Polly Put the Kettle On

by Hilary Bailey

  The late sunshine came through the shining shop windows. A little boy came in and said, ‘Two penny whirls, please.’

  Mrs Turnbull sold them to him.

  As soon as he had gone Polly pulled up the flap of the counter and burst through. She was on her knees ransacking the bottom cupboard of the sideboard when Mrs Turnbull found her. An old photograph album lay open beside her, showing Polly standing astraddle with her bucket and spade at Bournemouth.

  ‘Leave those things alone’, said Mrs Turnbull. Polly was going through the square tin biscuit-box in which Mrs Turnbull kept things of importance to her—her savings book, passport, private bank statements, a theatre programme, an ornament from a wedding cake. She snatched the bundle of letters. ‘Those are nothing to do with you.’

  Polly looked up at her. ‘Well, I’m sorry.’ She went on scrabbling through the box.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m going to go to court anyway.’ She tipped the last of the box out on to the carpet. The card announcing her grandmother’s funeral, Daniella’s wedding invitation, four pearls, which rolled out of a pink cardboard jewellery box filled with cotton wool. ‘All you’re doing is making it more difficult and expensive.’

  ‘All right’, said her mother, sitting down in a chair. ‘You can have the letter you’ve badgered and pestered me for, and made my life a misery about. You can have it and go. I hope you get the money and I hope you enjoy it when you’ve got it, that’s all I can say. It’s upstairs. I’ll fetch it.’

  Polly watched her go out. Then, quietly, she began to put the letters, the passport and all the other things back into the biscuit-box. She put the lid down. She closed the photograph album, then opened it again. There was she, about nine, with her mother, again at the seaside. They were walking together along the promenade holding hands. Polly had an ice-cream. Her mother in a long-skirted summer suit looked young, must have been younger then than Polly was now. They were smiling. The terrier, Jack, was at their feet. She, the grinning child with the plaits, was younger then than her son Max.

  As she shut the album her mother came into the room with the letter.

  ‘Here you are’, she said. ‘You can even see the postmark on the envelope.’

  She handed it to Polly, hesitated, said brusquely, ‘I’d like it back when you’ve finished with it.’

  ‘Yes Mum,’ said Polly, ‘thanks.’

  The doorbell clanged behind her as she left the shop. She walked quickly down the hot dusty road to the bus stop with the letter in her hand.

  As the bus came in sight and the fat woman in front began to move forward, she stuffed the letter in her pocket. Oddly, now she had it, she didn’t want it any more. It was enough that her mother had given it to her.

  ‘“Dear Deborah,”’ Clancy read out, sitting under a tree in the garden, ‘“I’m glad our daughter is born and that you did not have too hard a time of it. I am looking forward to seeing you both when I come home on leave. The weather is fine here but the food is lousy. I hope things are all right with you. Please go to see Dad and tell him I am OK. With love from Jo.” And that’s all she got from him for the next twenty years.’

  ‘She had it upstairs in her bedroom’, Polly said.

  ‘Well. It’s evidence’, Clancy said.

  ‘It’s evidence all right’, said Polly.

  ‘Don’t get bitter’, said Clancy.

  Looking back – III

  One hundred and fifty guests wandered through strobe lights, through amplified music in that airy September palace—the now legendary house at Elgin Crescent.

  Was this where the addict had slept on a scrap of carpet under the piano? Where poets, anarchists and rock’n’roll stars had curled up in sleeping bags? Was this the place of peeling paint and crumbling plaster, groaning pipes, cracked porcelain, dripping taps, missing tiles, of decrepit balconies hurling life peers to their doom?

  Lamps glowed in the garden, which was half covered by an awning. The lights shone in the leaves of the trees, lightened the dark grass, fell on a white statue on a plinth by the pond, where a small fountain played. The guests sat or stood there drinking and talking, wandering further away from the music through the gate to the larger garden beyond, throwing pennies in the pond, laughing. Two poets lay under the magnolia. A couple kissed in the dark corner between the garden wall and the house.

  ‘My husband—?’

  ‘Went back to the council meeting to vote up council house rents’, said the hairy anarchist, feeling her silken thigh.

  Ulla Helander sat on the garden wall with Clancy. She was wearing a black dress, tight from throat to ankle.

  ‘The cat has run away—look’, she said.

  Inside, the rooms glowed with their new colours, pale walls, buttercup carpets, jade walls, vermilion chairs, whites, velvets, purples, crystals, plush, crimson, chinese blue, pale leathers, the marble statue of an angel.

  Polly floated about in her flowing scarlet silk dress, orange hair blowing behind her like a fan.

  An MP pulled her down on to a puffy pink sofa. ‘How many votes do you seriously expect to get on this drug reform Bill of yours? Four—or five?’

  ‘If they allow a free vote you’ll be surprised’, she said. ‘Anyway, it’s not for this time. It’s for the next.’ She rose and went away.

  ‘What a pity,’ said a big fat lady literary critic, laying a heavy hand on Polly’s shoulder, ‘that Alexander had to miss all this.’

  ‘He’ll be out in time to help finish the food’, said Polly.

  ‘The wedding feast doth coldly furnish forth the funeral meats.’

  They danced in Polly’s bedroom, now a golden bower. They rolled on her great fur-covered bed, overhung with canopies and palms. Polly gazed at the outside window, now hung with lights, looked out at the dark sky beyond. Someone tugged at her hair.

  ‘Oh!’ she cried in shock. Black face and mirror shades. It was Jean Pierre Tonnerre of the Tonton Macoutes, who was going about frightening everybody. He had just put his head round the lavatory door and given Tracy a turn. Polly danced with him.

  The music changed, became slower, more sombre, all the lights dimmed. The music slowed more, the lights grew lower. The guests froze. All was dark and silent.

  ‘Supper-time’, said a man’s voice over the speakers.

  The lights went on, the music started and the waiters were carrying buckets of champagne, caviare swans packed about with ice, steaming turkeys, jacket potatoes, a castle made of ice-cream, sorbets, sausages, hot bread, silver tubs of coffee, salads in great glass bowls, curries in big brown crocks, mounds of mousse, chocolate, lemon, strawberry, huge platters of strawberries, peaches, pineapples, bowls of yellow cream, baskets of tomatoes, long dishes of salmon, heaps of chicken drumsticks, cakes of every shape, iced fantastically with flowers, messages, numbers and letters.

  ‘Oh’, cried the guests, and turned to.

  This was the Empress Polly’s ball.

  Nobody saw Max sitting at the wheel of Polly’s white Porsche which stood in the road outside the house. Nobody knew, or wondered, what he was thinking. He was not really thinking. He heard echoes of Polly and Clancy’s rows, the phone and the door-bell ringing, the hush as he entered the house from school each day and went up the silent thick carpeted stairs to find somebody, as he came down again, with his recorder, and went playing it, out into the garden to find Jean Campbell, the girls’ nanny, and his two sisters.

  Bleakness came to him from somewhere as he sat turning the steering wheel cautiously, making passes over the gears. He thought he was cold, but realized he wasn’t. ‘M6 interchange at seventy miles an hour’, he muttered to himself, ‘slows to forty, changing down into third, whoops, careless diesel fuel truck, glances in the mirror, signals, moves over into the middle lane, Bentley coming up too fast behind, takes evasive action, glances in the mirror, signals—’

  At the back of his mind he was yearning for his grandma, whom he telephoned every morning before school and every night bef
ore he went to bed, telling her about the fights in the playground, the price of Barbados stamps in Woolworth’s, what the little girls were doing. On Saturday afternoons he went over there after his morning troll up Portobello Road, had dinner, went to a match with his friend Julian, and came back on Sunday afternoon.

  One Sunday, he knew, he would decide not to come back to Elgin Crescent.

  Upstairs Jean Campbell, with a notice on her door ‘Children Sleeping’, knitted and watched the late horror movie on her colour TV. Her own narrow bed was in this room. The children slept next door. Above the low TV she could hear the music, the shrieks, the shouts as the night went on. Her lips compressed as she got on with the sleeveless green jersey for her holiday in Casablanca next month. Poor little things, she thought. Completely neglected of course. Why, when she’d arrived, with the builders tearing the house to pieces and expensive furniture coming through the door each minute, the little girls were still in plimsolls a size too small. Their little dresses without buttons—their vests and pants a disgrace. In the end she’d had a word with Lady Kops, when she came to visit, poor woman, and she’d been the one to pay, in spite of Mrs Kops’s Laura Ashleys, thirty guinea boots and all that lark. You could see what class she came from, although to do her justice Mrs Turnbull seemed a nice enough woman. Her morals—the drugs—that cousin. The things they said to each other when anyone could hear, and the names they called each other. She had been much deceived when she took the post. She was not sure how long she could tolerate it. Only about two inches of back to do. Well, we shall see what changes are made when Mr Kops comes out of prison—prison, indeed, she would not be requiring a reference from Mrs Kops when she left—but Mr Kops was at least a gentleman, so perhaps some hope lay there. She looked down at the pattern and started rapidly to knit the waist of the jumper.

  Mrs Traill, upstairs in her flat, stared at the peeling wallpaper, rocked in her old plush-covered rocker, looked out of the window to see who was passing on the pavement opposite, thought there goes that violinist from number 12. She’s coming back late these nights. Was it Wednesday she went into the house, early for once, with that darkie? Her husband must have been away. Hullo, guests leaving, she looks a bit the worse for wear. He’s bundling her in like a lot of old clothes he’s taking to the cleaners. Whoops, he’s had a few, too, took some paint off that Rolls Royce or whatever it was. Well, Polly Kops, you’re doing well enough with your fancy boy, not that she minded Clancy, but watch out, Polly. Up like a rocket and down like the stick. Don’t the bastards get all the luck though. £100,000 if you please. And the old man in jail, nice work if you can get it. Tried to buy me out if you please. ‘I need the room Mrs Traill.’ ‘So do I duckie. I’m getting on, I won’t be here to trouble you much longer.’ Some hopes. I’ll live forever if only to spite her. Eight thousand she’d gone up to but where could she go for that, and how could she get on without her little bits and pieces. Hard bitches, her and that Tracy. Well, they couldn’t get rid of her. She’d get rid of them, though. Yes, she would.

  ‘Can I come in Mrs Traill?’

  ‘Yes, come in. Come in, Clancy.’

  Clancy, a veritable gigolo in his cream leather, prances in, with a glass of champagne in one hand, a plate of chicken sandwiches in the other.

  ‘For you’, he says, bowing.

  ‘Ooh, Clancy. What a treat. Well, dear, I got that stuff for you.’

  She brings it out from under the frowsty cushion she sits on. He hands her the sandwiches and champagne. He rolls up his sleeve. After a while he says, ‘That’s it.’

  ‘All enjoying themselves down there, are they?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How nice. Innit lovely Polly’s got all this money now.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Nice for you, too.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Lovely, generous girl, Polly.’

  Clancy does not reply.

  ‘Here, I laid the cards out for you last night. You’re going to get a lot of money. Want me to do it again?’

  In the dark room, with its old brass bedstead, greasy carpet, unwashed teacups, Mrs Traill sits by the window, laying out tarot cards on the oilcloth of the table. ‘That’s right dear, quarrels over love and money, then your fortune and—and—a man. Watch out for this woman, though, she’s no good to you. There’s poor old Lord Bec, tragic wasn’t it, her own dad! Funny,’ she says dreamily, ‘I see you apart; seas between you. It’s all foreign. Oh well, cheers, Clancy, don’t let it get you down.’

  As he leaves, she says, ‘Don’t forget to let me know if you want any little errands run at all.’

  She broods over the red speckled oilcloth, the cards, the teacups, the glasses, on the table. The picture comes. Polly, alone and ghastly pale in the hall seeing to the loading of her goods into the furniture van outside. The girls and Max standing silently on the uncarpeted stairs, watching. Polly picks up two cases, Max the third. They walk out of the house. Polly turns on the step, puts down a case, shuts the front door. As it closes a sheet of newspaper rises in the draught and settles down again—‘That’ll learn you, Polly Kops’, murmurs Mrs Traill.

  Clancy swaggers down from Mrs Traill’s flat towards the revels, cream suit, long red hair hanging smooth, is that MacHeath on the landing, only slightly out of breath? He’s not a real user, addict, he’s just bored and depressed. He can’t get on with his African recordings; he wishes, without realizing it, he was in Africa again, tyres scorching through the miles and miles of dry scrub, hanging around the shebeens and bars, then drumming, drumming, and drumming, till his brain bursts. But he can’t think this because of Binnsy doing two years in Pentonville. He feels cooped up in centrally heated Heal’s, being fed turkey, pork, chicken and beef. Every meal is a condemned man’s breakfast. ‘You can have anything you like darling.’ He walks past Polly without greeting her.

  At Empress Polly’s that night were Lady Clarissa, being beaten by her lead guitarist, and Dylan, asleep under a buffet table with her little bare feet poking out under the cloth. There was Slasher, still crabby, sitting obstinately on a tapestried sofa, there were Flora, Pandora and Dora, Annie, Fanny and Sue, all made up like dollies, all in their yards of tat, hanging about and waiting for a musician to pull them but love them too. And Dealer Ben, Isidore Grapnel the Vietcong hero, Jim Snaithe, the anti-novelist, Tom Smith, the fortune-telling gypsy, Marcia Bird and Alice Carthew, tough women’s libbers in their jeans, Mandy Crack of the Mirror, Jack Elliot, secretary of the local Labour Party, chatting up Gascoyne, hoping for a safe seat, two actors boasting, three anarchists fighting, four groupies waiting, five poets swearing, six hippies scoring and many others, eating, drinking, talking, dancing, embracing, saying they were depressed, having fun at the Empress Polly’s ball, after which many a heart was broken, many found a soul-mate, two even had babies. There was nearly a murder committed when Matthew Sutcliffe, the mathematics don, counted Ms Grantley’s eyes, ears, nostrils, breasts, arms, hands, legs, feet, and seized her round the throat in the kitchen shouting, ‘Pairs, pairs, pairs. Don’t reject me’. Sid Jones raped Delia Griswold in the bathroom and began the romance which is told in her novel, Everything For You and Nothing For Me. Maurice Burns dropped the lid of the Bechstein on the hands of a piano student who later sued him, successfully, for damages. He met a very nice girl, Gascoyne’s secretary, and talked to her for hours. He left without her because, of course, he was homosexual. At home, on his silk pillows he realized he loved her. He phoned her at the House of Commons next morning, and over a cup of coffee and a bun at Jolyon’s told her all about it. She loved him too, they got married, and she was a great help to him in the practice. It was at this ball that the exquisite, seventy year old Petites Marionettes de Paris, which had been left in a trunk in the cloakroom, caught fire, and were finally put out by Long Tall Timmy at the head of a champagne bucket gang, Frederick the singer got into a fight with two lesbians and was severely trounced, Julian McNab, one of
the Secret Servicemen who had interviewed Polly after Lord Bec’s death, met and fell in love with Eva Kovacs, which was the worse for him and Mrs McNab, as life behind the Iron Curtain did not suit him and life alone in Ealing did not suit her, the secret Lib-Lab pact was first mooted, the TV series Up Yours Then, Mate came into being, Jennifer Dawson learned that her ex-husband had cancer, Professor Amos Corbett and Simon Berry decided to work together on synapses, and eventually produced a cure for schizophrenia and got a quarter of a Nobel Prize each. And Lady Clarissa Fossett found true love in the arms of an old sweetheart.

  Polly, on the new balcony, on a white bench under the orange tree, looking out over the street, thought about Clancy’s walking past her like that. Times were getting hard there. She could have screamed. She didn’t know why. She was giving him fifty quid a week and all he did was hang about the house. He ate all and drank all. She paid. He wore the best clothes and slept on a specially-made bed under silk sheets. That was no good either. All he did was get more and more perverted. The sensations were all right but all she was left with was a sour taste in her mouth, not semen, not sweat, not alcohol, not nicotine—gall, wormwood, school dinners.

  And she coudn’t write poetry. They kept on sending her poems back. She was sick of sending off buff envelopes and buff envelopes coming back through the door. It was worse than that. She couldn’t write poetry. She couldn’t write poetry.

  ‘I’m sick of finding you with everybody. Get off my cousin’, she had howled, opening the bedroom door last Friday.

  ‘Sorry Poll,’ said Ulla, rolling off Polly’s cousin, ‘I thought you were lunching out.’

  ‘You rotten cow,’ screeched Polly, ‘can’t you keep your knickers on? Get out.’

  Clancy said, ‘Don’t be like this, Poll.’

  ‘You—you steaming parasite’, she said, staring at his naked body with disgust. ‘It’s not fair. It’s not fair. Get out of my bloody bed, Ulla. Go and hang round someone else’s house. You’re too fucking much. Always with somebody else’s on somebody else’s bed. You’re freaky.’