Read Online The Trouble With Harry by Jack Trevor Story - Free Book Online

said. ‘Your tea’s ready.’
    ‘Is Harry Abie’s father, then?’ Sam asked.
    She shook her head emphatically. ‘Abie’s father is dead,’ she said sadly.
    ‘So is Harry.’
    ‘Yes, thank goodness,’ she said. She said it as if she were saying grace. ‘He was too good to live.’
    ‘He doesn’t look as if he were very good,’ Sam remarked.
    ‘He was horribly good,’ she assured him.
    ‘I like your mouth, too,’ Sam said.
    ‘Will you have some more tea?’ Jennifer asked him.
    ‘Thanks,’ Sam said. Then he added: ‘Where’s Abie gone?’
    ‘He’s gone to see the new captain,’ she said. ‘He shot that rabbit this afternoon and Abie found it.’
    ‘I’d like to hear some of your life story,’ Sam said, ‘if you don’t mind. You see, we don’t know quite what to do with Harry. You may have some suggestions.’

THE TRUTH ABOUT HARRY
    ‘You can stuff him for all I care,’ Jennifer said. ‘Stuff him and put him in a glass case – but I should have frosted glass.’
    ‘You don’t like him at all, do you? What did he do besides marry you?’
    ‘Look,’ Jennifer said, sitting on the arm of the artist’s chair. ‘I’ve wanted to explain about Harry a lot of times, but nobody could understand, least of all Harry. But you – you’ve got an artistic mind. You can see the finer things.’
    Sam agreed with her. ‘Tell me everything, Jennifer.’
    The woman’s eyes hazed. ‘It was a long time ago,’she said, ‘and I was in love. I was too much in love. But I was young and he was younger.’
    ‘How long ago was this?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘How old is Abie? … Four … that’s right; it would be about four years ago.’
    ‘You
were
in love, weren’t you?’ Sam remarked.
    ‘We were going to get married,’ Jennifer explained. ‘It was all arranged. We had agreed to overlook each other’s families and everything. And then Robert got killed …’
    She paused, and it was a tearful pause, full of might-have-beens.
    ‘That was terrible for you,’ said Sam.
    She sighed. ‘I was heartbroken,’ she said, ‘for six weeks – then I discovered I was going to have a baby.’
    ‘That was embarrassing,’ said Sam.
    ‘And that was where Harry came in,’ said Jennifer. ‘Harry the Handsome Hero. Harry the Saint. Harry the Good.’
    ‘Who was this Harry?’ Sam asked.
    ‘Robert’s brother,’ she said, ‘his elder brother.’
    ‘He fell in love with you?’
    She made a derisive sound with her mouth. ‘If he had fallen in love with me I wouldn’t have minded. But he wanted to marry me simply because I was in a jam. And because it was his brother who had put me in a jam.’
    ‘Harry wanted some of the jam,’ said Sam.
    She nodded darkly. ‘I didn’t guess. I thought he loved me. I thought he had been silently suffering all the time Robert and I had been courting. I thought he loved me to desperation and though I didn’t think much of him I decided to let him marry me for the sake of giving Abie a name.’ She fell silent and Sam sipped his second cup of tea. Then she looked down at him and there was a minor tragedy in her eyes. ‘It was on my wedding night I learnt the truth.’
    ‘That’s when most people learn the truth,’ Sam remarked.
    ‘But this was a terrible truth,’ Jennifer said. ‘This was the truth about Harry.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘How old are you, Mr Marlow?’
    ‘About twenty-nine.’
    ‘This is what happened,’ she said, softly and secretly. ‘I had undressed …’
    ‘Go on,’ Sam encouraged.
    ‘I had undressed,’ she continued, ‘and donned my nightie. I went up to bed first, you understand.’
    ‘I understand perfectly,’ Sam said.
    ‘Although I had no true feeling for Harry I had worked myself into a certain enthusiasm because I thought he loved me.’
    ‘It must have been hard work,’ Sam said.
    Jennifer was back to her wedding night and going strong. She said: ‘I sat by the window and there was a moon. I