Polly's Angel (39 page)

Polly's hand was about to descend on the window when there was a sudden commotion and a hand, startlingly white against the blackness, came out from between the curtains and, seizing the window catch, pushed the window out with considerable force. Polly felt the wood of the window hit her squarely on the nose and then she lost her rather precarious balance and found herself bouncing down the tiles and across the gutter, to land heavily on the cobbles below.

In fact, she landed on Diane and not the cobbles, or the story, she reflected later, might have had a very different ending. As it was, Diane's startled
woof
as all the air was suddenly expelled from her lungs was so funny – or so Polly thought – that it completely took Polly's mind off her sudden descent and made the bruises from the encounter seem of little account.

‘Sorry, Di, but the window was shut, and just as I was about to knock on it someone shot it open and it banged me on the nose and I fell,' Polly explained as soon as she and the older girl had untangled themselves. ‘Will I climb back now, and get in? Oh jay, I'd better, it must be one in the morning, and we'll be in awful trouble if we're caught now, so we will.'

‘Well, you aren't climbing on my back,' Diane said, breathing heavily and still clasping her skinned knees as she sat on the cobbles, leaning against the water butt. ‘I'm very sorry but this time
I'll
climb the bloody roof and you can make me a back. Tell me when you're ready.'

‘You're heavier than me,' Polly said doubtfully, getting to her feet. ‘I didn't knock you over on purpose, Di, honest to God I didn't.'

‘Well, I shall knock you down deliberately if I possibly can,' Diane said grimly. ‘I'm a mass of cuts and bruises thanks to you, O'Brady.'

‘I suppose it is my turn,' Polly said peaceably, bending down and gripping the water butt as tightly as she could. ‘Go on then, up with you!'

Diane reached the top of the water butt and set off across the tiles whilst Polly sat on the cobbles and laughed as silently as she could at the sight of her tall, slender friend climbing like a huge daddy-long-legs across the slippery roof. Presently, Diane reached the now wide-open window, slung a leg over the sill, paused a moment, and then disappeared inside. And after only a very short time, during which Polly wondered apprehensively whether whoever had opened the window had lain in wait for Diane in the darkness and was now marching her off to bed in disgrace, the back door creaked open and Diane beckoned her friend inside.

‘What a bloody awful night,' Diane said as the two of them threw their clothes off in their attic room and hurled themselves into their little iron beds. ‘Oh, the dance was all right, I know you're going to say that, Polly, but the rest! Well, it beggars description.'

‘So describe it,' Polly said from her cosy bed. ‘Oh damn, I forgot to pull back the blackout curtains and open the window. It was my turn, wasn't it?'

‘It was,' Diane said, but leaned over and jerked back the curtains so that the windy night could peer in at them and they could see the ragged clouds scooting across the star-drenched heavens. ‘But I don't think we ought to open the window, the gale will probably set every door in the house slamming. Now are you ready to hear just why it was that I wasted – I mean spent – my entire evening in the company of Meirion Williams?'

‘Won't it keep?' Polly said drowsily. Her nose hurt and all the various bumps and bruises collected on her descent from the roof were beginning to make themselves felt. ‘I'm ever so tired, Di, and you can't be feeling all that good. I mean, I landed on you when I fell, so you got a double lot of bruises. Can't we talk in the morning?'

‘We could, but I want to get it sorted out tonight,' Diane said stubbornly. ‘Poll, has it ever occurred to you to wonder where the fellow in that little shop gets his supplies from? And why there are girls on this island with silk stockings and others who haven't anything better than lisle?'

‘Ours are silk,' Polly mumbled. ‘But what does it matter where the feller gets his stuff from? Black market, I suppose.'

‘He gets all sorts from Ireland,' Diane said in a thrilling whisper. ‘
Your
Eire, Poll, not this island. And the ferries go over there every other day!'

‘So what? And as for the ferries, don't we all know it? We must watch them sail several times a week. I think they're very brave, the men who take the ferries across, because everyone knows that there are wolf packs of U-boats in the Irish Sea, just waiting to torpedo anything they can reach. Only of course our chaps go out at night and try to bag U-boats themselves, I've heard the sailors saying so. I say, Di, I wonder why the ferries don't sail at night, when our chaps are out U-boat-spotting, instead of during the day when there's no one to defend them?'

‘Polly, will you stop rambling and
listen
for once?' Diane said, exasperated. ‘Meirion told me that some girls go over on the ferry and buy stuff in Dublin, stuff that we can't get over here. And others take stuff the Irish need – tea is very popular, he said, and we have loads of tea in the stores – and swap for . . . well, for stockings, and lipsticks, and cheese . . . It seems a long while since I've had my way with a great, crisp pile of toasted cheese.'

‘They go over to Dublin,
my
Dublin?' Polly asked, suddenly forgetting to be sleepy and sitting up on one elbow. ‘But I thought you'd need special papers and all sorts to go over there.'

‘Nope,' Diane said, shaking her head. ‘All you need is a ticket. But of course it must help if you know the city, because you'd know where to go to find the sort of things you were after. Stockings and lipstick and so on, I mean.'

‘Ye-es, but it can't be as simple as that,' Polly said. ‘How d'you buy a ticket?'

‘Meirion said that if I gave him the money he'd get you a ticket, and then—'

‘Me? Oh no, you aren't getting me into that sort of a scrape, Diane Burlington,' Polly said roundly. ‘Go yourself!'

‘I can't, can I? I wouldn't know where to go for things, and I'd stand out like a sore thumb over there, as English as anything. But you, Poll, you could go over and be safe as houses!'

‘I don't know,' Polly said gloomily, but in her heart she was beginning to get excited at the thought of seeing Dublin again. ‘What about my uniform, though? I'm not a rich member of the Burlington family. All I've got is me uniform. You know very well that if I tried to go over in me uniform I'd be thrown in the Tower or something.'

‘I'll lend you some civvies,' Diane said. ‘And I'll give you the money, of course. Oh, and pay for the ticket and so on. Don't you want to go home? You're always talking about Dublin and how wonderful it was when you lived there.'

‘Yes, and so it is,' Polly said stoutly. ‘But I was only ten when I left . . . not that I've forgotten so much as a paving stone, for I've not, indeed. Kids always run the messages in Dublin, same as they do in Liverpool, so I know all the best shops for this and that. There's a dairy on Thomas Street where they sell the most wonderful Irish cheese . . . oh, it makes me mouth water just to think of it! But that doesn't mean I'm prepared to get into the worst trouble of me life, and get thrown out of the WRNs in disgrace, just so you can have a new lipstick.'

‘Oh, it won't come to that,' Diane promised. ‘If the worst comes to the worst I'd say it was all my fault. Besides, you'll never be found out; why should you? No one's interested in a girl going over for a few pairs of silk stockings. Come on, Poll, be a sport.'

‘It's too risky,' Polly said obstinately. ‘I'd love to see Dublin again, I don't deny it but—'

‘Oh, come on, Poll, I know you can do it,' Diane said eagerly. ‘You'll have to put in for some leave, of course, but they're pretty good about that sort of thing, and it isn't as if you'll need a week or anything like that. A forty-eight will be plenty.'

‘A forty-eight? Why would I need that long? If I catch the— What time does the
Hibernia
leave tomorrer? She's on this week, isn't she?'

‘Yes. She leaves at two o'clock, so you won't even have to get up terribly early. Not that you'd want to go tomorrow, because you'll need to get some supplies packed up carefully, so folk won't notice them. We said tea, didn't we? And I believe parachute silk's awfully popular over there. I can lay my hands on a nice big piece if you give me a few days.'

‘Well—' Polly began, then frowned. ‘Hey, the
Hibernia
leaves here at two o'clock in the afternoon, but what time does she get back?'

‘Ah! Well, that's another good reason for yourself going over, Polly,' Diane said in a honeyed tone. ‘She comes back in at noon the following day, so—'

‘Oh! So I'd have to stay overnight,' Polly said. ‘Why, all I'd have time for would be to have a night's sleep and then it would be time to get back to Dun Laoghaire for the ferry home! You're an idiot, you are—'

‘That's another good reason why I can't go myself, Poll,' Diane said, keeping her voice low. ‘No matter how willing, because I'd have nowhere to spend the night, and I wouldn't want to be cashiered or whatever they do to WRNs found sleeping rough in a foreign city. But you, Poll, you must have a thousand pals in Ireland, all panting to put you up for the night, especially if you took them some tea and some of those nice little sugar lumps they use in the officers' mess. Well? What do you say?'

‘I say no way, not if I have to be there two whole days,' Polly said firmly. She lay down again. ‘It 'ud all go wrong, I just know it would, plans you make always do. Come to that, plans made by me don't always go too smooth,' she added honestly. ‘So something we've cooked up between the pair of us is doomed, positively doomed! As for me wearing your civvies, can you imagine what a figure I'd cut? You're a foot taller than me and about twice as broad – I'd get taken up for a vagrant, or a spy. Because me pal Tad's mammy told me that the city's stiff with bleedin' Jerries, you can't hardly step a pace in the big shops without treading on one of them. No, Di, I'm afraid your plan isn't going to include me!'

‘It'll take some arranging, I grant you that,' Diane said as though her friend had not spoken. ‘But I'm a good organiser; you won't be left without a plan of action, trust me for that. As for clothes, I said I'd lend you some but I didn't say they would be mine, did I? Flicky Andover is about your size and she got a lovely white pullover from her boyfriend and an old grey duffle coat . . . We'll fix you up so that your own mother wouldn't recognise you, Poll. I know you won't want to take a kitbag over, either, so I've arranged to borrow one of those knapsack things that you sling on your back when you go camping. Some of the fellers go over to the mainland to climb in Snowdonia whenever they've got a forty-eight, and Jimmy says we can borrow his whenever we want it.'

‘It strikes me,' Polly said slowly, lying down in her bed again but fixing her friend with a round, reproachful eye, ‘it strikes me that you've done a divil of a lot of planning without so much as consulting meself. How long have you been hatching this?'

‘Only tonight, guide's honour,' Diane said promptly, lying down herself and pulling the blankets up over her exposed shoulder. ‘All the loans – the knapsack and the clothes, I mean – were promised ages ago, when I talked about going climbing too. Lots of people owe me favours, I'm just calling in a few of them, that's all.'

‘Well, the answer's still no. If you want someone to go over to Dublin, go yourself,' Polly said firmly. ‘Goodnight, Diane; sweet dreams.'

A week later Polly found herself getting off the train at Tara Street Station in Dublin and walking briskly along Luke Street. Home! This was home to her in a way which Liverpool had never really become, because her happy childhood had been spent here. It was here that she had first gone along to the small convent school where her mammy and daddy had decided she should get her education, but it was also here where what she felt was her
real
education had begun, what you might call her street education. Here she had kept nix for her brothers when they were up to some mischief or other, had run messages for the mammy and had gone in and out of the shops, both big and small, as of right. She turned into Townsend Street and immediately left into College Street, remembering now the many times she had trodden this way when the family had gone off on the train for a day's cockling down at Booterstown beach, or had been meeting someone off the train at Tara Street Station.

Every twist and turn of the narrowing streets which led her into the heart of the Liberties held a memory for her, almost all nice ones. Street games, marbles, tops, Piggy beds, she had played them all, mainly in company with Tad, who had been such a good friend to her. Yes, she could scarcely look around her now without getting a mental picture of Tad, small, square, sturdy despite the fact that he was always hungry, helping her, protecting her, codding her about ghosts and boggarts, taking her boxing the fox in the orchards on the outskirts of the city, teaching her to swim in the canal, half-drowning her in the Liffey . . . The memories swarmed into her head, bringing tears to her eyes and a lump to her throat. Oh janey, but she'd been a lucky kid to live here, to have had such a pal!

Still, all that had been a long time ago, and she had not heard from Tad now for . . . well, it must be getting on for a year. She had continued to write to him at first, doggedly determined to keep their friendship alive, but finally his lack of response had got to her. If he cared so little for her then he might whistle for her letters! She had continued to write to Mrs Donoghue, though, because she guessed that Tad was a poor correspondent to his mammy as well as his best friends, and Mrs Donoghue wrote back from time to time, though they weren't an awful lot better, if Polly was forced to be honest, than the letters – grubby notes – Tad had sent on the rare occasions when he had bothered to write at all.