Polly

Term started last Thursday but the first weekly faculty meeting is this Thursday evening.

The most enormous trucks imaginable, huge radiator grilles quite menacing. Truck drivers up in the gods with baseball caps. Kids with baseball caps back to front.

There’ll be no more than twelve in a class – that’s phenomenal.

The Charles River. Sculling. Harvard round the bend and out of sight. Concord River. Connecticut River.

Kate, lovely Kate, stopping at a tiny bakery just across the state line, buying me a cinnamon bun and a double decaff coffee.

‘We’re gonna have a whole lot of fun. You’re gonna just love school, you’ll fit in a dream.’

Will I? Hope I live up to your expectations – you seem to have decided an awful lot about me.

It was dark when they reached Hubbardtons Spring but Polly was vaguely aware that the houses, for the most part, were white planked and that the dark, woolly masses looming in the background were the tree-covered hills.

‘95 per cent of Vermont is tree covered,’ Kate informed the squinting Polly. ‘Hell, there’s a nip in the air, come on in.’

The front door, it transpired, was never used. Kate explained it was for show and that the house would have looked kind of funny without one. Polly was led instead around the side of the house, up wooden steps to the wooden deck where three men drank beer from small bottles and, after brief ‘hi’s and ‘hullo’s all round, she led Polly into the house. Straight into the warm kitchen which smelt divine, passed a gargantuan fridge smothered with photos and various magnets, round a corner, up some stairs, along a corridor, down three steps and sharp left into an ‘L’ shaped room with a decisive chill to it.

‘Been airing it for you. It’s not really been used since Great Aunt Clara died.’

Polly looked horrified.

‘Hey! That was ten years ago. And she was one helluva lady. You want to unpack? You want a beer?’

‘Yes and no,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t think I like beer.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll fetch you one that’ll change your mind. And your life. I’ll put money on it.’

With Kate disappeared, Polly shut the windows and closed the double curtains; lace first, chintz second. She absorbed the details of the room in an instant: painted white iron queen-size bed with a handmade patchwork quilt, an old rocker with two slats missing from the back, a chest of drawers warped sufficiently for none to be closed flush, a bookcase crammed full, framed prints of Van Gogh’s bedroom, Monet’s water-lily garden and Cézanne’s gardener, and an exquisite watercolour of maple trees ablaze in the autumn.

‘Fall,’ corrected Kate, making Polly realize she must have been talking out loud. ‘Here you go,’ she sang, thrusting a cold bottle of life-changing beer into Polly’s hands, ‘I’ll be out the back with the guys. You take your time. We’ll have dinner in forty-five.’

Supper? Isn’t it one in the morning?

Not for you Polly, it’s only eight o’clock.

But Max’ll be fast asleep. I can’t call him.

It’s already tomorrow for Max. He hasn’t seen you since yesterday.

I haven’t even said ‘yes’ yet.

‘The guys’ turned out to be Kate’s husband Clinton (‘As in Eastwood?’ Polly had asked in awe. ‘Sure!’ he had responded. ‘Or as in President. But we’ll go for the former if you don’t mind.’); another foreign exchange teacher who was Chinese and asked to be called Charles with a silent ‘s’ though his real name sounded something like Bik-toy-ng, and finally another young teacher from Hubbardtons called Greg who informed Polly he taught ‘Math’.

‘Sss?’ suggested Polly, imagining only one side on a triangle, one axis on a graph, no long division and absolutely no multiplication.

‘Math-th!’ Greg brandished, though it made him spit slightly.

‘That’s some bandanna,’ praised Clinton gently as he heaped spaghetti on to her plate.

To her horror, Polly realized that the Virgin Atlantic complimentary eye-mask was still propped up on her forehead.

‘You want to trade?’ Kate asked. ‘For another beer, say?’

‘Yes,’ mumbled crimson-cheeked Polly, biting her lip and digging her nails into the mask, ‘and yes.’

Kate examined the snooze-mask carefully and then tucked it into her pocket triumphantly.

Concerned that the new arrival should vanquish jet-lag, the group ensured that Polly did not go to bed until a respectable half past ten though it meant, on waking the next morning, that she had little recollection of the latter part of the night before, could not remember what or if she’d eaten and had to be reintroduced to Greg from scratch later that morning.

After ten hours of thick, dreamless sleep, Polly felt eager to set her first full day in motion and to acquaint herself with her new town, her new job and as many new peers as her mind could possibly catalogue. There seemed to be no one around, a feeble ‘Morning?’ from the bedroom door brought no reply. After encountering two dead ends, Polly found her way back to the kitchen and occupied herself by introducing herself to the fridge door where she came across Kate through the decades alongside affable-looking people with great teeth. The magnets holding the photos in place were quite something: colonial houses, a host of Disney characters, a golden angel, various dogs, a Red Sox shirt, a variety of bagels and doughnuts – all in miniature and mostly chipped.

‘I don’t call it my kitsch-en for nothing!’

‘Kate!’

‘Good morning there! I’m going to have you fetch the bread and milk, that way you’ll catch the layout of the town – and I can show you the short cut to school later.’

‘Fine,’ shrugged Polly, ‘fire away.’

‘Out the back door, over the lawn, through the passageway between those two houses there – with me so far? Hang a left, cross the street, first right. The store is the first building on the left. Got that?’

‘Aye, Cap’n Tracey.’

‘Hey? Who?’

‘You!’ said Polly fondly.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise that the store was called Hubbardtons. The proprietor told Polly that Great John himself had worked there as a young boy. And bought all his provisions there throughout his life.

‘Kate’s sent me for her daily bread,’ Polly explained.

‘Sure thing,’ said the proprietor, who was really too old to be wearing a denim skirt and sneakers, ‘and what’ll I call you?’

‘Oh, I’m Polly Fenton. From England. I’ve come to teach at the John Hubbardton Academy. English.’

‘Uh-huh, Hubbardtons,’ said the proprietor, whose hair was neatly held in place with a child’s novelty hair grips, ‘I’m pleased to meet you, my name’s Marsha – but you write it Mar-see-a, OK? That’s Mar-C.I.A. See?’ Polly nodded vigorously, wondering when she’d ever need to write to the proprietor of Hubbardtons Grocery Store.

It did not take much scrutinizing for Polly to familiarize herself with the layout of Hubbardtons Spring, though she would need a map to find her way round the school grounds for the first week. The town was laid out neatly either side of Main Street with Hubbardtons River running parallel to it. Though shrouded from view by a thatch of pine and maple, the water chattered constantly and Polly was all ears. There was a small fire station at one end of Main Street, at the other a church; white, wooden and archetypal (Polly once had a New England calendar with one on every page), marking a fork in the road. One leg obviously skirted alongside Hubbardtons (the river), the other marched upwards towards Hubbardtons (the mountain). Along Main Street, small stores sat amicably with houses and most of the buildings had flags outside, brightly coloured silk designs alongside the ubiquitous Stars and Stripes waving to Polly.

Everywhere I look I’m being welcomed. And yet no one really knows me at all. Poor Jen Carter, I can’t imagine a Belsize Park reception coming anywhere near as close.

Though she was keen to undertake a thorough exploration of Main Street and where it led, she was keener to taste the warm bread she was carrying. She returned to Pleasant Street, off by heart, back to Kate’s home.

‘Did you meet Marsha with the C.I.A?’ joked Kate, tearing a hunk of bread and offering the loaf to Polly to do the same.

‘Met Marsha,’ Polly confirmed, wrestling with the lid of the Marmite and then offering it to Kate.