sort of sweetness about this lady, that she was the one who had inherited almost everything in the house. And from the stiff way Mr Lynn was standing there, she also knew that Laurel was the ex-wife he had talked about. She just could not think how she had taken her for Nina.
“Tom, didn’t you know I’d been asking for you?” Laurel said. Then before Mr Lynn could do more than begin to shake his head – he was going to lie about that, Polly noticed with interest – Laurel’s eyes went first to the pictures and then to Polly. Polly jumped as the eyes met hers. They were as light as Laurel’s hair, but with black rings in the lightness, which made them almost seem like a tunnel Polly was looking down. They had no more feeling than a tunnel, either, in spite of the sweet look on Laurel’s face.
“When you choose your pictures, Tom,” Laurel said, looking at Polly, “don’t forget that the ones you can have are the ones over there.” Light caught colours from her rings as her hand pointed briefly to the right-hand wall. “The ones against the other wall are all too valuable to go out of the family,” she said.
Then she turned round and went out onto the landing, somehow taking Mr Lynn out there along with her. They half shut the door. Polly stood by the window and heard snatches of the things they said beyond the door. First came Laurel’s sweet, light voice saying “…all asking who the child is, Tom.” To which Mr Lynn’s voice muttered something about “…in charge of her… couldn’t just leave her…” She could tell Laurel did not like this, because she seemed pleased when Mr Lynn added “…away shortly. I’ve a train to catch.” One thing was clear: Mr Lynn was very carefully not telling Laurel who Polly was or how she got there.
Polly leaned against the window, looking down at the cars on the gravel, and considered. She was scared. She had thought it would be all right to come back into the house if Mr Lynn asked her to. Now she knew it was not. Mr Lynn was having to be artful and vague in order to cover it up. Laurel was frightening. Polly could hear her arguing with Mr Lynn now, out on the landing, her voice all little angry tinkles, like ice cubes in a drink. “Tom, whether you like it or not, you are!” And a bit later: “Because I tell you to, of course!” And later still: “I know you always were a fool, but that doesn’t let you off!”
Listening, Polly began to feel angry as well as scared. Laurel was a real bully, for all her voice was so sweet. Polly went over to the pictures on the other side of the room, the ones Mr Lynn was allowed to have. Sure enough, as she had expected, they were nothing like as good as the ones on the left-hand side. Most of them were terrible. Since the argument was still going on, outside on the landing, Polly tiptoed back to the pictures she had leaned against the wall by the window. Back and forth she tiptoed, putting all the good, interesting pictures she had already chosen into the stacks against the right-hand wall, and a few, not so terrible, to lean on the wall by the window, to look as if they had been chosen.
Then, to make things look the same as before, she took terrible pictures from the right-hand wall to the left-hand stacks. They ended up a complete mixture. When Mr Lynn came back into the room, Polly was kneeling virtuously by the right-hand wall, taking her mind off her evil deed by studying a picture called The Vigil, of a young knight praying at an altar.
“Do you think he’s a trainee-hero?” she asked Mr Lynn.
“Oh no. Put that back,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s soppy?”
“It is a bit,” Polly agreed cheerfully, and watched Mr Lynn choose pictures through her hair while she slowly put The Vigil back.
That was how she got Fire and Hemlock, of course. When he sorted through the doctored stacks, Mr Lynn picked out every one of the pictures Polly had chosen. “I didn’t know this would be here!” he said, and, “Oh, I remember this one!” He was particularly pleased by the swirly one of the violins. When he came to the picture of the fire at dusk, he smiled and said, “This photograph seems to haunt me. It used to hang over my bed when I lived here. I always liked the way the shape of that hemlock echoes the shape of that tree in the hedge. Here,” he said, and put it in Polly’s hands. “You have it.”
Polly was awed. She had never owned a picture before. Nor had she expected to profit from her bad deed. “You don’t mean I can keep it?” she said.
“Of course you can,” said Mr Lynn. “It’s not very valuable, I’m afraid, but you’ll find it grows on you. Keep it instead of a medal for life-saving.” At this, Polly tried to say thank you properly, but he cut her short by saying, “No, come on. I think your Granny may be worried about you by now.”
Mr Lynn had to carry the picture, along with his five others. It bumped against Polly’s legs as she walked, which threatened to break the glass. The other funeral guests were having lunch by then. Polly could hear the chink of knives and forks as they hurried through the empty hall. Polly was glad. She knew, if they met Laurel on the way out, Laurel would know at once that Mr Lynn had all the wrong pictures.
Thinking of Laurel, as she trotted beside Mr Lynn down the windy road, caused Polly, for some reason, to say, “When I come to work as your assistant in your ironmonger’s shop, I’m going to pretend to be a boy. You pretend you don’t know.”
“If you want,” said Mr Lynn. “As long as that doesn’t mean cutting your lovely hair.”
The lovely hair was blowing round Polly’s face and getting in her mouth and eyes. “It’s not lovely hair!” she said crossly. “I hate it. It drives me mad and I want it cut!”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr Lynn. “Of course. It’s your hair.”
“Oh!” said Polly, exasperated for no real reason. “I do wish you’d stop agreeing all the time! No wonder people bully you!” They came to Granny’s front gate then. “You can give me my picture now,” Polly said haughtily.
Mr Lynn did not reply, but he looked almost haughty too as he passed the picture over. The silence was all wind blowing and leaves rattling, and most unfriendly. But Granny had clearly been looking out for Polly. As Polly hitched the picture under her armpit and managed to get the gate unlatched, the front door banged open. Mintchoc came out first. For some reason, she put her back and tail up and fled at the sight of them. Granny sailed out second, like a rather small duchess.
“Inside, please, both of you,” she said. “I want to know just where she’s been.”
Polly and Mr Lynn stopped giving one another haughty looks and exchanged guilty ones instead. Humbly they followed Granny indoors and through to the kitchen. There sat Nina, over a half-eaten plate of lunch, staring wide-eyed and full-mouthed. By heaving a whole mouthful across into one side of her face, Nina managed to say, “Where did you go?”
“Yes,” said Granny, crisp as a brandy-snap. “That’s what I want to know too.” She stared long and sharp at Mr Lynn.
Mr Lynn shifted the heavy pile of pictures to his other arm. His glasses flashed unhappily. “Hunsdon House,” he admitted. “She – er – she wandered in. There’s a funeral there today, you know. She – er – I thought she looked rather lost while they were reading the Will, but as she was wearing black, I didn’t gather straightaway that she shouldn’t have been there. After that, I’m afraid I delayed her a little by asking her to help me choose some pictures.”
Granny’s sharp brown stare travelled over Mr Lynn’s lean, dark suit and his black tie and possibly took in a great deal. “Yes,” she said. “I saw the hearse go down. A woman, wasn’t it? So Madam gate-crashed the funeral, did she? And I’m to take it you looked after her, Mr – er?”
“Well
