Fire and Hemlock (26 page)

There turned out to be a dishwasher, so Polly could not help with the washing-up either. They went into the beautiful living room, where the carpet was like thicker, hairy porridge and the chairs were white leather, and sat listening to tinkling music. Polly did not remember Dad liking this kind of music before.

“Are we going to show Polly Bristol?” Joanna asked. “Shall I take the day off work tomorrow?”

“No, no,” Dad said hastily. “I know what a brute your boss is. I’ll take the day off and show her.”

Polly did not sleep well that night. The visitor’s couch was not comfortable. And she felt strange, agitated, and peculiarly uneasy. Something was odd somewhere, something was not quite right. From the way Joanna behaved, it seemed almost as if she thought Polly was only here on a short visit. But surely that couldn’t be true? Dad
must
have told her that Polly was living here now. Or had Mum not explained to Dad properly? That could be it. Ivy had written to Dad, but in her stony mood she did not always say things completely. And Dad was not behaving as if he thought Polly was here for good either. In which case, how awkward it was going to be when Polly had to explain.

These thoughts made Polly feel so strange in the end that she unpacked the stolen photograph from her bag in the dark. She did not like to turn on the light, in case she fell over a broom or the ironing board and disturbed Dad and Joanna, but she gripped the little oval frame in her hand as she wriggled back among the lumps in the couch, and it was somehow comforting. She fell asleep clutching it.

Next morning she tried to ask Dad and Joanna straight out if they knew she was living with them now. She tried several times, but she never seemed to get further than “Do you know—?” Joanna was hurrying through her routine of getting off to work and was far too busy getting Polly’s breakfast as well to listen or talk. She still would not let Polly help. Polly gave up for the time being and decided to ask Dad during the day.

After breakfast she and Dad walked to Clifton Suspension Bridge. While Polly admired it, Dad told her the famous story of the Victorian lady who had tried to commit suicide by jumping off the bridge. But it was such a long way down to the Avon in the gorge beneath that the lady’s crinoline had acted like a parachute and saved her life. Then he told her the equally famous story of the students who had jumped off the bridge one April Fools’ Day on the end of elastic ropes. They had stayed there, bobbing up and down like yo-yos, until the police had hauled them all up and arrested them for disturbing the peace. Polly laughed. But it seemed to get more and more difficult to ask Dad if he knew this was not just a visit.

They walked to the Zoo then. Polly found she could not ask straight out. But in front of the polar bears she said bravely, “I seem to be an awful trouble to you and Joanna—”

“That’s just because Joanna hasn’t settled down and got to know you yet,” Dad interrupted quickly. “Give her time.” He sounded so confident that Polly thought, with great relief, He does know! That’s all right, then.

They looked at sea lions and elephants, and then went to the Tropical Bird House. That was quite magical to Polly, because the birds were all loose inside, darting past their heads to perch on the trees, which were also growing there, indoors, under the glass roof. The moist, warm air was full of twittering and flashing wings.

“It’s like when I dream I’m inside my own brain!” Polly exclaimed. “Oh, I’m going to come here often and often!”

“I hope so,” Dad said, rather soberly and devoutly.

The way he said it made Polly anxious again. “Do you know which school I’ll be going to in Bristol?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

Dad laughed. “That’s a knotty problem in this town,” he said. “Let’s not worry about that for the moment. Plenty of time when we’ve all settled down.”

Polly’s uneasiness came back at that, and grew. It went on growing all through the day, interesting though the day was. They had a snack at the Zoo and then went to see one of the first ever iron ships. Polly could hardly take it in for her uneasiness. And once again, when they went back to where the flat was, they stayed outside, walking about, until Joanna had time to recover from work. Polly looked back to the old days and knew that Dad was very nervous about something. As soon as she knew that, her uneasiness flooded everything else, blotting through all her other feelings like spilled bleach. Her throat felt like a sore white tunnel of shame. Dad hasn’t told Joanna! she thought. He didn’t tell her I was coming, and he hasn’t told her I’m here for good! But it did not seem possible. Dad was not like that. It was only Mum who said he was secretive.

She was so bleached through by her uneasiness that she found it hard to eat even the small nut cutlet Joanna cooked for supper. Dad was now talking feverishly. Neither Polly nor Joanna laughed at his jokes. Joanna simply got up and went to fetch the sweet.

She came back and set a glass of yoghurt in front of Polly. “Polly,” she said, “without wanting to pry, is there any chance of your telling us how long this visit of yours is going to go on? Reg and I do have to go out tomorrow night, as it happens.”

Shame bleached Polly right through. She knew for certain that Dad had not told Joanna. He had simply hoped, or made himself believe, that Joanna would take to Polly. And Joanna hadn’t. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said brightly, without even having to think. “I’m going tomorrow morning.”

“What time train?” Joanna asked, almost eagerly.

Polly glanced through her hair at her father. There was profound and utter relief on his face. “Ten o’clock,” she invented. She was drowning in bleach. That look on Dad’s face. Mum had been right about him after all.

“Then we can all leave here together,” Joanna said. “If we go really early, I’ll have time to drive you to the station.”

A bleached kind of pride rose through Polly’s shame. “That’s perfectly all right,” she said. “I can easily find my own way.”

“Then it’s all settled,” Reg said heartily. “What shall we do this last evening?”

Polly nearly said, “Play Let’s Pretend,” but she bit it back in time. They watched television and Polly went to bed early, where, to her surprise, she slept a heavy sleep, as if she had been drugged. She still felt drugged when she got up next morning and packed, putting her nightclothes and the photograph back in her bag on top of the other things that she had never even taken out of it. In the same heavy, half-awake state, she went into the kitchen, where Joanna was racing through her routine as before.

“I’m afraid I haven’t time to pack sandwiches,” she said to Polly. “But you can get something to eat on the train, can’t you?”

“Of course she can,” said Reg. “Hurry up, Poll. We have to get to work.”

Polly nibbled some nutty brown toast she did not want, and then the other two were racing her out of the flat. Outside in the road, Reg waved goodbye to her as he and Joanna hurried to where the car was parked. “Shall I drive today?” Polly heard him say. “Or is it better if I guide you out?”

Polly was left standing on the pavement with her duffel bag hooked on one shoulder. She turned and walked the other way. Her pride would not let her stand and watch the car drive away. She heard it drive off as she reached the end of the road. Then, when it was too late, she remembered that she had no money and no ticket back to Middleton. And he never even asked me if I had! she thought. She knew it was her own fault too. She had been too bleached with pride to remember. But she also knew that Dad had not asked her about money because that was part of the pretence that she was only here for a short visit. Naturally, she would have a return ticket, and spending money for her stay.

Polly went on walking away. She walked among strong stone houses, then she walked among rows of older, airier houses joined together into yellow terraces. She walked through a stretch of green park with bushes. It rained a little. The sky was full of rolling, thick clouds, black as bruises and fat and wet. It did not surprise Polly that rain kept falling out of them. And yet, in a queer way, she was surprised at everything. She kept on walking. She crossed a road and walked on more green, under bare trees swaying and clawing against the clouds. Through the black branches she saw two lofty grey towers holding an upside-down arch of white metal. There’s the Suspension Bridge, she thought, and aimed towards it.

You had to pay to go on the bridge. Polly felt in her pocket and found her last two p. She handed it over and walked out to the middle of the bridge, under the great upside-down arch of the suspension cables. The bridge was a flat double strip under the cables, hung high, high up between two cliffs. Polly walked out to the middle and stopped. The wind took her hair there and hurled it about. She leaned both arms on the chubby metal fence at the edge and looked down, dizzyingly far, to the sinewy brown water of the Bristol Avon racing between thick mud banks below. The wind hurled seagulls about in the air like wastepaper. The bridge swayed, and rumbled under cars passing behind Polly. March, she thought. Wind. The trees on the opposite cliff were the same bruise colour as the clouds, only pinker. There were no leaves yet. She thought of the parachute-crinoline lady, and wondered if something like this had happened to her too.

A long time later, when she was nearly frozen, the wind flapped Polly’s hair in her face so hard that she had to turn her head to shake it away. Among the flying light strands of hair, she caught sight of someone standing at the far end of the bridge, leaning on a stick and looking at her. Only a glimpse, of a tall, bulky figure with the wind flapping its coat. Polly kept her head turned towards the river. She counted a hundred. Then she looked. Mr Leroy had gone by then, but she knew it had been him. Now she knew whom she had to thank for the situation she was in.

She turned and walked back across the bridge. Mr Leroy was not going to be able to stand and gloat over her. But what was she to
do
? There was a notice pasted up at the end of the bridge. SAMARITANS, it said, and a telephone number. But Polly had no money to telephone, and if she begged money off someone and rang them up, the first thing they would do would be to get hold of Dad. It would be the same if she explained at the railway station, or went to the police. They would get Dad, and he would be exposed, and so would Polly’s shame. And Joanna would open both eyes so wide. Anyway, it was all Mr Leroy’s doing really. But she still had to do
something
.

Polly thought, If I see a policeman, I’ll say I’ve lost my memory. And set off walking again. This time she went steeply downhill and walked and walked. Terrace after terrace of elegant houses, but she never saw a single policeman. Then I’ll go to the railway station and tell them I’ve lost my memory there instead, she thought. Somewhere near a big church she met a traffic warden and asked him the way to the station. He was kind. He directed Polly just as if she was a car.

“After the Centre, you drive over three roundabouts, see.”

“I see,” said Polly. “Three roundabouts.”

“That’s the ideal,” he said.

They really do say it! Polly thought. Evil, Idle and Normal. She knew she was going to get lost, not being a car, and she did.

She found herself in a part with tall office blocks, narrow towers of office, each with a thousand windows. Like stripes of graph paper, she thought. The wind hurled seagulls round the graph paper and old peanut packets round her feet. She turned a corner, and instead of offices, she found a narrow street. Here the houses were suddenly old, dark, and a little bulging. Like stepping from Here to Nowhere, Polly thought.

She went up the winding, lane-like street and there, like part of Nowhere coming when she called, she passed a small car crouching against the kerb with a parking ticket flapping from its wiper. It was cream yellow and kettle-shaped, and Polly only had to flick her eyes to its number plate to make sure. TC 123. She passed it without even slowing down. Mr Leroy was not going to realise that she had recognised that car. But inside, she was saying, Oh, thank heaven! over and over again. Oh, thank heaven!

Polly went on walking, but now she had somewhere to go. She was following a tugging in her head. It was like an instinct, the way migrating birds go, or salmon swim, sure and unhesitating, to the right place in the end. It took her round in a devious U-turn, back through the small streets, under the graph-paper buildings, across two very busy roads and up a slanting street to one side, to the elderly-looking front of a concert hall. Notices were stuck on it, one for wrestling – THE WESTON WHIRLWIND V CLAPHAM PETE – and one for a concert – THE DUMAS QUARTET TONIGHT 7:30. The part that said DUMAS QUARTET was an oblong strip of paper stuck on top of some other name and flapping loose in the wind. But it was there. Thank heaven!