Ellie and the Harpmaker

by Hazel Prior

  I am tired with all the talking now and sink back onto the pillows.

  Jo’s eyes are smoldering and she looks as though she is about to snort a great burst of fire from her nostrils, like a dragon. “God in heaven! That Ellie has a lot to answer for! And I thought Rhoda was bad!”

  | 46 |

  Ellie

  Only a sister would offer to drive three hundred miles for such a cause, when she has a child ill in bed and three others clamoring for her attention.

  “But I’m afraid I’ll have to drive us straight from the hospital back up to Yorkshire,” Vic says, and I hear down the line how much her voice is sagging. “I’d suggest a B and B, but Alan is at work tomorrow and I won’t be able to get a babysitter at such short notice.”

  Six hundred miles, then. It’s asking a lot, even of a sister.

  If only Christina was here!

  I cudgel my brain for other possibilities. Then I tell Vic to stay where she is. There’s a phone directory in the booth. I shuffle through the pages. The number is listed.

  The phone rings on and on. I’m about to give up when I hear a click and a voice greets me in a singsong Welsh accent.

  “Hi, Thomas, it’s Ellie Jacobs.”

  “Ellie Jacobs! Hello, Ellie Jacobs. What a pleasure, indeed! What can I do you for?”

  He knows nothing of last night’s events, apart from the fact that Dan left my car at his house. I break the news as gently as I can. Thomas bombards me with colorful expletives as I struggle through my description of the fire.

  “So our boyo Dan? He’s all right, is he, now?”

  I assure him that Dan is reasonably all right, here in the hospital too but still being “patched up.”

  I explain my current problem and ask about my car.

  “Yes, it’s still here next to the van,” Thomas tells me. And yes, Thomas, bless him, is happy to come and pick me up and take me to it. He is also sure—or pretty much sure—his wife won’t mind if I borrow some of her clothes.

  * * *

  • • •

  The drive to Yorkshire is longer than ever. I’m still feeling extremely delicate. And uncomfortable, and itchy. Thomas’s wife’s skirt is an awful creation, a tubular thing in puce nylon that’s three sizes too big for me. The sweater is grotesque too, with flouncy sleeves and a pattern of enormous turquoise and pink roses. I’ll return them both to their kind owner at the first possible opportunity. My outfit is the least of my worries, but I’ve improved it as best I can with Dan’s brown jacket. The jacket smells horribly of smoke, but behind that is the scent of pinewood and behind that, possibly, the scent of Dan himself. The scent of a kind, brave harpmaking man.

  The vision of burning harps haunts me throughout the journey. My driving is erratic, disturbed by memories: the smell, the heat, the sound of roaring flames and breaking strings. Dan will be haunted too, lying in his hospital bed, groaning in pain. Cursing the day he met me.

  I only pray he recovers quickly and finds some way of carrying on. Thomas promised he would go and visit as soon as visits were allowed. I wish I could be closer. I’ll try ringing the hospital once I arrive at Vic’s.

  As for my own future, I just don’t know. Logic suggests I should go back to Clive if he’ll have me. If he had come to collect me from the hospital I’d have gone home to him again like a lamb. After all, he saved Dan’s life after my clumsiness with the candle nearly killed him, and how can I ever forget that? Yet I shrink away from the idea of life with Clive again. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got into the habit of living off dreams. Reality seems a hell of a lot less attractive.

  I stop off three times, to fill the tank with petrol and drink awful coffee, at crowded service stations. At one of them I spot a man heading into the car park and I’m sure it’s Clive. I can only see his back view, but his height and the sandy color of his hair . . . Could it be that he has followed me, that he is even now planning to take me home? Then he turns and I see that it isn’t him at all. I start breathing again.

  With a throbbing head and stinging eyes I finally reach the close of redbrick houses where Vic lives and pull up in the driveway. Her children are playing in the garden. They flock round the car and drag me into the house with small, sticky hands.

  “Auntie Ellie’s here! Auntie Ellie’s here!”

  I manage a smile.

  Vic runs to meet me, her auburn hair streaming behind her, face flushed, arms open. “You’re in for a noisy time, I’m afraid!” she cries as she envelops me in a hug. I was cryptic on the phone, but she knows I’ve been through something and she knows it’s big.

  * * *

  • • •

  “But how . . .” I stammer. “. . . It can’t be true!”

  I clamp the receiver to my ear, wondering if it’s possible I’ve misheard. But I know I haven’t.

  Jo’s voice is terse. “I don’t think Dan would lie about such a thing! Do you?”

  I stare at the six pairs of boots in Vic’s hallway as if they can provide the proof I need. I’d rung Jo hoping for news of Dan. But instead she’d assaulted me with a hideous, horrifying revelation. I’d assumed the fire had been all my fault, which was bad enough, but this! My husband, a criminal. My husband, an arsonist.

  “I just . . . I can’t comprehend how Clive could have wanted to do such a thing,” I stammer.

  Could he really, really have meant to strike that match? I recall the tang I smelled on his breath the last time we were at home together. I picture all the empty whiskey bottles. The effects of alcohol on an overstrained mind . . .

  “I don’t get it either,” Jo grunts. “What did Dan ever do to him? If—and nobody ever hinted this was the case until now—your reason for leaving your husband was to be with my brother, then that was your call and your choice. But it’s Dan who’s lost his livelihood and ended up in horrible pain in the hospital. While you skip off to the comfort of your sister’s in Yorkshire.”

  “Jo, I—”

  “How could your husband even think of it?” She’s getting worked up now. Her voice is screechy. “What kind of a person is he to go to such extremes? What did you do to make him so jealous, so violent? Were you sleeping with my brother?”

  “No!”

  “Well, clearly something was going on. And now you know the consequences of your actions. I hope you’re happy.”

  She slams the phone down. I don’t blame her one bit for her anger. I stand shaking in the hall, trying to take in this new slant on things. The vision of the burning barn is alive in my head. It’s so terrifying I can’t bear to think of anyone deliberately planning it, let alone my own husband.

  Clive, Clive—how is this possible? Over the last few hours I’ve been telling myself he’s a hero. I was even contemplating going back to him. But now the message is thundering home: How much heroism did it actually take to call the fire department and to drag an exhausted Dan back from the barn? More to the point, how much malice did it take to plan a scene of destruction like the one I’d witnessed? Malice and sheer, venomous evil.

  The world is turning on its head. I think back. Everything is coming into sharper focus. Clive isn’t the one who called to me through the flames or guided me down the roof and caught me when I jumped. Or who dashed back into the furnace to save the harps. It isn’t Clive who is the hero.

  Everything now homes in on Dan, the kindest, bravest, truest man I know. What horror I have brought into his life! How can he ever forgive me? How can I possibly overcome the bitter regret clawing inside me?

  | 47 |

  Dan

  My first visitor in the hospital was my sister Jo. My second visitor was Thomas. He was wearing an anorak over his shorts, electric blue. The fringe of his hair was on a jagged slant and pressed flat against his forehead. I guessed he had let his wife Linda give him a haircut again and not liked it again and tried to improve it himself wit
h a pair of nail scissors again. This happens often with Thomas.

  Thomas sat in the chair by the bed and expressed his deep concern for my well-being and asked if I was doing all right. I informed him that according to the doctors I was doing miraculously well. He patted me on the shoulder.

  “Ouch,” I said because my shoulder was tender. Not as badly burned as my arms and hands, but still not good.

  “Sorry, mate,” he said.

  We sat in silence for a while. I thought about my harps. Thirty-two had been burned. I had managed to save four, and by good fortune Ellie’s harp had also survived. The fire brigade had put out the flames before they reached the upstairs room. But thirty-two was a lot of harps to lose.

  Thomas said, “I gave Ellie J a lift from the hospital. She drove off up to Yorkshire. Just in case you wanted to know where she is, boyo.”

  (I already knew where she was, in fact, because Jo had told me. I had asked lots of questions about Ellie when I found out Ellie had been on the phone to Jo, but Jo had said don’t you go worrying about Ellie; Ellie’s not the one who got severe burns and lost thirty-two harps and her whole livelihood, is she?)

  After another pause Thomas said: “I presume you’re insured, mate?”

  I didn’t answer immediately, so he said it again, in different words: “You took out buildings and contents insurance for the barn, didn’t you, boyo?”

  Buildings and contents insurance is when you give more money than you can possibly afford to a company made up of people you have never met and in exchange they will ask you to fill in a lot of forms packed with questions to which you don’t know the answers.

  I said no.

  “That’s not good, boyo,” Thomas said. Then he said: “Where are you going to live? How are you going to survive?”

  To which I answered that I hadn’t the faintest idea.

  | 48 |

  Ellie

  “He could be charming in his way, but I have to admit I always thought you were far too good for him.”

  “Good?” The word makes no sense.

  Vic reaches out and strokes my arm. “I never particularly warmed to Clive, Ellie, but I never dreamed he could do anything like this! Whiskey or no!”

  It is late. We are at the kitchen table, with wine. I take a sip from my glass. I need it badly. Telling Vic seems to make what happened even more real. Her husband wanders in.

  “Alan, sorry, but Ellie and I are having an important catch-up.”

  Alan looks apologetic and backs out.

  When he’s gone again she tops up both our glasses. She keeps shaking her head and making faces. “Do you know, I had this bad feeling about Clive right from the start. I know it’s easy to say now, but I never felt he was right for you. He was unbelievably manipulative. He played on your insecurities, Ellie, and he cramped your style. He could put on a good show of kindness, but he knew exactly which buttons to press to get his own way and make you feel bad about yourself. I did try to tell you, but you wouldn’t have it—you always sprang to his defense. You just kept giving him the benefit of the doubt. I thought you must have some kind of a blind spot or something.”

  “Well, my eyes are opened now!”

  My mother instilled in me such pitifully low self-esteem I’d always considered myself lucky to have a man like Clive.

  Lucky? I laugh bitterly.

  “What about this harpmaker?” Vic says, pushing back her hair, searching for a positive. “Is there anything there?”

  I look down into my glass. “Vic . . . thirty-two harps . . . thirty-two! One would have been tragedy enough, but . . . If you had seen those harps! If you’d seen him working at them day after day, creating such fine, noble creatures out of blocks of wood . . . so carefully and lovingly shaping them . . . Each one a work of wonder, each one totally unique. The smell of them, the touch of them, the exquisite sounds they could make! And because of me, because of stupid, stupid me, they are all burned to cinders!”

  My grief is contagious. We weep together.

  A long time later I stand up and go to look at the calendar that’s hanging on the wall. “I must visit Mum. How is she?”

  “She’s got a bit of a cold, but they’re looking after her well.”

  “Can we see her tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  At this moment I feel that the sight of my mother will be reassuring. It just goes to show how much life has changed.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Ellie, Ellie, what’s happening!”

  I throw back the bedclothes and sit bolt upright, gasping for breath. My heart is jumping about in my rib cage. “What? What?”

  Vic is at the door in her dressing gown. “You screamed.”

  I realize where I am. The panic begins to subside. “Bad dreams,” I explain, rubbing my eyes.

  “Oh, my poor sis! You were bloodcurdling. You terrified us all. What were you dreaming?”

  “Bad stuff. Burning harps, flying pheasants, my husband setting fire to my clothes.”

  She sits beside me and strokes my hair. I cling to her. The images replay in my head.

  My husband was setting fire to my clothes. And I was wearing those clothes.

  * * *

  • • •

  “Mum, look who’s come to see you!” declares Vic as we enter the small, functional, overheated bedroom. Mum is in an armchair, holding a book upside down and viewing it earnestly. A pink paper crown from Christmas is perched on top of her white curls.

  “Ah, Mum, look at you, still looking so festive!”

  She would never have worn such a thing in the past. I wonder if one of the carers placed it on her head and if she even knows it’s there.

  “Just a minute, I’m all blocked up,” she mutters, turning the book over and over in her hands.

  Vic and I exchange glances. We’re not sure in which sense she is blocked up or whether she even has any comprehension of the words she’s saying. We wait. At last she lays the book on her lap and looks up at me. Her eyes are encrusted with rheum, but signs of recognition slowly spread across her face.

  “Ah, you!” she says to me, then turns to Vic. “She looks thinner, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes, she does, but we’re very happy to see her, aren’t we, Mum?”

  Mum’s wrinkles shift slightly. She’s never been very good at smiling.

  We stay and chat for a while, covering the topics of Christmas at the care home, the weather, memories of our childhood and favorite foods. Mum contributes little, and only fragments are relevant. Vic updates her on the ballet and swimming lessons of her throng of grandchildren. I provide precisely no updates about my own life.

  * * *

  • • •

  Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, the thought keeps slamming into my consciousness. I fling it out time and time again, but it comes back like a boomerang. Clive wanted to ruin Dan and mortify me. Clive wanted to burn the harps. I simply cannot comprehend such cruelty.

  Neither Dan nor I have reported him to the police. As far as the fire service is concerned, the cause of the fire was a fallen candle, and the rapid spread of flames was due to the quantity of wood shavings and other flammable objects in the barn. Nobody has mentioned a heap of paraffin-soaked clothes, evidence that was wholly destroyed. Was it arson, anyway? Clive (thanks to Phineas) never actually lit a match. We could, I suppose, drag him through the courts, but it would only be traumatic for everyone, most of all for Dan, who can’t bear to be in a room with more than five people. But I wonder if Dan could claim compensation. Or if I could somehow help him negotiate an out-of-court settlement with Clive. I’ve discussed it with Vic and Alan and they think that might still be a possibility.

  The thought of ever being in touch with Clive again, however, makes my blood run cold.

  * * *

 
• • •

  They’ve all left early this morning, Alan and Vic for work and the children for school. I brew myself a strong coffee. The aroma takes me straight back to the Harp Barn. I’m pretty much always there in my thoughts anyway. It has already been a week since the fire, but time has folded into itself and everything seems to refer back to that event. I decide to hoover the house or make myself useful in some other way before the family returns. There’s a plastic helicopter on the chair, a one-legged doll on the fridge and a felt owl staring at me from the windowsill. The owl has a reproachful look and sadness in its big purple eyes. I sit down with my coffee, wondering where to start. Then I see it: the letter lying on the kitchen table, addressed to me. Clive’s handwriting.

  My coffee lurches all over the table. Luckily the tablecloth is childproof and easily wipeable. I find a kitchen sponge and clean the mess. Then I pick up the envelope gingerly, as if it’s about to bite me. Sooner or later I’ll have to look. I force myself to run a finger under the flap and unfold the paper inside.

  Dear Ellie,

  I have written to you so many times, but this time I’m going to post it. Words don’t come easily, but you and I still have futures and I know I can’t get on with mine if I leave this hanging.

  I want you to know that I’ve stopped drinking. I’m tempted often, but all I have to do is remind myself what a monster whiskey makes of me. I know I’ll never go near it again. I can never forget your face that night, and never forget what I did and what I was so close to doing.

  There is nothing I want more than for you to come home, but I have no right to expect that now. You still have your keys. When you are ready please come back to the house and take whatever is yours. If you don’t want to see me, then come during my office hours.

  I’ve transferred a sum to your account, which I hope you will accept. There is enough, I believe, to support you for a good while and to make repairs to the barn if that’s what you want to do (and I have a feeling you will). It hasn’t escaped my notice that no charges have been pressed against me. Your kindness stands in stark contrast to my own bitter actions.