Fire and Hemlock (36 page)

Granny came in, yawning a little from her afternoon rest. “Polly dear, have you seen Mintchoc? It’s time—” She looked from the spread heaps of paper to the empty suitcases. “I thought you were going to pack.”

“I got sidetracked. Mintchoc was in here a while back,” said Polly.

Mintchoc heard her name and emerged from under Polly’s bed as Polly spoke, portlier these days. She picked her way through the papers towards Granny with the dignity of a lioness. A small black-and-white lioness. Granny, whiter and more withered, had much the same dignity. A small white countess or something, Polly thought, watching Granny stoop lovingly and stiffly to gather up Mintchoc. “Here, my precious. Feeding time.”

“Granny, do you remember Mr Lynn?”

“Who’s that? No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh, you
must,
Granny! Thomas Lynn. He was a cellist.”

“I don’t recall anyone of that name playing the cello. Here, Mintchoc.” Mintchoc, with a bit of an effort on both their parts, arrived in Granny’s arms. Granny stood up with her, murmuring about nice fish for supper.

She really doesn’t remember! Polly thought. Neither did I. What’s wrong? “Thomas Lynn, Granny. I met him by gate-crashing a funeral at Hunsdon House.”

“That House?” Granny’s head darted round at Polly. A strange look which, in anyone else but Granny, Polly would have thought slightly mad came into her sharp old face. “What about That House? I don’t know about That House.”

“Hunsdon House, Granny,” Polly said. “You do. Seb comes from there. So did Mr Lynn.”

“I don’t know about it,” Granny repeated, still with the same look. Is she going crazy? Polly wondered. What shall I do if she is? “I’ve lived here for thirty years now,” Granny said, “and there’s only one thing I do know, Polly. Every nine years, at Hallowe’en, a funeral comes down this road from That House. Old Mrs Oaks told me that it’s a woman every eighty-one years, and she comes down on Hallowe’en. Every other time it’s a man, and he comes down the day after.”

Cold all through, with her hair pricking at the back of her neck, Polly knelt and stared at Granny. Mintchoc, aware that something peculiar was delaying her supper, began squirming indignantly. And Granny, who normally indulged Mintchoc’s every whim, seemed not to notice. “Mrs Oaks?” Polly asked, trying to make things seem normal again. “Is she the one you call Aches? Or is she Pains?”

“I’m talking about their mother,” Granny said. “And if I were to tell you what they were in That House, you’d laugh and not believe me. Nowadays they lay it on the men not to tell, you know.”

Here, to Polly’s relief, Mintchoc distracted Granny by wriggling free and jumping to the floor. Granny’s face took on its usual look of sharp intelligence. “She needs her supper, that cat,” she said, and followed Mintchoc downstairs.

Polly got up and followed them both. Granny was in the kitchen at the sink, cutting up expensive plaice with a pair of scissors, and Mintchoc was on the draining board beside her, tail up and complaining loudly. Mintchoc had the best of everything and was very strict about the time she had it.

“I did something terrible to Mr Lynn,” said Polly, “and he went.”

Granny said, while her scissors went crake-crake-crake, “Don’t come to me for sympathy, then. I never did like your Seb.”

“I’m not talking about Seb,” Polly said. “Thomas Lynn, Granny.”

“Then it’s no one I know.” Crake, went the scissors.

“I’m telling you,” said Polly. “I did something awful, and I can’t remember what I did.”

“Then you’d better think, hadn’t you?” crake-crake, said Granny.

“I can’t—”

“Can’t is won’t, most like, if it’s that bad,” Granny replied. “Here we are, Mintchoc. Nice fish.” She pushed the plate of cut fish across the draining board. Mintchoc’s head went down into it ravenously, snatch, snatch, tossing strips of fish into her gullet.

“You’re hopeless when you talk in proverbs,” Polly said. “You don’t listen.”

“I heard you,” Granny said. “If you’ve something buried in your head, then you’ll have to fetch it out before I can help you, won’t you?”

Polly sighed. Mintchoc crouched, crunching sideways at the fish. “I think I’ll go and ask Mum if she remembers.”

“Do that. You owe her a visit before you go off again.” These days Granny was very particular about Polly paying Ivy regular visits. “But be back to pack,” she called after Polly. “It’s not right to keep Mr Perks waiting while you do it tomorrow.”

Polly went out under the tingeing trees and turned right rather more quickly than usual. Hunsdon House, hidden down at the end of the street behind the yellowing leaves, seemed remarkably close at her back. It was a feeling she had not had for years now.

She walked, knowing the way too well to notice it, feeling like a thin skin bag in the shape of a person, crammed full of memories. The pictures, the appalling horse, Stow-on-the-Water, the quartet rehearsing in the green basement, the jet of pure misery at Middleton Fair. It was like yesterday, that misery. In a way, it was yesterday, because of the blank in between. It seemed to have burst up again, just as strong, as if those four years had not been there – but altered, because of whatever she had done a month after Middleton Fair, into something urgent and angry. It hurt Polly so that she moved her eyes away from a pair of happy lovers galumphing towards her down the pavement.

She saw them, even with her eyes on the fence. They had their arms round one another, pulling one another from side to side, laughing. The girl shone out in glistening purple and green. Her hair was crimson. Polly did not look at her pulling the boy almost over into the road. Nina Carrington, she thought, as she had thought many times, with yet another boyfriend. This boy was good-looking, with curly fair hair.

Then she looked. The boy was Leslie. “Hello, Nina!” she said.

Nina paused, clinging to Leslie’s arm with both her own shiny green ones, and gave Polly a puzzled, unfriendly look. “Oh, hello,” she said, and tried to pull Leslie on again.

Leslie, however, was true to Polly’s hidden memories of him. He hung back and peered at Polly round Nina’s crimson head. He grinned at her. “Who’s your friend?” he asked Nina. It was clear to Polly that he had not the least idea who she was.

“Polly Whittacker,” said Nina. “And she’s not my friend. She’s an intellectual.”

“Oh come off it, Nina!” said Polly. “We’ve known each other forever.”

Nina heaved at Leslie to make him walk on again. “We have?” she said coldly. “You’ve not spoken one word to me since we were in Junior School. So why the sudden interest?”

This was true, according to Polly’s plain, single memories. And Polly herself had believed it enough almost to walk straight past without speaking. Nina obviously resented it, and resented even more the way Leslie was grinning at Polly.

“My name’s Leslie,” he said. “Live in Middleton, do you, Polly?”

Polly nodded. “I live quite near Hunsdon House,” she said deliberately. “Do you know the Leroys?”

“The Leroys.” Leslie’s face suddenly looked as if a pink light was shining on it. And, Polly thought, it took quite a lot to make Leslie blush. “Sort of,” he admitted. But he was obviously too uncomfortable to go on talking, and he let Nina pull him on past Polly.

Hell! Polly thought. That worked a bit too well! “Leslie,” she called after him. “If you know the Leroys, you must know Tom too!”

Leslie’s too-pink face turned to look back at her. “I don’t think so. What name?”

“Thomas Lynn,” said Polly.

Nina turned round too. “Eff off,” she said.

Leslie was shaking his head and clearly not faking it. Polly could see he did not know Thomas Lynn any more than he had known her. “It doesn’t matter,” she called, and let them go on, wrestling and pushing and laughing, down the street.

She walked the other way, in an empty kind of horror. Real life, which yesterday had seemed safe and dullish and ordinary, was not real at all. It was a sham. Nina should have known her. So should Leslie. And what, in heaven’s name, did the sham hide?

She reached the road where she had once lived. The bushy tree across the road, where she remembered Seb once lurking, had been cut down. She wondered when. Ivy’s house needed painting, badly. She had not noticed that either, till now. Inside, it was even shabbier, with most of the pretty floral wallpaper from Polly’s childhood still there, but stained and faded. Polly went in through the small, untidy kitchen and found Ivy in the front room, aimlessly watching television. Ivy’s face sagged these days and she had put on weight. She had obviously not been to work that day, for she was wearing a greasy old padded dressing gown, and her these-days bulging feet were shoved into man’s slippers. But she had made a bit of an effort with her hair, enough to put it in curlers.

Polly, who had still been seeing her as the young, pretty Ivy of her childhood, stood and stared. My God! she thought. She’s turned into the way I used to imagine Edna! “Mum! You’re not ill, are you?”

Ivy turned, nursing a mug of tea in both frayed-looking hands.

“Oh it’s you. There’s some tea if you want to get yourself a cup.” She nodded to the teapot on the floor beside her. “I’m all right. Don’t worry about me. It’s only my nerves again.”

Polly, as she went to find a cup, told herself that this was not the real Ivy. The real Ivy was the one she remembered, bustling about, keeping the house pretty, keeping herself pretty, making strenuous efforts to keep things together after the divorce. Ivy and she were quite fond of one another these days. Life had not been kind to Ivy.

“I’m off to college tomorrow,” she said, coming back and pouring herself some tea. She had to shout a little because Ivy had the television turned up very loud.

“That’s right. Go and waste your time reading useless books,” Ivy said in her usual gloomy, matter-of-fact way. “Run through the taxpayers’ money. See your stuck-up boyfriend and never think about me. Never care that I’m sitting here a bundle of nerves, with the new lodger starting deceiving me already, and not a soul to turn to in my trouble.”

She always talks this way, Polly told herself. She steeled herself to listen sympathetically as usual.

“I only asked for a little happiness,” Ivy began again. “You have to go out and take it in this world. Happiness won’t come to you. I thought I’d found it this time, but he’s being so secretive, Polly.”

Polly found herself attending properly to this. And it was such nonsense. It always had been. “Oh, honestly, Mum! You and your search for happiness!” she said. She tried to say it in a light and kindly way, but it took such an effort that her hands shook round her teacup. “Happiness isn’t a
thing
. You can’t go out and get it like a cup of tea. It’s the way you feel about things.”

“But things have to go right if you’re to feel happy,” Ivy retorted. “And it’s only my own little share of happiness that I want. Everyone’s due that. I’m only asking for what should be mine.”

“Who says it should be yours?” Polly said irritably. “What law is it that says that?”

“
I
do,” said Ivy. “It’s because there’s no law that I have to go out and collect it. But you’ve always been against me,” she added, as if it were an accepted fact. “You never come here unless you’re after something. What do you want this time?”

It’s not her fault, Polly told herself. Still trying to speak lightly, she clenched her hands round her cup and said, “You know your trouble, Mum? You’re a miser – a happiness miser. And I’m not always after something. This is the first time I’ve ever asked you for anything, and even now it’s only information. Do you remember Mr Lynn at all?”

“Mr Lynn? And who might he be?” said Ivy.

“A man I used to know when I was small. He played the cello and used to send me books.”

“One of those,” said Ivy. “Your Mr Nobodies. You were always making things up. The way you used to believe in them used to make me fear for your reason, Polly. I’ll never forget the time you made yourself believe poor David Bragge was sending you presents, when it was your father all the time. I’ve forgiven you now, of course. But you knocked the happiness clean out of my hands over that.”

“It was not Dad,” Polly said, “who sent me those books.”

“Then it
was
David,” Ivy said broodingly. “Ah, well.”

“No,” said Polly. “It was Mr Lynn.”

“Go on!” Ivy said, chuckling a little. “You made him up!”

Polly stood up and put her cup on a chair arm, balancing it carefully. Mr Leroy had got at Ivy through Mr Lynn sending
The Golden Bough.
Had Mr Leroy made Ivy like this? It was a horrible thought, because, if so, it was indirectly Polly’s fault.

“Look at you,” Ivy said, brooding still. “You’ve rotted your mind with reading books. You can’t take a realistic view of life like I do. You can’t see the world as it is any longer.”

“Thank you for that,” Polly said, gasping a little. “You make it hard for anyone to be sorry for you, Mum. Goodbye.”

“You’re not going already?” Ivy protested. “What have I done to deserve this? Where are you off to so fast?”

“Nowhere,” Polly said, without thinking. Hearing herself say it, she gave a cackle of laughter as she hurried out of the house. Behind her, Ivy called out, “This is what you get for wasting good money on a college education!”