The Fox of Richmond Park

by Kate Dreyer

  ‘Psst. Hey, you!’ Vince hissed at the dog. She was white, with tight, curly fur and long, floppy ears. Her bouffant tail wagged frantically.

  ‘Who? Me?’ She searched for the voice. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Behind the bench, but stay where you are. I need your help,’ Vince whispered. The woman tugged lazily at the lead, but was absorbed in her phone and didn’t look up.

  The dog looked nervous. ‘What kind of help? It’s just that, if I’m bad, my human will call me a bad girl and boop me on the nose, and I really don’t like it when she does that.’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing bad… No booping, I promise,’ Vince said.

  ‘Then, sure!’ Her tongue lolled from her mouth. ‘What do you need? Tell me, tell me!’

  Of all the dogs in all of London…

  ‘My friend has fallen down onto the tracks. I need something to pull him up. Can I use your lead?’

  ‘My lead?’ She turned her head. ‘Oh! That lead! Erm, that might be difficult, but…’ She ran to the woman. Vince leaned around the bench to see what she was doing.

  The dog leapt onto the woman’s lap, grabbed her scarf in her teeth and pulled. The woman screamed and her phone fell from her hand and smashed on the floor. The scarf came away from her neck in one smooth motion and the dog jumped down and ran back to Vince.

  ‘Coco! What are you doing?’ the woman shouted, yanking hard on the lead. ‘Bad girl!’

  ‘Will this do?’ Coco said, dropping the scarf at Vince’s feet as she was dragged backwards. ‘Oh no! I think I was bad again…’

  ‘Perfect!’ Vince dashed to the scarf and picked it up in his jaws. He shouted a muffled ‘thank you’ through the material, before running back to Arthur.

  ‘Bad girl, Coco! What has got into you?’ The woman did, indeed, boop her on the nose. ‘Oh my god, is that a fox? It’s bad enough I have to be up this early without you destroying my stuff…’

  The station’s disembodied voice announced the next train, but Vince didn’t have time to listen. ‘Arthur, you still there?’

  ‘Yes, please hurry, Vince. I think I can feel another, um, train coming.’

  ‘Can you grab this in your teeth?’ Vince held the scarf by one end and flicked the other over the edge of the platform.

  ‘I, um, think so.’

  Vince felt the rumbling of the train in his paws. Panic seized him, but he’d almost killed Rita and Laurie, and he wasn’t about to let a tiny hedgehog get crushed under a train.

  ‘Ready?’ Vince said through clenched teeth.

  ‘Yessh!’ came the muffled reply.

  Vince backed up and felt the weight of Arthur at the end of the scarf. He went slowly, so as not to dislodge him. A flash of the oncoming train caught the corner of his eye. He slammed them shut, creeping backwards and pulling at the scarf until he heard a squeak.

  He opened his eyes. The tip of Arthur’s nose was poking over the edge of the platform. The train thundered towards them. Vince gave the scarf one last yank. Arthur sailed through the air and bounced onto the concrete, rolling until he hit the building wall. He unfurled and blinked at Vince. ‘I’m alive! You did it!’

  The woman appeared, Coco dragging her feet behind her. ‘Ugh…’ She bent down and plucked the scarf from the ground with two dainty fingers. She turned to Coco. ‘Gross. Now I have to throw this away.’

  Vince collapsed onto the ground. The train came to halt and the doors opened. The woman and Coco stepped on.

  ‘Should we get on?’ Arthur said.

  ‘Erm…’ Vince pulled himself to his feet. ‘COCO?’

  Coco’s head peered out from the open door.

  ‘This train… Broxbourne?’

  ‘Nope,’ Coco replied.

  ‘Thanks!’ Vince shouted over the beep, as the woman yanked Coco’s head back into the train before the doors slammed on her neck.

  ‘We wait for the next one, I guess,’ Vince said. ‘Let’s find somewhere to wait, away from the edge.’

  ‘Um, agreed,’ Arthur replied.

  *

  Vince and Arthur had been waiting for a while behind the bench when the disembodied voice spoke the name they wanted to hear.

  ‘The next train at platform two will be the five-forty service to Cambridge, calling at Cheshunt, Broxbourne, Roydon…’

  ‘That’s us!’ Arthur said.

  ‘Yup. Remember what we talked about? No curling up. Hang on to me and don’t worry about hurting me, okay? Getting on the train is the most important thing.’

  Arthur nodded. A few humans had arrived since the last train left, but they were bleary eyed and concentrating hard on the phones in their hands. Vince was grateful for those phones, and whatever it was that was so fascinating about them.

  The rumble of the rails and the roar of the massive engine grew louder, and the train appeared in the distance. After the accident with Arthur, Vince’s fear had faded somewhat, and now he was almost excited to see it. The train that would take him to Laurie and Rita. Hopefully.

  ‘Right, let’s go.’ Vince lowered his belly to the floor and Arthur clambered onto his back, biting down on the scruff of Vince’s neck to hold himself still. It was inelegant, but for a few blinks, it would do.

  The train pulled up and the people trudged onto it, eyes down. Vince held his breath and rushed to the door, keeping low. He slipped onto the train and the doors slid shut behind him. The humans were all sitting down, spread around the carriage, with most of the seats unoccupied. Vince exhaled and Arthur let go, dropping to the floor of the train with a bump.

  ‘We did it!’ Arthur whispered.

  ‘Quick, under there.’ Vince dashed under a pair of empty seats, getting as low and as close to the side wall as he could. Arthur wasn’t far behind, and tucked himself into the brush of Vince’s tail. Vince whispered, ‘Now we just have to get off at the right place. Two stops, the voice said.’

  ‘Do you think Rita is, um, okay?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘I think Rita’s fine. You know why?’

  Arthur shook his tiny head.

  ‘Because she’s a brave adventurer, like you.’

  Arthur giggled.

  The train was quiet, the engine the only noise for a while, until it arrived at its first stop. The train voice – different from the station voice – announced the name, but it wasn’t theirs. The doors nearest to them opened and a man got on, then sat down in the seat across from them. His clothes were all black, with a thin strip of blue material hanging from his neck, but – unlike the piece of material the woman had worn to keep her neck warm – Vince could see no discernible function for it. He placed a bag on the seat next to him and began to rummage through it.

  Vince must have caught his eye, because he suddenly stopped rummaging and moved across the seats to peer at him. The man’s eyes widened and he pulled a phone from a pocket on the top of his leg. He held it out in front of him, crouched down, and slowly crept closer to Vince, steadying himself on the seats.

  ‘I think someone’s fare dodging,’ the man said to nobody in particular, then laughed.

  Vince growled, hoping he would go away, but he continued to point the phone at them.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Arthur said.

  ‘Socks told me they make memories or something. Don’t worry, I won’t let him hurt you.’

  The man eventually returned to his seat and alternated between stabbing his fingers at his phone and staring at Vince, a gormless grin plastered across his face. Finally, he pulled a long white string from his bag and spent a while untangling the two round objects hanging from one end before pushing them into his ears. He clicked the other end into the phone, then stuffed it back into his pocket. A grating tssk noise emanated from the white bulbs.

  Arthur screwed up his face. ‘What are those white things? Is he listening to that horrible noise on purpose?’

  ‘I don’t know, it looks like it. Humans are weird.’

  As the train trundled on, Vince found himself becoming surprisingly r
elaxed. Maybe it was the warmth, the rhythmic vibrations of the carriage on the rails, or maybe Rita was right; the train really was the safest place for him to be.

  He wondered if Laurie had been scared, coming on the train with the human, and wished he could have been there to comfort her. But wishing about the past would get him nowhere. He’d come so far, and nothing would stop him from reaching Laurie now.

  After a while, Vince felt the train begin to slow down. ‘I think this is us. Get ready.’

  The train lurched to a stop, almost sending Arthur rolling across the floor, but he managed to climb up onto Vince’s back and grab on with his teeth again before the voice spoke from overheard. ‘Broxbourne. This is Broxbourne station.’

  ‘Ready?’ Vince said. Arthur grunted a reply. Vince ran, the man turned his head and pulled out his phone again, but Vince was already at the door. It was still closed. ‘What?’ A few blinks passed and he began to panic but, finally, the now-familiar hiss came and they slid open. A mass of human legs greeted him, followed by gasps and pointed fingers.

  ‘Look at that! A fox! And is that a… hedgehog?’

  Hands reached into pockets and those already holding their phones thrust them into Vince’s face. Some of the humans behind started tutting and pushing, causing the frontmost legs to stumble onto the train. Vince jumped back, startled, but he had to get out.

  ‘Hold on, Arthur!’ Vince darted between the first pair of legs, which wobbled atop bizarre shoes with a spike for a heel. The woman let out a shout and fell, crashing into another, and together they sank against the edge of the doors. The rest began to part for him and he weaved his way through until he was out in the open.

  Behind him, the group of humans clambered onto the train, snatching glances over their shoulders before the doors closed and blocked their view. The train began to roll away, but Vince stood and watched the open-mouthed and smiling faces through the windows until they were out of sight.

  They were strange creatures, humans. More often than not they seemed oblivious to him, until an opportunity to thrust a phone into his face occurred, but he concluded that they were, overall, a good species. Apart from the one who set the trap in the allotments. And the one who invented trains.

  Silence settled over the station and Vince lowered Arthur to the ground. In front of them, another set of train tracks ran parallel to the ones they’d arrived on, and a few humans milled around, some staring at them, some not. The animals weren’t completely out of danger yet. Vince stood over Arthur and had begun to look for the way out when a familiar voice caught both their ears.

  ‘You made it!’ Rita was perched on a fence, on the other side of the tracks. ‘What took you so long?’

  17

  Socks purred as he stretched across his owner’s lap, the man’s fingers occasionally reaching down to tickle him in his favourite spot behind his ears. His tail hung down, swishing contentedly from side to side.

  The man was seated at his kitchen table. His non-stroking hand spooned crunchy flakes into his mouth while the hand that, ideally, should have been focused solely on stroking Socks’s ears poked at the phone lying flat on the table. Sound began to play and the man leaned forward, over Socks.

  ‘Wow,’ the man said to himself. The noise from the phone sounded like rumbling, and a deep growl. ‘Look, Socks, a fox on a train.’ He lifted the phone and brought it close to Socks’s face. Before Socks realised what was happening, the noise stopped and the moving pictures on the phone changed to a black rectangle with some human writing across it.

  Socks frowned. ‘I didn’t see it! Show me again.’ He batted the phone with a paw then looked up at the man’s face.

  ‘Hang on, let me restart it.’ The man prodded the phone and a fox appeared, growling under some odd-looking chairs. After a few blinks, the picture disappeared again.

  ‘That’s Vince! How did you know…?’ Socks said.

  ‘You like the fox, Socksy?’ the man said. ‘Want to watch again?’

  ‘I don’t understand…’ Socks looked back to the screen. He watched the moving images of Vince again, but was none the wiser about where he was or how his human knew about him. And where was Laurie? He wasn’t much of a worrier and he knew she could take care of herself, but she’d been gone a few days now and he couldn’t help wondering where she’d got to.

  ‘Right, enough videos for you, Socksy Face. I’ve got to get to work. Another day, another dollar.’ The man sighed as he rose from the chair, tipping Socks off his lap and onto the floor before heading to the sink. Socks moseyed across the kitchen, about to climb into his bed in the corner, when he heard a scratch at the back door.

  ‘Socks? You in there?’ It was Monkey, the long-haired tabby from Shepherd’s Bush.

  ‘What are you doing over here, Monk?’ Socks shouted back.

  ‘Is that your friend? You want to go out?’ the man said, reaching over to open the back door. ‘Hello, handsome,’ he said to Monkey. ‘Well, isn’t this the coolest cat party around, eh?’

  Socks made for the door and meowed a thank you to his human before the door closed behind him. ‘Monk, I’ve just seen the strangest thing… Anyway, everything okay?’

  ‘Yes, yes, everything’s fine. I’ve had a message about your Laurie. Well, from Mister Floof in Notting Hill, actually, but he heard it from… Not important… Anyway, she had a bit of a run in with a car, but don’t worry, she’s absolutely fine. A human took her in and is taking her somewhere. There’s a bird and another fox looking for her. And a hedgehog.’

  ‘Oh, that’s Vince and Rita! And a hedgehog? Marvellous! So, Vince is okay too?’

  ‘Sounds like it. They’re on their way to find her. She’s been taken out of London, on a train,’ Monkey said.

  ‘That must be where he was when I was watching him…’ Socks said, almost to himself.

  Monkey frowned. ‘Nope, you’ve lost me there, Socks.’

  ‘Sorry, yes… Don’t worry. It’s so good to know she’s okay and that Vince is on his way to her. Thank you.’

  ‘There’s another thing, too,’ Monkey said. ‘They want a message taken to Richmond Park. Do you know it?’

  ‘I’ll find someone who does,’ Socks said.

  Monkey explained about Hampstead Heath, the riot and Edward’s deceit as best he could. The message, having been passed from cat to cat across the width of London, was understandably vague and made little sense to either of them, but Socks hoped Vince’s old friends would know what it meant.

  When they were done, Monkey said his goodbyes then turned and left Socks alone on the doorstep.

  Socks took a moment to wash his paws while he tried to figure out the best course of action. Richmond Park was south. He’d just have to get down to the flyover, tell the next cat over, then they’d take it from there…

  He wandered through the back garden, leapt up onto the fence and tiptoed along it until he reached the end of the houses. Dropping down to the pavement, he headed for the road, readying himself to cross it for the first time. If every other Official Feline Administrator could help Laurie and Vince, then he sure as scat could too.

  *

  ‘Rita!’ Arthur ran across the platform towards her.

  ‘Arthur, stop!’ Vince lunged for him and pulled him back from the edge with a paw. ‘We are not going through that again. How do we get out of here?’

  ‘Well, I flew, but there are stairs I think,’ Rita said. ‘Unless you want to just jump down and cross the tracks? You could easily squeeze through this fence.’

  ‘No thanks.’ Vince turned to look for the stairs. ‘Ah, over there?’ He walked over and looked up. A single human was coming down towards them. ‘Arthur, ready for another ride? Might be a bit longer this time. Think you can hang on until we’re out?’

  Arthur nodded and Vince instructed Rita to meet them outside. The human reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped. He stared at Vince and Arthur, mouth open. ‘Woah,’ he said.

  ‘Quick, get on.’
Vince and Arthur repeated their procedure, Arthur climbing onto the back of his neck in record speed. Vince growled at the human and crept towards him, tail thrashing, hoping it would be enough to move him out of the way.

  ‘Okay, alright mate, there you go…’ The man stepped to the side and swept his arms towards the stairs, as if ushering them up.

  Vince dashed past him, Arthur clinging on for dear life. He reached the top of the stairs and looked left and right. More humans walked towards him from far down a corridor on the right. To his left seemed like a dead end, but some humans were disappearing off, as if going down more stairs. He looked right again. They looked like they were coming in, so it must be the way out… If he went left down those other stairs, he’d end up back by the train tracks again, wouldn’t he?

  The longer he waited, the more he risked being trapped, or taken away somewhere by a well-meaning human. And Arthur’s teeth wouldn’t hold forever. He went right, and carefully ran along the corridor towards the oncoming humans. He didn’t look up to see their reactions. Feet stamped around him and shouts floated over his head as he tore through the maze of legs.

  More stairs. Down, this time. He took them two by two, turning once, twice, spiralling downwards, until he was at ground level once more. The room opened out and the familiar gates lined the exit. Humans passed through one at a time with shrill beeps and the harsh slamming of plastic and metal. One gate was larger, and the humans seemed to avoid it. Through the gap underneath, Vince had a clear view of the paved area beyond, where white lines marked out spaces for cars. Beyond that, trees.

  Rita was hopping on the pavement outside. ‘Vince! Arthur! Over here!’

  One human stood still on Vince’s side of the gates. He seemed to be in charge, pushing buttons on a machine when the gates didn’t open properly. The man saw Vince and put his hands up to his face. ‘Oh dear!’ He turned to the humans waiting behind the gates and shouted over the mechanical din. ‘Everyone get back. Let this fella out, please! Get back!’ He stood in front of the gates, stopping everyone from passing through.