Polly Brown

by Tricia Bennett

  Suddenly two croupiers, along with a number of stewards, arrived in the room, and upon seeing their potential profits going into a wastebasket instead of the usual company coffers, they furiously marched toward Polly, harshly ordering her to stop. Of course Polly had not given her speech for nothing, so she was not about to hand over her wastebasket stuffed with money and checks. With this in mind she ran around the room as fast as she could in her effort to avoid being captured. Neither the stewards nor the croupiers were a match for her, and they soon found themselves quite out of breath.

  Polly used their lack of stamina to her advantage and made a dash for the exit door where the sisters still stood alongside Roberta. As she passed through the door, she breathlessly whispered to Sister Augustus, “Here, take this.”

  The good sister quickly and happily obliged by hastily tucking the wastebasket under her habit for safety. She knew with unmistakable certainty that no steward or croupier would wish to personally search her, a sister of mercy, in pursuit of the missing basket. Yes, that would be unthinkable! The sisters and Roberta remained standing wide-eyed and innocent by the exit door as they waited to see what would happen next.

  The croupiers and stewards quickly congregated to devise a strategy before leaving by the exit door to split up and go in search of the girl and the basket of money. Happily, after many hours of searching, they were still unable to discover her hiding place, perhaps because the ship was so big and therefore plentiful in secret places to hide away without being discovered. Anyway, they were sadly forced to abandon the hunt for Polly and go back to their normal duties.

  “We are certain to meet up with her at dinner,” one of the stewards reassured the forlorn croupiers. “And then she will have a lot of explaining to do.”

  All the staff involved in the treasure hunt were greatly comforted by the belief that Polly could not hide away forever. She would be caught and then they would get the money back.

  Polly was nowhere to be seen when dinner was served and neither was Freddie Fruitless or any of his entourage. Captain Humdinger had paid them a visit, and after a good dressing down they had been encouraged to have dinner in their cabin. Whether this offended Freddie was entirely irrelevant, for this was, after all, the captain’s ship and his word was gospel.

  What precise words were exchanged between them will never be known, except that Freddie’s side of the argument was littered with angry and unmentionable expletives. Captain Humdinger, on the other hand, stood firm by his decision and with the greatest determination conveyed to Freddie that neither himself nor his entourage were welcome at his table on this voyage or any other where he was personally in command of the ship.

  Roberta took it upon herself to make up a plate of food and go in search of Polly, for she had some idea where she would be hiding. The money was never recovered, and Captain Humdinger, when informed by the stewards of her outrageous exploits, did nothing but smile to himself as he secretly found himself thinking, “Well done, Polly. You really do have all the hallmarks of a true princess.” He then called over a waiter and discreetly whispered in his ear a request for him to come back with a dustpan and brush, for some strange-looking feathers were mysteriously gathering under the table at which he was sitting.

  It was in the dead of the night before Polly came out of her hiding place and stealthily crept back to her cabin. She found Langdon perched on her bed along with a large plate of food and a little note from Roberta.

  Dear Polly,

  What you did was extremely brave, and I am very proud of you. I have returned Langdon, and I need to tell you that the sisters have been to see Captain Humdinger, and he has no problem at all with what you did. He insisted that the sisters keep hold of the money and share it out with me, for he knows every penny of it will be spent easing the suffering of others. God bless you, little precious one. Perhaps one of your dreams should be that of a public speaker? Think about it!

  Love,

  P. S. I hope you like the food I selected for you. Happy eating!

  While she was munching her way through the plate of food, there was a knock on the door. Polly jumped up and went to open it. She was both very surprised and delighted to discover her late night visitor was Freddie. Freddie wasted no time in getting to the point of his visit.

  “Polly, you say you can sing. Well, if you’re as good as you say, would you like to come back with me to my suite and give me a note or two so I can decide whether or not to sign you up?”

  Polly was surprised by her sudden hesitancy as she struggled to come up with a direct yes or no.

  “Look, Polly,” cried Freddie, a little irritated at her lack of enthusiasm. “Who else is going to give you this sort of opportunity? It’s not as though you are pretty to look at,” he commented disparagingly as he looked her up and down. “In fact, I’ve seen better ends on buses,” he muttered under his breath. “So if I were you, I would jump at this momentous opportunity to come on tour with me.”

  Still Polly held back.

  “Oh, come on, Polly. There isn’t a young girl in the world who wouldn’t throw themselves at me and accept such a wonderful offer! So don’t make this hard for me. I’m running out of time.”

  Freddie paused as he searched her face for a hint of hope. Still Polly showed no sign of excitement at his amazing proposal.

  “Polly, give me your answer. I need it now,” he urged, putting on the charm as he spoke.

  Polly drew a deep breath as she weighed up the pros and cons of this sudden and most unexpected invitation.

  Finally she responded. “Freddie, much as I adore your music, I feel I must say no to your kind offer.”

  Freddie looked positively stunned. Nobody had ever refused him anything, especially a little skinny girl with crooked teeth and wobbly eyes! Who did she think she was to turn HIM, the famous Freddie Fruitless, down and without any reasonable explanation why?

  “I don’t understand,” he angrily muttered. “Only yesterday you were falling at my feet to offer your services, and now you have the cheek to change your mind. I’m not only flabbergasted, but also really offended,” he stormed. “And I think I can safely say that you will live to regret this stupid decision of yours.”

  “Look, I’m so sorry, Freddie, but truth is I have other plans.”

  “Oh, and what precisely might they be?” Freddie said frostily. “Go on; tell me.”

  “Well, before I tell you my plans, Freddie, I feel I need to be honest with you and say that I have found your attitude towards others, the staff in particular, really terrible and very ungracious. I am therefore fairly certain that I would find your childish tantrums pretty impossible to cope with if I were to join you on the road.

  “Secondly, and more importantly, I am on my way to a place called Piadora, and I’m already terribly late getting there.”

  Freddie roared out loud. “Piadora? The place doesn’t exist, you dim-witted fool,” he said sourly.

  “Oh, but it does,” she answered with a gentle smile.

  “Well, you’re truly pathetic if you believe such nonsense,” Freddie snorted. “I think pathetic sums you up nicely. Indeed ‘Polly Pathetic,’ has a nice ring about it, don’t you think?”

  Polly took a deep breath, and chose to refrain from hitting back with anything similarly insulting.

  “Yes, Freddie, it may well sum me up, for there’s no denying that I am a bit of a wimp, and at times I hate myself for it. But at least I am not trying to be something I’m not,” she meekly replied.

  “Well, you’re the last person to speak when it comes to being something you’re not, you hypocrite,” exploded Freddie. “Here you are traveling around the world, acting like Mother Teresa, and stuffing your high-and-mighty moralistic values into everyone’s faces, Miss Polly Perfect. And yes, I did get to hear about your touching little speech,” he sniped with a mean note of sarcasm. “But allow me to state the obvious: everyone on board this ship knows you’re nothing but a sad, sick moron whose parents aba
ndoned you to an orphanage, probably because they did not want you. Personally, I don’t blame them. Look at you. You’re nothing but skin and bone with crooked teeth and eyes that wobble so much they make you look quite demented. In fact, I bet your mother was a woman of the streets who didn’t even have a clue as to who the father was,” he snarled, a small amount of spittle drooling down his chin as he continued to vent his fury. “Yes, I think I can safely say you’re a real loser, if ever I saw one. And the only reason you’re on this ship at all is that someone felt sorry for you. So take a hike, Polly Parasite,” he yelled, slamming the cabin door in her face without warning.

  Polly now felt really wobbly inside, and she could feel that her cheeks were well-and-truly burning, so she rushed to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face. Once inside the bathroom she collapsed in a heap on the floor and sobbed. She felt overwhelmed by Freddie’s vengeful accusations. Was she a fraud? Was she pathetic? Was she a real loser, and worse still, was she a parasite who manipulatively used other people’s kindness to get by? Polly felt sick inside as she also questioned herself as to whether there was any truth in his terribly vicious accusations. I mean, at the end of the day, did she come over as Miss High-and-Mighty, thinking of herself as being better than others? All these thoughts screamed out from within her as she lay in a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor.

  Polly lay on the bathroom floor for some time, sobbing her heart out, but then suddenly she pricked up her ears. She thought she could hear sweet music coming from the bedroom. No, it couldn’t be. She had not turned the radio on. Then she thought she could hear a familiar voice.

  “Hodgekiss, is that you?” she whispered, turning her head around to see out of the bathroom door.

  There was nobody there, at least nobody that she could see. Was she now beginning to hallucinate? She strained her ears to see if she could hear any better.

  “Hodgekiss, I can hear your voice. Come on, don’t play with me,” she cried.

  Still nobody appeared in the room. Polly then pinched herself to see if she was dreaming. But no, she was definitely wide awake and by now feeling very alarmed, for she could still hear the whisperings. The strongest whisper of them all seemed to sound like Hodgekiss’s very distinct but gentle voice. Was her imagination running riot?

  “Get up from the floor, Polly,” it seemed to be saying. “Wipe the tears from your eyes, brush the dust from under your feet, and hold your head up high.”

  Polly did not move, for although she was not frightened, she felt very safe exactly where she was down on the floor. “No, I’m not getting up,” she thought to herself. “I’m tired of getting up, and I’m sick and tired of struggling through life. Losers know their place, and that’s down here on the floor. In the gutter of life, where all who pass by can tread on me. No one will want to kick me again if I’m already down here, and let’s face it, that’s where I deserve to stay forever as the nobody that I am. Yes, anything else is just too painful.”

  “Oh Polly, whose report will you believe?” came the next whisper. “The choice is yours; the choice is yours.”

  Polly decided to stick her fingers in both ears to drown the whisperings out, but still they kept coming.

  “You are fearfully and wonderfully made,” whispered a chorus of voices chanting over and over as they repeated the same message. “…fearfully and wonderfully made.”

  “No, I’m not!” she screamed back at the whispers. “I’m ugly and nasty. Yes, I’m a monster, and I hate myself, and everybody hates me. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up, for I can’t carry on,” she wept.

  Still the voices kept coming, “If you knew the future, you would cry for joy, not weep with despair,” said the voices in perfect harmony.

  Polly still could not work out where these voices where coming from, and she feared that she was finally going crazy.

  Eventually, in a desperate bid to shut the voices up, she arose from the floor and washed her face in the sink. Then she climbed into her bed and held Langdon tightly to her fast-beating chest until she finally fell into a sound sleep.

  Early the next morning the ship came into the docks. Polly gathered her belongings and, with Langdon under one arm, headed off in the direction of Roberta’s cabin to say a final good-bye. As she made her way down the long corridor to Roberta’s cabin, she bumped into the sisters, who were also on their way to say goodbye to the lovely Scottish lass. Minutes later they were swapping addresses and saying tearful good-byes.

  “Is anyone meeting you off the ship, Roberta?” Sister Thomasina asked most innocently.

  “Oh no, I don’t think so,” came Roberta’s swift but gentle reply. “I think I have been gone too long for anyone to even remember me,” she said wistfully. “But I do not mind. I’m just glad to be back on English soil, although I’ll be going back to Africa as soon as possible, thanks to Polly and the generosity of all those men in the casino. How about you two?” she said, addressing the sisters.

  “Good gracious no,” came their equally speedy reply. “We come and go far too often for grand send-offs and the like. No, we just slip into one country and then out, often without as much as a whimper,” said Sister Thomasina with an impish grin. “And likewise, we are very grateful for the extra funds this trip has brought our way,” she said, smiling down at Polly as she spoke.

  Polly decided this was a good time to leave before she got asked the same question, so she quickly gave all present a hug and a peck on the cheek and announced that she had to rush. She then turned on her heels and ran down the corridor as though she had a train to catch.

  As she was disembarking from the vessel, she felt overwhelmed by the huge crowd of people gathered at the docks. They had streamers and banners with “Welcome” written in bold and bright colors. Polly at first wondered who the important person on board might be. Was it the president of the United States? Or was it the queen or the prime minister? She definitely assumed it must be royalty, and she did not have to wait long to find out.

  As she stood at the top of the steps, she was ordered by two rather burly men to step aside so that the wonderful, fabulous Freddie Fruitless and the Backsliders could disembark before any other guests. The crowd was swelling and becoming more hysterical by the moment. Having stood to one side, Polly watched as young girls screamed and cried out, “Freddie, we adore you.” They tried to reach the stairs so they could just touch his immortal body with their outstretched hands as he passed by them.

  “I touched him! I touched him!” screamed a young female before passing out on the ground.

  As the crowd moved forward, other girls appeared to faint. In minutes the police were given no choice but to cordon off an area for the well-being of the group as well as the safety of the crowd.

  As Freddie passed Polly on the steps, he turned and waved. Polly reciprocated. Then, before putting his arm back down to his side, he suddenly shouted, “Bye, loser!” at the top of his voice. With a grin on his face he turned away and proceeded to swan down the steps, blowing big kisses toward the adoring crowd, sending his emotionally charged fans into a frenzy.

  As press cameras clicked and flashed, taking snaps of every movement of a muscle Freddie made, the press stuffed microphones right up to his chin.

  “Are you glad to be in England, Freddie? Is it true that one of your vocalists has resigned, or was she sacked?”

  As Polly watched, she could not help but think that the world in which she lived was upside down. Yes, they appeared to hail bad as good and good as bad. The ill-tempered and inconsiderate Freddie Fruitless was being given a hero’s welcome with all the stops pulled out. Whereas Roberta and the lovely sisters who were, to Polly’s mind, the real heroes were left to discreetly slip off the boat into oblivion. So in Polly’s young mind nothing in life added up. With Freddie gone and the crowd dispersing, Polly picked up her schoolbag and, with Langdon still under one arm, started to descend down the steps that led to dry land.

  “One minute, miss,�
� said a stern voice.

  Polly felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around quite startled, but then relaxed. It was Captain Humdinger.

  “You weren’t about to leave my ship without saying good-bye, were you, Polly?” he said with a grin as he stroked his white whiskers.

  Polly smiled up at the captain.

  “Oh, please forgive me. I know I should have come to find you to say good-bye and thank you, but I got so caught up watching Freddie and the Backsliders disembark. You should have seen the amazing welcome he received. It was truly awesome, with banners and streamers and…”

  The captain put his finger over Polly’s lips to stop her. He then looked into her eyes and touchingly spoke words of great wisdom.

  “Dear, sweet Polly, there is a way that seems right to a man, but in truth it’s the pathway that leads only to death,” he said quietly, his deep voice betraying a deep sadness.

  “I don’t know what you mean Captain Humdinger,” replied Polly.

  “You will one day, Polly. Of that I assure you,” he said, patting her on the back. “Now I must go back to the purser’s office and sort out a few things before I too get to leave my lovely ship and head off to visit relatives. Can I get one of my crew to give you a lift anywhere?”

  Polly declined his kind offer, for she wasn’t entirely sure where she was meant to be heading, but she kept this little fact to herself. “After all, if you don’t know where you’re going, then you’re bound to end up somewhere else,” she thought to herself. As a result of that sobering little thought, she made the decision to study her little map as soon as she was able. But she was also greatly troubled by the thought that all her long trip around the world had done was take her round in circles and make her later than ever for tea in Piadora.

  She gave the dear and kindly captain one final hug, and then with her schoolbag over her shoulder and Langdon at her side, she alighted from the vessel secretly feeling quite sad and melancholic.