Fire And Hemlock Part 6

Polly was free the first week in April too. Holidays started then.

She sat straight down to write and tell Mr. Lynn so. Then she looked at the clock and found she had to go to school instead. The day seemed endless. But she was home at last, and the letter was written and posted. The soldiers were put in a place of honor in Polly's room. And the day was endless again.

To have something to do, Polly got out her nice dress and tried it on. There was a grease stain in front where she had dripped b.u.t.ter and honey despite all her care, and a muddy patch on the back where she had crouched on the pavement, afraid of the horse. The dress did not seem as big as it had been. It squeezed her round the chest and nipped her round her forearms, and the skirt came nowhere near her knees. But since it was the only nice dress Polly had, she went and looked at herself in Mum's big mirror, hoping it would do.

She saw a wild, gawky figure in a dress three sizes too small. Under the wrong-length frill of skirt were two thin legs with a scab on each k.n.o.bby knee. Round the scabs the knees were gray. The hands dangling out of the too short sleeves were gray, too. The wild tails of her hair were not quite gray, but they were drab somehow and rather like snakes, and the face among the snakes, had a sulky look, even though the sulky look was just breaking up into tears.

"Oh no no!" wailed Polly, and completed bursting into tears as she fled downstairs to the telephone. Tears made white places on her hand as she dialed Granny's number. "Granny! Granny Granny!"

"What is it, Polly?" Granny's voice said, sharp and comforting in the receiver.

"Mr. Lynn's asked me out and my nice dress is too small small!"

There was a slight pause from the other end. Then Granny said, "Back from Europe, is he?" Polly was surprised and interested to find that Granny had been following Mr. Lynn's movements too. "Well, that's nothing to take on about," Granny said.

"But I've no good clothes at all!" Polly wailed.

"Polly!" Granny said, sharper still. "Stop howling and answer me one serious question."

"Yes," Polly gulped.

"Did Mr. Lynn ask you you out, or did you ask out, or did you ask him him?" said Granny.

"He wrote and asked-I never said a word, promise," said Polly. "And he sent me a parcel with soldiers in-"

"All right," said Granny. "I'm not sure I like it, Polly, but if he's free to ask, I suppose he must want to see you. But be wary of what he gives you. Keep that to yourself, understand? Now, are you sure you want a dress? Wouldn't a pair of jeans and perhaps a nice jacket be better?"

"Well-" Polly remembered Mr. Lynn's old anorak. "Much better. But I haven't even got any jeans that fit, Granny."

"I thought that was what you were asking me for," Granny retorted. "I'll buy you them for your birthday, Polly. I'm not made of money."

Polly's birthday was not till June, but it was worth having no present from Granny then, just to be properly dressed now. She thanked Granny gratefully.

"I don't do it to be thanked," Granny said, and rang off.

Polly went upstairs and carefully put the soldiers in her folder along with her paintings. When Ivy came home, she was waiting in the hall. "Mum, my hair needs washing."

"I suppose it does," Ivy agreed. Neither of them could remember when Polly's hair was last washed. They went up to the bathroom, where they both had rather a shock. Polly's hair hung in snakes because each piece was matted into itself, in a sort of rope, and Polly had head lice. Ivy had to go out for a special shampoo and a fine-tooth comb. But the comb would not go through Polly's hair. "Don't you ever brush your hair?" Ivy said, grimly dragging an ordinary comb through it.

The dragging made Polly's head sore. Her eyes watered. "Not often."

"Then you should!" said Ivy. "You're big enough now, in all conscience! I don't know, Polly-this is such a mess I think I'd better cut it all off. You'd look quite nice with it short, after all."

"No!" shrieked Polly. She jumped up and dragged her hair away.

"Don't you dare touch it! I like it long!"

"After all I've done for you!" Ivy said, losing her temper too.

"You haven't done anything for me! You let me get lice!" Polly screamed back.

They shouted at one another for quite a while. At length Ivy gave in. "You always did have such a will, Polly. All right. But I thought you wanted it short."

"I don't any more," said Polly.

It took two hours to get Polly's hair combed, and another hour of washing after that. The water that came out of her hair was dark brown for the first two washes. Ivy washed it yet again, and combed it. Nits floated in the washbasin and had to be rinsed away.

"Let this be a lesson to you," Ivy said at last.

"Yes," Polly sighed. Her head ached worse than it had done with two black eyes. But she was rewarded by having a cloud of silver-fair, crackly hair, as clean as it was bright. She saw why Mr. Lynn had called it lovely now. She was rather careful about combing it after that.

6.

O they rode on, and further on, The steed went swifter than the wind, Until they reached a desert wide And living land was left behind.

THOMAS THE RHYMER.

Mr. Lynn had a new anorak. It was the first thing Polly saw when she opened the door to him. He had an altogether more prosperous look somehow.

"Won't you come in?" she said politely.

"No thanks," Mr. Lynn said, smiling all over his face. "I want to show you my horse."

Polly locked the front door and hid the key for Ivy and went out into the street with Mr. Lynn. There was a small cream-yellow car nestling against the curb, somewhat the shape of a teapot. He pointed to it proudly. "Like it?"

Polly laughed. The car's number plate was TC 123. "Oh yes! A modern horse. And TC for Tan Coul."

"Of course," agreed Mr. Lynn. "As soon as I saw the number plate, I knew I had to buy it. Hop in." He opened the pa.s.senger door for her and Polly climbed in, feeling very grand and relaxed in her new jeans and jacket. "I don't know what I'd have done," Mr. Lynn said, climbing in the other side, "if I'd failed my driving test. I only took it last Thursday, you see. I'd have had to call for you in a taxi. Now. Let's see. Choke, ignition, handbrake, check mirror. Do you want to know where we're going?"

"Nowhere, of course," said Polly. They both laughed, Polly heartily and Mr. Lynn in his guilty, cut-off gulp.

Then they tried to set off. At first the car would do nothing but plunge up and down on the spot. Mr. Lynn managed to get it moving, and they went down the street in a series of jumps, like a kangaroo with hiccups. "Horse very restive," Mr. Lynn apologized. "Feeling its oats." He was rather pink by this time. He tried moving the gear lever. There was a mighty crashing sound. The car gave another leap, backward this time, and stopped completely. "Oh dear," said Mr. Lynn, pinker still. "Polly, I'm sorry. I'm very nervous. The car knows."

"Call it names," said Polly. "Like you did the horse."

"No, you call me me names," said Mr. Lynn. "It's my fault." names," said Mr. Lynn. "It's my fault."

"All right then," said Polly. "I'll call you Tan Coul, trainee-hero of the West, and ironmonger and Thomas Piper, axefighter and giant-killer, and horse-tamer and someone who's going to kill dragons soon."

This seemed to make Mr. Lynn feel better. The car snarled and started with a swoop, and they swept out into the center ofMiddleton. There, after a number of interesting wobbles, they raced twice round the main square before Mr. Lynn could rein the car in enough to dive down the Gloucester Road. When he did, they howled swiftly out into the countryside, pausing only to miss a bus and skip the Miles Cross traffic lights.

"This car really is that horse, in a way," Mr. Lynn said as they flashed past the last limit sign at sixty miles an hour. "After you'd gone, I went back to that circus to see if it was all right. And apparently that wasn't the first time it had gone on the rampage. They were saying it would have to be put down."

"Oh no!" said Polly.

"Just how I felt," said Mr. Lynn. "So I had a rush of blood to the head and said I'd buy it. I couldn't bear to think of it dead. I knew I was going to get about enough money from the orchestra's European tour-but they wouldn't wait that long, however much I argued. In the end I had to sell one of those pictures-"

"Not the Chinese horse!" Polly exclaimed.

"No, no," Mr. Lynn said, as shocked as she was. "That's too beautiful. No, I sold that picnic picture, which was the one I liked least. Laurel had been more generous than I'd realized-it turns out to have been a genuine Impressionist, and it fetched quite an awesome price. So I could afford to feed the horse once I'd bought it."

"Where do you keep a horse in London?" Polly asked.

"I don't," said Mr. Lynn. "The circus people put me in touch with a woman who boards horses out in the country. And she discovered why I'd bought Lorenzo-I'm afraid the horse is called Lorenzo-and offered to buy him off me. That's how I got the car. I paid for it with the money Mary Fields gave me for the horse. That's where I thought we'd go first. You'd like to see the horse again, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," Polly said dubiously. "Are we going anywhere else?"

Mr. Lynn gave his gulp of a laugh. "Stow-on-the-Water," he said rather triumphantly. "Did you know it's a real place? I thought, if you agree, we could go there and look for hardware shops. It's inthe Cotswolds, not far from Mary Fields' farm." Polly thought that was a marvelous idea.

"Good," said Mr. Lynn. "Though I know there really is no such shop, I almost believe it's real. I can see it, and even smell the beastly smell in Edna's kitchen if I close my eyes."

"Don't close your eyes," Polly said swiftly and firmly. She had realized by now that Mr. Lynn drove the way heroes drive. The little car seemed to have a surprisingly fast engine hidden under its rounded bonnet, and Mr. Lynn drove it with his foot hard down to the floor, turning to talk to Polly as he drove. He did not seem frightfully particular about which side of the road they were on, and he clearly had a pa.s.sion for overtaking everything else going the same way. Polly was not at all frightened. After all, Mr. Lynn had driven all the way down from London without crashing. But it was clear to her that his heroic style of driving was not possible if he had his eyes shut.

"No, of course not," Mr. Lynn said with that slightly irritating meekness of his. And the car continued to nibble at hedges and swerve into the paths of oncoming lorries under a pale blue spring sky. Seagulls sat in plowed fields on either side. Polly thought, We're driving away to Nowhere! and snuggled down in her seat. She felt all easy and light, like you do when you stretch after sitting still, or get into your own clothes after playing dressing-up. Last term had been all wrong somehow. It was as if she had been pretending to be someone else.

"I saw you on television once," she said. "Just for a second."

"Oh. Did you?" Mr. Lynn hunched his high shoulders. "I wish you hadn't. I hoped I'd got away without being seen-they so rarely point the cameras at the cellos. I hate the way we look. Like a set of very neat carpenters."

"Only for an instant. I almost didn't," Polly a.s.sured him. And she felt so comfortable that she added, "And I saw your-Laurel, you know-in the audience with Mr. Leroy."

"Yes, they spent their honeymoon abroad," Mr. Lynn said. "I saw quite a bit of them."

It seemed comfortable still, but in some way it was not. Polly went on carefully, "And how's Seb? Have you seen him?"

"No, though I was wondering if you might have done," said Mr. Lynn. "He's at school in Middleton."

"What, at Wilton College?" Polly asked. Seb would obviously not go to one of the ordinary schools. She felt mixed awe and scorn, because Wilton College was a very posh school indeed.

"That's right. Now tell me about these three other heroes. Why don't you know Tan Audel?"

"I just don't." Polly saw Mr. Lynn was wanting to change the subject. She filed that away in her mind, along with the other things she knew about Mr. Lynn and Hunsdon House. She had a feeling they were beginning to add up into something she almost understood. She humored Mr. Lynn and described the heroes. Tan Coul was the hero of the West, Tan Thare the South, and poor, shape-changing Tan Hanivar was the hero of the North.

"I like the idea of him," Mr. Lynn said. "Would you say he had a thin sort of face with a great, gloomy beak of a nose? What's TanThare like?"

They decided that Tan Thare was chubby, with curly hair. But Tan Audel remained a blank to both of them. They were still trying to discover what Tan Audel was like ten miles further on, when Mr. Lynn said, "Woops! Here's the turning!" and went screaming into a narrow lane on two left-hand wheels. A signpost flashed past, saying old elmcott. The car lifted this way and that. Mr. Lynn had made some kind of mistake with the pedals, so that they were hurtling between black hedges, faster and faster.

Polly became almost nervous and cried out, "Oh, don't, Mr. Lynn, please!"

Mr. Lynn, sweating rather, succeeded in reining the car in. They stopped with a bounce only a foot from a five-barred gate. "Sorry," he said. "Bit between its teeth. We have to walk from here." They got out of the car, quivering a little, and went through the gate to a squishy lane beyond.

"Do you have to call me Mr. Lynn all the time?" Mr. Lynn asked as they crowded onto the gra.s.s edge out of the mud. "How would you feel if I called you Miss Whittacker?"

"That's different," said Polly.

"How?"

"Because I'm not grownup," Polly said patiently.

"But people don't, do they, these days?" Mr. Lynn said rather pleadingly. "It felt very odd, that evening we met the horse, to hear you crouching on the pavement screaming, 'Mr. Lynn, Mr. Lynn! Help!'"

"Oh I didn't, did I?" Polly felt as embarra.s.sed as Mr. Lynn was about being on television and turned her head away to look at the hedge. She had not known there had been words in her screams.

Mr. Lynn saw he had put his foot in it. "I did read The Hundred and One Dalmatians The Hundred and One Dalmatians," he said encouragingly. "It was very good."

"I knew you would-you're so obedient," Polly said tartly. Then she made a great effort and said, "Would calling you Uncle Tomdo?"

This time she seemed to have put her foot in it. Mr. Lynn swayed about on the gra.s.s, turning to look at her suspiciously. "Have you read Uncle Tom's Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin?" he asked her.

"No," Polly said, wondering.

"Read it. And find out why that name won't do." Mr. Lynn turned and went on down the gra.s.s in long, hopping strides.

Polly leaped and scrambled after. "Another time I'll help, I promise," she called. "I've been training."

Mr. Lynn leaned into the hedge to let her catch up. She could tell he was embarra.s.sed too. "But you were were a help," he said. "I thought you saw. I was too scared to move until I realized you'd get trampled if I didn't." a help," he said. "I thought you saw. I was too scared to move until I realized you'd get trampled if I didn't."

After that, neither of them said anything until they came round a corner, beside a neat white fence like the kind you get in toy farmyards, and saw the horse himself in the field beyond.

"He really is just the same color as the car!" Polly exclaimed. "I thought it was the streetlights."

"It was too good a coincidence to miss," agreed Mr. Lynn. Heleaned his elbows on the fence and admired the horse. "I think it's one of the golden horses of the sun," he said.

"Oh," said Polly.

There were quite a lot of horses together in the next field, but the golden horse was alone. It knew they were there. Its head lifted, and it began to canter this way and that in the field, free and swinging. Polly was glad there was a fence. It shook the ground as it pa.s.sed.

"Tell me how you train to be a hero," Mr. Lynn said. "I need to, far more than you do."

"I don't advise it," Polly said. She told him about the difficulties she had got into. Mr. Lynn gave several gulps of laughter, but when she got to the adrenaline, he suddenly burst out laughing just like other people did. Polly looked at him in surprise. She had not known he could laugh properly.

Mary Fields heard the laughing and came ducking out of the barn at the corner of the field. "h.e.l.lo there, Tom!" she called. She was a small, angle-faced lady with a bush of short, light hair. The same color hair as Laurel's, Polly thought. Mr. Lynn seemed partial to that sort of hair. He rubbed his hand over Mary's hair as he introduced Polly. Mary Fields shook hands with a grip that crunched Polly's knuckles, and they all went into her farmhouse for coffee. The house was yellowish stone, almost the color of the horse, and smelled damp inside. Polly did not enjoy this part much. At that stage of her life, she did not like coffee, and Mr. Lynn and Mary seemed to have a lot to say that Polly could not join in, mostly about horses and music. Polly's one effort to join in was a disaster. She politely asked Mary Fields if she went riding on the golden horse.

Mary gave a loud laugh. "Good Lord no! Anyone who tried would come off with a b.l.o.o.d.y sore a.r.s.e, I can tell you! He was trained as a bucking bronco. I'm keeping him for stud."

Polly was shocked at Mary's language, too shocked to talk any more. She sat nursing her cold mug of coffee, feeling dejected. This is not Nowhere, she thought. This is horribly Here Now. I wish we could go.

At last Mary said, "Well, do you two want to stay for some lunch?"

Mr. Lynn looked meditatively at Polly. "No, thanks very much. We ought to be getting on."

They stood up to go. Among the moving chairs and Mr. Lynn's goodbyes, Polly distinctly heard Mary Fields say, "See you when you've got rid of Little Miss Prim there." Polly knew Mary meant her, and she knew Mary did not like her.