by Freya North
Buster stomped into the room and Polly changed the subject, quickly. The cat wound his body around her legs and then slumped down at her feet, cleaning his anus meticulously. Polly sat alongside him and scratched his neck, causing him to change target and lick at her hand as if it was part of his own anatomy. She thanked him and called him charming.
‘Oh, cat,’ she sighed, ‘I can’t think what to do – about the here and now or about the there and soon.’
Buster regarded her sternly and then sauntered away to sit on the window-sill and concentrate on the rain outside.
‘It’s not that I feel caught between two countries,’ she said as she walked to the kitchen and put two slices of bread in the toaster, ‘or even two men. It’s almost as if I am swaying between two notions of myself and am unable to determine in which one lies reality. Polly the known, dependable, lively, friendly teacher and gregarious appendage to Max Fyfield? Or a young woman, turning twenty-eight, a little confused but acutely aware that her strength, independence and self-awareness are to be discovered, treasured.’
She shivered and held her face close to the toaster until her eyes smarted and her nose tingled. At the back of her mind, Mick Jagger was singing ‘You can’t always get what you want’.
‘I know,’ she told him, ‘but you also said that perhaps if I try, I might get what I need.’
Damn. What is it that I need? A kiss from Chip? Can such a thing really be that weighty? Or do I need clarification that I do indeed want to journey into the sunset of my life alongside Max Fyfield?
Jim Morrison suddenly appeared to remind her that wishful was sinful.
‘Hypocrite!’ she accused him. ‘If I told you someone’s gone and lit my fire, you’d tell me to neither hesitate nor wallow.’
Now Mr Jagger was back, colluding with Mr Morrison, trying to gain her sympathy, to tempt her with their backlist of hits. Luckily, the toast popped up and came to her emotional rescue before she could break on through to the other side.
Marmite. Lots.
Have some toast with your Marmite, Max would tease. Polly could hear him so clearly.
‘Ssh!’ she protested, shaking her head to banish the image. She took the plate into her living-room and ran into Bob Dylan.
‘Go away!’ she shouted at him before he’d even opened his mouth, but not before he’d struck a chord.
‘I need to update my record collection,’ said Polly very loudly and with contrived breeziness, flicking the television on and then off again, having a quick sob with toast stuck in her throat.
THIRTEEN
‘Keep still, stop bloody fidgeting!’
Dominic stepped in front of his tripod and regarded Polly with an expression so exasperated that she immediately begged forgiveness and promised not to move an inch. Polly frequently modelled for Dominic; never the main subject of his work, but as an accessory, a prop, for a variety of projects. Invariably, he required only parts of her and these she was willing to give because she loved his work and was flattered that he should want to use her body so creatively and with such an interesting use of focus and scale. Her knees had featured strongly in his last assignment, her earlobes and the nape of her neck in the one before that.
‘Better,’ he said from behind the lens to a drum roll of clicks, ‘good.’ He reappeared to rearrange her pose and she let him fiddle with her fingers and the lighting.
‘It’s a series for my next show,’ he had explained to her, ‘called “Time Pieces”. I want to do imaginative things with watches and clock faces and the human hand and eye. Time passing, life passing, faces and eyes as indicators of it all.’
‘And the fingers?’ Polly enquired.
‘Because, quite simply, they’re incredibly photogenic things. Just humour my bullshit-waffle – I make good photos in spite of it!’
Currently, Polly had an antique watch with a butter-soft leather strap twisted around her fingers.
‘OK,’ said Dominic, ‘now pop it into the palm of your hand, close your fingers and then unfold them – just slightly – for a little peep. Look, watch me; like this. Excellent. Bugger,’ he grumbled, ‘can’t see the hands.’
‘Hey?’ said Polly in disbelief, the camera appearing to focus on nothing else.
‘Of the watch,’ Dominic explained, ‘can you move them so they read ten past one? Yes! Oh yes, lovely. Hold it. Great. That’s it.’
They broke for a cup of tea and a softening digestive biscuit from a long since opened packet.
‘Time’s passing, Pollygirl.’
‘Isn’t it just,’ Polly agreed.
‘When’s the big day, then?’ Dominic asked with a little nudge.
‘Day after the day after tomorrow,’ Polly told him with a fleeting but telling sparkle.
Dominic fell silent and regarded her reproachfully. ‘I meant,’ he said, ‘when are you going to marry my brother, not leave him?’
‘I’m not leaving him!’ Polly rushed, reddening. There was a perceptiveness to Dominic’s tone for which she would never have credited him previously, and it unnerved her.
‘So, then, when?’
‘We haven’t picked a date precisely,’ she told him truthfully, and as breezily as she could.
‘Oh.’
‘Once I’m home for good,’ Polly continued carefully, taking another digestive, bending it without eating it, smiling very widely for Dominic.
‘So, you’re leaving on Friday,’ he responded through a slight shower of crumbs.
‘Suppose,’ she said, looking away quickly but not before a mixture of grief and excitement scumbled across her face and settled as sludge in her eyes. She could not prevent it, she could not hide it; the blatancy was there for Dominic to witness. Consciously, Dominic let an edgy silence hang a moment longer. Polly wiped her hands on her skirt methodically and raised her eyebrows. ‘Back to work?’
‘My muse!’ he proclaimed, letting her off the hook and banishing the unsettling image. ‘Better take advantage of you while I can, eh?’ He had no idea what to do with the inkling that something might be amiss.
Come on, take stock. I mean, this is Pollygirl Fenton we’re talking.
‘Now I’m going to zoom in on your eyes,’ he told her, ‘and then, later, transpose famous clock faces over your irises.’
Pity it won’t be in colour – just get a load of that khaki hue.
Suddenly, the clock tower at Hubbardtons, between the main hall and the dining-room, flitted across Polly’s mind and at once transported her back to Vermont. She could even smell morning grass. She shut her eyes and felt the fresh air against her skin.
Behind closed eyelids, Polly shifted her focus just slightly, over to the right, a little more – there! Petersfield House; colonial, wooden and pretty, her new home for her new responsibility as Dorm Mother to twelve girls. Sweep round 45 degrees, beyond the bike porch, to the hockey field. Beyond it, the sports hall, the gym, the Athletic Trainer’s surgery. Behind it all, lofty Hubbardtons wearing the velvet mauve of its early winter plumage while awaiting its annual cloak of snow to swathe away its contours until spring.
Faintly, now louder: voices.
‘Hey there, Polly, welcome back, honey.’
‘Hi Polly, hold up!’
‘Yo, Miss Fenton, good to see you.’
‘Hey Fen’un, looking good. How’s it going?’
Hullo Kate, hey Lorna, morning AJ, hullo Chip. It’s nice to be back. It’s good to see you too. It’s going fine. It’s going to be fine.
‘Oy!’
Who?
Polly opens her eyes.
Dominic.
Hampstead.
‘I can’t superimpose Big Ben or the Selfridges clock over closed eyelids!’
‘I was miles away,’ Polly apologized, still miles away and finding it difficult to get back.
A photographer’s skill is his heightened sense of looking. Just then, Polly’s vivid reel of Hubbardtons continued to run across her opened eyes. In an instant, Dominic saw.
She’s gone already.
It explained so much.
Her distance. The change in her.
He walked towards her, the intensity of his gaze rendering her powerless to close her eyes again though she was desperate to, just to look away, even to blink.
She’s hardly here at all. She wants to leave. She’d rather be over there. Something’s happening to her. Something’s happened. No. How can it? She’s only Polly.
‘What is it, Polly?’ he asked, uncomfortably close to her face, his tone accusatory and unsettling. ‘What’s going on? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’
‘What?’ she said with an edged laugh, Dominic’s eyes still locked on to hers though she flitted her gaze desperately. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’
It won’t be wrong. It’s going to make things right.
‘It bloody is,’ Dominic countered. ‘You’ve been,’ he stumbled, ‘you’ve been – you just haven’t been you.’
‘Dominic!’ Polly protested, shivering as if she was as naked as she felt. ‘What on earth are you going on about?’
‘I don’t know, Polly,’ Dominic replied measuredly, backing away from her and regarding her through slanted eyes, ‘you tell me. I just don’t know. You’ve been distant and moody and that’s not like you. In fact, furtive is the best word. Not pleasant, at any rate.’
‘I’m just tired,’ she pleaded in weak defence.
‘Well,’ said Dominic, dismantling his equipment, ‘I don’t want to photograph your eyes.’
‘Dom!’
‘No, Polly,’ he said sternly, hands on hips, ‘you won’t do. I don’t like what I see.’
‘Hullo?’
‘Megan?’
‘Yes?’
‘Dominic here. Fyfield. As in Maxanpolly.’
‘Hullo there!’
There is only one Dominic. He needs neither introduction nor genealogical clarification. And he’s on the end of my phone.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘I was wondering if you’d, er, if I could, um. I mean, it’s Polly’s last night, as you know, and she and Max are going to do something suitably romantic and private – you know, lots of candles, syrupy music and soft focus. So I was wondering if you’d like to go out for dinner. Or something.’
Sweet baby Jesus and his lovely mother Mary! Is Dominic Fyfield asking me out on a date?
‘Um,’ hesitated Megan for good effect and with a monstrous smile she was relieved Dominic could not see, ‘well, actually, yes I would. That sounds lovely. Thanks. Great. See you later then.’
‘Suitably romantic and private’, hey Mr Fyfield? Better not be outdone by baby brother! Must phone Polly.
‘Polly?’
‘Meg!’
‘You OK? Still on for tea and cake at three?’
‘Yes. And yes. You?’
‘Oh yes. But maybe not a whole pastry. Maybe we should share.’
‘Oh?’
‘Oh yes, I wouldn’t want to spoil my dinner now, would I?’
‘No?’
‘Ho! Dinner date. I have one too!’
‘Yes?’
‘Indeed I do. The Fyfield Boy’s just phoned.’
‘Max? You joining us?’
‘Dominic, you idiot woman.’
‘Yo!’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m sealing my approval with an expression of excitement!’
‘Ah ha. See you at three then?’
‘Later, dude.’
‘Enough, Fenton. I know you’re trying gently to ease yourself back into the swing of all things American, but just let me hear you say “Jolly good, tea at three”.’
‘Jolly good, tea at three.’
The girls shared a mountainous portion of pavlova. As it happened, Polly couldn’t have managed a portion to herself anyway. The glut of emotions weighed heavy on her stomach. Dominic’s intuition had surprised and unnerved her. She felt unsettled. She felt disorientated. She couldn’t possibly leave England. She wasn’t ready. Her trip home had passed so quickly. She didn’t want to go back to America. She wasn’t ready. What could she have been thinking? She wished she’d never gone out there in the first place. She regretted coming home to England for Christmas.
‘You ready to go back?’ Megan asked gently, right on cue. ‘Packed?’
‘No,’ Polly replied, ‘and no.’ How she wanted to open up, to let Megan in; confide, seek advice, approval, disapproval – whatever – just so she did not feel so alone and so solely responsible for any action she might take. Instead, she bit her cheek and held back, though she lacked the courage and the voice to speak anyway.
‘What’s in store for you, next term?’ Megan asked, using her index finger as a spatula against the plate.
Don’t ask.
‘Pardon?’
‘Well,’ said Polly quickly, ‘I’m moving from Kate’s to Petersfield House to be a Dorm Mom—’
‘Does that have capitals? Is it on your job description?’ interrupted Megan.
‘Yes and yes,’ Polly smiled and nodded, ‘and in class, we’re going for manners and wit with a dose of Austen and Wilde.’
‘They’ll love that,’ said Megan, etching dreamy expressions across the imagined faces of Polly’s anglophile students.
‘How about you?’ asked Polly; desperate to be distracted, needing an anchor with England, keen to divert the focus away from herself.
‘Mocks,’ groaned Megan to Polly’s say-no-more expression.
‘And you,’ Polly stressed, ‘yourself?’
Megan’s eyes glinted as she spun a lock of her hair through her fingers, a sly smile broadening across her lips. She arranged sugar cubes into the letter ‘D’ and then took one out, sucking on it luxuriously.
‘I’m going to have a Dalliance with Dominic.’
‘Just a dalliance,’ Polly responded. It was not a question.
Now that Dominic had Megan all to himself and out of context, he was delighted to discover anew just how gorgeous she was. Previously, that she was Polly’s close friend had somehow diminished her stand-alone merits. He had often flirted with her but elaborately and artificially because the very presence of Max and Polly had encouraged it. Tonight, there was no connection other than Max and Polly being absent and thus enabling this situation to have arisen. Dominic, aware and repentant that he had invariably acted up when in the presence of his brother, his brother’s girlfriend and her soul-mate, now made a conscious effort to be himself. Megan, who had already pinched herself a number of times to verify the actuality of the evening, relaxed. To her delight, she discovered that Dominic was not merely a gorgeous playboy to whom she would have surrendered herself willingly anyway; he was also attentive, intelligent and witty. And all the more attractive because of it.
‘Are you busy Saturday?’ Dominic asked as coffee came and went and came again at his instigation.
‘Saturday, Saturday,’ Megan mulled, though a clear picture of her even clearer diary came into view, ‘yes, I think I am. I’ll have to double-check, though.’
‘Well, if you are free,’ said Dominic, hoping sincerely that she would be, ‘we could go to the flicks.’
‘Have you seen the new Bruce Willis?’ Megan asked, her eyes sparkling.
‘No,’ said Dominic, with his devastating grin, ‘Max won’t come and see it with me. Might you, then?’
‘Will I!’ Megan enthused, ‘I love Brucie-boy. If I’m free.’
‘Of course,’ said Dominic, asking for the bill and winking, very quickly, but straight at Megan.
FOURTEEN
Max thought Polly looked quite the most beautiful he had ever seen her, standing there in her stockinged feet, her hand held by frail Miss Klee while they weathered a diatribe from an incensed Mrs Dale. Polly was wearing a softly tailored shift dress the colour of blackberry and her hair, recently trimmed to just below her jawline, her fringe skimming her neat eyebrows, gleamed like mahogany, framing her face and accentuating the shine of her eye
s. A lick of mascara emphasized her eyes, a swipe of lipstick made her already kissable lips even more so. Slender, milky arms, gorgeous knees, shapely calves and dainty ankles; what a package! Max congratulated himself and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his chinos to conceal his burgeoning erection.
‘Good evening, Miss Klee,’ he said, tipping his head in her direction, but with his eyes locked on to Polly.
‘Good evening,’ Miss Klee said to him with absolutely no recognition, ‘is it evening?’
‘It is,’ said Max kindly, taking her hand from Polly’s and leading her up the stairs to her flat, ‘half past seven, already.’
‘Mrs Dale,’ he replied calmly over his shoulder, to a torrent of abuse, on his way back down, ‘there is neither point nor merit in speaking like that. You will cause yourself an injury with all that rage. I shall turn the communal light off just as soon as we’re safely inside Miss Fenton’s flat.’
He performed this simple action as promised and closed Polly’s door behind him, heaving out a theatrical sigh, ‘Women!’
‘Darling Max,’ marvelled Polly, trailing her fingertips over his cheek and down the side of his neck, ‘such a gentleman.’ Max responded to the compliment with a flourish of a bow. Polly nestled against him, lost in her confusion but comforted by the sanctuary of his heartbeat.
‘Do you love me?’ he muffled into the top of her head. ‘Will you miss me?’
‘Yes,’ said Polly, ‘and yes.’
‘You hungry?’ he murmured. ‘Shall we go?’
‘Yes,’ said Polly, ‘and yes.’
Hampstead Heath was inky dark as they walked to their favourite restaurant in South End Green. It was like stepping into somewhere Mediterranean: pastel-washed walls, sunny waiters, fresh, colourful food, animated chatter; a perfect antidote to the damp chill of January in north London. The staff, uniformly camp and lavish with compliments, sashayed around the tables seeing to the diners’ every need and pampering them for the duration of their visit. The quality of the dishes and the showmanship of the staff kept Max and Polly entertained. Their waiter hyperbolized on Polly’s eyes and paid such attention to the details of Max’s outfit that Max wondered whether he should just take the shirt from his back and leave it as part of the tip. When each dish was brought to the table, their waiter placed it down with such care and attention that Max and Polly felt almost guilty for disturbing the platter’s design and eating the contents.
