by Freya North
‘Polly?’ the woman mouthed, from some distance.
‘Yes!’ Polly mouthed back, nodding and grinning.
‘Polly!’ the woman declared when they were close to, ‘hi there!’
‘Hullo,’ said Polly, a little breathless, ‘how do you do?’
‘I’m Kate Tracey, welcome,’ the woman said, gripping the placard between her knees so she could shake Polly’s hand heartily, ‘how you doing?’
‘Oh,’ said Polly, ‘absolutely fine, thank you.’
‘Good! This is Bogey. Bogey say hi.’
Polly hadn’t even seen the dog, having been preoccupied with Kate’s glinting eyes behind red-rimmed owl-frame spectacles.
‘Hullo Bogey!’ Polly declared, flopping to her knees and encircling her arms about the oversized Airedale’s neck while he slurped at her cheek. ‘As in Humphrey?’ she asked Kate.
‘Sure thing,’ Kate confirmed, trading the dog’s lead for Polly’s trolley.
‘I’m Fenton as in Roger and James,’ Polly explained, jigging to keep up with Kate who was slaloming effortlessly through the concourse towards the exit, ‘although I’m related to neither. Unfortunately.’
‘That’s too bad,’ rued Kate kindly, coming to a standstill, cocking her head and nodding at Polly, ‘I’m kinda partial to British photographers and British poets.’
Polly was most impressed.
‘I’ve had rampant affairs with both species,’ confided Kate through the side of her mouth while she walked. ‘Rampant!’ she all but growled. ‘In the sixties,’ she said, by way of justification.
Polly laughed.
I like this woman!
What’s she like then?
She’s head of art at Hubbardtons. I suppose she must be in her early fifties, but she’s quite trendy with her hair cut into a wonderful feathery crop and her face framed by these wacky specs. She has a round, sparkling face and chipmunk cheeks when she smiles. She’s wearing a lovely old leather jacket – which has obviously known no other owner – checked trousers and funky chunky boots. She walks incredibly fast and, oh how funny, she’s just clicked and winked at the newspaper-stand chap. He must be a hundred and twenty. Ha! Here’s her car and it’s a real slice of America – what they call a station-wagon, I think, with that faux wooden panelling along the side?
Do you know, I’m actually here! I’m in America, in the car park at Logan Airport. It’s not frightening, it’s fantastic. Can’t believe it. Wow!
‘All right! Here we go, luggage in the trunk, Bogey in the back, Polly up front with me.’
‘How long will the journey take?’
‘About three and a half.’
‘Bet that’s just round the block for you – rather than London to Liverpool for me. Is it scenic?’
‘Round the what? I’ve been to Liverpool, you know, in the sixties, of course. And yup, the route’s pretty.’
‘Fantastic! I’ve never been to America.’
‘You’re gonna have a lot of fun,’ said Kate, nodding sagely and tapping Polly lightly on the knee. ‘You’ll never want to leave.’ Polly tapped Kate back.
Oh yes I will. Everything I am is in the UK.
‘I like your checked trousers,’ she said instead.
Kate laughed, short and sharp. ‘They’re plaid pants over here.’
The journey passed quickly, Kate talking nineteen to the dozen while Polly’s eyes, like her ears, worked overtime to take in all she could.
School on Saturdays – nightmare!
Wooden houses. Big cars. Sidewalks. Very fat people. Fantastically thin people.
So I’m to have a room at Kate’s house for the first term.
Driving on the wrong side. Policemen with guns and cool glasses.
Term started last Thursday but the first weekly faculty meeting is this Thursday evening.
The most enormous trucks imaginable, huge radiator grilles quite menacing. Truck drivers up in the gods with baseball caps. Kids with baseball caps back to front.
There’ll be no more than twelve in a class – that’s phenomenal.
The Charles River. Sculling. Harvard round the bend and out of sight. Concord River. Connecticut River.
Kate, lovely Kate, stopping at a tiny bakery just across the state line, buying me a cinnamon bun and a double decaff coffee.
‘We’re gonna have a whole lot of fun. You’re gonna just love school, you’ll fit in a dream.’
Will I? Hope I live up to your expectations – you seem to have decided an awful lot about me.
It was dark when they reached Hubbardtons Spring but Polly was vaguely aware that the houses, for the most part, were white planked and that the dark, woolly masses looming in the background were the tree-covered hills.
‘95 per cent of Vermont is tree covered,’ Kate informed the squinting Polly. ‘Hell, there’s a nip in the air, come on in.’
The front door, it transpired, was never used. Kate explained it was for show and that the house would have looked kind of funny without one. Polly was led instead around the side of the house, up wooden steps to the wooden deck where three men drank beer from small bottles and, after brief ‘hi’s and ‘hullo’s all round, she led Polly into the house. Straight into the warm kitchen which smelt divine, passed a gargantuan fridge smothered with photos and various magnets, round a corner, up some stairs, along a corridor, down three steps and sharp left into an ‘L’ shaped room with a decisive chill to it.
‘Been airing it for you. It’s not really been used since Great Aunt Clara died.’
Polly looked horrified.
‘Hey! That was ten years ago. And she was one helluva lady. You want to unpack? You want a beer?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t think I like beer.’
‘Tell you what, I’ll fetch you one that’ll change your mind. And your life. I’ll put money on it.’
With Kate disappeared, Polly shut the windows and closed the double curtains; lace first, chintz second. She absorbed the details of the room in an instant: painted white iron queen-size bed with a handmade patchwork quilt, an old rocker with two slats missing from the back, a chest of drawers warped sufficiently for none to be closed flush, a bookcase crammed full, framed prints of Van Gogh’s bedroom, Monet’s water-lily garden and Cézanne’s gardener, and an exquisite watercolour of maple trees ablaze in the autumn.
‘Fall,’ corrected Kate, making Polly realize she must have been talking out loud. ‘Here you go,’ she sang, thrusting a cold bottle of life-changing beer into Polly’s hands, ‘I’ll be out the back with the guys. You take your time. We’ll have dinner in forty-five.’
Supper? Isn’t it one in the morning?
Not for you Polly, it’s only eight o’clock.
But Max’ll be fast asleep. I can’t call him.
It’s already tomorrow for Max. He hasn’t seen you since yesterday.
I haven’t even said ‘yes’ yet.
‘The guys’ turned out to be Kate’s husband Clinton (‘As in Eastwood?’ Polly had asked in awe. ‘Sure!’ he had responded. ‘Or as in President. But we’ll go for the former if you don’t mind.’); another foreign exchange teacher who was Chinese and asked to be called Charles with a silent ‘s’ though his real name sounded something like Bik-toy-ng, and finally another young teacher from Hubbardtons called Greg who informed Polly he taught ‘Math’.
‘Sss?’ suggested Polly, imagining only one side on a triangle, one axis on a graph, no long division and absolutely no multiplication.
‘Math-th!’ Greg brandished, though it made him spit slightly.
‘That’s some bandanna,’ praised Clinton gently as he heaped spaghetti on to her plate.
To her horror, Polly realized that the Virgin Atlantic complimentary eye-mask was still propped up on her forehead.
‘You want to trade?’ Kate asked. ‘For another beer, say?’
‘Yes,’ mumbled crimson-cheeked Polly, biting her lip and digging her nails into the mask, ‘and yes.’
/> Kate examined the snooze-mask carefully and then tucked it into her pocket triumphantly.
Concerned that the new arrival should vanquish jet-lag, the group ensured that Polly did not go to bed until a respectable half past ten though it meant, on waking the next morning, that she had little recollection of the latter part of the night before, could not remember what or if she’d eaten and had to be reintroduced to Greg from scratch later that morning.
After ten hours of thick, dreamless sleep, Polly felt eager to set her first full day in motion and to acquaint herself with her new town, her new job and as many new peers as her mind could possibly catalogue. There seemed to be no one around, a feeble ‘Morning?’ from the bedroom door brought no reply. After encountering two dead ends, Polly found her way back to the kitchen and occupied herself by introducing herself to the fridge door where she came across Kate through the decades alongside affable-looking people with great teeth. The magnets holding the photos in place were quite something: colonial houses, a host of Disney characters, a golden angel, various dogs, a Red Sox shirt, a variety of bagels and doughnuts – all in miniature and mostly chipped.
‘I don’t call it my kitsch-en for nothing!’
‘Kate!’
‘Good morning there! I’m going to have you fetch the bread and milk, that way you’ll catch the layout of the town – and I can show you the short cut to school later.’
‘Fine,’ shrugged Polly, ‘fire away.’
‘Out the back door, over the lawn, through the passageway between those two houses there – with me so far? Hang a left, cross the street, first right. The store is the first building on the left. Got that?’
‘Aye, Cap’n Tracey.’
‘Hey? Who?’
‘You!’ said Polly fondly.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise that the store was called Hubbardtons. The proprietor told Polly that Great John himself had worked there as a young boy. And bought all his provisions there throughout his life.
‘Kate’s sent me for her daily bread,’ Polly explained.
‘Sure thing,’ said the proprietor, who was really too old to be wearing a denim skirt and sneakers, ‘and what’ll I call you?’
‘Oh, I’m Polly Fenton. From England. I’ve come to teach at the John Hubbardton Academy. English.’
‘Uh-huh, Hubbardtons,’ said the proprietor, whose hair was neatly held in place with a child’s novelty hair grips, ‘I’m pleased to meet you, my name’s Marsha – but you write it Mar-see-a, OK? That’s Mar-C.I.A. See?’ Polly nodded vigorously, wondering when she’d ever need to write to the proprietor of Hubbardtons Grocery Store.
It did not take much scrutinizing for Polly to familiarize herself with the layout of Hubbardtons Spring, though she would need a map to find her way round the school grounds for the first week. The town was laid out neatly either side of Main Street with Hubbardtons River running parallel to it. Though shrouded from view by a thatch of pine and maple, the water chattered constantly and Polly was all ears. There was a small fire station at one end of Main Street, at the other a church; white, wooden and archetypal (Polly once had a New England calendar with one on every page), marking a fork in the road. One leg obviously skirted alongside Hubbardtons (the river), the other marched upwards towards Hubbardtons (the mountain). Along Main Street, small stores sat amicably with houses and most of the buildings had flags outside, brightly coloured silk designs alongside the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes waving to Polly.
Everywhere I look I’m being welcomed. And yet no one really knows me at all. Poor Jen Carter, I can’t imagine a Belsize Park reception coming anywhere near as close.
Though she was keen to undertake a thorough exploration of Main Street and where it led, she was keener to taste the warm bread she was carrying. She returned to Pleasant Street, off by heart, back to Kate’s home.
‘Did you meet Marsha with the C.I.A?’ joked Kate, tearing a hunk of bread and offering the loaf to Polly to do the same.
‘Met Marsha,’ Polly confirmed, wrestling with the lid of the Marmite and then offering it to Kate.
‘Jelly?’ traded Kate, with her mouth full.
‘Please,’ said Polly, accepting blueberry jam without raising her eyebrows.
A very different taste to good old Marmite. A rather pleasant surprise.
You have to try new things.
The next morning, with her body clock just about reset for Vermont, it was time for Polly to go to school. The John Hubbardton Academy was more impressive, more beautiful than either the brochure suggested or Polly had imagined. Neat pathways cut through well-tended swathes of lawn and led to the various buildings which made up the school. It was evident that they varied greatly in age, and therefore style, but the uniformity of the copper-red brick with creamy-grey stone windows and detailing gave the campus a homogeneity. Kate named each building and its resident faculty, and introduced Polly to practically everyone who passed by. Polly absorbed names such as Brentwood, Stuyvesant, Peter, Finnigan and Stewart though she forgot immediately which was architecture and which was human – and which was teacher and who was the pupil.
‘This is me,’ Kate said, clasping the pillar on the porch of a small but noble building, ‘this is where art matters.’
‘Where do I go?’ Polly asked. ‘Where’s “me”?’
‘See that place directly opposite,’ asked Kate, pointing to a majestic three-storey building with a great furl of steps leading up to it, ‘that’s Hubbardton Hall. That’s where the fundamentals are housed: English, Math, History – also the admin offices. Go up the stairs and knock on the first door to your left. They’ll be waiting. They know you’re here. They’ll show you to your class. Enjoy!’
Dutifully, Polly crossed the lawn (via the path, of course), climbed the stairs (twelve) and knocked on the first door to her left.
‘Enter!’
It was a woman’s voice. Polly popped her head around the door.
‘Hullo?’
The woman sat at a word processor and smiled broadly at Polly without taking her eyes from the screen.
‘Hi there. He’ll be right with you.’
Sure enough, whoever ‘he’ was appeared from a connecting door and bowled over to Polly with his hand outstretched; a substantial figure with dark curls and an opaque beard.
‘Powers!’ he boomed, shaking her hand with both of his clasped around it.
‘Fenton!’ Polly replied, loudly and hastily and as she thought she ought. They observed each other, both slightly puzzled. The man continued to shake her hand while he cocked his head, said ‘hmm’.
‘Come,’ he said, ‘you have a class to teach.’
He led her along the grand entrance hall, clad with portraits of Great J.H. and reverberating with the echo of footsteps and chatter. No one appeared to be looking at her and there were too many of them for her to focus on. It was just another day at school. And now she was part of it. She was the new girl. She had to fit in.
I have to fit in. People have expectations. I was chosen.
‘Your first class, lit crit, are freshmen and sophomore together.’
‘I see,’ said Polly, clueless, ‘what years are they?’
‘Ninth and tenth grade.’
‘I see,’ said Polly, none the wiser, wondering how Jen Carter was fairing with Upper Third and Lower Fourth.
‘Jackson!’ Polly’s chaperon called to a good-looking man with a goatee beard and John Lennon spectacles, ‘come over here!’
‘Hey Powers, how are you? Hi there,’ he nodded to Polly, ‘I’m Jackson Thomas, I teach English too.’
‘Hullo,’ responded Polly, trying to sound casual and look at ease, ‘I’m Fenton, Polly.’
The men regarded her and, while Jackson Thomas still wore the perplexed look that had been Powers’s previously, Powers suddenly burst out laughing, slapped Jackson on the back and patted Polly’s shoulders liberally.
‘What?’ laughed Polly with a little discomfort.
‘Hey?’ enquired Jackson.
‘Fenton!’ Powers laughed.
‘Yes?’ said Polly.
Suddenly Jackson roared alongside him.
‘Sorry?’ asked Polly, now a little irritated and her eye colour saying so. The joke was on her but what on earth was it?
‘My name,’ said Powers, ‘is Powers Mateland. This is my colleague, Jackson Thomas.’
‘Mateland,’ mused Polly, thinking it an odd Christian name, but there again, this was America.
‘My name,’ Powers repeated, slowly and theatrically, ‘is Powers. And his name,’ he chuckled, wagging his thumb at the bespectacled one, ‘is Jackson. Your name, unless I’m very much mistaken, is Polly. We don’t subscribe to the formality of using surnames here at Hubbardtons. I hope that’s cool with you?’
Polly looked hard at her shoes and tried to shuffle in a nonchalant manner.
Idiot girl!
She looked up at the men.
Powers and Jackson.
‘I see,’ she said cautiously before warming to the unaffected smiles the men bestowed on her, ‘I thought—’
‘I know – kinda weird to meet people christened Jackson and Powers when you’ve lived your life in a country of Johns and Henrys?’
Polly looked at the men’s shoes. Powers was wearing well-worn moccasins; Jackson had a pair of highly polished classic penny loafers. She looked up, shook her head and raised her eyebrows, obviously at herself.
‘What a twit I am, please excuse me,’ she said, while a delighted Powers mouthed ‘twit?’ with twisted eyebrows at Jackson. ‘May I cordially introduce myself? I am Polly Fenton and I am most pleased to make your acquaintance.’
Her voice came out more clipped than usual, but only she was aware of it.
Mind you, that’s probably what they’re expecting. I won’t let them down. I’ll play along.
They all shook hands anew and Jackson led Polly to her classroom.