Fire and Hemlock

  Seb saw her looking at Leslie. “Laurel’s not through with him,” he said. “She won’t let him go yet. Besides, he’s not much of a life. Polly – please!”

  “Oh shut up, Seb,” Polly said. “I wasn’t—”

  “One of us has got to go,” Seb insisted. “My father’s on his last legs. He’s been waiting eighteen years now. And Tom’s ten years older than I am. He’s had some time at least!”

  Oh God! Polly thought. What am I to do?

  Beside her, the strings were tuned. The quartet started to play. When Tom began it, gently rolling sullen, swelling notes out of the cello, she assumed it would be designed to show him as the superb cellist he was. But when Ann’s viola came mourning in, she wondered if it might be intended as a dirge. Beyond Ann, Sam’s violin sang, and Ed’s sang and soared, and the music became something else again, nearly light-hearted. Showing how much the quartet needed Tom? Polly wondered. There was no question they were a good quartet these days. They had improved almost out of mind from the afternoon Polly had spent hearing them practise in the green basement. Everyone was attending. The strolling people gathered round and sat on the grass to listen. Laurel turned round in her seat. Even Leslie forgot Laurel sufficiently to sit up and lean forward raptly. Only Seb, standing close to Polly, was tense and inattentive.

  The music broadened and deepened, put on majesty and passion, and moved onward in some way, fuller and fuller. All four players were putting their entire selves into it. Polly knew they were not trying to prove anything – or not really. She let the music take her, with relief, because while it lasted she would not have to make a decision or come to a dead end. She found her mind dwelling on Nowhere, as she and Tom used to imagine it. You slipped between Here and Now to the hidden Now and Here – as Laurel had once told another Tom, there was that bonny path in the middle – but you did not necessarily leave the world. Here was a place where the quartet was grinding out dissonances. There was a lovely tune beginning to emerge from it. Two sides to Nowhere, Polly thought. One really was a dead end. The other was the void that lay before you when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else had quite had before. That’s a discovery I must do something about, Polly thought, as the lovely tune sang out fully once and then fell away to end, as the piece had begun, in a long, sullen cello note. And her mind was made up.

  There was a polite patter of applause. “Isn’t it odd,” Polly heard someone behind her say, “how they always do something like this? It seems to bring out the best in them.”

  And if I hadn’t decided, I would after that! Polly thought. Everyone was looking at Laurel now. Laurel was sitting up straight, smiling at Tom. “You mustn’t think I don’t understand,” she said. “But it’s time now, Tom.”

  Tom got up and propped his cello carefully against the chair. Polly felt Seb begin to relax beside her. Ann turned round and, rather grimly, stowed her viola in its case. Ed and Sam sat where they were, looking urgently at Polly. My move, Polly thought. Mr Leroy was coming heavily up the slope towards Laurel’s seat. The King, Polly thought. The King who takes the lives of other men to make himself immortal.

  But before Polly could move, Mr Piper burst out from among the rose bushes and pushed his way through the elegant crowd until he was in front of Laurel’s seat. “Leslie!” he shouted. Leslie blinked up at him from beside Laurel, and then looked over at Tom in a puzzled way and seemed to wonder what was going on.

  Laurel sat up very straight. There was suddenly not the least doubt that this was a Court, and Laurel was its Queen. “Charles Lynn,” she said coldly. “What are you doing here?”

  Mr Piper loomed in front of her, grasping at the air with his huge hands, which looked queerly useless to him, as if he had been born with lobster’s claws. “Let Leslie go,” he said. “You cow!” Laurel simply looked at him. He put up a lobster hand to guard his eyes. “All right,” he said. “You can take me instead if you want. Just let Leslie go.”

  “No,” said Laurel. “I never make more than one bargain, Charles, and I made mine with you sixteen years ago when I let you go in exchange for your brother.”

  “Well, I knew what I was in for, didn’t I? And you didn’t like that,” Mr Piper said. “Besides, he was the one you really wanted anyway, wasn’t he?”

  “Oh, go away, Charles,” said Laurel.

  “Just a moment,” Tom put in. Mr Piper turned round awkwardly and backed away when he found Tom right beside him. “Didn’t I have any say in this bargain at all? Who took that photograph?”

  “You did – you were always pinching my camera. I only made the enlargement,” said Mr Piper. “Leave me alone, can’t you! Why do you keep trying to hunt me down?”

  “Because I knew it was you,” Tom said. “It had to be, from the way you kept out of sight when I came. It was a pretty poor trick, making Edna pretend to be your sister, and it didn’t fool me for long anyway. And I needed to know how that bargain was made.”

  “And you helped her get Leslie!” Mr Piper said. “I’m glad I made it!”

  “Be quiet, both of you,” Laurel said. “I’m obliged to you, Charles. Tom’s life is one of the most valuable we’ve had – even his infuriating habit of fighting everything I do. Morton needs a strong life just now. But the obligation has nothing to do with Leslie.”

  At this, Mr Piper lost his uneasy temper and shouted, “You unfeeling bitch!”

  Laurel raised her face and looked at him. “Go away,” she said. Caught in the tunnel of her eyes, Charles Lynn put his arm across his glasses and staggered. Two servitors came up and took hold of him, and looked at Laurel for instructions. “Take him home,” said Laurel. “His wife will be worrying.” As Mr Piper disappeared backwards among the crowd, still faintly trying to shout insults, Laurel turned, gently and sweetly, to Tom. “I’m sorry, Tom, but you will find the bargain holds. The picture was yours.”

  But it isn’t! Polly thought. He gave it to me! Mr Piper was still to be heard in the background as she pushed her way forward. Seb made an effort to hang on to her, but she shook him off, hardly noticing.

  “I never agreed to it,” Tom said. “Don’t look her in the eyes, Polly.”

  Laurel smiled at him indulgently. “Oh no, Polly,” she said.

  “Didn’t you hear me tell Charles that I never make more than one bargain?”

  “Yes,” said Polly. “And I agreed to forget Tom, though I never said for how long, and that isn’t the same as giving him up. But I haven’t come to quibble.” She looked carefully between Laurel and Leslie, two fair heads. “I claim that Morton Leroy has forfeited his right to Tom’s life. And he’ll have to find someone else or go himself.”

  “We second that,” said Ed. He and Sam and Ann were standing beside Polly, all looking very determined.

  Mr Leroy propped himself on his stick opposite. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked so much on the point of disintegration that Polly could hardly bear to see him. He could have been a walking corpse. “Laurel,” he said, “I don’t think these people have any right to be here.”

  “Yes we have,” said Ann. “My mother was a Leroy, and she told me we had a right to invite three friends.”

  Laurel looked at Ann carefully. “Very well,” she said. “In that case, I’ll investigate. Polly dear, I hope you’re not just wasting our time.”

  “I’m not,” said Polly. “It is right, isn’t it, that Tom’s life is sacrosanct up to this? I mean that, no matter how crazily he drives or whatever other dangerous thing he does, he wasn’t supposed to get hurt.”

  “Of course,” said Laurel.

  “But Mr Leroy made two attempts to kill me when I was with Tom,” Polly said. “Sam and Ed were there the first time, and Leslie was there the second time, when Tom got quite badly hurt—”

  “I can vouch for that,” Sam said. “We all can.”

  “And you must know it’s true yourself,” Polly said, “because I saw you with Tom only a month after—”

  “Tom dear,” said La
urel. “You told me—”

  “It doesn’t matter what he told you,” Ann interrupted. “Only Morton Leroy could have hurt him, and you know that even better than I do!”

  There was silence. In it Polly heard for the first time a faint rippling whisper from the current bleeding from the pool. Laurel seemed to be considering. “Very logical, Polly dear,” she said, “but please tell your friends not to presume.” Then she looked up, behind Polly and Ann. “Seb dear,” she said, and when Seb had grudgingly moved up near the seat, “Seb dear, I don’t think you were quite honest with me. When we made our plan, you never said a word of your father.” She looked the other way, at Mr Leroy. “Morton, my dear, I think you may have been rather foolish.”

  Mr Leroy was shaking. His red-rimmed eyes rolled vengefully to Polly. “It was my life she was stealing,” he said chokily. “But she was the one who stole the portrait from your room. You can get her for that.”

  “I’ll take that into consideration. Thank you,” Laurel said. “But I shall have to support Polly’s claim, Morton, you see that. Come here, Seb dear.”

  Tom reached out and seized Polly’s hand.

  “Who, me? Why?” said Seb.

  “Silly.” Laurel smiled and beckoned. “I shall need you if Morton loses.”

  Seb walked slowly over to the swinging seat. There was a look of such utter horror on his face that Polly realised that this was what Seb had been afraid of all these years. She would have felt sorry for him if he had not said to her as he passed her, “Laurel’s not the only unfeeling bitch around here.”

  “It won’t kill you,” Polly said. “Literally.”

  Laurel meanwhile gave Leslie a gentle push. “Up you get, dear. Seb’s young. I may not need you.”

  Leslie sprang up, hurt, guilty, and puzzled, and stared at Seb settling into his place. “What’s going on?”

  “Hush, dear,” said Laurel. “Now, Morton, this is what I say. I shall give both of you a chance. Tom can use anything which is truly his. You can use the exact equivalent. The one who enters the pool first is the one who goes. Don’t you think that’s fair, Polly?”

  “No,” said Ann, and Mr Leroy cried out, “Laurel! I’ve no strength!” and Ann added, “But Tom has. That’s the catch, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” said Laurel. “But that’s what I’ve said, dear.”

  Polly looked down at the grass, trying to work out what this meant. Laurel had taken steps to show Tom he could win. But why? Around her, everyone’s feet were crowding as if people were trying to see something, and Seb, for some reason, was churring with laughter. She looked up. Seb was laughing at her, and Tom was no longer beside her. Seeing Seb’s jeering face, it came to her that Seb had always loved her the way most people bear a grudge. He knew what Laurel meant.

  Tom and Mr Leroy were standing halfway down the lawn. The sound from the near-invisible current had changed to hoarse rasping. The ripples had reversed and were now bleeding back into the pool. The pool itself was – wrong somehow. It lay above, or beyond, or perhaps below the two standing on the lawn, like an open trench in a different dimension. Polly’s mind kept trying to tell her it was not really there, in spite of the funnel of ripples sucking back into it. Those ripples only showed because they rippled everything they passed in front of. As Polly was turning to look, they spread and ponded like a sea tide to shimmer across the green lawn and cover Tom and Mr Leroy from the knees down. Or had the ripples risen? Neither Tom nor Mr Leroy had moved, yet the funnel of transparent ripples was now somehow up to their waists.

  Mr Leroy had his stick grimly planted, undulating like a snake in the current. Tom put out a bleached, shimmering hand. It was a habitual sort of gesture, though it had doubt and experiment in it. His cello swam into being, still propped on its chair, on the rippling green slope above him, and its bow was somehow in his hand. And it seemed as if the ponding funnel of ripples tipped about without moving. Mr Leroy was out of it from the knees upwards, but Tom was under up to his shoulders. Polly saw him realise and stand back from the cello with his arms folded and the bow dangling, rippling under one elbow.

  There was polite pattering applause from the elegant people round Polly. A voice cheered Mr Leroy. Several others called jeeringly to Tom to use the cello, since he had made such a point of having it. Without thinking, Polly plunged forward to fetch that cello away.

  “No!” shouted Ann. Sam and Ed seized Polly by her arms and held her back. Polly stopped resisting in a hurry. Even this – her attempt to help and the others’ to stop her – had tipped the cone of ripples about again. Mr Leroy’s bent grey figure stood clear against the green grass. Only his feet and the tip of his stick rippled. Tom was right underneath, blanched and wavering, and, in the odd, wrong perspective down there, he was in some way a lot nearer to that coffin-shaped trench into which the current was bleeding. The bright garden and the elegantly excited people smeared round Polly as she understood. Tom on his own could not send Mr Leroy to the pool. Any help sent Tom there instead. Out of the smear, the one clear thing was Laurel, sitting upright in her seat, watching Tom with a small, grave smile. Laurel, with chilly, malicious logic, had made sure that there was only one way Tom could win.

  All right, Polly thought. So the only way to win is to lose. I’ll have to lose.

  There was a sort of conference going on among the other three, mainly in mutters and jerks of the head, in case this would be construed as help to Tom. “Try it,” said Ann. “It’s all I can think of.”

  Ed picked up his violin off the grass where he had dropped it in order to grab Polly, put it under his chin, and played, not his usual sweet notes, but a rapid downwards squalling. A whinny. Below, the bleached, shimmering shape of Tom tilted his head. He said something. Polly knew he was asking her what she thought, but his voice belled into a thousand echoes in the ripples and all she could hear was, “Think-ink-ink?”

  She could see the way the others were thinking. Tom had changed the horse for a car, but since Tom was Laurel’s man with Laurel’s gift, that horse was still truly his. It was all the wild strength he had summoned up to get loose from Laurel. They were asking him to summon it again to defeat Mr Leroy, hoping to use Laurel’s unlucky gift against her. But Polly knew it would only turn against Tom.

  “Don’t expect any help from me!” she shouted. It was all the hint she dared give.

  But a voice did not cut through the current like Ed’s violin. Tom must have thought she agreed. He nodded. The ripples sped over him faster and faster as he leaned forward and tried to get his bow to the strings of the cello. It seemed to have drifted upwards from him and he could barely reach it.

  Polly set off down the lawn again before he could do it. She was sure the others would not dare try to stop her a second time. She passed the elegant people crowding and clapping like spectators at a contest. They laughed and called out at her. She came to Mr Leroy. He was leaning on his stick watching Tom sarcastically over his shoulder. He broke into his loud, fatal laugh as he saw Polly. But the laugh stopped as she walked past him into the miasmic ripples, and he looked at her uneasily.

  Polly kept her eyes on the greyed, uncertain shape of Tom below. He was definitely below now, in the wrong perspective of that current, deep beneath her. Around her, everything became grey-green ripples, but she did not feel the ripples, or anything else particularly. She had meant to harden her mind and be as stony as Ivy, but she seemed stony already. Kind feeling seemed to bleed away from her as she went downwards. Love, companionship, even Nowhere meant less and less. All she felt was a numb kind of sadness. The truth between two people always cuts two ways, she thought. And she had to go on.

  As you do in water, she saw Mr Leroy floating above her, and the blurred soles of his shoes. Tom was floating below, fighting the current to get near his cello. Neither had gone up or down. By which Polly knew she had to go on and lose.

  She was quite near to Tom when he succeeded in drawing the bow across the cello. It made a thundering rasp
, which was taken up by the echoes of the current and prolonged to a chugging sort of snarl. Tom receded downwards instantly. Ah, well, Polly thought. It wouldn’t have worked. She passed the cello, with echoes ebbing out of it, and the bow, floating, and found Tom in front of her.

  He was hanging, swaying, with both arms spread out for balance on the very edge of the trench. It was open like a door behind him. And it was nothingness. There were no ripples here, just nothingness. Truly the dead end of nowhere, Polly thought.

  “That was a mistake,” he said to her. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Polly. The horse was coming. She could feel its hoofbeats in the dying din of the cello, cutting across the rhythm of the ripples above her. She wondered whether to say any more. She could have got it horribly wrong. But the only way to turn that wild strength of the horse to Tom’s advantage was to deprive him of it completely. To take everything away, and do it now, because the horse had arrived. When she craned her head in the impossible direction of the garden, back and above, she could see a huge, bent, golden shape racing across the green there. “And it was an even worse mistake,” she said, “the way you used me. You took me over as a child to save your own skin.”

  The golden shape surged above. Polly could feel the beast panic as the current dragged it in. “You’re not doing that again,” she said.

  Tom stared at her incredulously. She could see his eyes behind his glasses, as wide and grey with shock as they were when he first saw the horse. He had been completely sure of her. Polly could hardly blame him. But she had to go on. The horse was on its way down, screaming, lashing, fighting the current, belling echoes against the trench of nothingness, and the large grey shape of Mr Leroy was tumbling downwards before it.

  “Now you know how I felt,” Polly said. “Taste of your own medicine. We’ve nothing in common anyway, and I’ve got a career to come too.”