Polly's Angel (4 page)

‘It doesn't matter how long we take to get to the station, because we're not meetin' the perishin' train,' Polly pointed out briskly. ‘It arrived . . . oh, ages ago. Go on then, you run ahead and hide and I'll count to fifty. Slowly,' she added, seeing her brother looking up at her doubtfully. ‘Aw, c'mon, Ivan, we'll be bored to death else.'

‘Right,' Ivan said. He cantered off in a cloud of dust and Polly shut her eyes and started to count. Presently she shouted: ‘Coming, ready or not!' and charged up the lane, scanning the hedgerows, the autumn-tinted trees and any likely hiding place with an eagle eye. She very soon realised, however, that she should have set some sort of limit on the distance away from the lane which the hider could travel, since she could see no sign of her small brother. In fact she was about to give up when a stifled giggle above her head made her glance up into the boughs of the enormous pine tree around which she had been peering. Sure enough, there was her brother's rosy face hanging upside down and laughing at her, whilst the rest of him was laid comfortably along the large, rough-barked branch quite eighteen or twenty feet above the ground.

‘Got you!' Polly squeaked, only to be immediately thwarted.

‘You haven't,' Ivan said. ‘Come up here if you can, an' then you've got me, but I'm safe from you else, Polly O'Brady!'

‘Ivan, you're a perishin' liar!' Polly said indignantly after a moment's thought. ‘This is hide an' seek, not Relievio. Come on down, or I'll come up and marmelise you, so I will.'

‘I know it's hide an' seek,' the tree-dweller said tauntingly. ‘But you can't get me, can you? So you've not won.'

‘If I come up there I'll . . . I'll . . .'

‘If you come up, I'll go higher,' Ivan declared boastfully. ‘I'll go right to the top of the tree, an' – an' I'll be able to see the station, an' the crossin' cottage, an' the village . . . Why don't we both go up the tree, Poll?'

‘Because I'm wearin' me decent t'ings, an' me best shoes,' Polly said primly, but she was tempted. Boys always thought they could climb better than girls, but in her experience this was not so at all. I can climb like a cat, so I can, she told herself, it's just – just that I'll likely tear me decent skirt and Mammy can't afford to keep buyin' me skirts. T'ings are a tarble price these days, so they are.

‘And what am I wearin', Saint Polly?' her brother asked mockingly. ‘But I'm up the tree – and never a scratch on me, because I climb so well.'

‘Right,' Polly said grimly. She hitched up her skirt, tucked it into her navy-blue knickers and then, after some thought, removed her shiny strap shoes and her white ankle socks. No point in asking for trouble, and she could climb just as well barefoot she was sure.

The difficult part was the beginning, however. For the first dozen feet or so there wasn't a branch to hang on to, you simply had to swarm up the trunk and though she was a good climber, swarming was something she had never tried. But she tried it now, and after a couple of false starts, during which Ivan jeered terribly, she managed to get the hang of it and humped herself, caterpillar-like, up the long, sloping, rough-barked trunk, seizing the first branch with hands which trembled. She hauled herself aboard it, realising with a sinking feeling that now that she was actually on the branch it was possible that neither of them might be able to get down. And it was horribly high, so high that she felt quite giddy when the tree swayed in the wind.

‘Grand, isn't it, Poll?' her small brother said complacently. ‘Are you comin' up to me or shall we both go higher?'

Polly swallowed. ‘This is plenty high enough,' she said, trying to sound calm and matter of fact. ‘Let's go down now, eh, Ivan? Me legs is tarble scratched from grippin' the trunk and me hands is
raw
.'

‘Oh, well, I'll come down, then,' Ivan said airily. He swung off his branch on to the one below with an insouciance which brought Polly's heart thumping into her mouth. Dear God in heaven, don't let him fall, she prayed inside her head. Oh, it's ever so dangerous up here, so it is – let us get safely down to the ground!

But whether her prayers were answered or whether Ivan simply had no fear of heights she could not have said, for presently he thumped on to her branch, dusted his palms together, and grinned at her. There was a smear of dirt across his right cheek, Polly saw, and bits of bark and pine needles in his thatch of dark hair. His trousers had also attracted quite a lot of bark and the palms of his hands, like hers, were red-raw, but he seemed indifferent to such things. ‘There y'are, easy-peasy,' he said nonchalantly. ‘I say, Polly, what's that there?'

Polly looked down in the direction of his pointing finger, but could see nothing save for waist-high bracken and a tangle of brambles. ‘Where?' she said crossly. ‘There's nothin' there except bracken and old bushes, Ivan. Are you goin' down first?'

‘If you like,' Ivan said. ‘But there was something there, Poll. You can't see it from here, but up where I was—'

‘I'm not goin' higher,' Polly said at once. ‘It's a long way to the ground from here, so it is. I don't t'ink it'll be easy gettin' down, Ivan.'

‘I didn't say to go higher,' Ivan assured her. ‘I said from where I was I could see somet'ing glitterin' in the bracken. If I go first, though I'll have to get past you. Can you squeeze against the trunk?'

Not unwillingly, Polly got as close to the trunk of the tree as she could, and was impressed, against her will, by the casual way in which her little brother went past her, swung by his arms on the branch, then gripped the trunk with his knees until he had a good hold and could grab with his arms as well. Then, monkey-like, he descended the trunk until he stood once more on solid ground, looking up at her.

‘C'mon, Poll,' he called. ‘It's not bad – it's quite easy, so it is.'

Polly nodded, as though she thought it was easy too, then she glanced at the bracken and the brambles, at the pale grass which straggled between them and the beginning of the trees. Just for a moment she, too, saw something gleaming and glittering in the depths of the bracken but then she moved her head and the object disappeared. To distract Ivan, she called down to him. ‘I see somet'ing in the bracken, Ive. We'll take a look when I'm down, so we will.'

Ivan nodded and Polly took a deep breath, turned towards the trunk and closed her eyes. Then she launched herself at the tree trunk, hanging on, limpet-like with desperate hands, knees and feet. She felt that, had she been able to do so, she would have hung on to it with her nose and eyelashes as well, but failing that, she decided she would simply stay here for ever – or until someone came along with a good, strong ladder. She dared not move for fear she would lose her nerve – and her grip – and plummet to the uncommonly hard ground far below.

‘You've froze, like Bev said some fellers do when they first climb a pine,' a voice from below said with more than a trace of satisfaction. ‘Me an' Bev practised climbin' a pine whiles you were goin' shoppin' wit' Mammy last weekend.'

The unfairness of it! He had climbed up and down pine trees before, been taught by Bev to do it, yet here was she, a true beginner, stuck here like a fool, like a monkey on a perishin' stick! Indignation – and a strong desire to clap her small brother's ears until they rang – got Polly's eyes open and, forcing herself not to look down or to remember the drop, she unclamped her hands, one by one, and moved them lower down the trunk, making her legs follow suit. The cheek of that young feller down there, saying that she, Polly, was froze wit' fear, when she was no such t'ing! Determinedly closing her eyes again, she repeated the movements over and over. She would not let him see how terrified she was!

It was Ivan's laughter which made her open her eyes. He was roaring laughing, and when she looked round at him she saw that there were actually tears of laughter on his cheeks. But it wasn't until her foot hit something, and she realised it was the ground, that she knew why he was so amused. She had been so busy concentrating on not looking at the drop that she had reached the foot of the tree whilst still imagining herself up in the air somewhere, above that perilous drop.

However, there was nothing she could do about it now except to act with what dignity she could. She stood up and began to brush bits of bark and pine needles off her clothing and out of her hair. Then, ignoring Ivan's gradually fading mirth she said: ‘Where's Delly?'

As she had guessed it would, this took Ivan's mind off her tree-climbing. He looked around him. ‘Delly? Oh, janey, he'll be off after rabbits again, Poll. Or else he's gone on ahead to look for Daddy. Shall I give him a yell now?'

Polly was about to agree when the dog burst out of the bushes which lined the lane and hurled himself at Polly, whining and trying to grab at the hem of her skirt. Polly seized his collar and began to try to tow him along the lane in the direction of the station, but Delilah resisted, his whines growing louder. ‘What's up, old feller?' Polly said. ‘What've you found?'

‘It's probably something horrible,' Ivan said with relish. ‘Oh, remember that flashing t'ing I telled you about? He came from that direction, didn't he? Mebbe we'd best tek a look, Poll.'

‘I'm not goin' to have much choice,' Polly panted as Delilah turned round and began to tow her in the opposite direction. ‘All right, old feller, what is it, then?'

The children and the dog crossed the road, scrambled through the ditch – dry providentially – and out into a small hazel copse. Delilah, freed from Polly's grip, ran over to a recumbent figure lying face down on the ground and began to bark again, but Polly shushed him.

‘Delly, shut your gob, will you?' she said, approaching the figure cautiously. She bent over the man's head, then straightened, her eyes rounding with horror, both hands flying to press against her small, flat chest. ‘Oh, Ivan, Ivan, it's Daddy, an' he must have been hurt real bad!'

Despite the shock, neither child panicked. Ivan took one look at his father's white, set countenance and then turned back towards the lane. ‘I'll go to the station an' fetch help, so I will,' he said breathlessly. ‘I can run like the wind when I want to. You stay here wit' our daddy, Poll. You'd best keep Delly too. He'll give a bark if – if anyone comes near.'

‘Well, all right,' Polly said tremulously. ‘D-do you t'ink Daddy tripped over something, an' fell, Ivan? Should I try to sit him up, mebbe?'

‘No. He's too heavy,' Ivan said simply. ‘Shan't be long.'

He disappeared. Polly sat down beside her father and put a tentative hand on his cheek. It was cool, for the sun's rays had little power so late in the day, but it was not cold. No need, then, to try to get him warm. She put her head close to his and listened. To her enormous relief, she could hear his breathing, low and rasping. ‘I knew he wasn't dead, so I did,' she whispered to Delilah, who had come and sat beside her on the ground as soon as Ivan had disappeared. ‘Me daddy's the best daddy in the whole wide world, so no one would let him die. Not even God . . . because what'ud we do wit'out Daddy, eh, Delly?'

Delilah sighed deeply. Polly leaned over her father once more. She could not help wishing that she and Ivan had been accompanied by someone older – last year at this time it would have been she and Grace – but she would just have to do her best to be sensible and reassure her father. ‘Daddy? It's your own little girl, so it is. I'm wit' you, an' Ivan's gone for help. Oh, Daddy, could you say a word or two? Did you fall an' bang your poor head, then? I know I ought to fetch water, like they do in books, to trickle between your lips, only . . . only I don't t'ink there's any water nearby and I don't want to leave you, so I don't.'

Delilah grunted and moved over so that he was leaning against Polly. He looked down at Peader, anxiety written all over his woolly face, and then bent his head and licked the unconscious man's cheek. Polly, despite her fears, chuckled. ‘Sure an' isn't it just like our Delly to t'ink a kiss from him will bring you round, Daddy, just as if you were the sleepin' beauty an' Delly was the handsome prince? Oh, don't I wish it would too! But if you've had a bump on your head mebbe it's better for you to lie quiet a whiles. Anyway, Daddy, I'm goin' to hold your hand, so's you know I'm here, an' before you know it they'll come runnin', all the grown-ups from the station, an' you'll be took proper care of, an' better in no time at all, at all.'

It seemed a long while to poor Polly before the adults she longed for actually did arrive, and when they did the men did not waste time in examining the unconscious man or trying to work out what had happened. They lifted him with great care and gentleness on to the door they had brought and took him straight to the crossing cottage. Ivan and Polly had run ahead to alert their mother and a bed had been made up on the sofa, whilst the beautiful Sunday tea had been bundled out of the parlour and waited, unregarded, in the kitchen.

‘The doctor's coming,' Martin told Deirdre as soon as they had settled Peader on the sofa bed. ‘Mr Devenish telephoned him as soon as Ivan explained what had happened. He'll be able to tell us what's wrong wit' Daddy, Mammy. Maybe he just tripped . . . The doctor will know.'

And the doctor, when he had had a chance to examine Peader, looked grave. He told Deirdre that her man would have to be admitted to hospital and that his condition was serious.

‘He's had a stroke, Mrs O'Brady,' he said bluntly. ‘He's a very sick man and may not be well for some time.'