6

For a long time Polly waited in real terror for Mr. Leroy to carry out his threats. But nothing seemed to happen. Ivy and David came back, and Polly went home. Mr. Lynn did not send her a Christmas present, but that was the only unusual thing.

School started, with its usual feeling of this term being the dead end of the year. After a fortnight of it, when nothing still had happened, Polly decided that Mr. Leroy was either bluffing or trying to play on her nerves. She gave up worrying. If something happened, well, it did. If not, how silly she would be worrying about nothing.

So, as a way of defying Mr. Leroy, Polly began compiling a book called Tales of Nowhere. First, she made a list of all the things she and Mr. Lynn had made up about Tan Coul and Hero. Then she drew a map of Nowhere. She did a tracing of a real map of the Cotswolds and gave the places different names, except for Stow-on-the-Water. This seemed right for the way Nowhere was supposed to mix with real life. It rather pleased her to write DRAGON over the farm where Mary Fields lived. Then, rather thoughtfully, and a little frightened, she put Hunsdon House in too, right in the middle. That seemed right also. The next stage was to paint illustrations for the book she was going to write. Then she settled down to write it. This part of the plan went very slowly.

Nina meanwhile had given up acting and the guitar for boys. She and Polly were out of step again. Nina had come back to school with a figure. It seemed to have grown overnight—or, at least, over Christmas. All the plumpness which had hitherto been all over Nina had somehow settled into new and more appropriate places, and then dwindled, to make a most attractive shape. Nina looked good, and knew it. She spent perhaps half her time with other girls who were in the same happy state, comparing bosoms, talking of diets and discussing clothes. The rest of the time Nina pursued boys. The boys in her own year were considered quite uninteresting. Nina and her friends mostly went after boys in the Third and Fourth Years, but enough of the hunt spilled over into the Second Year for the boys there to start diving under desks whenever Nina appeared, shouting, “Help! Here comes Nympho Nina!”

“It’s a shame she’s started so early,” Fiona Perks remarked to Polly. “What will she have left to do when she’s an old woman of fifteen?”

Polly liked that remark. It was the kind of thing Granny said. “Nina has to be where the action is,” she explained. “She always did.” And she looked upon Fiona with a great deal more friendship after that. She and Fiona were rather thrown together that term anyway. They were both put in the Under Fourteen athletics team, and they both seemed to remain skinny and rodlike while the other girls burst out into hips and bosoms.

“We may be late developers,” Fiona said, “but when it happens, everyone watch out!”

Polly took to Fiona more and more. They were not quite at the stage of sitting together in class, but Polly went once, timidly, to have tea in Fiona’s house. Fiona’s house was quite grand—not as grand as Hunsdon House, but a little on the same lines. Polly wished she dared ask Fiona round to her house in return. But things had become really difficult there.

Ivy had decided David was deceiving her. Their Christmas holiday seemed to have done very little good. Sacrifice in vain! Polly thought bitterly. They could have come to the pantomime for all the good it did! Now, whenever David was out, Ivy telephoned all the people she knew and asked them where David was. One day Polly came in from school to find the kitchen a white fog from the kettle, and Ivy, red in the wet heat, busy steaming David’s letters open.

“I know. I’m insecure,” Ivy said defensively to Polly. “But he’s so secretive. How can I trust a man who doesn’t tell me anything?”

This made things awkward for Polly, because she was still taking notes from David to Mr. O’Keefe. She had thought David would stop asking her to take them after the row before the pantomime. She was astonished when he stopped her, the first day of school, and handed her another note.

“Be an obliging wench,” David said pleadingly. “Don’t stop up my only outlet, there’s a gorgeous. I’ll do the same for you one day.”

He seemed to mean it so much that Polly’s annoying tenderheartedness was aroused. Besides, she liked Mr. O’Keefe and the way he called her his darling. She agreed to take the note, and a good many others after that. All that term, even after the kettle incident, Polly was taking notes for David.

Then, towards the end of term, she came in from a cycle ride with Fiona to find Ivy opening a parcel. Polly could see the address, because it was on a label and very black, first the name of a book shop in Exeter and then MISS POLLY WHITTACKER… “Hey!” said Polly. “That’s mine! It’s from Mr. Lynn.”

Ivy’s answer was to thrust the half-opened parcel across the kitchen table at Polly. “Is it?” she said. “Then show me. Open it right out. Go on.”

Under Ivy’s suddenly ominous stare, Polly rather resentfully finished undoing the brown paper. In it was a fat book called The Golden Bough. The typed slip of paper with it said it was from Mr. Tea-Gell. Polly grinned. But her pleasure was a good deal spoiled by Ivy taking the book by its covers and shaking it, and then spreading the brown wrapping out to make sure there was no other message.

“It’s all right, Mum,” she said. “I know it’s from Mr. Lynn. That’s the way he always does it now.”

“Yes, but I don’t, do I?” Ivy said. “Where does it say it’s from him?”

“The name he gave the book shop,” Polly explained. “It’s a joke. His initials are T.G.L.”

“It makes a good story,” said Ivy.

“What do you mean?” said Polly.

“Mr. Lynn, Mr. Lynn!” said Ivy. “You may be always on about this Mr. Lynn of yours, but I don’t believe he exists. I’ve never set eyes on him!”

“Yes you have!” Polly cried out. “In London—the first time you went to the lawyer.”

“No I did not,” said Ivy. “You went by yourself in a taxi, as you well remember! You always were a sly little devil, even in those days. I can see now that you went to meet Reg behind my back. Oh, I have been a fool!”

Polly felt horrible. For a moment she wondered if Ivy had gone mad. But she felt so hurt and bewildered that she thought Ivy must be quite normal. If a person is mad, they cannot say things that hurt you. “Granny’s met him,” she said. “Ask her.”

“She’d only stick up for you. It’s no use asking her,” said Ivy. “She spoils you rotten, just like she did your father. And I reap the reward!” The front door clicked quietly. Ivy heard it. “David!” she shouted. “Come in here a moment!”

David came in slowly, sensing trouble. “The old homestead feels a bit stirred,” he said. “What’s the earthquake about?”

Ivy held the book and the typed note out towards him. “David, did you do this?”

David looked, wincing a little. “Not guilty. I couldn’t write a book like that to save my life. All that research—” He stopped, seeing the way Ivy was looking. “I didn’t give it her, if that’s what you mean. It’s that admirer fellow again. Whatsisface.”

“I know it was supposed to be,” Ivy said grimly. “My lady here has it all set up for you, doesn’t she? She makes herself up this story about this man who doesn’t exist. No doubt she believes it. She doesn’t know truth from lies, just like her father! Then you step in and start sending her presents, pretending they come from her Mr. Nobody!”

“That’s not true!” Polly shouted. And David said at the same time, “Be reasonable, Ivy. Why would I send Polly presents?”

“Why indeed?” Ivy said. There was a sort of miserable triumph to her. “Because she’s been running your errands for you, hasn’t she? I saw you look!” she shouted as David’s eyes met Polly’s without either of them being able to help it. “Don’t deny it. She’s been taking your love letters for that Irishman to hand on, in spite of all you swore to me before Christmas—!”

“Just the odd pound on the dogs, Ivy,” David said.

He would have done better to have denied everything. The resulting row seemed to shake the house. David got as angry as Ivy and roared that he was not going to stand for being spied on. Ivy screamed that he had reduced her to it by ganging up with Polly. David yelled that he did not care two hoots about Polly. Ivy accused both him and Polly of lying. Polly, in tears by now, tried to make at least David believe that Mr. Lynn had sent her the book. That made Ivy angrier than ever, and she sent Polly away upstairs. Polly defiantly grabbed The Golden Bough off the kitchen table as she went, at which Ivy screamed, “Yes, take your ill-gotten gains! Much good may they do you!”

Polly closed the door on David yelling that he did not send Polly that book. She went upstairs and tried to read it. But she was too upset. The book shook in her hands and she could not focus on the pages. The only thing she could seem to do was to get out all Mr. Lynn’s longer letters and go through them again, first to assure herself that Mr. Lynn indeed existed, and then to lay them all out as proof to Ivy. She knew Ivy would come up and talk to her. She was dreading it.

She was right. Ivy came in about two hours later. She had been crying and was carrying a letter.

“Polly,” she said, “how could you do this to me?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Polly said sulkily. “Mum, look at these letters. Mr. Lynn sent them. He is real.”

Ivy picked a letter up and glanced at it. “Typed,” she said. “Anyone can type a letter, and it was you that typed them by the look of all those mistakes.” Before Polly could protest that there was no one she knew with a typewriter, Ivy dropped the letter back on Polly’s bed. “Tell all the lies you like in your own mind,” she said. “It’s when you tell them to me that it matters. You’ve been secretive with me. You’ve destroyed my happiness with David. You’ve made him secretive too. I can’t have it, Polly. You’ll have to leave.”

“Leave?” said Polly. She did not understand.

“Leave,” said Ivy. “It’s my only chance of mending things with David. I had this letter from your father a while ago. Read it. He wants you to live with him and Joanna in Bristol. So there you’ll go as soon as school ends. You and Reg should see eye to eye. He believes what he wants to believe too.”

Polly took the letter Ivy held out. At first she could focus on it no more than she had been able to focus on The Golden Bough. It swam about behind blinding, rebellious thoughts. The same thing was happening to her now that had happened to Dad two years ago. She was not secretive. Neither was Dad. But Mum was not the kind of person who listened when you told her things. So you ended up not telling her, and when Mum realised, she was hurt. And when Ivy was hurt, she shut you out completely.

While Polly was thinking these things, some parts of the letter steadied enough for her to pick out phrases: a right to see my own daughter… very welcome in Bristol… try living with us at least… Well, Dad seemed to want her anyway.

It was settled that Polly should go to Bristol the first day of the Easter holidays. Polly packed her clothes and books in boxes for Ivy to send after her. She seemed to be packing all the rest of term, living in a house she no longer really lived in, going to a school she no longer really belonged to.

She kept looking at things and thinking, This is the last time I’ll listen to Nina discussing bras, or This is the last time I’ll have a French lesson here, or This is my last Indoor Athletic practice. She felt empty with waiting for her new life to start. But every so often, bitter thoughts spurted up into the emptiness. Everyone seemed to have hurt her, including Mr. Lynn. He just thinks of me as a sort of mascot, she found herself thinking. I don’t know why I bothered to have a row with Mr. Leroy about him. She was glad to be leaving. Almost the only thing she was sorry about was not going on with her new friendship with Fiona Perks.