by Jenny Colgan
It was Huckle who watched him on his way, taking one tentative, slightly wobbly step, then another, then standing on the side of the rock pool like a child on his first day of school, shooting sideways glances at the other puffins, inching steadily closer to them whilst attempting to appear nonchalant. It was Huckle who, completely without embarrassment, blew him a kiss.
‘Go, sweet baby,’ he said. ‘On you go.’
Polly, by contrast, felt frozen. She couldn’t move. She flashed back to Neil playing all by himself, so lonely by the rock pool outside the lighthouse, and damped the feeling down immediately. He would come back. She gripped on to Huckle’s hand so tightly he almost yelped. But instead, he just squeezed back.
‘Well, if we’re going to do it, we should do it all at once,’ Huckle had said, which had made a ton of sense when they were discussing it in the lighthouse by candlelight, all cosy and cuddling and getting ready for bed, but absolutely bloody none when they were actually standing at the railway station three days later.
Polly had insisted on getting the cab to the station with him; there was a bus that would take her back. Well, there was one bus a day. She didn’t know when it was, but she really didn’t care. As long as Huckle was on Cornish soil she had to be with him.
‘What are you doing to my phone?’ he protested, as she fiddled with the buttons.
‘I’m putting in a Google alert for Mount Polbearne,’ she said. ‘So you can see what we’re up to.’
He laughed. ‘But nothing is what we’re up to,’ he said. ‘That’s why we like it here.’
Polly looked at him.
‘It’s just a reminder,’ she said. ‘The last time you went, I really did think I would never see you again.’
‘I know,’ said Huckle, taking back his phone, and tossing his kitbag over his shoulder. It had been his father’s in Vietnam, and he had never used anything else. ‘But this time you know you will. It’s just a job. A hard, boring job, and then I will be back again with big bunches of cash and be a kept man who dabbles in honey.’
‘And me,’ pointed out Polly. ‘I want you to dabble in me.’
Huckle smiled. ‘Oh well, obviously. But you know, you are much more than just a hobby to me, Polly Waterford.’
They stood, both very still. The railway station – a branch line, with hardly any services; Huckle would have to change to even get to the London train – was utterly deserted. Birds of all sorts could be heard singing in the hedgerows. Bushes grew over the platform edges, and the long-abandoned tea room had dandelions and daisies bursting through every crack in the concrete. The hum of the electric lines emphasised the heavy stillness of the morning. It felt like a storm was on the way.
Polly blinked.
‘You know what I reckon?’ Kerensa had said a couple of nights earlier, as they had gloomily shared a bottle of Mount Polbearne’s cheapest white wine (from the grapes of several former Soviet bloc territories, according to the label).
‘What do you reckon?’ Polly had said.
‘I reckon all this hardship’s going to be good for you. I reckon he’s going to propose.’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ Polly had said vehemently. ‘How would we pay for a wedding? Sell a kidney?’
‘It’s not about the wedding,’ said Kerensa.
‘Says you,’ said Polly. Kerensa’s wedding had been a Kardashian-style extravaganza that had left everyone broken, tearful and exhausted, which Polly still doubted had been Kerensa’s original intention.
‘Don’t ask me what kind of house we could have had back in Plymouth for the price of that wedding,’ growled Kerensa. ‘I have decided not to think like that for the sake of inner peace.’
She took a large slug of the tongue-stripping wine.
‘This also helps towards inner peace.’
Polly nodded. ‘Anyway. God, no, with everything else going on, it’s way, way not on the agenda. We haven’t even discussed it.’
Kerensa raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes, but before he goes… he’ll want to do something, won’t he?’
Polly had shaken her head. She hadn’t ever felt that she and Huckle… Well, she certainly hadn’t envisaged a big white wedding day – Polly was always happier in the kitchen, behind the scenes. Having to be a bridesmaid at Kerensa’s wedding had been quite enough fuss for one lifetime. But she did, sometimes, in her quieter moments, think of a blond, golden-skinned chubby baby boy (and a lot of stair gates).
But she had never brought it up, and Huckle had certainly never mentioned it, and the timing couldn’t possibly be worse, so she had put it out of her mind completely.
‘Neh,’ she said, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t really feel. It had taken Huckle a long time to get over his last girlfriend, Candice, and a long time to get ready to commit. She didn’t want to push things. ‘I am not in the least bit fussed about all that. At least, not compared to the two million other things I have to fuss about right now.’
Kerensa knocked back a bit more of the wine.
‘Quite right,’ she said tipsily. ‘For richer for poorer is a right fricking pain in the arse.’
Not a breath of wind stirred the heavy foliage, the wild thyme that grew unconstrained up the rusting fence of the old branch line, the vast field of daisies that made up the bank. Polly and Huckle looked at one another. It was as if there was nobody else in the entire universe; as if, like in Where the Wild Things Are, the vines had claimed the world all around.
Huckle took a step towards her, and lifted her chin with his strong hand. His eyes were amused, as always, that clear blue that looked out on a world he expected to be good to him and, as a result, generally was. But today there was sadness in them too, and concern.
Polly swallowed and tried not to think of her conversation with Kerensa. She suddenly wished she wasn’t wearing her faded old rolled-up dungarees with a floral shirt underneath. She couldn’t possibly have known that Huckle thought she looked lovelier than she would in the priciest ballgown imaginable; he would carry this image of her in his heart. The sun was glinting on her hair, and he pulled her close and gently kissed the freckles on her nose, and realised, suddenly, that there was so much he wanted to say, but if he started, if he even tried to get the words out, then he would start to cry, and he wouldn’t get on the train, and they would be in an even worse situation than they were in already.
So even though he saw Polly’s eyes on him, wide and slightly confused, he still couldn’t speak, right up to the second when there was a faint push of wind, then a whistle, then a roar, and the train with its out-of-date rolling stock with the hand-operated doors slowly pulled up.
‘Huckle…’ Polly was saying, when suddenly out of the carriages spilled a huge party, a massive group of young men and women, all giggling and carrying champagne; the men in morning dress, the women in colourful dresses and hats and fascinators, all laughing and shouting at the tops of their voices, as behind them at the front of the station drew up, seemingly out of nowhere, a fleet of smart black cars with blue and pink ribbons tied to them.
‘A wedding,’ murmured Polly. It must be taking place in one of the grand hotels down on the coast – a very smart thing by the looks of it. The train nearly totally emptied, and, amidst the noise and colour of the huge gang, Huckle climbed aboard, carefully hauled up his kitbag, then leant his big shaggy head out of the pull-down window.
‘Polly,’ he said. She looked at him hopefully, eyes wide, holding on to his hand. But he was too far up to kiss, and neither of them could believe it when the guard blew the whistle and the train started to move, slowly, with so much left unsaid between them and so much left unkissed, and Polly started to speed up with the train, but that was silly of course, and all she could say was ‘Goodbye!’ and all he could do was lean out, shouting, ‘I’m coming back! I’m coming back!’ in a way that sounded to Polly like he was trying to convince someone, possibly her, possibly himself. And then, in a breath on the falling wind: ‘I love you.’
And then the train was a dot on the green horizon, and Polly turned away, into the great, happy, celebrating throng, who were chattering excitedly and loading themselves into cars, which swept off gaily down the little railway lane, to whoops and cheers and a cork popping out of a bottle. Polly watched them go, then trudged in the same direction, to sit and wait for a bus that would never come; to go home to a lighthouse where everything that was light had been extinguished.
Chapter Thirteen
‘I’m still so lonely.’
‘Can’t you put yourself out there a little more?’
‘I tried that. Then he vanished completely from the town, so I learned my lesson about that. I don’t know. I think they all hate me because of my cat. And because I nobbed Huckle’s brother or something. They all talk about me all the time.’
‘Is that the reality, do you think, or something you’re projecting?’
‘What’s the difference?’
Two weeks later, Polly had more or less given up on trying to sleep. It wasn’t as if she had anything to get up for. In the kitchen, her pans, her loaf tins and baguette brick and living yeast went ignored and unused.
All the pleasures she had taken so seriously – feeding herself and her friends, enjoying the merits of good food and good company, doing things slowly and getting them right – all of this had gone by the wayside. She had lost it. She felt so sorry for herself. Malcolm had got Jayden to paint over her name, which he had done, feeling like a war-time collaborator, he’d explained later, even though Polly said it was fine, it didn’t matter. Except he hadn’t got quite the right pale grey colour that Chris, Polly’s ex, had used, so all you could see were big brown chunky paintbrush marks.
Every night Polly sat by the window pretending she wasn’t watching out for Neil. Huckle would call, but he was worried by how down she sounded; how unlike herself. He was very concerned about her.
Huckle himself was frenziedly busy. He had turned up tired, dusty, astonished anew by the heat in the great flat plains of Georgia, with the corn high, to find Clemmie in a state of nervous collapse trying to deal with suppliers, creditors, field workers, unseasonal rainstorms and generalised chaos. When she saw him, she burst into tears.
‘I thought you were Dubose coming home.’
‘Won’t I do?’
Clemmie sobbed. ‘You’ll be… you’ll be much better.’
As soon as Huckle pulled out the farm accounts, he understood why. Everything was a terrible mess. He couldn’t figure out what Dubose had been doing all this time. With a sigh, tired and jet-lagged, he let Clemmie make him some iced tea – he’d missed it terribly – and sat down in the tiny dark office in the old wooden farmhouse. It was going to be a long couple of months.
Two weeks later he was just about starting to get a handle on it. He spoke to the merchants, timed out a proper schedule for the labourers, and started to get everything gradually moving into line. The accounts had involved night after night of painful reworking of columns of figures; it reminded him of his old city job, and why he’d left it behind. His days started early – the farm had a dairy herd as well as crops – and carried on well into the evening. Clemmie fed him grits and bacon in the morning; waffles; proper fried chicken at night, but he barely stopped, even to eat, which meant he wasn’t nearly as attentive to Polly as he knew he ought to be. But right here in front of him, as the golden heat poured down on the vast acres of land, there were jobs and livelihoods that Dubose had been in severe danger of simply dribbling away, and he had to get his head down and sort it out. He couldn’t remember ever working so hard.
Even though Huckle had set up a bank account for her and started sending little bits of money as he gradually turned the farm around, Polly hadn’t used a penny of it. She hadn’t gone to see any vans, hadn’t started thinking about what would be good and easy to make in very enclosed conditions, and summer was coming in fast. The season was short, and she would really have to make the most of it before people decided that coming to Mount Polbearne for a good lunch was such a waste of time they just wouldn’t bother.
The time difference was six hours, which was tricky, as late at night Polly sounded sleepy and a little despondent. And she talked about that puffin a lot. Huckle wanted to tell her to get back into the kitchen and bake, for heaven’s sake, but he didn’t know a way to say it without sounding cruel. He decided he needed to get Reuben to give her a kick up the arse. But finding more time in his day was tricky at the moment.
Back in Cornwall, the weather had stayed as heavy and unsettled as Polly’s mood, and she had given up on sleep altogether. She threw on one of Huckle’s heavy plaid winter shirts, put on her sandals and clop-clopped down the circular stairs of the lighthouse, slipping out of the door into a warm, starry evening and an almost-full moon.
She pulled the shirt around her and wandered down over the rocks. The pub and the chippy were closed; the fishermen long gone off to the hunting grounds, where radars beeped to tell them of the fathomless unsuspecting shoals beneath their feet where they could drop their nets. It would not, she thought, looking up at the jewelled sky, be a bad night to be a fisherman. Some nights were very bad. But not tonight.
She walked slowly across the low-tide shingle beyond the harbour wall, between the groynes. It was almost a beach when the tide was out and the old road to the mainland was revealed in all its glory. She picked up a stone and hurled it with all her might into the water. Then another, then another.
‘Oi!’ came a voice. ‘Careful now, you’ll have someone’s eye out.’
Polly jumped.
‘Oh goodness,’ she said, turning round and forgetting to be cross. ‘You startled me.’
Selina stood there.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I saw you down there and… well. I wanted… I wanted to apologise.’
Polly swallowed hard.
‘You nearly killed my bird,’ she said, before she could help herself. ‘He nearly died.’
‘I didn’t know it was your bird,’ said Selina. ‘He just hopped into the room. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.’
‘Cats shouldn’t kill birds.’
‘Can I tell you that I’ve already had that vet on and on and on at me about this?’ said Selina. ‘He also threatened to de-claw Lucas, which let me tell you I think is illegal.’
Polly was pleased to hear about Patrick sticking up for her.
‘But I am so, so sorry. I didn’t realise he meant so much to you. Lucas was just doing what cats do.’
‘I know,’ said Polly. ‘I do know. Neil shouldn’t have been hopping about in a house; he should have been flying around outside.’
‘Well, that is what most birds do, isn’t it?’
Polly’s eyes were shining with tears.
‘We had to send him away.’
‘No way,’ said Selina, genuinely shocked. ‘That is so harsh. Not because of Lucas?’
‘No,’ said Polly. ‘Well, yes. And no. No. Just because.’
Selina came and put her arm around her.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘I am so, so sorry.’ She paused. ‘I cannot tell you how weird it is for me to be saying that to somebody else for a change.’
Polly managed a weak smile.
‘I can imagine.’
She swallowed the lump in her throat.
‘I miss him,’ she said. ‘I miss them both, I miss them so much. Huckle’s gone too.’
‘I know about that,’ said Selina. ‘I haven’t heard that mad bike for ages. I overheard someone in Muriel’s saying he’d gone away for work. Then they all looked at me like that was my fault too. After…’
‘Where did Dubose go?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Selina. ‘It’s kind of my hobby, making men disappear at short notice.’
Polly looked at her.
‘Why…’
‘Because,’ said Selina. ‘Because I was unbelievably lonely and because he was nice to me.’
Polly got a massive flashback to t
he previous year, and to Tarnie. She shook her head.
‘I understand. And people aren’t blaming you.’
‘Really?’ said Selina. ‘They all think you’re mad for buying that lighthouse, by the way.’
‘Thank you for that totally surprising piece of news,’ said Polly drily.
Selina looked down and kicked a rock with her foot.
‘So apparently I’ve managed to completely screw things up for everyone. That’s the message I’ve been getting. Everywhere I go, everyone falls totally silent. Apparently I keep a tiger in my house who brutally attacked the mayor or something.’