Part 4 (1/2)

”I feel for him,” said Mr. Lynn. ”I had to do that to buy my good cello. What is Edna saving her money for?”

”To give to Leslie,” said Polly.

”Oh the awful Leslie,” said Mr. Lynn. ”From what you said in your letter, I see him as dark, sulky, and rather thick-set. Utterly spoiled, of course. Is Edna saving to buy him a motor bike?”

”When he's old enough. She gives him anything he wants,” said Polly. ”She's just bought him an earring shaped like a skull with diamonds for eyes.”

”Shaped like a skull,” agreed Mr. Lynn, ”for which he is not in the least grateful. How does he get on with my new a.s.sistant?”

”We hate one another,” said Polly. ”But I have to be polite to Leslie in case he guesses I'm not a boy.”

”And for fear of annoying Edna,” said Mr. Lynn. ”She'd have you out like a shot if Leslie told tales.”

When they had settled about Leslie and described the shop to one another-which took a long time, because both of them kept thinking of new things-they went on to Tan Coul himself. ”I don't understand about him,” Mr. Lynn said dubiously. ”What relation does he bear to me? I mean, what happens when he's needed? Do I have to become Mr. Piper in order to become Tan Coul, or can I switch straight to Tan Coul from here?”

Polly frowned. ”It isn't like that. You mustn't ask it to bits.”

”Yes I must,” Mr. Lynn said politely. ”Please don't put me off. This is the most important piece of hero business yet, and I think we should get it right. Now-can I switch straight to Tan Coul or not?”

”Ye-es,” Polly said. ”I think so. But it's not that simple. Mr. Piper is you too.”

”But I don't have to rush to Whatsis-on-the-Water and begin each job from there, do I?”

”No. And neither do I,” said Polly.

”That's a relief,” said Mr. Lynn. ”Even so, think how awkward it will be if the call comes while I'm in the middle of a concert or you're doing an exam. How do do the calls come, by the way?” the calls come, by the way?”

Polly began to feel a bit put-upon. ”Things just happen that need us,” she said. ”I think. Like the giant. You hear cras.h.i.+ng and you run there.”

”With my axe,” Mr. Lynn agreed. ”Where do you suggest I keep my axe in London?”

Polly turned round, laughing. It was so obvious she hardly needed to point.

”In a cello case, like a gangster?” Mr. Lynn said dubiously. ”Well, I could get them to make a little satin cus.h.i.+on for it, I suppose.”

Polly looked at him suspiciously. ”You're laughing at me.”

”Absolutely not!” Mr. Lynn seemed shocked. ”How could I? But I don't think you realize just how much that good cello cost.”

It was odd, Polly thought then, and later, and nine years after that, remembering it all. She never could completely tell how seriously Mr. Lynn took the hero business. Sometimes, like then, he seemed to be laughing at them both. At other times, like immediately after that, he was far more serious about it than Pollywas.

”But I still don't understand about Tan Coul,” he said thoughtfully, with his big hands clasped round his knees-they were sitting at opposite ends of the hearth rug. ”Where is he when he-or I-do his deeds? Are the giants and dragons and so forth here and now, or are they somewhere else entirely?”

If it had been Nina asking this, Polly would have answered that was not the way you played. But Mr. Lynn had already proved that you could not put him off like that, and she could see he was serious. She pushed aside the empty plates and knelt up in order to think strenuously. Her hair got in the way and she hooked it behind her ears. ”Sort of both,” she said. ”The other place they come from and where you do your deeds is is here-but it's not here too. It's-Oh, bother you! I just can't explain!” here-but it's not here too. It's-Oh, bother you! I just can't explain!”

”Don't get cross,” Mr. Lynn begged her. ”Maybe there are are no words for it.” no words for it.”

But there were, Polly realized. She saw in her mind two stone vases spinning, one slowly, the other fast, and stopping to show half a word each. With them she also saw Seb watching, looking scornful. ”Yes there are,” she contradicted Mr. Lynn. ”It's like those vases. Now-here and Nowhere.” The idea of Seb was so strong in her mind as she said it that she felt as if she had also told Mr. Lynn how Seb had tried to make her promise not to see him.

”Nowhere,” repeated Mr. Lynn. ”Now-here. Yes, I see.” He was not thinking of Seb at all. Polly did not know whether she was relieved or annoyed. Then he said, ”You mentioned a horse in your letter. A Nowhere horse, I suppose. What is my horse like? Do you have one too?”

”No,” said Polly. She would have liked one, but she was sure she had not. ”Your Nowhere horse is like that,” she said, pointing to the picture of the Chinese horse on the wall.

They both looked up at it. ”I'd hoped for something a bit calmer,” Mr. Lynn confessed. ”That one obviously kicks and bites. Polly, I don't think I'd stay on his back five seconds.”

”You'll have to try,” Polly said severely.

Mr. Lynn took it meekly. ”Oh well,” he said. ”Perhaps if I spoke to it in Chinese-Now, how did I come to find this vicious beast?” They were thinking of various ways Mr. Piper could have met the horse, when Mr. Lynn happened to see his watch. ”When does your mother want you back? Is she coming here?”

”Half past five,” said Polly, and then had an awful moment when she seemed to have forgotten the lawyer's address. She had just not listened in the taxi. But, because Ivy had made her say it, it had gone down into her memory somehow. She found she could recite it after all.

Mr. Lynn unfolded himself and stood up. ”Lucky that's quite near here. Come on. We'd better get going if we're to be there by five-thirty.”

Polly got her coat. Mr. Lynn put on a once s.h.i.+ny anorak almostas worn-out as Edna's dressing gown, and they set off, down the hollow stairs and into the now dark street. Strangely enough, Polly forgot to look in case Mr. Leroy or Laurel were following her. The road was so busy and Londonish and full of traffic that she only thought how glad she was to be able to grab hold of Mr. Lynn's hand, and how grateful she was that he took her a shortcut down small streets where there were fewer cars and even some trees. The trees still had some s.h.i.+vering leaves clinging to them. Polly was just thinking that those leaves looked almost golden in the orange of the streetlights when the noise began in the street round the corner.

It was about seven different noises at once. A car hooter blared. With it were mixed the awful screech of brakes and a splintering, cras.h.i.+ng sound. Behind this were angry voices yelling and several screams. But the noises in front of these, which made it obviously different from a simple car crash, were iron-battering sounds and a terrible shrill yelling that was the most panic-stricken noise Polly had ever heard.

Mr. Lynn and Polly looked at one another. ”Do you think we should go and see?” Mr. Lynn said.

”Yes,” said Polly. ”It might be a job for us.” She did not believe it was for an instant, and she knew Mr. Lynn did not either, but it seemed the right thing to say.

They went round the corner. Mr. Lynn said, ”Good Lord!” and a lot seemed to happen in no time at all.

The thing making the noise was a horse. It was loose in a narrow street with a rope bridle trailing off it, dodging and rearing as people tried to catch it-or the people might have been running away from it: it was not clear which. Slewed across the street behind the horse was a car with a broken headlight. A man was leaning angrily out of the car window, shouting. And the horse, a great, luminous, golden thing in the streetlights, slipping and crunching in the gla.s.s from the broken headlight, had just dodged someone's grabbing hands and was now coming battering toward Polly and Mr. Lynn, screaming more like a person than a horse. There was just an instant, while Mr. Lynn said ”Good Lord!” when Polly could see Mr. Lynn's eyes behind the orange glow of hisgla.s.ses, staring at her, wide and gray and incredulous. Then the horse was almost on top of them, and it reared.

Polly, to her everlasting disgust, did not behave anything like an a.s.sistant hero. She screamed almost as loudly as the horse and crouched on the pavement with her arms over her head. The horse was huge. It stood above her like a tower of golden flesh and bone, beating the air with its iron hooves, and screaming, screaming. Polly saw a big eye, a rolling bulge of blue-brown and white, shot with veins and tangled in pale horsehair, stuff like detergent bubbles dripping, and huge, square teeth. She knew the horse was mad with terror, and she screamed and screamed.

She heard Mr. Lynn say, ”Here.” Something hard and figure-eight-shaped was pushed into her fending hand. Polly's fingers closed round it without telling her what it was. She just knelt and screamed among flying shadows while the front hooves of the horse crashed down close beside her with Mr. Lynn's feet next to them. Then its back feet crashed. Mr. Lynn's hunched shoulder had hit the horse in its side as its back feet left the ground to lash at Polly, and swung it round just enough to miss her. After that, he managed to grab the rope trailing from the horse's nose. There was furious trampling and squealing. Sparks that were pale in the orange light came from under the horse's feet, and the horse's head, twisting and flattened, more like a snake's than a horse's, darted at Mr. Lynn's arm and tried to fix the huge teeth in him.

Mr. Lynn said words which Polly, up to then, had thought only Dad and the dustmen knew, and pulled hard down on the rope. There was a further rush of feet and sparks, and the two of them were trampling away from Polly toward the crashed car. The horse stopped screaming. Polly could hear the things Mr. Lynn was saying quite clearly. Most of it was to the horse, but some of it seemed to be just swearing. She giggled rather, because Mr. Lynn was not behaving like a hero either. Nor did he look like one. As the horse stamped round in a half-circle in front of the broken car, with Mr. Lynn hanging on to the rope at the end of both long arms and his anorak up under his armpits, he looked more like an orangutan than anything else, or perhaps a spider monkey. His hair, which even the wind at the funeral had not done much to disarrange, was all over his face and he seemed to have lost his gla.s.ses.

Here Polly's fingers told her again about the figure-of-eight object she was clutching. She looked down and found it was a pair of gold-rimmed gla.s.ses. She scrambled up and backed against a wall behind her, holding them very carefully. It would be awful if she broke Mr. Lynn's gla.s.ses. The horse was sliding about in the broken headlights. ”Look where you put your b.l.o.o.d.y feet, you fool!” Mr. Lynn said to it. It looked as if he was going to make it stand still any second.

The motorist climbed angrily out of his smashed car. ”I say!” he called out in a loud, hectoring voice. ”Is this your d.a.m.ned horse? It could have killed me!”

That set the horse off again. It became all orange, rearing panic, high on its back legs, with Mr. Lynn frantically leaning on the rope. He swore at the horse, then at the motorist. ”No, it is not my horse,” he added. ”Get out of the way!”

The horse managed to land out with a hind foot before its front feet hit the road. The motorist bolted for his life. Mr. Lynn yelled at the horse that its grandfather was a donkey with venereal disease and told it to Come off that! Come off that! And the two of them came rus.h.i.+ng back up the street again. They trampled round in front of Polly, with Mr. Lynn practically swinging on the rope. Polly could feel waves of terror coming off the horse. She had to hold both hands, and Mr. Lynn's gla.s.ses, to her mouth to stop herself screaming this time. In front of her were huge, bent, golden hind legs, stronger than she could have imagined, and a tail that lashed her face like her own hair in the wind, only harder, smelling of burning. Someone's burned it! she thought. No wonder it's so upset! And the two of them came rus.h.i.+ng back up the street again. They trampled round in front of Polly, with Mr. Lynn practically swinging on the rope. Polly could feel waves of terror coming off the horse. She had to hold both hands, and Mr. Lynn's gla.s.ses, to her mouth to stop herself screaming this time. In front of her were huge, bent, golden hind legs, stronger than she could have imagined, and a tail that lashed her face like her own hair in the wind, only harder, smelling of burning. Someone's burned it! she thought. No wonder it's so upset!

The next thing Polly knew, the motorist was standing beside her, watching the horse and Mr. Lynn rush away down the street. ”How was I to know it wasn't his b.l.o.o.d.y horse?” he said to Polly. ”He's behaving as if he knows it.”

”Be quiet,” Polly said. Her voice was thick from screaming. ”Mr. Lynn's being a hero.”

The motorist did not seem at all grateful. ”Well, he needn't have said that that to me,” he said. When Polly did not answer, he gave herup and went to complain to some of the people further down the street. Polly could hear him, all the time Mr. Lynn was dragging the horse to a standstill, telling someone that the horse had appeared out of the blue right in front of his car and that people shouldn't be allowed to own wild animals like that. to me,” he said. When Polly did not answer, he gave herup and went to complain to some of the people further down the street. Polly could hear him, all the time Mr. Lynn was dragging the horse to a standstill, telling someone that the horse had appeared out of the blue right in front of his car and that people shouldn't be allowed to own wild animals like that.

The horse stood still at last, orange flecked with detergent stuff, swis.h.i.+ng its tail. Each of its legs seemed to be shaking at a different speed. Polly could see s.h.i.+vers chasing up and down them as she walked gently toward it. Mr. Lynn was rubbing its nose and calling it soothing bad names. ”You cartload of cat's-meat,” she heard him say. ”Mindless dogfood. They'll eat you in Belgium for less than this.”