you with a brave, manufactured smile aboard her small face. Isn’t time strange? You’ve had five years together and suddenly it doesn’t seem enough. Eight days ago she wasn’t going until next week – ages away in the face of a whole week together. Then you had to think in terms, of days. Yesterday it was tomorrow. This morning it was this afternoon. Now, at noon, it is merely a case of less than a handful of hours.
‘You ready? Shall we go?’
‘Yes and no.’
‘The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back, hey?’
‘Can’t wait to get rid of me, is it?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do.’
‘Shall we?’
‘Sure thing, babe. Let’s burn rubber, hon. Hit it.’
‘Polly Fenton! Don’t you dare forsake your dulcet tones before you’ve even left our shores!’
‘Max, my lover, ‘twas but a jest. My accent and I will sail through this year untainted and return to you unblemished, in one piece. Absolutely fine and in a jiff.’
At Heathrow, Max bought Polly two bottles of her favourite shampoo because there was space in her rucksack and time to do it. They sat over cups of coffee and small bottles of orange juice, not daring to finish them. They tried to do the Guardian crossword but found that the airport tannoy played havoc with the necessary lobe of the brain. They declared the airport clock fast, their watches must be slow, that can’t be the time. Did you hear that? Yes, I did. Oh, that they were hard of hearing!
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Yes I did.’
‘What does “last call” actually mean, Max? Might there not be a “final” one we could wait for?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Oh dear,’ Polly says, ‘they’ve called me by name. Should I go now?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know we said you wouldn’t, but would you? Come all the way?’
‘All the way?’
‘To passport control at any rate?’ she whispers, hiding the colour of her eyes from Max as she closes them to kiss him. Her lips are quivering too much for her to pucker them properly. Max doesn’t mind; he knows her intention and echoes her sentiment with a clumsy bash of his lips against her cheek.
‘Come on Polly, it’s time.’
Silently, they try to pretend they have no idea where passport control is but there’s no avoiding it, all paths seem to lead there and yet they cannot see beyond it; beyond the neon sign ‘Departures’, beyond the uniformed officials behind their melamine lecterns.
‘Here we are.’
‘Can’t.’
‘You have to.’
‘Max. Can’t.’
‘Button, you can.’
‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.’
‘Oh dear. Bye bye.’
‘Bye, sweet girl.’
‘Hold me, Max.’
‘Would passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, please make her way to the departure lounge.’
‘You have to go.’
‘I know. Hold me a moment longer.’
‘This is the final call for passenger Polly Fenton, flying Virgin Atlantic to Boston, make your way to the departure lounge immediately.’
‘Got everything?’
‘Um, not sure, shall we check?’
‘You have everything.’
‘I do?’
‘You do.’
‘I do. OK.’
‘Off you go.’
‘Bye bye.’
‘Bye bye.’
‘Bye.’
Max watched her go away from him.
God, she can’t.
‘Polly!’
He ran towards her. Someone was examining her passport.
Wait!
‘Polly!’
They were handing her passport back to her.
Oh bloody hell, what am I? – what the? – Jesusgod.
‘Polly?’
Her tear-streaked face turned to him.
They regarded each other, Polly biting her lip in a futile bid to keep tears at bay. She wanted to smile for Max. She couldn’t if she was clamping on to her lips. Tears and a smile were much better than neither of either. She lavished both on him. He cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips against her forehead. Then he held her at arm’s length and took hold of her wrists.
Jesusgod, I can’t believe I—
‘Marry me.’
There!
Pardon?
Polly was stunned and far too choked to speak her reply. The passport officer cleared his throat and addressed her, rather ominously, by name. Polly wiped her nose on Max’s shirt. He took her left hand and slipped something along her fourth finger. The orange plastic neck-ring from the small bottle of fruit juice. Scratchy and ridiculously oversized. Exquisite.
‘You’ll have a proper one when you come home. Promise.’
TWO
When John Hubbardton died in 1906 at the age of eighty-nine, he had a minor river and, consequently, the small town along its banks named after him. That the town’s school, which he had founded in 1878, should also be renamed in his honour was a foregone conclusion. Lower South River thus became Hubbardtons River, the town of Lower South was renamed Hubbardtons Spring and the Lower South School became The John Hubbardton Academy. The mountain, in whose embrace all three lay, was also given the man’s name. By the 1920s, river, town, school and mountain were known universally as Hubbardtons. One lived in Hubbardtons, one’s kids were at school at Hubbardtons; summers were spent canoeing Hubbardtons, winters skiing Hubbardtons. We’ll discover the town and the river alongside Polly when she arrives, maybe the mountain too, if she learns to ski, but we can have a sneak preview of the school now, for Polly herself is re-reading her information pack. She is two hours into her journey.
The John Hubbardton Academy is a prep school. Not, you understand, in the British sense (small boys learning rugger and round vowels in preparation for Eton); Hubbardtons is a high-school, a boarding-school, ‘proud to provide a rounded preparation for college’, as proclaimed on page one of the glossy brochure.
‘Here at the John Hubbardton Academy, we’re one big family,’ commences page two. There are 240 students and 45 full-time teachers. When John Hubbardton founded the school 118 years ago it was, by necessity, co-ed. The school went temporarily all-male in a perverted stance against the 1960s, but extended an apology and an invitation to females a decade later. Currently, two thirds of both students and teachers are male. But no one is complaining.
‘We work and play, and we learn and live. Together. And we have 150 acres to do it in.’
It