“Or I shall never send you another,” said Mr Lynn. But he looked round at Polly as he said it, to make sure she knew it was one of his half-jokes. Polly hastily shut the book and laid it down again, and the practice went on.
Of all the things Polly found she had forgotten, some six years later, this was the one she was most hurt and astonished not to have remembered. At the time, she had kept telling herself that she would never forget this afternoon. How could she have forgotten how kind they all were, without the least fuss? Even more, how could she have forgotten watching and listening while they practised, as if it was a special private performance just for her? They made it seem like that, by turning and looking at her apologetically when things went wrong, or smiling at her in triumph when the music went right.
Ed seemed the one everyone blamed when it went wrong. Polly was rather indignant about that at first. Ed was small and round and only just as tall as Ann, and she thought they picked on him because of his size. But after a while she began to realise that it was Ed himself who took it on himself to be in the wrong nearly every time one of the others made a mistake. She was pretty sure Ed was pretending, because the others all got ashamed at admitting they were wrong. Polly began to suspect Ed was really a superb violinist, despite the daft, dismayed look he kept on his face while he played.
Beside Ed, Sam Rensky’s face went through incredible contortions. It was a rubbery, long-nosed face – his nose was nearly as long as Granny’s – with a long chin like a rubber boot toe. He was as tall as Mr Lynn, but a good deal skinnier, and the violin looked like a little toy under his long chin. Above it, his face grinned, glared, pursed its lips and ran down to new shapes in ripples. You might have thought he was mad if you had not known he was living the lovely sounds he and Ed were making. Bright, sharp streaks of sound, Polly thought. If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.
It took Polly some time before she could hear Ann’s viola at all. The composer never seemed to give it a bit on its own, and Ann did not help by keeping her face plain and straight as she played, with her jaw sort of ground downwards to hold the big viola in place. But at length Ann did have a piece on her own – Polly heard it several times, because Sam kept coming in at the wrong place – and the sound was vibrant and full, not as low as Polly expected. Ann played as precise and sweet as Ed, and there was a sort of excitement behind her playing quite at odds with the plain look on her face.
Polly probably watched Mr Lynn most – Tom, that was. She began to think of him as Tom a bit, now there were three other people all calling him Tom. Apart from that glimpse on television, she had never seen him play his cello. He sat wrapped round it in a way that amused her, with his head bent to dwell in the cello’s sound. One huge hand deftly planted itself on the strings, firmly trembled there – the trembling was something all four did – and then moved elsewhere while the bow carved sounds that thoroughly surprised Polly.
Up to then Polly had thought of a cello as an accompanying sort of instrument, deep but a little dull. Certainly Mr Lynn made it chuff and rumble at times, but that was only one of the things he made it do. He seemed to be able to make every sound, from a melodious groan to high song right up in the same range as Ann’s viola, either in a tactful undertone, or a smooth shout, or a stringy rasp. But it was the bell-like song in the middle which surprised and delighted Polly most. She liked that even better almost than the moments when Sam or Ed would gasp, “Put your back in it, Tom!” and the music suddenly widened until it seemed amazing that only four of them were making it.
I am lucky! Polly thought. Dad and Joanna seemed to be something that had happened last month, instead of only that morning. Just how lucky she was Polly gathered from their talk during the times they were all leaning forward, pointing at the music on the stands with their bows.
A lot of these times they were saying things like “Sam should be watching Ann when Ann comes in off the beat here,” or “Tom, how about starting that forte here, instead?” or “OK. Let’s take it again from D.” But they said enough round the edges of these things for Polly to gather that they had been asked to do this concert at very short notice, late last night, because the Hertzog Quartet, who should have been doing it, had all gone down with flu. They were pleased to get the chance to play, but they were all rather nervous. And but for this chance, they would have gone back to London today.
Finally they all put down their instruments and stretched. Ed said, “That’ll have to do,” and Sam said, “I’m starving.”
“Polly and I had better go,” Mr Lynn said. “Will someone look after my cello?”
Polly stood up, rather regretful. She would have liked to hear the proper concert now.
“Wait a moment,” Ann said. “Money.”
“Oh, yes. A whip-round for Polly,” Ed said. “She’ll need to eat on the train, won’t she?”
Each of them gave Polly a pound. She was so grateful, she almost cried again.
“It’s nothing,” Ann said. “We happen to have it. You don’t. I’ll see to the cello, Tom.”
Polly and Tom left the peeling green cloakroom with Ed and Sam, who were going to look for food. “And we have to look for my car,” said Mr Lynn. “I know I left it somewhere quite near.” It was dark outside by then. He took Polly’s bag off her, and they set off the opposite way to Ed and Sam.
“I saw it,” said Polly. “That’s how I knew you were in Bristol. It had a parking ticket.”
“It’s used to them,” said Tom. “Where was it?”
“I’m not sure,” Polly said.
“Lucky we left time to look, then,” he said.
They crossed the two busy roads, which were now busier than ever. As they arrived safely on the other side, Polly asked hopefully, “Do you think you might marry Ann?”
“Not a hope,” Mr Lynn said cheerfully. “Ann has her own ideas about such things.”
They turned into a narrow street with old houses, which Polly was sure was the street where she had seen the horse-car, but it was empty, all blue twilight and orange streetlight. The wind met them here. It whipped Polly’s hair in front of her, set Tom’s anorak rattling and the rubbish in the gutter rolling and pattering as they walked up the street.
Polly thought of herself walking in the wind all morning. She found she was able to talk about Dad and Joanna now without threatening to cry, and she began telling Tom, shouting against the wind at first, and then talking normally, as they turned into another narrow street, where the wind was less. There was no car there either. Paper and old leaves tumbled gently along behind them.
Mr Lynn yelped with laughter over the grey-and-gold toilet paper. “I wish I’d known you were here, having that kind of time,” he said.
“It makes me think,” said Polly. “What happens to all the people who don’t have someone like you they know?”
“God knows,” he said very soberly. And they walked the rest of the way down that street without speaking. The rubbish pounced and pattered behind them in the wind. Almost like little creatures running after us, Polly thought in a dreamlike way.
At the end of the street they were among the graph-paper towers and the wind was fierce. “This is wrong,” Polly said. “It was in an old street.”
“I know. This is the most confusing town I’ve ever been in.” Mr Lynn turned round to go back up the old street. Polly felt him go stiff. “I think we’ll keep on the way we were going,” he said carefully.
Polly turned too, against the wind, and looked back up the street. Her dreamlike feeling at once became the feeling of pure nightmare. For a moment, as you do in nightmares, she could not move. In the middle of the dark little street, the pattering rubbish was slowly piling upon itself, floating slowly and deliberately into a nightmare shape. It could have been a trick of the wind, but it was not. It was too deliberate. Plastic cups, peanut packets, leaves, and old wrappers were winding upwards, putting themselves in place as parts of a huge, bearlike shape. As Polly wat
ched, a piece of newspaper rose like a slow ghost to make the creature a staring face. Tom seized her wrist while she stared and pulled her away, among the tower buildings. They did not exactly run, but they went in long strides as fast as they could walk. Both of them kept looking back. The creature of rubbish was following, billowing on pattering, manlike legs.
“What can we do?” said Polly. “Throw a lighted match at it?” Her head was turned over her shoulder. It was coming rustling after them against the wind.
“I thought about that, and I don’t think so,” Mr Lynn said. “There’s a risk it will just come after us burning. Let’s find somewhere where there are a lot of people.”
Beyond the towers, they came to some kind of shopping precinct. It was wide and paved and quite well-lit, with lighted shops all round. A lot of people were there, heads down against the wind, hurrying, so that the place was full of banging feet.
The creature of rubbish came after them faster here, travelling in swoops, changing shape as it travelled. Polly could see the thing more clearly every time she looked. She could see the spaces between the writhing newspapers and the peanut packets riding in it alongside dead leaves.
It was collecting more as it came. Every time Polly looked, it was larger, with more legs, but it never fell apart and it always had that staring newspaper face.
“It’s mostly made of air,” she said. “It may not be able to hurt us.”
“Do you want to bet on that?” said Mr Lynn.
As he said it, the thing was near enough to put out a pattering piece of itself and search towards their heels, so near that they could hear the hundred papery parts of it scuttling along the pavement. They both ran. They ran sideways across the precinct, behind a kiosk and some concrete seats. But the thing streamed sideways too, round the kiosk and rattling across the seats, and kept on coming after them. Quite a few people looked up curiously as Tom and Polly pelted past them.
“No one else can see it!” gasped Polly.
“I know. Proper clowns we must look!” Mr Lynn panted. “If only we could find my damn car!”
They raced along beside lighted shops and whirled round a corner into another open stretch of precinct. They could tell by the rustling and rattling that the thing was close behind. Both of them were sure that the car was somewhere over to the left of this space. Tom took Polly’s wrist and dragged her over that way. And then retreated hurriedly as the newspaper face and a storm of small rubbish rose billowing and reaching for them. As they backed round the corner again, Polly caught a glimpse, between the spaces of it, of a dark, bulky figure standing watching against a lighted shop window.
“Mr Leroy—”
“Yes,” Mr Lynn said. “I know.” It was that quiet manner of his that ran you up against silence. Since Polly was not ten years old any longer, she knew better than to say any more. She simply sprinted back the way they had come, with Tom’s hand lugging at her wrist and the creature scuttling close after, wondering if this nightmare would ever end. They missed the way they had come into the precinct and simply plunged up the first street that seemed to lead away.
And there, up a short hill, was the horse-car crouched against the kerb at last. Tom let go of Polly’s wrist to get out his keys as they dashed towards it. He got there before Polly. When she pelted up, he had the doors open and was throwing her bag into the back seat.
“Get in,” he said. “Fasten the seat belt.”
Polly dived into the passenger seat. While she was fumbling with the belt, the car started with its usual whinny and jerk. She looked up to see its headlights glaring two bright spots on a solid, writhing mound of rubbish. The great newspaper face leered. It was entirely blocking the end of the narrow street.
“Hold on. I’m going to drive through it,” Tom said. It was one of those times when heroic driving might pay off, Polly thought dizzily. The car clunked into gear and leaped from the kerb, roaring. They hurtled at the thing of paper and leaves. Blue, orange and red paper whirled in the lights, a solid thickness, and the great white paper face seemed to stoop at them, so real that Polly almost saw eyes in the crumpled eyeholes. It was too real.
“Tom!” she screamed. “Tan Hanivar!”
Mr Lynn swore and dragged the steering wheel round. Polly had an instant’s slow-motion glimpse of Sam Rensky sliding sideways off the car bonnet along with a cloud of little glass cubes from the windscreen. On the other side there was Ed Davies, with his mouth open, yelling. “Tom, what the hell—!” Polly heard faintly through the hole in the windscreen. They nearly hit Ed too. The tyres shrieked as Tom missed Ed by bouncing up on the kerb on the other side of the street. They jolted down again. He was still driving flat out. Polly supposed she must have turned round then, because she had another glimpse of Sam Rensky rolling over in the road, trying to get up and looking utterly astonished, before they screamed round a corner and she could see nothing but white cobweb shapes from the broken windscreen.
“Stop!” she shouted. “You ran him over!”
Mr Lynn found a handkerchief somehow and punched at the smashed windscreen with it over his fist as he drove. The car wagged. “Sam was all right,” he said. “I think. Ed was there. I’m getting you to the station before anything else happens.”
Polly helped smash the rest of the glass out of the front window. The wind howled in. They were both shaking. Polly wanted to scream out that this was the meanest trick yet of Mr Leroy’s. It was meaner even than all the things he had done to Polly herself. He had nearly made Tom kill Sam. Sam had probably been badly hurt anyway. But she knew Tom would not talk about Mr Leroy.
“Was it Sam and Ed all along?” she said as they roared along a huge, orange-lit road. “Not paper at all?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “I just don’t know.” Polly thought he was going to run into silence then, but he went on, “What is it about us?” and roared through some traffic lights just as they turned red. Cold air whistled in Polly’s hair. “We make things up, and then they go and happen. I wrote you a letter something very like this.”
Mr Leroy uses them, Polly wanted to say. But there was more to it than that. She thought of Mr Piper’s shop in Stow-on-the-Water, which seemed to have nothing to do with Mr Leroy. “I don’t know,” she said wearily.
The car bucketed round a corner and screamed up the slope to the station. A big, lighted clock said twenty-five past six. In a dreamlike way Polly noticed birds roosting in a row along the hand of the clock. “Just time!” said Tom. They jumped out of the car and left it standing while they ran inside through the glass doors. Tom used a credit card, like Ivy, to get Polly a ticket. It seemed to take hours. Polly snatched up the ticket and they pelted to the platform to find the train already there, standing waiting. There were still two minutes to go.
Tom handed Polly her bag, panting. They were both still shaking. “Will you really be all right?” he said.
“I will now,” Polly said. “But what about you? You won’t be able to give your concert if Sam’s hurt, will you?”
“That I shall have to go and find out,” he said. “Don’t worry about us. Better get on the train.” He reached out and undid the handle of a door and swung it open for Polly. The other hand he put behind Polly’s head and squashed her face against his old anorak for a second. “Take care of yourself.”
The burr of his voice coming through the anorak almost drowned the sound of footsteps coming up beside them, but not quite. Out of one squashed eye Polly saw polished black shoes stop and stand just beyond Tom’s. “This is becoming more than just a joke, Tom,” said Mr Leroy’s chesty voice.
Mr Lynn’s hand changed direction. It was now pushing Polly hard towards the open door of the train. “Get on it, Polly,” he said quietly. “Quick. It’s just going.”
The whistle blew as he spoke. Polly scrambled up the steps and the door slammed behind her. The train moved before she could turn round, and she was moving further away when she did turn and look. Mr Leroy and Tom were standing face
to face on the platform, leaning towards one another, in fact, both talking angrily at once. She was fairly sure Tom was shouting at Mr Leroy. She did not blame him, considering that Mr Leroy had probably just ruined the Dumas Quartet.
3
But, Thomas, you shall hold your tongue
THOMAS THE RHYMER
Polly did not seem to be able to read on the train. She felt odder and odder, and the things which had happened in Bristol began to seem more and more phantasmagoric. Long before the train reached Middleton, the only parts that were real to Polly were Sam Rensky sliding off the car bonnet and terrible worry because of the way Mr Lynn had shouted at Mr Leroy.
Granny met her at Miles Cross with a taxi, which was just as well, because Polly had a high temperature by then. “Mr Leroy made Sam Rensky look like a monster!” she told Granny indignantly.
Granny felt her forehead. “I’m not surprised,” she said.
She put Polly straight to bed and called the doctor the next morning. Polly had flu. It was the season for it, the doctor said. Stay in bed.
Polly lay in bed and worried about Sam and Mr Lynn. The flu got into her head, the way flu does. By the time her temperature came down she was really not clear what had happened in Bristol. Sometimes she doubted her clear memory of Mr Lynn’s large hand squashing her face against his old anorak.
But the time in the green cloakroom watching the quartet play never seemed to be touched by doubt. It stood out, quiet and real, from all the rest.
Granny said very little about what had happened. Polly only remembered one thing Granny said, in the taxi. “I’m ashamed, Polly,” Granny said. “Your Mr Lynn behaved better than my Reg.” And that was all she said. Granny seemed to take it for granted that Polly was living with her now. When Polly began to get up, she found that Granny had been round in a taxi and fetched her things from Ivy.
For quite a while after that, Polly lay around fretfully reading The Golden Bough and annoying Granny considerably by insisting on having a proper bookmark so that she would not need to lay the book down on its face. She had to mark her page in some way or she kept losing her place, and she could not find where she had left off in Bristol for days. ‘The Hallowe’en Fires’ was it, or ‘The Magic Spring’ or ‘The Ritual of Death and Resurrection’? Or was it ‘Kings Killed When Their Strength Fails’ or ‘Kings Killed at the End of a Fixed Term’? It took her ages to discover that she had been in the middle of ‘Temporary Kings’.