The History of Mr. Polly

Mr. Polly sat beside the fat woman at one of the little green tables at the back of the Potwell Inn, and struggled with the mystery of life.  It was one of those evenings, serenely luminous, amply and atmospherically still, when the river bend was at its best.  A swan floated against the dark green masses of the further bank, the stream flowed broad and shining to its destiny, with scarce a ripple—­except where the reeds came out from the headland—­the three poplars rose clear and harmonious against a sky of green and yellow.  And it was as if it was all securely within a great warm friendly globe of crystal sky.  It was as safe and enclosed and fearless as a child that has still to be born.  It was an evening full of the quality of tranquil, unqualified assurance.  Mr. Polly’s mind was filled with the persuasion that indeed all things whatsoever must needs be satisfying and complete.  It was incredible that life has ever done more than seemed to jar, that there could be any shadow in life save such velvet softnesses as made the setting for that silent swan, or any murmur but the ripple of the water as it swirled round the chained and gently swaying punt.  And the mind of Mr. Polly, exalted and made tender by this atmosphere, sought gently, but sought, to draw together the varied memories that came drifting, half submerged, across the circle of his mind.

He spoke in words that seemed like a bent and broken stick thrust suddenly into water, destroying the mirror of the shapes they sought.  “Jim’s not coming back again ever,” he said.  “He got drowned five years ago.”

“Where?” asked the fat woman, surprised.

“Miles from here.  In the Medway.  Away in Kent.”

“Lor!” said the fat woman.

“It’s right enough,” said Mr. Polly.

“How d’you know?”

“I went to my home.”

“Where?”

“Don’t matter.  I went and found out.  He’d been in the water some days.  He’d got my clothes and they’d said it was me.”

“They?”

“It don’t matter.  I’m not going back to them.”

The fat woman regarded him silently for some time.  Her expression of scrutiny gave way to a quiet satisfaction.  Then her brown eyes went to the river.

“Poor Jim,” she said. “’E ’adn’t much Tact—­ever.”

She added mildly:  “I can’t ’ardly say I’m sorry.”

“Nor me,” said Mr. Polly, and got a step nearer the thought in him.  “But it don’t seem much good his having been alive, does it?”

“’E wasn’t much good,” the fat woman admitted.  “Ever.”

“I suppose there were things that were good to him,” Mr. Polly speculated.  “They weren’t our things.”

His hold slipped again.  “I often wonder about life,” he said weakly.

He tried again.  “One seems to start in life,” he said, “expecting something.  And it doesn’t happen.  And it doesn’t matter.  One starts with ideas that things are good and things are bad—­and it hasn’t much relation to what is good and what is bad.  I’ve always been the skeptaceous sort, and it’s always seemed rot to me to pretend we know good from evil.  It’s just what I’ve never done.  No Adam’s apple stuck in my throat, ma’am.  I don’t own to it.”

He reflected.

“I set fire to a house—­once.”

The fat woman started.

“I don’t feel sorry for it.  I don’t believe it was a bad thing to do—­any more than burning a toy like I did once when I was a baby.  I nearly killed myself with a razor.  Who hasn’t?—­anyhow gone as far as thinking of it?  Most of my time I’ve been half dreaming.  I married like a dream almost.  I’ve never really planned my life or set out to live.  I happened; things happened to me.  It’s so with everyone.  Jim couldn’t help himself.  I shot at him and tried to kill him.  I dropped the gun and he got it.  He very nearly had me.  I wasn’t a second too soon—­ducking….  Awkward—­that night was….  M’mm….  But I don’t blame him—­come to that.  Only I don’t see what it’s all up to….

“Like children playing about in a nursery.  Hurt themselves at times….

“There’s something that doesn’t mind us,” he resumed presently.  “It isn’t what we try to get that we get, it isn’t the good we think we do is good.  What makes us happy isn’t our trying, what makes others happy isn’t our trying.  There’s a sort of character people like and stand up for and a sort they won’t.  You got to work it out and take the consequences….  Miriam was always trying.”

“Who was Miriam?” asked the fat woman.

“No one you know.  But she used to go about with her brows knit trying not to do whatever she wanted to do—­if ever she did want to do anything—­”

He lost himself.

“You can’t help being fat,” said the fat woman after a pause, trying to get up to his thoughts.

“You can’t,” said Mr. Polly.

“It helps and it hinders.”

“Like my upside down way of talking.”

“The magistrates wouldn’t ’ave kept on the license to me if I ’adn’t been fat….”

“Then what have we done,” said Mr. Polly, “to get an evening like this?  Lord! look at it!” He sent his arm round the great curve of the sky.

“If I was a nigger or an Italian I should come out here and sing.  I whistle sometimes, but bless you, it’s singing I’ve got in my mind.  Sometimes I think I live for sunsets.”

“I don’t see that it does you any good always looking at sunsets like you do,” said the fat woman.

“Nor me.  But I do.  Sunsets and things I was made to like.”

“They don’t ’elp you,” said the fat woman thoughtfully.

“Who cares?” said Mr. Polly.

A deeper strain had come to the fat woman.  “You got to die some day,” she said.

“Some things I can’t believe,” said Mr. Polly suddenly, “and one is your being a skeleton….”  He pointed his hand towards the neighbour’s hedge.  “Look at ’em—­against the yellow—­and they’re just stingin’ nettles.  Nasty weeds—­if you count things by their uses.  And no help in the life hereafter.  But just look at the look of them!”

“It isn’t only looks,” said the fat woman.

“Whenever there’s signs of a good sunset and I’m not too busy,” said Mr. Polly, “I’ll come and sit out here.”

The fat woman looked at him with eyes in which contentment struggled with some obscure reluctant protest, and at last turned them slowly to the black nettle pagodas against the golden sky.

“I wish we could,” she said.

“I will.”

The fat woman’s voice sank nearly to the inaudible.

“Not always,” she said.

Mr. Polly was some time before he replied.  “Come here always when I’m a ghost,” he replied.

“Spoil the place for others,” said the fat woman, abandoning her moral solicitudes for a more congenial point of view.

“Not my sort of ghost wouldn’t,” said Mr. Polly, emerging from another long pause.  “I’d be a sort of diaphalous feeling—­just mellowish and warmish like….”

They said no more, but sat on in the warm twilight until at last they could scarcely distinguish each other’s faces.  They were not so much thinking as lost in a smooth, still quiet of the mind.  A bat flitted by.

“Time we was going in, O’ Party,” said Mr. Polly, standing up.  “Supper to get.  It’s as you say, we can’t sit here for ever.”

The End