Polly (2 page)

Not any more.

Come.

Together.

Kissing and smiling.

Like they always did.

‘Will you miss me?' she had asked.

‘Just as much as you'll miss me,' he had replied, gently and with confidence. Max and Polly, Polly and Max. Maxanpolly had become a familiar descriptive term amongst those who knew them, one frequently employed to quantify the level of compatibility amongst others.

‘No, I do like him
–
but we're not talking maxanpolly here.'

‘They've become totally maxanpollified.'

Polly Fenton and Max Fyfield were the couple that other couples loved, envied and invariably aspired to; after all, they had maintained their relationship through their early twenties. It seemed there had always been Max and Polly. That there would always be Max and Polly was a fact undisputed and oft proclaimed by those who knew them, for it created a soft web of safety. What a lovely balance: thirty-year-old Max, the quiet, freelance draughtsman; contemplative, generous, handsome in a boyish way with his fawn flop of hair, grey-blue eyes and open smile. Polly the English teacher, petite and pretty, a lively sparkle to Max's warm glow, an eager conversationalist to Max's well-chosen few words. She is as feminine as he is masculine; he's not hero-tall or model-macho but he appears strong and manly when he has Polly attached to him.

Max tips his head and maybe touches a shoulder when he greets people, while Polly hugs them liberally. Friends in need turn to Max for his measured, sober assistance. If they wish to celebrate or chat, they seek Polly because she will share their excitement and wear their emotions. Like salt and pepper, sugar and spice; they complement each other. Polly and Max fit. Polly will be greatly missed while she is away. But she'll be back. Of course she will. She's going away tomorrow but she'll be back, as she would say, ‘in a jiff'.

Tomorrow is now today. Yesterday went far too quickly. Now tomorrow will see Polly wake up over the sea and far away because today Polly is leaving England for America. At four thirty. Tomorrow, Max won't have seen Polly since yesterday. Polly and Max have not said much so far today. Polly has been scurrying around her flat, double-checking things already triple-checked yesterday. She has left little notes dotted here and there to assist her American proxy with the ways and wills of the boiler, the cooker, Buster, and the patio doors. Polly knows little about her counterpart apart from her name (Jen Carter), her age (same as Polly) and her subject (English too, of course).

‘Do you think The Jen Carter Person will be happy here?' Polly asks Max. ‘Do you think she'll like my flat?'

‘Yes. And yes,' Max assures, adding that a note explaining how the television worked was really not necessary. ‘Maybe just warn her that here we have only five channels.'

‘Radio?' Polly suggests, pen poised above a yellow Post-it note. Max shakes his head. He pulls Polly's hair through his hands into a pony tail, tugs it so her head comes back, and kisses her nose.

‘A map to the launderette!' Polly exclaims, busying herself with red and blue pens.

‘I'll start loading the car,' he says, turning away from her. It had seemed such a great idea, such a wonderful opportunity that she should go. Now Max feels ambivalent, wonders whether they should have discussed it in more depth, just talked more really.

‘And I must warn her of Buster's food fads,' Polly says to herself.

‘I'll load the car,' Max says.

Max opens the bonnet of his Beetle which is really the boot and smiles broadly at Polly's suitcase and the knowledge of all those jars of Marmite. He hates the stuff and yet had he not sneaked a jar from Polly yesterday? Just to keep. To have and to hold.

‘You can have it back once you're home again,' he had said, holding the jar aloft while Polly jumped to reach it.

‘Let me check the sell-by date. OK. But it must be this very jar – no substitute.'

A substitute? Ludicrous!

Max places her small rucksack on top of the suitcase and reads its bulges easily. Walkman. Water. Two paperbacks. One pair of thick socks. Bits and pieces from the bathroom.

Damn, I should have written a little note, or brought a little something to slip in as a surprise.

Too late, Max, because here she is. See her? Locking the door and resting her forehead lightly against it for a moment? Now walking down the steps. Walking towards you with a brave, manufactured smile aboard her small face. Isn't time strange? You've had five years together and suddenly it doesn't seem enough. Eight days ago she wasn't going until next week – ages away in the face of a whole week together. Then you had to think in terms, of days. Yesterday it was tomorrow. This morning it was this afternoon. Now, at noon, it is merely a case of less than a handful of hours.

‘You ready? Shall we go?'

‘Yes and no.'

‘The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back, hey?'

‘Can't wait to get rid of me, is it?'

‘You know what I mean.'

‘I do.'

‘Shall we?'

‘Sure thing, babe. Let's burn rubber, hon. Hit it.'

‘Polly Fenton! Don't you
dare
forsake your dulcet tones before you've even left our shores!'

‘Max, my lover, ‘twas but a jest. My accent and I will sail through this year untainted and return to you unblemished, in one piece. Absolutely fine and in a jiff.'

At Heathrow, Max bought Polly two bottles of her favourite shampoo because there was space in her rucksack and time to do it. They sat over cups of coffee and small bottles of orange juice, not daring to finish them. They tried to do the
Guardian
crossword but found that the airport tannoy played havoc with the necessary lobe of the brain. They declared the airport clock fast, their watches must be slow, that
can't
be the time. Did you hear that? Yes, I did. Oh, that they were hard of hearing!

‘Did you hear that?'

‘Yes I did.'

‘What does “last call” actually mean, Max? Might there not be a “final” one we could wait for?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Oh dear,' Polly says, ‘they've called me by name. Should I go now?'

‘Yes.'

‘I know we said you wouldn't, but would you? Come all the way?'

‘All the way?'

‘To passport control at any rate?' she whispers, hiding the colour of her eyes from Max as she closes them to kiss him. Her lips are quivering too much for her to pucker them properly. Max doesn't mind; he knows her intention and echoes her sentiment with a clumsy bash of his lips against her cheek.

‘Come on Polly, it's time.'

Silently, they try to pretend they have no idea where passport control is but there's no avoiding it, all paths seem to lead there and yet they cannot see beyond it; beyond the neon sign ‘Departures', beyond the uniformed officials behind their melamine lecterns.

‘Here we are.'

‘Can't.'

‘You have to.'

‘Max. Can't.'

‘Button, you can.'

‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.'

‘Oh dear. Bye bye.'

‘Bye, sweet girl.'

‘Hold me, Max.'

‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.'

‘You have to go.'

‘I know. Hold me a moment longer.'

‘This is the final call for passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, make your way to the departure lounge immediately.'

‘Got everything?'

‘Um, not sure, shall we check?'

‘You have everything.'

‘I do?'

‘You do.'

‘I do. OK.'

‘Off you go.'

‘Bye bye.'

‘Bye bye.'

‘Bye.'

Max watched her go away from him.

God, she can't.

‘Polly!'

He ran towards her. Someone was examining her passport.

Wait!

‘Polly!'

They were handing her passport back to her.

Oh bloody hell, what am I? – what the? – Jesusgod.

‘Polly?'

Her tear-streaked face turned to him.

They regarded each other, Polly biting her lip in a futile bid to keep tears at bay. She wanted to smile for Max. She couldn't if she was clamping on to her lips. Tears and a smile were much better than neither of either. She lavished both on him. He cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips against her forehead. Then he held her at arm's length and took hold of her wrists.

Jesusgod, I can't believe I—

‘Marry me.'

There!

Pardon?

Polly was stunned and far too choked to speak her reply. The passport officer cleared his throat and addressed her, rather ominously, by name. Polly wiped her nose on Max's shirt. He took her left hand and slipped something along her fourth finger. The orange plastic neck-ring from the small bottle of fruit juice. Scratchy and ridiculously oversized. Exquisite.

‘You'll have a proper one when you come home. Promise.'

W
hen John Hubbardton died in 1906 at the age of eighty-nine, he had a minor river and, consequently, the small town along its banks named after him. That the town's school, which he had founded in 1878, should also be renamed in his honour was a foregone conclusion. Lower South River thus became Hubbardtons River, the town of Lower South was renamed Hubbardtons Spring and the Lower South School became The John Hubbardton Academy. The mountain, in whose embrace all three lay, was also given the man's name. By the 1920s, river, town, school and mountain were known universally as Hubbardtons. One lived in Hubbardtons, one's kids were at school at Hubbardtons; summers were spent canoeing Hubbardtons, winters skiing Hubbardtons. We'll discover the town and the river alongside Polly when she arrives, maybe the mountain too, if she learns to ski, but we can have a sneak preview of the school now, for Polly herself is re-reading her information pack. She is two hours into her journey.

The John Hubbardton Academy is a prep school. Not, you understand, in the British sense (small boys learning rugger and round vowels in preparation for Eton); Hubbardtons is a high-school, a boarding-school, ‘
proud to provide a rounded preparation for college
', as proclaimed on page one of the glossy brochure.

‘
Here at the John Hubbardton Academy, we're one big family
,' commences page two. There are 240 students and 45 full-time teachers. When John Hubbardton founded the school 118 years ago it was, by necessity, co-ed. The school went temporarily all-male in a perverted stance against the 1960s, but extended an apology and an invitation to females a decade later. Currently, two thirds of both students and teachers are male. But no one is complaining.

‘We work and play, and we learn and live. Together. And we have 150 acres to do it in.'

It certainly looks picturesque from the brochure. Whether the buildings are genuinely old, or just old-style, is irrelevant; they are structurally pleasing and set attractively within grand grounds sympathetically landscaped. The superb backdrop of the Green Mountains completes the picture. Seemingly seamless; from the brochure photographs at least.

Polly slips the folder into the seat pouch in front of her, in between the safety instructions and the duty-free catalogue.

Poor old Jen Carter, whoever she may be. Do you know, I'm not sure that BGS is a fair trade for the JHA. I can't believe Max proposed!

In 1820, when Belsize Park sat just outside London, a thoroughly modern building was built for the purpose of overseeing the education of young ladies residing locally. The establishment was duly named Belsize Ladies' College. An insignia was designed (an open book with a lit candle propped, somewhat precariously, at its centre) and a motto was chosen (
Cherchez la femme
).

Until the turn of the century, sixty pupils were attended to by six teachers in this one building. 1900 saw the first expansion of the school with the purchase of the four-storey house next door, and similar shrewd acquisitions followed in the early decades. Now, there are 300 girls and twenty-seven teachers squeezed into a coterie of old houses around the original school building; ingeniously interconnected by a series of corridors, covered walkways and iron staircases. No one is quite sure when the college for ladies became a school for girls but the institute is known now as Belsize Girls' School. The insignia and the motto remain.

The grounds at BGS comprise two concrete rectangles over which the layout of a pair of netball courts are superimposed in red lines; two tennis courts, likewise, in blue. An oak tree, protected by an unquestioned ancient law, stands defiant, slap in the middle of the larger rectangle. It makes for interesting reinterpretations of the rules of netball and tennis. Winter and summer terms, the girls can choose to play hockey and cricket respectively on the manicured sports fields owned by the nearby public boys' school. Needless to say, the popularity of these two sports vastly outweigh tennis and netball. In the spring term, there is a choice between pottery classes in the cellar of the sixth-form house, or choral society at the boys' school. Unsurprisingly, you never heard so many fine voices.

Polly has taught English at Belsize Girls' School for five years. She landed the position the day after she had forlornly sent out her seventeenth job application, the morning of the day when Max first asked her out. Something divine was intervening and she welcomed it. She still feels truly blessed.

I hope this Jen Carter Person will be happy living my life for me – or at least a part of it – while I'm gone.

Polly wriggles her feet into the red socks that came free with the flight and places the complimentary ‘snooze-mask' over her tired eyes as, indeed, the passengers either side of her have done. Three hours to go.