Polly Pilgrim Read online

  ‘You come back here, you cheeky young devil! I’ll learn you to talk to me like that!’

  In her rage she forgot her grammar. Hurt, mingled with anger, flushed the bright colour in her cheeks to an even deeper rose. If she hadn’t seen the man plodding down towards the cottage from the hills, she would have chased after Gatty and landed her one as she’d often done when, as a rebellious child, her daughter had openly defied her. Without once making her cry, Polly remembered, going back wearily into the cottage.

  And if Jack Thomson had seen her raising her arms and yelling like a fishwife, then he gave no sign. Polly watched him from the window, holding her hand over her breasts as if to still the pounding of her heart.

  Jack Thomson walked on down the hill, treading softly with his soldier’s steady plod a walk that ill-matched his big body. Polly leaned closer to the window. Jack was a handsome man, no doubt about that, with his thick brown curly hair and his strange, green eyes fringed with girlish lashes. Suddenly he began to run.

  To catch Gatty up, Polly suspected. The thought made her bite her lips. There were things she’d heard about Jack and the pitiful women patients at the nearby mental hospital where he worked as an orderly; always the young ones, it was rumoured. His wife would be waiting for him in their ramshackle cottage at the bottom of the hill. Bella Thomson was a tiny woman, built like a scribble, with a habit of blinking sandy eyelashes over pale eyes of an indeterminate shade. Polly had often asked herself how Bella had ever managed to produce even such a sickly baby as their seven-month-old son. Bella was all right though. Cowed and frightened of her husband as she was, she could hold her own when they were having one of their frequent shouting matches. There was still plenty of spirit in the untidy little body. And though Polly suspected that Jack knocked his wife about (finding it hard to believe that any woman could black her eye quite so often against a door, as Bella claimed), her little piping voice could often be heard intermingling with Jack’s loud bellows.

  ‘I’ve just seen Jack Thomson, but he was in too much of a hurry to stop. I’d have liked a word with him before tomorrow,’ said Harry, as he came in with Martin, their arms loaded with logs.

  ‘Jack told me he’ll see you right for wood. He’s a strange one all right is Jack, surly one minute then all over you the next.’ Balling a fist, Harry cuffed his son affectionately on the shoulder. ‘We’ve been watching a tree sparrow, this lad and me. He thought there was only one kind, didn’t you, lad?’

  Martin’s voice was as chirpy as the little bird’s he now described. ‘It had a tiny black cap, like a skull-cap, our Mam. It was in a blackthorn bush.’ He piled his logs in the large clothes basket set in the hearth. ‘Did you know, Mam, that if a plant has four petals it’s called a Latin name?’ He hesitated, then at a nod from Harry went on. ‘A cruciferae. You know, like a cross with four bits to it. They won’t need to teach me Latin when I start at the grammar school next week. I’ll be able to tell them me dad’s learned it me already.’

  ‘Taught you already.’ Harry winked at his wife. ‘I’d best go up and put a few more things together if I’m to be off at first light in the morning.’

  Bending his head as if he needed to shield it from the height of the low ceiling, he disappeared from view up the narrow winding staircase leading to the three rooms upstairs.

  ‘Why does me dad have to go away?’

  At the hoarse sound of her son’s voice Polly turned round quickly, dismayed to see tears glistening on the stubbly eyelashes framing eyes as blue as her own. Martin was rocking his father’s chair backwards and forwards as if the rhythmic movement gave him comfort.

  ‘It’s spoilin’ everything me dad going away. If he goes and gets a job down south I’ll have to leave me new school, won’t I?’ His voice quavered. ‘An’ I might have been picked for the cricket team. Besides, Arnold’s going – you know Arnold Bolton – an’ he says we can be mates, with him and me being the only ones from the bottom school to pass the scholarship.’

  Polly knew her son. She knew the way his orderly mind worked. The phrase ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ might have been written by Martin. His room upstairs was as neat as a captain’s cabin, with his Meccano set pigeon-holed into little drawers, his comics arranged in two piles, one for Wizard and one for Adventure. His father going away interrupted the pattern. The tears were running unheeded now into the rolled collar of his grey pullover.

  ‘Anyroad, me dad doesn’t want to go. He’s only reckoning on he does. An’ Jim doesn’t like it neither. He’s only a dog, but dogs know.’

  As if understanding, the dog raised its nose, whimpered, then settled down again into an uneasy, twitching sleep.

  ‘Maybe it’ll only be for a little while. Things are bound to buck up soon, then he’ll be back. There’s a lot of water to go under the bridge before we think of moving to another place.’

  Polly lifted her chin to stare through the window. In the last rays of the dying sun the hills blazed as if on fire. When she went to kneel beside the rocking-chair, Martin was sobbing quietly, his tears seeming as constant and inevitable as the flow of a river.

  Harry walked the dog down the hill later that night, ostensibly to give Jim his run out, but in reality to meet Gatty off the last bus back from town. When they came in Gatty went straight to bed, turning back at the foot of the stairs to kiss Harry on his cheek.

  ‘Hope you go on all right, Dad,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Good night, lass.’

  Harry exchanged a smile with his wife as the disconsolate figure plodded upstairs. ‘Does she have to behave like a tragedy queen?’ he whispered. ‘Mebbe she thinks her face’ll crack if she smiles.’

  It had been a long day and Polly wasn’t going to spoil what was left of it by discussing Gatty. Harry’s eyes were telling her that he wanted to make love to her, and even after almost seventeen years of marriage the excitement was still there. There was the trick he had of slightly closing his eyes and gazing at her steadily, the way he was doing now. It was all there in his expression – his love for her, his thinking she was beautiful, his tenderness and his passion.

  ‘We’ll give Gatty a chance to get off to sleep, then we’ll go up.’

  Harry nodded. Oh, what was he going to do without her, his lovely Polly? From the minute he’d set eyes on her, he’d loved her. She was warmth, she was light, she was sunshine in a dark room.

  When she took the torch and went outside he stood up, kicked the smouldering logs and sent a shower of sparks up the chimney. He put the guard round the fire, unlaced his boots and wound the clock on the mantelpiece. His nightly ritual, as safe and reassuring as the sound of the wind sighing now in the branches of the oak tree.

  Never, never would he see her dragged down into real poverty like the wives of the unemployed men down the town. He’d seen them, faces bleak with the worry of penny-pinching, shouting at their husbands for no other reason than that they were there, idling their lives away, till it was time to go out and stand in line at the Labour Exchange, answering personal questions put to them by some chit of a clerk who’d sat out the war on his backside.

  He’d calculated they could last four months, maybe six, on the savings accumulated over the years. And by then he’d have got settled; by then they could all be together again. He glanced round the room. What was a house but sticks and stones? To leave the cottage would half destroy him, but to stay would be infinitely worse.

  He made love to his wife that night as though for the first time, passion unleashed and uncontrolled, then he slept, sinking deep into the feather mattress, his hand on Polly’s rounded thigh.

  And lying awake, staring up into the darkness, Polly saw the light on the ceiling and felt a finger of terror touch her heart.

  It was a strange, shifting, fluid shape, as if from a lamp held aloft in a wavering hand. Polly had seen it only twice before. Once towards the end of the war when Harry was serving in France, coinciding, she discovered later, with the ve
ry day he had breathed in poisonous gas on the Somme, and been carried choking and yellow into the field hospital.

  The second time the light appeared was on the night her father died, sighing softly in his sleep, leaving hold of his life as unobtrusively as he had lived it.

  Sheer horror held Polly still. Eyes wide, she willed the pulsing light to disappear. The cottage might have stood for three hundred years and more, but there was no such thing as ghosts. They were figments of the imagination, tricks of light and shade; it could even be the moon forming shadows through the thin flowered curtains.

  But when she slipped trembling from bed and went over to the window, the darkness outside was absolute, without a single star to pinprick the inky blackness of the sky. Leaving Harry sleeping, Polly crept down the stairs and crouched shivering on the rug by the pale grey ashes of the fire. Soon winter would come; there would be few hikers and picnickers walking down the hill past the cottage on their way to the banks of the river. At the moment the River Ribble meandered peacefully on its way, but winter rains could swell it to a raging torrent and, it was said, that on dark nights a young girl could be heard crying and wailing for her mother.

  Superstition. Like the light on the bedroom ceiling, ignorant superstition. Polly felt her scalp crawl with the cold whisper of fear. The story went that a servant girl from one of the big houses spilt water and was cursed by her mistress, who was reputed to be a witch. ‘I hope you break your neck!’ the poor girl was told, and the curse was effective, because that same day she slipped down the icy bank into the river and was drowned.

  The cottage was held in the grip of silence. Polly swayed to and fro with cold, telling herself that the creeping light in the bedroom was just her silly fancy – but not really believing it.

  When Harry padded downstairs and knelt beside her, Polly leaned against him, feeling the terror slip away as his arms came round her. When he led her gently back to bed and snuffed out the candle, Polly squeezed her eyes tight shut before daring to open them again.

  And the light on the ceiling, along with her dread and the premonition of unhappiness, had gone.

  Sighing with relief and shaking her head at her own foolishness, Polly turned into her husband’s arms and slept, held fast in his love.

  — Two —

  IT WAS A bad time for the first few weeks after Harry’s going, but somehow Polly managed to make ends meet.

  In spite of the depressing state of the economy, the country was also managing to get by, and MPs’ salaries were cut drastically.

  ‘And about time,’ said Polly’s mother. ‘I’ve heard tell them MPs don’t get to work till dinner time. Other folks have put in a good half day by then.’

  When Harry wrote to say he had been taken on at Kew Polly was thrilled even though he explained that it was only for the time being and then only as a casual labourer, sweeping leaves from the lawns and paths of the big gardens. He was having to pay ten shillings a week for a bed in an attic, he wrote, but he said nothing about the inadequate meals of watery soup and dry bread, or that he was sharing his room with an elderly tramp.

  Meanwhile, Polly fed her family on the little she dared to take from their savings, but there was nothing left over for anything else. She kept the savings book behind the clock on the mantelpiece, and took it down often to stare at the balance with growing dismay.

  ‘Reckoning your money up, pretty Polly?’

  As startled as if she’d been prodded in the back, Polly whipped round to see Jack Thomson standing in the doorway. He was holding an armful of logs, and the rubber soles of his gumboots made no sound as he padded towards the basket in the hearth.

  ‘I’ve put the rest outside, love,’ he grinned, showing teeth so white and even they didn’t look real, ‘on the left. My, but it’s parky out this morning.’

  Quickly Polly replaced the bank book behind the clock.

  ‘I didn’t hear you knock, Jack,’ she said deliberately. His familiarity was making her feel uneasy. With green eyes narrowed insolently, he was staring at her as if he could see right through her knitted jumper. Polly was aware that it had shrunk in the wash, and that it was straining over her breasts. Instinctively she folded her arms. ‘Thanks for the wood and for sawing the logs. I really appreciate that.’

  He laughed out loud as if she had said something witty. ‘You’re a good-looking lass, Polly Pilgrim. I like to see a woman with a bit of meat on her bones. Not like my missus. She looks as if she’s been spoke-shaved since she had the nipper.’ Pursing his lips he made a kissing noise. ‘You know where to come if you get stuck. for a bit of that there.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that!’ Polly heard her voice rise, then became even more rattled as she wondered if he’d been teasing. She thought about his wife – thin, pale and anguished, trying to cope with a baby who vomited most of his feeds back down the front of his flannelette nighties. ‘Bella’s ill,’ she reminded him. ‘She’s not been well since she had the baby. You know that without me telling you, Jack.’

  Grinning, he took a step towards her. ‘I like it when you lose your temper. I saw you t’other day shouting your head off at your Gatty.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘You want to watch her,’ he said slyly. ‘You know what young lasses get up to these days.’

  ‘Do I?’ Polly turned her head away from the smell of whisky on his breath. She felt confused and slightly hysterical. If she told him to keep away from Gatty, she could be putting ideas in his head. If they weren’t there already, that is. She didn’t understand him. One minute he was being kind bringing in the logs, and the next minute he was almost insultingly personal. She wasn’t sure how to deal with him, and she knew that if Harry hadn’t gone away, he wouldn’t dare to speak to her like that.

  ‘Give us a kiss and bit of a cuddle, Polly,’ he said thickly. ‘Just one friend to another. You’d enjoy it, lass. You’re not as straight-laced as you make out. I’ve met your sort many a time.’

  His handsome face was inches from her own. Although Polly was tall he seemed to tower over her, overwhelming her with the strength and animal violence of his big body. His mouth was red, his unshaven chin firm, and his green eyes glittered with excitement.

  Polly stepped backwards but, with the table behind her, knew she was trapped. If she screamed no one would hear. As strong as she was, she knew she was no match for this man. She could feel the violence emanating from him, and his hot breath on her face. A shudder ran over her as she remembered the tales she had heard about him, and in that moment she knew them to be true.

  He came closer. ‘Come on, Polly. Don’t hold back. There’s nobody looking.’

  Groping with a hand behind her, Polly opened the table drawer and closed her fingers round the bread knife. She wasn’t sure whether she would have the nerve to use it, but with the blood pounding in her ears she knew she would fight if necessary. She wasn’t some poor demented woman at the place where he worked, too doped and crazy to stand up for herself. Just let him lay one finger on her and he’d regret it!

  When he pushed her away she was so surprised she almost fell. The hard edge of the table caught her in the small of her back as she stumbled, and made her cry out in pain. She had barely regained her balance when she saw with amazement the sudden change in his expression.

  The excitement, the wild frustration had disappeared as if someone had taken a sponge and wiped them clean away. The green eyes were indolent now, teasing, unbelievably filled with laughter.

  ‘Thought I was up to summat, didn’t you, Polly Pilgrim?’

  With a flick of a hairy wrist he took the knife from her, sending it clattering and skidding across the floor. ‘I was having you on, you daft pie-can!’ He turned and spat into the fire. ‘You’re too old for me, Mrs Pilgrim! Too old and too clever Dick for me. I wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole. Not even if you was to go begging for it on your bended knees!’

  Light-footed, with his soldier’s tread he walked to the door. As he opened it the dog edged in, jumping
up, barking with short staccato barks, tiny paws scrabbling at Jack’s faded corduroy trousers, then whimpering with fright as a heavy gumboot sent him skidding across the floor.

  ‘Bloody dog!’ he said as he flicked at his trouser leg as though removing a clinging thread. ‘I’ll have him one of these days, see if I don’t!’ Then, as if they’d been having a normal conversation, he said: ‘There’s two letters for you down at the cottage. I’d have fetched them if I hadn’t forgot.’

  Raising a hand in a casual farewell salute, he stepped outside, loping away down the path with his hands deep in his pockets.

  ‘Poor old Jim.’ Polly went to kneel by the basket where the dog cowered, his whole body panting with distress. She stroked the quivering black coat, and at once a pink tongue came out and licked her hand. Soft brown eyes looked into her face, seeking an explanation.

  ‘You’re as flummoxed as me,’ Polly whispered, standing up and staring at the door, her face puckered into worry lines. She was sure of one thing – she’d be even more wary of Jack Thomson now. Harry might have tolerated him, but she wasn’t going to try to. There was something evil about the big man, something that disturbed her. Sighing heavily she picked up the knife and replaced it in the table drawer. And remembered that Jack had said there were two letters waiting for her down at his cottage.

  Pulling on her gumboots at the door, Polly stepped out into the splendour of an autumn morning. Mist seemed to move in harmony with the pearl-grey clouds drifting across the hills, but down in the valley she knew that the sun would be shining. Walking quickly down the steep and rocky slope, she was in shadow one minute and out of it the next. The drystone wall, almost two hundred years old, bisected the hill like a zip down the back of a dress. Polly smiled at the unpoetical way her mind ran on sometimes. Fancy likening an ancient wall to a zip! Harry would have laughed at that. Practical Polly, he called her sometimes, feet on the ground, unflappable Polly. She pulled a face at a ring of sheep, standing immobile as at a prayer meeting. What would Harry have thought if he’d seen her brandishing a knife at Jack Thomson? Polly tugged at her scarf as a sudden gust of wind blew it back from her head. Of one thing she was certain, Jack Thomson would think twice before having a go at her again.