Polly Put the Kettle On

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘Then what happened?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Well, as far as I could tell, he stared round, realized where he was, looked at his watch, said he had to be in Edgware in half an hour, and left. I think my manner must have put him off. That and the shop.’

  Polly could quite see Lord Bec, or Mr Bennett, as he must have been then, creeping back to make a proposal of marriage to his former wife and being intimidated by her nose, her neutrality, her indifference, her practicality, her air of one about to demand the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; above all, perhaps, by her impatience with, even contempt of his wealth, which was, in his dealings with her, all he had to bribe with.

  ‘After that,’ her mother continued placidly, ‘I didn’t hear from him again. He sent me some money on a banker’s draft. I sent it straight back with a note to the bank saying I didn’t want any more. If I wanted anything from him it was attention for you, not his money, not after all those years. It made me laugh when he became Lord Bec. I thought I might take down Turnbull from above the shop, and put up “Lady Bec” to add a touch of class.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ Polly asked. ‘Call yourself Lady Bec if you’re divorced before your husband gets a peerage?’

  ‘How would I know?’ demanded Mrs Turnbull. ‘Anyway, we weren’t divorced.’

  ‘When were you divorced, then?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Divorced? We were never divorced. I’ve half a mind to claim a widow’s pension’, said Mrs Turnbull merrily.

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Polly. ‘Then who’s Lady Bec?’

  ‘I don’t know’, said her mother. ‘I think he put it out they were married in Senegal, or Nepal, or somewhere in the middle of the jungle—I suppose when a man’s been a well-known bachelor for years no one asks any questions. And in a position like that they don’t ask to see your marriage lines. No one’s ever asked to see mine, for that matter. I’ve passed as the mother of a bastard for years.’

  ‘And I’ve passed as a bastard’, exclaimed Polly. ‘Now what possessed you to pin a label on me like that?’

  ‘I was angry’, said her mother. ‘After he’d looked at you like that, I waited for five months to hear from him and during that time I didn’t register your birth. I could’ve been fined for it but I said I was bombed out, or some such excuse, and it had slipped my mind. They didn’t bother me about it. Anyway you were a full six months old and I hadn’t had so much as a postcard, still less any of his pay, and I knew full well he was alive because I knew a girl whose fiancé was in the same unit, so—so I put you down as Father Unknown. I was sorry about it later, but don’t forget, I was twenty-one, it was war-time and I was very upset. And of course, the longer it went on the more difficult it seemed to correct. I couldn’t go along and say I’d made a mistake a year, two years, three years ago, and I wanted the name of Jo Nimmo put on your birth certificate, only I couldn’t find him and didn’t know his address. Or I thought I couldn’t. And, frankly, it didn’t seem worth the effort. You weren’t the only bastard born in South London in 1942, after all.’

  ‘Oh yes, I see that’, said Polly.

  ‘I daresay thinking you were a bastard strengthened your character in the end’, Mrs Turnbull said. In some way the recital of the past had cheered her.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Polly said cynically, ‘it’s made me what I am today. My God, what a story. And you, married all along. I’m amazed.’

  ‘Let’s hope it never comes out’, her mother said. ‘Of course, someone must know. They’re bound to have screened him thoroughly at some point, probably when he got his life peerage. And the facts aren’t hard to find. I suppose these days they don’t worry so much about these things.’

  ‘There was Max.’

  Her mother sat silent. ‘Is Max going to school yet?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll book him in next week.’

  ‘He wants to go to St Jude’s, in Penny Street.’

  ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘Yes. Over the phone. What I wonder is, why didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘I’ve been editing Alexander’s magazine, and getting this drug reform campaign going’, Polly said defensively. ‘I can’t do everything.’

  ‘You can get your son educated. It wouldn’t have taken you five minutes to ring up the headmaster. And this au pair for the girls—are you ever planning to see your children again?’

  ‘It’s been a difficult time, Mum,’ began Polly.

  ‘Oh, all right. But I suppose you realize how black things are looking—the children, Clancy, Jo falling off the balcony, the police called to the meeting, Alexander in prison and Clancy still hasn’t been tried. You could have both the fathers of your children in jail at the same time, yet, you know.’

  ‘A right problem family’, said Polly.

  ‘Quite right. You are’, her mother said decidedly. ‘Now set the table. It’s time for lunch. I’m just glad I never had your problems.’

  After the initial shock and grief, Polly decided, Lord Bec’s death seemed to have been a tonic to her mother. Perhaps it had confirmed the reality of a past which secrecy had made unreal for her. Perhaps the sight of the uncaring Jo dying in such a spectacular and disgraceful manner was not altogether unpleasing. Whatever it was, she now seemed quite cheerful about it.

  Her mother poured sherry. ‘Let’s drink this while we’re waiting for Max’, she said. ‘He’s very good, he’s never late for Sunday dinner.’

  ‘If you’re really his widow,’ Polly said as her mother carved the lamb, ‘you can put in for some of the money. Why don’t you?’

  ‘Take money from a Tory Cabinet Minister?’ her mother exclaimed, scandalized. ‘You ought to know me better.’

  Max ran in saying to Polly, ‘Clancy told me I could have a dog. I want a boxer.’

  They ate their roast and, afterwards, played Monopoly in the garden. Polly began to dread going home.

  ‘Would Max like to stay here for a couple of days?’ said her mother. ‘Just until the atmosphere’s cleared a little.’

  But Max still wanted to go home with Polly. Mrs Turnbull walked them to the bus stop and standing on the pavement, waved them a smiling goodbye. And she was crying.

  Polly, who sometimes enjoyed thinking, along with Shanghai Lily, Lola Montez and others of that ilk, that she had seen too much and forgotten too little, now, for the first time, felt that heavy aching of the heart which is a sign, not that it is breaking, for it never does, but that it is beginning to suffer the cuts, and contusions, the grievous bodily harm, which life inflicts on it.

  They were happy for the next few weeks. It was May. The sun shone in the garden. They decided to make a pond for Pamela and Sue. Mrs Traill, hoping they were digging a grave, watched them from her top window. They dug their hole, made it grow to great dimensions, mixed concrete on the garden path, made the pond tight, bought water-lilies and strange water-plants, plastic gnomes and goldfish. The Secret Servicemen and reporters who called would find Toddy digging, or the children paddling, or Max, home from school, putting newts in the pool, or Clancy putting down crazy-paving, or Mrs Turnbull, whom he often fetched in Blockade’s van after the shop shut, weeding or playing ball with Pam and Sue. Polly and Tracy, who had invalid status, read, cooked nice dinners or occasionally nodded off in deckchairs for it was hot. It was going to be a hot summer. The children began to go brown. The bees hummed, the air was full of scents, the ground grew warm.

  Their determination to fall back on the normal helped the scandal to die down. The inquest on Lord Bec found that he had had an unpleasant accident while under the influence of drugs. A new Home Secretary was appointed. The photographers who took back pictures of Clancy with a spade in his hands were not well received. It was established that sensation-seekers visiting Elgin Crescent would find nothing but a suburban family at work and play. Like all families they began to talk of going to the seaside, not too far from London, so that Polly could go to see Alexander every week.

  But there was still Alex
ander in jail, still Clancy’s trial, still no money. Pamela and Sue, in last year’s dresses, wore plimsolls instead of sandals. Max, short of pocket-money, took a job delivering papers every day before school. Food was hard to stretch. The purchase of the gnomes and water-plants had finished Polly’s money. The au pair’s wages were owing.

  Polly started a stall in Portobello Road on Saturdays, first begging records from the record company, books from Alexander’s publishers, and then branching out to tat which she collected from door to door every Thursday—old buttons, broken toys, lampshades and crockery. She made about twelve pounds a week. Clancy, still trying to get his African recordings into shape, did a gig every week with Blockade. This brought him twenty pounds. But it was not enough to pay the debts as well as sustain a household where money flowed like water. Soon, Polly thought, she would have to get a proper job.

  Ulla Helander dropped in and stayed a day or two, so did Lady Clarissa, and Alexander’s publisher, who had been thrown out by his wife. Lester Dent drifted back and soon things were as they had once been, if it hadn’t been for Alexander being in prison.

  The hot weeks wore on. In bed one warm night Clancy said, ‘You don’t need to get a job, you know. You’re sitting on a gold mine.’

  ‘Where?’ said Polly. ‘I can’t go on the streets at my age.’

  ‘Well it’s obvious. Get your mum to simply claim a bit of Lord Bec’s leavings. He’s a millionaire two or three times over. You’re his only child, legitimate child. She’s bound to get something. It’s not even as if this Lady Bec—or whoever she is—is his longstanding common law wife. She’s only been around a few years. Then you needn’t work. I needn’t either. Because he’s my uncle. See?’

  ‘Mum said she wouldn’t take anything from him, alive or dead.’

  ‘Talk to her again. Perhaps she’ll change her mind.’

  So, in the garden that night Polly said to her mother, ‘Mum, why don’t you try to get something out of Lord Bec’s estate?’

  ‘I’ve told you before Polly, I don’t want any part of it. The money was got dishonestly in my opinion, from the mines of South Africa, the tea plantations of Ceylon and everywhere where people are being exploited to make money for others. Moreover, I wouldn’t take anything from that source, good or bad. I got along without his money well enough while he was alive. I’m not going in now after carrion.’

  ‘You should give up reading the editorials in the Morning Star, Mum’, Polly said peevishly. ‘It’s beginning to affect your vocabulary. I think you’re being too scrupulous. After all, why should Lady Bec cop the lot?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she cares where her money comes from. I do.’

  ‘Think what you could do for Max.’

  ‘Yes. Ruin him with expensive playthings he’ll break in five minutes because he doesn’t value them. Look at him now. Do you think an expensive aquarium would be better for him than that pond?’

  ‘Well. It might be’, said Polly.

  ‘I know the girls want sandals, Polly’, Mrs Turnbull said, ‘but it won’t hurt them not to have them just now. I know you have bills, but—I’m sorry—‘I’m not going to stand up in court and try to get money on the strength of something that happened between two young stupid people over thirty years ago.’

  ‘You’d have paid for his funeral if he’d died a pauper’, said Poll.

  ‘That’s hardly the same.’

  ‘It seems such a waste—all those millions going to Lady Bec when look what I’ve got to cope with.’

  ‘You’re asking me to do what I don’t want to do for your sake. Now—I got up in the middle of the night to feed you, I stood freezing in the park while you ran about, I played ludo with you, I talked to your spotty boyfriends while you changed your dress four times upstairs, I waited up for you to come in—I didn’t always enjoy those things. But you’re thirty-one now and you’re asking too much.’

  In the face of her mother’s staunch left-wing politics, Protestant reliance on the inner voice and personal pride, there was nothing that Polly could do or say.

  The halcyon days wore on. Hot mornings cleaning the airy rooms, lunch-time drinks at garden pubs, afternoons in the garden, evenings under the trees, long nights with Clancy which made night like day and day like night.

  Polly awoke one night while Clancy was away playing with the band, added up her debts, went, inch by inch over the house, worked out that she had to have money or everything would collapse. The lease had eighteen months to run and after that she would have no house to live in. In that white night, with a full moon gleaming into the room, Polly, energy restored by the peaceful days, rang Maurice Burns. Used to late calls, he hauled himself up on his pillows and listened.

  ‘Sure you can claim some of your father’s bread, if you can prove he is your father.’

  ‘Mum’s got a letter from him. It says I’m his child. Then there’s the marriage certificate’, Polly rattled.

  ‘Cool it, then. Come in tomorrow and see Robinson. It sounds fine, you should get something.’

  It was supper-time. Polly raged as she plonked the salad on the table.

  ‘Salad and hardboiled eggs, and lucky to get it’, she told the complaining children. ‘I had to pawn my watch for it.’

  ‘Where’s the money I brought home from the gig?’ Clancy asked.

  ‘It went to pay the plumber’s last bill so that I could get those broken taps in the bathroom repaired. This place is falling to pieces.’

  She was a grim figure in her yellow trousers and orange sweater, a witch on a broomstick, with her hair flaying about her.

  ‘Went to see your mum, did you?’ Tracy asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Polly said furiously, ‘and she wouldn’t give me the letter. Wouldn’t give it to me—her own daughter.’

  ‘What’s this about a letter?’ Clancy asked.

  Pamela said to Sue, ‘If you eat my lettuce, I’ll eat your tomatoes.’

  ‘Shut up and eat what’s on your plate’, Tracy said.

  ‘It’s just a letter’, Polly said sulking because Clancy had come back and slept all day. ‘Oh—I’m going to ring her up now.’

  She left the table, lit a cigarette and stamped to the telephone.

  ‘Leave her alone, Poll’, said Tracy. ‘Oh hullo. Sit down and eat Polly’s,’ she said to Frederick, who had just come in, wearing a new green leather suit. ‘You look a treat.’

  ‘Seventy-five guineas’, he said. ‘I’m going to sing at the Playboy Club in a minute.’

  Clancy looked at him.

  ‘It’s a lovely place. Lots of lovely birds. I go warm all over while I’m there.’

  Ulla Helander wandered in. ‘Hullo,’ she said, ‘I came to wash my hair. My hairdryer’s broken.’ She too, sat down. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Poll’s trying to get her mother to get some of Lord Bec’s bread’, Tracy said.

  ‘Why not?’ said Ulla Helander.

  Max left the table and went out into the garden. He sat down and looked into the pond. He could hear his mother’s high, frantic voice.

  ‘I can’t understand why you’re being so unreasonable’, said Polly. ‘I’m not trying to involve you. All I want is the letter—that’s all you need do, give me the letter. It concerns me as much as you.’

  Pamela and Sue got down and wandered into the garden.

  ‘There can’t be any harm in getting the money. I can see why you might not want it but it hasn’t got the same implications for me. I might as well grab it if it’s going. You’ve got to give me that letter.’

  Lester Dent came in, sat down, said, ‘Any news from Alexander?’

  Clancy looked at him. ‘Not likely to be much, in the circumstances, is there?’ he said.

  ‘Of course he died through my balcony falling in. It really wasn’t my fault, was it? Do I have to sit and starve forever because my balcony collapsed? It only collapsed because I’m too broke to repair it. That’s what I’m talking about.’

  Frederick said to
Clancy, ‘She’s really freaking out.’

  ‘She’s got to have this letter her dad wrote to her mum saying she’s his kid, otherwise she can’t claim’, Tracy told him.

  ‘Oh’, said Frederick.

  ‘Oh I’m sick and tired of it, Mum. I’ll be homeless with three children in just over a year. Perhaps that will please you’, Polly cried. ‘You’re being ridiculous. I’m fed up, I’ve had enough.’ She put the phone down.

  Everyone was frightened by her.

  ‘If I lose this chance I’ll never get it again’, Polly droned, slumping down in Sue’s place. ‘She’s got to give me that letter.’

  ‘Why won’t she?’ Clancy asked.

  ‘Oh—she won’t take any money from him. What right have I got to it, all that. It’s her socialism that’s at the back of it, that’s what I think. She sincerely believes you’ve only the right to the penny you’ve earned. She says the money came from ugly sources. What am I supposed to do? Let that bitch Harriet Bec get away with it because I won’t soil my fingers?’

  ‘We could do with some cash’, Clancy said. ‘Why don’t I go and talk to her?’

  ‘Oh yes, you go, then Tracy goes, then the house falls in and kills her’, Polly said, unforgivably. ‘We had enough of that with Lord Bec.’ She left frightening vibes behind her in the room, for a terrible rage was consuming her.

  As with most passionate emotions over money, it was concerned with much more than plain cash. She wanted the money from her father to make up for her fatherless years, for the explanations she had had to make as a child, for the sight of a little girl riding through the park on her daddy’s shoulders, for her mother purposefully unblocking drains and putting up shelves, for the neglect, the lack of love she had just learned about.

  Next day she went to see her mother again. She stood in the shop, shouting, ‘Will you give it to me?’

  Her mother stood behind the counter. She said, ‘Have you gone raving mad, Polly? You sound about four years old.’

  Polly began to weep. ‘I want that money,’ she said, ‘I’m going to have it.’