Fire and Hemlock (29 page)

But the time in the green cloakroom watching the quartet play never seemed to be touched by doubt. It stood out, quiet and real, from all the rest.

Granny said very little about what had happened. Polly only remembered one thing Granny said, in the taxi. “I’m ashamed, Polly,” Granny said. “Your Mr Lynn behaved better than my Reg.” And that was all she said. Granny seemed to take it for granted that Polly was living with her now. When Polly began to get up, she found that Granny had been round in a taxi and fetched her things from Ivy.

For quite a while after that, Polly lay around fretfully reading
The Golden Bough
and annoying Granny considerably by insisting on having a proper bookmark so that she would not need to lay the book down on its face. She had to mark her page in some way or she kept losing her place, and she could not find where she had left off in Bristol for days. ‘The Hallowe’en Fires’ was it, or ‘The Magic Spring’ or ‘The Ritual of Death and Resurrection’? Or was it ‘Kings Killed When Their Strength Fails’ or ‘Kings Killed at the End of a Fixed Term’? It took her ages to discover that she had been in the middle of ‘Temporary Kings’.

She worried about Sam Rensky. But she did not dare tell Granny, or write to Mr Lynn, or even phone, because Mr Leroy had proved he really did know all she did. She had to wait until nearly the end of the holidays, when a postcard of Bath Abbey arrived for her. It was written in clear, bold writing that she did not know.

Don’t worry. Sam is made of rubber and the show went on even though he was black and blue.

Love from us all, Ann.

Polly was glad, but quiet. She did not see how she would ever manage to see Mr Lynn again.

She still felt quiet when she went back to Manor Road. It was rather embarrassing at first, because everyone had thought she was leaving and was very surprised to see her. Fiona was the only person Polly explained to, and she did not tell even Fiona very much. Fiona was delighted to see Polly. “I’m glad you didn’t leave,” she said. “You’d have missed a right joke if you had. Look at Nina!”

Nina was into clothes and hairstyles as well as boys that term. She came to school in a shiny golden hat and purple spangled tights. She got herself new glamorous glasses. She experimented with false eyelashes.

“I shall die!” said Fiona the day Nina’s eyelashes slithered down inside her new glasses during Biology and fell off onto a dissected frog. “I’m getting a figure now, by the way. If I breathe in, I almost have a waist. How about you?”

“Sort of,” said Polly. As Granny remarked when Polly introduced her to Fiona, both their figures were a pinch of faith, a spoonful of charity, and the rest entirely hope. But she admired Fiona’s red hair and told them both not to wish their lives away.

Polly and Fiona took Granny’s advice, on the whole, and turned their attention to other things. They invented a sport called
slodging.
You pretended you were urban guerrillas who were planning to blow up the Town Hall or some other target. You sneaked into the place and spied out the best place to plant your bombs. In this way Polly gatecrashed a number of places at least as imposing as Hunsdon House and was once caught red-handed lurking in the yard at the back of Woolworth’s. Polly could not think what to say and had to leave it to Fiona. Fiona said a boy had thrown her purse over the wall and she and Polly were looking for it. “It had my dinner money in it,” she explained, with an artistic sniff.

Oddly enough, Polly remembered
slodging
. It seemed to be in both parts of her memory. So why was it she had not remembered her thirteenth birthday party? Granny said invite some friends. She knew Polly needed cheering up. Polly invited a number of people, including Fiona and Nina. And it turned out that Nina, as well as Granny, admired Fiona’s red hair. With Polly’s party as her excuse, Nina bought a packet of red hair dye and tried to dye her hair. But she forgot to read the instructions on the packet.

The result was spectacular. For one whole day Nina blazed through the school like someone’s prize dahlia, red and sort of blonde and near-black in streaks, with her hair in an enormous shock. Her Mum met her at the school gates and marched her to a hairdresser. Nina arrived at Polly’s party with almost no hair at all. That was, Polly knew, about the last time Nina’s Mum had any say in what Nina did. What made her forget that?

And here was another thing Polly had all but forgotten. About a week later, right at the end of term, when Nina’s hair was already beginning to grow back in little wriggles, they all went on a school outing to the Cotswolds. It was a scorchingly hot day and Mr Partridge, who was in charge, began to look martyred long before they even reached the Cotswolds.

Polly envied Nina her cool hairstyle. Sweat ran out under Polly’s hair, wetting her neck and dripping past her ears. She drank five cans of fizz while they were seeing round the Roman Villa. Laughing and shouting, they were herded back on the coach again, getting hotter and hotter. Fiona’s freckly face went a pale mauve which clashed with her hair. Polly was in a hot, fizzy daze by the time the bus stopped in the market square at Stow-on-the-Water.

Out they all got again. Mr Partridge gathered them all round the cross in the middle and told them it was a very old Saxon cross. The sun beat down. Polly stayed at the back where it was cooler. People round her filtered quietly away, over to the supermarket to buy more fizz.

“Oh boredom!” said Fiona. “What’s the first sign of sunstroke?”

Polly looked round, over her shoulder. It was there. It was still there. Thomas Piper Hardware. There was a display of garden seats outside this time. It would be cool in there. “Let’s pretend we want to buy a lawnmower,” she said.

The idea made Fiona giggle. They were edging quietly away when Nina came plunging after them, asking in a loud whisper where they were off to.

“Nowhere that would interest you, Nina,” said Fiona. Since Fiona did not like Nina much, that, Polly thought irritably, was a stupid thing to say. Naturally, Nina crossed the square with them, and they all went into the clean, cool shop together.

School holidays must have already started in Stow-on-the-Water. The only person in the shop was Leslie. He was sitting at the cash desk in a brown overall some sizes too big for him, minding the shop. These days he had a lot of fair, curly hair. Polly could only just see the skull earring glittering through the curls. Leslie’s face lit up cheekily at the sight of them.

“Ay, ay!” he said. “What can I do for you today?”

This was invitation enough for Nina. She leaned her elbows on the cash desk and stuck out her much-discussed bosom at Leslie. “A lawnmower,” she said.

Leslie pretended to back away. “My doctor told me to give those up,” he said. “Lawnmowers are bad for you. Where are you from?”

“That’s telling,” said Nina.

“We’re three mystery women,” said Polly.

“What have you got besides lawnmowers?” said Fiona.

“Wouldn’t you like to know!” said Leslie. “Come on, tell us where you’re from.”

“Wouldn’t
you
like to know!” said Nina.

Everyone seemed to understand everyone else so well that the flirtation went with a swing for some time. Then Leslie pointed to Polly. “I know you,” he said. “You came in once with that fellow who looks like my Uncle Tom.” When Polly had finished being astonished that he remembered, Leslie said, “And you’re all from Middleton, aren’t you?”

“How do you know that?” exclaimed Nina.

The questioning turned the other way round for a while, with Leslie playing mysterious, until he laughed and said, “Saw you getting out of that coach. Tweedle Brothers, Middleton. I’m coming to Middleton myself soon. That’s why I asked.” All three of them clamoured to know why. Leslie winked at Fiona and said, “Heard of Wilton College?”

“You’re never going
there!
” said Nina. “It’s a Public School!”

“I am so!” said Leslie. “Won a music scholarship. I start next term. Tell me your names and I’ll look you all up when I come.”

None of them really believed him. Nina said pull the other one. “Other what?” asked Leslie. Fiona said Leslie would be a fish out of water there. Polly said college boys were not allowed to meet girls from the town.

“
I
will. I’m different. I’ll be out and about,” Leslie promised. “I swear I’ll meet you. What’s the date today?”

“July the twenty-fourth,” said Polly.

“Then September the twenty-fourth,” said Leslie. “Let’s make a date. Come on, tell me a good place to meet.”

“Town Hall steps?” Fiona said dubiously.

“What time?” said Nina.

“Yes, if we
are
going to make fools of ourselves, we don’t want to stand on the steps all day,” Polly said. “When?”

“Nor do I want to,” said Leslie. “I tell you what—Oops!”

A tall man in a brown overall like Leslie’s came and leaned both knotty hands on the cash desk. His glasses glinted ominously at Leslie. Leslie edged away, looking thoroughly subdued. “Are you girls wanting to buy anything?” Mr Piper asked unpleasantly.

None of them could think of anything they could even pretend to buy. Nina gulped. Fiona looked at the floor. Polly stared. Mr Piper was in some ways quite startlingly like Mr Lynn. He was the same height, with the same sort of high shoulders and the same forward thrust of the head. His face was a very similar shape. But there, to Polly’s relief, the likeness stopped. Mr Piper’s mouth was pinched with self-righteous bad temper. His face was lined with peevishness and his eyes were dark. The hair above it was grey, cropped as short as Nina’s.

“I see,” he said. “Then get out, all of you! I know your kind. I’m not having girls like you in my shop!”

Fiona blushed bright, unhappy mauve. Nina sullenly unhitched herself from the cash desk. Polly said, “We were only talking. There’s no need to be so rude.”

“There’s talk and talk, isn’t there?” Mr Piper said nastily. “Out!”

They began to move sluggishly towards the door. Nina, with great presence of mind, said loudly, “Half past twelve – lunchtime!” and looked ostentatiously at her watch, which in fact said twenty minutes to three. Leslie, looking demurely down at the desk, nodded slightly.

“Get out!” snarled Mr Piper.

They hurried outside into the heat. “What a horrible man!” said Fiona. Polly nodded. She hated to think that she had, in some back-to-front way, half made Mr Piper up. The likeness to Mr Lynn made her feel sick.

“I was clever, wasn’t I?” said Nina. “Over the time. Do you think he’ll—”

But at that stage they were interrupted by Mr Partridge, in a mood which made him at least as unpleasant as Mr Piper, striding across the square and shouting to know where the three of them had been.

David Bragge left Ivy soon after Polly was thirteen. Polly knew because Ivy came round to Granny’s house at the start of the holidays and told her about it. “I’m not saying it was all your fault,” she said to Polly. “But it was partly through your slyness and meddling. I couldn’t trust him after that. I was only trying to get a little happiness for us both and now it’s gone.”

Polly squirmed. Her time in Bristol had left her raw and embarrassed. Ivy did not seem to her to be telling the truth any more than Dad did.

“Is that all you have to say?” Granny said to Ivy, after an hour or so.

“Well she can come back now,” said Ivy.

“She’s not coming,” said Granny.

“She’s my daughter,” said Ivy.

“And you sent her off without making sure she had anywhere to go to,” Granny said. “But not once – not
once!
– have you mentioned that this afternoon. You haven’t even asked how she got back here to me. She stays here, Ivy. That’s my final word.”

Granny was altogether warlike that summer. She was determined that Polly should be legally allowed to live with her, and that there should be money for her keep from both Reg and Ivy. She sailed out, like a small upright army of one, to do battle with offices and banks and solicitors. She got her way too. When Polly went to be interviewed with Granny at one of the offices, she heard a man in a side room say, “Oh my God, it’s Mrs Whittacker! I don’t care what she wants – just give it her!”

After that interview they went to a tea shop for a treat. Granny loved treats. They had coffee and cakes, and Polly had ice cream as well. She had taken to coffee after the coffee from Ann Abraham’s flask. It had seemed like the perfect drink then, and it still did. She still thought ice cream was the perfect food. The difficulty of drinking one while eating the other fascinated Polly.