Polly

by Freya North

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘What are friends for?’ she replied, brushing his gratitude away along with one of her auburn curls. As they headed back for the cottage and lunch, Max asked about the bad patch she and William had gone through.

  ‘I refused to marry him and he refused to live together.’

  ‘And you’re now living together happily unmarried,’ Max marvelled.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Chloë, ‘blissfully.’

  ‘Now there’s a thought,’ Max said as they neared the kitchen door. ‘One more thing – Genevieve – was she planned or, um, flunked?’

  Chloë laughed. ‘Meticulously – flunked.’

  Max stayed on for a few days more. He stopped looking at the property section and, when he wasn’t wedging clay for William, or helping Chloë, or conversing at length with Genevieve, he drew. He went through pencils at an alarming rate, often resorting to biro and the backs of shopping lists, not from choice but necessity. Max drew the cliffs, the goat called Barbara, the corner of the kitchen, Genevieve asleep, the back of Chloë’s head, William working at his wheel. He drew his car, Chloë’s bicycle, his healed feet, Genevieve’s hands. He constructed still-life arrangements: one featuring his walking boots, Genevieve’s teddy and an onion; another, a selection of broken pottery, the telephone and a banana. He went to Mousehole and drew boats. He went to Penzance and sketched tourists. He went to a play at the Minack Theatre and filled a sketchbook with drawings of the actors, the spectators and, later, the entire story of the play itself. He drew fish. He drew gulls. He drew a puffin with fish dripping from its beak, from memory.

  Drawing was both cathartic and liberating. It was something Max had put on hold, that he had deemed an unaffordable luxury once he had left college and become a graphic designer. His only enduring concession to his love of drawing had been in relabelling himself a draughtsman. If he drew, in recent years, it had been only as rough preliminaries for commissions. Now Max was drawing again; subjects of his choice, on a scale in size and time which he defined. Some vast sketches he completed in ten minutes (Genevieve shell seeking); others little larger than envelopes took whole days (the puffin). All were united by his free and lucid style, their construction grounded in intuition as much as technique.

  On the morning he left Cornwall, Max gave a drawing to each member of the household, including Barbara the goat. He and William shook hands firmly, laid a hand on each other’s shoulders and then fell easily into a close embrace. He kissed Chloë gently, his hand in her hair, his cheek pressed against hers.

  ‘Keep drawing,’ she said.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Come and see us again,’ she said.

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Bring Polly next time,’ she said.

  All the while, Genevieve clung to his left thigh and it took both her parents and the promise of chocolate to prise her away and unravel her clenched fists into farewell waving for Max.

  ‘Don’t fuck off,’ she sobbed after him.

  But it is indeed time to leave, Max concedes out loud to his car as they cross the border into Devon.

  ‘I mean, poor Dom. And Megan. And my clients.’

  And Polly.

  How are we going to get you two together again?

  Bloody Polly Fenton. I’ve been cursing you for not being more like Chloë – all serene and calm and measured in emotional output. I’ve been wishing you could smile gently instead of grinning like a child; that you might laugh softly instead of so hysterically that you snort. I’ve been bemoaning the fact that you’re not taller, more substantial, more, I don’t know, proper-grown-up-woman. And yet I’m not thinking specifically about Chloë, certainly not about Jen to whom I have given very little thought.

  I’m talking about your scampering and sudden tears, the way you squeal and become overexcited or overtired. Recently, I have wanted you to trade your fluffy bedsocks and what you call your ‘bunny jimjams’ for black lace and painted toe nails. God, sometimes it feels like I’m with a little girl. We shouldn’t talk in baby voices, it’s pathetic and nonsensical. Why are you so Marmite-centric in your taste? Couldn’t you develop? And I wish you wouldn’t love your bloody cat quite so obsessively.

  But.

  Polly bloody Fenton. I miss hearing you laugh and cry, feeling you clinging to me like a limpet. I quite fancy a meal where both soup and subsequent stew are flavoured with the ubiquitous Marmite. I want Buster to sit at the table, or more specifically on the table, with us while we eat: I want you to fall asleep, head in my lap, while I watch the ten o’clock news, then see you all bleary and tiny, when I wake you so you don’t miss the ‘And Finally’. I want to observe how gloriously petite and beautifully put together you appear when in a crowd. You’re sexy in your fluffy bedsocks and nothing else. Your energy is infectious; your emotional deluge often as nourishing as it is sometimes exhausting. You put the colour in my life. Often, you’re too bright and noisy. But maybe my life would be a silent monochrome without you.

  Bloody Polly bloody Fenton.

  I slept with someone else.

  I asked you to marry me.

  What on earth did I mean by either?

  Can I figure this out?

  THIRTY-THREE

  Martha’s Vineyard was an indisputably beautiful place but Polly wished she had never been. It hadn’t been a holiday, or a retreat. She perceived it now as a rather surreal episode from which she had certainly learned. Still, though, she felt cluttered within. Normansbury, however, really rather a plain town and even more so in the rain, seemed the most wondrous place to Polly when the bus finally deposited her there after a circuitous journey from Woods Hole via a night in a particularly drab hostel in Boston.

  ‘I’m here,’ she rang Kate from a call box.

  ‘I’m right there,’ Kate replied while Polly swooned to the sound of her voice.

  While she waited, Polly found a bench by a red oak tree, under which only the most persistent drops of rain could manage their way through. As she sat, soothed by the rhythmic swish of wheels on wet tarmac, she realized she was glad of the rain because it confirmed the distance from Martha’s Vineyard.

  There it was sunny. Yesterday too. Last week, in fact.

  I wish I hadn’t met Bill and Marc. I don’t want to know about Sam Bauer and Josephine.

  I just wanted to be a tourist. I just wanted to be on my own.

  Just then, it wasn’t possible for her to see that she had choreographed the development of her entire stay. Instead, the sight of two dogs humping, swiftly followed by the unmistakable sound of Bogey barking encouragement at them, provided Polly welcome distraction. She left her preliminary ponderings on the bench under the great oak and walked defiantly to Kate’s car, into which she jumped and started chatting about absolutely nothing and nineteen to the dozen at that.

  ‘How was the Vineyard?’ Kate finally managed to interject as they pulled up outside her house.

  ‘Yes,’ said Polly in a rather different voice while she unloaded her bags and took great interest, with fingers and eyes, in the seam of her rucksack.

  I had the opportunity – just to be a tourist – but I designed my stay otherwise.

  I had the opportunity – with Bill and Marc – but I chose not to.

  I had the opportunity to comfort Sam Bauer in some small way. I didn’t.

  ‘Tea?’ Kate asked, hovering at a tactful distance and suggesting Polly reload her bags unless she intended to carry them to Petersfield House herself later.

  ‘Please,’ Polly replied, careful to tap at her temples to suggest utter empty-headedness rather than a mind racketing with confusion.

  ‘So,’ said Kate, slathering Marmite over Marcia’s pumpernickel, ‘you’re early.’ Her careful tone was one of kind observation and Polly hoped that a nod in reply was all that Kate required at this stage.

  ‘How’s Max?’ Kate asked. And why shouldn’t she? Polly swallowed hard on a chocolate-chip cookie but all she could taste was the ling
ering bitterness of forbidden fruit.

  Mind you, that quick taste cleared my hunger, gave me a metaphorical gut ache that will enable me to refuse it, steer clear, if ever I come across it again.

  ‘No more Max,’ Polly answered bravely, with a meek smile.

  ‘My God,’ said Kate, quite shocked.

  ‘Doesn’t want me back,’ Polly shrugged, resigned, her eyes flat and the colour of mud.

  ‘Does he know?’ Kate whispered.

  ‘No,’ Polly replied with sad irony, ‘all he does know is that he doesn’t want me.’

  The women put cookies into their mouths so that they did not have to talk.

  Jeez, poor kid. What can I say now?

  ‘You have plans?’ Kate asked. ‘Before summer term? Still a week off.’

  ‘Not really,’ Polly said slowly, twisting in the chair and seeing if there was anyone new on the Fridge of Smiles.

  ‘You could go upstate – have a scout, go walk? Middlebury is real pretty. You could go right on up to the Northeast Kingdom – or take back roads right into the Green Mountains – Vert Mont itself, you see?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Polly marvelled, wondering how, if words were her thing, she had not figured this out previously. ‘Maybe,’ she added.

  ‘You could borrow a car,’ Kate furthered.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Polly, ‘or maybe just the bike.’ She looked at her watch and stood up, ‘I’d better make a move.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kate. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable; they were being reserved, a distance that was anathema to both.

  It was strange being alone in Petersfield House. Polly visited each room in turn, smiling at the variety of belongings left strewn on beds or draped over chairs or propped in corners; vestiges of the girls’ personalities and guarantees of their imminent return. Her apartment was more tidy than she remembered leaving it, which unnerved her for some reason. She unpacked quickly and draped a few of her things about, whistling all the time to suggest that the silence didn’t bother her, before sinking into the couch and staring at the phone, biting her cheek, for over an hour.

  Having dialled Max but hung up just as soon as she heard a peep of a ring, and having called Megan and let it ring until a mechanized voice suggested she try later, Polly locked up Petersfield House and returned to Kate without warning or explanation.

  ‘Mind if I stay?’ she simply asked, somewhat sheepishly, while holding up her toothbrush for emphasis.

  ‘Mind?’ Kate exclaimed, as if even the thought that she might was an insult indeed. She touched Polly’s cheek and Polly took her hand, kissed it swiftly before they fell into an easy embrace. Great Aunt Clara’s bed was welcoming and occurred to Polly, just then, to be the safest bed she knew.

  What am I going to do with mine? In Belsize Park? Will burning the sheets be enough? Will I actually be able to sleep in it again? Will I ever sleep in it alongside Max? Oh God, might I never share sleep with Max again – in whatever bed?

  Suddenly, an image of her bed with Max and Jen in full shag, shunted itself uncompromisingly across the entire panorama of her mind’s eye. She sat bolt upright and switched on the light, breathing fast and feeling, for the first time, that she was nearing the verge of pure panic, dangerously close to the cliff edge of emotional chaos.

  Are they? Max and Jen? Doing it? I left early – did Jen go back to England early too? Was it all planned and premeditated? What are they doing at this precise moment? And are they doing whatever together?

  It no longer mattered to Polly whether her bed was the location; the notion of their possible continuing coupling was enough. She shuddered violently until it dispersed the image.

  Did my behaviour really drive him to it? Or does Max just not fancy me any more? Or does he just fancy her more?

  Polly recalled Jen’s height and exaggerated it, devising a physique of statuesque proportions. She added a stunning bust, a supermodel’s abdomen, a dancer’s legs and a porn star’s pussy. Polly glanced down her nightdress (little roses, Marks & Spencer cotton), scratched her stomach and punched her thigh harder than she thought she was going to.

  Is that why I’m so desperate to be back together? Because the thought of him with another woman is so excruciating? Because the notion of him simply not wanting me is so appalling?

  She hugged her knees and rocked herself. Her leg throbbed.

  Would I be feeling like this if I had never found out about the two of them?

  She left the bed and pressed her cheek lightly against the portrait of Cézanne’s gardener. The cold glass was as comforting as the old man’s hand on her head might have been.

  Did Max use the same techniques on Jen? Did she kiss like me? Taste like me? Different? Better? Oh God, she must’ve made him come. Someone else made my Max come. He came within someone else. Or maybe she swallowed for him. Or perhaps both. And more. All night, even. Should I be using the present tense?

  An image, known so well, of Max’s face during orgasm, the sound of him, the smell of him, grabbed Polly and made her choke. She took her nose to the old curtains and breathed in the mixture of mothballs and dried damp, the smell of time. She pressed the material hard against her face, opening her mouth wide into a vast, dry, silent wail. Her body heaved. She made no noise. She was too distressed to cry, too desolate to go in search of Kate’s promised shoulder. She tasted dust. She had a funny taste in her mouth.

  If I hadn’t slept with Chip, would Max still’ve slept with Jen? Is this divine punishment? God, I wish I’d never set eyes on the bastard, what a stupid waste of time it all was. Chip bloody Jonson can go to hell – because that’s where he’s landed me. It’s all his bloody fault.

  Polly crumpled herself into a muddle under the window. A draught seeped through and coursed an unrelenting path up her vertebrae. She felt freezing and in pain and caught in a vacuum of absolutely no idea what to do or what was going to happen to her. She could not move. Eventually, she crawled over to the bed and heaved herself back up into it. Shoving her face into the pillow, she tried to cry, she was desperate to cry, but her throat stung too much and her tear ducts remained defiantly shut. She was denied the absolving comfort of weeping. It seemed not even her body was there for her.

  ‘No Tupperware, thank you,’ said Megan. She shut the door to Dominic’s flat leaving Max, stupefied, staring at the brass ‘B’ of his own front door. He knocked again.

  ‘Jehovah? We’re Zoroastrians here,’ said Dominic, looking Max directly in the eye. ‘Sorry. Goodbye.’

  Again, the door was shut on Max. Puzzled for only a moment, he then left the building, returning half an hour later and giving three hearty raps at the door. Megan and Dominic looked at each other and over to the television and Coronation Street; they looked down at their lazily entwined limbs and up at each other’s faces again. They looked over to the door when three fresh raps rang out, raised eyebrows at each other and grinned.

  ‘What?’ Dominic shouted in convincing irritation on his way to the door.

  ‘We’ve got double glazing,’ Megan remonstrated, following close behind him.

  ‘Pizza delivery,’ called a voice of Afro-Itali-Asian origins. It was, of course, Max. ‘American Hot, Four Seasons and Gardener.’

  ‘Giardiniera,’ sang Megan in operatic Italian, coming forward to embrace Max but then taking charge of the three brown boxes and turning on her heels instead.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Dominic, reaching into his pockets, pressing a small amount of small change into Max’s hands, turning away but not quite closing the door. Soon all three of them were ensconced on the sofa with home-brew, pizza and Eastenders. Perfect. Familiar. Max been away? Has he? Cornwall? Really? Didn’t notice. Anyway, he’s here now. Welcome back. Cheers.

  Max’s week passed quickly. His backlog of work seemed to have grown disproportionately to the time he had taken off, but he immersed himself in it and the clients were pleased. He also took over Buster’s welfare from Megan, which entailed visiting the cat’s flat in Bel
size Park daily. Jen was nowhere though her return was imminent. She was, however, in the thoughts of Max, of Dominic and of Megan. All felt silent guilt; dreading seeing her again but eager to as well, just to allay fears and calm consciences.

  The flat was, however, thick with Polly; her presence a permeating vapour inducing Max to sit awhile, in the silence save for Buster’s purring or protestations; to remember, to think, to try to decide what to do.

  Polly’s week, however, passed at an insufferably slow rate. Though she timetabled her days to the very moment of closing her eyes at the end of each, still they dragged and she suffered. Cycling, hitherto merely a pleasurable and relaxing leisure pursuit, now became a quest for physical fitness; the crucial mental application it required doubling as a welcome preoccupation from other thoughts. The harder she cycled, the more taxing the routes and the longer the excursions, so the days passed just fractionally quicker: time trialing indeed. Polly had stayed only the one night with Kate, moving back into Petersfield House the next morning, early enough to have a full day on the bike too. Mostly, she chose the unsurfaced roads many Vermonters are keen to preserve, soon supporting their cause strongly herself: the dinks and ruts and constant rough surface necessitated utter concentration and she was glad for juddering and wobbling to preoccupy her mind entirely. It was just what she needed. She didn’t have to think about anything other than staying on and getting up that hill.

  The land looked beautiful. It was also strangely private; summer’s verdant lushness appearing not to have the touristic pull of fall’s burning bright. Polly was grateful for the solitude. Intermittently, during each outing, she’d say ‘Hi, little fella’ to the chipmunks, whom she refused to regard as being as common as the squirrels in Britain. She learned to distinguish between the red spots of the brook trout and the purple spots of the brown trout. She saw a skunk and her heart bled for it for, though it appeared lonesome and unloved, she didn’t want to venture near enough to it to offer her friendship.