Polly

by Freya North

  During her Tour de Vermont, she came across very few people. Two men busy at work in the orchards (standing with hands on hips, paunches out, gazing in reverence at their trees) gave her invigoratingly tart apples and a woman she passed, hoeing a vegetable garden, invited her in for lemonade, cookies and a chat.

  ‘You English? How wonderful!’ Polly’s host was so wide-eyed and happy of the fact that Polly found herself putting on her best vowels and most gracious adjectives.

  ‘What’ll I call you?’

  ‘I’m Polly, Fenton. How do you do.’

  ‘Polly Fenton – isn’t that just fine?’

  ‘I say, is it? Thank you. And you?’

  ‘I’m Ian.’

  ‘Ian?’

  ‘That’s right, Ian Paisley.’

  ‘Ian? Paisley?’

  ‘Yes? That’s me – you OK, hon?’

  Polly left soon after that, fearing that the woman was slightly loopy and possibly a little dangerous too. In the early hours, however, Polly awoke with a start.

  ‘Ann,’ she said, sitting up in the dark, ‘Ann. Bloody Ann of course. It just sounds like Ian.’

  Polly made a ten-mile detour via Ann Paisley’s house the next day so that she could be nicer to her; she took her some sour windfall apples and was careful to incorporate the lady’s name into her sentences. They didn’t talk about much, just sat on Ann’s veranda with the lemonade and the apples and the company, allowing the day to pass them by.

  ‘I think,’ said Max, while he sucked up a strand of spaghetti sonorously, leaving a dribble of tomato sauce on his chin like a frighteningly trendy goatee, ‘I might pop over to the States.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Megan, trying to sound nonchalant and not desperate for details.

  ‘Mmm,’ agreed Dominic, slurping a strand of his spaghetti but suffering a not-so-becoming blotch of sauce to his cheek, ‘when?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Max, raising his glass and toasting Delia Smith.

  ‘Delia,’ said Dominic.

  ‘La Smith,’ said Megan.

  ‘Maybe soon,’ Max continued, ‘maybe not. Depends on work. Depends on flights. Depends on money.’

  ‘I have a friend in the travel business,’ Megan said helpfully.

  ‘I can lend you a bob or two,’ Dominic added.

  Max regarded his wine. ‘Depends how I feel,’ he said quietly. Dominic moved the conversation round to cricket and Megan saw to the dessert.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Middlemarch,’ said Polly, proudly holding up her own beloved Penguin classic which was so well thumbed that it fanned out slightly, rather like a bouquet, ‘by George Eliot.’

  She waited, grinning at her class; the first lesson that term and it was wonderful to be amongst them again. Right on cue, Laurel Lap-top raised her hand.

  ‘Miss Fenton, what are his dates?’

  ‘Ah ha,’ said Polly, wagging her finger and realizing how she loved her job. ‘He doesn’t have dates at all – George Eliot being a nom de plume, a pseudonym.’

  ‘So what’s the psycho’s name?’ AJ asked, so proud of his pun that he had dismissed with hand raising altogether. The class gave him a reverential chuckle.

  ‘Ho,’ said Polly fondly, ‘what a wit you are, young master Harvey.’

  ‘AJ,’ AJ said quietly, looking a little uncomfortable, wondering if Miss Fenton would renege on their pact.

  ‘Marian Evans,’ Polly replied to his great relief, if utter incomprehension. Marian Evans he could take, Anthony Jerome he could not.

  ‘You could say,’ Miss Fenton continued, clearing her throat for she was about to sing, ‘didn’t shave her legs and then she was a he.’ This was greeted by a raucous chorus of Lou Reed aficionados imploring Miss Fenton to take a walk on the wild side. ‘I did,’ she said, too quietly for her serenading class to hear, ‘and I wouldn’t really recommend it.’

  After lunch, she gave her senior class their copies of Mill on the Floss. Having ascertained that Maggie and Tom Tulliver did not live anywhere near Lilliput and no, that wasn’t Ted Danson either, but a guy called Gulliver by a guy called Swift which wasn’t a pseudonym for someone called Doris, her class settled down to their work and afforded Polly a few moments’ window gazing. The quadrangle below. Out over the hockey pitch. There, the sports hall, the gym, the athletic trainer’s surgery. Big deal. So what? Anyway, the athletic trainer was now called Karen Crane.

  ‘Get a vibrator,’ Polly said to Lorna, her expression and tone deadly serious.

  Lorna shook her head and cast a wry smile away from Polly. ‘I don’t know,’ she mused.

  ‘Get a vibrator,’ Polly repeated with some urgency now, giving a quick stamp with her right foot for emphasis.

  The teachers made their way to the memorial garden, positioned just before the school grounds petered out at the lower reaches of Peter Mountain. Here a collection of white birch trees were each adorned with a brass plaque bearing the name of a deceased alumnus. In the fall, the yellow leaves had blazed out against the white bark and Polly had learned their nickname, beacons of the forest. That these particular beacons also celebrated life seemed to Polly a most resonant commemoration and she found this small arboretum a peaceful, affirming place, whatever the season and leaf colour. Now she was going to save Lorna’s life.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ she said unequivocally as she and Lorna sat on the bench wedged out of a tree trunk and laid their lunch across their knees, snapping into their cans of Coke in unison. Lorna drank thoughtfully and then shrugged, smiling with a look of elation and anticipation that Polly knew very well. ‘I think you’re mad. Stupid. Really I do. I’ll buy you a vibrator – an enormous, rippled, singing and dancing, multicoloured one, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t need a vibrator,’ Lorna qualified, ‘it’s not the sex, per se, that I’m after. It’s just, kinda like – heck, you know, shit.’

  Polly knew precisely.

  ‘I guess,’ Lorna continued, more serious now, ‘that maybe I want to go fly free one last time before I make my nest with Tom.’ She sighed satisfied, as if she had put her finger on a very sane idea.

  ‘Don’t!’ Polly warned her, shaking her head and pursing her lips.

  ‘Why not? Tom’ll never know, I’ll make sure of it.’

  ‘Tom won’t need to know,’ Polly said with conviction, ‘you will. And that’s enough to damage the relationship beyond repair.’

  ‘You sound – I don’t know,’ Lorna laughed, ‘like, well, like a teacher. A teacher in the faculty of Love And Life.’

  ‘It happened to a friend,’ Polly said, reading Lorna’s words not as the light-hearted compliment intended, but as acknowledgement of a skill she’d rather not have.

  ‘Yeah?’ Lorna responded, interested.

  ‘Indeed,’ Polly confirmed. ‘She had this incredible boyfriend – gorgeous, funny, kind – Mr Perfectomundo himself, believe me.’

  ‘And? Go on—’

  ‘Well,’ said Polly, chewing on her Caesar salad sub thoughtfully, ‘she, my friend, threw it all away.’

  ‘You don’t say?’

  ‘Yes I do. She bloody well did. She fancied a fling, swore that her boyfriend would never find out and that once she’d had her fill, she’d simply wipe her hands of the whole affair and get on with her life.’

  ‘Way to go!’ Lorna murmured approvingly, wondering if the friend was the Megan about whom Polly so frequently spoke.

  ‘It was certainly one way to go,’ Polly chastised, turning Lorna’s praise on its head, ‘because her boyfriend soon ended the relationship.’

  ‘How did he find out?’ Lorna asked, riveted enough not to have touched her sandwich.

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘No? Hey? So?’

  ‘He left her anyway.’

  Lorna looked simultaneously horrified and confused. Polly concentrated very hard on the brass plaque of Marc Bakarat (Sausalito 1949–Saigon 1968).

  ‘Why?’ said Lorna slowly, beginning to grasp the g
ist and wishing that she hadn’t.

  ‘He left her,’ Polly elaborated slowly, ‘because her actions had changed her. No matter how convinced she was that they wouldn’t, they did. It drove her boyfriend away and into the arms of someone else.’

  ‘Oh my – can you just imagine?’

  Polly did not answer that one directly. ‘This girl, my friend,’ she continued instead, ‘tried to insist that everything was going to be fine, that she forgave him and all that; you know – let’s just move on, wipe the slate clean, fresh start sort of thing.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘No go. The bloke was rightly perturbed by it all – you know men, thinking with their dicks and only contemplating their actions when their brains finally catch up.’ Polly levelled the accusation silently at herself and shuddered. Lorna felt the chill seep across from her friend and into her. Polly’s face was stony. It was also clearly legible.

  ‘Polly?’

  ‘Lorna.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yes. It was me. And I’m not my friend at all any more.’

  Lorna, moved by the honesty of her friend’s words, placed her arm around Polly’s shoulders and murmured soothing things about everything turning out just fine. Polly removed Lorna’s arm gently and regarded her at length before speaking again.

  ‘Among all forms of mistake,’ she said, ‘prophecy is the most gratuitous.’

  Lorna took the gravity of Polly’s tone very seriously. A few moments later, she burst out laughing. ‘And what the fuck does that mean?’

  Polly laughed a little. ‘Middlemarch,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Lorna corrected, with friendly sarcasm, ‘late May.’

  ‘It’s from the novel – I’m doing it with the kids. And I take it to mean that we can’t meddle with the future. Our actions in the present define it – however strongly we might predict otherwise. What you do in the present can truly jeopardize the way you see the future. If you take a risk, you must suffer the consequences being other than how you envisaged. You can’t do something and think “It’ll all be OK”, or “This, this and that will happen” – because one’s comeuppance for such arrogance is that very often it isn’t.’

  They continued with their lunch in silence, drinking from their cans rather noisily.

  ‘Polly?’ Lorna probed.

  ‘I’m not mentioning names,’ Polly all but warned her. ‘The outcome is very different from that which I prophesied. I thought I’d have a quick and rather rampant fling and then find myself gladly in the arms of my Max who was spared from knowing anything about my pathetic escapade.’

  ‘How did Max find out?’ Lorna all but whispered.

  ‘He didn’t,’ Polly confided with a pained smirk, ‘he doesn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him?’ Lorna gasped, stunned. ‘Once you knew that he’d done the self-same thing?’

  ‘No,’ said Polly defiantly, immune to Lorna’s tone of utter disbelief.

  ‘Maybe if you did, it’d even up the score?’ Lorna suggested, as if it was advice that Polly had called for, or a solution she had not considered.

  Polly smiled quickly and forlornly. ‘I wanted a Secret,’ she said very clearly, ‘and secrets are for keeping.’

  ‘Yeah, but—’ Lorna reasoned.

  ‘I can’t break that contract with myself,’ Polly said. ‘What sort of a person would that make me?’ She left the bench for Marc Bakarat’s tree and peeled away a slither of bark. She brought it back and gave it to Lorna.

  ‘Remember,’ said Polly, ‘that I’ve lost Max. He does not want me. Remember that, when you drop your knickers and Tom from your memory.’

  Polly cannot sleep. Her advice to Lorna was also a form of confession. She has broken her secret by sharing it. This has brought her some relief but the weight of it all has not lessened: that her deeds are now known spells danger too. They would have been safer kept locked within. Where would that have left Lorna, though? Without Tom? Feeling like Polly? Burdened by a secret she’d rather not have?

  Polly dresses and tiptoes down through Petersfield House, a dull symphony of creaking floorboards accompanying her footfalls. Out she goes, out into the night, back to the memorial garden; the beacon beeches pale and haunting, welcoming too. She snuggles down into the trunk-bench and folds her arms about herself protectively, a lonely embrace. It is very much night and as clear as day.

  Blaming Chip alone has been but a deluded excuse.

  Heeding Kate’s words has been a convenient excuse.

  I did what I did and I’ve been using Kate’s advice – never to tell a soul – as an easy solution. A way out. I’ve sort of lain the responsibility with Kate, haven’t I? ‘Kate says it’ll be OK as long as I keep it a secret.’ I see the wisdom in her words – but keeping a secret does not mean that I’m entitled to ignore its existence myself.

  She leaves the bench and wanders in between the trees.

  ‘I was unfaithful to the man I love,’ she tells Joseph Hanlon (1920–1994), ‘the man I’ve taken for granted – his presence, his fidelity, his goodness.’ She presses her lips gently against the bark and then dabs her tongue to see what brass tastes like. She pulls herself through the trees; circling, weaving, in and out, a slow folk dance of sorts; the dead folk and their living trees of remembrance lending a helping hand. She holds on to them and draws herself in between and around them all. She feels that they are assisting her; sometimes the trees themselves, sometimes the people they commemorate. She asks Mary Beth Stevens (1967–1993) if she died too young to have any regrets. Mary Beth Stevens seems to answer that she would rather have had more years even if it meant deeds she’d need to atone for. Polly doesn’t quite understand so she hugs the slim trunk until it becomes a beech tree and Mary Beth is just a name on a plaque attached.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she asks, sitting on her heels and picking at bark. ‘What can I do? What’s going to happen to me?’ She listens hard but hears no advice.

  I had it all worked out – without really thinking, actually. There’d be Max. Max and me. Now there isn’t. At all. I’ve lost sight of all I used to see. Now I don’t even know what to look for.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  The trees rustle very softly in night’s slim breeze but no one answers her. No one can tell her what to do or what will happen. She daren’t predict the future, not even what she would like to happen.

  I did that before. Look where it landed me.

  Having no inkling of her fate is fundamentally the most frightening thing. And it is very much a ‘thing’, not a thought, for it is her current reality and she has created it for herself.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  So, Polly has started truly to see the error of her ways. Chip is in Chicago and no longer a member of our cast list. And Max feels that a trip to America might be in order. Eight chapters to go and everything is heading towards a neat and tidy ending.

  As long as Max can book a seat. As long as he still wants to. As long as, if and when he makes it there, he and Polly are indeed reconciled. Two weeks have passed and Megan’s travel-agent friend’s number still lies on top of the Post-it pad, by the phone in the kitchen, becoming ever more sploshed as the days go by.

  Anyway, am I not forgetting something? Of course. Forgetting someone. Jen. Not really a memorable character but a key figure in this tale none the less, and still a potential spanner in the works. Has she had enough Chips in her life for a nourishing diet of Max to be what she desires? Will she hold on to him a little longer, with his permission? Maybe she won’t let him go, certainly not on a peace mission to the States, maybe she’ll entice him to stay.

  So, Jen remains on the scene – how can she not? In Belsize Park, cat- and flat-sitting for Polly and taking her classes? And Polly torments herself that Jen may have appropriated Max too. Megan is a little concerned as well.

  ‘I guess you guys know?’ Jen had said through the corner of a smile which, though small, was delineated with triumph. ‘About Max
and I?’ It was first break. First day of the summer term. Jen looked tanned and radiant, leaner than when she left, blonder too.

  ‘Me,’ Megan had replied with a swift smile that was wholly non-committal. ‘Max and me.’

  ‘You?’ said Jen.

  ‘Grammar,’ shrugged Megan. The staff room was not a fitting location for such a conversation (well, with Polly, then perhaps; with Jen, certainly not) and, just then, Megan realized that she was not an appropriate participant.

  Poor Jen Carter Woman. My loyalties are with Polly. I do not want the blonde statue to smile so connivingly. I will not help the foreign lesion. I don’t want to know what’s going on – if it is. Is it? Still? Should I tell Polly? Nope; change of slant.

  ‘Chip,’ Megan said with confidence, as if the name Max belonged to no one she knew, so why should she even consider it.

  ‘History,’ Jen replied, with a wink. ‘Max has seen to that. I owe it all to him. Can’t wait to see him.’

  Megan cleared her throat but found neither voice nor idea what to say. She couldn’t even say ‘Max?’ in a carefully contrived vague tone. Instead, she looked at her watch, rifled through a clutch of exercise books and did a good act at suddenly being most preoccupied with some fine detail of the Lower Fourth’s homework.

  ‘Catch you later,’ said Jen. Megan watched her leave the staff room.

  Is that a swagger? Sweet Mother Mary help us, Polly especially, for I think it is.

  ‘Dom, I’m seriously worried; honestly, seriously – gravely.’

  ‘Megan, inamorata fantastico, what on earth about?’

  ‘Your brother – my alpha man supremico.’

  ‘Max?’

  ‘No, you.’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘You’re my main man magnificat. But I’m worried about your brother.’

  ‘Max?’

  ‘And Polly’s locum.’

  ‘Jen?’

  ‘Yes. Worried. I am. Very.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Two things. Firstly, though I try to loathe her, to see her as the baddy, actually I feel for her, as well as feeling a bit guilty that we had some part in all of this. Secondly, I don’t think once was enough for her – Jen. And I fear she has persuasively long legs, an influentially fit physique.’