Polly Pilgrim

by Marie Joseph

  The manager extracted a sheet of figures, coughed slightly. ‘These are hard times for us all, Mr Goldberg,’ he began.

  ‘So what can you do?’ Manny whispered, tensing himself for the blow that would surely fall in the next few minutes. ‘I’ve put the whole workforce on half-time, starting today, and if in the next few weeks we manage to break the back of most of the bills coming in from the suppliers, I’ve worked out that––’

  He stopped as the manager raised an imperious hand. ‘Not so fast, Mr Goldberg. Hear my side of the position first, if you please.’

  The eyes behind the whirlpool lenses of the thick spectacles were cold and totally lacking in reassurance. Manny apologized, and settled his face into a subservient listening expression.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Ormerod,’ he said aloud.

  ‘You and your bloody spats,’ he said underneath his breath.

  ‘Mr Goldberg put us all on half-time,’ Polly said quickly, when Robert Dennis opened his door to her knock. ‘Starting today as ever was. So I thought I’d come and see how you were. With having this unexpected time off, you see.’ She stared down at her feet as if wondering how they’d had the nerve to walk her down this long street of quiet houses, each one fronted by a small garden. Terraced, but full of character, as an estate agent would undoubtedly have said. ‘I rang your office and they gave me your address. Not at first, I admit.’ Her pulse was racing and her cheeks burned. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

  He stared at her, feeling his own heart race with the shock of seeing her standing there, the collar of her red coat upturned against the cold wind, a small brown hat in the shape of a pork pie perched on the glory of her bright hair. She had been almost constantly in his thoughts, and yet she was the last person on earth he had expected to see. There was a hospital sling in some coarse cotton material supporting his shoulder, pinned across with a huge safety pin. He pointed to it with a smile.

  ‘This is only for show. I’m going back to work next week.’ He stood back to let her pass. ‘I wrote to you yesterday, so it should be waiting for you when you get back home. Come in. Come on in then.’

  They went through the black and white tiled vestibule into the lobby, a passageway too narrow to be called a hall. A door on the left led into what Polly guessed was the front parlour, and when she hesitated he gave her a gentle push.

  ‘Through there, Polly. The parlour’s only for visitors, not friends.’ He pushed open a door at the foot of a steep flight of stairs. ‘This is the living-room, and on through that the kitchen.’

  Politely trying not to look, Polly saw a draining-board set beneath a window festooned with red and white gingham curtains. There was a single cup and saucer set to drain, and a white tea-towel with a red stripe down the middle folded neatly at the side.

  ‘Give me your coat.’ Robert held out his hand. ‘And your hat – or will you have a job to get it back on just right again? I remember my wife used to spend ten minutes doing her face and her hair, then twenty minutes settling her hat.’ Laying the hat and coat down on a stand chair at the side of a polished mahogany sideboard, he pointed to a photograph of a pretty woman in a silver frame. ‘That was Jean.’

  Polly looked. She saw a serious studio profile of a sweet-faced, middle-aged woman wearing a dark dress with a little white lace collar, looking down as if reading a book.

  ‘The photographer in Preston Road preferred that type of pose to what he called an inane grin,’ Robert said. ‘It’s the last photograph Jean had taken, so I wish he’d taken her smiling.’ Picking the portrait up, he studied it for a moment then put it down again. ‘In a way though I suppose he was right. Jean didn’t have much to smile about those past few years of her life.’

  ‘She died of pneumonia, you told me?’ Polly whispered, embarrassed, fussing with her hair where the elastic from her hat had pulled it out of shape.

  ‘Oh yes. It was pneumonia at the end, and everyone said it was a blessing, but for ten years before that she’d suffered from a kind of muscular complaint which meant she was housebound for two years. At the end it was affecting her speech.’ He motioned to Polly to sit down in a chair by the fire. ‘So I suppose everyone was right when they said it was a blessing about the pneumonia.’

  ‘But you don’t think so?’

  ‘I’d’ve thought it a blessing if it had come years before!’ His voice was harsh. ‘It’ll come one day, Polly. Maybe not in our time, but one day someone with sense will make it legal for someone who suffered like my wife to have their pain put an end to. Of their own volition maybe, and if not, assisted by a helping hand.’

  ‘Take their own lives?’

  ‘Yes. Suicide. Let’s not use euphemisms. I’m a lapsed Catholic, Polly, and according to the dogma I had instilled in me, suicide is a mortal sin, promising an eternity of hellfire. But that’s not my view! My wife was having her hell right here, through there in the next room, sitting like a lump of nowt, half-blind and incontinent. I’d have done it myself if I’d had the guts. Many, many times I nearly did, but I hadn’t the courage.’

  He put up a hand to his hair. Now what had brought all that on? Why, in God’s name, had he blurted all that out to this young woman watching him in wide-eyed amazement? All she’d done, for heaven’s sake, was walk in through the door to stand in his living-room looking like a coloured photo when everything else was in old-fashioned sepia. He must have frightened her half-way to death.

  ‘You must forgive me,’ he said, going to sit opposite her in a leather, velvet-cushioned chair. ‘You’ll be wishing you hadn’t come.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Polly looked very wise. ‘It needed saying, and you’ll feel better for it.’ After the intensity of the past few moments she struggled to sound casual. ‘I must say you keep your house tidy. For a man on his own. But then I expect you had lots of practice before. . . .’ She stopped in mid-sentence. Oh, Lord. She’d meant to change the subject, not bring it up again. ‘What I mean is you must have been running the house single-handed for years now.’ She blushed. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean. . . . Oh, Robert. I didn’t mean that. Oh, what a clumsy way of putting it. My own mother says I put my big foot in it every time I open my mouth. Shall I go outside and come in again?’

  His lips twitched even as he appeared to take her seriously. ‘No, don’t go outside, Polly. If you do that you may decide to keep on walking down the street, and that would never do.’ He touched the sling deliberately. ‘I got used to far more tactless remarks than the one you just made a long time ago. A one-armed man is something of a rarity even since the last war. I think my worst moment came when they removed the dressings one day in the field hospital and I forced myself to look instead of turning my face to the wall.’ His eyes regarded her steadily. ‘It reminded me of a sausage in a pork butcher’s shop. A pinky brown colour with the skin drawn over the stump like a kitbag pulled together at the top. Not raw and red like I’d somehow imagined it to be. From then on I began to accept, and from then on everything I managed to do with one hand was a triumph. Dressing myself came first, and apart from my collar and tie, that proved easy. Once I’d worked out the drawer bit for the tie and used my teeth to bring one end of the collar round, I was away.’ He smiled. ‘Now that the embarrassing bit’s out of the way, may I offer you a cup of tea?’

  Knowing better than to make any offer of help, Polly sat looking around her as he busied himself in the kitchen. In spite of Robert’s brave declaration of total independence, the room did look as if it knew a woman’s touch. She smiled at the cliché, feeling an unwarranted twinge of jealousy. The curtains, shiny cream rayon with orange flames flaring up their length, had been drawn back in neat folds, not merely dragged back any old how, the way Harry drew theirs if he was downstairs first. Used to draw them, she reminded herself. She didn’t like Robert’s curtains, Polly decided.

  She then eyed the fireplace with speculative envy. Tiled in a beige mottled design, it boasted a back boiler. She could tell that by the way the fire was drawing to
the back of the grate. That meant blessed hot water, and maybe a bathroom upstairs. All mod. cons in fact. She turned her attention to the floor coverings. Brown self-patterned carpet almost to the walls, with just six inches or so of stained wood by the skirting board polished to mirror shininess, she noticed. And by her feet, up against the raised tiled hearth, a hand-pegged rug. Not made with bits of old coats and snippets from a ragbag, but a handsome rug, luxuriously thick with tufted wools, and a red dragon breathing fire in the middle.

  ‘My wife’s sister pops in every day,’ Robert said, coming in with a tray balanced on his right hand. ‘She lives next door.’ He slid the tray on to a drop-leaf table. ‘She’d half kill me if she saw me using the tray without a cloth on it.’ He poured milk into the two cups. ‘And she’d be gravely disappointed in me to see these cups and saucers instead of those over there in the display cabinet.’ Lifting the small brown teapot he began to pour. ‘She tries to take me over, I’m afraid. Goes about saying what a burden I am to her, but never misses a day.’ The deep-set eyes twinkled. ‘It’s all right. Don’t look so terrified. She’s been in and done her stint for today. She’s not likely to come in twice.’ He passed over a cup of tea. ‘Not unless she was behind her curtains as you knocked at the door. In that case she’ll be in any minute on some trumped-up excuse or other, just to see what’s going on.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ It was more a shocked intake of breath than an exclamation. Polly put her cup and saucer down quickly on the settee’s wooden arm-rest. ‘I’d better go, Robert.’ She looked round frantically for her coat and hat. ‘Do you mean your sister-in-law would really think . . . ?’

  ‘The worst,’ he said promptly. ‘Nellie is a staunch member of the Ladies’ Guild. She believes in one man, one woman, regardless of circumstances. When Jean was buried, Nellie would have felt it entirely in keeping for me to have cast myself into the grave on top of the coffin. In fact, I go as far as to say she’d have been right proud of me. Now sit down again and drink your tea.’

  ‘But if she should come in?’ Polly stared at the wall as if expecting to see Robert’s late wife’s sister appear through it. ‘Wouldn’t she think it funny me being here?’

  ‘Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?’ He grinned. ‘She’d think you were after me, if that’s what you mean.’ His eyes danced wickedly. ‘Look, love. Let’s get one thing straight. My sister-in-law is not my keeper, however much she’d like to think so.’

  A sudden rattling noise on the other side of the adjoining wall made Polly jump so that her teacup shivered in its saucer, and at once Robert left his chair to come and sit beside her on the settee.

  ‘Nellie raking the fire out,’ he explained, placing his hand briefly on Polly’s knee. ‘Raking out the ashes prior to banking it up with slack before she puts the fireguard round.’ He glanced at the Westminster-chime clock in the centre of the mantelpiece. ‘Today is her Bright Hour afternoon, held in the big vestry at the chapel round the corner. Nellie goes early to set out the tea things and butter the scones she’s made this morning. She’s been making them for the past ten years, grumbling at being put upon, and yet last year when a new member offered to take the job on, Nellie took it as a personal insult and threatened her resignation from the committee.’

  Polly stared down at the hand on her knee. The fingers were long, a surgeon’s fingers, she decided, or a pianist’s. A different shaped hand from Harry’s altogether.

  ‘My sister-in-law is a woman born to minister to someone,’ Robert was saying. ‘But fate decreed otherwise. Her husband was killed in the war, on the Somme, and her only son hardly ever comes to see her. His wife and Nellie were daggers drawn from the first meeting. So . . . for a while Jean filled that need. It was only because of Nellie’s kindness that I was able to keep on my job last year and now, well, I’m her life’s work, I’m afraid. The money I give her ekes out her pension, and the house looks a darned sight better than it would left to me.’ He grinned. ‘So surely I can tolerate a bit of nosiness, when you consider.’

  He took his hand away, and Polly relaxed, but she could still feel it there, through her skirt, through her stocking, almost as if he’d touched her skin. He was very close to her and for a terrible moment she had an almost irresistible urge to take his hand and hold it against her face. He was looking at her, his eyes soft, gentle and kind. They were the palest eyes she had ever seen, grey and luminous as mother-of-pearl. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t make the effort. She wanted to say something, but her mind was blank. Through the window directly behind them a stray shaft of sunlight gleamed on the silver streaks in his hair. When she spoke at last her voice was distant in her own ears, almost a whisper.

  ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘Now I can see you’re all right.’

  ‘How about Gatty?’ He spoke as if he hadn’t heard.

  ‘Jack Thomson has been put away. You were right about him being sick in his mind. He beat Bella up badly, but the postman came and sent for the police. An ambulance came and took him away. He won’t be bothering Gatty again. Martin brought Bella and the baby to me, and I saw to her. As long as nobody tries to take her house from her she’ll be okay.’

  Robert Dennis stroked his chin in a reflective kind of way. Polly’s flippant way of speaking didn’t fool him one bit. Whatever had happened had been dreadful, but Polly wasn’t going to say. There was even a slight smile playing round her lips. He frowned. There was an old saying that it was impossible to tell what went on behind a face, and Polly typified that supposition. She’d been just the same when that drunken brute had hurled the dog against a tree and given him – Robert gingerly touched his injured shoulder – a night of pain he wasn’t likely to forget. She was calm to the point of apparent uncaring, shelled in a serenity that wasn’t quite normal. He decided to try another tack.

  ‘And your husband? How is Harry?’

  Again the lift of the chin and the tantalizing, smooth answer.

  ‘Oh, Harry’s fine. He doesn’t write much these days, but then I can’t expect chatty letters from a man who was often content to sit in his chair all evening when his day’s work was over and never speak a word. Most of the communing Harry did was with Mother Nature.’ She smiled her wide smile. ‘He’ll write a proper letter when he thinks there’s something worth saying.’

  ‘I see.’ Robert decided to play Polly’s game. ‘It came to me last Sunday as we walked back to the cottage that Pendle looks like a crouching lion, without the mane. I used to think it was like a whale, but it’s not, it’s like a lion.’

  ‘I agree.’ Polly’s vivacity had come back, he noticed wryly, now that the conversation had reverted to trivia. ‘I used to play a game of imagining shapes. Like the two trees on the hill further away. Just two, all on their own, bending when the wind blows, into the shape of witches with streaming cloaks.’

  ‘It must, at times, be very lonely for you up there.’

  Again the bright denial. ‘Oh no. There’s too much to do living in the country to feel lonely.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Our milk doesn’t come in bottles on the doorstep like in the town. It has to be got in a can every morning or evening from the farm, and till we had cold water piped we had to take buckets to a spout over a mile away.’ A dimple came and went at the side of her mouth. ‘And the water coming from that spout wasn’t how you imagine. It trickled, slowly, till the waiting nearly drove you mad, especially in the winter. There was a nearby tree to shelter under, but many a time we got back wetter than the water we’d managed to collect.’

  Their eyes were meeting again, his quizzical, infinitely kind, and Polly’s wide, unblinking. And neither of them could look away. Polly said the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘Sticks. Yes, sticks. I can spot a good stick at a glance. For the oven.’ There was a high desperation in her voice. ‘Some are good oven pieces, and some not. But I can tell. I don’t think I ever go into the cottage without a bundle of sticks I’ve gathered on my way up the lane. You see, living in the co
untry means you never waste anything.’

  His face was coming closer, and there was no way she could turn her head. He was going to kiss her, and if he did she didn’t know what she’d do, and if he didn’t she would die. There was a warmth inside her, spreading through her body. Closing her eyes, she parted her lips a little as his arm drew her closer.

  ‘Coo-ee! Anyone at home?’

  Their lips hadn’t met, but the kiss was there, trembling between them. To the big-boned woman standing in the doorway, it was as plain as the nose on her face that they’d been up to something. Her brother-in-law’s face was livid with rage as he got abruptly to his feet and walked to the fireplace, seeing the shock drain the blood from Polly’s face as she too stood up and reached for her coat.

  Nellie tightened her lips. She glared at the ring on Polly’s left hand, and at her hair. Bottle-blonde, if she was any judge. ‘Well!’ she said, folding her arms. ‘Well! Here’s a nice old to-do!’

  ‘I was just going.’ Polly’s voice trembled on the verge of hysteria. Her fingers trembled too as she buttoned up her coat, and well they might, Nellie told herself. Brazen little varmint, a married woman canoodling on the settee with a man whose wife was barely cold in her grave. She waited, biding her time.

  ‘I didn’t hear you knock, Nellie,’ Robert said.

  As shamed as he’d every right to be, Nellie noticed grimly. She gave a disgusted sideways sniff at the settee cushions she’d plumped up only that morning, squashed out of shape where they’d been lying back on them. She drew herself up to her full impressive height.

  ‘So I’ve to knock afore I come in now, have I?’ She put a cake tin down on the table. ‘Fetching you some of me scones, I was. Fetching them for your tea out of the batch I’ve been making for the Bright Hour.’ Her eyes, as small and round as wimberries, raked Polly up and down. ‘So I should have stood outside on the flags waiting to be let in, should I?’ She stared hard at Polly. ‘I’ve seen you afore.’ Her mouth chewed on nothing for a moment. ‘I know where it was. You came with your mother to our last sale of work. Edna Myerscough – Edna Ainsworth that was. She went to St John’s School with me. Little woman who was a bit boss-eyed.’