Polly

by Freya North

  ‘God,’ Max agreed.

  ‘Better bloody get going then,’ Megan exclaimed.

  ‘Better bloody,’ Max agreed.

  ‘It’s all OK,’ Megan said later, wrapping her arms around Dominic’s neck and drawing him close for a long, steady kiss. ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Dominic, brushing her hair away from his lips and wondering to what she referred. ‘Max around?’

  ‘Nope, it’s all OK,’ Megan said, unbuttoning Dominic’s shirt a few inches so she could kiss his chest and decide that she liked it much more than Max’s anyway. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone,’ said Dominic, fighting to concentrate even with eyes shut. Megan murmured affirmatively while licking and nibbling at him.

  ‘Where?’ Dominic croaked. ‘Gone where?’

  ‘To America?’ Megan replied, looking up from his chest with a shrug, as if Dominic should have known all along and not interrupted her unnecessarily.

  ‘Has he?’ Dominic jerked back a little, taking Megan’s right hand and sucking her middle finger thoughtfully while she swooned. ‘Has he? Max? America?’ Dominic repeated, his speech a little muffled as he tried not to bite Megan’s finger as he spoke.

  ‘He has,’ Megan confirmed, pushing both her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, knowing that such a motion would cause her breasts to jut and that Dominic would find his attention drawn magnetically to them. ‘He’ll be on the plane now, about half an hour into the flight. Five and a half hours away from Boston. I’d say about nine hours away from Polly, in total.’

  ‘Nice tits,’ marvelled Dominic, ‘I mean, nine hours.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Megan purred.

  ‘I do too,’ Dominic replied, a breast in each hand, a blouse and a bra in the way.

  ‘What’ll happen?’ Megan said, encircling her hands over his wrists and urging a more energetic fondle.

  ‘What’ll be,’ murmured Dominic, now very distracted, ‘will be. What is apparent is that we have the place to ourselves.’ Dominic motioned to the fluffy rug from Ikea slyly, eyeing Megan up and down suggestively. Megan licked her lips in reply.

  Later, while they returned the furniture to its more usual locations, Megan told Dominic of Max’s evening with Jen.

  ‘It took me from here to Chiswick to summon the courage to ask him about it,’ Megan said, ‘and then it took from the Hogarth roundabout to Heathrow for Max to recount the evening.’

  ‘That’s lucky,’ said Dominic, ‘you might have had to change course for Gatwick, or even Stansted, if it hadn’t been quite so innocent.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Megan in earnest.

  ‘He’ll be landing in a couple of hours,’ said Dominic, scrutinizing the clock on the video.

  ‘Think everything will work out all right?’ Megan asked.

  Dominic pulled her close against him. ‘Depends what you mean by “all right”,’ he said. ‘Say the conclusion they draw doesn’t correspond with our hopes?’

  ‘Then that won’t be all right,’ Megan protested.

  ‘But it will,’ Dominic reasoned, ‘really. If you think about it.’

  Do I want to be on this plane? Making this journey? I don’t know. I still don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I mean, going there; or coming here, rather – I’m less than two hours away from landing. I do know that it’s time. I do know it’s what I need to do. I just don’t know what the right thing to do actually is. I don’t know what I want.

  ‘Sir, duty free?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  Free from duty? Do I want to be? How will I feel when I see her? Right now I feel very ambivalent. I feel a bit sick, too. I hate planes.

  ‘Sir, tea? Coffee?’

  ‘With caffeine?’

  ‘Yes sir, unless you’d prefer it without.’

  Oh God. I don’t believe it. Polly turns twenty-eight today, I mean tomorrow, or is it yesterday? Hang on. No, I land on her birthday. I forgot to send her a card.

  ‘Sir, more coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  I know, I could pretend that’s the purpose for my visit – to deliver her birthday card by hand. No, I can’t; that would give her the wrong idea and enforce affection. It would only raise hopes. Hold on, does that mean I’m making this trip to dash hopes, then? Anyway, is she still hoping for a reconciliation? How would I know? We haven’t spoken. We haven’t written. Not for nearly a month. How can either of us know how things stand?

  ‘I just want things to be resolved.’

  ‘Yes sir, more coffee?’

  I’m twenty-eight years old. Crappy birthday to you – crappy bloody birthday to me. I am no longer in my mid-twenties. The year after next I’ll be thirty. Where will I be the year after next?

  ‘Hey, Miss Fenton.’

  ‘Morning, Zoe – shouldn’t you be in class?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you? Miss Fenton? You OK? Hey? Want me to fetch someone?’

  ‘It’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to.’

  ‘That’s a song, huh?’

  ‘No, it’s the truth.’

  Miss Fenton cut a sorry figure as she turned from Zoe and made her way to class. It disturbed Zoe greatly to see her on the verge of tears. Teachers, like parents, don’t cry, do they? Well, they shouldn’t. Teachers are sort of parents anyway and, in the case of Miss Fenton, sometimes a whole lot better too.

  ‘She shouldn’t cry,’ Zoe later reasoned in confidence to the clutch of friends she had gathered for a lunch-time confab, ‘not on her birthday.’

  ‘’Specially not on her birthday,’ Lauren agreed, casting her gaze over to where Miss Fenton sat, alone, seemingly transfixed by her full plate.

  ‘You reckon she didn’t get any cards?’ Heidi asked, glancing at the teacher swiftly.

  ‘Why else would you cry on your birthday?’ Beth shrugged. They all shuddered at the thought of such neglect. ‘Shall we go sing to her?’

  ‘Like, right now?’ Heidi asked. ‘She might hate that.’

  ‘It kinda might make her cry again,’ Zoe pondered.

  ‘Let’s make her a party,’ Johanna announced in a triumphant whisper with a quick clap of her hands, ‘for the Petersfield House sisters.’

  ‘And her classes,’ Heidi interjected.

  ‘Sure,’ Johanna agreed, ‘more the merrier, as she says.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Lauren. ‘Guys too? Like, those she teaches?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Johanna, who had her eye on Forrest but the misfortune to share none of his classes.

  ‘Know what?’ Heidi said, ‘we should tell Ms Hendry – she’s Miss Fenton’s best buddy. She might help us get some stuff, you know?’

  ‘Go to it,’ said Johanna, with her trademark clap. The girls left the dining hall without looking over to Miss Fenton. They didn’t want to raise her suspicions. Polly was oblivious to their presence anyway; in a world of her own, staring at a plate of food, not remotely hungry and yet feeling starved.

  Lorna was horrified to learn it was Polly’s birthday. You bet she’d help the girls organize a party. You bet she gave out exit passes and permission to miss study period. Lorna went in search of Kate and found her, paint-spattered, encouraging the sophomores to express their emotions by working beyond the constraints of brushes and paper.

  ‘Use the walls,’ Kate cried, oblivious to Lorna’s entrance, ‘use your hands. Feel your way. Kiss the colour – it’s non-toxic. Watch. See? Yeah, kiss the colour. Embrace form and light. Blur the boundaries. Go ahead, guys, blur!’

  ‘Mrs Tracey?’

  ‘Ms Hendry!’

  ‘You know you have blue lips, a green cheek and a yellow left eye?’

  ‘Do I have a purple tongue, also? Should have – here—’

  ‘Yup, you sure do.’

  ‘You want to join us?’ Kate asked, motioning to spare overalls on the pegs by the wall currently being painted.

  ‘Want to join us?’ Lorna qualified in a lowered voice, guiding Kate away from her
throng and finding her hand turned orange in the process. ‘It’s Polly’s birthday,’ Lorna confided, ‘and she’s pretty low – thinks everyone’s forgotten.’

  ‘How can we forget if we never knew in the first place?’ Kate retorted, visibly upset.

  ‘I mean, her lot back home, you know?’ Lorna explained.

  Kate winced and then nodded. ‘You want to come over this afternoon? Cook? Bake?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Lorna, ‘that’d be great.’

  ‘Half of three?’ Kate winked before returning her attention to her class while Lorna slipped away. ‘OK you guys,’ Kate shouted, clapping and grinning effervescently. ‘Stop the mural just now, OK. Tom, go fetch that humungous roll of paper, the stuff we use for stage sets? Good. Let’s roll it out. Longer. More. Longer. Great. Now, let’s make the mother of all birthday cards.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Strange, Max ponders, standing on the bridge, his hand on the sign welcoming him to Hubbardtons Spring, his eyes drinking in the various sights of Main Street, it looks not too dissimilar to how I’d envisaged. It’s all very welcoming but do I actually want to be here? He regards the sign again, as if to double-check, gives it a confident ping with his finger and strolls on into the town.

  Diner on the left, looking just like they do in the films. Aroma-chiro-acu-herbal-zen sort of place on my right with a woman closing up under a trickle of wind chimes. Nice houses, all of them, even the most modest; set and settled like a friendly little group having a chat.

  ‘Evening.’

  Me?

  Yes you, Max. It’s Marcia, not that you’d know.

  ‘Yes, hullo, evening – is Pleasant Street near?’

  ‘Why sure – second right after the drugstore.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Hope not.

  Pleasant Street lives up to its name for Max and, though few of the houses are numbered, he seems to know instinctively which is Kate’s from Polly’s brief description in her very first letter. He walks past it, however, without changing his pace and continues to the end of the street. He sees the sign for the school at the start of a steep, tree-lined drive. A surge of adrenalin sears through his stomach. He turns back for Kate’s but stands still a while. In front of him, Pleasant Street with its trees and homes and cars rolls down to Main Street. Beyond the fringe of trees, the river; just out of earshot. Then the hills, forever rising, interlocking. And above it all, the embrace of a temperate evening sky; a blush of pink, a vestige of blue, diaphanous cloud seeping across like a sigh; the moon, early, over there.

  Max shakes his head and takes a deep breath. He yawns and shakes his head again. Why shouldn’t Polly feel so utterly settled in such an apparently perfect place? It certainly compared highly with any of the places he had hitherto lived.

  Apart from Cornwall, of course.

  But everywhere he had ever known seemed now rather far away. Distant. Easy to forget, potentially.

  You can’t feel homesick in a place like this, can you?

  He makes his way back down the street to the house he thinks is Kate’s. The front door has no knocker, no bell, not even a letter-box. He doesn’t want to hammer on the wood, the street is far too peaceful. He makes his way around the house, peering into windows as he goes, hovering momentarily by the steps leading up to the deck, assessing the back door. That’s more like it. Ajar. Knock. Gentle push. Soft call. Hullo? Anyone home?

  Kate is late because her selection of earrings is driving her mad. The decision, though, is important. There’s a party to go to, a friend to support and only the best earrings will do. She chooses Mexican silver and wonders why it took her so long. They complement her nut-brown skin, her elegant neck, her cropped hair. But they don’t go with her dress so she changes. She looks at the clock. She’s not really late, not for Polly, but she’s no longer early, as she had hoped to be, for Lorna.

  ‘Clinton, that you?’ Kate called, descending the stairs and expecting to see her husband back early from his run. She did not expect to come across a stranger engrossed in her fridge of smiles but she said ‘Hi’ all the same. The stranger, far more shocked and unnerved by her than she by him, scratched his head, mumbled a greeting and appeared generally but becomingly confused.

  ‘Max?’ she asked, eyes asparkle, face a little flushed, silver earrings dangling and glinting. ‘That you, right?’

  The man extended his hand. ‘How do you do,’ he confirmed and they shook on it heartily.

  ‘Max, I’m kinda on my way out,’ Kate explained, as if to a neighbour who had popped in unannounced for coffee and a chat.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Max assured her with a hint of apology, ‘honestly. Fine. I’m not going to be long.’

  ‘Oh-my-God-Max!’ Kate marvelled as her imagination tumbled, and reality dawned at last, ‘Max, you’re here.’

  ‘Er,’ Max laughed, looking about himself theatrically, ‘I suppose I rather am.’

  ‘I mean, here, today – Polly’s birthday, hey?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is. Today. I know.’

  ‘She thinks you’d all gone and forgot,’ Kate said.

  ‘I did,’ Max admitted. ‘I remembered only on the plane.’

  ‘You were coming anyway,’ Kate stated, ‘right?’

  ‘Yes. Spur of the moment – but a good idea, I hope,’ Max explained, presuming Kate to know about the situation between him and Polly, and actually feeling fine that she should.

  ‘Could be,’ said Kate warmly, ‘and all. I got to go. It’s a party for Polly.’ She bit her lip and regarded Max quizzically, while trying to assess in an instant all the pros and cons of Max’s entrance providing the biggest surprise of all. Max was doing the same. ‘You want to come too?’ Kate asked, squinting.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Max said, ‘tonight’s probably not the right time.’

  ‘You sure?’ Kate furthered, out of politeness though she tended to agree with Max. Max gazed at the fridge and focused on a photo which featured Polly in a group of people by a stack of timber. ‘House raising,’ Kate explained, ‘last fall.’

  ‘Polly building a home,’ Max said quietly, ‘in America.’

  Kate stole a long look at Max, who was miles away and didn’t see. She’d known him only a few minutes and yet, if she had had to pick from a long line of the most eligible partners for Polly, she saw how she would have chosen him without hesitation. Contemplative, strong, good. It was good that he was here. She was pleased; pleased too that he was how he was. Maybe he’d like to stay.

  ‘You want to stay here?’ she asked, bringing him back from his thoughts.

  ‘No no,’ Max answered. Then he thought back to Chloë and William’s hospitality. Kate seemed to be offering much of the same. ‘Well, perhaps I could. If you’re sure. Just for a day or two. I’m not staying long.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Kate easily.

  Max tapped his temples and pulled an exasperated face. ‘I just boarded a plane,’ he shrugged, ‘without thinking.’

  ‘Great that you did,’ Kate praised. ‘Listen, I got to go – but you know what? I think you should come along too, just for a peep through the window, just so you can see.’

  Max backed away a step, trying to evaluate the benefits, ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I know so,’ Kate said, taking his arm and leading the way.

  Forty minutes later, having absorbed a private glimpse of Polly, then returned to Kate’s to introduce and then excuse himself to Clinton, Max stood in the centre of Great Aunt Clara’s room, closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of Polly. He had just seen her, just left the sight of her, all ecstatic tears and squeals at her surprise party, and yet she was also right here in this funny old room too. He sat down carefully in the rickety chair and watched the lace panels waft and hover an inch or two from the windows.

  Just the same. Looked no different – I don’t know why I was expecting her to but I was. I suppose I thought that if she has changed, she’d look alte
red too. Oddly, it was more of a surprise to see her looking just the same. A bright button shining away and gleaming at all the people who love her, who have organized a party for her, who have made her birthday a happy one. Providing her with a feeling of family. She certainly looks very much at home out here, amongst them all.

  ‘I didn’t recognize her clothes,’ he told Cézanne’s gardener. ‘I didn’t know she had a pair of white jeans. Mind you,’ he continued, to the vague reflection of himself in a window pane, ‘this shirt is new too. From St Ives. She won’t have seen it before.’ He looked at Van Gogh’s bedroom and then looked about Great Aunt Clara’s. He went to his rucksack and rummaged through the clothes until he found his sketch pad. He sat down in the rickety chair, pencil poised, and wondered what to draw. The funny ornaments? Conclusions? A still life?

  A life, still?

  Polly went to bed a tired but happy twenty-eight-year-old.

  They remembered. All of them. They said, ‘How could we forget?’

  She told herself that it mattered no longer that the other people she thought mattered had obviously forgotten.

  I’ve just been given a wonderful party with cake and Coke and an enormous birthday card, presents too and kisses from everyone (apart from Johanna and Forrest, who were too engrossed kissing each other). I can hardly be ungrateful now, can I?

  From Lorna to Jackson, Zoe to AJ, Polly had received their affection with open gratitude. Though she believed that she was truly at the centre of her life, that reality was undoubtedly right here, right now, in this place, with these folks, her mind kept returning to the loaded question of where were her cards from those in England.

  Why not even Megan? Missing in the mail? Or just missing from her memory?

  And still nothing from Max. Nothing at all.

  Kate was surprised to find Max on the deck enjoying the peace and dew early the next morning.

  ‘Morning, early bird,’ she said softly, taking his wrist and finding that his watch read ten to seven.

  ‘Morning,’ Max replied, ‘how was the party?’

  ‘It was great,’ Kate said, taking a seat alongside him and accepting his offer of a sip from his mug of coffee. ‘You see her?’