Fire and Hemlock (43 page)

Polly found herself smiling because of the well-known way Tom’s head turned. It was an utter delight just to see it again. Now watch it! Watch it, she told herself. She was reminded of the glee she had felt while she set up that piece of witchcraft with the picture. It was not to be like that this time. This was not what it was about. All the same, she was so glad! She was still smiling as she slipped round the cross and down the steps, tottering a bit on her numb feet, and seized hold of Tom’s arm. She felt it tense and jerk. “Hello,” she said.

It did not surprise her particularly when Tom turned and peered at her blankly through his rain-speckled glasses. “I think you’ve made a mistake of some kind,” he said.

“No I haven’t,” Polly said. It was bound to be like this. “And I’m hanging on to you from now on.”

By this time Ann had passed them and joined Ed and Sam. Tom hurried after them, shaking his arm to free it from Polly, and Polly went with him, hanging on. “Will you please let go,” he said.

“My good woman,” Polly prompted him. “No, I won’t.”

“What’s the matter with you? Do you want money or something?”

“You know perfectly well I don’t!”

“I don’t know anything about you. Let go!”

They passed the car Laurel’s party had come in, practically fighting. Polly saw Ann, Ed and Sam pause in the station doorway and look round for Tom. Seeing the struggle, they turned away, obviously embarrassed, and went inside. “I’m not going to let—!” Polly was panting, when another person pushed past them and hurried into the station too. Tom tore himself loose from Polly with almost no trouble at all and plunged after. Polly saved herself from falling by catching hold of the wing mirror of Laurel’s car, but her numb feet let her down. She could hear the thumping of feet from inside the booking hall, and raised voices, but by the time she made her feet take her through the doorway, the quarrel seemed to have died down.

Ed was standing with Ann and Sam, blocking the way through to the platform. All of them looked angry and Ed was rubbing his arm. Mr Piper was looming in front of them, like something at bay. Tom was buying a ticket, with his back to everyone.

“Let me through,” Mr Piper said peremptorily. When none of the three moved, he turned and shouted, “Tom! For pity’s sake! I’m in a hurry. She’s got Leslie now!”

Tom turned round and gave his yelp of laughter. “So much for your hiding and pretending!” he said. “If you’d told the truth, you could have warned him. Don’t worry. The train will wait for me.”

Ann and Sam moved slowly aside. Ed moved even more reluctantly, and as Mr Piper dived past him, out onto the platform beyond, he shouted after him, “And be careful who you’re shoving another time!” While Ed was shouting, Tom picked up his cello. All four hurried after Mr Piper, so quickly that Polly nearly got left behind. She ran to the ticket window, fumbling out her student card and a five-pound note, which was all the money she had.

“The same, please,” she said. She supposed the clerk behind the window knew. A ticket came back, and quite a lot of change. A short journey, then. Polly snatched it up and ran. The train might wait for Tom, but it would not wait for her, which Tom of course knew. But, thanks to Mr Piper, Polly also knew that Tom had not been trying to shake her off as hard as he had pretended. She ignored her lifeless feet and sprinted.

The train was at the platform, beginning to move. Polly was in time to see Tom’s white parka through the glass of one of the doors. She put on a spurt and managed to claw hold of that door. Then, hopping on one foot as the train gathered speed, she got it open and threw herself inside the train. The door crashed shut behind her.

Inside, it was a perfectly normal train, with a gangway down the middle and rows of foursome tables on either side. Ann, Sam and Ed had already taken three seats at a table some way along. It was obvious that Tom would join them in the fourth seat as soon as he had finished stowing his cello. Polly darted up the gangway and stood in front of the fourth seat, stopping him. Ed and Ann looked at her, and looked away. Sam’s face twisted with embarrassment as Tom turned round and saw Polly. He stood waiting.

“Get out of my way, please.”

“No. And you do know me,” Polly said.

“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” said Tom.

“Nonsense. I haven’t changed that much,” Polly said. She leaned one hand on the table to look at Ed. “Ed, do
you
know me?” Ed shook his head and tried to avoid her eyes. It was the way anyone behaves when a stranger tries to pester him on a train. Sam was already looking away when Polly turned to him. They really did not know her, any more than Leslie had done. Still, I’m
not
going to be embarrassed out of it this time! Polly thought. That was something of a clue, really. Laurel thought she would be. Laurel worked by admissions, one way or another. Polly looked on to Ann. “Do
you
know me, Ann?”

Ann was clearly very tired. She was leaning sideways with her head on Sam’s shoulder. She looked up at Polly, direct and penetrating and dark, and frowned. “I think I do, somehow. But I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“Bless you, Tan Audel!” Polly said. She turned to Tom in triumph, but he simply walked up the gangway to another seat and sat there. Polly followed, and sat down facing him. Tom behaved as it she was not there.

He took his wet glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief. Without them, Polly could see how white and hollow-cheeked and strained his face was. Water dripped from her hair, and her elbows left damp smudges on the table while she sat there studying him. The train clattered round them, hurrying away into the night.

He did know her, Polly was sure. What he felt about her turning up again like this was another matter, but it did look as if Laurel had forced some kind of prohibition on him not to know her. So it followed that it must be important to get him to admit that he did. Or was this simply Polly’s own feelings making her think this? She had been prepared to be cool and alert and collected, and it was all overthrown by her utter delight at seeing him again. She wanted to burst into wild, joyful laughter.

“I know I must be one more damn thing to you,” she said, “but I have come to help if I can. I want to make amends for what I did to you – or apologise at least.” Tom held his glasses up towards the light overhead to see if they were clean, and did not answer. “Do you know,” Polly said, “the Obah Cypt turned out to be the
Fire and Hemlock
picture? I had it all along. There was a lock of your hair in the back of it – I found it today.”

Tom put his glasses back on and unzipped his wet parka. He sat back, staring beyond Polly. “I seem to be shut in a train with a raving female,” he said. “There is no such thing as an Obah Cypt.”

“Well, it’s the only name I know for it,” Polly said. “Who
is
Mr Piper? He seems to have been Tan Coul as much as you were. There
was
a giant in the supermarket. Edna told me.”

“What institution did you escape from?” said Tom.

Some of the wild laughter did break loose from Polly. “St Margaret’s College, Oxford. I share a padded cell with Fiona Perks.”

“Go back there,” said Tom.

“How ungrateful!” said Polly. “Don’t forget you started it by hauling me out of that funeral.”

Tom did not answer.

Polly bit her own tongue angrily. Polly, you fool! Keep off funerals. Of all the things to remind him of! “I think,” she said, “I’ve gone and left Granny’s famous umbrella on the steps of Miles Cross. You know the one? The big green and white umbrella you held over her that Sports Day before you went to Australia.” Tom did not reply. Polly tried again. “I don’t exactly blame Granny for telling you off then. She was right, according to her own lights, even though I suspect Morton Leroy had got to her. After all, Granny wasn’t to know you’d already made it quite plain at the panto that I was nothing but a complete nuisance to—”

“Come off that, P—!” Tom began violently. And stopped. “Did you happen to remark what your name was?” he asked carefully.

The laughter tore loose from Polly again. “No.” she said. “I didn’t, and you know it. And, of course, my name isn’t Polly, as you also know. It’s Hero.”

She had done it, Polly realised. She had got it right. Tom took his glasses off again and attended to what was probably an imaginary smear, and he was smiling as he wiped them, all over his strained face, in the same way that Polly was, as if he could not help it. He put the glasses on again, leaned his elbows on the table, and did at last look at Polly. “Polyphonic Assistants,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done that. You never did understand the risk.”

“Yes I did,” said Polly. “I had a talk with Morton Leroy after that pantomime. Had you known all along?”

Tom shook his head. Around them, the train rushed and rattled into darkness. The noise and the pressure suggested they were going through a tunnel. Tom had to shout against the clatter. “Not a notion, to begin with – it was too unbelievable – just like Tan Coul in the supermarket – slowly realising it could only be a giant—”

“That’s the gift she gave you,” Polly shouted back. “Things you make up to come true and then turn round and hit you.”

“Not till you wrote Leroy by mistake for Legris,” Tom shouted. “Then I saw. But you still think ‘This can’t happen to me!’ I still do.”

The things Polly wanted to shout in reply to this were lost, because the train rushed out of the tunnel again, into bright daylight. It burst across them so that they both had to shield their eyes from the brightness. When Polly managed to blink out of the window, she found they were travelling along beside the sea. White surf was folding and smashing almost beside the rails, and a myriad dazzles flickered off the grey water stretching towards the sun.

“Is it always like this?” she said.

“I think it varies,” said Tom. “I’ve only ridden in Laurel’s train once before. It was hills and deserts then. Whatever suits her sense of humour, I think.”

“I could do without her sense of humour,” Polly said bitterly. “True Thomas. You haven’t got cancer, have you?”

“Is that what she told you?” Tom pushed his hands wearily over his face, lifting his glasses to rub his eyes. The train was slowing down now, noticeably. Tom’s face looked as if his rubbing hands were wiping the colour out of it with every rub.

“If I’d been thinking of you at
all
”, Polly said, angry and remorseful, “I could have seen through that. She only lied when I asked. You taught me about sentimental drivel, but I didn’t think of that
once!
”

The brakes of the train were shrieking. A station of some kind was sliding into view. Tom stood up. “Well, I’d had years of Laurel, and you hadn’t.”

Polly stood up too. Down the carriage, Sam, Ed and Ann were collecting their instrument cases and moving to the door. When they got there, they stood looking back doubtfully, waiting for Tom.

“You go on,” Tom called to them. “There’s only one way to go. You can’t miss it. I’ll catch you up in a minute.” Ann nodded and got off the train. Sam and Ed looked at one another before they followed her, clearly wondering whether to come back and rescue Tom from Polly, and then deciding that it would be too embarrassing. They got off too, and Tom turned to collect his cello.

“Can’t you just not go?” Polly said.

“I don’t really want them coming to fetch me,” Tom said. “Off you get.”

Polly and he climbed off the train onto an empty, sunlit platform. The place seemed deserted. They walked across the platform, and their feet boomed on the hollow wooden floor of the booking hall. Outside was a long street, lined on each side with chestnut trees, from which big orange leaves, like hands, drifted down across Ann, Ed and Sam, walking ahead in the distance. Above the trees stood the moon, flat and white in the blue sky.

“You shouldn’t have come,” Tom said as they set off down the street. “I’d suggest you don’t come any further, except that I think the only way out now is to go on.”

“I know you won’t want me looking on—” Polly said.

“I don’t,” he said. “But it’s not that. You don’t understand – there’s nothing you can do now.”

“Yes there is,” said Polly. “I have to hang on to you.”

Tom sighed. “I knew you didn’t understand. You were doing that for about five years, but you stopped. I can’t say I blame you.” A hand-like leaf fell on the case of the cello, and slid off again. Polly shuddered. “Anyhow,” Tom said, “I’m quite glad of a chance to apologise.”

“Apologise!” said Polly. “I’d have thought it was the other way round.”

“Both ways round then,” said Tom.

“Mary Fields?” asked Polly.

He shrugged. “That too, I suppose. Some of it was an attempt to keep the heat off you. Poor Mary. I haven’t seen her for over a year now.”

They walked on, with leaves pattering to the street around them. Polly cheerlessly considered. At least she was not being troubled with that pointless gladness any more. Allowing for the fact that Tom was bound to be in a strange state of mind, things seemed no different from the way they always had been. “Then why are you still trying to choke me off?” she said. “You are. You have been ever since I knew you.”

“What else could I do?” Tom demanded. “I had to keep getting in touch, and sending you things, because you were my only chance, but I didn’t have to like what I was doing, particularly after Morton found out. And I drove a bargain with Laurel after that, not to harm you—”