Fire and Hemlock (2 page)

“Suppose they
were
once facts,” Polly said to herself, with her hand still resting on the book. Ever since she was a small girl, she had liked supposing things. And the habit died hard, even at the age of nineteen. “Suppose,” she said, “I really am like the man in the story, and something happened to change my past.”

It was intended simply as a soothing daydream, to bury the strange, pointless worry that seemed to be growing in her. But suddenly, out of it leaped a white flash of conviction. It was just like the way those four – or more – figures used to leap into being behind the fire in that photograph. Polly glanced up at it, almost expecting to see them again. There were only men-shaped clumps of hedge. The flash of conviction had gone too. But it left Polly with a dreary, nagging suspicion in its place: that something
had
been different in the past, and if it had, it was because of something dreadful she had done herself.

But there seemed no way to discover what was different. Polly’s past seemed a smooth string of normal, half-forgotten things: school and home, happiness and miseries, fun and friends, and, for some reason, a memory of eating toasted buns for tea, dripping butter. Apart from this odd memory about the book, there seemed no foothold for anything unusual.

“If nothing happened, then there’s nothing to remember,” she told herself, trying to sound philosophical. “Of course there’s nowhere to start.”

For some reason, that appalled her. She crouched, with her hand growing damp on the book, forgetting her grimy shoes tangling in the bedspread and the suitcases open on the floor, staring into her appallingly normal memories: a Cotswold town, London, a shopping precinct somewhere, a horse—“That’s absurd. I don’t
know
any horses!” she said. “It’s no good. I’ll have to go back to the time before it all started, or didn’t start, and get in from that end.” That was when she was how old? Ten? What was she doing then? What friends had she?

Friends. That did it. From nine years ago came swimming the shape of Polly’s once-dear friend Nina. Fat, silly Nina. Granny used to call Nina a ripe banana. And Polly was so attached to Nina that Granny had agreed to have Nina along with Polly, that first time Polly came to stay with Granny. That would be back around the time there was first a question of divorce between Polly’s parents. Back too to when Polly’s favourite reading was a fat book called
Heroes
that had once been Granny’s.

At that, Polly raised her head. “The funeral!” she said.

In those days people who did not know Polly might have thought she chose Nina as a friend to set herself off by comparison. Nina was a big, fat girl with short, frizzy hair, glasses, and a loud giggle. Polly, on the other hand, was an extremely pretty little girl, and probably the prettiest thing about her was her mass of long, fine, fair hair. In fact, Polly admired and envied Nina desperately, both Nina’s looks and her bold, madcap disposition. Polly, at that time, was trying to eat a packet of biscuits every day in order to get fat like Nina. And she spent diligent hours squashing and pressing at her eyes in hopes either of making herself need glasses too, or at least of giving her eyes the fat, pink, staring look that Nina’s had when Nina took off her glasses. She cried when Mum refused to cut her hair short like Nina’s. She hated her hair. The first morning they were at Granny’s, she took pleasure in forgetting to brush it.

It was not hard to forget. Polly and Nina had been awake half the night in Granny’s spare room, talking and laughing. They were wildly excited. And it was such a relief to Polly to be away from the whispered quarrelling at home, and the hard, false silences whenever Mum and Dad noticed Polly was near. They did not seem to realise that Polly knew a quarrel when she heard one, just like anyone does. Granny was a relief because she was calm. Nina’s wild, silly jokes were even more of a relief, even if Polly was hardly awake the next morning. The whole first day at Granny’s was like a dream to Polly.

It was a windy day in autumn. In Granny’s garden the leaves whirled down. Nina and Polly raced about, catching them. Every leaf you caught, Nina shrieked, meant one happy day. Polly only caught seven. Nina caught thirty-five.

“Well, it’s a whole week. Count your blessings,” Granny said to Polly in her dry way when they came panting in to show her, and she gave them milk and biscuits. Granny always made Polly think of biscuits. She had a dry, shortbread sort of way to her, with a hidden taste that came out afterwards. Her kitchen had a biscuit smell to it, a nutty, buttery smell like no other kitchen.

While Polly was sniffing the smell, Nina remembered that today was Hallowe’en. She decided that she and Polly must both dress up as High Priestesses, and she clamoured for long black robes.

“Never a dull moment with our Nina,” Granny remarked, and she went away to see what she could find. She came back with two old black dresses and some dark curtains. In an amused, uncommitted way, she helped them both dress up. Then she turned them firmly out of doors. “Go and make an exhibit of yourselves round the neighbourhood,” she said. “They need a bit of stirring up here.”

Nina and Polly paraded up and down the road for a while. Nina looked for all the world like a large, fat nun, and the dress held her knees together. Polly’s dress, apart from being long, was quite a good fit. The neighbourhood did not seem to notice them. The houses – except for a few small ones like Granny’s – were large and set back from the road, hidden by the trees that grew down both sides, and not a soul came to see the two High Priestesses, even though Nina laughed and shrieked and exclaimed every time her headdress flapped. They paraded right up to the big house across the end of the road and looked through the bars of its gate. It was called Hunsdon House – the name was cut into the stone of both gateposts. Inside, they saw a length of gravel drive, much strewn with dead leaves, and, coming slowly crunching along it towards them, a shiny black motor-hearse with flowers piled on top.

At the sight Nina shrieked and ran away down the road, trailing her headdress. “Hold your collar! Hold your collar till you see a four-legged animal!”

They ran into Granny’s garden where, luckily, Granny’s black-and-white cat, Mintchoc, was sitting on the wall. So that was all right. They could use both hands again. “Now what shall we do?” demanded Nina.

Polly was still laughing at Nina. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Think of something. What do High Priestesses
do
?” said Nina.

“No idea,” said Polly.

“Yes you have,” said Nina. “Think – or I shan’t play with you any more!”

Nina was always making that threat. It never failed with Polly. “Oh – er – they walk in procession and make human sacrifices,” Polly said.

Nina shrieked with gleeful laughter. “We did! We have! Our corpse was in the hearse! Then what happens?”

“Um,” said Polly. “We have to wait for the gods to answer our sacrifice. And – I know – while we wait, the police come after us for murder.”

Nina liked that. She ran flapping and squawking into Granny’s back garden, crying out that the police were after her. When Polly caught up with her, she was trying to climb the wall into the next garden. “What are you doing?” Polly said, hardly able to speak for laughing.

“Escaping from the police, of course!” said Nina. With a great deal of silly giggling, she managed to scramble to the top of the wall, where her black robe split with a sound like a gunshot. “Oh!” she cried. “They got me!” Whereupon she swung her legs over the wall and vanished in a crash of rotting wood. “Come on!” said her voice from behind the wall. “I won’t be your friend if you stay there.”

As usual, the threat was enough for Polly. It was not really that she was afraid Nina would stop being her friend – though she was, a little. It was more that Polly could not seem to break out of her prim, timid self in those days, and be properly adventurous, without Nina’s threats to galvanise her. So now she boldly swung herself up the wall and was quite grateful to Nina when she landed in the middle of somebody’s woodshed on the other side.

After that, the morning became more like a dream than ever – a very silly dream too. Nina and Polly scrambled through garden after garden. Some were neat and open, and they sprinted through those, and some were overgrown, with hiding-places where they could lurk. One garden was full of washing, and they had to crouch behind flapping sheets while somebody took down a row of pants. They were on the edge of giggles the whole time, terrified that someone would catch them and yet, in a dreamlike way, almost sure they were safe. Both of them lost their curtain headdresses in different gardens, but they went on, quite unable to stop or go back, neither of them quite knowing why. Nina invented a reason in about the tenth garden. She said they were coming to a road, because she could hear cars. So they went more madly than ever, across a row of rotting shed roofs that creaked and splintered under them, and jumped down from the wall into what seemed to be a wood. Nina ran towards the open, laughing with relief, and Polly lost her for a few seconds.

When Polly came out into the open, it was not a road after all. It was gravel at the side of a house. There was a door open in the house, and through it Polly caught a glimpse of Nina walking up a polished passage, actually inside the house.

“The cheek Nina has!” she said to herself. For a moment she almost did not dare follow Nina. But the dreamlike feeling was still on her. She thought of the threats Nina would make if she stayed hiding in the wood, and she sprinted on her toes across the space in a scatter of gravel and went into the house too, into a strong smell of polish and scent. Cautiously, she tiptoed up the passage.

Here it was completely like a dream. The passage led into a grand hall with a white-painted staircase wrapped round the outside of it in joints, each joint a balcony, and huge, painted china vases standing around, every one big enough to contain one of Ali Baba’s forty thieves. A man met her here. As people do in dreams, he seemed to be expecting Polly. He was obviously a servitor, for he was wearing evening dress and carrying a tray with glasses on it. Polly made a little movement to run away as he came up to her, but all he said was, “Orangeade, miss? I fancy you’re a bit young yet for sherry.” And he held the tray out.

It made Polly feel like a queen. She put out a somewhat grubby hand and took a glass of orangeade. There was ice in it and a slice of real orange. “Thank you,” she said in a stately, queenlike way.

“Turn left through that door, miss,” the servitor said.

Polly did as he said. She had a feeling she was supposed to. True, underneath she had a faint feeling that this couldn’t be quite right, but there did not seem to be anything she could do about it. Holding the clinking glass against her chest, Polly walked like a queen in her black dress into a big, carpeted room. It was dingy in the gusty light of the autumn day, and full of comfortable armchairs lined up in not very regular rows. A number of people were standing about holding wineglasses and talking in murmurs. They were all in dark clothes and looked very respectable, and every one of them was grown up. None of them paid any attention to Polly at all.

Nina was not there. Polly had not really expected her to be. It was clear Nina had vanished the way people do in dreams. She saw the woman she had mistaken for Nina – it was the split skirt and the black dress which had caused the mistake – standing outlined against the dim green garden beyond the windows, talking to a high-shouldered man with glasses. Everything was very hushed and elderly. “And I shan’t look on it very kindly if you do,” Polly heard the woman say to the man. It was a polite murmur, but it sounded like one of Nina’s threats, only a good deal less friendly.

More people came in behind Polly. She moved over out of their way and sat on one of the back row of chairs, which were hard and upright, still carefully holding her orangeade. She sat and watched the room fill with murmuring, dreamlike people in dark clothes. There was one other child now. He was in a grey suit and looked as respectable as the rest, and he was rather old too – at least fourteen, Polly thought. He did not notice Polly. Nobody did, except the man with glasses. Polly could see the glasses flashing at her uncertainly as the lady talked to him.

Then a new stage seemed to start. A busy, important man swept through the room and sat down in a chair facing all the others. All the rest sat down too, in a quiet, quick way, turning their heads to make sure there was a chair there before they sat. The room was all rustling while they arranged themselves, and one set of quick footsteps as the high-shouldered man walked about looking for a place. Everyone looked at him crossly. He hunched a bit – you do, Polly thought, when everyone stares – and finally sat down near the door, a few seats along from Polly.