Fire and Hemlock (37 page)

Polly ran, in order not to hear any more. No. No! she thought, as she shut the back door. I didn’t make Mr Lynn up – surely – did I? And yet, if you thought of it, what more likely thing for a lonely child to do? Particularly if that child was not happy and knew her parents were going to get divorced.

If so, it was a pretty odd set of things to make up, she thought.

But not impossible, she had to admit.

Without calculating, she walked towards the Rose and Crown, the way she had so often gone once with David Bragge’s secret notes. And there was the Rose and Crown, and there was Mr O’Keefe leaning against the wall, just as he always used to do. Does he ever go away at all? Polly wondered. Mr O’Keefe seemed just the same as ever, just as shabby, just as skinny, wearing the same disgraceful dirty hat – though there seemed to be a few more teeth missing from the wide smile with which he welcomed her.

“Hello my darling! It’s a long time since you were here carrying me your notes. You’ve had time to grow up a lovely young woman since you came this way last. Look at the hair on you still! Such lovely hair. I used to dream of it at nights!”

“Oh – thank you – I suppose it
is
a long time,” Polly said, rather taken by surprise at this welcome. “How are you, Mr O’Keefe?” He was well, he told her. Couldn’t complain. And Polly? Polly explained she lived with Granny these days, and then asked what she realised she must have come to ask. “Tell me, Mr O’Keefe – are you still in touch with David Bragge?”

Mr O’Keefe’s eyes slid into the unshaven corners of his face and he looked at her narrowly. “I am. But take advice from me. He’s not the man to go to in your trouble, my darling.”

“I – Oh. I only wanted to ask him something,” Polly said. “Why not?”

Mr O’Keefe tipped a skinny hand to his mouth, acting someone drinking. He winked, a slow, sad wink. “Far worse than I am,” he said. “Don’t see him, my darling. It wouldn’t be fair to the both of you.”

“Then – could you give me his telephone number instead?” Polly asked.

Mr O’Keefe tried to dissuade her, but he did not pretend not to know it. At length he gave her an old betting slip and lent her a pen, and Polly wrote the number against the wall of the Rose and Crown as Mr O’Keefe dictated it. She gave the pen back and thanked him fervently. “Hey now! Don’t go doing that!” he said. Polly turned back, not sure what he meant. “Smiling like that at the men,” Mr O’Keefe said. “You’ve a soft heart someone will take advantage of, if you go tempting us poor lads that way.”

Polly laughed, hoping that was the right way to respond, and ran to the nearest phone booth. It was no wonder, she thought, seeing her face in its mirror as she dialled the number, that Mr O’Keefe thought she was in trouble. She looked white and strained and desperate.

David’s voice, when he answered, sounded thick with drink.

“This is Polly Whit—”

“
Polly!
” David shouted. “Long time no see! Must be years since I last clapped oculars on—” His voice thickened and stammered as he remembered the circumstances in which he last saw Polly. “Live with your grandmother still? Nice old lady.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Polly said. “Listen, David, this may strike you as an odd thing to ask, but do you remember the time someone kept sending me books—?”

“And Ivy thought it was me. Wasn’t me,” David interrupted earnestly. “Remember it well. Always had a soft spot for you. Lovely, warm-hearted kid you were, Polly. How old are you now? Fifteen, sixteen?”

“Nineteen,” said Polly, and cut through his amazement at how time flies by asking, “Who did you think those books were from?”

“Seem to remember Ivy said it was your father,” David said. “Muddled sort of business. You said not, didn’t you? Always inclined to believe you rather than Ivy, Polly. Soul of honour you were to me. Come round and see me. Tomorrow. Make an effort, be sober tomorrow. Say you’ll come.”

“I’m leaving for college tomorrow,” Polly said. “I’ll come round when I’m back at Christmas, if you like. Didn’t I say the books were from Mr Lynn?”

“Can’t say I remember you mentioned any name. But if the books weren’t from your father and they weren’t from me, it stands to reason they had to be from someone else. Clever thought, that,” David said, pleased with himself. “Polly, I’m longing to see you again. I know I’m nothing but a lonely old soak these days, but you’d gladden my heart, Polly. Do come round.”

“I’ll come at Christmas,” Polly promised, and rang off rather wishing she had not said that. He sounded as if he cherished a sentimental affection for her a little warmer than she had bargained for – maybe all those compliments that used to annoy Ivy so had not been a game after all – and this was what Mr O’Keefe had been warning her about. Oh, well.

Polly squeezed out of the phone booth and let the heavy door shut behind her. David had provided the one hint so far that Thomas Lynn might indeed have existed. If only for that, she would have to go and see him at Christmas. As he said, someone must have sent her those books. It was not much, but it was something. She remembered reading those books, all of them, vividly, and, what was more, she had gone on remembering them even through the plain four years when her memories ran single again.

So, who else could she ask?

The obvious answer was Seb. But if there was any truth at all in those hidden memories, Seb was the one person she could
not
ask. She might as well go straight to Mr Leroy and Laurel. Oh, that was rich! Polly gave an unhappy laugh as she strode unseeingly home to Granny’s. She had indeed gone to see Mr Leroy and Laurel, earlier this summer. And Laurel had then been to her simply Seb’s stepmother, a beautiful Mrs Leroy she had never met before.

Fancy forgetting Laurel! she thought as she strode. Or Mr Leroy, for that matter!

It had been when Seb had at last cajoled, bullied and pleaded with her to get engaged to him. And then he said she must meet his parents. The Leroys had not been at Hunsdon House. Polly had gone up to London, to their large and exquisitely furnished flat. She had been awed by the statues and pictures and antique furniture in it. A great contrast – she realised now – to the flat where she had gone to visit Mr Lynn. And she wondered if Mr Lynn could have lived in this magnificent flat at one time, when he was married to Laurel. There had even been, she remembered now, a picture in the hall with a little light over it – an Impressionist painting of a picnic party – which could have been the very one she had caused Mr Lynn to steal nearly nine years before.

At the time, this had meant nothing to Polly. She had thought about nothing but not letting Seb down, and she had been quite startled by how very pleased Seb’s father had been to see her. “Well now, this is clever of you, Sebastian!” he had said, more than once. Polly had not wholly cared for Seb’s father, his ragged grey hair, his yellowing teeth and the loose, dark pouches under his eyes. “Clever, Sebastian, clever!” he said, and his loud, chesty laugh dissolved into the cough it reminded her of. Laurel had almost glared when Mr Leroy said this. She had smiled, and she had talked softly and charmingly to Polly, but Polly could tell Laurel was not pleased, not pleased at all.

It had been obvious enough for Polly innocently to ask Seb about it in the street afterwards.

“Yes, I knew she’d object,” Seb said, “so I didn’t tell her.”

“Why? Did she want you to marry someone else?” Polly asked. “I suppose you’re her heir, aren’t you? She must have had other plans for you.”

Seb gave a loud, hacking laugh, quite unlike his usual well-controlled churring. “Plans!” he said. “Inherit from Laurel! I’ll be lucky! I’m only a half Leroy anyway. My mother was as ordinary as you are.” Then he became serious and put his arm round Polly, which was a thing he very seldom did in the street. “The fact is, Pol, I’m in a fairly tense situation with Laurel. Laurel and my father used to be married before, you see, before my father met my mother.”

“And Laurel doesn’t get on with your mother?” Polly guessed.

This made Seb laugh again. He churred this time, long and amused. “My mother’s dead. She died nearly nine years ago.”

“Oh,” Polly said, stricken and embarrassed. She had been thinking of the way Ivy hated Joanna, and she wanted to kick herself for being so self-centred. She could tell Seb was upset. He was almost grinding her against him. Yet she could tell he was laughing at her too. She was too confused to ask any more.

That was puzzling, Polly thought now, marching home to Granny’s, and it was even more puzzling how pleased Mr Leroy had been to see her. She shuddered. If there was one thing she was sure of now, it was that Mr Leroy had it in for her. So what
was
going on? She ran through her memories, across the jolt where she had done God alone knew what, and on into the plain, single four years beyond. Back and forth. There was always that jolt, then such a difference: Mr Leroy glad to see her, and Seb behaving as if he had never met her before that party of Fiona’s.

Polly well remembered first seeing Seb at that party. Fiona said Seb had gatecrashed it. She had seemed rather surprised that Polly had not come across Seb before. Seb had made straight for Polly. Polly had looked at him, tall, smooth-haired, with his air of self-possessed slight scorn for other people, and Seb had seemed immediately familiar, although Polly had never, as far as she knew, set eyes on him before. They had fallen easily into conversation. Which was, Polly had thought then, just how she had always thought it should be. It had surprised her later that something so much as it should be should turn out to be so unexciting.

This made Polly laugh now, a short jolt of laughter. Unless, she thought, Seb and Mr Leroy had forgotten too. So many people had – Granny, Ivy, Nina, Leslie. But she could not believe that Mr Leroy had forgotten. Seb, on the other hand – Seb had always been on her side in a way. Perhaps Seb had forgotten too, in which case there was no point in asking Seb anything.

So who else was there to ask?

Polly turned into her own road, where Hunsdon House stood blocking one end, facing the fact that there was almost no one else to ask. Thomas Lynn, if he had ever existed, had been so separate from her everyday life that it had been an easy thing to slice him out of it – as easy as Granny filleting plaice for Mintchoc. Except that he had not been separate at all. Almost everything Polly did in those five years went back to Mr Lynn somehow. The four years after that had been formless and humdrum years. Polly had done things, true, but it had all been without shape, as if she had been filleted away from her own motives and the things which gave her shape.

Granny looked at Polly when she came in. “Have you fetched it out yet?”

“No,” said Polly.

She spent the whole night packing, and going round and round in those memories. And she did not understand. Quite apart from the truly strange things she now remembered – which she thought she
must
partly have imagined – Mr Leroy had been so determined to stop her seeing Thomas Lynn that she knew it had been important to go on seeing him. Yet it was equally clear that Tom himself had been trying to freeze Polly off. Which put a stop to everything rather, didn’t it?

It did not stop Polly trying at least to remember Ann Abraham’s address, or Sam Rensky’s. And she could not. They were not left out of her mind with a jolt, like the space between her double and single memories. They had simply faded, as things do that you have not paid much attention to. She wrote letters to them both, all the same, in the course of the night, and addressed them after a fashion, hoping that the post office might just manage to deliver them. But she was not going to post them in a box at the end of a road which also held Hunsdon House. She packed them to take to Oxford too.

Granny looked at her again in the morning. “What set you off?”

“A book,” said Polly.

Mr Perks and Fiona arrived in Mr Perks’ car, and Fiona helped Polly load her things into a boot and back seat already crammed with Fiona’s things. Though Fiona and Polly were at different colleges, they were sharing a tiny flat this year. Fiona was in great excitement about it. She did not seem to notice anything wrong with Polly.

Granny plainly did. She looked at Polly again as she reached up to kiss Polly goodbye. “Take care,” she said. “And if a book set you off, a book may help again when you’ve fetched it out of you. Try it. Goodbye. And don’t forget to write.”