Polly's Angel (21 page)

‘I won't come all the way, but I've heard about the Scottie – that's the Scotland Road, isn't it?' Phil said, going over to the washstand and pouring water into the blue and white china basin. ‘There's shops galore, all sorts . . . I've an uncle in the Navy and he says he never leaves Liverpool without visiting the Scottie – and somewhere called Paddy's Market, an' all. So if we go up together, we can come back separate.'

‘Right. And look, Phil, if me luck's in I'll get asked in for me tea, very like, so if I'm not back by six, just explain to Mrs What's-her-name, will you?'

‘Sure I will, so,' Phil said peacefully. He began to wash his face, not bothering with soap, ducked his head under the water briefly and then smarmed his hair flat to his scalp with both hands. ‘Your turn now, Tad.'

Tad found Titchfield Street without difficulty, but as he had feared, the house was empty. He knocked as hard as he could, and even went round the back, but then, shrugging, he did the only thing he could. He wrote:

He shoved this brief epistle through the letter box in the front door and then headed back to the Scotland Road, where he met up with Phil almost at once, since he had been such a short while away.

‘I'm coming back this evening, around eight,' he told Phil. ‘They're all out so I left 'em a note, but at least this means that Poll can make sure she's in when I come back. Now what'll we do?'

‘Take a look around,' Phil said. ‘There's a grosh of shops and stuff's cheap compared with home, so it is. We'll ask the way to Paddy's Market presently – that's good, I've heard a thousand fellers say so.'

‘Right,' Tad said. He was happy to do anything which would occupy the time between now and eight o'clock. ‘There's some dining rooms just up the road, I passed 'em on my way back to you. We might get a meal there, or at least tea and a bun.'

Phil agreed and the two young men began to examine the shop windows.

At a quarter to eight Tad was walking along the Scotland Road once more, anticipation tightening into knots in his stomach. Very soon he would be seeing Polly after rather more than five years, and he found that her old magic was still at work. Angela might be his girlfriend, but he suspected that Polly would always have a special place in his heart.

So Tad trod the pavement with the palms of his hands damp and his heart beating overtime. His hair had been Brylcreemed to his head but because of its tendency to curl, it had not remained fashionably sleek for long. Still, Polly wouldn't mind, she wasn't a girl, Tad knew, to be taken in by appearances. Nevertheless he had done his best. A brand-new tie, checked in red and blue, was definitely eye-catching and the white of his brand-new shirt could have scarcely been surpassed. He had polished his best black shoes until he could see his face in them and despite the cold he had not worn his overcoat, which was a sight too small for him, though he carried it over one arm – no point in getting caught in a downpour and half-freezing to death.

It was very dark in the street now without any shop windows blazing and with what traffic there was showing only the cold, dim blue light of the special lamps the regulations allowed. People, mainly dark-clad, passed him, the pale ovals of their faces just about visible once your eyes got used to the gloom. Good thing there was a moon, Tad reflected, otherwise God knows how folk in cities managed to make their way about. And you took your life in your hands when you crossed the road; bicycles, for the most part, did not bother with lights at all and dashed along at a good old rate, the riders trusting to speed and their ability to swerve to save themselves from becoming killers or corpses.

He was about to cross over himself, in fact, when he saw a small group of people coming towards him. One of them, a girl, had primrose hair of such fairness that you could see it gleaming silver in the moonlight, and although he could only see the blur of her face, there was something familiar . . .

‘Sure an' wouldn't I get out early when it's your last leave, me dearest?' the girl said, as she and the young man on whose arm she swung came alongside Tad. ‘Nothin' would have made me stay late tonight, not if they'd been willin' to pay me a fortune!'

‘Polly?' Tad said uncertainly. ‘Is it yourself, Poll?'

The girl half-turned her head. Her face, in the moonlight, was all white and silver, the eyes hidden in the deep shadow, her mouth half-open still in speech. She said: ‘Who's you when you're at home?'

The young man on whose arm she hung, however, had no intention of allowing her to stand in the street exchanging small talk with a stranger. He gave her arm a sharp tug, pulling her past Tad. ‘She's me girl, an' she don't know you, no more'n I do,' the young man said sharply. ‘Wharrer you think you're doin', accostin' a young lady in the street? Come on, Poll,' and he pulled her sharply away.

Tad stood for a moment, sick with horror. His Polly, behaving in such a way! Well, she had changed and no mistake – she'd not recognised him, her old playfellow, for a start off, and wasn't that a dreadful thing, for she should have been expecting him, having, he assumed, read his note when she got home.

For a moment he stood, irresolute, on the edge of the pavement. Then, very slowly, he turned back the way he had come, feeling more miserable than ever before. She had looked at him and not recognised him! She had allowed herself to be pulled away from him by a young feller she must, clearly, think pretty highly of to have treated her old friend so. Well, no point in going round to Titchfield Street now, he might as well take himself back to his lodgings and go to bed. They had an early start in the morning, best get a good night's sleep.

By the time he reached the Vaults, of course, he was beginning to have second thoughts. He sat in the downstairs bar drinking beer and playing poker with Phil and a couple of lads who had just signed on as ratings in the Navy, puzzling over the nasty little encounter. He was no longer at all sure that it had been his Polly – Polly O'Brady – that he had met in the darkened street. There must be a hundred girls called Polly in Liverpool, and probably a good few of them lived on or near the Scotland Road. And as for the hair, there were hundreds of blondes in Dublin which probably meant thousands in this great city. Most of them were bottle blondes, he knew, but he could not always tell the difference between bleached and natural even in daylight, and moonlight was the trickiest light there was, just about.

He had not said too much to Phil, only that he had missed Polly, who had gone out, but now he got to his feet a little uncertainly. ‘Could you go on wit'out me, fellers?' he said rather thickly, for he did not normally drink more than a pint in one evening and now his score was at least three. ‘I think I'm after going back to Titchfield Street to see if me pal's back yet.'

‘You can't do that, Tad,' Phil said. ‘It's after ten o'clock, so it is, and the family will be in bed and won't thank you for disturbing them. Besides, after this hand we'd best make our way to bed ourselves. We don't want a black mark against us at the very start because we've missed the bloody train!'

So Tad had sat down again, and presently the game finished, with Tad, oddly enough, four shillings the richer, when you thought how far his mind had been from the game, and the four of them made their way to bed. Tad decided, as he pulled the blankets up round his ears, that he must write to Polly first thing, and make some excuse for not turning up in Titchfield Street. The more he thought about the encounter, the more he became convinced that the girl he had met had not been Polly.

But a letter will explain it all, he thought sleepily, trying to keep to his own half of the bed, for Phil, already snoring, kept kicking and heaving at the covers. I'll write before I have my breakfast tomorrow, so's she'll understand.

‘I waited in all evening, so I did, and not a bleedin' sign of the feller did I see,' Polly told her friend Alice next morning as they waited for the tram which would take them into the city centre. ‘But something must have come up – Tad's very reliable as a rule. Or he was when we all lived in Dublin. I can't imagine him letting me down, not if he was able to come.'

‘Oh well, once they're in the forces their time ain't their own,' Alice agreed cheerfully. ‘He'll write and explain, I daresay.'

‘Sure to,' Polly agreed, but she was rather cross with Tad no matter how she might excuse him to others. This was the first time they'd been within shouting distance of one another and he had failed to turn up – and he'd missed out on a treat too, so he had. Mammy had cooked a lovely supper and she, Polly, had baked a load of fruit buns. She had cooled them and parcelled them up and had meant to give them to him to eat on the train, and even this morning she'd not had the heart to hand them round to the rest of the family. Who knew, he might have meant this evening, he might yet turn up on their doorstep, stammering and apologetic, explaining how the mistake had happened. She would save the buns for one more day and if he did not come tonight, she and Ivan would eat them, which would show him!

All through the rest of the day, every time the office door opened, Polly glanced up hopefully, but there was no sign of a square figure with close-cropped hair and an anxious expression, so that evening the buns were ceremoniously served after tea and Polly got out a book and began to read, though in fact she was listening so hard for a sound on the doorstep and a knock on their door that she scarcely turned a page all evening.

‘You know Tad, he'd not let you down,' Deirdre said comfortably when Polly put aside her book and said she might as well be off to bed. ‘He'll write and explain, alanna, never you fret.'

‘Oh, it doesn't matter,' Polly said with elaborate casualness which, she suspected, would not deceive her mother in the least. ‘There's other times. Tad'll get leaves, I expect. Bedford isn't far away, like Dublin. He'll turn up again, like a bad penny.'

‘So he will,' Peader said heartily. ‘I must have stepped down to the Post Office when he come knockin' the first time. It's a pity, but there'll be other times.'

Agreeing, Polly trailed up the stairs . . . and saw, out of the corner of her eye, that the slight shape of her angel was not in its usual position at the bend in the stairs. Oh well, I'm growing up, so I am, Polly reminded herself, climbing the rest of the stairs and pushing open her bedroom door. Besides, she can't be there all the time . . . Oh, janey, I can't write to Tad, I've not got an address any more! Still, he'll write to me, I know he will. And with that she began her preparations for bed, pushing Tad's strange behaviour to the back of her mind, or trying to do so. Instead, however, she found herself thinking defiantly that Sunny would not have behaved so; if he had been able to come and see her he would most certainly have done so, even if he had got into the most awful trouble as a result.

Much comforted by this thought, Polly climbed into bed and presently slept.

Chapter Seven

Despite the war, the O'Bradys intended to have a good Christmas, and it certainly began well, Polly thought on Christmas Eve, as she joined the rest of the family round the fire. Peader was roasting chestnuts on the coal shovel, Bevin was whittling a whistle out of a smooth piece of pine, and Polly and her mother were knitting. Polly worked laboriously, Deirdre with precision and speed, so that the wool seemed to spin through her fingers and the needles clicked so rapidly that she sounded like a sewing machine, Polly thought enviously. Her own needles clashed together ever slower and Polly noticed, with annoyance, that she had dropped a stitch at some time or other and the resultant hole had now formed a small ladder which did little to add to the attraction of the khaki scarf she was making.

Sitting comfortably in the living room, Polly could hear an occasional gust of rain hitting the window panes and knew a moment of intense happiness – there is nothing like foul weather outside and a good fire inside to warm the cockles of your heart, she told herself, reaching for a roasted chestnut. Another gust made her think of Martin out on a tossing ocean with no warm fire, no chestnuts and precious little Christmas cheer. I'll write to him later, Polly told herself, and I'll work harder at the knitting. Earlier, she and Ivan had dressed the tree, with Polly's Christmas angel sitting demurely on the topmost bough and candy walking sticks, shiny silver and gold balls and small, gaily-wrapped presents hanging from every branch, and Polly was just covertly admiring it and wondering which of the little presents was for her when someone knocked at the front door. Ivan, who was nearest, pulled a face but got to his feet. ‘It'll be bleedin' Alice, for you,' he muttered to his sister, but he kept his voice down, for although Deirdre and Peader both realised the inevitability of their younger son losing his Dublin brogue and picking up the local accent, they did not approve of the local swear words which were frequently on that same son's lips.

‘It won't be Alice,' Polly said, but she turned towards the door nevertheless. ‘Alice's mam was takin' her to see her gran tonight; they won't be back until ever so late, so they're goin' to Midnight Mass. Then they won't have to mess up Christmas mornin' by goin' to church. I wouldn't mind goin' to Midnight meself, so I wouldn't.'

Peader, fishing hot chestnuts from the ashes, said mildly: ‘Communion doesn't mess up your Christmas mornin', alanna, it gives meanin' to it,' but Deirdre, still furiously knitting, looked up and smiled at Polly, though she shook her head a little reprovingly too.