Polly Brown Read online

  POLLY BROWN by Tricia Bennett

  Published by Creation House

  A Charisma Media Company

  600 Rinehart Road

  Lake Mary, Florida 32746

  www.charismamedia.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  Cover design by Terry Clifton

  Copyright © 2007 by Patricia Bennett

  All rights reserved

  Visit the author’s website: http://www.hopeinyourheart.com

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007926958

  International Standard Book Number: 978-1-59979-214-9

  E-book International Standard Book Number: 978-1-61638-930-7

  First Edition

  07 08 09 10 11 — 987654321

  Printed in the United States of America

  This book is dedicated to the orphan inside each one of us.

  “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you!”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  WE WANT TO thank our three children, Antonia, Reuben, and James, for supporting our dream, as well as two of our many foster girls, Emma and Anna, who consider us to be their second Mum and Dad, and whom we hold close to our heart.

  Also we would like to thank some of the many precious people we have met since leaving the UK a year ago to arrive on American soil, including Dr. Troy Miller and the Potters House and their Turn Around Project (TAP) which helps young people and others to get their lives back on track, including dear Mr. Young who, despite getting old, still packs a powerful hug! And also to all at Youth Challenge of Florida, whom we love so very much. Thank you to Linda Hall and her caring team who do so much to reach into the lives of many at their homeless shelter. A big thanks also goes to Grace Tab for all their support and encouragement towards us. And to Al and Vickie Sikes for their help in setting up our English Tearoom called “Polly’s Pantry” (themed on this book), here in Wildwood, near The Villages, in Central Florida.

  We came to this country not knowing a single soul, so thank you Liz and Charlie Parrot for inviting us, complete strangers from the UK, to share your special Thanksgiving Day meal within days of our arrival. And thank you to Lorraine Harris (a fellow author), and her husband, Lamont, for their support and friendship and for helping us launch our first book signing in The Villages. Thanks also to my lovely Spanish sister Kenilia and her family, as well as Vivienne and Al Levine for their wonderful friendship and constant encouragement.

  Also to our friend Watchman, who visits prisons and schools, and whose music inspires the youth of Great Britain to believe and hope for better things. Thanks also to Roberta Cousins who has abandoned her life in England to rescue children from off the streets in Uganda.

  We would like to send our love to Dave and Tisha Knowles, Carlos and Valerie Macuix, Dr. Vija and Margaret Sodera, Jacquie Long, Steve and Georgie Bailey, Chris and Lottie Seaton, Peter and Felicity Wilkes, Kim and Emma Connor, Simon and Catherine Mouatt, as well as dear friends Mike and Suzie Collins who are heading for Canada, and Steve and Carol Bourne in Vero Beach. And to all our other good friends whom sadly we have had to leave behind in England, to embark on this exciting journey with Polly!

  And thank you to Tanya Courtenage and all the staff at Betel International for all the work you do rescuing teenagers from drug and other addictions in the UK, for you have saved so many precious lives with your work.

  We would also like to thank all the staff of Families For Children, who work so hard to make foster children’s lives both safe and happy. Also we would like to make mention of a wonderful school called Michael Ayres Junior in Bognor Regis. Also we would like to thank Rose Green Infant and Junior School, Nyewood Junior, and Bishop Luffa School in Chichester, for working so hard on behalf of my own children as well as for our foster children.

  We would also like to thank Allen Quain and all the staff at Creation House who have worked so hard to produce this book.

  Our thanks also to The Carpenters House in Eustis, Florida, a privately run Children’s Home run by Pat and Linda Manfredi, for letting us have the privilege of becoming aunt and uncle to their sixteen or more, beautiful children. And also we would like to thank Mukkala and his family who pour out their lives daily for the children in our orphanage in India. Also Pastor Solomon and his family in Hyderabad for all they do in their hometown and beyond.

  Ooh and I mustn’t forget to thank my extremely patient husband, John, who has been a tower of strength in every time of trouble, and has never doubted me, even when I doubted myself! Such men are a rare, rare breed!

  CONTENTS

  1 Polly’s Sad, Humdrum Life

  2 Oliver the Caterpillar

  3 The Copper Kettle Tearoom

  4 Boritz on the Warpath

  5 The Mole Crisis

  6 Oliver’s Rather Clever Disappearing Act

  7 School, Glorious School

  8 The Pea Problem

  9 Good-bye, Thomas

  10 Dr. Chipatti to the Rescue

  11 Flustered by Feathers

  12 It Is Good to Be a Cracked Pot

  13 The Poppy Field

  14 The Funeral

  15 In Dominum Spiritum Sanctum

  16 Truth Comes in a Day

  17 Close Every Door to Me

  18 Polly’s Near-Death Experience

  19 The Valley of Lost Souls

  20 Hope in Your Heart Hospital

  21 Many Misunderstandings

  22 Storming the Plane

  23 Pedro and the Street Children

  24 I Say, Anyone for Tennis?

  25 Another Dark Night of the Soul

  26 All Aboard the Queen Mary

  27 Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend

  28 Beauty and the Beast

  29 Tobias Hits the Jackpot

  30 The Gulley of Lost Dreams

  31 Pack Up All Your Cares and Woes

  32 Langdon’s Epitaph

  33 Herbert’s Full Recovery

  34 “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”

  35 Polly’s Last Will and Testament

  36 Piadora at Last

  37 Apples Galore

  38 Tea With Hodgekiss

  39 Polly Is Somewhat Enlightened

  40 Time to Go Home

  Chapter 1

  POLLY’S SAD, HUMDRUM LIFE

  “ONCE UPON A time…” began the storyteller. His young, captive audience had his full attention, for all those gathered around truly loved to hear magical tales. The storyteller secretly smiled to himself, opened the book, and began reading.

  A huge medieval castle stood perched high on a steep hill overlooking a sleepy little town in the heart of the English countryside. It had been built centuries before to fight off all the wicked enemies determined to conquer the town and take its inhabitants captive. Many bloody battles had been fought and won there. As news of these most ferocious encounters spread across the kingdom, enemy after enemy was forced to admit that this castle, and therefore this town, was indeed unconquerable. As a result they were given no choice but to turn their attentions to other lands with less fortified castles to take siege and conquer, leaving this little English town to finally enjoy great peace. Therefore the valiant knights of the castle found themselves unexpectedly redundant, with little more to do than twiddle their thumbs and paint their toenails bright red.

  Finally there came a time when they grew so bored that, after much debate, they reached the unanimous deci
sion to put their swords back into their scabbards forever. Once they did that, they felt most relieved as they removed their disgracefully heavy armor and hung it up on the personalized pegs provided in the huge, baronial hall. Then, after giving the plants one final watering, they gave each other a kiss and a hug before swapping addresses, each promising to keep in touch (though any knight worth his salt would indeed never break such a vow).

  With their good-byes over, they sadly departed the castle forever, stopping only to pick up some postcards as a reminder of all the mischievous fun they’d had together. They then headed home to their families, who had sorely missed them over the years. After their departure, the castle lay idle for hundreds of years. Thick dust gathered in every corner, and their wonderfully shiny suits of armor slowly corroded into little heaps of iron filings on the cold floor.

  Eventually this most impressive castle became little more than a tourist attraction that people visited from faraway lands, anxious to walk through the magnificent rooms. Their cameras clicked away furiously as they took numerous pictures, which were eventually stored away and forgotten in an attic somewhere, untouched and gathering dust. That is, of course, until many years later when they returned to the town, this time with friends, to once again tour the magnificent castle and update their photo albums.

  However, quite a large part of the castle was out of bounds to the visiting tourists. A big sign that read KEEP OUT OR ELSE! hung on the imposing black gates, making quite certain that any who chose to ignore this notice did so at his or her own peril. Those who did not heed this warning came face-to-face with the vicious dog that patrolled this private section of the castle, with many leaving with the odd chunk or two missing from a leg or an ankle. This savage beast, who answered to the name of Pitstop, was kept ravenously hungry so that he did his job more diligently. He guarded this wing of the castle and was more than delighted to defend it from nosey tourists hoping for a sneaky snapshot.

  The out-of-bounds wing, along with the rest of the castle, belonged to an extremely wealthy duke. Many years earlier, he decided to allow it to be used as an orphanage. It was home to nearly thirty or more children who had no mothers or fathers, and therefore, nowhere else to live and to be cared for. This is where our heroine Polly lived, along with her two brothers. They all lived under the watchful eye of Mr. and Mrs. Scumberry, their guardians, whom all the children, Polly included, were required to call Aunt Mildred and Uncle Boritz.

  Uncle Boritz was a short, extremely rotund man. But what he lacked in height, he made up for in other ways. He was so well-versed in wielding his power that all who lived under his roof trembled at the very sight of him. His shiny, bald head was shaped like an egg, and his long nose was peppered with warts. He had a large mustache, and he wore a thick pair of black spectacles.

  Aunt Mildred, on the other hand, was as tall as a skyscraper and hideously thin, with the exception of her posterior, which was extraordinarily large. Her scrawny neck was bare, as every wisp of her graying hair was scraped off her prim face. Sadly, her thin lips seemed permanently pursed, for very little in life appeared to amuse her. Polly had never witnessed Aunt Mildred’s stony face break out into the tiniest of smiles, as with great purpose she strode around the castle in her flat, old-fashioned shoes.

  “Now, I think at this stage it would be fair to point out,” said the storyteller, “that most young ladies living in castles are princesses, but this was not the case for Polly. Indeed, Polly longed to feel special and wanted, just like other princesses who lived in fine castles. Instead, she had to live with the sad truth that she was an orphan for which no one truly cared. This made Polly very unhappy and, at times, fearful of what her future might hold,” said the storyteller, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper. His young and now-captivated audience turned and looked at one another, their eyes visibly widening. For to those present, to have no mother or father seemed awful and quite impossible to imagine. The storyteller paused and smiled at his troubled young audience, for he hoped that by the end of his tale they would be much wiser!

  Polly’s full name was Polly Esther Brown, and despite being almost eleven years old, she stood 3 feet 10¾ inches tall when she took off her shoes and measured her height against the wall. This made her despair, for she longed to be taller like many of her foster sisters. She was also decidedly thin, and this made her shabby clothes hang rather badly on her waiflike frame. She was not particularly pretty either, for her eyes were not only slightly crossed, but also muddy brown in color, matching her brown, unkempt hair, which fell somewhere between her chin and her shoulders. To make things worse, she had what she considered to be fairly enormous gaps in her slightly crooked teeth. Polly did not make a habit of smiling, because she believed herself to be positively ugly, and this fact alone made her feel most melancholic.

  Polly had often secretly thought to herself that maybe, just maybe, if she had been born with blonde, curly hair and blue eyes and with a name such as Pandora, Antonia, Ruby, or Harriet, her mother would have kept her instead of putting her and with her brothers James and Thomas into an orphanage. This thought had been with Polly ever since she discovered thinking as a pastime, and Polly had plenty of time to think, for she was a very lonely young girl.

  It was not uncommon for Uncle Boritz to find Polly weeping in a corner. He would observe her over his thick-rimmed glasses as though she were some insect that needed to be crushed underfoot like a cockroach. Indeed, he had little time or sympathy for such sensitive, troubled mites as Polly. He offered no words of comfort to ease her increasing and most apparent distress; in fact, her plight seemed to amuse him. Eventually, having tired of observing her, he would break into a wide grin and cheerfully declare, “Polly, laugh, and the world laughs with you; cry, and you cry alone.” Sadly, this would make her weep even more.

  For some unfathomable reason, Uncle Boritz never failed to give words of “comfort” whenever he saw her huddled in a corner in this pitiful state. After this he would then break into raucous laughter before turning on his heels to continue down the long corridor. He would give no further thought to her plight as he jangled his big bunch of jailer’s keys with Pitstop, his faithful rottweiler, following devotedly in his shadow. The two of them were inseparable and bore an uncanny resemblance to each other; they both had large, yellow teeth and sagging potbellies. As master and beast wound their way down the many long corridors of the castle, Polly could always trace their movements by following the trail of slimy slobber left by Pitstop on the highly polished oak floors.

  Today was Polly’s eleventh birthday, and she saw no reason to be happy at all, for she had no birthday cards, no presents, no birthday cake, and no party to celebrate the occasion. Why she had ever expected any form of celebration is unclear, for year after year she had hoped in vain that this would be the special year when she would receive a nice present and have a party. On her eleventh birthday she found herself wistfully dreaming and hoping for a pink pair of ballet shoes. But sadly, all the wishing in the world had done her no good, for the day was almost over, and, as usual, she had received nothing but extra cleaning jobs around the vast castle she knew as home. Polly had lived at the castle for six long years, and with each day that passed she found herself getting sadder and sadder. She was beginning to despair that her little life held no hope. She prayed continuously for a miracle, but it never seemed to come.

  She had spent these past years feeling utterly desperate for somebody—anybody—to help her and her brothers and come to their rescue. She always faithfully attended church and listened very seriously to the sermons. They made it quite plain that God was standing by, ready to lend a helping hand and perform miracles if people only cared to ask for them. Take, for instance, sweet Mrs. Greta Hornchurch, who had disgracefully skived off church for many weeks as she battled with a serious chest infection. On her return, Father Benedict warmly welcomed her back into the fold and gave thanks from the pulpit for the wonderful miracle of her recovery.
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  Polly could not help but observe that Greta was still accompanied by a large oxygen tank on wheels, complete with a tent to help her remain conscious throughout the lengthy service. Polly watched intently as the mask covering her nose and mouth clouded with every breath she exhaled. All this led Polly to wonder whether Greta had any hope of making it to the end of the service without collapsing. But not only had she made it, she was also still happily seated in the pew long after the rest of the congregation had left the church to go home and the good father had returned to the vestry. This left Polly to conclude that if miracles did happen, then both Greta and she needed a far larger miracle if either of them were to have any real and lasting hope.

  As she reflected on Father Benedict’s rather lengthy talk on the Sermon on the Mount, she recalled the Scripture verse he read from the pulpit: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). She had thought at the time that this must surely include her, for she felt very poor in every sense of the word. Likewise, when the Father read, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted” (v. 4), again she found herself wondering how she was meant to feel blessed and comforted when she had never before felt any such feeling in her life. By the time Father Benedict said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (v. 6), Polly could hardly contain herself a moment longer, for surely this one really applied to her. After all, she was always hungry as well as thirsty. So Father Benedict’s poignant sermon left Polly feeling more anxious than ever for an answer to the overwhelming sadness and loneliness, which were her only companions in life.

  She stood in the red phone booth for hours at a time going through numerous possible combinations in an attempt to contact the “Man in the sky,” but all had failed. Once, in total desperation, she dialed 9-9-9, because the sign in the phone booth stated “In Case of Emergency, Dial 9-9-9.” As Polly considered her ongoing crisis to definitely fall into the category of an emergency, she had finally come to believe that she had hit on God’s correct number. She was most disappointed when the only help she was offered was that of the police, ambulance, or fire brigade, for she was more than certain that she required none of these.