A Friend of the Family (24 page)

Polly gave a sigh of relief and called to Ozzy, who had now decided that he liked the snow so much that he would sleep out in it. After a battle of wills, Polly got him back inside, settled them beside the Aga with a couple of biscuits, locked up, checked on Hugh and went gratefully to bed.

 

Twenty-five

 

POLLY WAS DREAMING. SHE
and Saul were stuck in a snowdrift and Max was trying to rescue them. The trouble was that he would keep singing, a strange high droning noise that was horrible to listen to and was impeding the rescue.

‘Do shut up, Max,' she kept shouting but he wouldn't listen and she was sinking farther into the snow with Saul clinging to her. She gave a great heave to save herself and woke up.

She lay for a moment feeling an enormous sense of relief and then realised that the high droning song was still going on somewhere in the distance. She struggled up and stared round Harriet's spare room, remembered the events of the last forty-eight hours and fell back on the pillows.

‘Jesus wept!' she muttered.

Raising her arm, she peered at her wristwatch and hastily shut her eyes. Could it really only be a quarter past seven! She thought about Paul and wondered where he was. Ever since she had read his note, events had been whirling her along at such a pace that she felt she no longer had any control over her life. Even now, Paul might be trying to get in touch, wondering where she was, getting no reply. Would he worry? Decide that he must return? Telephone the police? She groaned aloud and began to feel a sense of desperation. The toneless keening was suddenly more than she could bear. Leaping from the bed, she threw open the door. As she drew in breath to shout, she realised that it was Hugh singing and stopped short. Hugh! For a moment she had forgotten all about him.

Dashing back into the bedroom, she grabbed her dressing gown, thrust her feet into sheepskin slippers and hurried along the passage. Hugh was sitting up in bed surrounded by a strange assortment of toys to whom he was singing. He held a book in his hand from which he appeared to be reading what could only be the words of his song, since there was certainly no tune. Polly relaxed and smiled at him. ‘Morning, Huge,' she said.

He glanced at her, nodded rather curtly and turned a page. Whilst she waited for the concert to end, Polly glanced round his little room which Michael had painted a pale apricot so that the sun always seemed to be shining here. This morning, however, a ghostly glow pervaded the room and Polly wandered over to the window and opened the curtains. She caught her breath, delighted, for the landscape was unrecognisable; the snow had blown and drifted into huge hills and cliffs which transformed the garden and the moor beyond into the sort of magic land that one had imagined in one's childhood. A gleam of early sunshine caused the snow to sparkle and flash and the long shadows in its folds were ink-blue.

‘Huge!' she cried. Oh, look!'

Fortunately, the concert seemed to have come to its natural close and Hugh, having bowed to his audience, scrambled to his feet and raised his arms to be lifted. His little bed had a drop side but Polly whisked him up and over the top and stood him on the broad window seat.

‘Look, Huge,' she said again. ‘Look at the snow.'

Hugh stared out. ‘Snow,' he repeated quietly to himself. ‘Snow.'

Polly, her arm round him to keep him warm, tried to remember what it was like to see something for the first time and to have no idea what it was, what it felt like, tasted like, how it behaved, whether it was to be welcomed or feared. She groped after a fleeting sensation but it eluded her, moving just outside her memory. She gazed at Hugh's rapt face trying, through him, to regain the magic. It was no use. It was beyond her. She sighed, feeling for a brief moment that she had lost something indefinably precious.

‘Come on, Huge,' she said, lifting him to the floor and kneeling before him. ‘We'll get dressed and, after breakfast, we'll make a snowman.'

‘What's a snowman?' he asked, allowing himself to be divested of his pyjamas.

‘You wait and see,' promised Polly, who felt that to explain was just impossible. ‘Now, what do you wear?'

Hugh pointed to the little chair on which his clothes were piled and Polly bundled him into warm layers, sending up a heartfelt prayer of relief that he was now out of nappies.

‘There!' she said. ‘You're ready. Mummy's left a lovely present for you. She's hidden it somewhere as a surprise. Can you find it while I get dressed?'

Back in her room she shivered. Hugh's room and the bathroom were kept warm by radiators run from the Aga, as was Harriet's bedroom. But the spare room and the boxroom had no form of heating and Polly had never dressed so quickly. Out on the landing she listened for Hugh. He seemed to be rooting about in the bathroom.

‘Found it?' she cried and he appeared in the doorway, beaming happily and clutching a gaily wrapped parcel. ‘Well done, Huge.'

They went down the stairs hand in hand, one step at a time, and into the kitchen. Max waved his tail a little but didn't move. Ozzy got up, stretched mightily and sat down again, unwilling at present to extend himself too far. Who knew what this strange woman might not feel it incumbent upon him to perform? He felt it wise to conserve his energy.

Polly swung Hugh into his high chair and he started to unwrap his present. She studied Harriet's list.

Ready Brek, she read. Toast. Honey or marmalade. Yes. This was well within her scope. ‘Max has four biscuits for breakfast,' she read on aloud. Max's ears pricked up. This was more like it. ‘Ozzy has six. And occasionally a beaten egg.' She went into the utility room where the dogs' food was stored and took down the biscuit tin. They watched from the doorway.

‘Here we are.' She put the biscuits on the flagged floor and, wondering if they might need to go outside, went to the door and opened it with difficulty. Snow stood piled as high as her thighs and formed a barrier across the doorway. The earlier gleam of sunshine had disappeared and snowflakes fell softly but insistently from a leaden sky. ‘Gracious!' she exclaimed. ‘How are you going to get through that, chaps?'

Ozzy finished his breakfast, shouldered his way through the snow and disappeared but Max, having taken one look, finished his biscuits and hurried back into the kitchen.

 

OLIVER PEERED WITH DISTASTE
into a saucepan containing the remains of some porridge, flexed a slice of rather tired-looking toast and felt the cooling teapot. He sighed. It seemed that he would have to prepare his own breakfast. Perhaps, if he waited a little longer, Saul would be down and he could con him into making it for them both. Saul was quite a decent cook. Oliver had learned very early on that it was a great mistake to own to being good at things. People then expected you to perform, to be helpful, and Oliver did so hate to disappoint people. The telephone rang.

‘Telephone,' he bellowed, after a moment.

The ringing ceased and Oliver could hear his mother speaking in the hall. Tom appeared in the doorway.

‘Has it ever occurred to you to answer the phone yourself, instead of shouting at people?'

Oliver grinned at him. ‘What a brilliant idea, Pa. I wonder why I never thought of that. Want some coffee?'

‘No thanks. I had my breakfast approximately'—Tom looked ostentatiously at his watch-'an hour ago.'

‘Poor old thing,' sympathised Oliver. ‘Must be all those years as a jolly jack tar that makes it impossible for you to sleep later than seven o'clock in the morning. Still, that doesn't stop you from having some coffee. Ah! Here's Saul. He can make it for us.'

‘Make what?' Saul came yawning into the kitchen dressed in the
ancient tracksuit that he wore as pyjamas in very cold weather. He sat down at the table. His dark hair stood on end and his eyes were heavy with sleep.

‘You've been selected from a host of applicants to make breakfast,' Oliver told him kindly. ‘Two lightly grilled rashers and some scrambled eggs will do beautifully for me.'

Saul told him, briefly and succinctly, what he could do with himself.

‘Really! Your language!' mourned Oliver. ‘And in front of your father, too. I hope you're not going to let him get away with that, Pa. When I was his age you would have thrashed me.'

‘Oh, very funny.' Tom laughed mirthlessly. ‘If I'd been allowed to knock some sense into you, you'd be twice the man you are now. Can't even cook your own breakfast!'

Oliver winked at his brother, who grinned unwillingly. ΌΚ, I'll do it,' said Saul with a resigned sigh. ‘But you can jolly well make me some coffee first.'

‘On its way, dear boy. Sure you won't have some, Pa?'

‘I've said I don't want any,' said Tom, testily. ‘And why you should give in to him, Saul, I really don't know. All his life people have been at his beck and call . . . '

Cass appeared and took in the scene at a glance. ‘Whatever's going on?' she asked. ‘You'll have a heart attack if you bellow like that, darling. That was Thea asking for Polly. She was supposed to be going over there today. Oh, Ollie, darling. Is that for me? Is the sugar in? Lovely. Now, out of the way while I cook you a nice big breakfast.'

 

WHEN SHE PUT DOWN
the receiver after speaking to Cass, Thea immediately lifted it again and dialled Harriet's number. The line was engaged. She went back to washing up the breakfast things, thinking about Polly. She wondered how she was reacting to being up on the moor all on her own—as it were—at Lower Barton. Nobody knew better than Thea how Polly hated the isolation of the cottage. It was not that Polly minded being alone but she hated being cut off from
civilisation. At least she had Ozzy and Max to look after her and Hugh would prove a distracting influence. With luck she'd have her hands too full to think about her loneliness and perhaps Michael would be back later. Thea glanced out of the window. The snow lay thick and George had not attempted to get up to London. It would be too awful if poor Polly were to be stuck up there for days. A thought occurred to her. She finished the washing-up and went to find George, pausing on the way to try Harriet's number again. Still engaged.

George was shovelling the snow away on the platform. He stopped as Thea approached and blew out his lips. ‘More to come if you ask me,' he said. ‘Get the kettle on, darling. I'd kill for a cup of coffee.'

‘It's on,' said Thea. ‘George, I've just been speaking to Cass. Michael's taken Harriet in to have the baby and Polly's all on her own at Lower Barton. If Michael can't get back she'll be frightened up there on her own. I suppose there's no chance of me getting up there? I could stay with her till Michael's back. Or better still, we could fetch them all down here.'

‘Out of the question.' George shook his head. ‘Honestly, darling. Look at it. There's no chance of making it up there. It would be madness to try.'

‘D'you think that Michael will be able to get back from Plymouth then?'

‘Difficult to say. The main roads will be cleared but there's no way I'd risk going out on the lanes.' He saw her face fall and spoke more bracingly. ‘I'm sure that Michael will get through. He'll come straight out on the main road and he'd think nothing of walking the last few miles. But I'm not risking these back roads. Don't worry, Michael will make it. Now, how about that coffee?'

Thea went back to the kitchen. At least she could telephone Polly and see how she was coping. She'd give George his coffee and then they could have a nice long chat, assuming that whoever had been talking to Polly had now finished and the line was free.

 

IT WAS MICHAEL WHO
had telephoned.

‘It's another hoy, Polly!' He sounded jubilant. ‘And they're both doing well. He's a big fellow—nearly eight pounds—and poor Harriet is exhausted. But everyone's very pleased with her and he's beau tiful. Dark, well, he would be with both Harriet's and my colouring . . . '

Polly listened patiently while he delivered a eulogy about the baby and Harriet and sent all sorts of messages to Hugh, and she accepted with equanimity the news that he would be staying at the hospital. ‘I doubt if you could get up the track, even if you wanted to,' she told him. ‘It's really thick up here.'

‘Mmm.' Michael sounded thoughtful, as if he had just returned with a bump to the practicalities of life. ‘Yes, it would be. You never get the same idea of it in the town, of course. Listen, Polly. This is very important. My worry is that you may lose the power and probably the telephone. I can't do much about the telephone but at least with the Aga you'll continue to have something to cook on, hot water and heat upstairs. It runs on oil, the tank's full and it needs no electricity to keep it going. If you get a power cut, move into our bedroom where it's warmer.

‘Now, light. I don't feel happy at the thought of you fiddling about with the paraffin lamps but in the utility room, up on the high shelf above the dogs' food, are three Gaz lamps. I want you to go and get one while I'm still on the phone. Go on, I'll hang on.'

Polly hurried out into the utility room and looked round. Three odd-shaped lamps stood in a row on the high shelf. Standing on tiptoe she reached one down, went back into the kitchen and picked up the receiver.