Ellie and the Harpmaker

by Hazel Prior

  The back of my neck prickles as I scan the words. Why oh why did I write that? Why am I so, so dangerously stupid? Sometimes my poems seem to take on their own thoughts and breathe them out onto the page, while I myself am scarcely aware of them. Now the words floodlight all my feelings for Dan. And Clive has seen them.

  A clod of dread is forming in my chest. What have I done, what have I done?

  Footsteps sound behind me on the landing. I turn around. My husband is there. He comes to a halt and stands heavily by the door, trickles of water running down his face; a massive, naked mountain of a man. His eyes bore through me.

  “A warmer place?” The words come growling through his bared teeth.

  “It’s . . . just a poem!” I stammer.

  “You crave it more and more, do you?”

  “Clive, it’s not . . .” I hang my head.

  He strides toward me, then stops abruptly. I can’t look at him, but I can sense the anguish seething in every fiber of his body. He snatches the book from me. He begins tearing out the pages. I wince. My eyes fix on my creations as they are pulled apart one by one. The paper screeches out in distress as it rips. The noise runs through my teeth, to the back of my head, right to the core of me. Something inside me is ripping too.

  As Clive reaches the final poem, I make a last desperate bid to grab the book back from him. For a second we are engaged in a tug-of-war, then suddenly he lets go. I hang on to it: one miserable, crumpled page. All that is left of my musings.

  | 37 |

  Dan

  I spend a long time stroking Phineas, then finally push him off my knee. It is time for bed. I must be up early tomorrow morning to ring my son Ed and wish him a happy Christmas. I will not see Ed over Christmas, which is a sad thing. He will spend the day with his grandparents and his great-uncle and his great-aunt and Roe Deer and Roe Deer’s guitar man. It will be the first time he meets Guitar Man.

  Roe Deer has apparently now changed her mind and informed Guitar Man of Ed’s existence. It was too difficult to keep hidden any longer. She wanted Guitar Man to meet her parents and her parents don’t approve of hiding things like that from possible future husbands. Also, Ed himself couldn’t be relied upon to tell the required lies at the required time, pretending he was a cousin and suchlike.

  Much to Roe Deer’s relief, Guitar Man doesn’t seem too bothered about the number of strings. Indeed he might still marry her. It is very important I contribute absolutely as much money as I can to Ed’s upkeep, though.

  I told Roe Deer I wasn’t keen on Ed spending Christmas with his grandparents and his great-uncle and his great-aunt and Roe Deer and Guitar Man. I wanted him to spend it with me. I had already missed five Christmases of Ed’s life, so this was only fair. But she said it was too late; it was all arranged now. I could have Ed next Christmas.

  | 38 |

  Ellie

  I lie awake for the rest of the night, cuddling my last poem. As I hold them close, the words I’ve written seem to seep deeper and deeper inside me.

  But now I’ve found a warmer place,

  With music, heart and breathing space.

  It seems to me that those three elements are vital to life. Vital to my life, anyway.

  * * *

  • • •

  Christmas morning dawns. Clive gives a loud yawn, stretches and climbs out of bed. Will he wish me a happy Christmas? Will he? Will he? I tell myself it all hinges on that. I lie there, silently. Looking at him, waiting.

  He scratches his groin and takes a gulp of water from the glass on the bedside table. He meanders down the landing. I hear him having a shower, then he returns and starts opening and shutting drawers. He puts on jeans and a sweater. I am still waiting.

  He disappears again. I hear him tramp downstairs, I hear the kettle and the radio and, half an hour later, I hear him go out.

  I drag myself out of the bed. I stumble to the bathroom and slosh my face with water. Then, my heart banging in my chest, I run down the landing. I scramble into some clothes and throw some more into a bag. As an afterthought I rush back to the bathroom and add soap, toothbrush and painkillers.

  Outside, the air stings my hot eyes. I dash the tears away and fling the bag into the car. The windscreen is all iced over. I return to the house to fetch my shoulder bag, find my wallet at the bottom of it, take out my credit card and scrape. At last there is a hole in the ice big enough to see through. Mercifully the engine starts up all right. I accelerate away, out of the village and along the winding roads of Exmoor.

  My mind is in shock. I feel as if something inside me has been in the process of fraying, fraying, fraying. Now it has finally come apart and I am pinging off wildly in another direction. Is this moment real? Am I leaving my husband? Leaving Clive? Am I crazy?

  I look down at my hands on the steering wheel. They appear to be my hands, purposefully driving the car away, farther and farther away from home. It must be true.

  The hills and the fields are stunned and silent. The trees drip moisture. The world whirs past in a white blur.

  I try to wrench my thoughts into some practical pattern. It seems I am creating a gaping hole in my future and I have no idea how it can be filled. Well . . . if I’m honest I do have an idea. Just as in Clive’s head there’s an idea, in my head—in that mushy, dreamy section of it, the section that writes poems—there’s a version of that same idea. But there’s no way I can act on it. I scold myself for ever letting such an idea in. It’s simply not possible that anything similar can be in Dan’s head. He’s far too taken up with thoughts of his son and of Rhoda.

  That wretched photo is haunting me again. I wish I’d never set eyes on it.

  No, I will have to find some alternative future. I’m running away from substance and structure and I have only a dim mist ahead of me.

  If ever I needed a friend the time is now.

  When I arrive, something feels wrong. The wreath is still on the door, the fairy lights are around the windows, but nothing is lit up. I lean on the steering wheel, my head in my hands. Of course! Christina is in Thailand. I’d completely forgotten.

  I realize with a pang how isolated I have become. I think of Vic, up in Yorkshire. But that is an incredibly long drive, and I’m not sure I am capable of it, mentally or physically.

  I turn the car around.

  | 39 |

  Dan

  She came to the Harp Barn today. Her hair was the color of walnut wood. Her eyes were the color of bracken in October. I did not notice her socks because her face took up the rest of my attention. It was full of tears and lines of sorrow. Her eyebrows were pulled together very closely as if they were trying to squeeze something away. There were purple-gray tinges under both her eyes. They looked swollen.

  “Dan, thank God you’re here!”

  Where else would I be?

  “Can I come in?” she said.

  I told her of course she could.

  “I’ve left him,” she said. And she held her sleeve over her face for a long time.

  I wasn’t sure at all what I was supposed to do, but I eventually decided it might be all right to go over and hug her, so that is what I did. She hugged back in a way that was very tight and close. Her tears were extremely wet. They trickled one by one down the side of my neck, inside my shirt collar and down my back.

  Over her shoulder I watched outside the window the snow falling, little ashen fragments against a white sky. I thought about people leaving people and what a hard thing that is, under any circumstances.

  At last Ellie took a deep breath, pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose.

  “Dan,” she said, “what . . . what are your plans for today?”

  I said the Fifi harp was gone now so the next thing was to cut up wood to make the Phineas, the harp that my son Ed and I are making together, and that was what I was planning on doing
today.

  “But it’s Christmas Day!” she said.

  I said I knew that.

  “Aren’t you doing anything with Jo? Or Ed? Or—or—or Rhoda? Aren’t they coming round?”

  I said no to all of these. Jo was doing things in soup kitchens to help those less fortunate than ourselves and Ed was spending the day with his grandparents and his great-uncle and his great-aunt and Roe Deer and Roe Deer’s guitar man. He would come to see me on Saturday, as usual.

  Ellie sank into a chair and blew her nose again. “Dan,” she said, “I have to be practical. I would have stayed with my friend Christina, but she’s gone away to get some winter sun in Thailand. I’d forgotten. So I really don’t have anywhere to go at the moment. I’ll go and stay with my sister once I have spoken to her, but it’s a long way to drive and I’m so tired! Would it be all right if I stayed here for a bit?”

  I said of course she could.

  She stood up and hugged me again. I was getting used to it.

  “This is where I want to be right now,” she said. “The harp is here and you are here and I feel . . . I’ll be no trouble, I promise. I’ll help with cooking and cleaning and things. I’ll get out of the way if you want me to. It won’t be for long, just a few days, till I get myself sorted. Would that be OK?”

  I told her of course, of course it would. We held each other for a long time. My shirt was getting very wet.

  “Sorry, I’m a bit wobbly. I haven’t eaten yet today. How about a nice cuppa . . . and some sandwiches?” she suggested.

  I said of course again. I was saying it a lot. Then I asked her how many sandwiches she would like, and what fillings she would like in them.

  “You are a gem,” she said. “Three, please! Any filling will do.”

  After sandwiches (brie and tomato, wholemeal bread, three each) and tea (Earl Grey for her; I had a glass of nice, cold water), she brought a cushion (green, shabby) and rug (tartan, with a few pheasant feathers stuck to it) from her car and put them in the little room. I asked what she was doing. She said, “I’ll sleep here, if that’s all right?”

  I said wouldn’t she rather sleep in my bed, where it was softer and warmer? She looked at me in a strange way and there was a little silence between us. I said I would of course sleep downstairs and keep Phineas company if that was what she decided to do. She said no, no, she would hate to put me out, she’d be much happier on the floor in the little room, next to her harp. I said whatever made her happiest, that was the thing she should do. I put down some more cushions and rugs, though, because I thought that what she had wouldn’t be enough to keep her comfortable. Not at all.

  Then Ellie went out to look at the snow for a bit and she stroked Phineas for a bit and she played the harp for a bit. The harp playing soothed her. I could tell.

  I did not wish her Happy Christmas, though. I guessed that, from her face, it wasn’t.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ellie cooks with me, in the little kitchen. She makes curries and stir-fries and teaches me how to make them too, with ginger, garlic, lemon juice and stuff. I am learning all about cumin and coriander. She always did say that variety is the spice of life and I am beginning to think she is right. The spices keep our insides warm on these cold days.

  There are white ribbons of snow outlining every branch and twig, and rows of icicles stuck along the roof of the barn like crocodile teeth. Drifts lie along the edges of the lane, very thick and powdery. It is deep underfoot too. I need to get the shovel and dig us out when we drive to Minehead or Porlock for supplies.

  When Ed came to the barn on Saturday he was very excited. He likes snow, a lot. As soon as we arrived he launched himself into the snow, took great handfuls of it and flung it up in the air, jumping up and down. Then when Ellie came out he threw some at her, which she didn’t mind a bit. She scooped up a load more and threw it back at him. This was their first encounter. I was glad it was going so well.

  After that we compared footprints.

  “Yours are biggest,” said Ed to me, planting his small foot with flashing sneakers into my zigzag-ridged boot print. “Next are Ellie’s,” he continued, leaping into her narrower, smoother prints. She does not have her thick grippy boots with her because she left them in her house and doesn’t want to go back and get them. Her feet get cold a lot in her not-very-practical shoes and she slips about. Ed and I had to hold on to her on both sides to support her. “Mine are smallest,” said Ed, demonstrating the fact by making lots of footprints that ran round us in circles.

  Then Ed told us that we had to turn and face the barn and count to a hundred while he went to hide, and after we’d reached a hundred we must follow his tracks and see if we could find him. Ellie and I obeyed. We trailed him across the white field, alongside the stream and up the bank, over the tumbledown stone wall, then into the woods. We searched for him under the laden boughs of the old oaks and beeches. We said, “Where can he be?” a lot of times. Loudly.

  Then there was a sudden “Boo!” and he sprang out on us from behind a tree trunk. I collapsed onto the ground in shock. Ed laughed like a drunken hyena. His laugh is contagious. Ellie joined in. Which was a good thing, I think.

  There is nothing Ed likes more than jumping out and shouting boo. I’m beginning to get used to such explosiveness. It seems to be a major feature of a small boy’s life.

  That same afternoon we made snowmen. We made a snow-Dan, a snow-Ed and a snow-Ellie in the orchard. We also made a snow-Phineas.

  “We need carrots. Have you got carrots, Dad?” Ed asked. Luckily I did have carrots. We gave ourselves carrot noses and gave Phineas a carrot beak.

  “We need lumps of coal. Have you got any coal?” Coal was something I did not have, but Ed was resourceful and found some dark stones. We carefully placed our eyes in our faces.

  “What do you make mouths out of?” he asked next. “Twigs?”

  I applauded his idea and said if there was one thing we were never short of on Exmoor that thing was twigs.

  “I’ll find some,” said Ed and scooted off. A moment later he was back with three twigs. The curviest one he put on the snow-Dan’s face to make him smiley. The second curviest he put on the snow-Ed. But on the snow-Ellie he put the twig upside down so she looked sad. I looked at the snow-Ellie and I looked at the real Ellie and I saw that Ed had got that right.

  Ellie then said she’d like to take photos of the snow characters but she couldn’t because she didn’t have her camera with her. Then she went quiet. Ellie goes quiet a lot these days. I’ve noticed that. I don’t mind it, though, and Ed doesn’t mind either.

  Later on Saturday my sister Jo came to join us. She brought hand-knitted gloves for Ed and chocolates in the shape of trains. She said that now she had her big opportunity to be an auntie. She patted Ed on the head and told him what a terror he was. She patted Ellie on the arm and told her she was doing really well, considering.

  Ed likes talking. Ed talked all the time—to us or to himself or to Phineas. “You’re cool!” he told Phineas. Phineas looked very pleased to hear this.

  “You’re megacool.” Phineas looked even more pleased.

  “You’re the coolest pheasant in the whole world!” Phineas was so pleased at this that he took one of Ed’s shirt buttons in his beak and pulled it off.

  To me Ed asked lots of questions. I did my best to answer.

  “Dad, tell me about your dad. What was he like?”

  I said my dad was a big and gentle man.

  “How big?”

  I showed him where my dad came up to on the barn door.

  With his arms outstretched Ed measured the distance between this and his own height, which was quite substantial. “And how gentle?”

  I explained that my dad was so gentle he used to stop the car if a caterpillar was crossing the road. Even though my mother didn’t like it. He s
topped the car and then he got out and picked the caterpillar up and put it carefully on a leaf on the shoulder, where it would be safe.

  Ed nodded. “That’s much more gentler than my other granddad, Gramps,” he told me. He meant Roe Deer’s father. “Gramps doesn’t like stopping the car even for schoolkids at the crossing.”

  He picked up a stick that he brought home from a walk earlier and waved it around. “What about your mum? Was she big and gentle too?”

  I told him no, she wasn’t, not at all. I told him she was quite small and I showed him on the barn door where she came up to, which was a little bit closer to his own height. I said that I wouldn’t exactly describe her as gentle either. She was always too busy telling me all about what I was supposed to do and not supposed to do.

  Ed said: “My mum doesn’t tell me anything about supposed to and not supposed to. She leaves all that to my nan.”

  In the evening we sat together by the fire and Ellie read to us, bits from Winnie-the-Pooh and bits from Lewis Carroll, books I’ve kept from my own childhood. Ellie reads well. Ed was enchanted.

  My friend Thomas has also been introduced to Ed. Thomas declares him to be a little monkey. Thomas lingers most mornings. He likes talking to Ellie about the weather.

  It is strange when there are so many people in the barn at one time. My life is branching out into all sorts of new directions, like a hazel tree that resprouts after coppicing.

  * * *

  • • •

  Weekdays are our quieter days. I make harps. Ellie sits wrapped up in a rug and reads or looks at the fire. She sometimes goes outside to wander by herself or sometimes comes with me on my walk and I show her all the things I like, from the frozen puddles to the iced tops of the pine trees to the shining structures that have formed over the stream like organ pipes. She gazes at everything and holds on to me so that she doesn’t fall over.