Fire and Hemlock

  “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 in the Cotswolds, not far from Mary Fields’ farm.”

  Polly thought that was a marvellous 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 realised 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 passion 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 ploughed 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 assured 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 humoured 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 Tan Thare 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 grass 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 grown up,” 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 embarrassed 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 Dalmations,” 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 Tom do?”

  This time she seemed to have put her foot in it. Mr Lynn swayed about on the grass, turning to look at her suspiciously. “Have you read 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 grass 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 embarrassed too. “But you were a help,” he said. “I thought you saw. I was too scared to move until I realised 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 colour as the car!” Polly exclaimed. “I thought it was the streetlights.”

  “It was too good a coincidence to miss,” agreed Mr Lynn. He leaned 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 passed.

  “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. “Hello there, Tom!” she called. She was a small, angle-faced lady with a bush of short, light hair. The same colour 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 colour 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 bloody sore arse, I can tell you! He was trained as a bucking bronco. I’m kee
ping 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.

  And I don’t like her! she thought as she followed Mr Lynn back along the muddy lane. She wondered why. Polly was not sure, but she knew the thing which had most upset her about Mary’s shocking remark was not the words, but the way Mary had said it in order to shock her. Beyond that, she gave up. She was not used to grown-up ladies behaving like girls at school.

  They got lost driving to Stow-on-the-Water. “The trouble is, I can’t drive and look where I’m going,” Mr Lynn said helplessly over the map. “Can you read maps?”

  Polly had never read a map in her life, but she tried. They had lunch at a pub by the river which served huge hamburgers and chips, but they had to eat outside because the dining room was full and Polly was too young to go in the bar. Polly did not mind at all. Mr Lynn was describing Edna’s kitchen to her, so that she could almost smell it too. And they both knew exactly the paraffin-and-dust-and-iron smell in the shop itself. Then Mr Lynn went on to Awful Leslie, and his greasy black hair and hanging lower lip. He told her some of the rude things Leslie said. Polly wondered then if he was really thinking of Seb, but she did not say so. About that time she got cold in the wind from the river.

  “We seem to have chosen a wintry sort of day,” Mr Lynn said, worried about her. “Would you like my anorak?”

  “No. I’m an assistant, not a damsel in distress,” Polly said. “Save it for them.”

  “As you please,” Mr Lynn said humbly. When Polly turned to him to tell him not to be so obedient, he added, “You can be very majestic sometimes, you know.”

  Polly got into the car, rather scrunched. That was when she realised that a lot of Mr Lynn’s humbleness was a joke, even if some of it was real. She never found it easy to sort out which was which.

  Stow-on-the-Water, when they finally found it, was made of the same yellow horse-coloured stone as Mary Fields’ farm. The main street opened up at one end into a market square, where there was a bridge over the river and a cross in the middle. After they had parked the car – with a jolt and a shriek of brakes that made everyone in the square whirl round to look – Mr Lynn went over to the cross and leaned towards it studiously. He said he thought it was Saxon. Polly tried to look as if she felt that was old and reverent. A War Memorial would have struck her as just as old and a lot more historic.

  “Now,” said Mr Lynn, “to look for ironmongers.”

  They looked up. And there it was, facing them across the square. Thomas Piper Hardware. There were shiny folding ladders propped outside and stacks of new yellow wood labelled DO IT YOURSELF. The whole shop had a new, clean look, most definitely modern. But it was there. Thomas Piper Hardware. The discovery shook them both, more than they had bargained for. Polly looked up at Mr Lynn, and Mr Lynn looked down at Polly, and his eyes were as round and amazed behind his glasses as they had been when he first saw the horse.

  “What do you make of that!” he said.

  “I don’t know,” said Polly. “I don’t – like it somehow.”

  They stood and stared at the shop. They stood until Polly began to shiver in the wind again.

  “We’re not being very brave, are we?” said Mr Lynn. “We can do better than this. Come on.”

  They sauntered towards the shop. Polly wandered away to the left, pretending she was going somewhere else. Then Mr Lynn wandered away to the right. But it was only a short distance. In no time they were standing beside the shiny ladders, looking at a display of bright orange jugs, bowls and lawnmowers in the window beyond.

  “We ought to buy something,” Mr Lynn whispered. He sounded nearly panic-stricken. “Think of something we can ask for.”

  “Tools?” said Polly.

  “Yes, people can always use more tools,” Mr Lynn said thankfully.

  They went in. The shop was as bright and modern inside as it was outside. Everything was arranged on corridors of clean shelves, rather like Mr Lynn had described the supermarket where the giant was. A clean, sharp smell of plastic and paint and detergent met their noses. Polly and Mr Lynn went down the first corridor between teapots and kettles on one side, and hoses and brooms on the other. The place seemed empty except for them. They came up the second corridor, between paint and shiny hooks and rails for towels.

  From here they saw there was a lady sitting at a desk near the door that said WAY OUT, an ordinary, smallish lady with a nice, nervous face and fluffy mouse-brown hair. She was busily doing sums on a scrap of paper. But she raised her head as they came up the corridor, without really looking at them, and said, “We’ll have to reorder those electric kettles. They’ve not come.”

  Somehow it was clear she was saying it to Mr Lynn. His eyes went round again and met Polly’s almost desperately. Then he managed to say, “I – I beg your pardon?”

  The lady’s fluffy head shot round to look at them. Her face crumpled with dismay. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir! I quite thought you were Mr Piper! You have just his walk.” Her eyes remained on Mr Lynn as if they found it impossible to move away. Amazement grew through the crumples in her face. “You really do look such a lot like him!” she said. “Were you looking for something particular?”

  Under her eyes Mr Lynn’s face went pale and rather shiny. He swallowed – Polly saw a lump in his throat surge. “Just – just a screwdriver or so,” he said rather stickily.

  “Down at the end,” said the lady. And suddenly she shouted. Her voice filled the silent shop and made Polly jump. “Leslie!” she yelled. “Les! Come and help this gentleman and young lady find a screwdriver!”

  Rubber shoes squeaked at the back of the shop. Polly’s head and Mr Lynn’s turned that way, fascinated, to see a boy of about Polly’s age shoot cheerfully into sight. He was not dark. He had quite a mop of fairish hair. But he did wear an earring, and that earring was a little silver skull with glittering green stones for eyes. He grinned cheerfully at Polly, but the grin faded a bit as he looked up at Mr Lynn, and he stared as hard as Polly was staring at him.

  “Leslie,” the lady called from the desk. “Am I going mad? Or does this gentleman remind you of your uncle too?”

  “Yeah,” Leslie said, staring wonderingly at Mr Lynn. “They could be twins! Not being awful,” he added to Mr Lynn. It did not sound as if he liked his uncle much. “But you do look just like him.”

  “Oh not that like,” the lady said hurriedly. “This gentleman’s much younger than Tom is, Leslie.” She smiled at Mr Lynn. “That’s kids for you. They think everyone over twenty is the same age, don’t they?”

  Mr Lynn’s face had gone from pale to a sort of muddy red. Leslie saw he had overdone things. “Said the wrong thing – as usual!” he remarked to Polly. “Opened my big mouth and put my foot in it. What did you want?”

  “Screwdriver,” Polly said faintly.

  “Sure you don’t want a left-handed hammer?” asked Leslie. “Or how about a pound of elbow grease?”

  “Leslie!” said the lady at the desk. She gave Polly a grin as cheeky as Leslie’s. “He’s a terror with his jokes,” she said. “Take no notice.”

  “Down this end,” said Leslie, and squeaked bouncily off to the end of the shop.

  Polly followed him, scarcely able to see straight for confusion. She knew just how Mr Lynn must be feeling. Leslie was nice. The discovery made her squiggle inside, in a way that could have been pleasant but was probably nasty. And she could see from the way the lady at th
e desk watched Leslie, not quite smiling, as he went, that she adored Leslie. She was obviously his mother, and clearly adored him because, not being stupid like Edna, she knew Leslie was worth it.

  Utterly confused, Polly looked dimly at rows of screwdrivers, large, small, with wooden handles and transparent plastic handles, and picked up a packet of assorted small ones because they were nearest. Mr Lynn, equally at random, seized a couple of large ones from higher up.

  They followed Leslie back to the cash desk, where Mr Lynn paid for all of them in a distracted rush. “Thank you, sir,” said the lady. “I do wish Mr Piper was here. I’d love to see the two of you side by side. I just can’t get over how like him you are!”

  “He is, you know,” Leslie said to Polly. “See you.”

  “See you,” Polly replied, looking to one side of Leslie’s earring, and not meaning it at all.

  When they got outside, Mr Lynn’s face was white again. “Ye gods and little fishes, Polly!” he gasped. “I don’t believe this!” And he went away across the square in enormous strides. Polly sprinted after him, and together they threw themselves inside a door marked YE OLDE COTSWOLDE CAFÉ TEAS. Almost without seeing where they were, they collapsed at a table and Mr Lynn ordered scones and cakes and Coke and milkshakes after one wild, random glance at the menu. The waitress looked wondering, and asked him if that was what he really wanted. “Yes, yes!” he said, and when she had gone he sat puffing as if he had run a race.

  Polly sat sort of recovering too. Ordinary feelings began coming back like pins and needles. “It’s all true,” she said. “Except that it isn’t.”

  “That’s what’s so unnerving,” said Mr Lynn. “Mr Piper, the shop. Leslie – but none of it quite like we thought. Do you think the woman’s name was Edna? I was dying to ask her, but I couldn’t think of a way to ask that didn’t seem rude.”