Fire and Hemlock

“You know what he’s like as well as I do, Polly. Reg has no sense of reality. Money goes through his hands like water. And if I presume to say anything, he just laughs it off and spends more money on a present to soothe me down. Presents!” Ivy said bitterly. “I want a relationship, not presents! I want happiness and sharing – not just two people living in the same house. That’s all we’ve been for years now – two people living in the same house. Your father’s so secretive, Polly. On top, he’s all smiles and laughs, but if I ever ask him what he’s really thinking, it’s ‘Oh, nothing particularly, Ivy,’ and not a word more will he say. That’s not right, Polly. He’s got no right to keep himself to himself away from me like that!”

This was already beginning to sound like one of Ivy’s usual discontents. Polly had long ago learned to dread them. Later in her life she learned to dread them much more. This time, as usual, her feelings were hurt on Dad’s behalf. She had to give up trying to feel honoured and tell herself she was being considerate instead. As Ivy talked on, she found herself thinking that Dad was not secretive. He just expected you to know what he was feeling by the things he said and did. It was Mum who kept herself to herself, locked away in moods.

“I know I have these moods,” Ivy was saying, a long time later. “But what can I do when I’m being rejected at every end and turn? It gets me that way. I know when I’m not wanted. It didn’t use to be that way when Reg and I were first married. We shared then. But not now.”

Polly listened, still trying to be considerate, and kept vowing privately that she would never, ever lock herself away from anyone. When she looked at the clock, she was surprised to find it was past her bedtime and Ivy was still talking. By now it was sounding just like her usual discontents.

“Well you know me – I’ve slaved and worked to make the house nice, gave up my job to have it all perfect. And I do think in return the least he could do is not walk muddy feet all over the carpets, and shut drawers after he’s opened them, and tidy up a bit sometimes. Not a bit of it. When I mention it – and I’m not a nag, Polly – he laughs and says I’m in my mood again. Then he gives me a present. Then what does he do? He goes straight from me to that Joanna Renton of his!”

This was new, Polly thought dully. This must be what Dad had done.

“Joanna’s not the first either,” said Ivy. “But I was a fool before and didn’t keep track of what he was doing.”

“Is – is he with Joanna Renton now?” Polly broke her long, long silence to ask.

“Yes,” Ivy said. She sounded tired. She too looked at the clock. “Oh, is that the time? Are you hungry at all, Polly?”

“No,” Polly said considerately, though she was rather. “I had a big tea.”

“Good,” said Ivy. “I haven’t got the energy to think of food, somehow. You hop along to bed, Polly. And remember when you get married not to make the mistakes I did.”

“I don’t think I will get married,” Polly said as she stood up. “I’m going to train to be a hero instead.” But she could tell her mother was not listening.

5 O see you not yon narrow roadSo thick beset with thorns and briars?That is the path of Righteousness,Though after it but few enquires. (#ulink_c1060661-8e32-518a-a2c6-6a206cc24376)

THOMAS THE RHYMER

Dad came back two days later. Polly had just got home from Nina’s and she was in the hall when she heard his key opening the door. She rushed and hugged him. Dad greeted her with his usual half-shout and great grin, and hugged her back, just as usual. Polly felt the arms hugging her quivering ever so slightly. It reminded her of the quiver she had felt in Mr Lynn’s arm when she pulled him down the street after catching the horse.

The quiver stopped when Ivy came and stood in the living-room door, looking at them with her stoniest expression. Polly felt Dad’s arms all hard as he looked up and said, “Now, what’s all this, Ivy?”

“I’ve been to a lawyer,” said Mum.

“You haven’t!” Dad said blankly, and then tried to hide the blankness with a grin.

“That’s right, laugh it off,” Ivy said. “As usual. But I have. And I’ve told Polly all about it too. I’ll thank you to let her go and stop subverting her. Come here, Polly.”

Dad’s arm clenched round Polly and he made a strange noise. It was a jeering groan, and a maddened shout, and the growl you make before hitting someone, and the sound you make trying not to cry, all in one. “Subverting!” he said. “Just what have you been making her think of me?”

And Polly was suddenly being pushed back and forth along the hall while her parents shouted at one another. The first push was Dad trying to use Polly like a shield or a hostage to get past Ivy into the living room. But Ivy stood barring his way to anywhere but the hall and put her arms round Polly protectively. Dad shouted that she was using Polly against him like she always did. Mum pushed Polly back to Dad. Back and forth Polly went, feeling so numb and stupid that she almost wanted to laugh, in spite of the way they were screaming.

In the midst of it the back door banged without anybody but Polly noticing. Granny was there, upright as the Queen Mother and stiff with anger, and taking everyone’s attention, even though she was only a head taller than Polly.

“Polly’s coming with me,” Granny said, “until you’ve had your shout out. I’m not taking sides, and it doesn’t matter to me what you settle, but Polly’s not coming back until you have. Get your things, Polly.”

Polly thought Dad seemed relieved. Ivy drew herself up angrily. “Reg, did you tell her to come here and poke her nose in?”

“I phoned to see how she was,” Dad said defensively. “That’s all.”

“You—!” began Ivy.

“Shut up!” said Granny. Her voice banged like someone hitting a biscuit tin. “Reg is always glad for someone to do his dirty work for him – I’ll give you that, Ivy – but he didn’t ask me to come. I told you, I just came for Polly. When I’ve got her, I’ll go. But not until.”

Granny, naturally, won. Ten minutes later she and Polly went out of the front door with a duffel bag of Polly’s clothes, Granny marching and Polly creeping rather.

“I know, I know,” Granny said. “I’m not a saint, Polly. You’ll have to learn that.”

Saint or not, Polly thought there was a kind of holy calm about Granny’s house, smelling of biscuits. She stayed there a week, and went to school from there. It meant a longer journey and not seeing so much of Nina, but it seemed worth it. Polly sat at Granny’s kitchen table and painted Christmas cards for everyone she knew, including Mr Lynn. Then she painted several big pictures of Tan Coul fighting a dragon and overcoming a wizard, with herself dressed as a boy, rather small, down at one side.

While she painted, Granny bustled quietly about and talked to Polly about things she had done as a girl. Granny had been what she called “a bold, bad girl”. She had done a number of things Polly thought were really much more daring than gate-crashing a funeral. But she was surprised that Granny did not talk about Dad when he was a boy, the way she usually did.

“That would be taking sides,” Granny said, “and I said I wouldn’t. Besides, I’m not sure I didn’t spoil your father rotten. I’m not making the same mistake over you. Off to bed now, and no arguing.”

Polly had the same bedroom she had shared with Nina. And there was her Fire and Hemlock picture hanging over her bed. She lay and looked at it, with Mintchoc curled up and purring on the pillow by her neck. Mintchoc had a smell too, but not of biscuits. It was a faint, clean scent, like talcum powder. Polly stroked her and looked at the shapes coming out of the smoke in the picture. They really were four men, rushing to put out the fire before the whole field caught. If Polly screwed her eyes up, she could sometimes see a fifth, smaller shape, a bit to one side, behind the flames. She liked to think it was herself as Hero. There was no doubt in her mind that the bigger shapes were Tan Coul and his three friends. If she went on staring with her eyes squinched, she found she could see the misty shape of the Chinese horse too, rearing amid the vapour that was rising all round the four men. The horse and the smaller shape disappeared when she knelt on her bed with her face right up against the picture, but the four men were always there.

Polly spent some time thinking what Tan Coul’s friends might be like. When she was tired of painting, she wrote Mr Lynn a letter about them. Some of the letter was about Awful Leslie and Dreadful Edna, and some of it was suggestions about how to fight dragons, but the friends were the important part.

Tan Coul has three frends who are heros too. They are Tan Audel who is sumone I don’t know, and Tan Thare and Tan Hanivar. I know them. Tan Thare is jolly, he can make music sound out of nowhere to friten his enemies. Tan Hanivar is rather a sad case becuse he keeps turning into things and doesnt want peple to know. He can be a wolf or even a dragon, it is very hard for his frends not to kill him by mistake.

At the end of the week Granny took Polly home, with her paintings, cards, and letter in a new folder. Mum seemed glad to see her. She hugged Polly and told Granny she was grateful. But Dad was gone. His hi-fi had gone too, and an armchair, and a number of smaller things from round the house. The divorce was definite.

“Definite,” said Ivy, when Polly asked.

In a way, it made home as peaceful as Granny’s house.

Polly got very busy then preparing for the Christmas play at school. She remembered to send her Christmas cards, but she clean forgot the letter. After all, hero-business was only a game and school was real.

Mum and Dad both came to the school play, but they did not look at one another and they sat on opposite sides of the hall. Polly did not know Dad was there until she came on the stage as the youngest of the Three Kings. Nina told her. Nina was King Herod. She had turned out to be far better than any of the boys at ranting and roaring and looking kingly. Miss Green said that none of the boys could get on the stage without looking sheepish, and she made them all shepherds, for obvious reasons, as she said. So Nina was having the time of her life in a wriggly stuck-on moustache and beard, shouting and strutting and having everybody executed. But her eyes kept moving from one side of the hall to the other, keeping tabs on whose parents were there.

“Your Dad’s come,” she said to Polly out of the side of her mouth.

“I know!” Polly whispered, with rather a jolt, because she had not known at all. And she got on with trying to offer King Herod some gold.

“Away with it!” cried Nina. “I am not your King of Kings!” [He’s left your Mum, hasn’t he?] And I know no more than you where he may be.”

“It is not you but a child, Your Majesty [Yes],” said Polly. “[Shut up.] A star rising in the east told us that he was born.”

“This is terrible news!” King Herod said to the audience. And to Polly, “[Are they going to get divorced?] And what else does that star tell you? [Is that what that boy Seb was talking about?] Do you know where the child is?”

Polly sighed and nodded to the first question. She shook her head to the second question, but it was one of the other Kings who had to explain that they were following the star, so she could not speak. This conversation, she thought, was exactly like the way the deeds of Tan Coul were mixed up with the real world. She wished she could have explained it to Mr Lynn like this. She felt prickly anger with Nina for being so nosy, and it made her go cold and stony. She suddenly knew how Ivy felt.

“Then I tell you what,” Nina was saying as she strutted round the stage. “I’ll entrust the three of you with a very important mission.” She strutted up behind Polly. “[Your Dad’s girlfriend doesn’t want him to see you, does she?] I wish to honour the King of Kings myself. I’d like you to tell me when you’ve found him. [It must feel ever so strange!]”

Polly pressed her lips together and refused to say more than the lines she had learned. The Three Kings left the stage. Nina had a good rant and then left too.

She pushed through the angels waiting to go on and found Polly. “Tell me what it’s like not having your Dad at home. Was that boy a detective?”

“No,” Polly said stonily.