My Soul Can Reach
Chapter Two: Polly
"I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light"
~ Sonnets from the Portuguese, XLIII, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
London-born Polly Plummer loved adventure. Her parents attributed it partly to the books she read and partly to 'that Kirke boy' with whom she had become such fast friends when he lived down the row. Despite the description, Mr. and Mrs. Plummer were fond of Digory and they agreed to visits to the old house in the country and correspondence from Greece and India and Italy with rather knowing smiles.
Polly studied French and German and hoped to travel herself one day. Money wasn't quite so plentiful with the Plummers as the Kirkes, and while Digory would have gladly had her along - 'Just like old times.' – and not cared for the raised eyebrows, Polly's parents would certainly have objected. Polly joined the Red Cross instead, devoured Digory's letters and wrote back about the training at Tredegar House and how the best things required work.
When the war came, Polly got to travel at last, although she saw little of Paris outside of the hospital walls. Adventure came to her in the form of weary young men with bleak eyes and without limbs, filled with stories they couldn't tell. Polly who had known a world wiped clear of life, recognized the bleakness, and reminded herself that worlds were born as well as destroyed. Sometimes she told them that. Some of them believed it.
Grief is great, she wrote to Digory by the light of a candle-lantern, remembering now. The tiny flame put her in mind of a greater one and she added. The home fires are still burning.
When Polly began coughing too hard, she was sent back to Colney Hatch to rest. She was the first from home to become ill, but Mr. Plummer was the first to pass away. After she recovered and the visitors left, Polly sat with her mother until the sun came up, and then returned to the hospital. There were fewer nurses than there had been before.
"'Grief is great,'" she said, when Digory came back from the front with the familiar empty eyes.
They filled with fire, and he nodded, not needing to be told what she'd told the others. "But-"
Grief is great, she thought when the second war began. But He is good.
