“Drink the juice up quick,” Ed told her. “That’s nothing but a disguise for an illegal act. We’re celebrating.”
“We’ve got two things to celebrate,” said Ann. “Here’s the first.” She opened her handbag and passed Polly a paperback book from it.
“And the other thing is that we’ve been asked to make a record!” Sam said. He was too pleased with the news to wait any longer.
I’m glad it wasn’t worse, Polly found herself thinking.
“Fame at last!” said Ed. “Or a bit, anyway. And some money.”
“That’s marvellous. I am glad,” Polly said, and meant it. She looked at the book. “Good heavens!”
It was called Tales from Nowhere by Ann Abraham, Edward Davies, Thomas Lynn and Samuel Rensky. The cover was a smoky bluish green, with pink hints of fire to it, and across the front was the gaunt tree shape of a dead hemlock. “Who chose this cover?”
“The publisher did that,” said Ann. “We just made up the stories.”
Sam and Ed interrupted one another to tell her how they had done it. “We had to spend such hours travelling, or sitting about waiting, you see, that we got into the way of telling one another stories to pass the time. Tom started it. No, wasn’t it Ann? Anyway, it was Tom who said we should write them down. So we wrote them down, and read them aloud, and told one another where they stank, and rewrote them, and Tom typed them. Then Ann went behind our backs while we were in New York and sent them to a publisher. We all nearly dropped when they said they’d print them!”
They smiled at Polly proudly while she flipped through the book. “I’d love to read it,” she said. “Can I borrow it?”
“That one’s your copy,” said Tom. It may have been the first time he spoke to Polly. “We saved it for you.”
“On condition I don’t put it face down on the floor – I know!” Polly said, and managed to meet his eyes for the first time. “Thanks. Thank you all so much.” They had written their names in it, she found, now she looked properly. She was touched. It was an honour.
“Now the celebration,” said Ed. “Everyone’s glass empty? Good.”
He and Sam fetched a couple of bottles of champagne out from the shade under the table. Leslie’s eyes met Polly’s, awed. Neither of them had ever had champagne. The most Polly had ever had was a couple of glasses of red wine at a Christmas party. In fact, four years later, as she brought this up from her memory, she thought it was a marvel she behaved later on as well as she did. She remembered Ed bending over one cork and Sam’s long, curving thumbs forcing at the other. There were two swift, loud pops. Corks soared up into the tree. Sam and Ed secretively foamed champagne into Polly’s and Leslie’s empty glasses, and then turned and filled everyone else’s openly. The other people on the forecourt stared rather.
They drank toasts – to the record, the book and to Australia. By that time Polly’s head had gone a little muzzy. Probably Leslie’s had too, because he remarked that champagne seemed to act quickly. Polly remembered Ann passing round snapshots of Australia. Some of them were quite hard to focus on.
“The blurred sideways ones without heads are all Tom’s,” somebody said.
“I used to do a lot of photography,” Tom said ruefully. “I seem to have lost the knack.”
Mary Fields, who no doubt felt a little left out, Polly thought, blurrily charitable, took over the conversation then. She had been to Australia as a nurse, a few years back. She had tried to buy a horse there and someone had cheated her. Leslie and Polly were left to one another. For a while they simply smiled and lay back in their chairs. Polly remembered looking up at the big leaves of the tree and tracing the heavy skeleton of branches among them. Soaring, she thought. Like music made solid.
“How did you come to be here?” she asked Leslie.
“Tom asked me,” said Leslie. “To look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after,” Polly said, stabbed with annoyance. “Besides, you hardly know Tom.”
“Know him quite well,” said Leslie. “Used to come into the shop a lot – him and Mary. That’s how I got sent to Wilton. Mum asked him about schools once. He said Seb Leroy seemed happy at Wilton – what’s the tie-up between him and Seb?” But before Polly could get round to deciding how you described the stepson of an ex-wife, Leslie gave a great champagne-filled grin. “Leroy’s stepmother, now – she’s quite something!” he said, staring happily up into the tree.
“Don’t tell me you know Laurel!” Polly exclaimed. It rang out rather. She saw Tom glance over at them.
“Laurel asked me to tea,” Leslie said, swirling the last of his champagne smugly.
Polly’s champagne had turned into warm, thin wine. She drank it away in one long pull. “Yuk!”
And suddenly everyone wanted to leave. They were getting up, arguing where to go next. That part was very fuzzy to Polly, but she knew that the group headed by Ed and Leslie won. “It’s only just round the corner!” they insisted. Polly was preoccupied with aiming Tales from Nowhere at her bag. She kept missing, and only got it put away safely as they all rushed off and swept her away with them. After that, somehow, they were in a fairground.
“Of course! Middleton Fair!” Polly remembered saying. She was somewhat restored by the sharp scent of petrol and squashed grass, and bewildered again by the music battering through the sound of heavy engines. It all seemed bright and peculiar in the hot sunlight.
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 assured 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 Big 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, assembled round her to the music of a brass 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 hello, Seb!” she cried out, violently glad to see him.
“Hello, 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, unti
l 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 towards 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 grey. A plywood Dracula stood at the entrance.
“The Castle of Horrors!” Leslie shouted. “Let’s go!”
The others, inspired by Dodgems and champagne, raced after him. 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 going 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 grass 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 glasses 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 armour with an axe raised in its metal first 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!” and tore loose from the string.
Polly snapped round to see the suit of armour 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 armour and seeing it sway away backwards. 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 to hold up the arm of the second suit of armour, 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 armour 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 armour was raising its axe again. Polly rolled desperately away, deafened by crashing metal. Next thing she knew, an iron portcullis had dropped out of the roof, trapping Tom underneath it. That held him in place while the first suit of armour 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 me!” he said.
“I’m trying!” Polly snapped. Lucky I’ve got muscles, she thought as she somehow rescued his glasses 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 grass smelling of petrol, into a roar of heavy engines.
Tom went on his knees there, bent over, muttering things. The stuff 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 hell. 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-coloured 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!”
People’s feet appeared, trampling round them in the grass. Ed said, “Hell’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 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 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.