Polly Put the Kettle On

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘You married?’ asked the driver.

  ‘I am’, she told him.

  ‘Any kids?’

  ‘Four year old twins—girls.’

  ‘I bet they’re a handful.’

  ‘It’s nothing like it was when they were younger.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  She blew her nose, the cab ran through Chelsea streets, where shapely brass knockers hung above plants in tubs, through the lights of Notting Hill, down into the vale of tall, dark houses and the littered streets of North Kensington. She got out at the corner.

  ‘I hope you’re wrong about your cousin’, he said.

  ‘Thanks’, she said.

  She walked up the quiet, tree-lined road in the soft air. Traffic fumes rose past the houses to hide the stars. She passed the houses where couples dined, crushing bread, peeling fruit, in the windows by candlelight. She passed the house where the girl with long hair played the violin out into the night, heard her own footsteps echoing in the silence, was calm—and there was the police car outside her front door.

  She scraped the Oxo cube, Alexander’s pot, from the bottom of her handbag, flicked it over the vicar’s hedge, keeping the same measured pace, checked herself mentally—hair, eyes, teeth, dress and shoes—and came up to Sergeant Puller satisfied, middle-class, white and safe from assault.

  ‘Oh, hullo’, she said.

  ‘Mrs Kops?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Yes. Nothing wrong. I hope.’ Perhaps, she thought, Alexander’s been killed at Cheyne Walk. But Puller did not make a sad policeman’s face.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘may we come inside?’

  ‘Of course’, she said.

  He and the other policeman barely glanced at the wolf, lying on its side.

  ‘Come down into the kitchen’, she said, uncertain of what she’d find in the sitting-room upstairs. The kitchen was homely, full of respectable things like children’s toys, unironed ironing, potato peelings.

  ‘Do sit down’, she said, graciously. They sat down round the small table to one side of the room. She turned on the lamp, leaving the rest of the room in darkness, but still suggestive of domesticity.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  They refused but she put the kettle on. Her mouth was like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. It wasn’t a bust. It wasn’t a death in the family. What could it be? Perhaps she’d been spotted in Blockade’s tranny. There was that pillar-box—oh, first Kops and now the cops—

  Puller said, ‘I believe you know Mr Clancy Goldstein.’

  ‘My cousin’, she said. In her uncertainty about Clancy, that much she knew about him.

  ‘You said he was your cousin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had got him off balance. As she made a pot of tea she said, ‘What’s it all about?’ adding ‘Alfie’, in her head.

  ‘He’s in hospital.’

  ‘In England?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She sat down opposite the policeman with her tea and took a long, strong, sweet draught. She lit a cigarette. The whirling in her head settled.

  ‘Well,’ she said, conscious of no guilt in the legal sense, ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Do you see a lot of your cousin, Mrs Kops?’

  ‘Not these days. And he’s been abroad for about three months.’

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘Oh—well. Yes. Six months.’

  ‘When he’s at home, how often do you see him?’ Puller went on in his steady policeman’s tone, the only weapon he could use against the middle classes. Meanwhile, next door’s cat came and sat on Polly’s lap. ‘About once a month, perhaps?’ he asked.

  ‘Less than that. To be honest,’ she said, feeling the acres of lies lying between her and Clancy Goldstein, ‘there’s been something of a family quarrel. I see him when we can’t avoid it at Christmas—family occasions, things like that. He and my husband don’t get on’, she added for good measure, amazed at the picture of normal everyday relationships she was assembling.

  ‘Are you,’ she said, to hammer it home, ‘going to tell me what all this is about? Is he in any trouble?’

  ‘We’re just checking on some of his friends’, Puller said. ‘Finding your name in his address book we assumed that you were one. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

  ‘That’s all right’, Polly said getting up. ‘Can you see yourselves out? I must go and see the babysitter.’

  ‘Of course’, he said.

  ‘Use that door’, Polly said, pointing to the back door. As she went up the stairs she said, ‘Where is he by the way? Perhaps I ought to see how he is?’

  ‘Sunnyhills.’

  ‘What? Sunnyhills?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Kops. Good night.’

  ‘Good night’, she said blankly.

  There was racketing all night as Lester Dent assaulted Lady Clarissa, unsuccessfully in the kitchen, Ulla Helander and Alexander whispered outside the bedroom door, Hi and Martin Sutcliffe had a noisy argument and Frederick sang a new song. Polly, tracing all this in her head, slept in bed.

  ‘Tracy’s in Paddington General’, Alexander told her when he came to bed. Polly was too tired to concentrate.

  ‘Thought so. I’ll go and see her tomorrow.’

  ‘Do that. Toddy’s going.’

  ‘Clancy Goldstein’s in Sunnyhills.’

  ‘He’s what?’ he said sitting up in bed. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Two coppers came round, checking on me. Something to do with his address book.’

  ‘Oh—don’t lie there muttering. If we can get him out in time, we can replace Matthew and we can go ahead with the recording. Did they say what it was all about?’

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me’, Polly said, rising in indignation. ‘I don’t know anything about it. It’s three in the morning, Alexander, and I saw you fucking Ulla upstairs in Cheyne Walk.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that Poll. I was drunk’, he said insincerely. ‘Let’s get some sleep now. Go and see Clancy in the morning and get the full story.’

  ‘I’m going to see Tracy’, she told him.

  ‘Well, go and see them both. Take them some presents—it’ll be like Christmas Day when you were a kid.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Alexander’, said Polly.

  ‘I do love you, Polly’, he told her.

  She blew a raspberry and he was hurt.

  WOODLAND STORYBOOK

  You’ll always find them

  In Woodland so green,

  The hurry-est, scurry-est,

  Creatures you’ve seen.

  Small Toddy was sitting holding Tracy’s hand when Poll walked in, turning all heads as she banged up the ward in her long green dress with her red hair floating out behind.

  They both looked pale. Polly produced her roses and a box of chocs, Nova, She, Woman, New Musical Express and the Daily Mirror, said, ‘I’m sorry Tracy. I knew really—I was so drunk.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. Sister said it was a blessing in disguise.’

  ‘Oh Christ. What a bummer.’

  ‘Whichever way it was, perhaps it is’, Tracy said.

  Toddy started crying. ‘I wanted it,’ he said, ‘it was my baby—my little son.’

  ‘Daughter’, Tracy said.

  ‘I wouldn’t’ve minded.’

  ‘Don’t make it any worse, Toddy’, said Poll. ‘Mum sent her love, Tracy. Said don’t worry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Tracy, ‘perhaps it was all a dream, anyway—a baby and that. You know how it is. What happened at the party after I left?’ There were tears in her eyes.

  ‘Oh—I’d left too. I found Alexander fucking Ulla Helander in the back bedroom.’

  ‘I told him you’d find out’, she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Polly asked. ‘Not that I didn’t know really.’

  ‘He asked me not to mention it. I felt bad about it, really, but I thought you knew, yo
u see. It was so obvious. Are you upset?’

  ‘No’, Polly said, considering. ‘It was only to be expected.’

  ‘It’s not as if you—’

  ‘Mm, he nearly caught me that time at Brighton. If you hadn’t popped out and rung the doorbell—’

  ‘Oh dear. My heart was banging like a drum. I thought, what will he think—with me sitting in the next room reading Woman and eating rock.’

  ‘I thought I’d never find my pants in the dark—’

  ‘I’ll never forget the landlady’s face. She looked like Frankie Howerd—“Ooh, well I never”, said Tracy.

  ‘Oh, Tracy, he was only the telly repair man, too.’

  They laughed, forgetting about Toddy. ‘And this is where you land up isn’t it?’ She was crying again.

  Polly said, ‘Guess what happened when I got home. Sergeant Puller and another copper were there. They told me Clancy was in Sunnyhills.’

  ‘Clancy? What’s he in Sunnyhills for?’

  ‘He was in Brixton’, Toddy said. ‘He got a psychiatric report and they sent him to Sunnyhills.’

  ‘What was he in prison for?’ Polly asked.

  ‘When he got back from Africa,’ said Toddy, ‘they found ten pounds of raw opium hidden around the Land Rover. He and Binnsy got nicked and sent to Brixton on remand. Clancy said he didn’t know nothing about it, went mad and got himself sent to Sunnyhills.’

  ‘Where’s Binnsy?’

  ‘A waiting trial in Brixton. Course, Clancy’ll have to stand trial too, but the word says he’ll get off with a caution.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Polly said.

  ‘Alexander got in touch with his lawyer after you left this morning. He told Timmy and Timmy told me. It seems the stuff had Binnsy’s prints all over it and none of Clancy’s, and Binnsy’s got a record, so most likely Binnsy’ll get a few years and Clancy’ll get off. Alexander’s trying to spring him from the bin now so he can play with the band.’

  ‘What a tale’, said Tracy. ‘And I bet Clancy was in it up to the neck, too, knowing him.’

  ‘No doubt about it’, Polly said. ‘He was always the one that got away with it. Auntie Daniella will go spare—blue-eyed Clancy accused and in the bin. Led astray by evil companions.’

  ‘It makes you sick’, Tracy said.

  ‘I was supposed to go and see him today,’ Polly said, ‘to find out all about it. It seems Alexander’s already got everything fixed.’

  ‘He still wants you to go’, Toddy told her. ‘So you can see what his condition’s like. I mean—it’s no good getting him out of the bin, and bail and that, if he’s really barmy. Anyway, he might have to be released into your care.’

  ‘My care?’ said Polly, horrified.

  ‘That’s what the lawyer reckoned. They might want a responsible person to speak up and say they’ll keep an eye on him—make sure he behaves himself, like. Alexander said it’d better be you because you’re respectable.’

  ‘That’s a laugh’, said Tracy.

  Polly shot her a vicious, warning glance.

  ‘Sorry I spoke’, Tracy said in a mutter.

  ‘You’d better be’, Polly threatened.

  ‘What a cow’, said Tracy.

  ‘What’s going on—’ asked Toddy.

  ‘Nothing to do with you’, said Polly.

  ‘Right on’, Toddy said mildly.

  Polly scratched her head. ‘I don’t like all this, I don’t want to get involved. I can’t guarantee Clancy’s good behaviour. Jesus Christ couldn’t do that. Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with me. Why should I work for Alexander Kops? I’m being conned.’

  Toddy looked low. ‘I suppose you need him badly’, Polly asked.

  ‘Well—’ Toddy said hopelessly.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind. It doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘The record company owes me some bread’, said Toddy. ‘When we’ve made the LP I’ll have enough for a small place in the country with a bit of land where I can grow a few vegetables, and that.’

  ‘Be nice’, Polly sighed. ‘I’d better go, I’ve got to be back by three and it’s a long way to Sunnyhills. You two could start looking for the cottage already’, she said.

  ‘I brought the London Weekly Advertiser with me’, Toddy said. ‘We were just looking at it.’

  ‘Nice’, Polly agreed. ‘Well, I’ll be off.’ She stood up. ‘’Bye Tracy. I’ll come in tomorrow.’

  Tracy nodded. Polly bashed off along the ward, bright hair floating, and escaped at speed from the hospital’s corridors and clanking trolleys, relieved, as all hospital visitors are when they reach the entrance hall, that they haven’t been waylaid by the staff and made to have a baby or an operation. She ran down the steps into the chill street with the basket containing another hospital visitor’s set—bunch of roses, box of Black Magic, Penthouse, Playboy, New Musical Express, the Daily Mirror and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. She hailed a cab.

  She sat in her coat, smoking a cigar. How would she find cousin Clancy, she asked herself. How would he find her? Above all, was he really mad? It’s a long hard road from Mitcham Green to Sunnyhills—

  Long aching yellow corridors where signs read Electrotherapy Unit, Mother and Baby Unit, a cross between a real hospital and the Gestapo cellars under the Reichsmuseum, the induction centre at Auschwitz. By the billiard table of the day room lounged tight-trousered, key-swinging attendants. They watched a worn-out black man and an old man in pyjamas playing billiards, their hands shaking, their legs unsteady with Valium, Largactil, Librium. Here was the home of madness, a Van Gogh sunflower on the walls, worn armchairs, a few old magazines, a bad dentist’s waiting-room.

  She went into a side room and asked the nurse for Clancy.

  She remembered him riding his bicycle down tree-lined streets, spending long summer evenings in his neat suburban bedroom practising the drums, while his mother complained about the pain going through her head like long knives. She went on remembering—his one room lodgings smelling of frying, looking out on playing-fields down by the Oval.

  ‘He’s fast asleep now’, the nurse told her.

  ‘Can I see him—just to leave these things?’

  ‘He won’t wake up.’

  The atmosphere affected her so much that she ran into the ward, crying with pity for her cousin. Under the window was a bed, so flat it looked empty, a pillow with dulled ginger hair spread all over it.

  ‘Clancy,’ she cried, ‘Clancy! My Clancy, what have they done to you?’

  She fell on him, kissing his pallid face.

  The nurse, in the doorway said, ‘Mrs Kops! Mrs Kops! Please behave yourself.’

  Polly went on wetting Clancy’s face with her tears, crying, ‘Clancy, my love. Wake up, wake up and speak to me.’

  ‘Mrs Kops! Stop disturbing the patient at once!’

  She lay across Clancy, smothering his face with the kisses she could not spare for Alexander or her children.

  ‘Oh, Clancy. Oh. Oh’, she cried.

  The nurse was pulling her by the shoulder when Clancy woke up and feebly put his arms out to her.

  ‘Take me home, Polly. Take me home.’

  It was at Tracy’s wedding at St Mark’s, Streatham. Tracy in the droopy blue dress and John in the blue suit, slicked-down hair, she only eighteen, an assistant at Marks and Spencer’s, he nineteen and in the building trade; all the relations in crimplene suits, flowery hats; and the Turnbull side who never stepped inside a church from one family funeral to the next christening suddenly bridling at the smell of incense, the embroidered priest, suddenly Protestant to the stiff backbone. Reception at the Plaza Rooms, Streatham, cold chicken buffet, sour champagne, bride and groom left for their honeymoon at Torquay, bride’s going-away suit fawn with blue accessories. And she, Polly, had come with the Honourable Julian Powys, old university pal, and Clancy had come with Betty Fawkes, the village bicycle, with her piled-up hairdo, stiletto heels and jammy lips, and they’d a
ll got drunk, she and Clancy left and got on a bus, went to the pictures, saw Shane, began to hold hands, then to kiss and had wound up on that decaying boat down in the darkness of the Thames Embankment, eleven, twelve years, half a lifetime away—

  ‘Take me home, Polly. Take me home.’

  The nurse manhandled her away from the bed. ‘Mrs Kops. You’re not helping the patient, you know.’

  The male nurse appeared and held her, roughly, by the arm.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Polly said furiously, ‘I just came to leave some things for my cousin, here.’

  ‘You’d better leave them and go.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Polly’, Clancy moaned, enjoyably. How the Turnbulls loved these scenes. The Christmases they’d had, crying and shouting at each other.

  ‘Oh, sit up, Clancy. I’ve got to talk to you’, she said. ‘I suppose there’s no hope of a cup of tea?’ she said commandingly to the nurse. ‘I’ve urgent family business to discuss.’

  There was no denying the family resemblance, nor the glamour and interest of the pair. As a black man in pyjamas got out of his bed four times, fell through the door into the day room and lay howling on the floor, they all made tea for Clancy and Polly.

  ‘Was that you moaning “Don’t leave me, Clancy. Oh, angels, give him back to me for a little while”?’ Clancy muttered through a mouth spumy with drugs.

  ‘Well—’

  ‘That was nice’, he said dreamily. ‘You made my face all wet with tears.’

  ‘Coming down to brass tacks, Clancy, Blockade want you to do some recordings with them. Matthew’s left.’

  ‘Got too much on. There’s all these African recordings I made. Don’t like Blockade, noisy buggers.’

  ‘All right. They sent me to ask, I asked. OK.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘Here comes the tea.’

  An old man walked round and round the room, was told to lie down and did so.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Polly.

  The black man got up and fell through the door again. He screamed. They shouted. They flung him into bed.