"We sold one of your originals after you went home last evening, dear," Annie announced when Harry arrived at the shop that morning.
She had walked to work through the golden dawn light at a quick pace in order to ward off the early April chill in the air and was a bit out of breath. Ignoring her employer, she turned to look at the wall where her watercolour paintings and ink drawings were displayed and noted the empty space where one of her "Church of St. Mary" renditions had been. She flushed with pleasure. Both her own artwork and Annie's were reproduced on notecards and calendars, mugs and coasters, trivets and teapots, and other such Old Alresford mementoes, and these sold like sweets to the tourist trade— it was their daily bread and butter. But to sell an original painting! This meant thousands of extra pounds in the bank.
"Now that spring has arrived at last, it would be good to lay in a new supply of originals," Annie hinted gently. "It's a new tourist season—we need to stock some fresh work for our regulars to pick from."
"Yes, yes, I know," Harry said irritably. "I'll take an easel out this afternoon and get started on a new St. Mary's." The old parish church was popular with the tourists. Or perhaps she would sketch some more Old Alresford House drawings. Local landscapes always sold well: the Pond and the Green, the old rectory, and the fulling mill—the usual tourist spots. When she was feeling especially inspired, she sought out other subjects of beauty—wild flowers, water fowl, grazing sheep, and Harry's own particular favourite, the willow trees on Ox Drove cycle path. She was not, however, feeling especially inspired of late.
Annie seemed not to notice her employee's moodiness. The kind old woman had always reminded Harry of a woolly sheep- round and soft and gentle, with fluffy white hair and mild eyes. "That will be fine, dear," the elderly woman bleated placidly as she turned the "Open" sign around on the door and prepared for the onslaught of customers searching for just the right souvenir.
Harry took her place behind the counter, ready to earn her hourly wage, undignified as it might be for an artist to work as a shop girl. Selling an original was an occasional windfall, but she could not count on it to pay the monthly bills. At sixteen, Harry had quit school to try her hand at art fulltime, but without any training her efforts simply floundered. Her mother's best friend, Annie, a local artist with her own shop, had soon stepped in, offering to give her lessons whenever she was able. Under Annie's expert guidance, Harry's natural talent flourished and her work began to sell. John had been proud of her then.
But two years later their mum had died, and John's job at the local market—after school and on weekends—had not brought in enough to make ends meet. He refused to quit school and work full time and had insisted that Harry take a paying job as well. He was sixteen himself by that time, a top student and hell-bent on becoming a doctor, and did not seem to understand how important Harry's art was and why she should not have to do ordinary work. They had had a number of heated rows over it, with John complaining that he should not have to support the both of them by his own efforts alone and Harry standing firm that her art must not pushed aside in favour of lesser work.
Finally John, who had admittedly always been the clever one in the family, hit on the solution of Harry working in Annie's shop and selling her work at the same time. Annie's hands were already growing stiff and painful with arthritis and she was no longer churning out paintings as quickly as she had in the past, and so the potential of a new source of local art persuaded her take Harry on as an employee as well as a student. And here Harry had stayed for over twenty years, with Annie moving more and more slowly as time went by and depending more and more on her own daughter, Charlotte, and on Harry to keep things going.
But Harry had what she called an "artist's temperament". When she was feeling bright, she could turn out painting after painting. None of them were masterpieces, but the tourists seemed to appreciate them and though most could not afford an original piece, reproductions flew off the shelves. Those were the times when Harry felt all was right with the world.
However, when Harry was in a dark mood, she could not manage to paint or draw anything at all, and many days only the thought of making enough coin to pay for her Jameson could get her out of bed and into the shop. She could serve customers well enough when she was in her dark place of mind, but when she picked up pen or brush her hands trembled uncontrollably and she could not do a thing with them.
The village folk assumed that it was the drink that caused her hands to shake, but she had always suspected that was something more dire. After all, she noted as she readied the till for the day, her hands were steady enough just now even though she'd had a couple of shots with breakfast to get her going this morning. No, she had always had a feeling that there was something physically wrong with her during the dark times, and now she was certain she was right. John had an occasional tremor in his left hand due, he said, to nerve damage caused by the bullet that had ripped through his shoulder. That had to be it, of course. At some time in her childhood—some time she couldn't seem to remember, probably because it must have been terribly traumatic—Harry must have been injured enough to cause the same sort of nerve damage, which still caused her hands to shake. No one who knew her as a child could recall such an injury, but Harry was convinced it was the only explanation.
Old Annie greeted her first customers of the day, chatting pleasantly and patiently answering their questions about the local history and notable sites. It was an elderly couple and they dithered about, undecided about whether to buy a tea set with Harry's willow trees painted on them or a set of tumblers with a silhouette of the Old Alresford House etched on each. Annie was gentle and unhurried, but Harry felt she could scream if they didn't make up their minds soon. Fortunately, her phone buzzed and looking down, she saw it was John.
Motioning with her phone to Annie, Harry stepped outside with relief at the excuse to escape. But why was John calling her on a Wednesday? They had had such a row when he had come to see her on Boxing Day, ending with John asking her yet again to "get help", as he called it. Harry had reminded him in strong and pointed language that it was John who needed help; John, with his PTSD and his strange attachment to that psychopathic flatmate of his, and now with his unhealthy fixation on his unsuitably young girlfriend. They had not had much to say to each other since. John's perfunctory calls on Sunday nights had been excruciatingly civil and brief.
"John?" she asked, half afraid of bad news and half hoping he had at last come to his senses and was calling to admit that Harry had been right all along about that insufferable slag, Mary Morstan.
"Hi, Harry." John sounded happy but wary of her. "Listen, I'm going to be in Winchester tomorrow on business and wondered if you'd meet me for lunch. Anywhere you'd like. My treat."
Harry was instantly suspicious. What reason could John have for going to Winchester? She could only think of two: the solicitor, who had held John's will and other legal papers since John first joined the RAMC; and the bank, where Mum had paid for a safety deposit box decades ago in which to hide her few bits of treasures that she wanted to keep out of the hands of her drunken husband. "Why are you going to Winchester? Why not come here? It's only seven miles further on," she demanded.
"I can meet you for lunch there if you like," he replied cheerfully. "Just thought you might like something different from local fare. I'll finish my business In Winchester and meet you at the pub at one."
"What business do you have Winchester?" Harry demanded. "You're changing your will, aren't you? That . . . that horrible creature has convinced you to hand over all your assets to her. I knew it!"
John snorted with mirthless laughter. "What assets? Harry, I'm in a perpetual state of being broke. Any extra I might have laid by, I poured into that money-pit of a house years ago."
Oh, he would throw the house into her face, wouldn't he? Well, if he wasn't going to the solicitors, then his business would be with the bank. "What are you doing with the safety deposit box? You're not giving her any of Mum's things, are you?" Harry cried, aghast. "Oh, John, you can't!"
Her brother sighed and his voice grew tight. "Look, I wish you would just agree to meet Mary. You'd like her if you gave her a chance; I know you would."
Harry snarled derisively. Words failed her in the face of his obstinance.
"Anyway," John stubbornly persisted, "you need to get used to the idea of Mary being in my life. I wanted to tell you this in person, but I'm proposing to her on Friday."
Harry gasped with a sudden insight. That was why he was going to the bank in Winchester! "Not with Gran's ring? No, John, that's the only thing of value we have left of Mum's things. You can't give it away. You just can't!" She dropped heavily onto the bench outside the shop, her legs suddenly too weak to hold her.
"We agreed years ago, Harry." John's voice sounded strained and he spoke with the excessive patience that she knew meant he was on the edge of losing his temper. "You kept Mum's ring and I was to have Gran's. I'm offering it to Mary as an engagement ring, since I can't afford to buy her anything new."
Harry fought back the angry tears. "But . . . I gave Mum's ring to Clara when . . . . I don't have it anymore." She hated that her voice was cracking.
"I know you gave it to Clara. I was there, at your wedding." John's voice gentled into sympathy. "But, Harry, I also know she gave it back to you when she left. If you don't have it, it isn't because of Clara."
Harry covered her mouth to smother a sob. Yes, Clara had given it back—thrown it at her, actually, there in the London flat the army had arranged for them so that they could be near John while he was in hospital. Until that day, Clara had always forgiven Harry for everything—for the relapses, the filthy moods, the misunderstandings. But what Harry had done that day in hospital, Clara could not forgive. "I knew you had problems, but to be capable of this!" she had cried, tears coursing down her face. "If you won't get help, I can't watch you self-destruct anymore." And then she had walked out, and that was the end of a six-year marriage. Harry had picked the ring up off the floor and had taken it to the nearest pawn shop. She couldn't really remember anything after that for several, dark weeks.
"Look, I'll see you at lunch tomorrow and we'll talk about it," John was saying softly.
"Don't bother," Harry snapped. "Just take Gran's ring and go back to London. I don't want to see you." Gran's ring, Mum's ring, Mum herself, Clara—everything was gone. What did Harry have left but John? And now John was deserting her again, just as he had when he left home twenty years ago.
John sighed. "All right, have it your own way, then. I'll let you know what she says when I ask her." And he rung off.
Harry sat on the bench, gripping the seat on either side of her in both hands. Her fingernails dug into the green-painted boards as she tried to control her rage. How could he not see how foolishly and how rashly he was behaving over this chit of girl? He'd only been seeing her for six months! And now to give Gran's ring to her! Harry wondered if she would be able to sneak a few pulls from the flask she had hidden in her handbag without Annie seeing. She needed something to steady her nerves.
"'I'll let you know what she says. . . .'" Harry muttered John's last words to her sarcastically under her breath. She pulled up the picture John had sent her of his girlfriend and sneered at it. So young, so pretty, and so obviously predatory. And then she brightened. Mary Morstan wouldn't be in the least bit interested in marrying John, would she? This child was a cat on the prowl, playing with Harry's brother as if he were a catnip mouse. The bitch would eviscerate him, and then tire of her new toy and toss him aside. She would have no desire to make the relationship permanent, would she? With her whole life ahead of her, would she really want to tie herself to a broken-down, penniless old soldier? And then Harry remembered her own shock at seeing John's savagely damaged shoulder. She knew that no young woman would want to have to face such an ugly sight every day of her life. Mary Morstan would turn John's proposal down, and then he would know that Harry had been right all along! He would apologize for treating his sister so rudely and admit that all they had left in the world was each other.
Greatly cheered, Harry went back into the shop and served customers all day with more patience than she was normally able to muster. She even began work on a new painting during her lunch break—her precious willows with their fresh, green foliage stirring gently in a springtime breeze.
000
Three days later, her phone pinged and she opened the text from John. It read simply: "She said yes."
Harry, moving as if she were in a dream, took the next bus to Winchester, wandered into an off-licence, and bought a case of Jameson. She had to take a cab to return home.
000
To read about John's proposal to Mary, see "Dancing Around the Subject".
To read about Harry's reaction to John leaving home when he was eighteen, see Chapter 3 of "Chance Meetings."