Polly's Angel (52 page)

‘The allies are pushing up Italy as fast as they can go,' she said contentedly, as the family sat round the fire that evening, for although it was October it was pleasant to sit in the warm once darkness fell. ‘We'll get confirmation soon enough, I'm sure. Oh, and I'm so grateful to your Sunny, Poll! Now that I know he reached land, I'm content to wait.'

Chapter Sixteen

S
PRING
1945

Polly lay on a smooth, sheep-nibbled stretch of turf, with the sun hot on her closed eyelids and the sound of the sea gently lapping at the shore below the cliffs, and basked. She was on her holidays, or at least she felt as if she were, for when one is in the WRNS, and suddenly gets a whole week off, and lives at home, what is to stop one spending that week somewhere else? Peader had his allotment and his coupon-checking and points-additions and Deirdre still worked in her parachute factory on Hanover Street so if Polly had stayed at home it would have been a lonely sort of leave.

If Grace or one of Polly's pals had been able to get some leave as well it would have been a different story. But despite the fact that everyone knew the war was going to end any day now, Grace was needed on her station, and Sunny was probably still with his ship, halfway, Polly thought gloomily, between Scotland and Russia, either coming or going. At any rate, she hadn't had a letter for ages, so she had decided to spend her leave visiting old friends, visiting a place, she thought now, where she had been happier than one usually was in wartime.

Anglesey. Holyhead. In fact, in the very house where she had been billeted when she had first joined the WRNS, for Diane was still there, and most of her other friends were still in Holyhead. So Polly had rung up and asked permission to spend her leave in the tall house in London Road, and Diane had told her that she was as welcome as the day was long, and added that they would not mention her presence to anyone in authority.

‘We've a spare bed or two, with people on leave, and others having left for different jobs,' she had said breezily. ‘Oh, Poll, I have missed you! It'll be grand to see you again – are you coming down here to see that fellow, the one you made so unhappy? Only I've not seen him around since you left.'

‘No, of course I'm not coming to see Tad,' Polly had said, annoyed. ‘Why on earth should I do such a t'ing, Di? Besides, he's up north somewhere – I don't know where, we've lost touch.'

‘Oh,' Diane said. She sounded a little doubtful. ‘Well, you know your own business best, of course, but I always thought—'

‘I don't know what you thought,' Polly had said rather reproachfully. ‘But you shouldn't leap to conclusions, Di. I've told you over and over that I've got a feller, a serious one. Sunny, the chap whose on the Russian convoys. He's a signaller, and—'

‘Oh, yes, I know all about your Sunny,' Diane had assured her, sounding not in the least cast down by Polly's words. ‘Still, no point in talking about it now, when we're going to see each other so soon. I'll get some time off . . . Oh, Poll, I can't wait!'

So Polly had caught a train and arrived at Holyhead on the first day of her leave. She had settled into the old house as though she had never left it, and in the bright April sunshine had begun to enjoy her holiday. For the first couple of days she had revisited old haunts around the docks and the town, had gone into the clubs and messes to meet old friends and generally caught up with the local news. But even in the bustle of the naval headquarters she had the feeling that everyone was waiting. Waiting for the inevitable end of it all which could not be far off, not now.

And all the time, in the back of her mind, was a feeling of vague dissatisfaction. She had been so happy here – why could she not recapture that happiness, feel the warm glow of it in her veins? She supposed it was because she was no longer truly a part of it, as she had once been. She had no real place here, no actual purpose. And a good many of the men she had worked with had moved on, perhaps manning the invasion fleet which had left from the channel ports the previous year, perhaps taking the place of other men on the convoys or in the dockyards, putting right the damage which had been done to such vessels. So earlier that day Polly had decided to get some food from the girls' kitchen and make herself some sandwiches. Then she could take a picnic somewhere quiet, and enjoy the wonderful sunshine.

She had borrowed a bicycle and pedalled slowly around the coast, ending up here, on the quiet, sunny cliff, sunbathing, occasionally taking a drink from the bottle of cold tea she had brought with her, and thinking.

What had gone wrong with her life of late? she wondered. She had not seen her angel for ages now, since joining the service, in fact, and had told herself rather miserably that seeing angels was presumably something which you left behind with girlhood, because now she was a woman who no longer needed an angel. But she missed that sweet-faced presence which had always made her feel safe, and loved. And now, she fell to wondering why she had ever had that guardian angel, because she had had Mammy, and Daddy and her brothers, to say nothing of Tad . . . Her thoughts broke down in confusion, until she reminded herself that she had meant she had had Tad when she had been just a kid, in Dublin, that his presence – or absence – would most certainly not have affected her need of an angel.

But Grace, who had needed an angel so desperately, her thoughts continued, had never had one. That was strange, wasn't it? She had asked Grace several times, very carefully, mind, whether Grace had ever been aware of a presence, of something glimpsed, not straightforwardly, but out of the corner of one's eye, so to speak. More an inward conviction of another's presence than a proper sighting. She had made it plain that she did not mean recently, of course, because now Grace, like herself, was a woman grown, but long ago, when Grace had wandered the streets alone, always in need, usually in fear. Grace had looked mildly surprised by the question but had said, a little regretfully, that never, during that sad time, had she ever felt any sort of strange, other-worldly presence, or not one which was well-disposed towards her at any rate. So Polly had dropped the subject, and had told herself fiercely that she should be eternally grateful for her own immense good fortune in being able to see her guardian angel now and then – as a child, of course – and not feel so deprived and cheated now that she could no longer do so.

Having settled that matter to her satisfaction, or almost so, she turned her thoughts back to her stay on the island. She had been to a dance held out at Valley, and had not enjoyed herself as much as she had hoped. She and Diane had had a lovely day out with two young naval bods. They had gone out in a dinghy and bathed from the boat, swimming in water a great deal deeper than they could have reached from the beach. It had been fun, but somehow, the faint disappointment which had seemed to come over her even as she smiled her delighted greeting to the island where she had been so happy would not be dispelled. There was something wrong, something missing . . .

Restlessly, Polly rolled from her back on to her front and studied the tiny, gold-centred daisy almost beneath her nose, with its oriole of pink tipped petals. She was being quite absurd, wholly ridiculous, and it was time she snapped out of it. She turned her thoughts to a favourite theme: her wedding. There she was, poised and lovely in a long white dress with a full skirt and narrow sleeves. She wore a white veil which billowed out beneath a wreath of lilies of the valley and her feet were clad in white, satin, high-heeled shoes. She had her hand – with the sapphire engagement and the gold wedding rings on the third finger – tucked into Sunny's uniform sleeve, and she was smiling up at him as he was smiling down at her, their eyes meeting with a look of perfect understanding and love . . . and nearby, her parents beamed, both with their eyes full of tears of love and pride as they saw their only daughter wed. And there was Diane (who often doubled in the dream as her bridesmaid, along with Grace and Monica, of course) in her uniform getting eight girls in neat WRNS navy-blue to form a triumphal arch so that she and Sunny could run the gauntlet of all the rice – no, confetti, because she would not be marrying in wartime, not now, when the whole thing was more or less over – which would be thrown between the porch of the church and the lychgate.

It was a nice dream and Polly, smiling, rolled over on to her back again and then sat up and reached for her picnic. She bit into a corned-beef sandwich, liberally doused with brown sauce, and gazed blissfully up at the brilliant blue of the noonday sky. She had found a bag of dried apple rings and a few sultanas as well as the sandwich ingredients when she had poked about in the pantry and had decided the girls would not miss these odds and ends, deciding that she had done very well considering that no one, as yet, had asked her for her ration book. Indeed, apart from the vague feeling that she no longer belonged here, no holiday, she told herself, could have been nicer or more satisfying.

Sitting there, with the wind lifting her fair hair off her shoulders and the subdued sound of the waves on the rocks far below in her ears, Polly thought that the only unsatisfactory thing about her wedding dream was that she could never force herself to go any further with it. She could not imagine the going-away suit which she would wear, or the hotel, or guest-house more likely, where she and Sunny would spend their honeymoon. She could not imagine them enjoying their wedding reception, far less climbing into their marriage bed. And as for the ordinary things, her making his breakfast, him going off to work, this seemed totally beyond her. In fact, she thought now, folding her sandwich paper into a neat square and shoving it into the pocket of her uniform jacket, she could not imagine herself spending a few weeks with Sunny, let alone the rest of her life.

The thought, coming spontaneously, jolted her. She frowned down at her black lace-up shoes and then did something she had not done for years and years. She pressed the heels of both hands into her eye sockets and pushed and pushed until she could see scarlet and gold with black squiggles and strange patterns shooting across her inner vision, until she felt as though her head were a huge balloon which must burst at any minute. When she could bear it no longer she took her hands away from her face and opened her eyes. And for one startling, extraordinary minute she saw, vaguely, the faint outline of a face, and seemed to hear, equally faintly, the echo of a voice. Then both faded and she was just Polly O'Brady, sitting in the sunshine feeling remarkably foolish, and knowing, with startling clarity, the answer to the questions which had been plaguing her of late. The wonderful wedding of which she had dreamed was just that – a dream. It had no hint of reality, no possibility that it might, one day, actually happen. You've been a complete and total fool, Polly O'Brady, she told herself furiously, beginning to cram the remains of her picnic into her pockets and standing up to brush the crumbs off the front of her skirt and the creases off the back. But just because you've been a fool until now, doesn't mean you have to go on being a fool for ever. You came back here to find the happiness you thought you had lost – well, you didn't find it because it isn't here, not any more. It's – it's up in Lincolnshire somewhere, and if you don't go up and see Tad and tell him you've made the biggest mistake of your life and ask him to forgive you, take you back, then whatever happens next, it won't be marriage to Sunny because he isn't the feller for you and you aren't the girl for him.

Why, when Sunny comes back on leave are you so thrilled at the thought of just seeing him again that you can't think of anything else? When you're with him, do you hang on his every word, want to please him, put yourself out for him? No, Polly O'Brady, you do not do any of those things. You are pleased to see him all right, but you don't want to make any special arrangements and very soon after his arrival you begin to wish he wasn't quite so sure of himself, quite so handsome and self-opinionated. You find fault with him – oh, not aloud, but in your head. He doesn't come up to your imaginary expectations, so you find yourself pretending. Pretending that the two of you are perfectly matched, that you'll marry, have a family, be happy together. When all the time – all the time, Polly O'Brady – you're really trying to fit him into quite another shape. To make tall, handsome, blond-haired Sunny into . . . into . . .

She picked up her bicycle from where she had rested it against a handy gorsebush and began to coast down towards the road. It crossed her mind to wonder what Sunny would think when she told him that it had all been a mistake, that she really wasn't the girl for him. She could write to him, a sort of ‘Dear John' letter, except that it wouldn't be a letter like that at all because now that she was looking honestly at her relationship with Sunny, she realised that in all probability Sunny had been aware of the problem for some time.

She reached the main road, if you could call a winding country lane a main road, and turned left along it. She would go back now and tell Diane that she wouldn't be spending any more time on the island. She could say anything, she could even tell her the truth, because she and Diane had never had any secrets from one another, and she saw no reason why she should be secretive with her friend now.

Polly gritted her teeth as she slogged up the first of the hills which lay ahead. Diane thought I'd come back to see Tad, she remembered, and though of course I hadn't, perhaps, in a way, she was right. Perhaps it was really Tad who had made Holyhead so special.

But as she rode into the outskirts of Holyhead, it did cross Polly's mind to wonder what exactly she should do next. She had three whole days of her leave left, enough to get up to Lincolnshire – and back again, she supposed vaguely – but she did not have very much money, and she realised that knowing which airfield Tad was stationed at did not mean she would be able to run him to earth easily. The chances were, she knew, that the airfield would be some considerable way from the railway station, and Tad, being a pilot now, wouldn't be available all day as he had been as a flight mech. She could go up there and find he was flying the first night she arrived, in bed all the next day, and flying the following night. I could hang around there for a week and not see him and be court-martialled from the Navy for being AWOL, she told herself, pedalling desperately. Though if Tad knew I was there, surely he would get out of bed and see me, if only for a few minutes? She would have to borrow some money from Di for the rail fare and the taxi fare out to the airfield. Now she actually began to think about it, what was more, she would need to stay somewhere overnight . . .