Polly Put the Kettle On

by Hilary Bailey

  But Polly was too soft for her own good, she was a fool to herself—now all she knew was that the pain of ten years’ separation from Clancy and Max were over.

  They were in bed that afternoon when he said, ‘We really messed it up, Polly.’

  ‘Oh, you’re back. That’s what matters. It’s a chance to do it right this time.’

  Afternoon light came in as she stood in the kitchen in her dressing-gown, phoning Lord Bec. She spoke smoothly, scarcely realizing what she said. ‘May I come and see you on Tuesday, then, since Alexander’s away? Perhaps we can sort something out.’

  Back in bed she looked through Gorilla’s feature on Lord Bec.

  ‘The main grounds for libel seem to be that Alexander’s accused him of starting a company while he was an undischarged bankrupt, which he was not, and an accusation of some complicated fiddle where he’s supposed to have circulated false rumours of a merger between his paper company and a big printing firm in order to bump up the shares, and then netting a million selling out himself, which he denies, saying the rumours never came from him in the first place. He says he can prove it.’

  ‘I don’t know why you bother’, Clancy said. ‘What do you care if Alex goes to jail? They’ll probably award damages and the Kops’s will pay up.’

  ‘I’ll try and get him off the hook though’, Polly said.

  ‘Seems you’ve been shitting on him generally. Why try to pull him out of this bother? What about me? I’ve got to go to court, too.’

  Polly went to sleep, a thin sleep through which she heard Tracy putting Pam and Sue to bed, heard Mrs Traill’s footsteps stop, for eternity, outside the bedroom door, heard Clancy playing the drums softly downstairs. In her sleep, she waited for him.

  She got up and made a cup of tea, found him standing by the gas fire, talking to Tracy. Her heart moved: she nearly dropped the tray. He was so lovely, standing there, so solid, so real, like a live statue, glowing, radiating energy, meaning everything. He came and kissed her.

  ‘Tracy and me have been planning plans’, he said. ‘Come and sit down. What a lovely cuppa. How do you feel about booting Alexander out?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘he’s always saying he wants to leave. It’s not as if he had nowhere to go. There’s always Bryanston Square, with his golden teddy with the diamond eyes still propped up in the four-poster in his old throne room, just like it’s always been. He can’t stand this place anyway.’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Tracy, ‘if he wants to leave, why hasn’t he already? I don’t think you’ll get rid of him as easily as that. I’ve often wondered if he wasn’t more for you and the kids than he seems.’

  ‘Oh—he only stays because his files and books are here’, Polly said. ‘He’s too lazy to pack, that’s all. If I lay on a van, he’ll go without looking back.’

  ‘I hope you’re right’, said Tracy. ‘Mind you, I’m sorry for him in a way.’

  ‘Be sorry then,’ Polly said, ‘I’m more worried about where the next penny’s coming from. If they don’t bring anything back from that tour, that’s it. I won’t have enough for a loaf. I can’t go to mum, not now.’

  ‘There’s my Social Security’, Tracy offered.

  ‘That’s very nice of you Tracy,’ Polly said, ‘but it’s worse than that. They’re due to cut off the phone next week, then the electricity. I owe fifty quid at the grocer’s, the builders are doing me for fifteen quid for that bathroom job. I even owe the window cleaner three—’

  ‘And your library books are overdue’, Tracy said.

  ‘Well, that’s just it. It’s everything. I’ll have to try and get Alexander to get some money out of his parents, that’s all. But I bet they won’t give him any. Oh—I’ll phone Lady Kops in the morning. I’ve got to do something.’

  ‘What about the Woodland Storybook?’

  ‘That’ll be another three months. I’ve got to have it now. I’ll phone her tomorrow before Alexander gets back.’

  ‘Here—didn’t you know?’ Tracy said in alarm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve cut the tour short. He’s on his way.’

  ‘Oh,’ Polly screamed, ‘oh, no, oh.’

  ‘Ulla told me this afternoon. He phoned her from Amsterdam. I thought you knew—I thought you seemed very relaxed.’

  Polly sat gasping. Clancy sat.

  She recovered. Quick as an animal, she said, ‘When are they due?’

  ‘The ferry gets in at two this morning. Then they’ve got to drive to London. You’ve got about seven hours.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Clancy. ‘I’ll go into that junk room to sleep, tonight. Then if you face him with it all when he gets back I can pop out in my Superman set and beat him up.’

  But they were in bed when the phone rang at three. They stood, shivering in the same blanket in the kitchen, while Polly answered.

  ‘Yes, this is Mrs Kops.’

  ‘This is the Southampton police, Mrs Kops. I’m sorry to have to wake you up. I’m afraid your husband is with us. He asked us to phone you.’

  ‘What for?’ cried Polly. ‘He hasn’t done anything, has he?’

  ‘We’ve arrested him for being in possession of drugs, Mrs Kops. They were found by a customs officer who searched his personal effects when he landed.’

  ‘Oh—oh’, said Polly. ‘Is it very serious?’

  ‘I’m afraid it is rather serious. You might like to get in touch with your husband’s solicitor’, the policeman said with grave enjoyment. ‘He will appear at a magistrate’s court in the morning.’

  ‘Bail?’ mouthed Clancy.

  ‘What about bail?’ she asked faintly. ‘How much will you want?’

  ‘That’s for the magistrate to decide, I’m afraid, Mrs Kops. If bail is granted at all, that is.’

  ‘They’re going to oppose bail’, Clancy said, as Polly dialled Maurice Burns’s number. ‘Has he been done before?’

  ‘He’s got three convictions already—one was a plant. Only an ounce or two and a few pills but there you go—Hullo, Maurice. It’s Polly Kops. I’m sorry to disturb you but Alexander’s being held by the police at Southampton—arrested in possession of drugs. He’s coming up before the magistrates tomorrow. Can you get down there?’

  Maurice Burns elbowed up on the pillow, in his white and gold bedroom, looked down at the jet-black curls of Philippe Grandet, who had fucked him because he, Burns, needed it so much and said sadly, ‘Oh yes, yes, I’ll be there. Did you get the number of the police station?’

  ‘No’, said Polly. ‘Maurice, I’m sorry, shall I—?’

  ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it. Shall I pick you up tomorrow? Right. All right, don’t worry.’

  The good Philippe, victim of police beatings, of maman and papa and cocaine, murmured, ‘Oui, ma petite Juliette’, turned on the pillow and slept again, nuzzling his beautiful face into the pillow.

  Maurice Burns stared down at him in grief, and with a long pale finger dialled Directory Enquiries, while Polly and Clancy made love in W11, and his client, her husband, spent the first of many nights in jail.

  They all sped down to Southampton in Burns’s Lagonda, Polly, Clancy, Tracy, Pam and Sue and Max, squashed up but enjoying the spring air, nonetheless. All the relations, having a beano. Quite an outing, to quote Clancy, none too concerned about his cousin-in-law. They decided that it was only fair that Alexander should have the pleasure of the ride back, in the smooth and classy vehicle, while Polly and Clancy came back by train.

  Earlier Polly had telephoned her mother-in-law. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to ask you for money. Alexander’s away at present so he doesn’t know I’m ringing, but I’m really awfully worried. There’s a bank overdraft of about £250 and accumulated bills, like the phone, the electricity and so forth. I’m very sorry to have to ask, but I really can’t see any way of paying them at present. We have got money coming in, but it’s the immediate expenses which bother me. I really rang to ask if you could lend me �
�500.’

  ‘You say Alexander doesn’t know you’re ringing me up?’ said Lady Kops.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well. His father and I have already told him he can’t expect any money from us. He’s grown up, he’s elected to lead the kind of life he does and he must take the consequences. He quite understands that, and I’m afraid you must do so too.’

  ‘Lady Kops,’ Polly said, ‘I’m talking about how to feed your grandchildren.’

  ‘I will feed them and clothe them whenever you care to bring them here. I simply refuse to give you or Alexander any money’, said the iron mother-in-law.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Polly furiously, ‘perhaps you’d like to know that your son is now in prison in Southampton on a drugs charge.’

  ‘As it happens I did know. A Daily Mirror reporter rang up and told me half an hour ago’, said Lady Kops with finality. ‘He asked me for a comment. I told him I was not at all surprised. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘I think you’re a pig’, said Polly putting the phone down. ‘That’s the fucking upper classes for you’, she said in rage to Clancy, who was sitting in a Blockade T-shirt and striped pants, drinking tea at the kitchen table. ‘Don’t tell me a working class family wouldn’t rally round a bit in a situation like this, whatever they thought of the relations concerned. They get so used to refusing money, it becomes second nature. They get to the point where they can turn away a starving pregnant daughter as easily as they can the man from Oxfam. “I’m frightfully sorry, I have so many calls on my pocket, I have to be selective.” Bloody sod of a woman.’

  ‘She took the wind out of your sails with that one about the Mirror reporter’, Clancy remarked.

  ‘Oh, you can sit there laughing’, Polly said, putting on make-up in the kitchen mirror and polishing the children’s shoes. ‘You won’t laugh so loud when you see what we all come down to. Oh well, let’s get the show on the road. Where are Pam’s clean pants—there they are. I wish I had Max’s suit, I’m trying to make a respectable impression.’

  ‘Will Alexander be Lord Kops when his father dies?’ Clancy asked.

  ‘Yes. He got a peerage for services to capitalism. Alexander will be the second Lord Kops. Clubs, old lags, hobbies, smoking dope and pushing his wife about. Is that a ladder? Yes, of course. Pam! Sue! Come and get dressed. We’ve got ten minutes to get out of the house.’

  ‘You’ll be Lady Kops.’

  ‘Do me a favour please. I won’t be here when his father gets his next cold, let alone dies. At last, at last,’ she said as the children ran in, ‘stand quite still while I put your dresses on. You’ve written all over you in felt pen. Naughty girls, I told you to keep clean for the car ride.’

  ‘Be Mrs Goldstein then?’ Clancy said.

  ‘No, thank you. Those days are gone. I’ll be Miss Turnbull, thank God. Why get married, with society collapsing like it is? When the Chinese come they won’t ask our names. They’ll line us up and look at our hands. Soft ones like Alexander Kops’s to the left—there’s the firing squad. Workers, like me, to the right. Here’s your copy of the Little Red Book and a pink slip for the bicycle factory, work hard, keep your blue tunic clean, thank you and goodbye. Look here, Clancy, I’m getting in a state. Why can’t you put Pam and Sue’s shoes on? Make up for a little lost time?’

  ‘You’re spiteful today’, he said.

  ‘Well, put your shoulder to the bloody wheel then. Oh for God’s sake, the right shoe normally goes on the right foot, doesn’t it? Don’t force it, don’t force it. That’s a child, not a block of wood.’

  The children however were laughing. Polly, in her petticoat, lugged out the rubbish and threw it into the dustbin just as Maurice Burns drove up.

  ‘Stay there one minute’, she cried re-entering the house, putting on her dress and coat, calling Max, plaiting the children’s hair, tying on their ribbons, putting down the cat’s food, moaning ‘Oh God, no money, Alexander in jail. Where will it all end? Where will it all end?’

  Clancy, suddenly dressed and astonishingly smart in a dark-green corduroy suit, turned off the gas under the empty kettle, found Max’s tie, the girls’ coats, the door-key, picked Polly’s hat up from a chair and hustled her out of the house.

  ‘I’ve got no money’, she wailed as she was about to get into the car.

  ‘I have. I have’, he assured her.

  ‘Jesus Christ. I’ve had enough’, she said slumping into the front seat.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Max called from the back, ‘we’ll look after you.’

  ‘We’ll have to’, Clancy said in an undertone.

  ‘Well. Let’s get going’, said Tracy briskly. Today she was wearing a knee-length yellow velvet skirt and velvet bottle-green jacket which she had stolen specially for the occasion from Miss Selfridge that very morning. They made a smart set of rapscallions in the April air. Indeed, one could never have guessed from the appearance of the party that at that very moment two LEB men were, only half a mile away, moving purposefully towards the house bent on cutting off their electricity supply for non-payment of the account. Nor that they were going to court on, as it turned out, a futile quest.

  Polly screamed as they led Alexander back to the cells. He, an eagle profile on a lean body, looked straight ahead. Clancy wiped away a tear.

  ‘Oh the bastards,’ he said, ‘the bastards.’

  Nothing Maurice Burns could say about Alexander’s responsibilities had weighed against the strong police recommendation that bail should not be granted. And it was not until Maurice Burns hurried into court before the hearing began, that Polly found out that Alexander had been carrying, in a suitcase with a false bottom, not an ounce of pot for his own use, but a pound of hash. This evidence of deliberate concealment, the fact that he was plainly bringing the drugs in to sell, and his previous convictions, were enough to persuade the magistrates, tired of cases involving alien crimes like drug-smuggling and illegal immigration, to refuse bail.

  They stood outside the court, smoking. ‘He only did it to get some money’, Polly said. ‘It’s not fair. It was for us.’

  Long Tall Timmy put his arm round her. ‘I’m sorry, Poll, we all tried to stop him. He wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Timmy reckoned he’d bring it in himself but Alexander wouldn’t let him’, said Toddy. ‘He said if Timmy got busted it would mess up the recording, but they didn’t really need him that much.’

  ‘There you go, Polly’, Alexander said to her. They faced each other across a wooden table. ‘I knew I’d get done.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said, ‘there’s still the trial.’

  ‘Not much hope there. I’ll plead my conscience, that I’m acting politically to get the law changed, so I don’t consider myself bound by it, but it won’t wash in court. Do what you can to keep the campaign going, will you?’

  ‘Yes’, said Poll. ‘Listen—I’ve fixed to go and see Lord Bec tomorrow. I’ll get a retraction in the magazine shall I?’

  ‘You’d better. I can’t face two court appearances. It’d be too much for Maurice, as well. As it is I’ll get eighteen months on this one. I don’t need a load of damages on top.’ He paused. ‘I’m worried about money.’

  ‘I can go to Mum, if the worst comes to the worst. It’s only a question of tiding things over until June. Then you get the payment on your book, I get the payment on mine and the record will be released so some royalties should start coming in after that. I’ve fixed the first recording session for tomorrow. Don’t worry.’

  He said, ‘I saw Clancy. Is he going to do the recording?’

  Polly nodded. Alexander looked at her, opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again.

  Polly, knowing he knew, said, finally, in a weak voice, ‘Don’t worry, Alexander.’

  She left him sitting there behind the wooden table, blue eyes empty, beaked nose pointing down, like a starving bird in a cage. She rushed back. ‘Alexander’, she said.

  ‘Better piss off, Polly,’ he said, ‘they’
ll be waiting for you.’

  It was as bleak as a griefless funeral, with nothing to do but hear the clods fall on the coffin of the unloved. Polly walked down the corridor, straightened her back and resolved to fight for Alexander’s freedom, his magazine, his cause, his children, knowing in her heart of hearts that whatever petitions, rallies, manifestos, barristers, magazines, articles, brilliant defences, legal loopholes, prizes and honours she could produce for him, if she got him elected king of England itself, she could do him less good than if, in the preceding moments she had been a bleached blonde in a shoddy miniskirt, inarticulate and weeping into his face with the mascara running down her cheeks. That would have been something to carry into jail with him, would have been worth the extra six months, a year, on his sentence she could, undoubtedly, get him off. She brushed away a tear and joined the others in the car.

  Clancy was sobered. He said, ‘I hope that doesn’t happen to me. Here, will you take my case on, Maurice?’

  ‘No,’ said Burns, pulling on his joint, ‘I’m full up with drugs cases. And I’m tired of my clients going to jail: it hurts my professional pride. Also, I never get paid. Also, the courts are getting harsher. Also, my idealism is taking too much of a beating.’

  ‘He wants me to go on with his campaign’, Polly said. ‘Do you know anything about it?’

  ‘He’s talked to me’, Burns said, putting the car in gear. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, if you must go ahead, and I don’t advise it. Alexander’s already collected a libel suit on the strength of it and the thing’s hardly begun yet.’