Harry Doing Good

by Canaway, W. H.

  Harry Doing Good

  W. H. Canaway

  © W. H. Canaway 1973

  W. H. Canaway has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1973 by Hutchinson & Co.

  This edition published in 2017 by The Odyssey Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Part Two

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Part One

  Truth

  1

  Harry finished his beer and set down the tankard with a happy sigh. He smiled at his five companions, grouped with him round the table in the corner of the pub.

  ‘Well, friends,’ he said. ‘What’s left in the kitty?’

  Evening light of early autumn slanted through the leaded windows, sending out warm glints from horse-brasses, a hunting horn and a post horn, copper kettles; light winked and scintillated over the rows of bottles behind the bar. The pub was full of cavers and walkers, a babble of conversations. The landlord and his wife were busy, and as happy as Harry, who was counting the coins on the table.

  ‘Enough for a pint each for the lads,’ he said. ‘And something soft for the girls. You’ve had your limit, ladies.’

  Simon said, ‘I’ll get them,’ knowing quite well what to get. He was over six feet tall, just eighteen, with mousy hair, not too long. Neither of the young men had long hair, and Harry had hair which was decidedly short. He was forty, a great age, and knew his own mind. There was no messing with Harry, everybody knew that, especially the parents of the young people he took under his wing.

  Linda got up with Simon and said, ‘I’ll help.’

  They pushed their way into the crowd at the bar, Linda petite and dark, with religious convictions like Harry; not that he made a favourite of her in any way. Harry had no favourites. He smiled round impartially at the others and said, ‘Well, that was what I call a good day. Twenty miles and a bit. Just right, that was. Just enough to set us up for a lovely night’s sleep after a jolly good supper and a well-earned jar or two.’

  Cheryl said with no more than a hint of displeasure, ‘You are an old meanie, Harry. I’d have loved another snowball.’

  Cheryl was lovely: no other word for it, thought Harry as he slapped her hand gently. A creamy blonde with a full figure…and seventeen.

  He said, ‘I’ll stretch a point once, but not twice. You know you’re under age. We got well away with it. You’ve had your snowball, and one’s your limit. I was taking a risk, Cheryl. Now don’t push your luck.’

  Peter, thickset and dark, with eyebrows which tended to grow together, nodded in agreement, and said, ‘Harry made Ann and Linda wait till they were eighteen. If it wasn’t for those blue eyes, I bet you’d have had to wait too.’

  ‘Unfair!’ shouted Harry, enjoying himself. ‘The eyes have nothing to do with it. The eyes do not have it!’

  Ann smiled at Cheryl, but said nothing. Cheryl was lovely, but Ann was beautiful, with a slightly olive skin, a thin straight nose, and hair even darker than Peter’s.

  Harry said, ‘This is better than that old youth club ever was. Come on, admit it! Isn’t this better?’

  It had all started with the youth club, when Harry had been a part-time deputy leader. They had hived off with Harry, Peter and Linda, Ann, Simon and Cheryl, because of the leader, Mr Lee-Barnes. There had been something…something not quite nice about the man; nothing you could put your finger on, but they had all felt it quite distinctly. Peter, who had belonged to the judo section and had a brown belt, thought the man was a queer, and should not have instructed in judo. So Peter left, even though he had been hoping to take a First Dan grading. Harry had put it to him plainly: break off from the club along with us, or we just won’t want to know.

  Harry could be trusted to keep the young people out of mischief, and see they had fun as well. And no messing, no funny business. When the youth club had finally broken up, other parents had practically begged Harry to take on their youngsters, but he had been firm. He had no room for any more apart from his loyal young friends. The name had stuck, and now they called themselves the LYF, including Harry himself. As he said, to them he might seem a grandpa, but to a grandpa he would seem a youngster. So the LYF they were. Having a name for the group was great. It somehow cemented them together. Harry and Linda had the bond of their deep beliefs, which they never tried to impose on the others, except possibly to lead by example. They thought of themselves as the LYF, and as time went on, none of them gave much thought to Cheryl’s deformed left hand, the jagged red blotch across Ann’s throat and collar bone, or Peter’s false teeth, or Simon’s occasional funny turn. Linda usually tagged along behind Simon, just as now, because you never knew, did you? Harry had never said anything to her, but there was an understanding between them so deep that words had been unnecessary.

  So Simon and Linda fetched the drinks through the crush: pints of beer for the men, and soft drinks for the girls, who had already had their limit: two bottles of pale ale apiece.

  And Simon said, ‘That was a great day, Harry, I must say. It really was great.’

  ‘Nothing like it,’ said Harry. ‘The Treak Cliff, the Winnats, the Speedwell and the Blue John. And a twenty-mile walk into the bargain, my happy warriors. And all the rest. It’s been a good few months, when you add it all up. Who’d be a dropout?’

  Cheryl said seriously, ‘We all might have been, easy. I don’t mean you, Harry. Nor you, Linda. But the rest of us, we might have been, easy.’

  ‘Yeh,’ said Simon. ‘Bad vibes. Bad karma.’

  ‘Simon,’ Harry said severely.

  ‘Sorry. I was only putting it on, Harry.’

  Harry took a long pull at his beer and then said, ‘That’s how it begins. And before you know where you are, you’re part of the permissive society.’

  ‘Hanging around doing nothing,’ Peter said. ‘Wearing beads and all that.’

  ‘Yes, well we’re the LYF,’ Harry said. ‘People outside don’t know. You’ll have heard them, though you never show it, and good for you. While they’re making their remarks, we’re exploring this island of ours.’

  Ann said, ‘I don’t think I’d have been a dropout. I mean, you’ve got to have an inclination that way in the first place, haven’t you? I know I’m not, well…’ She touched the upper part of her disfigurement and made a moue. ‘You know. But even so, you need to feel that way to begin with, before.’

  Cheryl nodded, but Linda shook her head negatively. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You didn’t listen to Harry in the first place. Just start imitating them, that’s all it needs. You want to listen to what he’s saying.’

  Harry nodded, leaning back in his seat. He was squat and strong, with a square brown face and a big jaw, hair cropped close, eyes and hair dark brown. His red anorak was draped over the back of the chair, the quilted material cheap and worn. He thought, It’s just like one big family. We’ll never break up; I won’t let us. Peter ought to marry Ann, and Linda could marry Simon.

  He glanced across at Cheryl, who was sipping ginger ale. She’s lovely, he thought, for the hundredth time. The hand makes no difference at all. Why, if I was that way inclined…but it’s a good job I’m not.

  ‘Bedroom eyes,’ Cheryl said to him.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Mentally undressing you, that’s what I was doing.’

  Though he knew where to draw the line, Harry would from time to time permit himself a little pleasantry with one or other of t
he girls, making them feel attractive in his eyes, as indeed they were. But only up to a point. Sex seldom obtruded with Harry, whose sexuality was so low-keyed and subdued that many a monk would have been glad of it.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Simon said. ‘A dish, is our Cheryl, a real dish.’

  ‘Right,’ said Harry quickly. ‘We’re agreed on that. Next subject, please.’

  Peter said, ‘The holidays. They’re coming up in three weeks. Can we talk about the holidays? These weekends have been great. We’ve done the Lakes and the Dales and the Meres. We’ve done some caves and Wenlock Edge. But they were just weekends. You said we’d take a whole week in the holidays, Harry. Have you got anything lined up?’

  ‘I have indeed,’ Harry said, looking at them all teasingly. ‘What do you think I’ve been doing while I was driving round servicing all those dishwashers? Boning up on Einstein or something like that? No: I’ve been thinking about what the LYF is going to be doing in the holidays.’

  ‘Tell us, Harry!’ they begged in chorus.

  Ann shared a conspiratorial grin with Harry, though she had no more idea than the others what he had in mind.

  ‘Wasn’t it Wigan Pier?’ she asked, and the others groaned.

  Peter said, ‘I thought of going down to the Budokwai, do a bit of training and then try for my black belt. I bet I could get it if I had some more practice.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Harry said. ‘You’re not breaking up the LYF for a black belt. All that Jap stuff. What’s wrong with a good straight left? Anyhow, you wait till you hear where we’re going. There’ll be no more talk about black belts then, so belt up, Peter lad.’

  Linda said, ‘Well, put us out of our misery. Let us all into the big secret.’

  ‘Not in here.’ Harry looked round the crowded room. ‘All it needs is somebody to overhear, and then when we got there we’d find fifty others there before us. Drink up and we’ll all go outside. Spend a penny first.’

  *

  Pennies spent, the party met again in the bar, then put on anoraks. In the lobby of the pub they dug out their boots from the jumbled pairs on the racks: scores of pairs, the mud on them caked hard by the heat from the pipes which ran beneath the racks. Leaning against the wall, hopping from foot to foot, interrupted by customers pushing through, they put on their boots and then went outside.

  The sun had sunk behind the moor, which was black against the afterglow; mist lay in the dale downwards and to their left as they came through the car park to an old VW Kombi. Harry unlocked the van and came out with a map, spreading it on the stone wall by the van; the others clustered round.

  Simon said, ‘North Wales,’ with a little touch of petulance in his voice. ‘Are we going up Snowdon or something?’

  Harry was opening out the map to its fullest extent. Then he folded it again at the section he wanted.

  ‘North Wales, yes,’ he said. ‘Snowdon, no. Why, you can take a train up Snowdon. Now look here. This plateau.’

  They all craned over the map.

  ‘It’s high up,’ Cheryl said.

  ‘Averages two and a half thousand… Do you know,’ Harry said impressively, ‘a whole Roman legion vanished in there?’

  ‘Go on with you!’ said Ann.

  ‘That is a fact. A whole legion. Vanished. Without a trace. And that’s what we’re going to do.’

  Peter said, ‘What, vanish without a trace, or find a Roman legion? Harry, you must be joking, mate.’

  ‘No, not find a legion. We might find some traces, though. I’ve ordered one of your actual metal detectors.’ He gazed round the group to judge the effect of his words, and at the same time took from his pocket three ball bearings. He stared at the map, rotating the ball bearings with his thumb on the fingers of his right hand, compulsively.

  He said, ‘You never know what we might find!’

  Linda said, ‘Buried treasure?’

  ‘Well,’ said Harry, ‘I s’pose there’s an outside chance we might. I was thinking more of ancient things: swords and things like that, cups and spoons and things.’

  Ann said. ‘Well, they’d be like treasure by now, wouldn’t they? Valuable.’

  Harry rubbed away at his ball bearings.

  ‘’Course they would!’ he said. ‘Bright as a button, that’s what you are, Ann love. You never know what we might come up with, and that’s what got me going in the first place. The LYF explores the country, right? And I was thinking that if we took this metal detector along with us, we’d be doing something a bit extra. The element of mystery.’

  He stabbed at the map with his free hand.

  ‘Well, what do you say?’

  ‘Great!’ said Simon. ‘You’re a marvel, Harry. I don’t know how you think of these things.’

  And that was the general consensus of opinion. Harry beamed, put away the ball bearings, and led the way back to the Kombi, stowing the map in the glove box.

  ‘Time for kip,’ he said. ‘Time for shut-eye.’ And, as always on these trips: ‘Ladies first.’

  The men kissed the girls good night, Harry warning Peter not to make too much of a meal of it with Ann. And then the men took their sleeping bags to the outhouse where they were to sleep by previous arrangement with the landlord. It was warm and fusty, smelling of old hay and animal manure, but cost fifty pence for the three of them, and as Harry said, for fifty pence who would expect the Ritz? They undressed down to shorts and singlets, then climbed into their sleeping bags with weary but happy grunts and sighs. They had all washed perfunctorily while visiting the pub lavatory, and more extensive ablutions could wait till next morning.

  Harry yawned, visual impressions, disconnected images fleeting through his mind: the boat gliding on the underground waters of the Speedwell Mine, the row of lights flickering from end to end of the passage; Lord Mulgrave’s Dining Room in the Blue John Mine; the coruscating incrustations of the Crystal Waterfall.

  He thought, I’m doing good. I’m a do-gooder. Let people make their snide remarks: what’s so wrong with being a do-gooder? What would be so great about being a do-badder?

  The lights flashed in his mind, reflections from fluorspar, blue and red and white, interspersed incongruously with glimpses of the green lid of the High Peak with its reticulations of limestone walls.

  A great day, he thought. But we’ll do better. Do-gooders do better.

  *

  And in the Kombi the girls locked up, switched on the roof lights and drew the curtains which Harry had improvised, inspired by motor caravans. They spread their sleeping bags on the seats and began to undress.

  ‘What a lovely day,’ Ann said languorously, struggling out of her sweater and taking off her bra. The great red blotch snaked down off her neck and across her upper chest, above the pretty pink-and-brown-tipped breasts. She leaned over and helped Cheryl, whose left hand hung paralysed, undeveloped fingers drooping like the ribs of a slightly open fan. ‘Come on, peaches and cream,’ she said, unclipping Cheryl’s bra and whisking it away. ‘Oh, what a figure you’ve got!’

  Linda was already in bed, saying her prayers lying down and with her eyes closed. Long ago she had given up kneeling to pray when in company; not that it embarrassed her, but she was quite aware that it made others uneasy.

  Ann said to Cheryl, ‘Harry’s marvellous, I know, but don’t you think he’s a bit too strict?’ She snuggled into her sleeping bag and added, ‘I wouldn’t have minded ten minutes with Peter. Ten minutes by ourselves. After all, what can happen in ten minutes?’

  Surfacing from her devotions at these words, Linda said, ‘A whole lot can happen in ten minutes, my girl. Twins can happen in less than ten minutes.’

  Cheryl said, ‘We’ve been over all this before. If we go along, nice and quiet, sooner or later one of them will marry one of us, and so on. What other chances have we got? — I don’t mean you, Linda. You’ll marry him, in the end, I bet. Ann fancies Peter, so that’ll leave me with Simon.’

  ‘Don’t put it like t
hat,’ Ann said. ‘That’s not putting it the right way at all.’

  ‘Mercenary,’ said Linda. ‘I’ve got no designs on Harry. I think he’s a fine person, and he’s the best friend we’ve got, but him and me getting married! I love him like a father, or more like a favourite uncle, and sometimes I think he’s a saint from heaven, but I don’t love him with sex.’

  Cheryl said, ‘You think sex always has to foul things up, Linda?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Linda. ‘That’s why I don’t want you and Ann going on like you do. Ann going all dreamy about Peter, and you totting up the odds like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ Cheryl said with contrition. ‘But I don’t want to end up like some old maid.’

  Linda said, ‘You won’t. You’re lovely, everybody knows that. But…look, don’t take this wrong…you and Ann, you’re in special danger. You think there aren’t much chances, and if you hadn’t met Harry you’d already be sleeping around like a couple of groupies, just because of that. Think it over. Why, you said so yourself: you might have been a dropout.’

  ‘I know,’ Cheryl said, and sighed.

  Ann was curled in her bag, thinking about Peter.

  She said, ‘I’m thinking about Peter, and it’s nice.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ said Linda.

  There was a brief silence after Linda reached up and switched out the lights, a silence broken by a sudden eruption of noise: calls, singing, the pub emptying. The last car accelerated up through its gears.

  ‘Linda?’ said Cheryl. ‘Linda?’

  ‘What is it now?’

  ‘I don’t know how to… I was thinking when you said that about Harry being a saint. Well, if you’re a saint you aren’t normal, are you?’

  There was a pause. Faint light through gaps in the curtains showed glistening beads of condensation on the headlining of the Kombi. Cheryl gazed up at them, beginning to be scared of the implications of what she had said.

  Linda said slowly, ‘Cheryl, are you trying to say that Harry isn’t normal? Harry?’