Fire and Hemlock

  They passed the car Laurel’s party had come in, practically fighting. Polly saw Ann, Ed and Sam pause in the station doorway and look round for Tom. Seeing the struggle, they turned away, obviously embarrassed, and went inside. “I’m not going to let—!” Polly was panting, when another person pushed past them and hurried into the station too. Tom tore himself loose from Polly with almost no trouble at all and plunged after. Polly saved herself from falling by catching hold of the wing mirror of Laurel’s car, but her numb feet let her down. She could hear the thumping of feet from inside the booking hall, and raised voices, but by the time she made her feet take her through the doorway, the quarrel seemed to have died down.

  Ed was standing with Ann and Sam, blocking the way through to the platform. All of them looked angry and Ed was rubbing his arm. Mr Piper was looming in front of them, like something at bay. Tom was buying a ticket, with his back to everyone.

  “Let me through,” Mr Piper said peremptorily. When none of the three moved, he turned and shouted, “Tom! For pity’s sake! I’m in a hurry. She’s got Leslie now!”

  Tom turned round and gave his yelp of laughter. “So much for your hiding and pretending!” he said. “If you’d told the truth, you could have warned him. Don’t worry. The train will wait for me.”

  Ann and Sam moved slowly aside. Ed moved even more reluctantly, and as Mr Piper dived past him, out onto the platform beyond, he shouted after him, “And be careful who you’re shoving another time!” While Ed was shouting, Tom picked up his cello. All four hurried after Mr Piper, so quickly that Polly nearly got left behind. She ran to the ticket window, fumbling out her student card and a five-pound note, which was all the money she had.

  “The same, please,” she said. She supposed the clerk behind the window knew. A ticket came back, and quite a lot of change. A short journey, then. Polly snatched it up and ran. The train might wait for Tom, but it would not wait for her, which Tom of course knew. But, thanks to Mr Piper, Polly also knew that Tom had not been trying to shake her off as hard as he had pretended. She ignored her lifeless feet and sprinted.

  The train was at the platform, beginning to move. Polly was in time to see Tom’s white parka through the glass of one of the doors. She put on a spurt and managed to claw hold of that door. Then, hopping on one foot as the train gathered speed, she got it open and threw herself inside the train. The door crashed shut behind her.

  Inside, it was a perfectly normal train, with a gangway down the middle and rows of foursome tables on either side. Ann, Sam and Ed had already taken three seats at a table some way along. It was obvious that Tom would join them in the fourth seat as soon as he had finished stowing his cello. Polly darted up the gangway and stood in front of the fourth seat, stopping him. Ed and Ann looked at her, and looked away. Sam’s face twisted with embarrassment as Tom turned round and saw Polly. He stood waiting.

  “Get out of my way, please.”

  “No. And you do know me,” Polly said.

  “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” said Tom.

  “Nonsense. I haven’t changed that much,” Polly said. She leaned one hand on the table to look at Ed. “Ed, do you know me?” Ed shook his head and tried to avoid her eyes. It was the way anyone behaves when a stranger tries to pester him on a train. Sam was already looking away when Polly turned to him. They really did not know her, any more than Leslie had done. Still, I’m not going to be embarrassed out of it this time! Polly thought. That was something of a clue, really. Laurel thought she would be. Laurel worked by admissions, one way or another. Polly looked on to Ann. “Do you know me, Ann?”

  Ann was clearly very tired. She was leaning sideways with her head on Sam’s shoulder. She looked up at Polly, direct and penetrating and dark, and frowned. “I think I do, somehow. But I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “Bless you, Tan Audel!” Polly said. She turned to Tom in triumph, but he simply walked up the gangway to another seat and sat there. Polly followed, and sat down facing him. Tom behaved as it she was not there.

  He took his wet glasses off and cleaned them with a handkerchief. Without them, Polly could see how white and hollow-cheeked and strained his face was. Water dripped from her hair, and her elbows left damp smudges on the table while she sat there studying him. The train clattered round them, hurrying away into the night.

  He did know her, Polly was sure. What he felt about her turning up again like this was another matter, but it did look as if Laurel had forced some kind of prohibition on him not to know her. So it followed that it must be important to get him to admit that he did. Or was this simply Polly’s own feelings making her think this? She had been prepared to be cool and alert and collected, and it was all overthrown by her utter delight at seeing him again. She wanted to burst into wild, joyful laughter.

  “I know I must be one more damn thing to you,” she said, “but I have come to help if I can. I want to make amends for what I did to you – or apologise at least.” Tom held his glasses up towards the light overhead to see if they were clean, and did not answer. “Do you know,” Polly said, “the Obah Cypt turned out to be the Fire and Hemlock picture? I had it all along. There was a lock of your hair in the back of it – I found it today.”

  Tom put his glasses back on and unzipped his wet parka. He sat back, staring beyond Polly. “I seem to be shut in a train with a raving female,” he said. “There is no such thing as an Obah Cypt.”

  “Well, it’s the only name I know for it,” Polly said. “Who is Mr Piper? He seems to have been Tan Coul as much as you were. There was a giant in the supermarket. Edna told me.”

  “What institution did you escape from?” said Tom.

  Some of the wild laughter did break loose from Polly. “St Margaret’s College, Oxford. I share a padded cell with Fiona Perks.”

  “Go back there,” said Tom.

  “How ungrateful!” said Polly. “Don’t forget you started it by hauling me out of that funeral.”

  Tom did not answer.

  Polly bit her own tongue angrily. Polly, you fool! Keep off funerals. Of all the things to remind him of! “I think,” she said, “I’ve gone and left Granny’s famous umbrella on the steps of Miles Cross. You know the one? The big green and white umbrella you held over her that Sports Day before you went to Australia.” Tom did not reply. Polly tried again. “I don’t exactly blame Granny for telling you off then. She was right, according to her own lights, even though I suspect Morton Leroy had got to her. After all, Granny wasn’t to know you’d already made it quite plain at the panto that I was nothing but a complete nuisance to—”

  “Come off that, P—!” Tom began violently. And stopped. “Did you happen to remark what your name was?” he asked carefully.

  The laughter tore loose from Polly again. “No.” she said. “I didn’t, and you know it. And, of course, my name isn’t Polly, as you also know. It’s Hero.”

  She had done it, Polly realised. She had got it right. Tom took his glasses off again and attended to what was probably an imaginary smear, and he was smiling as he wiped them, all over his strained face, in the same way that Polly was, as if he could not help it. He put the glasses on again, leaned his elbows on the table, and did at last look at Polly. “Polyphonic Assistants,” he said. “You shouldn’t have done that. You never did understand the risk.”

  “Yes I did,” said Polly. “I had a talk with Morton Leroy after that pantomime. Had you known all along?”

  Tom shook his head. Around them, the train rushed and rattled into darkness. The noise and the pressure suggested they were going through a tunnel. Tom had to shout against the clatter. “Not a notion, to begin with – it was too unbelievable – just like Tan Coul in the supermarket – slowly realising it could only be a giant—”

  “That’s the gift she gave you,” Polly shouted back. “Things you make up to come true and then turn round and hit you.”

  “Not till you wrote Leroy by mistake for Legris,” Tom shouted. “Then I saw. But
you still think ‘This can’t happen to me!’ I still do.”

  The things Polly wanted to shout in reply to this were lost, because the train rushed out of the tunnel again, into bright daylight. It burst across them so that they both had to shield their eyes from the brightness. When Polly managed to blink out of the window, she found they were travelling along beside the sea. White surf was folding and smashing almost beside the rails, and a myriad dazzles flickered off the grey water stretching towards the sun.

  “Is it always like this?” she said.

  “I think it varies,” said Tom. “I’ve only ridden in Laurel’s train once before. It was hills and deserts then. Whatever suits her sense of humour, I think.”

  “I could do without her sense of humour,” Polly said bitterly. “True Thomas. You haven’t got cancer, have you?”

  “Is that what she told you?” Tom pushed his hands wearily over his face, lifting his glasses to rub his eyes. The train was slowing down now, noticeably. Tom’s face looked as if his rubbing hands were wiping the colour out of it with every rub.

  “If I’d been thinking of you at all”, Polly said, angry and remorseful, “I could have seen through that. She only lied when I asked. You taught me about sentimental drivel, but I didn’t think of that once!”

  The brakes of the train were shrieking. A station of some kind was sliding into view. Tom stood up. “Well, I’d had years of Laurel, and you hadn’t.”

  Polly stood up too. Down the carriage, Sam, Ed and Ann were collecting their instrument cases and moving to the door. When they got there, they stood looking back doubtfully, waiting for Tom.

  “You go on,” Tom called to them. “There’s only one way to go. You can’t miss it. I’ll catch you up in a minute.” Ann nodded and got off the train. Sam and Ed looked at one another before they followed her, clearly wondering whether to come back and rescue Tom from Polly, and then deciding that it would be too embarrassing. They got off too, and Tom turned to collect his cello.

  “Can’t you just not go?” Polly said.

  “I don’t really want them coming to fetch me,” Tom said. “Off you get.”

  Polly and he climbed off the train onto an empty, sunlit platform. The place seemed deserted. They walked across the platform, and their feet boomed on the hollow wooden floor of the booking hall. Outside was a long street, lined on each side with chestnut trees, from which big orange leaves, like hands, drifted down across Ann, Ed and Sam, walking ahead in the distance. Above the trees stood the moon, flat and white in the blue sky.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Tom said as they set off down the street. “I’d suggest you don’t come any further, except that I think the only way out now is to go on.”

  “I know you won’t want me looking on—” Polly said.

  “I don’t,” he said. “But it’s not that. You don’t understand – there’s nothing you can do now.”

  “Yes there is,” said Polly. “I have to hang on to you.”

  Tom sighed. “I knew you didn’t understand. You were doing that for about five years, but you stopped. I can’t say I blame you.” A hand-like leaf fell on the case of the cello, and slid off again. Polly shuddered. “Anyhow,” Tom said, “I’m quite glad of a chance to apologise.”

  “Apologise!” said Polly. “I’d have thought it was the other way round.”

  “Both ways round then,” said Tom.

  “Mary Fields?” asked Polly.

  He shrugged. “That too, I suppose. Some of it was an attempt to keep the heat off you. Poor Mary. I haven’t seen her for over a year now.”

  They walked on, with leaves pattering to the street around them. Polly cheerlessly considered. At least she was not being troubled with that pointless gladness any more. Allowing for the fact that Tom was bound to be in a strange state of mind, things seemed no different from the way they always had been. “Then why are you still trying to choke me off?” she said. “You are. You have been ever since I knew you.”

  “What else could I do?” Tom demanded. “I had to keep getting in touch, and sending you things, because you were my only chance, but I didn’t have to like what I was doing, particularly after Morton found out. And I drove a bargain with Laurel after that, not to harm you—”

  “Don’t tell me!” Polly said. “And I’ve just made you break that one too. I told you not to protect me. Years ago.”

  “But you also told me not to be obedient,” Tom pointed out.

  At this, Polly rounded on him in exasperation, and found they had come to the end of the street. It ended in two stone pillars supporting an open gate. The name Hunsdon House was engraved deep into each pillar. “We seem to have got Nowhere,” she said dryly.

  “What did you expect?” Tom put down his cello in the gateway and leaned against the left-hand pillar. Polly did not blame him for being reluctant to go in. “Let’s not wrangle any more,” he said. “I’m almost out of time.” He held out a hand towards Polly.

  Polly stumbled over the cello in her hurry to get near and nearly fell against Tom’s chest. They wrapped their arms around one another. Tom was more solid and limber than Polly had expected, and warmer, and just a little gawky. He threaded both hands into Polly’s damp hair and kissed her eyes as well as her mouth. “I’ve always loved your hair,” he said.

  “I know,” Polly said.

  They stayed clenched together in the gateway until Polly became aware of Laurel’s sweet, tinkling voice. “Tom!” it said from somewhere in the distance, more and more insistently. “Tom!” It became impossible to ignore. They sighed and let go of one another. Tom picked up the cello again and they walked side by side up the shaded drive and round towards the garden where Laurel’s voice was coming from. Polly was light-headed with strange, miserable joy. In a way it was worth it, she thought, except that it was such a total waste.

  At first sight it seemed to be autumn in the garden. The trees there were an unmoving glory of rust, copper-green, olive-silver and strong yellow, fading to purple and deep rose red. But it was hot as summer. Polly’s hair and Tom’s parka steamed in the heat. Swallows flickered in the blue sky overhead, and bees filled the crowding roses to one side – not white roses as Polly remembered, but heavy red and bronze and glaring pink. The shape of the garden had changed too. The lawn now sloped clear down from the house to the place with the empty concrete pool, which was in full view, flanked by six-foot growths of hemlock. The pool was not precisely empty any longer. It was shimmering, all over a surface that did not seem to be there. Strong, colourless ripples bled upwards from it, like water or heated air, wavering the hemlocks and the trees where they passed. Polly could not look at it.

  The people were all gathered in the upper part of the lawn, holding wine glasses. It could have been a harmless, charming picnic. They were in elegant clothes, the women in long dresses and picture hats, the men in white or in morning dress. There was a murmur of talk and laughter. Laurel, wearing a long green gown, was reclining in a swinging garden seat under a little tree whose leaves were the same orange-brown as the drink she was sipping. Leslie was lolling beside her on the seat. He did not seem to be able to take his eyes off Laurel. The look on his face was dreamy, besotted, adoring, but spiced with wickedness, as if at least half his feelings were guilty ones.

  Seeing Leslie, Tom muttered something and turned rather sharply away to one side of the garden seat, where four chairs and four music stands were set out. Ann and Sam and Ed were there, unpacking music and getting out their viola and violins. They looked round as Tom and Polly came up, with relieved recognition.

  “So you got here!” Sam said to Polly. “That makes me feel better.”

  “Let’s hope we can do something,” Ed added.

  Ann just smiled at Polly, tensely and meaningly. So they know me, Polly thought. Which means that Laurel has no need to bother any more. She watched Tom shed his parka to show a sober, ordinary suit like Sam’s and Ed’s. The four of them sat down and began tuning strings, as if they had
been hired to entertain the picnic party. And the elegant, chatting people took no more notice of them than they did of the various servitors going round with drinks. Nobody offered the quartet a drink. They were just hired servants too. Which, Polly thought, was what Tom had been all along to these people.

  Here she looked up to see Seb and Mr Leroy staring at her. They were standing together lower down the lawn, and Polly had seldom seen two people look more aghast. The identical horror on their faces brought out the likeness between them, although Seb was tall and trim and elegant in white, and Mr Leroy was elderly and yellowing and ill, sagging inside his grey morning coat. As Polly looked, Seb said something to his father – it was clearly, “Let me handle her!” – and hurried up the slope to Polly.

  He’s even getting dark places under his eyes, Polly thought as Seb came up to her.

  “My Pol!” said Seb. “What are you doing here?”

  “I remembered,” said Polly. “I’ve come for Tom.”

  Seb sagged, so that he looked even more like Mr Leroy, and fixed her with a sort of desperate glare. “Polly! Think of me!”

  “I am,” said Polly, “and I don’t like what I’m thinking. I don’t like what you did.”

  Seb, to do him justice, made no attempt to bluster or pretend. “But it was between me and him,” he said. “It always was. And Tom used you too. Surely you understand, Polly! If they don’t take him, they’ll take me instead.”

  Polly turned her eyes from his desperately glaring face. Beside her, Tom was bending over the strings of his cello, not looking at her, pretending he could not hear every word Seb said. She thought of the way Seb had gripped her that time, outside the Leroys’ London flat, and she did see that Seb had been afraid for most of his life. Beyond Seb, Mr Leroy saggingly propped himself on a stick, and down beyond him the transparent living current bled upwards from the pool, shimmering the hemlocks. Seb had managed her, Polly thought, just as he always did, and brought her to a complete dead end. Her eyes moved on to Leslie. He was gently swinging the seat, smiling languorously at Laurel. And I didn’t even do anything about him! she thought. I should have rung up Nina and made her understand. That’s one thing I should have done.