Fire And Hemlock Part 17

She found Tom beside her. "Polly," he said. "Do you think a fairground is the best place for the two of us to be? In the light of past events?"

"Past events? Paper monsters and so on?" Polly said. A little mistily, she saw Tom nod. She had meant to behave with great dignity, but that nod a.s.sured her that they had, after all, shared a number of experiences in the past, and he knew it as well as she did. "I don't mind," she said. She seized his arm with both hands and hugged it. "I don't care. I'm just so glad to see you again!"

"All the same-" he began.

Mary Fields was suddenly standing in front of them, laughing heartily. "Tom! You should see yourself! You look like father and daughter!"

Tom took hold of Polly's hands and unwrapped them. Polly did not exactly resist, but she did not help either. "All right. We're coming, Mary." Mary moved off, lingering sideways, waiting for Tom. "In that case," Tom said, pushing Polly's hands away, "we'd better stay clear of things like the Ferris Wheel and the Octopus." He moved off after Mary.

Polly followed him, not quite stopping herself making movements to take hold of him again. "Why, why, why? Tom, tell me why at least!"

Tom answered over his shoulder. "You know if you think about it."

It was his way of running you up against silence. Polly stood where she was. Vaguely, she knew there were lines of light bulbs, red things and gold things turning, engines grinding, rifles cracking, a.s.sembled round her to the music of a bra.s.s band no one was playing. Such was her misery that she herself seemed nowhere among it all. She was no more important than the little Ping-Pong ball bouncing on top of a jet of water in the stall beside her.

Leslie came scouring back to find her. Tom had sent him. Polly let him seize her hand and tow her into the festivity. Pride came to her, as it had over Joanna, and she made herself violently happy,fiercely enjoying herself. It was like pushing your hand on the jet of water to hold it down. Ann went on the Big Wheel with Sam. Leslie and Ed rode the Octopus, yelling. Polly came off a roundabout and met Seb. The sky was wheeling round the dark figure, but she knew it was Seb. I think he follows me around, she thought.

"Oh h.e.l.lo, Seb!" she cried out, violently glad to see him.

"h.e.l.lo, Seb," Tom said from somewhere near. "Come and join us on the Dodgems."

Someone paid huge sums of money for them all to have several turns on the Dodgems. Seb dropped out after the first go. It did not suit his dignity to be doubled up in a small red car. The rest of them drove like idiots, yelling and whooping, until the money ran out. Polly had a violent duel with Leslie. She chased him round and round the rink, with her hair flying and both of them screaming, until Leslie turned and knocked her neatly into Sam. She pursued Sam then, took time off to give Mary a hearty thump, and then went after Ann, whereupon she ended up stuck, spinning round on the spot and howling for help. Ed came and knocked her loose and she went after him like a fury. She did not go near Tom.

"Polly's a regular Amazon!" she heard someone saying as the cars coasted to a grating silence for the last time. "I'd rather have Tom's driving any day!"

Polly got down from the rink, a little weak at the knees, to find herself joining a laughing line, hurrying to find further enjoyments. As they streamed in and out among the stalls, Leslie shouted, "How about the Tunnel of Love?"

"No," said Tom.

Leslie, clearly, had not been run up against Tom's silence before. It made him blink and grunt slightly, and then turn away looking as if he did not quite know what had happened. Not that it worried him for long. Almost at once he was leading the rush toward a tall plywood fort at the end of an alley of stalls. The fort had slit windows and battlements and was painted in splashes of red and gray. A plywood Dracula stood at the entrance. "The Castle of Horrors!" Leslie shouted. "Let's go!"

The others, inspired by Dodgems and champagne, raced afterhim. Ed was shouting, as loudly as Leslie, "It's Tan Coul's castle! This I must see!" which made Ann double up with laughter.

Polly was behind the rest, going slower. The effort of holding down the jet of misery inside her made her chest ache. Seb caught her up from behind and put his arm round her. "There you are, Pol. Where are those fools going now?"

"To interview Dracula," said Polly. "You come too."

"Let's not," said Seb. "Let's just you and me go in the Tunnel of Love. Come on."

"No thanks." Polly slithered out from under his arm. "I'm with them. It would be rude." Which was true, although it was just an excuse. "You come to the Castle of Horrors with me." But Seb refused. Polly left him standing irritably in the lane of trodden gra.s.s and ran to join the others at the plywood castle.

They were just going in. Someone had already paid for her. Polly dodged after them under a plywood portcullis and fought round a sacking curtain into lurid red light. A skeleton loomed at her, yattering its teeth. Polly swerved round it, pretending to laugh, though it was not very convincing. The others had got ahead of her, thanks to Seb, and she was all on her own. She could hear their exclamations in the distance, and their feet treading hollow boards. She pushed through string cobwebs, past a barred window with mechanical groans coming from behind it, and Dracula towered at a corner. His fangs gleamed. He was almost convincing. Polly hurried, feeling deserted, into clanks, groans, and rattles, to a part where the light was dim and blue. She drew back with a gasp from a ghost.

"Oh thank goodness!" Tom said beside her, amused but relieved. "I thought I'd lost everyone."

It was quite dark, but Polly could see the blue light glinting on his gla.s.ses and pick out the stoop of his head as he looked at her. The jet of misery tried to force itself up past her hand. She crammed it down. "Not very convincing, is it?" she said, and hated her voice. It sounded bright and social.

"No, but I suppose they can't have people going mad with terror," he said. "Your hair looks pale blue."

"All the better to drive you mad with terror with," said Polly. "They put me in here as a hallucination."

Tom gave his yelp of laughter. "Not very convincing, are you?"

"Spit!" said Polly. "Round one to you."

They walked along the hollow boards under the clutching arms of two more ghosts. Polly thought Tom had run her into silence again. But the jet of misery seemed to be dying down. Then he said, "Leslie seems quite happy. How's he really doing at Wilton?"

Hint, Polly thought. Leslies are for Pollys. "All right," she said, "when he's not skiving off. Seb said he was a popular little beast. But he had a bit of trouble at first, not being the same as the other boys."

"I was afraid he might," Tom said. "I feel responsible. I told Edna how good the music was there, but I didn't dream she'd take me seriously. I hated the place when Laurel sent me there."

"Laurel sent you?" Polly said.

More string cobwebs surrounded them. It was quite a fight to get through. Polly thought silence had descended for certain this time, but Tom said, dim and blue, and breathless from being tangled in string, "My parents had died and we'd nothing. I was in Council care when Laurel almost adopted me. I know how Leslie felt."

Telling me things, Polly thought. A farewell gift. She came loose from the string and turned to watch Tom fight through. Something clanked beside her. A suit of armor with an axe raised in its metal fist was seemingly bearing down on her. Knowing it would stop before it reached her, Polly ignored it. "Leslie's tougher than-"

Tom shouted, "Watch out out!" and tore loose from the string.

Polly snapped round to see the suit of armor really coming for her, and another clanking up from the other side. After that, things happened so fast that her memory had it simply as a clanking, blue-lit whirl. She remembered aiming a great kick at the nearest suit of armor and seeing it sway away backward. The whistling wind from its axe as it just missed her face was one of the things that stood out. So was the gong-like ringing from her other kicks. But her chief memory was a dim blue sight of Tom wrestling tohold up the arm of the second suit of armor, which kept going mechanically up and down, up and down, with the axe just missing his hair. With that went a rumbling of some sort from overhead.

Polly came at a run to kick that suit of armor too. Tom said, "No, don't be a fool!" and kicked her instead, hard, on the thigh. Polly staggered sideways and fell over, in a whirl of frantic blue metallic sights-something was falling out of the roof, and the first suit of armor was raising its axe again. Polly rolled desperately away, deafened by crashing metal. Next thing she knew, an iron portullis had dropped out of the roof, trapping Tom underneath it. That held him in place while the first suit of armor brought its axe down. Polly knew, because she felt him jerk while she struggled to heave the spiked metal grille up off his back. She did not remember getting up. She was just there, heaving at the bars.

"Get this off off me!" he said. me!" he said.

"I'm trying!" trying!" Polly snapped. Lucky I've got muscles, she thought as she somehow rescued his gla.s.ses and rammed them in her pocket. The portcullis was mechanically forcing itself down and down. Polly trembled with the effort of heaving it. Tom fell on his face under her feet, and that just enabled her to hold it clear of him while he rolled out from underneath. It dropped with a clang then, and the metal spikes ran into the floorboards. "Jesus wept!" said Polly. Tom was simply lying there with his face in his arms. In the blue light the back of his shirt seemed to be oozing black, shiny stuff. Polly snapped. Lucky I've got muscles, she thought as she somehow rescued his gla.s.ses and rammed them in her pocket. The portcullis was mechanically forcing itself down and down. Polly trembled with the effort of heaving it. Tom fell on his face under her feet, and that just enabled her to hold it clear of him while he rolled out from underneath. It dropped with a clang then, and the metal spikes ran into the floorboards. "Jesus wept!" said Polly. Tom was simply lying there with his face in his arms. In the blue light the back of his shirt seemed to be oozing black, shiny stuff.

"Get us out," he said, "before anything else comes for us."

Polly looked round rather wildly. Quite near her face a white crack of light threaded the blue dimness. She put out her hand and felt plywood. "Here's a way," she remembered saying, and after that a fury of kicking and tearing until she had managed to loosen a panel of plywood and let sunlight come blinding in. She went on bashing and made a bigger hole. Tom climbed to his feet and she somehow helped him drop several feet down into the white, white daylight, to trampled gra.s.s smelling of petrol, into a roar of heavy engines.

Tom went on his knees there, bent over, muttering things. Thestuff oozing from his shirt was red by daylight.

"You're bleeding," Polly said, shouting above the engines. "A lot."

"That's what it feels like," he said. "It hurts like h.e.l.l. Can you get my shirt off and look?"

"Yes." Not at all wanting to, Polly helped him get one arm out of its sleeve and then gingerly took hold of the green shirt by its collar. She had to peel it off. It made her teeth ache and her spine fizz with horror. More blood kept coming, and she was terrified that he was only being held together by the shirt.

While she peeled, Tom said in a tight, grating sort of way, "You are now about to see a human back."

"Oh shut up," she said. "You would say that! I've seen backs every time I go swimming." And, having by then pulled the shirt down and seen the mess the portcullis and the axe had made between them, Polly could think of nothing else. She dithered, holding the shirt wadded up, not knowing whether to press it to the big, oozing cuts or not. Her teeth felt about to fall out. There were maroon-colored dents too that must have been really painful. "Tom, this looks awful!"

"But how about the bit round the edges?" Tom said almost jeeringly.

"Brown-and you've got muscles," Polly said. "I don't know what to do do!"

People's feet appeared, trampling round them in the gra.s.s. Ed said, "h.e.l.l's bells! That's what the noise was!" Ann threw herself down on her knees beside Polly, demanding to know what had happened. Sam took hold of Polly's elbow and pulled her to her feet. "Are you you all right? What happened?" all right? What happened?"

"It was-" Polly began, but Tom interrupted her. "From playing the cello in Australia," he said. "That's all."

"What's he on about?" said Ed.

"Nothing," Polly said. "There was a portcullis and it fell on him."

"Leroy again," said Ann. "Polly, can you run and find Mary? She used to be a nurse. I don't know enough to touch this."

"We'd better find a doctor or an ambulance," said Sam.

He and Ed and Polly hurried away in different directions. Tom called after them in that scratchily painful voice, "And Leslie! Find Leslie! I must must talk to Leslie!" talk to Leslie!"

As Polly ran, she could hear Ann trying to say soothing things to Tom. They were in a back lane of the fair, among engines on huge wheels, blue oil fumes, and the canvas rears of stalls. The sensible place to look for Mary would be the proper exit to the Castle of Horrors. Polly dived through the nearest gap that seemed to lead to the main fairground, and cut in past a deafening lorry engine. Mr. Leroy and Seb were just beyond the gap. Polly saw them both in profile, yelling at one another, and backed hastily out of sight.

"-do it this way! There's a much better way!" Seb almost screamed. His voice cracked as badly as Tom's.

And Mr. Leroy bellowed, "To save our skins! That's why!"

Polly fled, found another gap, and sped through. There was a throng of people outside the Castle of Horrors, most of them angry and frightened. The man in charge was waving his arms and shouting, "It's all quite safe, I tell you!" He seemed panic-stricken. "It's quite safe!"

Mary turned away from the back of the crowd and saw Polly. Her face changed from annoyance to horror. "Polly! What's all that blood?"

Polly looked down and saw that the front of her white shirt and some of her hair were stained with bright red blotches. "It's Tom's," she said. "Come quickly. A piece of the castle fell on him."

Mary put a firm arm round her. "Easy now," she said. "Show me where. It'll be all right." That was the thing about Mary. She was nice, even though she and Polly did not like one another.

They were slower getting there than Polly wanted to be. Her leg and side quite suddenly began to hurt appallingly where Tom had kicked her. Mary helped her limp through into the back part of the fair again, where they arrived too late to be of use. An ambulance, with its blue light flashing on top, was already backed up into the gra.s.sy lane. Two ambulance men were just finishing putting somekind of dressing on Tom's back. Everyone else was standing watching, including Leslie, who looked as sick as Ann did. Polly gathered that Leslie was the one who had called the ambulance.

Tom was now swearing steadily. His face looked odd. Polly remembered she had his gla.s.ses in her pocket, and she limped over and gave them to him. He put them on, as he was, still crouched over on the gra.s.s, and went on swearing. His face looked just as odd with his gla.s.ses on. It had gone a strange color, which was not white, as Polly might have expected-muddier than that-and it went stranger as the ambulance men helped him to his feet.

"Up you come now, sir! Can you manage to walk up the ramp?"

Polly heard Sam mutter to Ed, "Curse this. What about that recording session on Tuesday?"

"I know," said Ed. "We'll have to cancel. He can't possibly play in that state."

Tom contrived to hear this somehow, through his own swearing and the cajoling of the ambulance men, in spite of the noise of the fair and the grinding of heavy engines. He turned and called over his shoulder, "Don't you dare cancel it! Either I'll play or you'll get Dowsett or someone. Ann, do you hear? You're not to cancel that recording. And Leslie," he added, turning the other way, "don't you forget what I said either!"

"Gives his orders, doesn't he?" Leslie said to Polly as the doors of the ambulance closed.

"He was in pain, you little fool!" Mary snapped. Mary, Polly remembered, vented her feelings in anger. She raged at Ann and Ed and Sam and wanted them to sue the fair for negligence. The three of them just shrugged, which made Mary angrier than ever.

"We'll try if you like," Ann said at last, in an effort to pacify her, "but I'm willing to bet you there'll be no evidence to go on."

Polly understood what Ann meant when she looked round to find the place where she had forced a way out of the Castle of Horrors and saw only a smooth painted plywood wall, with no sign even of a loose panel.

7.

Out then spoke her brother dear- He meant to do her harm- "There grows a herb in Carterhaugh..."

TAM LIN.

Ed drove Leslie and Polly back to Granny's, while the other three went in Tom's horse-car to the hospital. Ann promised to ring up as soon as there was news.

Granny was upstairs resting. Polly and Leslie sat on the sofa with the telly on, waiting for Ann to telephone. They both felt so strange that they wrapped their arms round one another and leaned head to head, unseeingly watching cricket. Polly kept reliving the wild blue clanking scene, over and over, and her desperate effort to hold the iron portcullis up as it forced itself down. Leslie was a comfort against that, but nothing seemed to plug the jet of misery inside her. That seemed to be a separate thing, and stronger than ever.

"I hate that Mary Fields," Leslie remarked. "First female I've ever hated."

"So do I," Polly confessed. "Leslie, those suits of armor-"

"I saw," Leslie said. "I was coming along behind those cobwebs, but you were talking about me, so I didn't call out. That's how I got the ambulance so quick. I went back out the front way. I tell you the truth, I thought he might have been even worse hurt than he was."

"He-he-" Polly began again.

"Needn't have got hurt at all," Leslie said, "if he'd stayed put. They were both after you, you, weren't they? Must have been programmed like robots." weren't they? Must have been programmed like robots."

"Yes," said Polly. She had been trying to tell herself that Mr. Leroy had done his usual thing of injuring both Polly and thequartet in one go, but she had not convinced herself this time. She knew Leslie was quite right.

They stared at cricket awhile. "Something's going on," Leslie said at length, in an injured way. "I don't understand about Tom. He kept coming into our shop, Mum said. And she said each time he came, my Uncle Tom hid out the back until he'd gone. Now, why would he do that? Don't get me wrong. I've nothing against Tom. I like him-even though he had no business warning me off Mrs. Leroy like he did just now. Really angry he was, about that."

Polly sighed. "He used to be married to Laurel. Leslie, he does know."

"Ah," said Leslie. "Then in that case he's bound to think she's bad news, isn't he? I thought there was something."

Granny came down then, and they had tea. Ann did not ring until two hours later, around the time Leslie was uneasily saying he would have to get back for Roll Call. "Tom's all right," she said. "They st.i.tched the cuts and seemed to think it looked worse than it was. So they gave him injections and things and let him go-he refused to stay in overnight anyway. They told him he'd have to stop playing for at least a week, but he won't hear of that either. He says if Sam could play after he ran him over, then he can record on Tuesday. We'll have to see how he is then, I suppose. Anyway, not to worry. We're all at Mary Fields' place at the moment-she's being really good with him, considering. I don't think Tom's stopped swearing once since we got here."

"Well that's that, then," said Leslie as he got up to go.

Which was just how Polly felt too. There was a sort of flatness and finality to everything. Her jet of misery burst through the flatness like a drowning flood. She floated in it like a corpse for nearly a week. She could not even talk to Fiona because Fiona was too ill to be disturbed.

Seb came round the next Sat.u.r.day while Granny was resting. Polly did not feel like seeing him, but it was not easy to tell him that. She suggested they go out for a walk, or round to Nina's-anything not to be alone with Seb. All Seb did was to throw himself on the sofa and grin languidly at her. That meant hewanted her to go over there and be kissed, and she did not want to. "Oh, come on!" he said.

It made Polly feel she was being mean. "I'm not in the mood," she explained, trying to sound kind.

Seb sighed and looked at the ceiling. "I hear old Tom copped it," he said.

"What!" Polly said.

"Didn't a piece of the scenery fall on him at Middleton Fair?" said Seb.

"Oh yes," said Polly. "But-isn't he all right, then?"

"Fit as a fiddle-cello, I should say," Seb said cheerfully. "Last heard of making a recording in London, so my informant tells me."