Polly (9 page)

‘Polly.'

Gosh, his voice was high. What power!

‘Polly!'

Hang on, that's not his voice at all. That's Kate's.

Kate?

What's going on?

Where's Mikey gone?

‘Come on sleepy head, it's school time.'

If fantasy is fiction, does it preclude reality entirely? Dreams may not be real but they are genuine; truth often contained therein.

Was the reality really only that Mikey had merely done no more than greet her, introduce himself and ask if she was from England, and all briefly at lunch-time? Was that really all he had done?

Polly felt quite sick. Sick with dismay that it had only been a damn dream, sick with worry that she should be thus dismayed and sick at herself for her perceived infidelity. That she had had the dream at all deeply distressed her and yet she was also troubled by her disappointment at being woken. She worried that she had been writhing as Kate tried to wake her. Had she said anything revealing in her sleep? Why had she never dreamt about Max in such a way? Had he ever dreamt so explicitly about her? About anyone else? But it made her feel sick that he might have done; about someone else. And yet how could she have done this? To Max? Would she even have noticed Mikey had she not felt so uneasy about the phone call with Max?

I haven't fantasized like this at all. Haven't ever needed to. Hang on, it wasn't a fantasy at all – it was but a dream. Phew! I can't determine what I dream. I'm innocent.

She lay in bed, her hand resting gently over her pubis. The hair there was damp. She tunnelled between the lips of her sex; she oozed wetness. With an ear peeled and eyes clamped to the slightly ajar door, she masturbated. She didn't think of Max. She didn't think of Mikey. She thought instead of a film star and closed her eyes as she came.

Dominic's party was OK, Max supposes, as he settles at his drawing board and leafs through the briefs clipped at the top.

Quite good, actually. Except for being lumbered with the clearing up because Dom's hangover rendered him immobile all day. Shame that Polly phoned. I can't believe I forgot, that's not like me.

Max must work on the design for a media agency's Christmas party invitation, and comes up with an idea to manipulate the text into the shape of a wine glass. Because he must perfect the design first, he ignores the precise wording the client has ordered. A letter to Polly will provide the perfect practice vehicle. He doodles wine-glass shapes quickly and then commences.

It's a good design, Max is pleased with it. He can't show the client this particular one, of course, not least because he's going to send it to Polly straight away. After lunch, he'll re-do it and insert the commissioned wording. Somehow, he feels closer to Polly just writing to her than he did when speaking to her by phone but he'll call her at midnight because he must, because no doubt she'll be waiting. That's in twelve hours' time. Currently, Mikey McCabe is laying her down under the trees. Max isn't to know, though. How can he know what Polly is dreaming?

Polly beat Max to it. She skipped dinner easily because she hadn't been able to eat all day anyway. She felt wretched, believing herself to have been unfaithful. She also felt sick with worry that she was far from Max's mind anyway, that she was perhaps slipping from his heart. Why else would he have forgotten to call her? Why else would he be so preoccupied with some stupid party of Dominic's? Adrenalin surged as she dialled.

‘Hullo?'

Bloody Dominic.

‘Dominic, it's Polly. Max, please.'

I don't like you any more.

‘Hey Polly!'

Party animal, bad influence.

‘Max, please.'

‘Sure,' said Dominic, unaware of his crime and presuming Polly merely being frugal with the transatlantic call. ‘Take care, girl, speak to you soon.'

Hopefully not.

‘Polly?'

He sounds tired.

‘Hullo.'

She sounds low.

‘I,' stumbled Max, ‘I wrote to you today. Posted it Swiftair.'

‘Thank you,' Polly responded, having still not received his first letter.

Well, have you written to him?

I've almost finished a very long letter, actually, that I started before I even left England and continued on the flight.

‘Saturday?' she started, feeling low and little and at last forgetting all about Mikey.

‘God, I'm so sorry about all of that,' Max said, ‘I felt terrible.'

‘So did I,' Polly said carefully. She could envisage Max so clearly, most probably sat on the kitchen table, socked feet on a chair. Maybe in his Norwegian fisherman jumper. No, it's still mild; probably a polo shirt on top of a T-shirt.

‘Polly?' said Max, leaving the kitchen table and pressing his forehead against the fridge, ‘still there?'

‘Yes,' she affirmed quietly.

‘I don't like this,' Max said sadly.

‘What?' responded the tiny voice over an ocean and a continent away, ‘what's “this”?'

‘Speaking to you,' he explained, ‘on the phone. It seems only to magnify the physical distance between us.'

Polly was quiet. Max continued, ‘I find it painful. I can't say enough. I can't say it right. As you said, the telephone is cruel, Button, it gives you false hope of intimacy. You sound so clear. You sound just like you. You sound so bloody near. But you're not. I could turn around, positive that you're just beside me. See, but you're not. Do you see?'

‘I do,' answered Polly, searching for Max in Kate's kitchen and not finding him. He had shed light on a situation she previously could not fathom and she felt relieved and settled for it. ‘Do you know, you're quite right, Max. I think if I hadn't actually phoned on Saturday – just heard about the evening in a sentence in a letter some time later instead – I wouldn't have felt so —' Words eluded her.

Max, Max, I do love you. I know that I do.

‘Polly? You wouldn't have felt so – what?'

‘Um,' she pondered, ‘isolated?'

‘Ah.'

‘So open to wild suggestion.'

On my part as much as yours. Bloody Mikey McCabe – as if!

They fell silent and listened to each other breathe. If Max closed his eyes, he could almost feel the top of her head by his lips. Polly shut her eyes and conjured Max standing right beside her.

‘Max,' she said, without opening her eyes so that he'd remain there for a few moments longer, ‘what are you wearing?'

‘My navy polo shirt and a red T-shirt, why?'

‘Just wondered,' Polly replied with a smile. ‘I thought you were, you see. In your socks?'

‘Indeed. Bet you're wearing your floaty brown skirt and your cream Aran knit?'

‘Spot on, boyo!' said Polly in her black jeans and her new, grey, Hubbardtons Academy sweatshirt.

But I love him. White lies are a lover's duty. His happiness is my charge.

‘See,' Max announced, ‘we don't need the phone at all, do we? I think I feel closer to you without it – do you agree?'

‘Yes,' said Polly, crying silently, wishing she was in her brown skirt and Aran knit, ‘it's true. The distance is spelt out so heartlessly by the phone.'

‘So, shall we telepathize instead of telephone? See how it goes?'

‘Let's,' Polly agreed, ‘and write. Often.'

‘Weekly,' Max assured her.

‘At the very least.'

‘Swiftair,' Max stressed.

‘'Kay,' said Polly.

Polly slept superbly that night. She dreamt Max had appeared at Hubbardtons in his Beetle. When she had asked him what on earth he was doing there (her feet off the floor, her arms clamped about his neck and his answer initially swamped by her kisses) he said his studio was around the corner, like it always was, silly old thing.

Max slept fitfully. He knew he'd made a sensible suggestion, done the right thing (as was his wont), but it currently served only to acknowledge unequivocally that Polly was far away and for a long time too. It made him sad. Confused a little. How could he not want to speak to her directly? In his dream, he went to Polly's flat expecting her to be there. Why wouldn't she be? America? Where's that then? Only Polly wasn't there at all. The woman who answered the door had never heard of her. Come on in, please, she invited Max. They sat on the sofa that the woman assured him belonged to no Polly Fenton. She made him tea. She looked like a supermodel and she gave him a terrific blow job.

Max wrenched himself awake in a sweat.

‘No!'

He'd messed the sheets.

‘God, no.'

He went to the kitchen, drank water and made himself cocoa. It was half four in the morning. It was still yesterday in Vermont.

Shall I call her? Just quickly?

He resisted.

He felt awful.

I don't care if it was a dream. I can't believe I did that to Polly.

He slept the rest of the night on the sofa.

T
he first month crawled along for Max but for Polly, it passed at more of a scamper. She had little time to herself but as that was something she had never craved, she did not really notice. She was happy to be so occupied; if there wasn't an evening meeting, a study hour to supervise, lessons to prepare or essays to mark, Polly was easily persuaded to join a group of teachers for a drink at the picturesque village of Grafton, or a movie in the nondescript town of Normansbury in lieu of a sensible early night. Her advisees also took much of her spare time but she gave it to them willingly – each teacher was Adviser for up to six students; on call for advice, comfort and any etcetera that the advisee might require. Polly's full clutch of six turned to her often; partly because it meant they could leave the school grounds and have cookies at Kate's, partly because Miss Fenton was ‘cool', ‘so, so nice' and ‘just the best' anyway.

Most of the male freshmen and seniors are in love with her. The sophomores and juniors in between simply adore her. She thinks of them as her seraphims and Junos. English lessons have swiftly become favourite; the homework prompt and pleasing. Powers Mateland is delighted. She's had no need to holler for Jackson Thomas, nor has he succeeded in asking her for a date. She's always busy, that Polly Fenton, skipping about smiling, eyes alive; chatting away to students, teachers, herself and who knows what.

Excluding the house raising, Polly has had only four days off and she has willingly filled every moment of these. She went to a lunch-time concert with Kate at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, taking the seven-hour round trip in her stride like a native. She's driven a laden minibus up to Hanover in New Hampshire to watch an Ivy League football game between Dartmouth College and Princeton, and she has spent the past two Sundays with Lorna, who she likes very much. Last week they browsed around Keene and found a lovely bistro for lunch where they whiled away the hours until it was suddenly time to order supper. Yesterday, Lorna and Polly took a trip to Manchester where they had an exhilarating day over-spending in the factory outlets, buying things they really didn't need but at prices so good they'd have been mad not to. The notion that they'd probably like each other has been proven, and a friendship between the two has developed effortlessly.

Lorna now knows all about Max. She has a boyfriend back home in Ohio and it's good to talk about the trials of long-distance love with one who knows. With one as fun as Polly. Polly has even called her Megan, absent-mindedly, once or twice, though she looks nothing like her, but Lorna was more than flattered.

‘Will you guys get married?' she asked, having told Polly that she and Tom plan to. Sometime.

‘Maybe,' guards Polly for the time being, ‘probably.'

Why am I being guarded?

Just because I haven't found the neck-ring ring?

Or because maybe, for the first time, it's nice to be known – and liked – just as Polly. You know, without the Maxand bit.

For his part, Max doesn't really mind that she hasn't said ‘yes' formally, officially. He doesn't need to hear it because he doesn't doubt her feelings towards him, he has no need to.

It's just her scatty, emotional disposition. Plus, she probably wants to say ‘yes' to my face, with a deluge of kisses. Anyway, she has so much on her plate. She probably thinks she's actually accepted already.

Because when you're that committed, that sure, there's no need to rush, isn't that right, Max?

‘Miss Fenton, if it's not Mountain Day today, can you coach us soccer?'

Though it had nothing to do with Hardy, the class had worked well through the double period and Polly was happy to ease off in these last ten minutes.

‘Hold on, Heidi – what's Mountain Day?'