Polly Read online

  ‘Yes I did.’

  ‘What does “last call” actually mean, Max? Might there not be a “final” one we could wait for?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Polly says, ‘they’ve called me by name. Should I go now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know we said you wouldn’t, but would you? Come all the way?’

  ‘All the way?’

  ‘To passport control at any rate?’ she whispers, hiding the colour of her eyes from Max as she closes them to kiss him. Her lips are quivering too much for her to pucker them properly. Max doesn’t mind; he knows her intention and echoes her sentiment with a clumsy bash of his lips against her cheek.

  ‘Come on Polly, it’s time.’

  Silently, they try to pretend they have no idea where passport control is but there’s no avoiding it, all paths seem to lead there and yet they cannot see beyond it; beyond the neon sign ‘Departures’, beyond the uniformed officials behind their melamine lecterns.

  ‘Here we are.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘Max. Can’t.’

  ‘Button, you can.’

  ‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.’

  ‘Oh dear. Bye bye.’

  ‘Bye, sweet girl.’

  ‘Hold me, Max.’

  ‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.’

  ‘You have to go.’

  ‘I know. Hold me a moment longer.’

  ‘This is the final call for passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, make your way to the departure lounge immediately.’

  ‘Got everything?’

  ‘Um, not sure, shall we check?’

  ‘You have everything.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘I do. OK.’

  ‘Off you go.’

  ‘Bye bye.’

  ‘Bye bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  Max watched her go away from him.

  God, she can’t.

  ‘Polly!’

  He ran towards her. Someone was examining her passport.

  Wait!

  ‘Polly!’

  They were handing her passport back to her.

  Oh bloody hell, what am I? – what the? – Jesusgod.

  ‘Polly?’

  Her tear-streaked face turned to him.

  They regarded each other, Polly biting her lip in a futile bid to keep tears at bay. She wanted to smile for Max. She couldn’t if she was clamping on to her lips. Tears and a smile were much better than neither of either. She lavished both on him. He cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips against her forehead. Then he held her at arm’s length and took hold of her wrists.

  Jesusgod, I can’t believe I—

  ‘Marry me.’

  There!

  Pardon?

  Polly was stunned and far too choked to speak her reply. The passport officer cleared his throat and addressed her, rather ominously, by name. Polly wiped her nose on Max’s shirt. He took her left hand and slipped something along her fourth finger. The orange plastic neck-ring from the small bottle of fruit juice. Scratchy and ridiculously oversized. Exquisite.

  ‘You’ll have a proper one when you come home. Promise.’

  TWO

  When John Hubbardton died in 1906 at the age of eighty-nine, he had a minor river and, consequently, the small town along its banks named after him. That the town’s school, which he had founded in 1878, should also be renamed in his honour was a foregone conclusion. Lower South River thus became Hubbardtons River, the town of Lower South was renamed Hubbardtons Spring and the Lower South School became The John Hubbardton Academy. The mountain, in whose embrace all three lay, was also given the man’s name. By the 1920s, river, town, school and mountain were known universally as Hubbardtons. One lived in Hubbardtons, one’s kids were at school at Hubbardtons; summers were spent canoeing Hubbardtons, winters skiing Hubbardtons. We’ll discover the town and the river alongside Polly when she arrives, maybe the mountain too, if she learns to ski, but we can have a sneak preview of the school now, for Polly herself is re-reading her information pack. She is two hours into her journey.

  The John Hubbardton Academy is a prep school. Not, you understand, in the British sense (small boys learning rugger and round vowels in preparation for Eton); Hubbardtons is a high-school, a boarding-school, ‘proud to provide a rounded preparation for college’, as proclaimed on page one of the glossy brochure.

  ‘Here at the John Hubbardton Academy, we’re one big family,’ commences page two. There are 240 students and 45 full-time teachers. When John Hubbardton founded the school 118 years ago it was, by necessity, co-ed. The school went temporarily all-male in a perverted stance against the 1960s, but extended an apology and an invitation to females a decade later. Currently, two thirds of both students and teachers are male. But no one is complaining.

  ‘We work and play, and we learn and live. Together. And we have 150 acres to do it in.’

  It certainly looks picturesque from the brochure. Whether the buildings are genuinely old, or just old-style, is irrelevant; they are structurally pleasing and set attractively within grand grounds sympathetically landscaped. The superb backdrop of the Green Mountains completes the picture. Seemingly seamless; from the brochure photographs at least.

  Polly slips the folder into the seat pouch in front of her, in between the safety instructions and the duty-free catalogue.

  Poor old Jen Carter, whoever she may be. Do you know, I’m not sure that BGS is a fair trade for the JHA. I can’t believe Max proposed!

  In 1820, when Belsize Park sat just outside London, a thoroughly modern building was built for the purpose of overseeing the education of young ladies residing locally. The establishment was duly named Belsize Ladies’ College. An insignia was designed (an open book with a lit candle propped, somewhat precariously, at its centre) and a motto was chosen (Cherchez la femme).

  Until the turn of the century, sixty pupils were attended to by six teachers in this one building. 1900 saw the first expansion of the school with the purchase of the four-storey house next door, and similar shrewd acquisitions followed in the early decades. Now, there are 300 girls and twenty-seven teachers squeezed into a coterie of old houses around the original school building; ingeniously interconnected by a series of corridors, covered walkways and iron staircases. No one is quite sure when the college for ladies became a school for girls but the institute is known now as Belsize Girls’ School. The insignia and the motto remain.

  The grounds at BGS comprise two concrete rectangles over which the layout of a pair of netball courts are superimposed in red lines; two tennis courts, likewise, in blue. An oak tree, protected by an unquestioned ancient law, stands defiant, slap in the middle of the larger rectangle. It makes for interesting reinterpretations of the rules of netball and tennis. Winter and summer terms, the girls can choose to play hockey and cricket respectively on the manicured sports fields owned by the nearby public boys’ school. Needless to say, the popularity of these two sports vastly outweigh tennis and netball. In the spring term, there is a choice between pottery classes in the cellar of the sixth-form house, or choral society at the boys’ school. Unsurprisingly, you never heard so many fine voices.

  Polly has taught English at Belsize Girls’ School for five years. She landed the position the day after she had forlornly sent out her seventeenth job application, the morning of the day when Max first asked her out. Something divine was intervening and she welcomed it. She still feels truly blessed.

  I hope this Jen Carter Person will be happy living my life for me – or at least a part of it – while I’m gone.

  Polly wriggles her feet into the red socks that came free with the flight and places the complimentary ‘snooze-mask’ over her tired eyes as, indeed, the passengers
either side of her have done. Three hours to go.

  Oh, for Marmite on toast.

  Think about Max. Marriage. Marmite. Mmm!

  ‘Pollygirl set sail OK then?’

  Dominic handed his brother a glass of his incomparable home-brew which he had poured on hearing Max’s car return. Max nodded, made an affirmative noise in his throat and accepted the beer with unbridled gratitude, downing half the pint swiftly and with eyes closed as if it was some elixir. Or in the hope, at least, that the fast-working potency of the beverage might lead him to believe that Polly had not gone at all.

  The brothers sat down on their sofa and supped in amiable silence. Both had kicked off their shoes and had their legs stretched out in front of them; ankles crossed on the coffee table built, quite obviously, for that precise purpose. Dominic flicked between television channels, finally choosing a cartoon and silencing the volume.

  ‘So,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Max replied.

  Dominic replenished their glasses and they continued to sit alongside each other, the occasional chuckle acknowledging that antics in animation are as entertaining without sound as with.

  ‘So,’ Max said eventually, as if concluding a lengthy soliloquy.

  ‘Yup,’ said Dominic, in utter understanding. Close friends often know what each other is about to say, they may even finish sentences for one another; but close friends who are also siblings can conduct entire conversations without saying a word. And so it is with Dominic and Max, five years separate them and nothing comes between them. They can have entire conversations in utter silence.

  They shared a bedroom when they were young and, for the past seven years, Dominic has rented the second bedroom of his flat to his younger brother.

  ‘It’s in the wrong side of Hampstead,’ he had warned Max.

  ‘How on earth can there be a wrong side to Hampstead?’ Max, then in Streatham, had marvelled, already heaping his belongings into black bin bags.

  So the boys kept home together and never wavered from the four golden rules they had devised during that journey seven years ago from south to north London. Sitting-room to appear to be tidy, cleaning duties on alternate Saturdays, fridge always to contain milk and alcohol, and CD collection to be communal. The draughtsman and photographer, both freelance and with adjacent studios nearby, living and working alongside each other in peace and harmony. They never fight for the shower or the phone, they never argue about washing up, they invariably have the same taste in TV and radio programming. And their combined CD collection is not so much communal as duplicate.

  Dominic Fyfield is five years older, two inches taller and a stone heavier than his brother. Like Max, Dominic is handsome in face and character. Where his features are not as fine as Max’s (his hair is a touch coarser and his eyes a little plainer), Dominic’s disposition is more effortlessly outgoing. Both brothers have winning smiles but Dominic shamelessly employs his to wholly libidinous ends. Dominic, however, respects Max’s monogamy just as much as Max marvels at his brother’s stamina and ability to chop and change, mix and match, when it comes to women. Max does, however, frequently call his brother a tart. Dominic, though, accepts it only as a profound compliment.

  ‘Why thank you, good man. Praise indeed from one as staid and unadventurous as you, Maximilian.’

  ‘Ah! But at least I know where my next metaphorical hot meal is coming from. Ever thought you might go hungry?’

  ‘Moi? Pah!’

  The Fyfield brothers are a lovely balance because they are different enough not to be competitive. Neither brother covets the other’s life because they are content and settled and secure with their own patterns. Neither, therefore, passes judgement. They disagree frequently but they rarely argue. And though Dominic lavishes many a smile on Polly, it is with no intent other than his seal of approval, acknowledgement of his brother’s good fortune.

  On first meeting her, Dominic had put her to the test and discovered she came through with colours blazing. He regaled Max with his findings.

  ‘Bit small?’ Dominic suggested.

  ‘But perfectly formed,’ Max justified.

  ‘Mmm,’ conceded Dominic, ‘nicely put together. Bright too.’

  ‘As a button,’ confirmed Max.

  ‘Gregarious and outgoing,’ said Dominic, throwing a cushion at his brother. ‘Good balance for you, you fusty old fart.’

  ‘I don’t think you can talk about farts being fusty, Dom,’ warned Max with a retaliation of cushions, ‘it’s the pot calling the kettle black.’

  ‘Bastard! Flatulence is a serious medical matter. OK, OK. So this Polly Fenton is a teacher.’

  ‘Yup, English.’

  ‘Shame it’s not PE but never mind. Remember that PE teacher I went out with?’

  ‘Unforgettable,’ cringed Max.

  ‘Gave a whole new meaning to the term “games mistress”, I can tell you.’

  ‘I can hear her still,’ Max groaned.

  Dominic had a private reminisce, of which Max decided not to partake, before returning his attention to his brother’s new girlfriend.

  ‘Fenton. Do you know, she actually apologized to me for not being related to Roger. Now that’s what I call impressive.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Maximus Cretinous! Roh-ger Fen-ton,’ Dominic stressed as though spoken italics would assist, ‘seminal nineteenth-century photographer? Crimean War?’

  ‘Right, right,’ hurried Max. ‘She’s not related to James either.’

  ‘Who he?’

  ‘Jay-ums Fen-ton, dickhead,’ Max relished. ‘Come on – landmark British poet, journalist, critic? The Memory of War?’

  Dominic regarded his brother slyly. ‘Swot!’ he declared, with a friendly punch to the biceps.

  ‘Back to Polly?’ Max, ever the pacifist, suggested; so they chinked glasses and toasted her health and Max’s very good fortune.

  ‘Get you, Max!’ mused Dominic. ‘Is she tickling your fancy or melting your heart?’

  ‘We’re not talking marriage here,’ Max had laughed, standing and stretching, and offering his brother a choice between a frozen lasagne ready-meal or beans on toast.

  ‘She’ll be half-way through her journey now,’ Dominic remarks, listening to his watch, checking it against the time on the video and phoning the talking clock to make absolutely sure.

  ‘Oh, and I asked her to marry me,’ Max says to Dominic, as if informing him merely that he had invited Polly along to the cinema with them.

  ‘Oh yes?’ says Dominic, keeping a straight face but unable to do anything about the sparkle in his eyes.

  ‘Yup,’ says Max, ‘just before she went through passport control.’

  ‘Did she, er, accept graciously?’ asked Dominic, all wide eyed and winsome.

  ‘Not in so many words,’ said Max slowly, ‘what with all her sobbing and hugging me. And her nose all blocked up.’ He proffered the crumpled section of his shirt as proof.

  ‘Ah,’ said Dominic, further convinced that all women were soft. And so, it now transpired, was his brother. ‘Bet she made off with your diamond!’

  ‘Actually,’ said Max, burping lightly under his breath and passing his glass for another refill, ‘it was all a bit spur-of-the-moment. The words sort of tumbled out. Anyway, she’s having to make do with the plastic jigger from a small bottle of fruit juice. Until she comes home.’

  With eyes shut and further concealed by the eye-mask; body wrapped, chin to knee, against the controlled chill of aeroplane air-conditioning by a thin, synthetic blanket, Polly concentrates on forgetting the whirr and smell of the plane, the words and pictures of the Hubbardtons brochure, to transport herself back to the then and there of her departure from Max. And his words. And their meaning.

  Marry me.

  Me?

  Who else.

  But I haven’t really thought about it – not outside the context of a soft-focus day-dream. We’ve never spoken seriously about it – like we might be tempting fate if we
did. But there again, who else would I marry?

  She wriggles in her seat and retrieves the orange plastic neck-ring from the back pocket of her jeans. She places it on her finger, under the blanket, eyes scrunched shut even behind the eye-mask, desperate to recreate the sensation when Max did so. It is too large, of course. Somehow, its symbolism is almost too big for her to contemplate as well, thousands of feet up in the air, on her way to foreign climes. For a whole year. She’ll think seriously on it anon of course, perhaps on the banks of some lonely stream, under the bough of some lofty maple, when she feels alone and a million miles away.

  I’m bound to, frequently.

  God, a whole year. And so far away.

  The eye-mask forces her tears back against her eyes. The noise of the aircraft prevents anyone hearing her sniff. She returns the plastic neck-ring ring to the back pocket of her jeans. It’s serrated.

  Sharper than you’d think.

  The glut of emotions enveloping her at Heathrow had been complex: the pain of parting from Max; the apprehension of leaving kin and country; a fear of flying; the love of the job she was leaving; concern for the position she was exchanging it for. Not to mention the bombard of emotion subsuming her when the man she loved proposed marriage. Out of the blue.

  So spontaneous – very un-Max. Wonder if he thought about it, whether he really truly meant it?

  ‘Oh dear,’ she wails suddenly, out loud, tasting the blanket inadvertently, ‘I didn’t actually say “yes”.’

  The shock of it!

  THREE

  Polly was immensely excited to see Cape Cod from the aeroplane window.

  ‘Do you know, it looks exactly the same as it does on a map!’ she exclaimed to her neighbour who was still wearing the blindfold. ‘Look!’ Polly urged, with a gentle but insistent nudge, ‘it’s like an arm, a crook at the elbow, a hand cupping the sea against it. Look!’

  Her fellow passenger did indeed look and then retreated back behind his eye-mask hoping sincerely that no other cartographical features would solicit his neighbour before they landed in Boston.

  As Polly waited at the luggage carousel, she suddenly had absolutely no idea who would be meeting her. In the event, she would have made a bee-line for Kate Tracey anyway, whether or not she had been brandishing the enormous board emblazoned with Polly’s name. Amongst the sea of faces and the barrage of name signs, Kate’s easy smile reached out to Polly immediately. As she approached, she marvelled at the coincidence that the name on the sign was indeed her very own.