Fire and Hemlock

by Diana Wynne Jones

  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.

  4

  They’ll turn me in your arms, lady,

  Into a deer so wild,

  But hold me fast, don’t let me go

  TAM LIN

  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.

  “You are being generous,” she said to Granny, out of her new embarrassed rawness. “Arranging to keep me, I mean.”

  “No, I’m not,” Granny retorted. “Being generous is giving something that’s hard to give. After I gave up teaching, I’d next to nothing to do and I began to feel no one in the world needed me. Now you need me. It’s a pleasure, Polly.”

  “Thanks.” Polly contracted her throat with ice cream, expanded it again with coffee, and asked, “What made the man in that office say ‘Give it her!’ like that?”

  Granny chuckled. “Remember that day I was so late home? I had him that day. Refusing this, denying that, saying maybe to the other. And I lost patience. I said, ‘Young man,’ I said, ‘if you don’t give me what I want – and I made you a perfectly reasonable request – I shall just sit here until you do give it me.’ And I did,” said Granny. “I sat in front of him and I looked at him. They couldn’t close the office at closing time.”

  Polly laughed. She could just see Granny sitting there, unbeaten, small, a lot smaller than Polly was herself now, filling the office with her personality and her bright, unnerving stare. “How long did he last?”

  “Two and a half hours,” said Granny. “He was a tough one. Most of them only last twenty minutes.”

  Polly laughed again and looked up in the middle of laughing because the table got dark from the shadow of someone standing beside it. It was Seb. He was standing staring at her in a confused sort of way, awkwardly clutching a camera. “I saw you through the café window,” he said. He seemed as tall as the ceiling. Polly didn’t know what to say, except that she really had not done anything this time. Her hand rattled her coffee.

  “And I’m her grandmother,” said Granny. “Are you going to sit down, or have you put out roots in the floor?”

  At this, Seb evidently remembered the very polite manners he had been taught. He apologised to Granny and, to Polly’s surprise, slid into a chair at the table. But once he was there, he refused cake and ice cream and coffee, and just sat. What does Mr Leroy think I’ve done? Polly wondered, near to panic.

  “Talk about photographs,” Granny advised Seb, at which Polly jumped guiltily. “I see you’re carrying a camera.”

  Seb took her advice. He talked of shutter speeds and lenses, types of camera and kinds of film. Of lighting, developing, and printing. It was his latest passion. Polly was bored stiff, even through her alarm. At length Seb turned to her and said, “I really came to ask if I could photograph you. Would you mind posing for me outside? It won’t take a minute.”

  “And it won’t hurt a bit,” said Granny. “Well, we’ve finished here. Better go outside and get it over, Polly.”

  Seb photographed Polly beside the tea-shop railings. Then he photographed Granny too because, he said, she had an interesting face. Granny snorted. “I’ll bring you the prints when I’ve done them,” he said. “You live just up the road from us these days, don’t you?”

  Then, at last, he went. Polly realised that Mr Leroy still kept a very close watch on her and turned shakily to Granny. “What did he want?”

  “Goose!” said Granny. “You, of course. The poor boy’s smitten pink over you.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Polly.

  But it seemed to be true. Seb arrived at Granny’s two days later with the photographs, and stayed all afternoon explaining the exact method he had used to develop and print them. This time he was much less awkward. He told them he preferred not to be called Seb these days, but Sebastian, and that he was doing A Levels next year. After that he intended to be a barrister. He looked at Polly most of the time he talked. Polly tried not to be awkward either, but it was not easy when someone so tall and old and well dressed seemed to admire her so much.

  She did not like the photographs as all. Seb had done things with strong light and dark shadows that made Polly and Granny look like two white-haired witches. “Well, you see,” Seb explained to Polly, “you’re not beautiful, or pretty, but your face is interesting, and I’ve brought out the interest.”

  “What a thing to say!” Granny exclaimed when he had gone. “He’ll go far with the girls, that one, on those kind of compliments! My pretty granddaughter interesting! I never heard such stuff!”

  “You don’t like him, do you?” Polly said, in great relief.

  “When he’s noticed there are other people in the world
besides himself,” Granny said, “there might be no harm in Master Sebastian. But I’m prejudiced. He comes from That House.” Granny always called Hunsdon House That House.

  Seb came round rather often after that. He lived so near. It was, Polly felt, almost the only drawback that summer to living with Granny. Granny was marvellous. She had only two faults, as far as Polly knew. The first one was surprising – Granny was scared of small animals. Mintchoc, who adored Granny as much as Polly did, was always bringing her mice or frogs or voles and laying them lovingly at Granny’s feet. Whenever she did, Granny climbed on a chair and screamed for Polly. It always amazed Polly, and irritated her too, to see someone as dauntless as Granny standing on a chair clutching her skirt and screaming at a mouse.

  “Don’t hurt it!” Granny shouted. “Don’t kill it! It’s somebody’s dead soul!”

  Polly was amused and exasperated. “How can I kill it if it’s dead anyway?” she said, carrying the mouse or frog to the window.

  “You can and it is,” Granny said, quite impervious to reason. “Is it gone?”

  “Yes,” said Polly.

  That was Granny’s other fault, of course – superstition. It was because of Granny’s superstition that Polly went on wearing the little opal pendant, although she knew Mr Leroy had found a way to get round it. Granny became so alarmed the one time Polly took it off that Polly humoured her and put it on again. There was no arguing with Granny about such things. She had superstition written all through her like the words in seaside rock.

  The pendant did not even seem to be able to keep Seb away. He called most afternoons. By the end of the summer Polly was not scared of him any longer, but she was quite bored. One afternoon they were in the garden, where Seb was telling her about the agonies of withdrawal he had suffered when he gave up cigarettes, when he suddenly broke off talking and grabbed Polly and kissed her.