Thoughts on Harry by Rosemary Timperley

Where I talk about flowers for the first time ever

I really enjoyed diving into this tale. When I first read it years ago it creeped me the hell out. To me, it has a very surreal, almost Poltergeist feel to it.

So, what is Harry about? What are the main themes here? A good way to get to that is to ask ourselves to describe the story without talking about the events or the characters in the story. To me, it’s a story about fear and hypervigilance, and of what it means to be a family (i.e. family by blood or otherwise).

Let’s dive into what makes this story so effective.

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Here at Short Story Club, we dissect the classics and lesser-known tales that warrant more attention. If you’re fed up of people showing off about the number of books they’ve read, then this is the place for you. We take our time, reading two tales a month and really getting into what made them so effective (or otherwise!). What’s more, I’ll provide the links to the stories and it’s all free.

A journey through the story

Such ordinary things make me afraid.

What makes this story so effective (imo) is the cyclical beginning and end. The opening paragraph is repeated at the end and caps it all off so perfectly. The paragraph is a list of all the small things that make our narrator afraid. So even before we know who our narrator is, what the situation is, or anything about the story, we know to be on the lookout for white roses, sharp shadows on grass, children with red hair. And the name – Harry.

This tees us up perfectly and these items are returned to time and time again during the most important parts of the tale. It creates tension and intrigue right from the get-go.

We are introduced to our narrator, the fear-stricken Mrs. James and her husband Jim, with their daughter Christine playing by the roses.

Suddenly she looked towards the bush of white roses, which cast its shadow over the grass, and smiled.

This sentence is deftly placed. We’re a few paragraphs in at this point from the opening where we’re essentially primed to look for roses and shadows and such. Christine starts talking to the rose bush (or someone nearby). And we get our first hint that the family unit is not typical. During her conversation with the ghost of Harry, Christine has to put her foot down and say, “Oh, but they are my mummy and daddy.” It’s a hint that Harry knows what Christine doesn’t – that Christine is adopted.

Mrs. James gets scared and calls Christine in early to stop her from talking to Harry, who they think is an imaginary friend on account of Christine being so lonely. Mrs. James hates this, does everything she can to stop Christine talking to Harry.

“It’s just that I feel extra responsible for her. More so than if I were her real mother.”

There’s more images of roses and shadows and redness creeping in at times throughout, before it’s suggested to Mrs. James by her husband, Jim, to take Christine to a doctor to talk it over. The doctor also chalks it up to loneliness, telling Mrs. James to relax, everything will be fine once Christine starts school and gets real friends.

I longed for grey skies and rain. I longed for the white roses to wither and die.

And here, we get an exhausted wish from Mrs. James when she’s feeling most desperate about the situation. We feel for her in this moment and there’s a case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for here.

Who is this little loved stranger I’ve taken as a daughter? Who is Christine?

This is where I feel her lack of passion for being a real mother. I might be reading too much into it, but was adoption Jim’s idea and she’s just going along with it? She’s too quick in my view to see her ‘daughter’ as a stranger, too quick to seek answers and do something about it.

And so, she takes professional advice from their doctor, but still, she’s driven to find out more. So she goes to the adoption agency and begs for more details. And she gets Harry’s story. Here, she finds out that Harry was a real person and Christine’s brother who saved her from their awful (blood) parents.

“You don’t love me. Harry loves me. Harry wants me. He says I can go with him.”

This is during the first day of school for Christine and this exchange gives a nice note of foreboding. Christine also feels the rift, made wider because of the things Harry is telling her.

Mrs. James goes so far as to visit the old house where the fire happened that almost took Christine’s life, and that took Harry’s. He sacrificed himself by jumping out the window, using his body to cushion her fall.

“This place isn’t for you. It’s for the dead who aren’t dead, and the living who aren’t alive. Am I alive or dead? You tell me. I don’t know.”

And so, at the derelict building that the fire shut down, we meet the crazy old lady who talks in somewhat of a code. On rereading the tale, it seems that this is the writer’s attempt to show that ghosts can walk the real world, but it’s a little thin if that is the case. The old lady info dumps that she sees Harry all the time and that he’ll stop at nothing until Christine is all his again.

The clock strikes three. She’s forgotten to pick up Christine at the school. As readers, we feel the rush at this stage. She eventually makes it to the school, harried and desperate, only to find that a red-haired brother has made his appearance and picked her up.

Everything gets too hot. The sun strikes her like a hot blade. And she faints away. We rejoin the tale weeks later after she’s recovered from sunstroke. I like the parallels to the fire that took Harry here, it’s a nice touch.

And that’s the end of it. Harry has won. But what has he done with her? Is the image of the white roses turning red at the end a sign that he has killed her, taken her into the spirit world so they can be together always?

Suspension of disbelief

I think the most interesting thing I want to see in your comments is whether this tale worked for you or not. Do I think it’s a perfect tale? No. It required a bit too much suspension of belief at the part where she goes to the adoption agency and easily obtains details of Christine’s past, which would normally never happen.

How much should we suspend our disbelief in order to go along with the flow and enjoy a tale, though? There’s no right or wrong answer as every reader is different, but it raises an interesting point in my mind. How far is too far?

PS – I also had similar thoughts about the crazy old woman who just happens to be there conveniently enough.

PPS – The fact that Harry is a ‘bad guy’ is sketched a little too thinly in my opinion. Wouldn’t a good big brother want Christine to have the promised and safe childhood she was receiving if he loved her so much? He’s painted as kind of sweet and protective at the start, and then it’s thrown in that he’s selfish and wicked.

PPPS – Why not just hack down all roses in your garden and wherever you see them? Harry seems to be powered by them.

PPPPS – How can Harry be a real person again, just like that? Is the old lady a ghost, too? It’s not clear enough to make this feel plausible (imo).

(It seems I sit more on the realist side of the fence and am jolted out of a story easily…)

Big creepy things in sweet little sentences

Then, again like a dream, the long thin clear-cut shadow of a boy near the white roses.

This story could’ve been easily over-written, trying to ring every bit of creepiness from the images. But, Timperley does an expert job of sharing these images in short, impactful statements like above. We don’t need bells and whistles to wring the atmosphere out of the words. The things going on are creepier due to the fact they are plainly stated.

I saw a shadow on the pavement alongside her own – a long, thin shadow – like a boy’s shadow.

This tale is coloured white and red

The sun burned on her pale red hair and made her skin look very white.

This is the part where I talk about flowers (kind of). White and red are continually referenced all through the tale. We know she is frightened of white roses and kids with red hair. These images are often paired with each other as in the above.

These could simply be how the author saw the story as she was building it, but if we take a look closer, it’s not hard to see the reason why this white and red is effective in adding to the atmosphere.

White is often associated with innocence. Here we have Christine who is the innocent in this tale. And the white roses. White roses often symbolise friendship, too. And red is the colour of blood and fire and heat.

Then we have white roses that turn to red (in her mind at least) before she collapses at the end of the story.

Then the roses danced before my eyes and turned red. The world turned red. Blood red. Wet red.

This is how you use colour in fiction. Not only do we use it to paint the scene by surface colour, but by deep association. Also, the wet red at the end of this sequence paints a great picture and really squeezes the impact she was going for.

Such ordinary things make me afraid

To me, the power in this story is the fact that we have a mother who is so desperately trying to win her place as ‘mother’ that she does the wrong thing. She goes against all the advice and it leads to an opportunity for Harry to appear and steal his sister back.

Now, this isn’t to say that Harry wouldn’t have gotten his way eventually, but at least in the story’s timeframe, Christine would’ve been safe if the mother would’ve just picked her up on time.

But beyond the ‘you can be too scared that it drives you to do unsensible things’ point, there’s a deeper meaning to this tale. What makes a family a family? Does Christine belong to Harry simply because of their blood connection? Did the mother really ever want a family and was merely acting?

What did you think of the tale? Please let me know in comments below.