Polly
Freya North
NEW on ebook for the first time with NEW author afterword.He’s out of sight, she’s out of her mind.Polly Fenton is about to embark on a year-long teachers’ exchange to America. Swapping cottage pie for corn dogs is one thing, but trading lives with her American counterpart, Jen, is quite another.The minute Polly’s feet touch down Stateside, she’s swept off them altogether. When she meets Chip Jonson, the school athletic trainer, all thoughts of home suddenly disappear.Spanning three terms and two countries, this is a sparky and sassy story of New England and Old England, fidelity and flirtation, receiving one’s comeuppance – and making amends.
FREYA NORTH
Polly
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblace to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely conincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by
William Heinemann 1998
Copyright © Freya North 1998
Afterword © Freya North 2012
Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Extracts here (#ulink_07ce051e-c201-5870-8380-e36205344ed0), here (#litres_trial_promo) and here (#litres_trial_promo) from ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn; Extracts here (#litres_trial_promo) from ‘Tam O’Shanter’ by Robert Burns;
‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerald Manley Hopkins; ‘Somet, Bright Start’ by John Keats; ‘Proverbial Philosophy’, 1st series. ‘Of Discretion’ by Martin Farquhar Tupper;
‘Lead Kindly Night’ by Henry Newman
The author and publisher have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright holders for permission, and any omissions or errors in the form of credit given will be corrected in future editions
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007462193
Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN:9780007462209
Version: 2017-11-28
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
For Osi
Welcome to the family, sis!
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u6527d602-3792-512c-aa66-6df4f59e9971)
Copyright (#u2681a7e1-7ad1-5fcb-bc4e-8f0f7ee4008b)
Dedication (#u1e69788b-163d-5bf7-978c-65e7be06624f)
Michaelmas (#u37045546-5d61-5a67-adca-caeb7a16228d)
Chapter One (#ue0f63a0c-1162-546b-8f78-b6e30e4517a8)
Chapter Two (#u094b8e1f-b99c-5816-a42b-c3bebb971496)
Chapter Three (#u45b2cb46-eac9-57ca-8b9e-769293b0fd18)
Chapter Four (#u208ed268-2231-50a0-b7d1-4b22a6a55886)
Chapter Five (#ud5bcd226-0667-59fd-9fac-8f4db5b1de02)
Chapter Six (#ub562e027-b18f-5409-a157-32456a5e196c)
Chapter Seven (#u6f4e9185-2d6d-53f8-af04-c4cd82af2a0d)
Chapter Eight (#ud3890360-11a3-57f1-89b5-68bdf0227ebf)
Chapter Nine (#u60869e81-1a6c-5971-88db-2dd7c1fec421)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Lent (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Summer (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Acclaim for Freya (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Freya North (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
MICHAELMAS
Pennies in a stream
Falling leaves of sycamore
Moonlight in Vermont
Karl Suessdorf & John Blackburn, Moonlight in Vermont
ONE
If Polly Fenton had thought for one moment that a year in America was going to have serious ramifications for her accent and her relationship with Max Fyfield, she very probably would not be going. But the concept hasn’t crossed her mind and so she is trading Belsize Park, London, for Hubbardtons Spring, Vermont, on a teachers’ exchange programme.
Tomorrow.
Today, she must pack and prepare.
Currently, she is wrapping articles of clothing around bumper-sized jars of Marmite.
‘Look, Buster, I’ve never been to America,’ she explains to her oversized ginger tom-cat who regards her reproachfully. ‘This is an amazing opportunity,’ she clarifies, as much to herself as to Buster’s withering yawn. ‘Max said so,’ she furthers, looking at a photograph of him, clasping it to her heart before swaddling it in pairs of knickers and placing it in the suitcase.
Apart from Buster, Polly actually has everyone’s blessing. The offer of the exchange wasn’t even put out to tender amongst the school staff and when Polly asked Max what he thought, he declared, ‘Go West, young woman. Wow!’
Her friends have taken to talking to her in American accents, scattering twangy sentences with liberal dashings of ‘sonava’, ‘goddam’ and ‘gee’. Such supportive reactions have enabled Polly to feel just on the verge of rather excited about her year away. And why shouldn’t she be? Her life in London is safe and lovely and she knows it will greet her as such on her return. And yet, over the last week and particularly today, on packing, those quivers of excitement are masking tremors of fear.
She is twenty-seven years old, petite in stature but large in character. Her dead straight, rich brown hair hangs in a neat, fringed bob, the gloss and hue of dark, clear honey (though she wishes it were a more Marmitey shade and sheen, of course). Eyes that are mostly rich hazel turn khaki in times of extreme emotion. They invariably change colour on a daily basis when some fact or fantasy subsumes her.
Presently, with some trepidation, she is rifling through her bathroom cabinet deciding what to take.
‘Do you know, I’ve never been away from home for more than a fortnight,’ she says to herself, very quietly. ‘I haven’t been apart from Max for more than four days – and then only twice in our five years.’
She sits on the edge of the bath and her eyes well army-issue green. Her throat is tight. Here it comes. She cries sharply for a few seconds until her throat loosens.
‘Oh dear,’ she says, catching her breath and sniffing loudly, while a sorry smile etches its way across her lips. ‘That’s better. Much better,’ she laughs, as the ablutionary effect of the sob settles in and her eyes shine hazel. ‘Absolutely fine. Where was I?’
Though she taps her temples and scrunches her brow, she can’t remember what she was to do in the bathroom so she returns to her bedroom and regards the open suitcase on the bed, gaping like a cavernous, ravenous mouth. She fears that once the lid is closed, the contents might be consumed. She giggles at her ludicrously active imagination developed, as a necessity, in childhood.
If you’d been brought up by an aunt who made Trappist monks seem fervent conversationalists, you too would turn to the most unlikely of objects for a chat.
Polly regards the suitcase, half tempted to take everything out and place it all back in her cupboard and drawers.
Do I really want to go? But, for a whole year?
Too late to back out now.
‘Is that enough Marmite? Have I packed enough clothes?’
Polly weighs the merit of another jar of Marmite against another pair of jeans, looking from one to the other, chewing her lip and procrastinating.
I’m going to the home of the Blue Jean – bloody brilliant!
I’m going away from the home of Marmite – why would I want to do that?
The clothing loses, easily, and the jar of Marmite is wrapped in a T-shirt currently lying unproductive in the suitcase.
She returns to the bathroom. Dilemma. To pack a half-empty bottle of shampoo or buy new. Where? At the airport? Or over there, in America?
‘Saved by the bell!’ Polly cheers, straightening her brow and running away from the shampoo conundrum to answer the door.
‘Lalalalala-America!’
It’s Max. Singing. He has a lovely voice. Polly throws her arms about his neck and buries her face there while he wraps his arms about her waist and lifts her up. They waddle through the communal hallway back to her flat.
‘Switch the light off, bitch!’ comes the familiar tirade from Edith Dale, the old woman living on the top floor.
‘Hullo, hullo? What is the noise please? Is it Sunday?’ asks Miss Klee, the frail Swiss woman who lives on the floor above Polly.
‘It’s Monday, Miss Klee, the eighth of September,’ a muffled Max informs, Polly still clasped on to him, while he flicks the hallway light back on.
Back in Polly’s flat, Max sets her down. She goes over to the French doors, sighs at her minute patio and then returns to him.
‘I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go,’ she whispers, drumming her fists lightly against his chest. ‘Tell me I don’t have to!’ she pleads. ‘Tell me to stay.’
Max holds her wrists and lays her hands either side of her face. ‘Daft thing,’ he says with affection, noting her eyes are currently a very sludgy green. ‘Of course you’re going. It’s an amazing opportunity.’
‘A-maze-ing,’ Polly repeats ruefully. ‘Will you miss me?’ she implores, scanning Max’s face which she knows off by heart, wondering how on earth she’ll cope without easy access to it over the next year.
‘Will you miss me?’ she asks again, this time pouting becomingly.
‘Just as much as you’ll miss me,’ Max assures, pressing his finger gently on the tip of her nose. Her eyes smart with tears but she swallows them away for the time being.
‘Packed?’ he asks, ‘ready?’
‘Yes,’ says Polly in a small voice, ‘and no.’
‘Clothes as well as Marmite?’
‘Yes,’ Polly replies, ‘and yes. The jars would crack otherwise, wouldn’t they? Come and see.’
The lid on the suitcase had fallen closed and, as she lifted it, Polly wondered whether the contents would be entire, or half eaten.
‘Absolutely fine,’ she said, on close scrutiny.
‘Hey?’ said Max, casting his eyes away from the rattle of hangers in the cupboard, the hungry shelves.
‘Oh, nothing,’ Polly smiled.
‘Come here, Button,’ he said quietly. She went over to him and slid her fingers into the front pockets of his trousers.
‘Why do you call me Button?’ she asked for the thousandth time. Max replied with his thousandth shrug. They heaved the suitcase from the bed and curled up together in the impression it had left.
‘Can’t I pack you?’ Polly asked, walking fingertips over his face.
‘You’d have to forego a lot of Marmite,’ Max qualified, taking her hand and kissing the palm.
‘Do you know, I don’t think I can live without either of you,’ said Polly honestly, folding her fingers lightly over his nose.
Lazily, Max travelled his hand over her body, admiring, as ever he did, her petite frame. Max knelt up beside Polly and looked down upon her.
Polly Fenton. Like a figure ‘2’, folded like that. Just us two, too. I must soak it all up. Commit it all to memory, although I don’t doubt absence making my heart all the fonder. Strange, though.
Polly had placed an arm across Max’s knees, her hand patting his stomach.
‘I’m going to America,’ she told him quietly, as if for the first time. ‘Can’t wait,’ she said, eyes wide. ‘Don’t want to go,’ she continued, eyes wider still, khaki flecking across them as he watched. Max laughed softly through his nose and bent low to kiss her forehead. Suddenly her arms were around his neck and, though it threatened to break his back, he let her kiss him as if she would never stop. Dozens of feathery lip pinches, like popcorn popping, one after another after another, small and involuntary noises accompanying them. It made him smile but still she continued, kissing his teeth now instead. He pulled away, cocked his head and observed her, returning his lips to hers and just pressing against them, no puckering, while privately asking himself ‘Is she really going?’
Max placed his arms either side of Polly’s head and straddled her. He dipped his upper body low, like a press-up, and kissed her nose. He continued these press-up lip-presses, alighting on her forehead, her cheek, her left eye, her chin, her nose, her right eye, her forehead again. As he neared her nose for the third time, she held his face gently and greeted his lips with hers. A long, soft kiss, soon enough a deeper kiss; eyes open and so close that they blurred; passion and love legible regardless.
Up they sat and undressed themselves, like they always did. You touch me while I touch you, like we always do. Under the covers. Cuddle sweetly, kiss lightly. Kiss with tongues. Move closer and grind subconsciously. Fondle her breasts. Feel his cock. Finger her sex. Sidle down his torso and then suck him. Hear his breathing quicken. Good. Flip her over and lick her. Enough. Cover her. Enter her. Hold his buttocks. Kiss his neck. Squeeze her nipples. Kiss. Smile.
Moan. Move.
Swap places.
Move. Moan.
Swap again.
Silence.
Not any more.
Come.
Together.
Kissing and smiling.
Like they always did.
‘Will you miss me?’ she had asked.
‘Just as much as you’ll miss me,’ he had replied, gently and with confidence. Max and Polly, Polly and Max. Maxanpolly had become a familiar descriptive term amongst those who knew them, one frequently employed to quantify the level of compatibility amongst others.
‘No, I do like him – but we’re not talking maxanpolly here.’
‘They’ve become totally maxanpollified.’
Polly Fenton and Max Fyfield were the couple that other couples loved, envied and invariably aspired to; after all, they had maintained their relationship through their early twenties. It seemed there had always been Max and Polly. That there would always be Max and Polly was a fact undisputed and oft proclaimed by those who knew them, for it created a soft web of safety. What a lovely balance: thirty-year-old Max, the quiet, freelance draughtsman; contemplative, generous, handsome in a boyish way with his fawn flop of hair, grey-blue eyes and open smile. Polly the English teacher, petite and pretty, a lively sparkle to Max’s warm glow, an eager conversationalist to Max’s well-chosen few words. She is as feminine as he is masculine; he’s not hero-tall or model-macho but he appears strong and manly when he has Polly attached to him.
Max tips his head and maybe touches a shoulder when he greets people, while Polly hugs them liberally. Friends in need turn to Max for his measured, sober assistance. If they wish to celebrate or chat, they seek Polly because she will share their excitement and wear their emotions. Like salt and pepper, sugar and spice; they complement each other. Polly and Max fit. Polly will be greatly missed while she is away. But she’ll be back. Of course she will. She’s going away tomorrow but she’ll be back, as she would say, ‘in a jiff’.
Tomorrow is now today. Yesterday went far too quickly. Now tomorrow will see Polly wake up over the sea and far away because today Polly is leaving England for America. At four thirty. Tomorrow, Max won’t have seen Polly since yesterday. Polly and Max have not said much so far today. Polly has been scurrying around her flat, double-checking things already triple-checked yesterday. She has left little notes dotted here and there to assist her American proxy with the ways and wills of the boiler, the cooker, Buster, and the patio doors. Polly knows little about her counterpart apart from her name (Jen Carter), her age (same as Polly) and her subject (English too, of course).
‘Do you think The Jen Carter Person will be happy here?’ Polly asks Max. ‘Do you think she’ll like my flat?’
‘Yes. And yes,’ Max assures, adding that a note explaining how the television worked was really not necessary. ‘Maybe just warn her that here we have only five channels.’
‘Radio?’ Polly suggests, pen poised above a yellow Post-it note. Max shakes his head. He pulls Polly’s hair through his hands into a pony tail, tugs it so her head comes back, and kisses her nose.
‘A map to the launderette!’ Polly exclaims, busying herself with red and blue pens.
‘I’ll start loading the car,’ he says, turning away from her. It had seemed such a great idea, such a wonderful opportunity that she should go. Now Max feels ambivalent, wonders whether they should have discussed it in more depth, just talked more really.
‘And I must warn her of Buster’s food fads,’ Polly says to herself.
‘I’ll load the car,’ Max says.
Max opens the bonnet of his Beetle which is really the boot and smiles broadly at Polly’s suitcase and the knowledge of all those jars of Marmite. He hates the stuff and yet had he not sneaked a jar from Polly yesterday? Just to keep. To have and to hold.
‘You can have it back once you’re home again,’ he had said, holding the jar aloft while Polly jumped to reach it.
‘Let me check the sell-by date. OK. But it must be this very jar – no substitute.’
A substitute? Ludicrous!
Max places her small rucksack on top of the suitcase and reads its bulges easily. Walkman. Water. Two paperbacks. One pair of thick socks. Bits and pieces from the bathroom.
Damn, I should have written a little note, or brought a little something to slip in as a surprise.
Too late, Max, because here she is. See her? Locking the door and resting her forehead lightly against it for a moment? Now walking down the steps. Walking towards you with a brave, manufactured smile aboard her small face. Isn’t time strange? You’ve had five years together and suddenly it doesn’t seem enough. Eight days ago she wasn’t going until next week – ages away in the face of a whole week together. Then you had to think in terms, of days. Yesterday it was tomorrow. This morning it was this afternoon. Now, at noon, it is merely a case of less than a handful of hours.
‘You ready? Shall we go?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back, hey?’
‘Can’t wait to get rid of me, is it?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do.’
‘Shall we?’
‘Sure thing, babe. Let’s burn rubber, hon. Hit it.’
‘Polly Fenton! Don’t you dare forsake your dulcet tones before you’ve even left our shores!’
‘Max, my lover, ‘twas but a jest. My accent and I will sail through this year untainted and return to you unblemished, in one piece. Absolutely fine and in a jiff.’
At Heathrow, Max bought Polly two bottles of her favourite shampoo because there was space in her rucksack and time to do it. They sat over cups of coffee and small bottles of orange juice, not daring to finish them. They tried to do the Guardian crossword but found that the airport tannoy played havoc with the necessary lobe of the brain. They declared the airport clock fast, their watches must be slow, that can’t be the time. Did you hear that? Yes, I did. Oh, that they were hard of hearing!
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Yes I did.’
‘What does “last call” actually mean, Max? Might there not be a “final” one we could wait for?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Oh dear,’ Polly says, ‘they’ve called me by name. Should I go now?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know we said you wouldn’t, but would you? Come all the way?’
‘All the way?’
‘To passport control at any rate?’ she whispers, hiding the colour of her eyes from Max as she closes them to kiss him. Her lips are quivering too much for her to pucker them properly. Max doesn’t mind; he knows her intention and echoes her sentiment with a clumsy bash of his lips against her cheek.
‘Come on Polly, it’s time.’
Silently, they try to pretend they have no idea where passport control is but there’s no avoiding it, all paths seem to lead there and yet they cannot see beyond it; beyond the neon sign ‘Departures’, beyond the uniformed officials behind their melamine lecterns.
‘Here we are.’
‘Can’t.’
‘You have to.’
‘Max. Can’t.’
‘Button, you can.’
‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.’
‘Oh dear. Bye bye.’
‘Bye, sweet girl.’
‘Hold me, Max.’
‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.’
‘You have to go.’
‘I know. Hold me a moment longer.’
‘This is the final call for passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, make your way to the departure lounge immediately.’
‘Got everything?’
‘Um, not sure, shall we check?’
‘You have everything.’
‘I do?’
‘You do.’
‘I do. OK.’
‘Off you go.’
‘Bye bye.’
‘Bye bye.’
‘Bye.’
Max watched her go away from him.
God, she can’t.
‘Polly!’
He ran towards her. Someone was examining her passport.
Wait!
‘Polly!’
They were handing her passport back to her.
Oh bloody hell, what am I? – what the? – Jesusgod.
‘Polly?’
Her tear-streaked face turned to him.
They regarded each other, Polly biting her lip in a futile bid to keep tears at bay. She wanted to smile for Max. She couldn’t if she was clamping on to her lips. Tears and a smile were much better than neither of either. She lavished both on him. He cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips against her forehead. Then he held her at arm’s length and took hold of her wrists.
Jesusgod, I can’t believe I—
‘Marry me.’
There!
Pardon?
Polly was stunned and far too choked to speak her reply. The passport officer cleared his throat and addressed her, rather ominously, by name. Polly wiped her nose on Max’s shirt. He took her left hand and slipped something along her fourth finger. The orange plastic neck-ring from the small bottle of fruit juice. Scratchy and ridiculously oversized. Exquisite.
‘You’ll have a proper one when you come home. Promise.’
TWO
When John Hubbardton died in 1906 at the age of eighty-nine, he had a minor river and, consequently, the small town along its banks named after him. That the town’s school, which he had founded in 1878, should also be renamed in his honour was a foregone conclusion. Lower South River thus became Hubbardtons River, the town of Lower South was renamed Hubbardtons Spring and the Lower South School became The John Hubbardton Academy. The mountain, in whose embrace all three lay, was also given the man’s name. By the 1920s, river, town, school and mountain were known universally as Hubbardtons. One lived in Hubbardtons, one’s kids were at school at Hubbardtons; summers were spent canoeing Hubbardtons, winters skiing Hubbardtons. We’ll discover the town and the river alongside Polly when she arrives, maybe the mountain too, if she learns to ski, but we can have a sneak preview of the school now, for Polly herself is re-reading her information pack. She is two hours into her journey.
The John Hubbardton Academy is a prep school. Not, you understand, in the British sense (small boys learning rugger and round vowels in preparation for Eton); Hubbardtons is a high-school, a boarding-school, ‘proud to provide a rounded preparation for college’, as proclaimed on page one of the glossy brochure.
‘Here at the John Hubbardton Academy, we’re one big family,’ commences page two. There are 240 students and 45 full-time teachers. When John Hubbardton founded the school 118 years ago it was, by necessity, co-ed. The school went temporarily all-male in a perverted stance against the 1960s, but extended an apology and an invitation to females a decade later. Currently, two thirds of both students and teachers are male. But no one is complaining.
‘We work and play, and we learn and live. Together. And we have 150 acres to do it in.’
It certainly looks picturesque from the brochure. Whether the buildings are genuinely old, or just old-style, is irrelevant; they are structurally pleasing and set attractively within grand grounds sympathetically landscaped. The superb backdrop of the Green Mountains completes the picture. Seemingly seamless; from the brochure photographs at least.
Polly slips the folder into the seat pouch in front of her, in between the safety instructions and the duty-free catalogue.
Poor old Jen Carter, whoever she may be. Do you know, I’m not sure that BGS is a fair trade for the JHA. I can’t believe Max proposed!
In 1820, when Belsize Park sat just outside London, a thoroughly modern building was built for the purpose of overseeing the education of young ladies residing locally. The establishment was duly named Belsize Ladies’ College. An insignia was designed (an open book with a lit candle propped, somewhat precariously, at its centre) and a motto was chosen (Cherchez la femme).
Until the turn of the century, sixty pupils were attended to by six teachers in this one building. 1900 saw the first expansion of the school with the purchase of the four-storey house next door, and similar shrewd acquisitions followed in the early decades. Now, there are 300 girls and twenty-seven teachers squeezed into a coterie of old houses around the original school building; ingeniously interconnected by a series of corridors, covered walkways and iron staircases. No one is quite sure when the college for ladies became a school for girls but the institute is known now as Belsize Girls’ School. The insignia and the motto remain.
The grounds at BGS comprise two concrete rectangles over which the layout of a pair of netball courts are superimposed in red lines; two tennis courts, likewise, in blue. An oak tree, protected by an unquestioned ancient law, stands defiant, slap in the middle of the larger rectangle. It makes for interesting reinterpretations of the rules of netball and tennis. Winter and summer terms, the girls can choose to play hockey and cricket respectively on the manicured sports fields owned by the nearby public boys’ school. Needless to say, the popularity of these two sports vastly outweigh tennis and netball. In the spring term, there is a choice between pottery classes in the cellar of the sixth-form house, or choral society at the boys’ school. Unsurprisingly, you never heard so many fine voices.
Polly has taught English at Belsize Girls’ School for five years. She landed the position the day after she had forlornly sent out her seventeenth job application, the morning of the day when Max first asked her out. Something divine was intervening and she welcomed it. She still feels truly blessed.
I hope this Jen Carter Person will be happy living my life for me – or at least a part of it – while I’m gone.
Polly wriggles her feet into the red socks that came free with the flight and places the complimentary ‘snooze-mask’ over her tired eyes as, indeed, the passengers either side of her have done. Three hours to go.
Oh, for Marmite on toast.
Think about Max. Marriage. Marmite. Mmm!
‘Pollygirl set sail OK then?’
Dominic handed his brother a glass of his incomparable home-brew which he had poured on hearing Max’s car return. Max nodded, made an affirmative noise in his throat and accepted the beer with unbridled gratitude, downing half the pint swiftly and with eyes closed as if it was some elixir. Or in the hope, at least, that the fast-working potency of the beverage might lead him to believe that Polly had not gone at all.
The brothers sat down on their sofa and supped in amiable silence. Both had kicked off their shoes and had their legs stretched out in front of them; ankles crossed on the coffee table built, quite obviously, for that precise purpose. Dominic flicked between television channels, finally choosing a cartoon and silencing the volume.
‘So,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Max replied.
Dominic replenished their glasses and they continued to sit alongside each other, the occasional chuckle acknowledging that antics in animation are as entertaining without sound as with.
‘So,’ Max said eventually, as if concluding a lengthy soliloquy.
‘Yup,’ said Dominic, in utter understanding. Close friends often know what each other is about to say, they may even finish sentences for one another; but close friends who are also siblings can conduct entire conversations without saying a word. And so it is with Dominic and Max, five years separate them and nothing comes between them. They can have entire conversations in utter silence.
They shared a bedroom when they were young and, for the past seven years, Dominic has rented the second bedroom of his flat to his younger brother.
‘It’s in the wrong side of Hampstead,’ he had warned Max.
‘How on earth can there be a wrong side to Hampstead?’ Max, then in Streatham, had marvelled, already heaping his belongings into black bin bags.
So the boys kept home together and never wavered from the four golden rules they had devised during that journey seven years ago from south to north London. Sitting-room to appear to be tidy, cleaning duties on alternate Saturdays, fridge always to contain milk and alcohol, and CD collection to be communal. The draughtsman and photographer, both freelance and with adjacent studios nearby, living and working alongside each other in peace and harmony. They never fight for the shower or the phone, they never argue about washing up, they invariably have the same taste in TV and radio programming. And their combined CD collection is not so much communal as duplicate.
Dominic Fyfield is five years older, two inches taller and a stone heavier than his brother. Like Max, Dominic is handsome in face and character. Where his features are not as fine as Max’s (his hair is a touch coarser and his eyes a little plainer), Dominic’s disposition is more effortlessly outgoing. Both brothers have winning smiles but Dominic shamelessly employs his to wholly libidinous ends. Dominic, however, respects Max’s monogamy just as much as Max marvels at his brother’s stamina and ability to chop and change, mix and match, when it comes to women. Max does, however, frequently call his brother a tart. Dominic, though, accepts it only as a profound compliment.
‘Why thank you, good man. Praise indeed from one as staid and unadventurous as you, Maximilian.’
‘Ah! But at least I know where my next metaphorical hot meal is coming from. Ever thought you might go hungry?’
‘Moi? Pah!’
The Fyfield brothers are a lovely balance because they are different enough not to be competitive. Neither brother covets the other’s life because they are content and settled and secure with their own patterns. Neither, therefore, passes judgement. They disagree frequently but they rarely argue. And though Dominic lavishes many a smile on Polly, it is with no intent other than his seal of approval, acknowledgement of his brother’s good fortune.
On first meeting her, Dominic had put her to the test and discovered she came through with colours blazing. He regaled Max with his findings.
‘Bit small?’ Dominic suggested.
‘But perfectly formed,’ Max justified.
‘Mmm,’ conceded Dominic, ‘nicely put together. Bright too.’
‘As a button,’ confirmed Max.
‘Gregarious and outgoing,’ said Dominic, throwing a cushion at his brother. ‘Good balance for you, you fusty old fart.’
‘I don’t think you can talk about farts being fusty, Dom,’ warned Max with a retaliation of cushions, ‘it’s the pot calling the kettle black.’
‘Bastard! Flatulence is a serious medical matter. OK, OK. So this Polly Fenton is a teacher.’
‘Yup, English.’
‘Shame it’s not PE but never mind. Remember that PE teacher I went out with?’
‘Unforgettable,’ cringed Max.
‘Gave a whole new meaning to the term “games mistress”, I can tell you.’
‘I can hear her still,’ Max groaned.
Dominic had a private reminisce, of which Max decided not to partake, before returning his attention to his brother’s new girlfriend.
‘Fenton. Do you know, she actually apologized to me for not being related to Roger. Now that’s what I call impressive.’
‘Who?’
‘Maximus Cretinous! Roh-ger Fen-ton,’ Dominic stressed as though spoken italics would assist, ‘seminal nineteenth-century photographer? Crimean War?’
‘Right, right,’ hurried Max. ‘She’s not related to James either.’
‘Who he?’
‘Jay-ums Fen-ton, dickhead,’ Max relished. ‘Come on – landmark British poet, journalist, critic? The Memory of War?’
Dominic regarded his brother slyly. ‘Swot!’ he declared, with a friendly punch to the biceps.
‘Back to Polly?’ Max, ever the pacifist, suggested; so they chinked glasses and toasted her health and Max’s very good fortune.
‘Get you, Max!’ mused Dominic. ‘Is she tickling your fancy or melting your heart?’
‘We’re not talking marriage here,’ Max had laughed, standing and stretching, and offering his brother a choice between a frozen lasagne ready-meal or beans on toast.
‘She’ll be half-way through her journey now,’ Dominic remarks, listening to his watch, checking it against the time on the video and phoning the talking clock to make absolutely sure.
‘Oh, and I asked her to marry me,’ Max says to Dominic, as if informing him merely that he had invited Polly along to the cinema with them.
‘Oh yes?’ says Dominic, keeping a straight face but unable to do anything about the sparkle in his eyes.
‘Yup,’ says Max, ‘just before she went through passport control.’
‘Did she, er, accept graciously?’ asked Dominic, all wide eyed and winsome.
‘Not in so many words,’ said Max slowly, ‘what with all her sobbing and hugging me. And her nose all blocked up.’ He proffered the crumpled section of his shirt as proof.
‘Ah,’ said Dominic, further convinced that all women were soft. And so, it now transpired, was his brother. ‘Bet she made off with your diamond!’
‘Actually,’ said Max, burping lightly under his breath and passing his glass for another refill, ‘it was all a bit spur-of-the-moment. The words sort of tumbled out. Anyway, she’s having to make do with the plastic jigger from a small bottle of fruit juice. Until she comes home.’
With eyes shut and further concealed by the eye-mask; body wrapped, chin to knee, against the controlled chill of aeroplane air-conditioning by a thin, synthetic blanket, Polly concentrates on forgetting the whirr and smell of the plane, the words and pictures of the Hubbardtons brochure, to transport herself back to the then and there of her departure from Max. And his words. And their meaning.
Marry me.
Me?
Who else.
But I haven’t really thought about it – not outside the context of a soft-focus day-dream. We’ve never spoken seriously about it – like we might be tempting fate if we did. But there again, who else would I marry?
She wriggles in her seat and retrieves the orange plastic neck-ring from the back pocket of her jeans. She places it on her finger, under the blanket, eyes scrunched shut even behind the eye-mask, desperate to recreate the sensation when Max did so. It is too large, of course. Somehow, its symbolism is almost too big for her to contemplate as well, thousands of feet up in the air, on her way to foreign climes. For a whole year. She’ll think seriously on it anon of course, perhaps on the banks of some lonely stream, under the bough of some lofty maple, when she feels alone and a million miles away.
I’m bound to, frequently.
God, a whole year. And so far away.
The eye-mask forces her tears back against her eyes. The noise of the aircraft prevents anyone hearing her sniff. She returns the plastic neck-ring ring to the back pocket of her jeans. It’s serrated.
Sharper than you’d think.
The glut of emotions enveloping her at Heathrow had been complex: the pain of parting from Max; the apprehension of leaving kin and country; a fear of flying; the love of the job she was leaving; concern for the position she was exchanging it for. Not to mention the bombard of emotion subsuming her when the man she loved proposed marriage. Out of the blue.
So spontaneous – very un-Max. Wonder if he thought about it, whether he really truly meant it?
‘Oh dear,’ she wails suddenly, out loud, tasting the blanket inadvertently, ‘I didn’t actually say “yes”.’
The shock of it!
THREE
Polly was immensely excited to see Cape Cod from the aeroplane window.
‘Do you know, it looks exactly the same as it does on a map!’ she exclaimed to her neighbour who was still wearing the blindfold. ‘Look!’ Polly urged, with a gentle but insistent nudge, ‘it’s like an arm, a crook at the elbow, a hand cupping the sea against it. Look!’
Her fellow passenger did indeed look and then retreated back behind his eye-mask hoping sincerely that no other cartographical features would solicit his neighbour before they landed in Boston.
As Polly waited at the luggage carousel, she suddenly had absolutely no idea who would be meeting her. In the event, she would have made a bee-line for Kate Tracey anyway, whether or not she had been brandishing the enormous board emblazoned with Polly’s name. Amongst the sea of faces and the barrage of name signs, Kate’s easy smile reached out to Polly immediately. As she approached, she marvelled at the coincidence that the name on the sign was indeed her very own.
‘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.
‘I have the class next to yours,’ he reassured her, ‘so if you need me, just holler.’
‘Righty ho,’ said Polly, though she’d never used the phrase before.
‘You know how to holler, don’t you?’ growled Jackson with a wink.
FOUR
It seems wise, at this point, to introduce Megan Reilly because no doubt we’ll bear witness to much of Polly’s experience through their correspondence by letter and phone. Megan, a fellow teacher at BGS, is Polly’s closest friend. She is two years older than Polly but they started at BGS on the same day, five years ago. Megan teaches Maths. With an ‘s’. She is taller and more substantial than Polly, but that’s not hard. Though her distant Irish roots have left no trace of an accent, Megan has the dark, twirling tresses and lough-blue eyes of her Reilly ancestors. She has a slick, biting sense of humour, and the tortoiseshell spectacles she wears serve to magnify the wicked glint to her eye. She’s effortlessly glamorous without a scrape of make-up, her hair sometimes swirled on top of her head, sometimes cascading down her back and, while she merely nods at current trends, she always looks enviably stylish and expensive – in school as much as out.
‘You have this intuitive flair for layering,’ Louise Bray, head of History and a slave to fashion, told her begrudgingly as she fingered Megan’s soft, burgundy cardigan over a peach silk waistcoat worn on top of a cream linen shirt; a white cotton T-shirt just visible beneath it all and a scarf with all the above colours draped about her shoulders.
‘Regulation school colours,’ Megan explained with a shrug.
A flair for layers – bum! I just threw on whatever was clean and to hand.
Megan lives in a maisonette on the good side of Kilburn and she only ever walks to school. It is, in fact, more of a march; she covers the side streets of West Hampstead in under ten minutes, invariably jay-walks the Finchley Road at Swiss Cottage and is at school, unswervingly, at 8.15 a.m. She is always home in time for Neighbours (an obsession about which she feels neither guilt nor embarrassment), apart from Wednesdays when she plays violin in the school orchestra.
It is 8.15 a.m. Megan makes coffee in the staff room. The other teachers mill around, some in conversation, some analysing their registers, others gazing down at the netball-court-cum-playground-cum-arboretum, deciding on today’s tactics to keep their girls in order. To Megan, however, the staff room may as well have been empty. Polly’s absence was all the more stark to her because none of the other teachers appeared to notice it. Despite her universal popularity, Megan felt utterly alone without Polly and she felt her exuberance being sapped. Megan was not used to not having Polly there. Not after five years in which they’d snatched whatever spare time the school day bestowed on them to natter and laugh and share their space together. Their conversations could span school scandals, the beef crisis, cinema and Marks & Spencer ready-meals, in great detail and all in an easy five minutes. Five minutes were ample. In retrospect, they had been so precious too and the bond between the women was strong. Invariably, the topic turned, at some point and on a daily basis, to the Fyfield brothers; usually over lunch-time or an evening’s telephone call, when they could confer more leisurely. After all, Megan has borne witness to Polly’s relationship with Max from the start. She adores Max. And she has also had her eye on Dominic for some time.
It is 8.20 a.m. Megan Reilly has been charged with showing Jen Carter around school and she awaits her arrival with some suspicion. Polly’s replacement? She can’t take Polly’s place. There is no substitute. She is irreplaceable. And yet This Carter Woman has taken Polly’s place in more ways than one because of course she’s now ensconced at Polly’s place – her flat – too. Megan had phoned the previous evening to welcome Jennifer Carter but was so perturbed to discover Polly’s answering machine already boasting a new message in a transatlantic twang that she hung up and phoned Max in disgust (and dismay – having prayed hard for Dominic to answer the call).
‘That Carter Woman’s been tampering with Polly’s phone!’ she launched.
‘Hullo Megan,’ said Max, ‘how are you? Polly did leave a little yellow Post-it on the answerphone with instructions. And her permission.’
Megan chewed her thumb and decided she’d overlook the situation. But log it, all the same. ‘Has Polly phoned yet?’ she asked, ‘has she arrived, do you know?’
‘She has arrived, Meg,’ said Max pseudo-breezily, ‘I phoned the airline to check. But no, I haven’t heard from her and I don’t really expect to tonight. Long journey and everything. Hopefully tomorrow. You haven’t heard a peep, have you?’
‘No, sadly, no.’
‘You will.’
‘Will what?’
‘Hear from Polly, of course.’
‘Oh yes. I’m not used not to speaking to her daily, on the blower.’
‘She’ll have lots to tell you. She already has.’
‘Has what?’
‘Lots to tell you.’
‘Oh, undoubtedly.’
Both sighed.
‘Max, do you feel, you know – easy – about This Carter Woman living in Polly’s place? Cuddling Buster? Using the bubble bath? Fiddling about?’
‘Well,’ paused Max, ‘Polly gave her blessing. And gave me “site management responsibilities” as it were, so I’ll keep my eye on things. The Carter Woman has my number. And I have a set of keys.’
This appeased Megan.
‘How’s Dominic then? He OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Max, throwing a suggestive wink over to his brother, ‘he’s fine. Megan, we really oughtn’t to call her The Carter Woman, not before we’ve even met her. She might be perfectly OK. She’s probably very nice.’
‘But she sure ain’t Polly!’ Megan declared in pure New York.
Max fell silent.
‘Better go, Meg. Better keep the line free, just in case.’
8.30 a.m. Mrs Elms, headmistress of stereotypical St Trinian’s proportions, marched into the staff room.
‘Good morning, everybody,’ she cried, her iron-coloured curls and dark burgundy lipstick fixed until home time. ‘Here she is – locum tenens for Polly Fenton – Miss Jennifer Carter!’ and she applauded extravagantly, nudging the stranger into centre stage.
‘Actually,’ the girl replied, shoulders square, ‘it’s Jen and it’s Ms.’
‘Nonsense!’ cajoled Mrs Elms to Jen’s unhidden horror. ‘At BGS, if we’re not Mrs we’re Miss. Unless we’re Mr, of course. Isn’t that right, Bill?’ she declared to the art teacher who nodded in a vague sort of way, as befitting his calling.
‘Mr Hardy!’ Mrs Elms proclaimed proudly, outstretching her hand to the man and thrusting Jen’s into it. ‘Mr Bill Hardy,’ Mrs Elms continued, ‘this is Miss Carter. Jen,’ she enunciated, ‘is that right, dear?’
‘Uh huh,’ said Jen, who looked tired and, Megan discerned with a tiny touch of sympathy, tearful.
Mrs Elms went through the entire staff body in the same manner, grabbing hands and thrusting Jen’s into them. She came to Megan.
‘And this, Miss Carter, this is Miss Megan Reilly. Hands, ladies. Super. There are no hands safer than Miss Reilly’s, my dear. She’ll deliver you to your class and show you the ropes. And the stairs and the corridors, ha!’
With that, Mrs Elms turned on her squat-heeled shoes and left on the double to prepare herself for assembly.
‘She’s not even fifty,’ Megan whispered to Jen, ‘isn’t that frightening?’
‘Sure is. Do I really have to be a Miss?’
‘Well,’ said Megan, thrusting an unrequested coffee into Jen’s hands, ‘that all depends on your pronunciation now, doesn’t it!’ She winked at Jen.
‘Is this decaff?’
‘Dat is right,’ joked Megan, masking sudden irritation with a daft foreign accent, ‘dis is de caff and dat is de tea!’
‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I am Polly Fenton and I’ll be teaching English this year.’
Who? Us! Ladies and gentlemen – us? Cool!
Ten hands shot into the air and fresh, eager faces implored her to choose me, choose me.
This can’t really be unadulterated enthusiasm, genuine politeness, can it? Surely it must be the start of some horrible jest?
You’re at Hubbardtons now, Polly, you can shake off the wariness that the BGS girls have instilled in you.
The hands still soared heavenward.
‘Er, yes?’ said Polly, marvelling that the room was carpeted. ‘Gentleman with the baseball cap?’
‘Mrs, Miss or Ms, ma’am?’
His face was earnest. After all, he wasn’t sure he’d even met a gentleman before, let alone been referred to as one.
‘Miss,’ confirmed Polly with a relieved smile; he was clearly enthusiastic and polite and not the practical joker type.
A class of ten? Do you know, that’s less than the weekly detention crowd at BGS!
Polly looked about her, nine pairs of hands lay neatly on the tables in front of them. A tenth pair were hidden but heard, tapping away at a lap-top. Polly cleared her throat.
‘You there? With the computer?’
‘Yes, Ma’am?’
‘Miss,’ said Polly. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m just logging “Miss Polly Fenton” into my file, Ma’am.’
‘Miss,’ said Polly.
‘Miss,’ said the girl, closing the lid of the machine and giving Polly her undivided attention, prefixed by a shy smile and then a beaming, glinting grin displaying a mouth with more metal than enamel.
‘Okey dokey,’ said Polly, surprised at her choice of phrase, ‘you now know me, but who on earth are you? Plural!’
The students delivered their names.
Oh that they could wear name badges too! How ever am I to distinguish between AJ and TC? Lauren and Laurel? And two Bens, would you believe, not to mention a Heidi, a Forrest and the two others whose names I’ve completely forgotten?
‘Super!’ Polly declared instead. ‘And could you let me know which of you are the semaphores?’
The class laughed politely and AJ, who turned out to be the boy wearing the baseball cap, corrected her kindly and informed her that he was a sophomore and sixteen years of age, and that TC, Forrest, Lauren and Ed (ah, that was it, Ed!) were as well. Laurel, the girl with the lap-top, explained that she was a freshman and had just turned fifteen. Polly deduced that the remaining freshmen were both Bens, Heidi and the boy with no name, who was rather overweight but wore the sweetest smile Polly had ever seen in a fifteen-year-old.
‘Splendid,’ said Polly and, as she did so, she observed ten pairs of eyes glaze slightly while the smiles stretched at her vocabulary. ‘Let’s crack on. What’s so funny? Lauren?’
‘It’s just, like, your accent’s so neat, I guess we’re gonna have a bunch of fun learning English from an English lady.’
It was the first time Polly had ever been referred to as a lady so she chose to go easy on Lauren’s command of the English language.
‘Thank you, Lauren, but I’d rather you spoke of a bunch of flowers tied with a neat ribbon – and perhaps an accent that is, for example, jolly nice, and English lessons which, I assure you, are to be tremendous fun.’
The class gave her a swift round of applause; Polly bowed graciously, somewhat mystified by her unpremeditated plumminess and her employment of the forbidden adjective, nice.
‘Now,’ she said, rummaging in her large bag, ‘now, have I a treat for you. Where the Dickens—? Ah, here we are. Pumblechook!’ she declared suddenly, fixing a wild smile on Heidi and making her jump. Silence rapt the students. Polly left her table, on which she had been perched, and walked slowly around the semicircle of desks in front of her, distributing books. ‘Snodgrass!’ she whispered to TC; ‘Sergeant Buzfuz!’ she declared to Forrest. She walked behind Ben (with the blond hair, must remember) and cried ‘Pecksniff!’ above his head as she clasped his shoulders. The class were captivated, Lauren looked positively frightened as Miss Fenton approached her, held on to her eyes and uttered ‘Uriah Heap!’ in sombre tones. Miss Fenton placed both hands on Ed’s desk and growled ‘Chuzzlewit!’, before going to AJ, removing his baseball cap and replacing it, backwards, while she cried ‘Mr Tappertit!’ The second Ben (curly hair, snub nose; curly hair, snub nose) she greeted with ‘Bumble!’ before singing ‘Mrs Fezziwig!’ to Laurel. Just the nameless boy. Polly stood in front of him and tipped her head, ‘Dick Swiveller,’ she declared, after some thought.
‘No, Miss Fenton,’ he said, slowly and ingenuously, ‘I’m Dick Southwood Junior.’
Thank goodness for that.
‘Miss?’
‘Yes, AJ?’
‘Who are these guys?’
‘Dickens!’ brandished Polly, ‘Charles Dickens Esquire. Born the 7th of February 1812, died on June the 9th, 1870. With names as imaginative, as delicious to the tongue, as Snodgrass and Pumblechook, can you imagine how colourful and fantastic the characters are themselves? Do not such names bode well for marvellous stories?’
Somebody whistled in slow appreciation.
‘Miss Fenton?’
‘Yes Laurel Lap-top?’
‘Was that 1812?’
‘Yes, and you don’t have to commit it to the silicon memory of that machine. Switch it off, if you please, and tune in to this: David Copperfield.’
With copies distributed to each member of the class, Polly said ‘Chapter One’ while her eyes sparkled olive at the students. They read in silence until the end of class.
‘Ladies! Lay-deez! Upper Four – attention this instant! Lucy Howard, back to your place. On your chair, young lady – do not soil that desk with your derrière. Quiet. Angela, excuse me, Angela! How do you fancy detention tomorrow? You don’t? Well then, shut it! Thank you. How gracious you all are. This is Miss Carter, who’s taking Miss Fenton’s place for a year. She’ll be your form teacher as well as English teacher to some of you. Alison Setton, bring me that paper aeroplane. Now!’
‘Miss Reilly thinks she’s so cool when really she’s naff.’
‘I am cool, Alison, you just can’t handle it – detention tomorrow – you can sew position tags on to the new netball vests. This, as I said, is Miss Carter. You are all to be cordial, friendly and SILENT.’
Megan Reilly fixed the class with an uncompromising stare, patted Jen on the shoulder and whispered to her that she was hoarse already, bless the blighters.
‘A word of advice,’ she disclosed in quiet warning, ‘don’t smile until half term.’
She patted the new teacher again and left the room, remonstrating to Jesus, Mary and Joseph when she heard the decibel level soar just as soon as she’d closed the door.
Jen Carter stood behind her desk and in front of a blackboard. She’d never used a blackboard before. At Hubbardtons they had expanses of wipe-away white. And odourless, non-toxic coloured markers.
She’d never heard such a racket.
She’d never taught a class with more than twelve students to it.
She’d never taught only girls.
She’d never met blighters.
How in hell’s name was she going to gain their respect, how ever was she even going to get their attention?
Don’t smile.
How long was it till half term?
She turned to the blackboard and began to write her name in long, sloping letters. The din continued, subsiding only temporarily when the chalk grated at a particular point on the board. It was like the volume being switched off. And then switched on, twice as loud, immediately after. She turned back to the class.
‘Quiet, please.’
Did she say something?
Dunno. Couldn’t hear it if she did.
Bet those teeth are capped.
Yeah. And those boobs are definitely plastic.
‘Ladies,’ she tried, ‘quiet?’
Ha! We’ve got her, she’s cracking.
Come on, let’s all hum.
Yeah! And sway slightly.
‘Per-lease!’
Jen turned back to the blackboard and stared at her name. Amazingly, the volume was cranked up a further two notches. Brainwave. She took a deep breath and then dragged her fingernails across the blackboard (capped teeth were impermeable to the screech) before spinning on her heels. The class, still soothing their jaws with their hands, were silent; momentarily at least. Fixing her eyes on the clock at the back of the classroom, Jen spoke from the pit of her stomach in deep, curdling tones.
‘Shut. The fuck. Up.’
8.40 a.m.
Respect!
‘Don’t you ever, EVER make me swear again,’ she told thirty pairs of awestruck eyes.
FIVE
‘Kate, please may I use the phone?’ asked Polly.
‘Sure,’ said Kate and, disconcerted by Polly’s sludge-green eyes, she placed a wand of raw spaghetti between the pages of her book and discreetly left the kitchen as if she had been just about to anyway.
‘Hullo?’
‘Dom?’
‘Hullo, Pollygirl – how are you? How’s it going? What am I saying! Hold on. Max? Max! Quick! I’ll pass you over. You take care, Miss Fenton – them yankies can be wankies. Max? Max! He’s in the frigging bath, Polly. Would you believe it? Call back in five mins, yes?’
‘’Kay.’
‘Hullo?’
‘Meg?’
‘Po-lly!’
The women shrieked at each other nonsensically down the phone for a moment.
‘Max is in the bath.’
‘So I’m your second choice – charming!’
‘Dear Miss Reilly,’ soothed Polly, knowing Megan meant no mischief, ‘I’ve just finished my first full day. It’s the first chance I’ve had to use the phone. I can’t be too long – just give Max enough time to dry.’
‘How are you, girl? What’s it like?’ asked Megan while she located Polly on the school photograph and stroked her with her little finger. ‘Is it incredible? Have you met Tom Cruise yet?’
‘Yes,’ said Polly, ‘and no.’
‘Anyone who looks remotely like him? Brad Pitt, at a scrape?’
‘No,’ said Polly, ‘and no. Or not that I’ve met so far, I’m afraid. There might be, but I’m jet lagged beyond belief. Do you know, this place, Meg, is so, so beautiful. There’s so much space for the children – in class and out. Guess how many I have in a class?’
‘Can’t! Tell!’
‘No. More. Than. Twelve.’
‘Jee—’
‘And they’re all impeccably behaved. They’re even quiet before class!’
‘—zus. No wonder That Carter Woman looks so shell-shocked.’
‘Everything OK?’
‘If you call Upper Four OK.’
‘Say no more. What was for lunch today?’
‘Lunch? Pie and mash, or mashed ratatouille and mash. And some clumpy pink mash for pud.’
‘Do you know what I had? Ask me!’
‘I say, Miss Fenton, what did you have for lunch?’
‘I had Caesar Salad with a selection of cold cuts and a freshly baked roll.’
‘Stop, stop – that’s just not on.’
‘Well, I could have had vegetable burritos, if that makes you feel any better.’
‘No it bloody doesn’t.’
‘Or there again, chicken papardelle with tarragon cream. The Federal Government subsidizes the food while making guidelines about fat content and protein quotas.’
‘I’m weeping.’
‘That’s not all, Meg. There were four different types of coffee to choose from, and as many teas. And that’s not counting the decaffeinated or detanninized strains! All fresh, I hasten to add, and free. No plasticated liquid from vending machines here. And, do you know, we have those fantastic swirly machines with fresh juice churning around available to us. All. Day. Long.’
‘I’m over there!’
‘No you’re not,’ said Polly quietly, ‘you’re over there – over the sea and far, far away. I better go, Max’ll be waiting. Will you write?’
‘I have done already. Posted it at lunch-time,’ Megan paused and continued forlornly, ‘when I went to the newsagent for a chocolate fest in lieu of lousy lunch.’
‘Polly? Polly? You there? That you?’
Speak some more. Let me listen.
‘Polly?’
‘Oh, Max.’
They hung on to their respective receivers with eyes closed and hearts bursting. They could hear each other breathe. How fantastic.
‘I couldn’t phone till now,’ Polly explained, ‘I’ve had every minute organized.’
‘I know,’ Max soothed, ‘I’m sure. I imagined. What’s it like? School and where you’re staying?’
‘Lovely – everywhere and everyone. So friendly and welcoming. The school is magnificent and the children are a dream – only I hope I don’t wake up. I just talked shop with Megan so she’ll fill you in, if you like. How’s Buster?’
‘Fine, I presume – I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.’
‘Will you phone The Jen Carter Person and just double-check everything’s OK at the flat?’
‘’Course I will. Can I have your number there? Thanks.’
‘God, you sound so close it’s cruel.’
‘You in your pyjamas, Polly?’
‘No, silly, it’s only six o’clock here. In fact, I’m in a frock because it’s something called Formal Meal tonight.’
‘Which knickers are you wearing?’
‘Hold on a – let me check. The pair with the blue roses.’
‘Divine.’
‘Funny fellow.’
‘I miss you madly, Polly.’
Oh my God, I haven’t actively missed you yet Max, because I haven’t actually had time to. That’s terrible of me.
‘Polly? You there? I was saying how I miss you.’
‘Do you?’ she said sweetly.
‘I do,’ Max confirmed softly, not registering Polly’s pause.
‘Oh dear! Do you know, I haven’t said “I do” to you yet, have I!’
‘No, actually, not in so many words. Do you still have your ring?’
‘Maximilian, would I mislay something as precious as that?’
I must take it from the back pocket of my jeans and put it somewhere safe.
‘You’d better go, Polly. Better not take advantage of your hosts.’
‘’Kay. Will you phone soon? Will you phone on Saturday?’
‘Absolutely. Night night.’
‘Night.’
Polly walked slowly to her room. She went to her jeans and slipped her hand into the back pockets. And then those at the front. She fell to her knees and walked a methodical circle with her hands around the chair over which her jeans lay. She looked under the bed. And in the bin. And in the pockets of her other jeans. And in her jacket pocket. She looked behind the bedside table. She went to the bathroom and searched through her toilet bag. She went back to the bedroom, bit her nails and her lip and muffled a strangled yelp by hurling herself on to the bed. Burying her face into the pillows she sobbed. She bit, she hit them. She cursed herself. She stabbed at the bed with her fist. She cursed Great Aunt Clara. She swore profusely. She all but wore herself out. Finally, she sat cross-legged on the bed, snorting through a heavy nose and rubbing hard at itching eyes.
I can’t have lost it!
It seems you have.
I haven’t even said yes, yet, I haven’t said ‘I do’.
It seems you haven’t.
Max, who’s been at the centre of my world, is offering me lifelong security, he’s going to provide me with my own family at last. And I haven’t even bloody accepted his offer. I can’t tell anyone I’m engaged unless I’ve formally agreed to be. I can’t tell people unless I have a ring to show them. As proof. And I can’t tell Max that I’ll marry him if I have to tell him that I’ve lost his ring.
You haven’t even told Megan yet, either, have you? Wonder why. No time to think on it now. Wash your face and make haste for Formal Meal.
‘Jennifer Carter speaking.’
‘Oh, um, hullo, er, my name’s Max Fyfield – I’m, er, Polly’s—’
‘Sure! Max, hi there, nice to speak to you.’
‘I just thought I’d give you a bell to see if you’ve settled in OK? All all right with the flat?’
‘Everything’s cool here, thanks. Your Polly’s left me these little notes every place. Feel like I know her.’
‘And Buster? He’s OK? Not terrorizing you? Just roar at him if he is – and ignore him if he replies.’
‘Buster’s adorable. He’s on my lap right now.’
‘Ah, super. Polly will be pleased. Have you met Megan Reilly yet?’
‘Sure, she’s shown me round the school and has been real sweet.’
God, how Megan’ll cringe if she ever hears such terminology!
‘Great, great. And how was school? Those girls can be a handful. An excess of intelligence and money, I fear.’
‘I think,’ said Jen, ‘that we have arrived at an understanding.’
‘Good, good,’ stumbled Max, ‘well, I just phoned to see that everything’s tickety boo.’
‘What’s that? Tickety boo? Ha!’
‘Yes, ha! I’m glad you seem to have settled. Do call if you need anything.’
‘Sure. Many thanks, Max.’
‘Bye then.’
‘Bye now.’
Jen heaved Buster so that he stood on his hind legs on her lap.
‘All I need,’ she told him, ‘to make my picture perfect, is one Chip Jonson.’
SIX
If it had been Megan Reilly, and not Polly Fenton, who was at Hubbardtons, she would have swiftly traded ten Tom Cruises, and gladly forfeited the hope of Dominic Fyfield, for even a chance with Chip Jonson. But for Megan, who is in London, in the staff room, listening to Jen drone on about how wonderful her boyfriend Chip is, the man is merely a name. And a seemingly daft one at that.
Polly has not yet met him, for if an athletic trainer rarely has reason to venture from the gym complex, seldom does he need to cross right over the playing fields to the main school buildings. And four days into her stay, Polly would be unable to locate the gym or the drama building and has no need, as yet, to visit either. She has now met her junior and senior students and has begun to weave her infectious love of literature and language deep into the fabric of her classes. She’s had no need to holler for Jackson Thomas, much to his chagrin. He hopes to grab her off duty, off her guard (just grab her, really), at the House Raising this coming Sunday. They’ll be building a house for Jojo Baxter, who teaches journalism and hockey. Everyone’s invited. Polly’s been invited. She’s looking forward to it very much.
‘They’ll build a whole house? In a day?’ she said to Kate, incredulous.
‘Yup,’ Kate confirmed as if there was nothing untoward about the concept at all, ‘I’m down to bake pies. You want to help?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Polly, ‘I could make a bakewell tart.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ Kate replied ingenuously.
It was the first occasion, since the journey from Boston, that Kate and Polly were alone for any length of time. Formal Meal, the faculty meeting and Kate’s involvement with the local flamenco club had occupied them and kept them apart. Yet a quick, wide wave from Polly across the quadrangle; a brief exchange over the salad bar at lunch; a note from Kate, magnetized to the fridge by Mickey Mouse, offering Polly unrestricted access to her bicycle, saw a burgeoning fondness develop between the two. Now, they’re making pie. Apple. Cherry. Blueberry. No bakewell. Baked beautifully.
This is Vermont, not Derbyshire. When in Rome – and all that.
‘Tell me about home, Polly, paint me a picture.’
‘Home,’ Polly explained, taking Kate at her word and drawing a disproportionate plan in the flour, ‘is a small, rented flat with a patio and mad neighbours in leafy Belsize Park. That’s in North London for your information.’
‘Neat,’ Kate enthused.
‘Not very,’ apologized Polly.
‘How mad?’ Kate asked, eyes alive above a huge smile.
‘Absolutely bonkers,’ Polly assured her.
‘Bonkers!’ Kate declared, having her first taste of the word and finding it delicious.
They made pastry in silence for a while.
‘Home,’ Polly started again, ‘is really a fat tom-cat called Buster and a darling boy called Max.’
‘Uh huh,’ murmured Kate: an excellent phrase to elicit further details.
‘Yes,’ said Polly quietly, ‘I’ve had them both for five years. In fact —’ she started before a small voice warned her against continuing.
You can’t tell her. You’ve no proof, remember.
(More to the point, Polly, you haven’t clarified the situation with Max, have you?)
‘Uh huh,’ Kate repeated as she pricked the top of the pies, ‘that must be kinda tough. I’ll bet you’re missing them both.’
With a degree of guilt which she covered with a hasty ‘Oh yes, of course’, Polly realized that she had still been too busy to have actively missed Max. ‘He said he’d phone on Saturday. That’s tomorrow.’
Only I hope he calls before the Blues Brothers evening starts at Finnigan’s. (That’s Finnigan House – senior male dorm. Everyone invited.) I’m on duty, you see. Me and Charle(s) and Lorna – she’s lovely, I met her at lunch today. She teaches drama and voice. I think we’re about the same age.
‘What does Max do?’ Kate asked, genuinely interested.
Polly smiled. ‘You’d love him,’ she said, ‘he’s very artistic, very talented. Officially, he’s a self-employed graphic designer, only he likes to be known as a freelance draughtsman.’
Kate nodded approvingly. ‘He sounds special. That right?’
‘Absolutely,’ enthused Polly. ‘He is,’ she said. ‘In fact —’
No.
Not yet.
Kate refrained from the uh-huh of encouragement that was on the tip of her tongue. Polly looked suddenly lost and lonely so she handed her the bowl of blueberries and changed the subject instead.
Saturday. School for Polly finished at two but she joined the other off-duty teachers and students to eat hot dogs while watching the senior boys in a football match. She had no idea what these extravagantly padded, already beefy boys were doing, but there seemed to be more rucks than rugger and much less fancy footwork than footie. The buttocks, however, were incomparably pert and neat and made the game a pleasure to watch. Even more so, once Kate had explained the rules in under a minute, with ketchup on her chin. Soon, Polly was cheering with the best of them, much to Jackson’s delight.
‘So she can holler,’ he mused through the side of his mouth and to no one, ‘and boy, can she holler.’
Polly returned to Kate’s alone, forgoing the post-match refreshments and post mortem so she could guard the phone and leap on it as soon as it rang.
I’m going to say yes, you see. I’m going to accept his proposal. Then I can finally tell everyone.
The house, however, remained silent until Kate, Charle(s) and Bogey returned an hour later. Kate scanned Polly’s face hopefully, so Polly shook her head and shrugged her shoulders with hastily employed nonchalance, offering to make tea for the troops. The phone rang as soon as she left it; she tried not to jump on it but failed. It was Clinton for Kate. Polly tried not to register her disappointment. She failed.
It’s half past bloody six. That’s half eleven over there. Where is he?
After Polly had poured cranberry juice instead of milk into the tea, Kate suggested, very kindly, why didn’t she make the call and beat him to it?
‘Ain’t nothing like making a man good and guilty,’ she drawled like Mae West. ‘They usually repent extravagantly! Go on, I’m going to take a shower.’
It was seven o’clock. The Blues Brothers evening at Finnigan’s started in half an hour. It was midnight in Britain.
Actually, one minute past. It’s tomorrow. And Max said he’d phone me yesterday.
A strange voice, male and Scottish, answered the phone in England. Polly presumed she had misdialled so she hung up and rang again, staring at the number pad and speaking them out loud as she dialled. The same voice.
God, I hope everything’s OK.
‘Er, hullo, is Max there? Max Fyfield.’ There was interference on the line. She tapped the receiver against her hand. It wasn’t interference, it was background noise. Music, muffled. Voices, many.
‘Hullo?’ said the Scotsman.
‘Max Fyfield?’ stressed Polly, trying not to shout. It sounded like the receiver was dropped. ‘Hullo?’ she said. ‘Hullo? Max?’
Click.
The line was dead.
She dialled again, distressed and a little angry. Who was that man? How dare he!
‘Hullo?’
‘Thank God,’ said Polly, eyes to the heavens, ‘Dom, it’s me. Max there?’
‘Hullo? Oh Polly! Hi! Hold on. Max! Hold on,’ said Dom, disappearing with an unpromising clatter to locate his brother.
‘Polly?’
‘Max – hullo, I was er. You said you’d –’
Suddenly she wanted to cry.
Don’t be so silly.
Why do you want to cry?
I don’t know. I don’t want to be here. I feel frightened. It all feels too fragile.
‘Sorry,’ Max rushed. ‘Oh God, so sorry. I, er, well actually I forgot. Hey you – get the Osmonds off the turntable! And Slade. Kool and the Gang can stay. Polly? There you are – I was going to call you earlier but Dominic had me running errands and opening wine. Dom! Dom! The chilli – the coffee table. God that was close.’
‘Max,’ Polly asked, trying to control the shake in her voice, ‘what’s happening? What’s going on?’
I feel lonely. I’m frightened.
What of?
‘Dom has a few friends round,’ Max explained lightly.
Precisely.
‘Anyone I know?’
What’s wrong with that? Why do I feel shaky?
‘Er, don’t think so.’
‘Meg?’
I can hear a woman laughing. He’s just covered the mouthpiece with his hand. Why? Why’s he done that?
‘Meg?’ Polly repeated, staring around Kate’s kitchen, the people on the fridge; realizing that she was, essentially, amongst strangers. Alone.
I’m alone. Over here. Over there. I just delude myself that I’m allowed into people’s spheres, that they’ll make me part of their world, their family.
‘Megan was here earlier but she had to leave as she was meeting Jen Carter for a drink.’
I’ve been replaced. Oh, most wicked haste.
‘Max – why didn’t you phone me?’ Polly consciously let slip into baby voice. ‘Like you promised?’
‘I’m sorry Button,’ he said, his voice distant (he sounds distant), ‘I forgot. I was busy.’
No!
Yes – anyway, Polly, who is it who’s been too preoccupied even to think of him much, let alone miss him at all? Were you expecting life in London to be frozen in time until your return?
‘Polly?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice, ‘I’m still here.’
‘I’d better go now, this isn’t the best time for a chat, is it? There’s chilli on the carpet and Dominic’s off his face. God, he’s out on the balcony. Doing opera. I must go – I’ll call you soon, promise. ’Kay?’
‘’Kay.’
What else could she say?
‘Love you,’ Max cooed.
Don’t say that.
‘’Kay,’ she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. She replaced the handset and stared blankly at the fridge of smiles.
‘You OK?’ asked Kate, understanding now the provenance of Polly’s deepening eye colour.
‘Yup,’ said Polly, a little more croakily than she would have liked, ‘absolutely fine.’
Kate offered Polly a cherry tomato. She bit it and winced as the delicious, tart juice caused a stab of sharpness to zip along her jaw. She swallowed. Hard.
‘All set?’ Kate asked.
‘Do you know,’ Polly replied, ‘I think I’ll give it a miss. Jet lag, you see. And building a house tomorrow – have to be strong, hey!’
‘Well,’ cautioned Kate, ‘I don’t think you can give it a miss. You’re on duty, Polly. That’s your job. That’s what you’re paid for. That’s why you’re here.’
Kate didn’t tell her that it wouldn’t be a problem for another teacher to stand in. She didn’t tell her because she didn’t want Polly not to go. She thought Polly ought not to be alone. Not on her first Saturday night in America. She hardly knew the girl, not properly. But she knew her well enough to see that loneliness was uncharted anathema to Polly Fenton. Kate cared.
So Miss Fenton went through the motions of being a teacher that night. She knew the film well, having seen it many times at university, and knew what to heckle and when to sing. But though she did so at all the opportune moments, gaining much admiration from the students in the process, there was no passion behind it and she felt no fun. She could have talked to Lorna, really she could. Really talked. She’d have liked that; Lorna too, hopefully. But she couldn’t because it was so noisy. And she was on duty.
What is it, Polly? What, exactly, has unnerved you so?
It feels too far to be safe.
How do you mean?
It’s new. I’ve never not been near him. We’ve rarely done things apart. ‘While the cat’s away’, hey?
How about ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, surely?
More like ‘out of sight, out of mind’. I must be losing mine. I don’t know, do you know I just feel – uneasy. All of a sudden. I suppose I just presumed all to be so secure. After five years, you slip into an easy routine. Or is it complacency? I’m not going to say ‘yes’. I’d better not. Not for a while.
Power game?
Safety net.
Fighting sleep, Polly forced images of Max to assault her instead. Max drunk. Max stoned. Max having a brilliant time without her. Max necking someone, tall and blonde. Max’s mind being utterly devoid of Polly.
She’d never done this to herself before.
She’d never seen Max like that.
What are you doing, Fenton? That’s not Max – not Max at all.
Look what Sunday has brought – a breathtakingly beautiful morning. Polly slept well, eventually, and her fears that smiling would elude her entire stay have proven unfounded: she grins broadly at the morning. Dew covers the lawn in a sweeping kiss and the very tips of just one or two leaves on each maple tree wink a crimson preview to Polly. New England. Vermont. Fall. How lucky.
Trading Old for New.
‘Just you wait,’ says Kate, pushing a mug of erbal tea (most definitely no ‘h’) into Polly’s hands, ‘another four weeks and man, you’ll weep!’ They sip and sigh awhile.
‘All set?’ Kate asks.
‘Won’t I need a hammer?’ asks Polly. Kate laughs and gives her a quick, spontaneous hug.
‘Nope!’ she declares, ‘that’s for the guys. You know there won’t be one nail or screw used, just oak pegs?’
How could Polly know? She’s never been to a house raising before.
Can a scent be deafening? Technically, probably not; grammatically, debatable too. However, it occurs to Polly, as she and Kate stride towards the site, that it is the most appropriate word to use.
The scent of pine is deafening.
Definitely; it is deafening and divine.
The pine, not yet seen, has been felled, planed and is ready to be made into a house.
From the right-hand fork at the end of Main Street, a small, well-maintained lane leads off it to the right. It continues severely up hill; over the petticoats and on to the very skirt of Mount Hubbardtons. Not that John Hubbardton was a cross-dresser, of course; it’s merely the price he must pay for having a mountain previously known as Sister Mountain renamed in his honour. After half a mile, a dirt track leads off the lane and it is here that we catch up with Polly and Kate. Kate is telling her all about Jojo Baxter but Polly can hardly hear her for the scent of pine. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply. It’s so heady. She stumbles as she goes. Kate links arms with her. For support.
‘Are these my Queens of Tarts?’
‘Hey Jojo!’ Kate sang, loading all the tarts on to Polly’s already laden arms so she could embrace Jojo. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good, good. You must be Polly? Hi there, I’m Jojo. I’m starving and we’ve hardly gotten started. Save my soul and send me to heaven: blueberry, cherry and apple? Queens of Tarts, queens!’
Polly fell for Jojo immediately and knew instinctively that they’d see eye to eye – not least because they were absolutely the same height.
There were people and pine everywhere. By the time Polly had laid the pies on one of three trestles set up in a rambling shack on the edge of the clearing, the population on Jojo’s site seemed to have doubled. What a crowd! Adults and children and most ages represented therein. The site for the house had already been prepared in the form of a large, rectangular platform; children were scampering over it; women were pacing it, imagining the kitchen and my! what an awesome bedroom; men were analysing it with tape measures, spirit levels and the failsafe eye. There were three enormous wooden ‘A’ frames; one lay on the platform, the other two at either end. Nearby, stacks of pine in differing configurations were planked up in neat piles six foot high. A single sheet of white paper, tacked to one plank, had a list of ten, polite points. This was how you raised a house. As easy as apple pie.
This is America, thought Polly, venturing nearer to the platform and absorbing all surrounding her as she went, not just the pine and the fact that folk build houses for their friends in a day. No; alongside the pies and pumpernickel, the accents and the stunning scenery, this enormous sense of spirit embodies America, surely.
Wasn’t all of this a film? Harrison Ford?
The house raising might well have been staged just for an English tourist. But just as Polly was neither ignored or stared at, nor was she over-welcomed. She felt at ease. She was not a tourist, she was not at the cinema. People allowed her to occupy a space amongst them. She fitted in just fine.
All America is here: wholesome kids, caring women, buddy-buddy men, Boston beans baking deep in that pit over there, the children’s tree house with the Stars and Stripes. I hear terminology I wrongly thought would irritate me, I smell the gargantuan feast that will revive the pioneers mid-morning. I baked a pie. I smell pine. I’m part of this. I belong.
The first ‘A’ frame was aligned, hauled and coaxed into its place with little ado.
‘Hold it right there, Ed.’
‘Easy! Easy!’
‘Up she goes. She’s up.’
‘Way to go, guys!’
While the children now played in the trees and by the stream, the women chatted and marvelled and ensured that beakers were overflowing with fruit juice. The builders were all voluntary – Clinton and Jackson and a couple of other Hubbardton teachers amongst them. There were also Jojo’s friends and family who had travelled across the state, some even down from Canada, to be a part of the day. There were Jude and Ed, her hillbilly-looking nephews whose sensitive and polite demeanour was utterly at odds with their thick necks and thatched hair, their calloused, stout hands and seam-stretching thighs. Nearby, a couple of elderly men in great shape (who actually didn’t look silly in their checked shirts and worn jeans), spoke about e-mail and software while they flung ropes about like dab hands. A goofy teenager set up a plumb-line and cried ‘Yo!’ triumphantly while Clinton and Jackson rigged up a ‘come-along’ to secure the correct tautness between struts. A small army of men wore tool belts slung like holsters; whipping out hammers with a speed that would have done John Wayne proud, or twirling their tools with all the flair of a rock-and-roll drummer. Everyone had a job to do, everyone knew their place. Overseeing the entire operation was a small, wiry man, the architect and only paid member of the team, bearded strangely minus a moustache, who darted nimbly around the growing skeleton, heaping praise, advice and instructions with a softly spoken voice. All three ‘A’ frames were now in place and point four on the list had been reached.
Every strut, joist and plank had a home in either a notch, a wedge or a grip in a neighbouring plank, strut or joist. Corresponding holes in the wood allowed for oak pegs to further secure the bond. A jigsaw puzzle the size and shape of a house. The hillside rang with the song of chatter, of laughter and of knock, knock, knock on wood. Enter two carpenters, father and son: Bob and Mikey McCabe. Polly had a doughnut in one hand and a small offcut of pine in the other and she was intermittently sniffing the two when she first caught sight of Mikey. Tall and lithe in physique, his dark hair long. He had the most beautiful forearms, ditto his strong, muscled legs with their masculine smattering of dark hairs. His face was so handsome it could well be illegal.
Polly bit into the wood, hard, and thought to herself that English doughnuts were so much softer and more tasty and who on earth was that scrumptious man and he’s taken his T-shirt off, oh my God.
She was utterly taken aback. She had no control over her eyes as they darted to and from this figure. Her heart pounded. She was horrified and exhilarated.
But I don’t look twice at normal men.
Normal?
I mean, real-life blokes. Only Max. For the past five years. Apart from film stars – who don’t count.
She let the doughnut fall to the ground as if it were an off-cut of pine, and she placed the offcut of pine, teethmarks and all, on to a plate of doughnuts.
Polly Fenton doesn’t look twice. But I can’t keep my eyes off him.
‘Isn’t this great!’ squeezed Jojo, at her side.
‘Super duper,’ agreed Polly in fine style, half relieved to be led away from this apparent danger zone, half ruing the fact that stirring the beans prevented visual access to Mikey McCabe.
‘He’s out of sight,’ she lamented softly to the great saucepan as she sat on her heels over the pit.
‘Isn’t he just!’ colluded Kate cautiously but with a skew smile. ‘Outa sight. Totally.’
‘I meant,’ fumbled Polly, immensely uncomfortable and almost lost for words, ‘I meant – absolutely nothing. Nothing at all.’
Kate doffed her head and departed with a smile that was kind. And wise. And something else too.
Outa sight, Polly twanged to herself.
Max is out of her mind.
She is totally engrossed in the sensation of the present.
SEVEN
‘Hey there,’ he said, bowling over to her at lunch-time with an easy smile, ‘I’m Mikey.’
A warm, firm handshake.
Look at his neck. His Adam’s apple. Shoulders. Chest.
No don’t.
‘Hullo,’ she responded, ‘I’m Polly.’ Desperate to be demure and disinterested. Failing.
Fight the smile.
Failing.
Am I blushing?
Yes.
‘From England, hey?’
‘Yes, from Old Blighty,’ Polly enunciated. He nodded and smiled, displaying perfect white teeth behind full, deep red lips. The morning’s exertion had had superb consequences for his appearance; his hair was damp and tousled and scraped hastily into a pony tail while sweat and sawdust gave a subtle glisten to his body and had made his eyes watery and dark. Polly tried not to stare and hoped sincerely that her pupils were not dilating visibly. If they were (they were), he was too well mannered to acknowledge it.
The house was all but finished by four o’clock. The roof was slatted and watertight. There were no side walls at the moment as Jojo, predictably, had run out of money. However, even in its skeletal state it was stunning. It was obvious what a gorgeous home it was going to be when complete; occupying this spectacular position in the lie of Hubbardtons, overlooking the main cluster of houses of Hubbardtons and just a twenty-minute walk for Jojo to her classes at Hubbardtons.
The little architect started a round of applause when the job was done, which was followed by liberal high-fiving and unabashed hugging. The men then jumped from the structure and stood back to look on it, nodding and congratulating each other and themselves. They finished the last of the beans and made another inroad into the batch of pies before disappearing to their pick-ups and returning with fiddles. They played until dusk. Polly counted seven violins as she tapped her toes with her mouth agape. There were two bonfires. She sat by Kate at the smaller. Mikey McCabe was playing his fiddle around the other; jigging and twisting, turning and stamping. He had jeans on. But Polly could clearly see his legs beneath them. She really couldn’t take her eyes off him. She couldn’t really. He was magnificent.
Polly ate little at supper for she was still full from lunch. She washed up diligently and made tea for Kate, Clinton and Charle(s).
‘I have a slight headache,’ she said, swiping her brow with the back of her hand so that she covered her eyes as she spoke, ‘I think I’ll take a stroll.’
‘You want to wait till I’ve finished my tea?’ offered Kate.
‘I think I’ll go right now if you don’t mind,’ Polly declined politely, ‘I must nip it in the bud.’
A headache? A stroll? But Polly is positively stomping along Main Street, forking right, then right again. Springing through the petticoats then climbing up on to the skirts of Hubbardtons.
No moon. No need.
I must nip it in the bud.
Turn right.
The house, pale yellow-pink in night light, still smelling divine.
‘Hey! You came.’
‘Mikey.’
‘You came.’
‘I can’t do this.’
‘You’re here.’
Mikey was leaning against one of the corner posts of the house. Polly climbed on to the platform and walked over to him. He was still in jeans and now wore a polarfleece top to ward off the chill of the September night. He had her locked into his eyes. She could not get away. Not even if she had tried.
‘I,’ Polly said, as Mikey straightened up and walked over to meet her, bang in the centre of the house, ‘can’t do this.’
‘Do what?’ he asked softly, his lips parted and damp. ‘Do this?’ he enquired as he stroked her hair and brought her hand to touch his. ‘Or this?’ he asked, pulling her closer and breathing a kiss on to her forehead. ‘Or is it this,’ he wondered aloud as he tipped up her chin and lowered his face over hers, ‘that you can’t do?’ Their lips were less than an inch apart. She could feel his breath over her cheek. His eyes were so close, so dark and deep. She could hardly breathe. ‘Is it this that you can’t do,’ he said, without the question mark, as he sank his lips against hers. He flicked his tongue. It was surprisingly cold against her top lip. She really could not breathe. As she gasped for air, he plunged his tongue deep into her mouth where it immediately leapt about, sweeping across the underside of her teeth, pressing at the roof of her mouth, searching out her tongue and pulling it into a frantic dance with his. Her arms were about his shoulders.
How did they get there?
She was kissing with a hunger that umpteen apple pies could not diminish. Mikey pulled away and placed his hands on his hips.
‘Well, girl, it sure looks like you can, indeed, do this.’
Polly could not speak, let alone protest, because her voice, it seemed, was only for gasping and her heart was in her mouth anyway. Simultaneously, it was also beating hard and fast between her legs. Mikey came close again, encircled one hand around Polly’s waist and pushed the other up under her crotch. He pressed and rubbed and as he did so, the seam of her jeans massaged her clitoris. She could have fainted. Instead, she moaned and swayed, closed her eyes and tensed her thighs as he grazed her neck with his teeth. He took his hand away and cupped her right breast, suddenly pinching hard at the nipple. Now they weren’t kissing. They weren’t saying anything. They were breathing heavily, gorging on each other’s faces.
‘Christ,’ Mikey said hoarsely, scooping Polly against himself, bucking his groin gently against her. Automatically, she travelled her hand down his body and felt his erection defiant through denim. She rubbed him and squeezed along the impressive length of his cock while they stared at each other. They ate at each other’s mouths again.
A noise. Footsteps.
‘Hallo?’
Jojo! Quick! Into the trees.
‘Hallo?’
They watched as Jojo clambered aboard her new house and walked round it in a slow waltz of sorts.
‘Hi there, little house!’ they heard her repeat over and over as she circumnavigated her domain. She didn’t stay long. They neither resented nor blamed her for coming. They’d have done the same, they agreed, if it was their house built on this beautiful plot of land. Jojo walked away, singing and skipping as she went. Mikey had his back to a tree and pulled Polly against him but facing away from him. She pushed her arms back so she could hold on to the belt loops of his jeans and steady herself. It caused her body to arch forward and gave unlimited access to Mikey’s hands. He felt along her stomach, slipped his fingers down the front of her jeans as far as he could reach and then slid them under her knickers. He could not reach far enough, despite her wriggling, so he cupped and fondled both her breasts instead and then encircled her neck with his hands, squeezing, quite tightly. It felt dangerous. It was. Wasn’t it?
The ground was unbelievably soft. Mikey had laid her down on it, removed her boots and jeans arid placed his fleece and his shirt under her body. He was stepping out of his jeans, looming over her in white jockey shorts, his erection holding out the fabric like the mast of a marquee. He straddled her, kissed her and then set to work on each of her nipples in turn, while she tried to reach his cock which was tantalizingly beyond her stretch. God she wanted him. All of him. Inside her. She bucked her body up and sat with her face against his stomach, his cock stiff between her breasts. She had a hand on each buttock and started, teasingly slowly, to inch his underpants down. The shaft of his penis sprang out of the fabric, his balls still concealed.
‘Polly,’ he murmured, ‘God, you’re something else.’ Slowly she lowered her mouth over his cock, making sure he could feel her hot breath over it before her lips touched down.
‘Polly,’ his voice was rising with his excitement. She kissed the very tip of him with the lightest of lips. Then she gulped down as much of him as would reasonably fit.
‘Polly.’
Gosh, his voice was high. What power!
‘Polly!’
Hang on, that’s not his voice at all. That’s Kate’s.
Kate?
What’s going on?
Where’s Mikey gone?
‘Come on sleepy head, it’s school time.’
If fantasy is fiction, does it preclude reality entirely? Dreams may not be real but they are genuine; truth often contained therein.
Was the reality really only that Mikey had merely done no more than greet her, introduce himself and ask if she was from England, and all briefly at lunch-time? Was that really all he had done?
Polly felt quite sick. Sick with dismay that it had only been a damn dream, sick with worry that she should be thus dismayed and sick at herself for her perceived infidelity. That she had had the dream at all deeply distressed her and yet she was also troubled by her disappointment at being woken. She worried that she had been writhing as Kate tried to wake her. Had she said anything revealing in her sleep? Why had she never dreamt about Max in such a way? Had he ever dreamt so explicitly about her? About anyone else? But it made her feel sick that he might have done; about someone else. And yet how could she have done this? To Max? Would she even have noticed Mikey had she not felt so uneasy about the phone call with Max?
I haven’t fantasized like this at all. Haven’t ever needed to. Hang on, it wasn’t a fantasy at all – it was but a dream. Phew! I can’t determine what I dream. I’m innocent.
She lay in bed, her hand resting gently over her pubis. The hair there was damp. She tunnelled between the lips of her sex; she oozed wetness. With an ear peeled and eyes clamped to the slightly ajar door, she masturbated. She didn’t think of Max. She didn’t think of Mikey. She thought instead of a film star and closed her eyes as she came.
Dominic’s party was OK, Max supposes, as he settles at his drawing board and leafs through the briefs clipped at the top.
Quite good, actually. Except for being lumbered with the clearing up because Dom’s hangover rendered him immobile all day. Shame that Polly phoned. I can’t believe I forgot, that’s not like me.
Max must work on the design for a media agency’s Christmas party invitation, and comes up with an idea to manipulate the text into the shape of a wine glass. Because he must perfect the design first, he ignores the precise wording the client has ordered. A letter to Polly will provide the perfect practice vehicle. He doodles wine-glass shapes quickly and then commences.
It’s a good design, Max is pleased with it. He can’t show the client this particular one, of course, not least because he’s going to send it to Polly straight away. After lunch, he’ll re-do it and insert the commissioned wording. Somehow, he feels closer to Polly just writing to her than he did when speaking to her by phone but he’ll call her at midnight because he must, because no doubt she’ll be waiting. That’s in twelve hours’ time. Currently, Mikey McCabe is laying her down under the trees. Max isn’t to know, though. How can he know what Polly is dreaming?
Polly beat Max to it. She skipped dinner easily because she hadn’t been able to eat all day anyway. She felt wretched, believing herself to have been unfaithful. She also felt sick with worry that she was far from Max’s mind anyway, that she was perhaps slipping from his heart. Why else would he have forgotten to call her? Why else would he be so preoccupied with some stupid party of Dominic’s? Adrenalin surged as she dialled.
‘Hullo?’
Bloody Dominic.
‘Dominic, it’s Polly. Max, please.’
I don’t like you any more.
‘Hey Polly!’
Party animal, bad influence.
‘Max, please.’
‘Sure,’ said Dominic, unaware of his crime and presuming Polly merely being frugal with the transatlantic call. ‘Take care, girl, speak to you soon.’
Hopefully not.
‘Polly?’
He sounds tired.
‘Hullo.’
She sounds low.
‘I,’ stumbled Max, ‘I wrote to you today. Posted it Swiftair.’
‘Thank you,’ Polly responded, having still not received his first letter.
Well, have you written to him?
I’ve almost finished a very long letter, actually, that I started before I even left England and continued on the flight.
‘Saturday?’ she started, feeling low and little and at last forgetting all about Mikey.
‘God, I’m so sorry about all of that,’ Max said, ‘I felt terrible.’
‘So did I,’ Polly said carefully. She could envisage Max so clearly, most probably sat on the kitchen table, socked feet on a chair. Maybe in his Norwegian fisherman jumper. No, it’s still mild; probably a polo shirt on top of a T-shirt.
‘Polly?’ said Max, leaving the kitchen table and pressing his forehead against the fridge, ‘still there?’
‘Yes,’ she affirmed quietly.
‘I don’t like this,’ Max said sadly.
‘What?’ responded the tiny voice over an ocean and a continent away, ‘what’s “this”?’
‘Speaking to you,’ he explained, ‘on the phone. It seems only to magnify the physical distance between us.’
Polly was quiet. Max continued, ‘I find it painful. I can’t say enough. I can’t say it right. As you said, the telephone is cruel, Button, it gives you false hope of intimacy. You sound so clear. You sound just like you. You sound so bloody near. But you’re not. I could turn around, positive that you’re just beside me. See, but you’re not. Do you see?’
‘I do,’ answered Polly, searching for Max in Kate’s kitchen and not finding him. He had shed light on a situation she previously could not fathom and she felt relieved and settled for it. ‘Do you know, you’re quite right, Max. I think if I hadn’t actually phoned on Saturday – just heard about the evening in a sentence in a letter some time later instead – I wouldn’t have felt so —’ Words eluded her.
Max, Max, I do love you. I know that I do.
‘Polly? You wouldn’t have felt so – what?’
‘Um,’ she pondered, ‘isolated?’
‘Ah.’
‘So open to wild suggestion.’
On my part as much as yours. Bloody Mikey McCabe – as if!
They fell silent and listened to each other breathe. If Max closed his eyes, he could almost feel the top of her head by his lips. Polly shut her eyes and conjured Max standing right beside her.
‘Max,’ she said, without opening her eyes so that he’d remain there for a few moments longer, ‘what are you wearing?’
‘My navy polo shirt and a red T-shirt, why?’
‘Just wondered,’ Polly replied with a smile. ‘I thought you were, you see. In your socks?’
‘Indeed. Bet you’re wearing your floaty brown skirt and your cream Aran knit?’
‘Spot on, boyo!’ said Polly in her black jeans and her new, grey, Hubbardtons Academy sweatshirt.
But I love him. White lies are a lover’s duty. His happiness is my charge.
‘See,’ Max announced, ‘we don’t need the phone at all, do we? I think I feel closer to you without it – do you agree?’
‘Yes,’ said Polly, crying silently, wishing she was in her brown skirt and Aran knit, ‘it’s true. The distance is spelt out so heartlessly by the phone.’
‘So, shall we telepathize instead of telephone? See how it goes?’
‘Let’s,’ Polly agreed, ‘and write. Often.’
‘Weekly,’ Max assured her.
‘At the very least.’
‘Swiftair,’ Max stressed.
‘’Kay,’ said Polly.
Polly slept superbly that night. She dreamt Max had appeared at Hubbardtons in his Beetle. When she had asked him what on earth he was doing there (her feet off the floor, her arms clamped about his neck and his answer initially swamped by her kisses) he said his studio was around the corner, like it always was, silly old thing.
Max slept fitfully. He knew he’d made a sensible suggestion, done the right thing (as was his wont), but it currently served only to acknowledge unequivocally that Polly was far away and for a long time too. It made him sad. Confused a little. How could he not want to speak to her directly? In his dream, he went to Polly’s flat expecting her to be there. Why wouldn’t she be? America? Where’s that then? Only Polly wasn’t there at all. The woman who answered the door had never heard of her. Come on in, please, she invited Max. They sat on the sofa that the woman assured him belonged to no Polly Fenton. She made him tea. She looked like a supermodel and she gave him a terrific blow job.
Max wrenched himself awake in a sweat.
‘No!’
He’d messed the sheets.
‘God, no.’
He went to the kitchen, drank water and made himself cocoa. It was half four in the morning. It was still yesterday in Vermont.
Shall I call her? Just quickly?
He resisted.
He felt awful.
I don’t care if it was a dream. I can’t believe I did that to Polly.
He slept the rest of the night on the sofa.
EIGHT
The first month crawled along for Max but for Polly, it passed at more of a scamper. She had little time to herself but as that was something she had never craved, she did not really notice. She was happy to be so occupied; if there wasn’t an evening meeting, a study hour to supervise, lessons to prepare or essays to mark, Polly was easily persuaded to join a group of teachers for a drink at the picturesque village of Grafton, or a movie in the nondescript town of Normansbury in lieu of a sensible early night. Her advisees also took much of her spare time but she gave it to them willingly – each teacher was Adviser for up to six students; on call for advice, comfort and any etcetera that the advisee might require. Polly’s full clutch of six turned to her often; partly because it meant they could leave the school grounds and have cookies at Kate’s, partly because Miss Fenton was ‘cool’, ‘so, so nice’ and ‘just the best’ anyway.
Most of the male freshmen and seniors are in love with her. The sophomores and juniors in between simply adore her. She thinks of them as her seraphims and Junos. English lessons have swiftly become favourite; the homework prompt and pleasing. Powers Mateland is delighted. She’s had no need to holler for Jackson Thomas, nor has he succeeded in asking her for a date. She’s always busy, that Polly Fenton, skipping about smiling, eyes alive; chatting away to students, teachers, herself and who knows what.
Excluding the house raising, Polly has had only four days off and she has willingly filled every moment of these. She went to a lunch-time concert with Kate at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, taking the seven-hour round trip in her stride like a native. She’s driven a laden minibus up to Hanover in New Hampshire to watch an Ivy League football game between Dartmouth College and Princeton, and she has spent the past two Sundays with Lorna, who she likes very much. Last week they browsed around Keene and found a lovely bistro for lunch where they whiled away the hours until it was suddenly time to order supper. Yesterday, Lorna and Polly took a trip to Manchester where they had an exhilarating day over-spending in the factory outlets, buying things they really didn’t need but at prices so good they’d have been mad not to. The notion that they’d probably like each other has been proven, and a friendship between the two has developed effortlessly.
Lorna now knows all about Max. She has a boyfriend back home in Ohio and it’s good to talk about the trials of long-distance love with one who knows. With one as fun as Polly. Polly has even called her Megan, absent-mindedly, once or twice, though she looks nothing like her, but Lorna was more than flattered.
‘Will you guys get married?’ she asked, having told Polly that she and Tom plan to. Sometime.
‘Maybe,’ guards Polly for the time being, ‘probably.’
Why am I being guarded?
Just because I haven’t found the neck-ring ring?
Or because maybe, for the first time, it’s nice to be known – and liked – just as Polly. You know, without the Maxand bit.
For his part, Max doesn’t really mind that she hasn’t said ‘yes’ formally, officially. He doesn’t need to hear it because he doesn’t doubt her feelings towards him, he has no need to.
It’s just her scatty, emotional disposition. Plus, she probably wants to say ‘yes’ to my face, with a deluge of kisses. Anyway, she has so much on her plate. She probably thinks she’s actually accepted already.
Because when you’re that committed, that sure, there’s no need to rush, isn’t that right, Max?
‘Miss Fenton, if it’s not Mountain Day today, can you coach us soccer?’
Though it had nothing to do with Hardy, the class had worked well through the double period and Polly was happy to ease off in these last ten minutes.
‘Hold on, Heidi – what’s Mountain Day?’
‘Mountain Day? Miss Fenton, it’s the best – the bell, like, sounds four times, everybody meets on the hockey field and we all, like, hit the mountains for the day – it’s just the best. Mr Jonson organizes it. No one knows when it’ll be – not even Mr Mateland. It’s so cool.’
Polly absorbed the detail, ignored the repetitious element of Heidi’s explanation, and nodded. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but why footie?’
‘Hey?’
‘Soccer.’
‘You’re from England, right!’ Heidi announced as if Miss Fenton had lost her mind.
‘The home of the game?’ stressed AJ, perturbed by Miss Fenton’s blank expression.
Laurel’s hand shot up as she closed the lid of her lap-top.
‘Laurel?’
‘Bet you were born with your boots on!’
How ever am I going to let them down gently?
‘Yo!’ called curly-hair-snub-nose-Ben, his arm stretched, ‘Up the Arsenal! Is that right?’ he quickly added, with sincerity.
‘Come on you reds!’ chanted TC.
‘Scumming home, scumming home, football’s scumming home,’ sang TC, who presumed that to scum for home was particularly fancy footwork all players should aspire to.
‘You gonna coach us or what?’ asked Dick, slapping podgy hands down on the desk and fixing Miss Fenton with a look of hope mixed with exasperation.
‘I’m frightfully sorry to disappoint you,’ Polly said, wondering where on earth the adverb had come from, ‘but I’ve never kicked a football in my life.’
The class stared at her in disbelief. A further, conclusive shrug from Miss Fenton saw hurt and disappointment criss-cross the ten faces.
‘How about netball?’
Begrudgingly, the class said they’d meet her in the main gym at lunch-time, if there was a free court.
The main gym at lunch-time. It was free and Polly’s jaw dropped.
Look at it! And this is only the main gym – there’s another one too, and a weights room and a stretch studio as well.
Looking around at the superbly maintained hall, Polly couldn’t wait to describe it all to Megan. Suddenly, she had an overwhelming surge of sympathy for The Jen Carter Person as she recalled the BGS gym; its frayed ropes, plastic-covered mats that clung cruelly to sweaty legs, and the floor with the varnish chipped into tessellations by squadrons of nimble-fingered games-wary girls. And the ceiling that served to amplify their squawks and protestations. She also realized with some guilt that she had quite a lot to recount to Megan, having been most uncharacteristically lax in her correspondence.
‘Righty ho!’ called Polly, positioning her class and some bystanders who wanted to join in, into some semblance of two netball teams. ‘Blast, no bibs!’ Hastily, she scribbled capital letters on to paper and safety-pinned them to the students’ shirts.
‘What’s “ga”?’ asked blond-hair-Ben suspiciously.
‘Goal Attack,’ Polly explained, pinning a large ‘C’ to Laurel and deciding that Dick would be safest as ‘GD’. (‘Cool,’ he said, to her relief.)
The game lasted twelve and a half minutes before the players went on strike.
‘What?’ Heidi exclaimed, squinting at Miss Fenton to make double sure it was English she was speaking, ‘you can’t run? With the ball? You gotta stop and pass it on?’
Whistles of incredulity and snorts of disbelief ricochetted around the hall.
‘Hey Miss Fenton,’ Lauren called to save the day, ‘how about we teach you basketball?’
‘It’ll be the best twelve and a half minutes of your life,’ AJ assured her, flipping his cap round back to front.
‘Yes, siree,’ confirmed Forrest.
‘Game on!’ TC chanted and clapped.
After quarter of an hour, Polly had to admit that basketball was a ‘far superior’ game to netball (‘Does that mean she likes it?’ asked Lauren quietly. ‘I guess so,’ said Ed). ‘However,’ she continued, ‘my leg is killing me – so I shall bow out gracefully and watch from the sidelines.’
‘I sure am sorry ‘bout that,’ said AJ, who had collided with her at high speed and, being big for his age, had come off scot-free. Polly brushed away his apology while he shook his head gravely.
‘Stiff upper lip and all that!’ she explained, wondering how to make hers rigid because the pain from her leg was causing it to quiver.
‘Go see Mr Jonson,’ Heidi suggested. ‘That’s what he’s, like, here for – his office is off of the weights room through there.’
You can’t be Mr Jonson, the athletic trainer. You’re a film star, surely?
‘Mr Jonson?’
‘Yes?’
You are Mr Jonson? Wait till I tell Meg!
‘Um, I’m Polly Fenton.’
‘Hey,’ Mr Jonson smiled, beach-blond and brawny, and looking fantastic in his jogging pants and cosy sweatshirt, ‘I’m Chip.’
‘Chip?’ Polly repeated, wondering, but only as an aside, if he had actually been christened that way, ‘I’ve never met anyone called Chip. I’m Polly.’
‘Ditto Polly,’ Chip laughed, walking towards her and shaking her hand. ‘Aren’t you the chick who puts the kettle on?’
Polly put her hands on her hips and smiled wryly.
‘Ah yes,’ she countered slowly, ‘I remember you, you’re Fish-and!’
Chip held his hands up in surrender and nodded.
She is cute. I had no idea. It’s a whole month into term and I had no idea.
‘Pardon?’ said Polly.
‘I was thinking, you must have been here a month and I had no idea,’ he shrugged.
‘’Bout what?’ Polly asked.
‘’Bout who’s standing in for Jen Carter,’ Chip explained. ‘I guess I just don’t have much cause to go to the main buildings, being the Athletic Trainer. Hell, Stuyvesant House could burn down and I’d probably not know. I’m kinda out of the way here.’
‘What does an athletic trainer do exactly?’ Polly asked, perusing the walls of Chip’s office. ‘We don’t have such things in our school, in England full stop, I don’t think,’ she continued, admiring the array of photos depicting him excelling in a variety of sports. A cabinet full of medals and trophies too. What a hero!
‘Well,’ said Chip, ‘I’m on call if there’s a sports-related injury. Or if a kid’s training, I’ll devise a programme. If they have a bad back, or whatever, I see to it. I administer physio, rehab, hydrotherapy – you know?’
‘Really!’ Polly gasped in awe, pitying poor Miss Henry who looked like a man but preferred women and was head of P.E. at BGS. ‘Hydrotherapy?’
‘Sure,’ shrugged Chip. ‘We have a couple of whirlpools,’ he explained, as if they should be no more eye-opening than a couple of table-tennis tables. ‘So what can I do for you? Or did you just come by to say hi?’
‘Hi, hullo. Actually, it’s my leg,’ Polly stressed. ‘Young AJ and I collided.’
‘Not on some fine detail of Shakespeare, surely – I know the kid’s opinionated but hey!’
‘No no!’ Polly laughed, warming to Chip’s wit and smile. ‘Basketball. And anyway, it’s Hardy at the mo’.’
‘Kiss me?’ asked Chip, turning his head and looking at Polly through slanted eyes.
‘Pardonwhat?’ Polly reacted whilst struggling against being swallowed whole by his gaze.
‘Kiss me Hardy?’ Chip illumined, the picture of innocence.
Look at that picture of him finishing the Boston Marathon. How can anyone look that composed and, um, pleasing, after twenty-six miles?
‘And 385 yards,’ said Chip, reading her mind.
‘Thomas,’ she stressed, leaping back on to safer ground, ‘Hardy. Thomas Hardy.’
‘I gathered,’ Chip said, motioning Polly to a chair while he drew another up close.
‘Far from the Madding Crowd,’ Polly continued vaguely, wondering if Chip’s tan was genuine.
‘Yup,’ said Chip, ‘as I said, I’m pretty cut off out here. Now, let’s take a look at this leg. You want to take your pants down?’
What!
No!
Yes?
‘Your trousers?’ he spelt out with a ‘w’ and a ‘z’.
Yes!
No?
Polly rolled down her leggings, suddenly horribly aware of her bikini-line fuzz, pale thighs and rather bristly lower legs. Chip placed cool hands around her calf and lifted her leg on to his lap, admiring her smooth milky skin to himself.
‘Play much?’ he asked, pressing gently. ‘This hurt?’
‘No and yes!’ Polly all but yelled. Chip winced for her, holding her leg steady. And tenderly. And for longer than was probably necessary, not that Polly would have known. He hovered his hand above it; kept it there, suspended. Polly could feel a cushion of heat. Odd. It was soothing. It gave her a strange feeling.
‘That’s one helluva whack you’ve gotten yourself, lady!’
‘Dialect words,’ she quoted, in a bid to belittle the blush she knew she wore. ‘Those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.’
‘Hey?’ asked Chip.
‘Hardy,’ Polly nodded, adding ‘Thomas’ quickly before Chip could quote Nelson again.
‘You calling me an animal?’ he laughed, hovering a fist above her throbbing shin.
‘No, no, no. I’m far too genteel,’ Polly heard herself say.
Chip sent her on her way with some arnica, a cool pack, and his assurance that there was no damage done.
A very private, quiet side of Polly wasn’t so sure.
Nor, Chip realized, removing the photograph of Jen from his desk and relegating it to the bottom drawer, was he.
Max was shopping at Budgens in Belsize Park because he couldn’t face the one-way system encircling Sainsbury’s in Camden Town; he didn’t like Safeway because the television adverts irritated him supremely, and Waitrose in Swiss Cottage was far too extravagant midweek (which made the Rosslyn Delicatessen in Hampstead a luxury completely out of the question). Yet he loathed Budgens intensely. He only needed a few basics, few of which the store had anyway, but there he was, he realized, mainly because it was Polly’s stamping ground and therefore offered some connection, some comfort in lieu of the real thing. In lieu of an overdue letter.
He bought half a basketful of provisions and was about to make a swift exit when the Lottery machine and the passport-photo machine suggested he do otherwise.
I’ll buy a ticket for Polly!
I’ll pose for some daft passport photos to send with it!
He procrastinated for some time over which numbers to pick before marking off six boxes.
27 for her age, 30 for mine, 5 for the years we’ve been together (and the weeks we’ve now been apart), 19 for the date in December when she’ll be home for Christmas. Damn, two more. 13 because I’m not suspicious, I mean superstitious, and because it equals ‘M’ in the alphabet. 16, likewise, for ‘P’.
‘How will I know if she’s won?’ he asked the sales assistant who regarded him most warily, not imagining that there was anyone in the UK who had never before bought a Lottery ticket.
‘It flashes up half-way through Blind Date,’ she informed him as if he was a halfwit.
‘On the television?’ Max asked, to her stupefied look. ‘When’s it on? Blind Date?’ he pressed, thinking the girl’s grimace of exasperation was merely some unfortunate facial mishap.
‘Sa-Urday nigh-,’ she said, dropping her ‘t’s in mystification, ‘’bou- eigh-.’
Max thanked her and asked her what coins he needed for the passport-photo machine.
While waiting for the snaps to develop, a sickening lurch hit his stomach.
Oh bloody hell, the ice-cream!
He’d treated himself to a comfort-size tub of Häagen-Dazs ‘Cookie Dough Dynamo’ which he had no intention of sharing with Dominic, no matter how starving his brother might be, how hard he might plead, how temptingly he might bribe. Currently, the tub was at the bottom of the plastic bag; Max could feel it because he was holding the bag next to him as he waited by the whirring passport machine. He looked at his watch and then at the store’s clock and estimated he had been faffing around, gambling and posing, for at least fifteen minutes since paying for his goods. He added on another ten minutes since he had plucked the ice-cream from the freezer cabinet and placed it with relish in the then empty basket.
Still the machine rumbled and clicked and though he looked up the chute he could see nothing. He sat down, alongside a cackle of old ladies, on the orange chairs provided by the store.
Nothing for it, I’ll have to salvage what I can.
He took the ice-cream tub from the bag and gave it a gentle squeeze. It yielded ominously quickly to his touch. He eased the lid off easily and pulled back the film cover, licking it meticulously. Slowly, he licked at the goopy surface of the ice-cream. Actually, it hadn’t melted much at all. But enough, all the same, to warrant him lapping at the softer parts.
‘Like the cutest puppy,’ Jen Carter, bearing witness to the whole episode while she waited in the queue, said to herself.
As Max was waiting for the machine to blow-dry the photos which had finally appeared, a blonde woman, lean and too tanned for this time of year, approached him.
‘Looks like you could use one of these,’ she said in an American accent, offering him a Maryland cookie. He looked at her bewildered.
How can biscuits help with drying photos?
‘Sorry?’ he said, a quick glance at the machine to see that the blow-drying was still in operation.
Come on, machine.
‘For your ice-cream?’ said the woman, tapping the tub with the biscuit packet. ‘Like, in place of a spoon.’
‘Right, right!’ Max responded, a little embarrassed, glaring at the machine to hurry up. He’d recently read an article about supermarkets being hotbeds for ‘singles in search of sex’ and was increasingly worried that there were ulterior motives for this woman and her cookies. The machine was silent. Thank God.
My hands are full; bugger and damn!
‘Here, let me,’ the woman offered.
‘No, no,’ rushed Max, ‘honestly.’
Too late.
She had the photos. Though she pretended not to look, she’d have seen the one of him pulling his monkey face. And the one below of his wide-eyed theatrical pout. In a glance.
‘Er,’ Max stumbled, ‘thanks, right, yes, thank you. Fine. They’re for my girlfriend. She’s in America.’
‘My home, my country,’ sighed the woman, clasping hands (and the photos) to her breast and smiling.
‘Yes,’ said Max, inadvertently clapping eyes on her breast, ‘Vermont.’
The woman’s smile fixed itself and then dropped. She scoured Max’s face and he found himself rooted by a pair of very blue eyes.
‘Vermont?’ she gasped, ‘you wouldn’t be—?’ She let the sentence hang. England sure was small – but not that small, surely.
Max’s eyes alighted on cat biscuits, tinned salmon and condensed milk visible in the woman’s plastic bag.
Buster.
‘You’re not—’ he stopped. They stared at each other, searching for some further clue.
‘I’m Jen Carter,’ she laughed, eyes dancing while her brow twitched becomingly.
‘Good Lord!’ Max chuckled, shaking his head and grinning back, ‘I’m Polly’s Max.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘I do,’ he assured her, ‘I am.’
They shook their heads and then shook hands.
‘Well well,’ Max said, handing Jen the ice-cream while he restored order to his shopping bag.
‘Can I tempt you,’ Jen asked, ‘with Polly’s spoons? You want to eat up your ice-cream back at the apartment? Check the place over? Say hi to Buster?’
What an offer. Of course he did.
Aha. Is autumn to be a season of trysts? A helluva fruity mess? A little bit of harmless swinging? Mixing if not matching? Musical affairs? Bed jumping and wife swapping? But no one’s married here. Yet. Does that make it any less significant? Easier? Does that make it right? Or just not as wrong?
Hold on, I thought these four characters were besotted with their true partners? Fenton and Fyfield. Miss American Pie and her hunk of Chip. It might be an interesting notion in terms of our tale’s plot – but what of the potential chaos in our characters’ lives? We know these people. The thought wouldn’t enter their minds, would it? Or if it did, if it crept in, it would be banished at once, of course. Or, if not quite at once, it would be considered carefully – and then rejected defiantly. Surely.
NINE
While Jen cursed autumn for dressing the pavements in a lethal cloak of sodden leaves and for giving her a stuffy cold, Polly praised the fall frequently each day for its stunning blaze of cool fire. She was rarely without a smile or a spring to her step and her delight and her energy were infectious. Trudging across Hampstead Heath in its October livery of russets and browns was one thing, but jogging or cycling or sitting – just living – in Vermont, in a landscape which boasted every possible hue of red, orange and yellow was something else entirely.
‘Forget Keats!’ Polly told her senior class, ‘“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”? I hardly think so. Don’t take any notice of him – he never came to Vermont, you see. But if he had, class, how do you think he would have described it? Anyone? Don?’
‘Er, “season of pumpkin and palette of fire”?’
‘Good! Laura?’
‘“Trees clad the colour of passion; sun slumbering till spring”?’
‘Super! Kevin?’
‘“Fall: the sweep of flame that is the swansong of the maple.”’
‘Terrific! Gosh, look at it out there – come on, let’s spend the remainder of the lesson outside composing odes.’
The Bench, Hockey Pitch
19th October
Darling Max,
My class are composing odes to the fall so I thought I’d do the same but in letter form to you. I’ve told the seniors to forget Keats – do you think that very wicked? But most of them are eighteen years old, so I’m sure they can handle such an order! I won’t tell the juniors to do so as they’re far too impressionable, and I can’t instruct the freshers and sofs because I doubt they know who Keats is. I think the seniors feel liberated, relieved in some way – given carte blanche to shake off the spectre of hallowed literature, to praise nature in whatever terms they choose. They’re picking some excellent ones too.
As you know, I don’t believe in God, but I have to credit and thank some thing; whoever, whatever. As the fall has taken hold, it is as if some divine, huge power is laying their hand over the land in a slow, magical sweeping. Initially, just the fingertips of some of the leaves on a few of the trees were touched with crimson. Within a week, every tree had a flourish of copper or brass amongst the remaining green – as if a whole branchful had been given a celestial handshake. Now the maples are cloaked in incredible swathes of colours from the highest yellow to the deepest maroon; so vivid and bright that I don’t know whether to weep or wear sunglasses. No mists, no mellow fruitfulness; instead an amazing clarity, crystal-clean light and a clear breeze. This land is rich indeed, for the leaves are made of gold, of rubies, of garnets. Ho! Sorry to prattle on in such syrupy terms, but I really have fallen under the spell of this place.
The only drawback is the Rodin Syndrome. Now that I have experienced the fall in Vermont, I fear any other autumn anywhere else will surely seem second-rate and mediocre. Rather like all other sculpture once the work of Rodin is known.
God, I wish you were here. It is absolutely beautiful but it would be even better if I could share it. I mean, I go jogging with Lorna and cycling with Clinton (I’m quite fit now – you’d love my tight butt) (that’s American for firm bum) but what I crave is a long, loping walk with you.
Damn – time and paper run out on me – and my juniors are about to have the surprise of their lives: they’re about to meet Chaucer and, while they adore my dulcet tones, I’m not sure what they’ll make of my Middle English accent.
I love you, Max-i-mine. My own ‘verray parfit gentil knight’, I miss you. Write soon,
Polly.
PS. pis send more Marmite – Kate’s gone crazy for it and is using it in everything – Bogey’s food included.
‘Yeah, hello?’
‘Chip?’
‘Jen! How are you? Hey, it’s great to hear from you. I was going to call you only there’s a hockey tournament soon and suddenly the whole team have gotten aches and sprains.’
‘Hey, that’s OK, I’ve been pretty busy too.’
‘So how’s it going?’
‘Good, good – how’s Hubbardtons?’
‘Pretty much the same. I think tomorrow’ll be Mountain Day.’
‘Hey – isn’t that classified information? Wish I could be there.’
‘You don’t have some day similar, in London England?’
‘Nope. Nothing that comes close. Something called Mufti when the kids can wear their own clothes – but that’s only the last day of term.’
‘Some way off.’
‘Sure is. You know, it’s kinda weird living in someone else’s apartment. There’re these crazy women above me – one is old, Swiss and nutty as hell, the other’s an out-and-out psycho. I haven’t managed to come in without one or other noticing – so I’m either sworn at or asked the date, time and year and the whereabouts of some guy called Franz.’
‘Sounds entertaining?’
‘I guess. I think I prefer being Dorm Mother to ten girls though. So, have you met Polly Fenton?’
‘Er, Polly Fenton. No, no, I haven’t as yet.’
‘Oh?’
‘No, I’ve been real busy.’
‘Sure. She’s pretty.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I met her boyfriend and he showed me photos.’
‘She has a boyfriend?’
‘Yes. Chip?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You there?’
‘Sure.’
‘You went kinda distant.’
‘I was miles away, I was just – you know. I don’t know, I’m bushed.’
‘Sure.’
‘So what’s he like?’
‘Who?’
‘This boyfriend guy.’
‘Oh, he’s really sweet and helpful – the boiler here’s a little temperamental so he’s going to have someone come fix it. He and his brother are making dinner for me and Megan this weekend.’
‘Great.’
‘Yeah. You want to know who Megan is?’
‘I’d love to but I gotta go – I have a kid for hydrotherapy in five.’
‘Sure. I love you, Chip.’
‘Love you too, Jen.’
Hampstead
Hallowe’en
Hullo Button,
Lovely to receive your letters – two arrived this morning though you sent them a week apart. Royal Mail – 1, USA Post – 0. You wrote beautifully about the fall and I wish so much I could share it with you. Maybe another year we could take our holiday there.
London is sludgy and slippery, and strolling over the Heath becomes a maudlin trudge without you, kicking the leaves, all rosy-cheeked and alive. There have been some great films on at the Everyman but all Dominic will be coaxed to see is Die Very Hard 27 and Star Trek 43. Plebeian.
Work has been going well; some new commissions as well as potboilers from the faithful. I enclose photos and a Lottery ticket – the acquisition of both being highly traumatic so I hope you’ll be grateful.
You’ll never guess who I bumped into.
Jen Carter!
At Budgens.
You’ll be pleased to hear that Buster is living the life to which he is accustomed: her shopping consisted of little else than tinned salmon and condensed milk. I popped back to the flat and, rest assured, all is neat and tidy, with Post-it notes still in place. I thought it would be friendly to invite her over for supper, along with Megan – such an evening will provide Jen with some company, Megan with some hope, and Dominic with a choice!
I’ll report back with Technicolor detail!
Love and miss you intensely,
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