “Of course we are!” she cried. “And where’s the coffee?”

  I told her I had poured out a mugful for Ellie and, having wafted the rest around the room, I’d tipped it down the sink.

  “Aaargh!” she screeched. “I wish you wouldn’t do that! How many times do I have to tell you, coffee is for drinking. Hang on! How come Ellie gets a mug and I don’t? Here, give me the pot. I’ll make another.”

  While she was wrestling with the coffee I took the sandwiches down to Ellie. She was pacing round and round. Today her socks were navy blue, but her sweater was a nice deep shade of russet. It looked good with the walnut-colored glossiness of her hair, I thought. Her skin was pearly white.

  “Dan!” is what she said.

  “Ellie,” I said back to her. It is reassuring that we know each other’s names so well.

  I put the sandwiches on the table and I told her about the different flavors, adding that there were thirty-three in total.

  She accepted one without seeming to give much consideration as to which flavor it was, and took a bite out of it.

  “Don’t say anything!” Jo called from the kitchen. “I’ll be with you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”

  Ellie and I did not say anything. When Jo issues a command, you follow it. However, she did take a long while. I would estimate that a lamb could have shaken its tail possibly up to four hundred times before she came in with the brimming coffeepot. I thought of explaining to Ellie that my sister Jo is given to such exaggerations, but I didn’t because I was forbidden to say anything.

  When Jo came back in she poured out two more coffees, even though she knows I don’t drink it.

  “You may actually want something stronger,” she said.

  I asked her why.

  “Ellie and I have . . . news. Stop dithering around, now. Stop twitching your hands, sit down and pay attention.” Her voice was even louder than usual and set off a bit of an echo effect in all the harps.

  I did what I was told.

  “Now, this is all about Rhoda.”

  “Roe Deer?”

  “Rhoda,” she confirmed. Jo always looks as though she is having her teeth extracted when she talks about Roe Deer. I waited. Over these last days I’ve been experiencing a sore, raw feeling whenever I think about Roe Deer, but today the feeling was neither quite so sore nor quite so raw.

  “Six years ago you and Rhoda were very involved, right? I mean, not like now but on an intimate level. Right?”

  I studied my sandwich. It was peanut butter, with rather too much peanut butter in it. The bread was nice and thin, though, the corners of the triangles good and pointy.

  “Right?” she urged.

  I told her yes, even though I had a feeling it was the wrong answer. I do pretty much always tell the truth, even though I know you’re not supposed to. I can’t seem to help it.

  “And then, soon after you got together, she disappeared out of your life for quite a long time, didn’t she?”

  I told her yes again.

  She fixed her eyes on me. “Dan, listen. We’ve got something very important to tell you, something that you ought to know. Ellie here has made a discovery. In that time that you didn’t see her, Rhoda was having a baby.”

  I heard the words, but the meaning slipped right past my brain and scuttled out of reach.

  “Your baby,” said Jo.

  Something started yanking deep down inside me. The yank was strong, very, as if my heart was on the end of a bit of string and somebody had tugged the string and hauled my heart right up through my rib cage. It made it difficult to breathe. The two faces were swimming before my eyes.

  “Do you understand me?”

  I told her yes, then added no.

  “Listen, Dan. Rhoda has been keeping it a secret from you all this time, but Ellie has found out and we think it’s time you knew.”

  My mouth moved, but words wouldn’t come out.

  “You have a five-year-old son,” she said.

  I don’t know how long I sat there or what they said after that. But I know that at some point Jo left because she had to go to work. And some time after that I took myself outside to feed Phineas. And some time later I came back in and picked up various harpmaking tools one after the other, but my hands were shaking so much I couldn’t hold them. There was a mug of cold c
offee and a great heap of untouched sandwiches on the table.

  Ellie was still there, pulling her hair and eyebrows into tufts. When she saw I was back inside, she went into the kitchen and emerged again with a fresh cup of tea. “Drink this,” she said.

  My hands couldn’t get a grip of it and I spilled it down my trousers. My bandage and everything was tea soaked. I sprang to the tap and sloshed water everywhere.

  “Stop, Dan!” cried Ellie. “That’s way too much water! You’ll drown yourself!”

  My hands were flapping and weaving patterns in the air. My eyes wouldn’t stop blinking. Strangulated noises were coming from my mouth. I had no control over any of it.

  Ellie put her arms around me and held me close. She was very warm and I could feel her heart beating through her russet-colored sweater. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she repeated. “Dan, calm down! Everything’s going to be all right.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Phineas has eaten lots today. He had all the leftover sandwiches. I will have to put him on a diet next week.

  I cannot make harps, I cannot eat and I cannot sleep. I’m already feeling that what I am supposed to do and what I want to do are probably not the same thing. My mother would have very clear ideas on that, but she is not alive now, so she can’t help me. I am sure my sister Jo has very clear ideas too. The phone has been ringing constantly over the last two hours and I know it’s her. I haven’t answered it, though.

  Ellie has gone home to cook supper for her husband. Phineas has come in and settled in his bed.

  I’m going out. It’s dark out there. I’ll have to take a flashlight, but luckily a flashlight is a thing that I have. I will walk among the trees in the dark and have a think because now, suddenly, I have a son and, although I don’t believe it a hundred percent—probably only about eight point five percent at the moment—the percentage is rising all the time. When I get to a hundred I will have to decide what to do because you can’t suddenly discover you have a son of five years old and not do anything.

  I put on my boots and tramp down the lane. I walk and I walk and thoughts come and go. Overhead are thousands of stars. There is a wispy fragment of moon and a sharp frost. The air bites into me. An owl hoots, pauses, then hoots again. Something rustles on my right in a hedgerow. The flashlight beam glints in the frozen puddles on the lane. My footfalls thud like a drumbeat in the stillness of the night air. I walk and I walk and eventually I realize my leg is hurting, very, very badly. I ignore it and carry on. There is not much sky now; the branches of the pines are crowding out the stars. A twig snaps underfoot. I keep going uphill until I have a sense of opening as the trees give way to moorland. The breeze is cold on my face.