The Haunting of Harriet (9 page)

Harriet was tall - not long and graceful but large and ungainly. From birth she shunned the limelight, being happiest unnoticed beside her beautiful brother, or better still when her father sang to her, which he only ever did when no one else was near. She shared his solitary manner, the air of a watcher rather than a doer. She was obviously her father’s daughter and he spent as much time as he could with his beloved baby girl. Together they kept to the shadows, leaving front of stage to Davy and his Mama, who basked in the reflected light of the son. Although ten hours younger, Harriet was by far the stronger twin and took on the role of protector as if she knew she was destined to watch over her little brother throughout his life.

Alice took scant interest in the children. Her son’s resemblance to herself made him a rival. She thought him beautiful and enjoyed the reflection of the praise that was lavished on him. When she looked at Harriet she could see nothing of beauty. Secretly this changeling child frightened her. It was those eyes. They were in fact mirror images of her own but Alice could not see it. The only time she saw her own amber eyes was when they shone back from the one of the many mirrors she consulted, always with a gleam of approval. Her daughter’s eyes peered disapprovingly into her soul, exposing her shallowness. One looked into mother’s or daughter’s eyes at one’s peril; to do so was to fall instantly under a spell. George was smitten; first by the mother, then by these disparate children. He doted on them, much to Alice’s chagrin. David was his first-born, his son and heir, but Harriet was his sunshine and his joy.

By the time the Marchant twins were eight, Harriet towered over Davy. Never destined to be a diminutive stunner like her mother, she dwarfed the pair of them and her Mama was often heard referring to her as a freak. She grew faster than Tom the gardener’s runner beans and was as thin as one of the bamboo poles that supported them although she could eat the entire pantry at one sitting. She moved with an ungainly, lolloping gait, as if her brain was too far from her feet for any message to get through. And she knew only two speeds: flat-out or stop. Her thoughts travelled even faster than her feet, so when she spoke her words tumbled out in such rapid succession that the sense of them was lost in the delivery.

The child had a mind of her own, as did her hair. From day one it was thick and coarse, unlike her mother’s silken, Titian tresses. The red mass that was Harriet’s crowning shame grew in unruly chunks that did not so much frame her face as imprison it, sticking out in different directions, depending on their mood. Attempts to tame it by cutting a fringe failed: the horrid stuff refused to lie flat, preferring to protrude at a right-angle, giving the appearance of a shelf, which took several hair slides and grips to hold back. The only way to control this mane was to plait it while it was still wet, which worked well enough until Harriet, who loathed ribbons or dresses or anything feminine, would wrench it free, letting it bounce back with a vengeance and explode into wild corkscrews resembling a barley-sugar twist.

Whereas most redheads have pale, transparent skin, Harriet’s radiated health. The sun only had to look at her to turn her natural olive tone an even bronze glow, which continued to darken to the colour of a conker. Her eyes were her truly redeeming feature. They were pure amber, translucent honey weapons that she deployed with total ignorance as to their potency. Unlike her mother’s, they were filled with kindness and mischief. Tough, independent and fiercely loyal as she was, her brother adored her and willingly accepted her as his leader. She was wilful, with a stubbornness that matched her mother’s. Alice, to her horror, had given birth to an out-and-out tomboy. The two had not yet reached a point of conflict but the meagre foundations that lay beneath them were shaky.

Young Harriet’s most extraordinary attribute was her voice. She could hold a tune and deliver a song with a mellow full-throated quality that seemed to come from deep in her stomach. Strong and mature, it had a richness of tone not usually associated with one so young. Her father’s failing eyesight was compensated by the sound of this voice. She would sit on his lap on his old wicker chair by the boathouse, lost in their own secret world: two songbirds warbling for the sheer joy it. And Harriet could whistle as well as any man; much of the day was spent with her hands thrust deep into her pockets, whistling or humming to herself, as she strode about, her brother in her wake, running full pelt to keep up.

George was invalided out of service with early retirement in January 1939. His accidental collision with the seven-twenty, all those years ago, had not only fractured his skull, impairing his eyesight, but he had evidently also suffered severe damage to his cranial and optic nerve. An epileptic fit while at work had cost him his job, the use of his right eye and a second opportunity to serve King and country in the war that he had known for some time was inevitable. He arrived back in Kent broken and depressed. Life without his work to go to was a strange, alien thing, an increasingly difficult journey leading nowhere. Tom encouraged him to help in the garden but his fits came more and more frequently, which made working outside dangerous and difficult. Lack of employment left him with an inclination to do nothing in which he began to indulge. His depressions deepened. He would sink into pits of self-loathing and despair that terrified Alice, who had little empathy with her husband’s affliction and saw him as a liability.

His “little nightingale” was his salvation. Her patience was infinite, her devotion total. They would start each day walking together around the garden, her right hand gripped tightly in his left, his black cane in service in the other. With his stick he would point to items at random - a bud, a leaf, an insect - and Harriet would run to them, kneeling to examine them more closely; then placing them in her canvas bag she would run back to the comfort of that large hand while chattering non-stop about the latest amazing treasure, which they would examine later under a magnifying glass. The bond being cemented daily between father and child was to be for the child a powerful force in a strange, lonely life.

So far Harriet’s life had been fine. She had a few troubles but adopted the philosophy that there was no point worrying about something if you could not do anything about it. Her relationship with her mother fell into this category. Although Alice was an abysmal parent, Harriet taught herself to accept her or ignore her. Her love for her brother came naturally and was mutually rewarding. Her love for her father was absolute. Watching him slip away cut her to the quick. His dependence on her, however, turned her into a fiercely independent creature, old for her age and proud of her role as a carer. She had been born stubborn and now she was growing up, her individualism was surfacing with a vengeance. So when her father suffered his first stroke Harriet was ready to become his “nightingale” in more ways than one. Given the choice, she would have been constantly at his side, nursing him in her own earnest way.

George’s concentration diminished daily. But Harriet never moaned. When she was not wiping the stream of dribble from the corner of his lop-sided mouth or packing his pipe and puffing on it to get it started before handing it over for him to take a few feeble sucks, she was content simply to sit and sing to him, knowing that the days when he could walk with her or carry her aloft on his shoulders were over. She had to accept that their precious days together were numbered. When his face contorted with pain or he became insensible to her presence, she wondered where he went but she never gave up on him. Sitting in silence was hard for Harriet and she tried to read quietly beside him. She even attempted sewing and produced a pathetic sampler that he hung beside his chair in the Tudor room. There was little she could do other than love him. For the child, that was enough but for the man it caused a deep ache, a yearning to gather her into his arms and fly away with her beyond all the pain and cruelty this world afforded. There were times when Harriet’s presence served as a hideous reminder of his inadequacy as a father. His depression crippled him. He would be lost without her and afraid of leaving her. Locked inside his unresponsive frame was a loving father desperate to escape by any means. The telepathy between them was so strong that the child began to sense the pain her presence caused him. Reluctantly she limited the time she spent with him to such times when she could see it was helping him. The prison that trapped him became a two-way barrier blocking her on the outside, unable to reach through to him while he could find no release from the pain.

Alice remained oblivious to all this. She was starring in a drama of her own. She had discovered the joy of sex with almost anyone but George. The war delighted her. London became even more enticing with its constantly changing supply of handsome uniformed officers to admire her. The blacked-out streets, the knowledge that at any moment it could all end, that any kiss could be the last, was irresistible. War had brought an excitement, an added frisson of danger that fed her addiction and exaggerated the glitz behind the dark exteriors of the nightclubs she frequented. She was hooked on being “naughty” and this war was the perfect excuse to indulge her bad behaviour. A car would call each night and whisk her away to her secret life.

Harriet took to hiding on the corner of the landing, out of her mother’s view, watching for her to make her appearance. She was still a very beautiful woman and to see her in all her glory was like being at the cinema. Her long evening gown, a fox fur draped over wide, padded shoulders, sleek, cinnamon hair caught up in combs and braids and those long red talons flashing as she placed a black Sobranie in its holder. The click of the small silver lighter before its bright orange flame leapt up to meet it, catching the watcher in the spell that was Alice. Seeing those wonderful sculpted lips purse as they sucked hard and long; the practised tilt of the head before the thin coil was released from a perfect oval to begin its long journey around the elegant head, lingering for a moment before continuing on up to the top of the staircase, growing weaker as it climbed higher and higher. It was straight out of the movies. At the bottom of the stairs the cigarette was stubbed out. Long gloves were pulled on and with a final pout of reflective approval she was gone. As the front door closed Harriet would sneak into the temple, stand before her mother’s altar and mimic the sensuous action she had witnessed so many times. First she ran her tongue along her teeth to remove any trace of red then a quick flick at each corner of her mouth with the fourth finger of each hand to ensure a perfect finish. Next, ignoring her well chewed rather grubby nails, she would balance her pencil between her first and second fingers and adopting an affected pose would blow a kiss at her reflection, before sweeping onto the landing and beginning her descent to the ring of rapturous applause from her “audience”.

Not that Harriet had ever seen a film. Her mother considered all picture palaces dirty flea-ridden places that decent people did not frequent. But as Harriet only ever viewed her mother from this unnatural distance she may as well have been made of celluloid. She observed her without the warmth of physical contact. She just watched, the image of her mother’s ritual etching itself into her memory. The brushing of the hair, the drenching of the spray from the fascinating array of bottles displayed on the dressing-table would stay with Harriet for the rest of her life, enabling her to recall the smell of her mother. Simply by closing her eyes, she could conjure up the exact sensation of silk or fur against her skin. Nobody ever saw her creep into her mother’s room and pull cinnamon threads from that ivory brush to hold against and compare with her own. Jabbing at her freckles with a loaded powder puff she watched them vanish beneath a thick layer of fine white dust. This caress by proxy was the closest she got to actually touching her mother. She never felt the warmth of her mother’s skin. She judged by appearance. In winter it was as cold and forbidding as alabaster and in the summer that pale golden sheen was far too exquisite to be touched, defiled by dirty fingermarks.

Harriet dreamed of being beautiful. She too wanted to be sculpted out of polished marble. Her mother was precious, valuable; a rare object to be worshipped from afar or at least at arm’s length. She was like the Chinese vase on the hall table, beautiful, expensive but breakable. Where this creature disappeared to each night or at what time she staggered back was never questioned. George must have known about his wife’s escapades but her nocturnal shenanigans were of little interest to him. It suited both parties admirably for him to turn a blind eye. For her part, Harriet needed the love of her father. At night in her dreams he was strong again, kissing her goodnight and stroking her tangle of hair as if it were spun from the purest of silk. He would lift her onto his shoulders, calling her his “little nightingale” while laughing at her funny face as she twisted round to meet his eyes. As long as he was there she was content to live this strange half-life with him. The thought of life without her father was unbearable. Without her brother it would be hell.