Polly (22 page)

‘You sure?'

‘Sure I'm sure,' says Polly.

‘I had a great evening,' he assures her, while Polly works hard on keeping her smarting eyes darting away from his gaze.

‘Me too,' she says, turning and walking away. She goes directly to bed and begs sleep to take her quickly. She refuses to think of Chip. She still has not opened Max's letter.

I
t was at least a week before Chip and Polly met again. She'd spied him at a distance, once or twice, but had turned away from the sight of him in the hope that she had not been noticed. School started an hour and a half earlier in the Lent term to accommodate the skiers and though it thus ended an hour and a half earlier too, it remained mercifully a Chip-free zone for invariably he was the last to leave the slopes and inevitably he had a queue of the wounded awaiting his return and attention.

Polly hadn't exactly given up hope, she just had yet to decide what to do next. She believed the onus was now on her and it was onerous. Polly was indebted to her sizeable workload, took on the assistant directorship for the school revue, visited her advisees regularly and was a conscientious Dorm Mother. She synchronized two subsequent free evenings with Lorna and organized an ice-skating excursion to Keene on her day off. She finally read Max's letter. It was short and ever so sweet but she read it only the once, swiftly, and then mislaid it accidentally on purpose. She has yet to reply.

As much as she tried to avoid Chip, Polly also kept her distance from Kate because, in some way, she felt she had let her down. She dreaded Kate enquiring after the state of affairs; to admit that nothing had happened because she had actively prevented it would be far too humiliating. Polly told herself that to dull the twinkle in Kate's eye with the truth of the matter was an unbearable notion. Polly told herself that as Kate wanted to live again through Polly, how could she disappoint her so? Polly did not tell herself that she dreaded hearing the far more likely ‘Probably just as well, hon' from Kate.

The bell had already rung for third period and Polly made her way to the classroom. She'd never been late and wondered why she was, and more importantly, why she wasn't actually that bothered. From the hush of the rooms she passed, save for the voice of an adult, she knew that other lessons were already under way. She could detect animated chatter coming from the end room, her class, but knew it was hoping too much that the focus might already be on Dickens. She had faith in her students, though, and knew that as soon as she appeared they would listen up and apply themselves.

If you are even under a minute late at BGS, you've lost the entire class for the duration of the lesson – and very probably the subsequent two or three as well.

As Polly passed Jackson Thomas's class, the door opened. It often did, so she kept on walking, as she always did, anticipating Jackson's whispered insinuations and futile offers. In her left arm, she held a clutch of books to her breast so she held up her right hand in a preventative gesture as she went.

‘Thanks but no thanks,' she said lightly, looking straight ahead and continuing on her way, ‘neither the time, the inclination, nor the money. Sorry!'

‘Hey?'

That's not Jackson.

‘Wait up!'

Chip!

Polly ground to a halt, still facing her direction of travel, then slowly turned around. Winter sunshine flooded down from the skylights and clung to Chip in a cloak of gossamer brilliance. Polly was rendered immobile and utterly silent by his steady, penetrating gaze. It was a moment of celluloid resonance, if ever there was one; no doubt a camera would have zoomed in for a stunning close-up of Chip's bone structure, before panning round to the startled delight in Polly's eyes. Indeed she even peeled her ears, fully expecting rousing background music, but all was silent save muffled teachers' voices and the low din coming from her class.

But this was neither film nor fiction. It was the here and now, or, rather, the there and then. Slowly Chip came towards Polly. Her left cheek was burning from a direct hit of sunlight that also rendered her partly blind. She held her breath, just waiting for someone to appear from a classroom. And yet she felt no fear of being caught, but dreaded instead that this electrifying moment and its possible consequences might be ruined. Chip came closer, he neither spoke, nor was he smiling; he was utterly focused and deadly serious, his eyes locked on to hers. His body now blocked the sun. She could see him clearly. His penetrative gaze made her head swim and caused a throbbing between her legs that she was sure was visible, it was so pronounced. And yet she remained oblivious to the fact that it was actually
her
eyes that were drawing
him
towards her like a magnet. The sound of the lessons surrounding them had reduced down to a distant hum. As Chip neared, Polly began to back up until the wall supported her. Her hair whisked against her jaw. She tossed her head like a filly and watched Chip's lips part, glistening, as if he was about to speak. He said nothing, he kept advancing. Polly's lips parted in anticipation of being kissed.

Come on.

Here? In the corridor? With staff and pupils but yards away and liable to appear at any moment?

Chip was but inches away. Closer than that. So close. Suddenly, Polly had no conception that she was in a corridor of a school in Vermont with a classload of children yards away in a room with the door wide open. She ceased to be Polly Fenton with a flat in Belsize Park and a cat called Buster. Max was an abbreviation, right? Not a name.

Suddenly, it really didn't matter who she, or who
he
was. It was enough that such a glorious specimen of virility was visibly attracted to her and coming to get her. Right now. Polly could have been anywhere and, at that precise moment, with the proximity of the anticipated, desired kiss so tantalizingly close, she wouldn't have cared who came across her.

It was hard to tell who initiated it, but suddenly Polly found her arms about Chip's neck, his tongue leaping about inside her mouth. He had one hand enmeshed in her hair while the other latched on to her breast, grasping on tight as if to open the door to a world of physical bliss. She was pushed against the wall, hard. Her books had slithered down her torso and were now caught precariously between their two bodies; sheaves of paper had already flown free to lie in a scatter around them.

Though their faces had seemed to hover and hesitate excruciatingly close, ultimately their lips had hardly touched before they were tonguing each other with abandon, greedily exploring the inside of each other's mouths and gobbling up the new taste. Their eyes were wide open and feasted on the sight of each other. Polly could hardly breathe but in order to kiss on, she had to; so she panted lightly when she could and held her breath at other times, which itself served to increase the light-headed sensation. Chip was making deep, desirous noises in his throat which sounded dangerously loud to Polly, yet the very volume, the sound of him, turned her on all the more.

Chip swapped hands deftly, cupping her head and her sex; her books secured, for the time being at least, under his elbow. Simultaneously, he pulled her hair and rubbed swiftly against the mound of her sex. She moaned involuntarily and he bit her lip to silence her. She pulled her head away, in shock and pain, but on seeing his broad, dimpled, dazzling smile she melted again and enjoyed the fact that both sets of her lips now throbbed. Poking her tongue out to one side of her mouth, furling her eyelashes, cocking her head and regarding him lasciviously, Polly travelled her hand from his neck down his body, observing that it was at the point just above his navel when he closed his eyes and swayed a little. She left her hand still for a moment and then took it away.

‘I have a class to teach,' she announced in a voice that was too husky to be hers, surely. ‘I have a class to teach,' she repeated, clearing her throat but finding that the tone remained. Chip licked his lips and then held his hands up in mock surrender. As he did so, her books tumbled free and fell to the floor with a noisy clatter.

‘Everything OK?' asked Jackson Thomas, suddenly in the doorway of his class room and seemingly more interested in the proximity of Chip to Polly than in her fallen books.

‘Hey Miss Fenton, you need help?' called AJ from the other end of the corridor.

‘I'm fine,' Polly told everyone with a separate nod, Chip included.

‘She's fine,' Chip repeated to the audience, ‘I think she was dazzled so she dropped her books.'

Dazzled indeed! Polly exerted an inordinate amount of self control not to laugh or show even an ounce of reaction.

‘I'll be there in a mo', AJ, thanks.'

‘OK,' said Jackson unconvinced, having noted the bulge in Chip's trousers and praying that Polly had nothing to do with it, nor even knew of its existence, ‘OK.' He swayed against his door frame for a moment, said ‘OK' a third time and then returned to his class, drawing the door ajar and then closing it cautiously some moments later.

The corridor was quiet again. Polly did not look at Chip.

‘I have a class to teach,' she said, biting away at the blush of exhilaration which she knew criss-crossed her face while it coursed rapidly through her veins.

‘I have an announcement to make,' Chip explained, ‘I've done Mr Thomas's class and your guys, Miss Fenton, are next. All set?'

In her class room, Polly did not know where to look. She was suddenly sure that if she regarded Chip for too long, their connection would be clearly legible.

There again, won't it look suspicious if I don't regard him at all?

Consequently, and conscientiously, she looked to each of her pupils in turn, interspersing a non-committal glance at Chip after every other student. He was there to announce the ski teams and his news was accompanied by the appropriate cheers or groans.

‘Heidi?' Polly asked, responding to the girl's politely up-stretched arm.

‘You ski, Miss Fenton? Do you have mountains in England?'

‘No and yes,' Polly informed, thinking that they really ought to be turning their attention to Dickens.

‘We'll have your teacher up on skis, hey guys?' Chip encouraged, ‘slaloming with the best of you!'

A raucous chorus of approval erupted, and much laughter too.

‘Quiet!' Polly cried in consternation, the noise level anomalously close to that of a BGS class, ‘Mr Jonson, if that is all, Estelle has something to say to Pip.'

Chip bowed his head and thanked her, apologizing to the class (with a wink that went unnoticed by Polly) for taking up too much of their lesson. In the doorway, just before he left, he simulated a parallel turn, smiled broadly at all asunder, letting it linger daringly on Polly. He shut the door behind him. Polly went over to it and pushed the weight of her body against it.

‘Pip pip pip,' she uttered absent-mindedly, not knowing where to look or what to teach. ‘Tell you what, chaps, how about you all pen a few paragraphs describing the sensation of skiing. If you don't ski, imagine what it might be like. If you hate skiing, tell me why – but curb any gruesome details, I don't want to be put off – there's a challenge, remember!'

Polly was on a high all day. She walked with a swagger that matched her mood and reminded her, with the friction of every stride, that her knickers were triumphantly damp. She ruffled Lorna's hair as she passed by in the dining hall and gave both Bens a high five, much to their amusement. She invited all her dorm daughters up for tea and biscuits and a further analysis of her musical tastes, though most of them brought their own offerings of Nirvana and asked for cookies and Coke instead.

It was at precisely nine minutes to eleven that night, when Polly was finally alone for the first time that day, that she was overcome with horror and a churning nausea. She paced from room to room, a hand at her mouth, soon both hands at her head, then hugging herself, soon hitting herself. Finally, she curled up in a corner of the bathroom and focused on her knees because all around her the tiles presented her with her own distorted reflection.

Distorted indeed.

At last, Polly, what a relief. Finally you feel guilt and remorse. You're pining for Max and cursing yourself for all that idiocy, this foray into infidelity. Yes?

No.

No?

Yes, fear and loathing have struck her deep. But, what is it that ails the very core of Polly's being? Guilt? Shame? Regret? Surely a combination of all three? No, that would be far too simple – and far too easy to purge and cure. Far too neat and tidy – we still have half a book remaining.

No. Our dishonest, floundering heroine feels wretched because of an outright lack of guilt, of shame and of regret. It is the very fact that she feels not one ounce of any of the aforementioned which terrifies her so, because new limits have been thereby set.

I thought one kiss would do. I thought it would be sufficient to rid my system of that troublesome notion.

And it wasn't?

It was a superb kiss.

And it wasn't enough?

It might have been if untold suffering and remorse succeeded the pleasure of the moment.

But it didn't?

Nope. I feel feisty and horny and hungry for more.

How much more?

Who knows?

I can't believe you're smiling, Polly. Thought you felt lousy?

I did. I know I should. But I simply don't.

P
olly felt ridiculous in salopettes. They belonged to Lorna who had assured her that it didn't matter that she was four inches taller and at least a stone heavier than Polly.

‘Heck, they'll do their job.'

‘They're very, well,
pink
,' was all Polly could muster in gratitude.

She tried them on very late, when she could be sure that no one would intrude. She hoped unrealistically that they'd suit her but on closer inspection of the cut and colour she doubted whether they would, had they even been made to measure. The suit consisted of a pair of dungarees in a restrictive, dense, rubbery material which flared out extravagantly beneath the knees. Polly knew this was to accommodate bulky ski boots but, standing there in horror in front of her mirror, she decided the boots would have to be enormous if they were to streamline the effect in the slightest. The upper part of the dungarees was a sickly baby-pink, the flared parts a fan of panelled sections in progressively virulent shades of the colour. The jacket was predominantly cerise, with stripes on the sleeves in a shade close to candy floss, a triangular panel down the back the colour of early 1980s lipstick and a strip either side of the zip at the front which could only be described as well-chewed bubblegum.