Lynn gave his guilty cut-off yelp of laughter. It was not just the way he laughed at funerals. He always laughed like that. “Call it a symptom,” he said. “Expert heroes never swear.”
“I shall be a hero too,” Polly panted. “I’m going into training from now on.”
By the time they reached the lawyer’s, it was so late that Mum was standing in the street beside a waiting taxi. She was in such a state that she barely looked at Mr Lynn. “Come on, Polly!” she said. “It’s rush hour and I don’t know what time we’ll get home! Say goodbye,” she added as she bundled Polly into the taxi. That was all the notice she took of Mr Lynn politely holding the taxi door open for her. Polly was the one who remembered to call out “Thank you for having me!” as the taxi drove away. She was rather surprised that Ivy had forgotten to remind her to say it – usually she made such a point of it – but she could see Mum was in a real state.
Unfortunately, Ivy’s state was a silent one. Polly was dying to tell her all about tea and Mr Lynn’s flat and, above all, about the horse, but Ivy sat fenced in silence as thick as barbed wire, and Polly knew better than to try to break in. The train was so crowded that Polly had to perch on Mum’s knee, and Ivy’s mood made that knee stiff and uncomfortable.
Ivy said just one thing on the train. She said, “Well, Polly, I’ve taken a step.”
And so have I, I suppose, Polly thought with a kind of dismal excitement. I saw Mr Lynn when they said not to. But all she could really think about was the unheroic way she had screamed and crouched on the pavement and given Mr Lynn no help at all.
When they got home, instead of looking in the fridge or suggesting fish and chips, Ivy sat down at the kitchen table and talked to Polly. “I suppose I owe it to you to explain a bit,” she said, sitting very upright and staring into the distance. “I went to talk to that lawyer about getting a divorce from your father. You may well ask why—”
Polly hurriedly shook her head. She knew now why she had dreaded being told about Dad. But Ivy talked anyway. Polly listened in silence, hoping she would begin feeling honoured soon that Mum was confiding in her. She told herself she felt honoured, but in fact she mostly felt shocked and awed by the way tears came and went in Ivy’s eyes without quite ever falling out and running down her face.
“You know what he’s like as well as I do, Polly. Reg has no sense of reality. Money goes through his hands like water. And if I presume to say anything, he just laughs it off and spends more money on a present to soothe me down. Presents!” Ivy said bitterly. “I want a relationship, not presents! I want happiness and sharing – not just two people living in the same house. That’s all we’ve been for years now – two people living in the same house. Your father’s so secretive, Polly. On top, he’s all smiles and laughs, but if I ever ask him what he’s really thinking, it’s ‘Oh, nothing particularly, Ivy,’ and not a word more will he say. That’s not right, Polly. He’s got no right to keep himself to himself away from me like that!”
This was already beginning to sound like one of Ivy’s usual discontents. Polly had long ago learned to dread them. Later in her life she learned to dread them much more. This time, as usual, her feelings were hurt on Dad’s behalf. She had to give up trying to feel honoured and tell herself she was being considerate instead. As Ivy talked on, she found herself thinking that Dad was not secretive. He just expected you to know what he was feeling by the things he said and did. It was Mum who kept herself to herself, locked away in moods.
“I know I have these moods,” Ivy was saying, a long time later. “But what can I do when I’m being rejected at every end and turn? It gets me that way. I know when I’m not wanted. It didn’t use to be that way when Reg and I were first married. We shared then. But not now.”
Polly listened, still trying to be considerate, and kept vowing privately that she would never, ever lock herself away from anyone. When she looked at the clock, she was surprised to find it was past her bedtime and Ivy was still talking. By now it was sounding just like her usual discontents.
“Well you know me – I’ve slaved and worked to make the house nice, gave up my job to have it all perfect. And I do think in return the least he could do is not walk muddy feet all over the carpets, and shut drawers after he’s opened them, and tidy up a bit sometimes. Not a bit of it. When I mention it – and I’m not a nag, Polly – he laughs and says I’m in my mood again. Then he gives me a present. Then what does he do? He goes straight from me to that Joanna Renton of his!”
This was new, Polly thought dully. This must be what Dad had done.
“Joanna’s not the first either,” said Ivy. “But I was a fool before and didn’t keep track of what he was doing.”
“Is – is he with Joanna Renton now?” Polly broke her long, long silence to ask.
“Yes,” Ivy said. She sounded tired. She too looked at the clock. “Oh, is that the time? Are you hungry at all, Polly?”
“No,” Polly said considerately, though she was rather. “I had a big tea.”
“Good,” said Ivy. “I haven’t got the energy to think of food, somehow. You hop along to bed, Polly. And remember when you get married not to make the mistakes I did.”
“I don’t think I will get married,” Polly said as she stood up. “I’m going to train to be a hero instead.” But she could tell her mother was not listening.
THOMAS THE RHYMER
Dad came back two days later. Polly had just got home from Nina’s and she was in the hall when she heard his key opening the door. She rushed and hugged him. Dad greeted her with his usual half-shout and great grin, and hugged her back, just as usual. Polly felt the arms hugging her quivering ever so slightly. It reminded her of the quiver she had felt in Mr Lynn’s arm when she pulled him down the street after catching the horse.
The quiver stopped when Ivy came and stood in the living-room door, looking at them with her stoniest expression. Polly felt Dad’s arms all hard as he looked up and said, “Now, what’s all this, Ivy?”
“I’ve been to a lawyer,” said Mum.
“You haven’t!” Dad said blankly, and then tried to hide the blankness with a grin.
“That’s right, laugh it off,” Ivy said. “As usual. But I have. And I’ve told Polly all about it too. I’ll thank you to let her go and stop subverting her. Come here, Polly.”
Dad’s arm clenched round Polly and he made a strange noise. It was a jeering groan, and a maddened shout, and the growl you make before hitting someone, and the sound you make trying not to cry, all in one. “Subverting!” he said. “Just what have you been making her think of me?”
And Polly was suddenly being pushed back and forth along the hall while her parents shouted at one another. The first push was Dad trying to use Polly like a shield or a hostage to get past Ivy into the living room. But Ivy stood barring his way to anywhere but the hall and put her
