Читать книгу Polly - Freya North - Страница 13

‘Hey there,’ he said, bowling over to her at lunch-time with an easy smile, ‘I’m Mikey.’

A warm, firm handshake.

Look at his neck. His Adam’s apple. Shoulders. Chest.

No don’t.

‘Hullo,’ she responded, ‘I’m Polly.’ Desperate to be demure and disinterested. Failing.

Fight the smile.

Failing.

Am I blushing?

Yes.

‘From England, hey?’

‘Yes, from Old Blighty,’ Polly enunciated. He nodded and smiled, displaying perfect white teeth behind full, deep red lips. The morning’s exertion had had superb consequences for his appearance; his hair was damp and tousled and scraped hastily into a pony tail while sweat and sawdust gave a subtle glisten to his body and had made his eyes watery and dark. Polly tried not to stare and hoped sincerely that her pupils were not dilating visibly. If they were (they were), he was too well mannered to acknowledge it.

The house was all but finished by four o’clock. The roof was slatted and watertight. There were no side walls at the moment as Jojo, predictably, had run out of money. However, even in its skeletal state it was stunning. It was obvious what a gorgeous home it was going to be when complete; occupying this spectacular position in the lie of Hubbardtons, overlooking the main cluster of houses of Hubbardtons and just a twenty-minute walk for Jojo to her classes at Hubbardtons.

The little architect started a round of applause when the job was done, which was followed by liberal high-fiving and unabashed hugging. The men then jumped from the structure and stood back to look on it, nodding and congratulating each other and themselves. They finished the last of the beans and made another inroad into the batch of pies before disappearing to their pick-ups and returning with fiddles. They played until dusk. Polly counted seven violins as she tapped her toes with her mouth agape. There were two bonfires. She sat by Kate at the smaller. Mikey McCabe was playing his fiddle around the other; jigging and twisting, turning and stamping. He had jeans on. But Polly could clearly see his legs beneath them. She really couldn’t take her eyes off him. She couldn’t really. He was magnificent.

Polly ate little at supper for she was still full from lunch. She washed up diligently and made tea for Kate, Clinton and Charle(s).

‘I have a slight headache,’ she said, swiping her brow with the back of her hand so that she covered her eyes as she spoke, ‘I think I’ll take a stroll.’

‘You want to wait till I’ve finished my tea?’ offered Kate.

‘I think I’ll go right now if you don’t mind,’ Polly declined politely, ‘I must nip it in the bud.’

A headache? A stroll? But Polly is positively stomping along Main Street, forking right, then right again. Springing through the petticoats then climbing up on to the skirts of Hubbardtons.

No moon. No need.

I must nip it in the bud.

Turn right.

The house, pale yellow-pink in night light, still smelling divine.

‘Hey! You came.’

‘Mikey.’

‘You came.’

‘I can’t do this.’

‘You’re here.’

Mikey was leaning against one of the corner posts of the house. Polly climbed on to the platform and walked over to him. He was still in jeans and now wore a polarfleece top to ward off the chill of the September night. He had her locked into his eyes. She could not get away. Not even if she had tried.

‘I,’ Polly said, as Mikey straightened up and walked over to meet her, bang in the centre of the house, ‘can’t do this.’

‘Do what?’ he asked softly, his lips parted and damp. ‘Do this?’ he enquired as he stroked her hair and brought her hand to touch his. ‘Or this?’ he asked, pulling her closer and breathing a kiss on to her forehead. ‘Or is it this,’ he wondered aloud as he tipped up her chin and lowered his face over hers, ‘that you can’t do?’ Their lips were less than an inch apart. She could feel his breath over her cheek. His eyes were so close, so dark and deep. She could hardly breathe. ‘Is it this that you can’t do,’ he said, without the question mark, as he sank his lips against hers. He flicked his tongue. It was surprisingly cold against her top lip. She really could not breathe. As she gasped for air, he plunged his tongue deep into her mouth where it immediately leapt about, sweeping across the underside of her teeth, pressing at the roof of her mouth, searching out her tongue and pulling it into a frantic dance with his. Her arms were about his shoulders.

How did they get there?

She was kissing with a hunger that umpteen apple pies could not diminish. Mikey pulled away and placed his hands on his hips.

‘Well, girl, it sure looks like you can, indeed, do this.’

Polly could not speak, let alone protest, because her voice, it seemed, was only for gasping and her heart was in her mouth anyway. Simultaneously, it was also beating hard and fast between her legs. Mikey came close again, encircled one hand around Polly’s waist and pushed the other up under her crotch. He pressed and rubbed and as he did so, the seam of her jeans massaged her clitoris. She could have fainted. Instead, she moaned and swayed, closed her eyes and tensed her thighs as he grazed her neck with his teeth. He took his hand away and cupped her right breast, suddenly pinching hard at the nipple. Now they weren’t kissing. They weren’t saying anything. They were breathing heavily, gorging on each other’s faces.

‘Christ,’ Mikey said hoarsely, scooping Polly against himself, bucking his groin gently against her. Automatically, she travelled her hand down his body and felt his erection defiant through denim. She rubbed him and squeezed along the impressive length of his cock while they stared at each other. They ate at each other’s mouths again.

A noise. Footsteps.

‘Hallo?’

Jojo! Quick! Into the trees.

‘Hallo?’

They watched as Jojo clambered aboard her new house and walked round it in a slow waltz of sorts.

‘Hi there, little house!’ they heard her repeat over and over as she circumnavigated her domain. She didn’t stay long. They neither resented nor blamed her for coming. They’d have done the same, they agreed, if it was their house built on this beautiful plot of land. Jojo walked away, singing and skipping as she went. Mikey had his back to a tree and pulled Polly against him but facing away from him. She pushed her arms back so she could hold on to the belt loops of his jeans and steady herself. It caused her body to arch forward and gave unlimited access to Mikey’s hands. He felt along her stomach, slipped his fingers down the front of her jeans as far as he could reach and then slid them under her knickers. He could not reach far enough, despite her wriggling, so he cupped and fondled both her breasts instead and then encircled her neck with his hands, squeezing, quite tightly. It felt dangerous. It was. Wasn’t it?

The ground was unbelievably soft. Mikey had laid her down on it, removed her boots and jeans arid placed his fleece and his shirt under her body. He was stepping out of his jeans, looming over her in white jockey shorts, his erection holding out the fabric like the mast of a marquee. He straddled her, kissed her and then set to work on each of her nipples in turn, while she tried to reach his cock which was tantalizingly beyond her stretch. God she wanted him. All of him. Inside her. She bucked her body up and sat with her face against his stomach, his cock stiff between her breasts. She had a hand on each buttock and started, teasingly slowly, to inch his underpants down. The shaft of his penis sprang out of the fabric, his balls still concealed.

‘Polly,’ he murmured, ‘God, you’re something else.’ Slowly she lowered her mouth over his cock, making sure he could feel her hot breath over it before her lips touched down.

‘Polly,’ his voice was rising with his excitement. She kissed the very tip of him with the lightest of lips. Then she gulped down as much of him as would reasonably fit.

‘Polly.’

Gosh, his voice was high. What power!

‘Polly!’

Hang on, that’s not his voice at all. That’s Kate’s.

Kate?

What’s going on?

Where’s Mikey gone?

‘Come on sleepy head, it’s school time.’

If fantasy is fiction, does it preclude reality entirely? Dreams may not be real but they are genuine; truth often contained therein.

Was the reality really only that Mikey had merely done no more than greet her, introduce himself and ask if she was from England, and all briefly at lunch-time? Was that really all he had done?

Polly felt quite sick. Sick with dismay that it had only been a damn dream, sick with worry that she should be thus dismayed and sick at herself for her perceived infidelity. That she had had the dream at all deeply distressed her and yet she was also troubled by her disappointment at being woken. She worried that she had been writhing as Kate tried to wake her. Had she said anything revealing in her sleep? Why had she never dreamt about Max in such a way? Had he ever dreamt so explicitly about her? About anyone else? But it made her feel sick that he might have done; about someone else. And yet how could she have done this? To Max? Would she even have noticed Mikey had she not felt so uneasy about the phone call with Max?

I haven’t fantasized like this at all. Haven’t ever needed to. Hang on, it wasn’t a fantasy at all – it was but a dream. Phew! I can’t determine what I dream. I’m innocent.

She lay in bed, her hand resting gently over her pubis. The hair there was damp. She tunnelled between the lips of her sex; she oozed wetness. With an ear peeled and eyes clamped to the slightly ajar door, she masturbated. She didn’t think of Max. She didn’t think of Mikey. She thought instead of a film star and closed her eyes as she came.

Dominic’s party was OK, Max supposes, as he settles at his drawing board and leafs through the briefs clipped at the top.

Quite good, actually. Except for being lumbered with the clearing up because Dom’s hangover rendered him immobile all day. Shame that Polly phoned. I can’t believe I forgot, that’s not like me.

Max must work on the design for a media agency’s Christmas party invitation, and comes up with an idea to manipulate the text into the shape of a wine glass. Because he must perfect the design first, he ignores the precise wording the client has ordered. A letter to Polly will provide the perfect practice vehicle. He doodles wine-glass shapes quickly and then commences.

It’s a good design, Max is pleased with it. He can’t show the client this particular one, of course, not least because he’s going to send it to Polly straight away. After lunch, he’ll re-do it and insert the commissioned wording. Somehow, he feels closer to Polly just writing to her than he did when speaking to her by phone but he’ll call her at midnight because he must, because no doubt she’ll be waiting. That’s in twelve hours’ time. Currently, Mikey McCabe is laying her down under the trees. Max isn’t to know, though. How can he know what Polly is dreaming?

Polly beat Max to it. She skipped dinner easily because she hadn’t been able to eat all day anyway. She felt wretched, believing herself to have been unfaithful. She also felt sick with worry that she was far from Max’s mind anyway, that she was perhaps slipping from his heart. Why else would he have forgotten to call her? Why else would he be so preoccupied with some stupid party of Dominic’s? Adrenalin surged as she dialled.

‘Hullo?’

Bloody Dominic.

‘Dominic, it’s Polly. Max, please.’

I don’t like you any more.

‘Hey Polly!’

Party animal, bad influence.

‘Max, please.’

‘Sure,’ said Dominic, unaware of his crime and presuming Polly merely being frugal with the transatlantic call. ‘Take care, girl, speak to you soon.’

Hopefully not.

‘Polly?’

He sounds tired.

‘Hullo.’

She sounds low.

‘I,’ stumbled Max, ‘I wrote to you today. Posted it Swiftair.’

‘Thank you,’ Polly responded, having still not received his first letter.

Well, have you written to him?

I’ve almost finished a very long letter, actually, that I started before I even left England and continued on the flight.

‘Saturday?’ she started, feeling low and little and at last forgetting all about Mikey.

‘God, I’m so sorry about all of that,’ Max said, ‘I felt terrible.’

‘So did I,’ Polly said carefully. She could envisage Max so clearly, most probably sat on the kitchen table, socked feet on a chair. Maybe in his Norwegian fisherman jumper. No, it’s still mild; probably a polo shirt on top of a T-shirt.

‘Polly?’ said Max, leaving the kitchen table and pressing his forehead against the fridge, ‘still there?’

‘Yes,’ she affirmed quietly.

‘I don’t like this,’ Max said sadly.

‘What?’ responded the tiny voice over an ocean and a continent away, ‘what’s “this”?’

‘Speaking to you,’ he explained, ‘on the phone. It seems only to magnify the physical distance between us.’

Polly was quiet. Max continued, ‘I find it painful. I can’t say enough. I can’t say it right. As you said, the telephone is cruel, Button, it gives you false hope of intimacy. You sound so clear. You sound just like you. You sound so bloody near. But you’re not. I could turn around, positive that you’re just beside me. See, but you’re not. Do you see?’

‘I do,’ answered Polly, searching for Max in Kate’s kitchen and not finding him. He had shed light on a situation she previously could not fathom and she felt relieved and settled for it. ‘Do you know, you’re quite right, Max. I think if I hadn’t actually phoned on Saturday – just heard about the evening in a sentence in a letter some time later instead – I wouldn’t have felt so —’ Words eluded her.

Max, Max, I do love you. I know that I do.

‘Polly? You wouldn’t have felt so – what?’

‘Um,’ she pondered, ‘isolated?’

‘Ah.’

‘So open to wild suggestion.’

On my part as much as yours. Bloody Mikey McCabe – as if!

They fell silent and listened to each other breathe. If Max closed his eyes, he could almost feel the top of her head by his lips. Polly shut her eyes and conjured Max standing right beside her.

‘Max,’ she said, without opening her eyes so that he’d remain there for a few moments longer, ‘what are you wearing?’

‘My navy polo shirt and a red T-shirt, why?’

‘Just wondered,’ Polly replied with a smile. ‘I thought you were, you see. In your socks?’

‘Indeed. Bet you’re wearing your floaty brown skirt and your cream Aran knit?’

‘Spot on, boyo!’ said Polly in her black jeans and her new, grey, Hubbardtons Academy sweatshirt.

But I love him. White lies are a lover’s duty. His happiness is my charge.

‘See,’ Max announced, ‘we don’t need the phone at all, do we? I think I feel closer to you without it – do you agree?’

‘Yes,’ said Polly, crying silently, wishing she was in her brown skirt and Aran knit, ‘it’s true. The distance is spelt out so heartlessly by the phone.’

‘So, shall we telepathize instead of telephone? See how it goes?’

‘Let’s,’ Polly agreed, ‘and write. Often.’

‘Weekly,’ Max assured her.

‘At the very least.’

‘Swiftair,’ Max stressed.

‘’Kay,’ said Polly.

Polly slept superbly that night. She dreamt Max had appeared at Hubbardtons in his Beetle. When she had asked him what on earth he was doing there (her feet off the floor, her arms clamped about his neck and his answer initially swamped by her kisses) he said his studio was around the corner, like it always was, silly old thing.

Max slept fitfully. He knew he’d made a sensible suggestion, done the right thing (as was his wont), but it currently served only to acknowledge unequivocally that Polly was far away and for a long time too. It made him sad. Confused a little. How could he not want to speak to her directly? In his dream, he went to Polly’s flat expecting her to be there. Why wouldn’t she be? America? Where’s that then? Only Polly wasn’t there at all. The woman who answered the door had never heard of her. Come on in, please, she invited Max. They sat on the sofa that the woman assured him belonged to no Polly Fenton. She made him tea. She looked like a supermodel and she gave him a terrific blow job.

Max wrenched himself awake in a sweat.

‘No!’

He’d messed the sheets.

‘God, no.’

He went to the kitchen, drank water and made himself cocoa. It was half four in the morning. It was still yesterday in Vermont.

Shall I call her? Just quickly?

He resisted.

He felt awful.

I don’t care if it was a dream. I can’t believe I did that to Polly.

He slept the rest of the night on the sofa.