Читать книгу Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 8

Polly forgot to take the picture home with her when she went back from Granny’s. Granny did not remind her. Thinking about it nine years later, Polly wondered if it was not really because Granny disapproved of Mr Lynn giving it to her. On the other hand, it could have been that Granny knew, as well as Polly did, that home was not a Fire and Hemlock sort of place.

Home had bright, flowered wallpaper with matching curtains. Polly thought, going to bed in her own room, that pulling the curtains was like pulling the walls across the windows.

When she did remember the picture, quite late that night, she opened her mouth to yell. Then she thought better of it. Mum was in one of her moods, stony-quiet and upright, and the slightest thing would send her off into one of her long grumbles. Polly knew this, although Dad was not there to say warningly, “Quiet – you’ll have Ivy in her discontents again!” Dad had gone away on a course, Mum said. So Polly shut her mouth and did not raise an outcry at forgetting her picture.

School started again. Everybody was talking about fireworks and bonfires, except Nina, who had to be different. Nina went round claiming that she was being followed by sinister strangers. Nobody knew whether to believe Nina or not, least of all Polly.

“You mustn’t speak to them,” she said, thinking of what Granny had said.

“No fear!” said Nina. “I’m going to tell my Dad about them.”

That made Polly wish her Dad would come home. She missed him. She spent a lot of time with Nina that week, round at Nina’s house. Mum was still in the mood, not speaking much and not much company. Nina’s house was much more fun. It was all lined with varnished wood inside and smelled of cooking spices. Nina’s toys were allowed to lie about on the floor, just anywhere. Nina had cars and Action Men and guns and Lego and dozens of electronic machines. Most of the batteries were dead, but they were still fun. Polly loved them.

The irony was that Nina much preferred Polly’s toys. By Friday evening she was sick of playing with cars. “Let’s go round to your house,” she said. “I want to play with your sewing machine and your dolls.”

Polly argued, but Nina won by saying, “I shan’t be your friend if we don’t.”

They set off. Nina’s Mum shrieked after them that Nina was not to be a nuisance and be back in an hour. It was getting dark by then, and streetlights were coming on. Nina’s glasses flashed orange as she looked over her shoulder. “I am being followed,” she said. It seemed to please her.

By this, Polly understood that it was a game of Nina’s. She was glad, because the idea of being followed in the dark would have been very frightening. “How many are there of them?” she asked, humouring Nina.

“Two,” Nina said. “When it’s the man, he sits in his car pretending to be someone’s Dad. The boy stands across the road, staring.”

They walked on until they came to the pillar box on the corner of Polly’s road. Nina knew Polly did not believe her. “I told my Dad,” she said, as if this proved it. “He took me to school this morning, but the man kept out of sight.”

He would, Polly thought, if he wasn’t there anyway. All the same, it was a relief to rush up the path to her own front door and burst breathlessly inside.

Ivy met them in the hall, carrying a long, fat envelope. She handed it to Polly. She was still in her mood. “This came for you,” she said in her stony mood-voice. “What have you been up to now?”

“Nothing, Mum!” Polly exclaimed, genuinely surprised. The envelope was addressed in Granny’s writing, to Miss Polly Whittacker. At the back, somewhat torn where Mum had slit the envelope open, Granny had written: Sorry, Polly. I opened this. It wasn’t a mistake. You never know with strange men. Inside was another envelope, fat and crackly, with a typed address to Polly at Granny’s house. It was slit open too. Polly looked at it, mystified, and then up at her mother. “Why did you open it as well?”

Nina took a look at their faces and tiptoed away upstairs to Polly’s room.

Ivy smoothed at her beautifully set hair. “It was from Granny,” she said in a stony voice. “It might – I thought – It could have been something to do with your father.” Two tears oozed from her eyes. She shook them away so angrily that some salty water splashed on Polly’s mouth. “Stop standing staring at me, can’t you!” she said. “Go upstairs and play!”

There seemed nothing Polly could do but climb the stairs to her room. There, Nina was busily setting out a dolls’ tea party. Polly could taste salt still, but she pretended not to notice it and sat on her bed and opened her letter. It was typed, like the envelope, but not in an official way. Polly could see mistakes in it, all the way down the first page, some crossed out with the right word written above in ink, some crossed by typed slanting lines and sorry! typed before the right word.

The paper it was typed on was a mad mixture, all different sizes. The first page was smooth and good and quite small. The next page was large and yellowish. There followed two pages of furry paper with blue lines on, which must have been torn out of a notebook, and the last pages had clumps of narrow lines, like telegraph wires, printed across them. Polly, after blinking a little, recognised these pages as music paper. At this stage, delicately and gently, almost holding her breath, Polly turned to the very last page. The end of the letter was halfway down it, followed by an extra bit labelled P.S. She read, With best wishes to my assistant trainee-hero, Thomas G. Lynn. The name was signed in ink, but quite easy to read.

It really was from Mr Lynn, then. Polly felt her whole face move, as if there was a tight layer under her skin, from solemn to a great, beaming smile. Polly, in those days, was slow at reading. Long before she had finished the letter, Nina had given up even threatening. She played crossly on the floor by herself, and only looked up once or twice when Polly laughed out loud.

Dear Polly,

After I had to run away so abrbubtly – sorry! – suddendly, I had quite a while to sit on the train and think, and it seemed to me that we still had a lot of details to settle conconcerning our secret lives. Most of the things are questionoins-sorry! – I need to aks you. You know more about thseses things than I do. But one thing I could settle was our first avdenture – sorry! – vadntrue – sorry! – job with the giant. I think it happened like this. Of course if you think differntly, please say so, and I shall risk your annoyance by agreeing with you. Here goes.

The first thing you must rememember is that Mr Thomas Piper is very strong. He may look exactly like me – not unlike and ostrich in gold – rimmed glasses – but he has muscles which I, in my false identity as a mere cellist, lack. Every morning he lifts mighty sin-sorry!-sun-blistered wooden shutters, two of them, from the windows of his shop and carries them away indoors. He follows this by carrying outside to the pavement such items as rolls of chicken wire neither you nor I could lift, piles of dustbins, graden rollers neither of us could move, and stacks of hefty white chamberpots that we would have to take one at a time. Every evening he takes it all in again and brings out the shuterts. He could, if he wished, win an Olympic Gold Medal for wieght-lifting, but this has never occurred to him.

In between customers, he idly sharpens axes and stares out into the street, thinking. Like me, he has an active mind, but not having been given the education which was thrust upon me, his mind whirrs about rather. He buys old books from junk shops and reads them all. Most of them are horribly out of date. His sister Edna, who, you tell me, hates him to spend money on useless things like books, tells him he is mad. Mr Piper thinks she may be right. At any rate, on this particular morning his thoughts are whirring about worse than ever, because he has been reading an old book called “Don Quixote,” about a tall thin man who had read books until he went mad and fought some windmills, thinking they were giants.

Mr Piper is staring out between dangling scrubbing brushes as he sharpens his axe, wondering if he is that mad himself, when the light is blocked from the door, once, twice, by something enormous going by. The fire-irons round the door knock together. Mr Piper blinks. For a moment he could have sworn that those were two huge legs, each ending in a foot the size of a Mini Metro, striding past his door. “I am that mad,” he thinks. He has gone back to sharpening his axe when he hears crashing from up the street. Then screams. Then running feet.

Edna calles from the back room. “What’s going on, Tom?”

A girl Mr Piper recofnises as Maisie Millet from the supermarket checkout goes running past, looking terrified. “Something at the supermarket, dear,” he calls back.

“Go and see!” Edna screams at him. She is unbearably curious. She likes to know everything that goes on in Stow Whatyoumacallit. But she cannot go out herslef because she always wears a dressing gown to save money and never takes her hair out of curlers.

Mr Piper, still holding his axe, goes out of his shop and stares up the srteet. Sure enough, there is broken glass over the pavement in front of the supermarket, and people are running away from it in all directions, shouting for help. A robbery, thinks Mr Piper, and runs towards it, axe in hand. He pases the phone booth on the way. The manager of the supermarket is in it, white-faced, dialing 999. The plate glass window of the supermarket has a huge hole in it, with notices about this week’s prices flapping in shreds around it. As Mr Piper races up, a white deep-freeze sails out through the hole and crashes into a parked car. Dozens of pale pink frozen chickens drop like bricks and skid across the road. People scream and scatter.

One person does not run. This is a small boy with rather long, fair hair. As Mr Piper stops and stares at the slithering chickens, this boy girl person comes hopping through the mess towards him.

“Thank goodness you’ve come, Tan Coul!” this person calls. “Do hurry! There’s a giant in the supermarket.”

This child suffers from too much imagination, Mr Piper thinks, looking down at her-sorry!-him. She-sorry!-he is madder than I am. “There are no such things as giants,” he syas. “What is really going on?”

Like an answer, there is a terrible roar from inside the broken window. Mr Piper wonders if his glasses need cleaning. A young man in white overalls from the butchery departmnent leaps through the hole in the window and runs as if for his life. Something seems to grab at him as he leaps. Whatever it is is snatched back immediately, and there is an even louder roar. It sounds like swearing.

Mr Piper is trying to convince himself that he did not, really and truly, see a huge hand trying to grab the younf man, when the boy says, “See that, Tan Coul? That was the giant’s hand. He cut his thumb on the window. That’s why he’s swearing. Let’s go in quickly, while he’s sucking it. There may be some more people stuck inside.”

Mr Piper looks down the street, where the supermarket manager is still frantically talking into the teolephone. There is no sign of police or fire brigade yet. It is clear something has to be done. Consoling himself with the thought that there must be a lunatic inside the supermarket even more insane than he is, he says, “Very well. Stay there,” and crunches through the broken glass to the window.

There is an awful mess inside. Shelves of things have been pushed this way and that. The floor is covered with mounds of salt and washing powder, broken jam jars and pools of cooking oil. There are holes in the walls where freezers have been ripped out. Toilet paper has been unreeled across everything. But the thing which causes Mr Piper to stop short by the checkout desks is the huge bulk he can see down at the far end. Something large and round shines balefully at him from there, surrounded by what seems to be barbed wire.

Could that thing really be a giant’s eye, peering at him from a giant’s hair, behind a giant’s doubled-up knees?

“I don’t think it’s a windmill,” he murmurs doubtfully to himself.

“Of course it isn’t,” says a voise at his elbow. He sees that the boy has followed him inside. “The giant’s sitting down against the end wall, with his knees up. He’s too big to stand up in here. That should make things easy. You can just chop his head off with your axe.” Mr Piper does not like veeven killing flies. He is quite convinced that the huge thing down at the end is an optical illusion of some kind. He tucks his axe under his arm and takes his glasses off to clean. The giant – or whatever – dissolves into a blur, which makes him feel much happier. “I told you to stay outsude,” he says to the boy.

“I wouldn’t be much use as an assistant if I did that,” the boy retorts. “I’ve come miles from Middleton to be your trainee, Tan Coul, and I’m not going away now.”

“My name is Piper really,” Mr Piper says.

“I keep a hardware shope. Is that why you keep calling me Can Tool?”

“Not Can Tool, Tan Coul, stupid!” says the boy. “The great hero-”

But at this moment the giant moves. The blur Mr Piper can see produces a yard-long bent strip of white, unpleasantly like a glaoting grin. Something huge softly advances on them. Mr Piper claps his glasses on his nose and sees an immense hand with a cut on its thumb reaching out to grab them. Illusion or not, he and the boy dive out of its way. The hand, with terrible speed, snatches after them. The boy dodges behind a zig-zag of loose shelves. Mr Piper is left out in the open and only a pool of washing-up liquid saves him. He slides in it, falls flat on his back, and loses his glasses. Somehow the boy pulls him behind the shelves too. They crouch there, panting, while the giant, as far as Mr Piper can tell, lumbers about the shop on his hands and knees. The giant is too big to see all in one piece, even if he had not lost his glasses. There are crashes, rendings and sliding sounds.

“What’s he doing?” pants Mr Piper.

“Pushing some freezers and the cash desks across the hole in the window,” says the boy.

“Now he’s put another freezer across the door at the back.”

“Oh,” says Mr Piper unhappily.

The giant begind to roar again. His voice is almost too loud to hear, but Mr Piper distinctly catches the words “fresh warm meat on legs!” and possibly something about Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum too. He does his best not to believe that he is trapped in a supermarket with a hungry giant. But the shelf they are hiding behind tips and begins to move. Four enormous fingers with dirty nails seem to be gripping it by one end. The boy and Mr Piper get up and tiptoe hurriedly behind the next lot of shelves, skipping over smashed pickle jars and trying not to crunch in cornflakes. Mr Piper has to do this by smell and instinct, since he can hardly see the floor.

“Kill him!” the boy whispers as they tiptoe. “You’re a hero. You can’t be a coward!”

“Oh, can’t I just!” Mr Piper whispers back. The shelf they are now behind gegins to move too. They tiptoe on, through tins of dogfood and mushy peas. “There are no such things as giants,” Mr Piper explains as they go. “This is some kind of illusion.” The latest shelf moves, and they scuttle behind another.

Now a low rumbling begins, getting gradually louder. If Mr Piper were not doing his best to know better, he would swear it was the giant laughing with triumph, because the giant is moving his prey shelf by shelf into a corner where the upended freezers spill out squashed butter and squinched cartons of yoghurt. They will be trapped in that corner.

The boy sighs. “Do me a favour, Tan Cou – er – Mr Piper. Pretend there is a giant. Pretend we’ll be dead in a minute unless you do something.”

Mr Piper’s foot slips in yoghurt. He goes down with one knee in a pound of butter. The giant’s rumbles becomes a roar. The boy’s advice suddenly seems excellent. Mr Piper swings his axe round in threatening circles as he kneels.

The laughter stops. The blurred shape of the giant, on all fours against the windows, looks at them with its bushy head tipped on one side. Then a vast arm stretches. Mr Piper scrambles round on his knees and chops desperately at the huge hand reaching out at him.

“Throw tins at his face!” he gasps to the boy. “Get him to stand up!”

“Good idea,” says the boy. He picks up a tin and hurls it, and another. His aim is good, but he is not strong enough to worry the giant, who just comes crawling towards them.

Mr Piper throws a tin himself and chops again with his axe at the reaching hand. The giant gives a roar that buzzes the windows. They snatch up tim after tin and bombard the giant’s head. The giant, kneeling hugely opposite, keeps on grabbing at them. Mr Piper chops at his fingers every time he does, keeping him at bay. He feels hopeless now. He can only see the reaching fingers when they are almost too close. He cannot see properly to aim tins. The boy keeps hitting, but this does not worry the giant at all. On the rare occasions when Mr Piper’s tins hit, they make him rear up and bump his head on the ceiling.

“What’s up there?” pants the boy. “Anything that might help?”

As far as Mr Piper knows, there is the supermarket manager’s flat up above. He is hoping that there are iron girders in the ceiling, on which the giant might be induced to brain himself. But they run out of tins just then. Mr Piper scrambles backwards to the nearest shelf and seizes a packet off it at random. Beside him, the boy hurls a large cheese. It misses, because the giant moves his bushy head aside. He moves it into line with the packet Mr Piper has just thrown.

It turns out to be a packet of flour. It succeeds beyond Mr Piper’s wildest hopes. It hits the giant in the eye and bursts all over his face. The giant howls, so loud it hurts their ears. He claps both fists to his face and, most unwisely, rears up on his knees. The great, bushy head goes straight through the ceiling. The giant howls again and falls over backwards, smashing two sets of shelves underneath him. And things begin to rain down on the giant through the hole in the ceiling. First comes a large sofa, then a television, followed by a squad of armchairs. While the giant is gasping from these, there is a pause, full of sliding noises. Then a kitchen table falls on him, followed by a washing machine, a big refrigerator, a dishwasher, and finally a heavy gas oven. The gas oven hits the giant in the stomach and knocks the breath out of him with a WHOOF that blows all the tiolet paper into the air. Mr Piper picks his way among the fluttering streamers of it until he is so close that even he can see he is standing by a steep, bushy hill of head, beside a monstrous ear. He takes careful aim, swings the axe with all his great strength, and hits the giant with the flat of it, just behind that enormous ear.

Everything goes quiet. In the qiet Mr Piper becomes aware of sirnes – sorry! – sirens, and neenawing and whooping. Flashing lights are arriving outside the window.

The boy appears at Mr Piper’s elbow again.

“You didn’t kill him,” he says reproachfully. This is a very bloodthirsty child, Mr Piper thinks. Does she-sorry!-he want me to cut the giant into joints and pack him in the freezers? He does not like to admit that he cannot even kill flies. He replies with dignity, “I never kill a helpless enemy. Haven’t you heard of chivalry? What’s your name, by the way?”

“P – er – Hero,” says the boy. “There are police cars and fire engines outside. What shall we tell them?”

“Nothing,” says Mr Piper. “We’ll go out of the back door. I’ll move that freezer as soon as I’ve found my glasses.”

“Here they are,” Hero says, and puts the glasses into Mr Piper’s hand. As Mr Piper fumbles them on to his nose, Hero explains, “I picked them up and kept them. I knew you’d manage better if you didn’t have to keep explaining you weren’t really seeing a giant.”

Mr Piper looks from the boy to the giant. It is indeed, monstrously and hugely, a giant, snoring peacefully among the litter. He feels rather sick.

They leave the supermarket the back way as the police come through the front. Edna, by this time, has taken her curlers out, put on her best dressing gown, and arrived at the shop door. She is watching when the police make the mistake of asking the fire brigade to hose the giant’s face to revive him for questioning. The giant hates this. He has had enough anyway.

Edna sees him burst out of the supermarket, shoving a police car one way and a fire engine the other. After which he rises to his full height of forty feet or so and runs away, shaking the ground as he goes. Edna is so amazed at this sight that she not only forgets to scold her brother for being covered with flour and yoghurt; she forgets to forbid him to take on a smart new boy assistant.

In this manner Mr Thomas Piper and his assistant Hero began their careers as trainee-heroes. At least, I hope you agree that this is how it was.

With best wishes to my assistant trainee-hero,

Thomas G. Lynn

P.S. I seem to remember that all heroes have a special weapon of some kind. Don’t I need to find a sword? And what about a horse? I tried to be faithful to your description of Edna. Did I get her right?

Polly put the letter down with a sigh. She thought the giant ought to have been killed too.

“Finished?” Nina said rather sourly. She was standing by the window. “If you can spare the time, come over here and look.”

“Why?” said Polly, still seeing broken supermarket in her mind’s eye.

“Because,” Nina said with awful patience, “one of the people following me is standing across the road.”

That fetched Polly across the room. Funny thing, she thought, as she pressed her forehead against the window in order to see into the dark outside, real life trumps made-up things every time – if this is real, of course. “Where? I don’t see anyone.”

“Under that person opposite’s big bush. There,” said Nina.

Polly could see the figure now. It looked like a boy humped in an anorak. While she looked, the person shifted, stamped feet, and began walking up and down. He must have been cold standing out there in the dark. He stopped before he got to the streetlight and turned again, but at that end of his walk there was enough light to show he had neat hair and a scornful set to his smooth face. And Polly had sharp eyes. Her heart thudded rather. She said, “He’s called Seb. He was at the funeral.”

“Why is he following me?” Nina whispered. “I’m scared, Polly.”

Polly asked, feeling rather shrewd and detective-like, “Did the man following you have two sort of black lumps under his eyes?”

Nina nodded. “He’s the scary one. He sits in his car and stares.”

“He’s Seb’s father,” said Polly. “Mr Morton Leroy. Is he here now?”

“I told you!” Nina said irritably. “They take it in turns. But why?”

Polly had just been reading Mr Lynn’s letter. Mr Lynn obviously thought she was bold and bloodthirsty, and she wanted to prove he was right. “Let’s go out and ask him,” she said.

Nina replied with a shocked giggle. She could not believe Polly meant it. “Never speak to strange men,” she said. “Your Granny said.”

“He’s not strange – I know his name,” Polly said. “He’s not even a man.”

“He’s big, though,” Nina objected.

At this, Polly took great pleasure in saying, “Nina Carrington, stop being such a scaredy-cat or I won’t be your friend any more.” It worked too. As Polly marched to the door and downstairs, she heard Nina come stumbling after her, fighting her way into her coat to disguise her lack of courage. They went out of the front door and crossed the street together.

As they went towards him, Seb backed away into the shadow under the bush. Probably he did not credit that they were actually on their way to speak to him. By the time they reached him, he was flattened against the wall beneath the bush. He stared at them, and they stared at him. He was a good foot taller than they were. If it had not been for Mr Lynn’s letter, Polly thought she might have run away.

“What are you spying on Nina for?” she said.

Seb’s face turned from one to the other. “Which of you is Nina?”

“Me,” Nina said in a scared, throaty way.

“Then I’m not,” said Seb. “It’s you with the fair hair I’m supposed to watch. Now get lost, both of you.”

“Why?” Polly said. And Nina was indignant enough to add, “And we’re not going till you tell us!”

Seb hunched his shoulders against the wall and slid his feet forward across the pavement. He laughed at the way they backed away from his feet as they slid. It brought his face nearly down to their level, giving them a full blast of the scorn and dislike in it. “I’ve a good mind to tell you,” he said. “Yes, why not?” He nodded his chin at Polly. “You,” he said, “took something when you came to our house, didn’t you?”

“It was given me!” said Polly.

“So what? You took it,” said Seb.

“I am not a thief!” Polly said angrily. “I didn’t even break and enter. The door was open and I went in.”

“Shut up,” said Seb. “Listen. You didn’t eat and you didn’t drink, and you worked the Nowhere vases round first. Don’t deny it. I saw you working them. And I haven’t told my father that – yet. You owe me for that.”

“I don’t understand a word of this!” Nina said. “And it was me you were following, not Polly.”

“You shut up too,” Seb said, jerking his chin at Nina. “You only come into it because the two of you act like Siamese twins, trotting to her house, trotting to your house, trotting to school together. I didn’t know even little girls could be that boring!”

“We’re not boring,” said Polly.

“Yes you are – boring as hell,” Seb retorted disagreeably.

“Hell’s not boring,” Nina said smartly. She hated not being the centre of attention. “There’s devils with forks and flames, and thousands of sinners. You won’t have a dull moment when you go there.”

“I’m not planning to go there,” Seb said. “I told you to shut up. I’m planning not to,” he said to Polly, “and I told you, you owe me.”

Polly was puzzled and scared, but she said defiantly, “Laurel’s not having it back! It’s mine.”

“Laurel doesn’t know,” said Seb. “Luckily for you. Have you seen or talked to a certain person from the house since the funeral?”

Polly thought of the varied sheets of Mr Lynn’s letter lying on her bed across the street, and her heart began bumping again. “Yes,” she said. “I’m talking to you now.” And she prayed that Nina had not chanced to notice who the letter was from – or, if she had, that Nina would have the sense not to say.

“Very funny!” said Seb. “You know that’s not who I mean.” Nina, to Polly’s relief, looked puzzled to death. “All right,” said Seb. “You haven’t – and I should know, standing outside in all weathers, watching—”

“Don’t you have to go to school at all?” Nina interrupted.

Seb sighed. “Yes I do, you boring little girl, but it’s still half-term. Shut up. I’m talking to her.” He stood himself up and turned round to face Polly. “Now see, you – this is a warning. Don’t. Don’t have anything to do with a certain person. Understand? Come on – promise. You owe me to promise.”

Polly stared up at Seb’s shadowy, orange-lit face. Since she could not pretend not to know what he was talking about, she thought rapidly for a way not to promise. She said rather vaguely, “It’s very kind of you to warn me.”

“Kind!” exclaimed Seb. He stamped about in disgust. Polly stood back, gently holding her breath. It looked as if he was distracted. “Who’s kind? I don’t do favours. I only told you because I’m sick of standing outside your beastly home and your boring school every day for a week! My feet are killing me. Yesterday I got soaked to the skin…”

He complained for quite a long time. Polly let her breath out and tried not to look smug. She could tell he was a selfish person. His own sufferings meant more to him than making her give promises.

All the same, Seb was not a fool. Having grumbled until Nina was yawning and shivering, he gave Polly a bad moment by rounding on her threateningly.

“Don’t forget,” he said. “If you break your promise, it won’t be me who sees to you. My father’s bad enough, but if Laurel gets to know, I wouldn’t be you for a billion pounds!” Polly believed him. She shivered as hard as Nina.

“I won’t forget,” she said.

“And good riddance!” Seb said. Polly watched him swing round and walk away. She watched him turn the corner by the pillar box. He was gone. Remembering, she thought, is not the same as promising. Good. I’ve won.

For a moment she thought Seb was coming back round the corner, uttering shrieking shouts. But it was only Nina’s Mum, come to see where Nina had got to. “I was worried, cherub. If somebody really is following you—”

“They weren’t,” Nina said crossly. “That was a mistake.” Her glasses flashed at Polly, puzzled and conspiratorially, as she was towed away.

And that was a good thing too, Polly thought, as she went back across the road. Nina had not had time to ask things which it was beyond Polly to explain.

Her own Mum met her at the front door. “Polly, what have you been up to now?” she said tiredly. “Door open, no coat.”

Polly looked up at her, remembering those angry splashes of salt. It was such a pity, when Ivy was so much better-looking than Nina’s Mum. Polly thought, I am not going to be a selfish person like Seb. “Sorry,” she said. “What’s the matter, Mum?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” said Ivy, drawing herself up stony and still. “Why should there be?”

“You cried,” said Polly.

“The idea!” exclaimed Ivy. “Go straight upstairs and don’t give me those stories!”

Polly went upstairs, trying to shrug. Mum was in a mood, all right. It didn’t do to get upset about it. To prove she was not upset, Polly read Mr Lynn’s letter all through again. Then she drew the curtains – after all, Seb might come back – and fetched out her birthday writing paper with roses on, and her best pen. Kneeling on her bed, rear upwards, hair dangling, she wrote a reply to Mr Lynn in her best writing. His letter deserved a good answer, but she wanted it to be good because of Seb, and because of Mum too, though she was not sure why.

Dear Mr Lynn,

Your letter is good and funny but you are not like Mr Piper reely. You should have killed the giant like you said I said. Now I will anser your questiuns. You are right heros always have a weapun but you do not need a sord, you have your axe. You need a horse. St Gorge had a horse for killing draguns. You got Edna right only not nasty enuff. She nags. She is so upposed to Mr Piper reading books that the pore man has to rap them in the cuvers of yusefull books called “A short histury of nales” for the big ones and “Iron list” for the small ones and read them secritally wile Edna watches the telly.

I hope you are well.

Polly was going to finish here, when she remembered Seb again. A new thought struck her. She sucked her pen a while, then wrote:

Mr Piper has a nefue, Edna is his Mum, called Leslie. He is a horrid boy and gets scaunfull every time Mr Piper is nice to him. Leslie is ashamed of Mr Piper, he thinks he is mad. He did not see the giant.

That is all. By for now.

Polly

She put the letter into an envelope and addressed it carefully. She went downstairs with it, intending to ask Mum for a stamp from her handbag. But since Ivy was sitting at the kitchen table pretending to read a magazine and showing no sign even of thinking of getting supper, Polly helped herself to a stamp and stuck it on. She went back to the kitchen. Ivy was still sitting.

“Mum,” Polly said softly, “shall I go and get fish and chips for supper?”

Ivy jerked. “For God’s sake, Polly, don’t treat me as if I was ill!”

Then, as Polly was slithering away, sure that she had pushed Mum from a mood into one of her discontents, she heard Ivy say thoughtfully, “Chinese. I fancy Chinese. Or would you rather have Indian, Polly?”

Polly did not like curry, nor the severe man in the Indian Take Away. “Chinese,” she said. “Shall I get it?”

Instead of fussing, as she often did, about Polly going out alone in the dark, Ivy simply said, “The money’s in my bag. Cross the road carefully.”

Polly found some pound notes and hid those and the letter in a carrier bag. She went out cautiously into a drizzling night. There was no sign of Seb. Nevertheless, Polly smuggled the letter into the pillar box on the corner, looking round everywhere as she did it, as if it was the guiltiest thing she had ever done. She had no doubt she was breaking the promise Seb thought she had made. Then she went on her way to the Chinese Take Away, thinking she was probably quite heroic.