A Fox Inside

by David Stacton

  Neither of them entered the library. Lily stared at them both, and he thought that when she looked at him there was a special, intimate anger in her eyes.

  Then Maggie did what he knew Maggie would do in any crisis, even of her own causing. She did not even try to help him. She got up and rushed uncertainly across the room. Charles made way for her with a special kind of irony as she squeezed out of the door. They heard her hurrying across the parquet to the hall, her footsteps interrupted by the rugs.

  Lily slipped off her coat. She was wearing a long dress of grey and white stripes. She did not seem in the least annoyed. “You’d better go now,” she said. He looked at her and stood up. She went over to the liquor cabinet. “Go on,” she said, and there was a quick personal fury in her voice. “Get out.”

  He had nothing to fight back with. As he went to the door he had to pass Charles, who smelled faintly of some smooth Cologne that hovered round him. And it seemed to him that Charles gave him a glance that, though it was amused, had in it, too, something of the special pleasure of someone who has vanquished an opponent before the fight, an opponent equal, but with less efficient training.

  It also seemed to him that Charles and Lily had reached some agreement about him, even before Charles had met him; they had that marital quality of making up their minds about events before they let the events occur.

  He walked down the drive and all the way back to the university, that being the only place he had to go, over the golf links, where the sprinklers had been turning over the lawns, as they did now. He had not stopped to watch them then. He had only wanted to hide.

  But now he thought he knew very well how Charles had felt and how his mind had worked. It was that inward glance at him and at the ashtray. That glance, even now, lingered in his mind.

  *

  That had been ten years ago and the stump now was littered with stubbed-out cigarettes. It must be three in the morning and he had sat there a long time. His joints were stiff and no matter how long he sat there the sprinklers would continue to revolve and to chirp incessantly.

  Ten years ago was the year of the war. He had turned on the radio one lonely afternoon to get some music and had got Pearl Harbour instead. As far as the university was concerned the war was social. They had turned the track field into a compulsory ground for commando tactics invented on the spot; and all the undergraduates, shivering with cold, in that bad winter, had had to practise commando tactics during their gym periods. It was like going out for track and he was not good at track. Neither was the university very good at commando tactics.

  After graduation he joined the navy and for some reason had the good fortune, he supposed because he was Spanish-Mexican, to have a good war. He spent most of it in Puerto Rico, working in a prophylaxis station. Once or twice he saw faces he had seen round campus on the stairs of the naval brothels. He enjoyed the anonymity and the uniform, which suited him, and Puerto Rico, and the time to think. He had a lot of time to think. In between the boredom and the alcohol he learned a lot and sometimes, because he was shoved off into a corner again, he thought of Maggie.

  She still fascinated him, because nothing had ever been finished or settled between them. He still wondered whether he loved her or not. It did not matter. For when he got drunk enough to cry out, while his head went round and he stank on his pillow, it was her name he repeated like magic, to exorcize the alcohol. Next day if, for instance, he went swimming through the gelatinous Caribbean water with that special muscular joy that was the only pride childhood ever gave him, he didn’t think of her at all. It was only that she had some kind of permanent hold over him that some day he would have to loosen or resolve. Puerto Rico, as did everything else, left him between two worlds.

  After the war he wasn’t an officer and in his position, even with Senator Ford to back him, a Senator Ford grown less powerful and more senile now, he got nowhere. He gave up and went south to Los Angeles, where he belonged; and in a small way he had done well.

  He gave it up, stubbed out his last cigarette, and walked down through the campus to his hotel, wanting another cigarette long before he got there. In the morning he would go and see Ford. Maybe Ford would buck him up.

  XI

  UNDER THE LAWS OF THE UNIversity, which was in those days land poor, those professorially employed by its colleges were allowed to build houses upon the property, usually on the upland hills, upon a lease to last their tenure of office, or if they should retire from the university rather than remove from it, for their lifetime. In this way the university profitably became landlord. Senator Ford, who had wielded some power in the past, though joining the faculty in an honorary capacity and late, had been granted the same privileges and had his house there.

  Such clustered houses, usually in a Spanish style, though built of wood, were both patriarchal and pleasant. Senator Ford’s was neither. Perched on the edge of the golf course was an old and shapeless house. It had once sheltered the local bootlegger and had even been a store. It was the only house on its road, unless one counted some squatters’ cabins in a gully beyond it. Built on several levels and shaded by acacia trees, it had behind it unfinished and abandoned rooms, a refuge for old bottles and forgotten newspapers. The part of the house occupied by Ford was much the same. The long glassed-in gallery at the side, many of its windows broken, which had once been the store and had served as an office during the bootleg period, was now a ruined clutter of papers, books, broken furniture, and old newspapers. Ford collected pictures and they lay deserted out there, the rain and damp destroying them, the mice eating them. Upstairs there were four bedrooms, of which three were abandoned and locked. Luke had stayed in one of them once, a dirty room with the acacia trees ceaselessly brushing over the tin roof of the porch. Ford lived like a well-dressed ferret. He was a neglected dandy in a long-forgotten style, with an egg-stained waistcoat. In addition to this he kept cats. The cats were predacious and brought down sparrows, small birds, and lizards, which they brought into the house and left there. These small game were left undisposed of. You might find them anywhere, for Ford was afraid of death, and unless someone came by who could be induced to remove them, would not touch even the corpse of a sparrow. For some reason they did not putrefact, but mummified; therefore you could always find a few of their dried-out bodies, either in the gallery, or swept furtively under chairs and tables. It had once been Luke’s duty to remove them, but as Ford withdrew more and more from life, and saw fewer and fewer people, they remained there longer and longer. This, combined with the sulphurous powders which he burned to dissipate his asthma, gave the house a musty smell like that of the patchouli jars that on old mantelpieces held the rotten, verdigrised petals of roses.

  Luke called him up the next morning. His voice was as contemptuous, mannered and rasping as ever, but slightly more senile; and with an undercurrent of warmth in it that was no more than bored loneliness. Luke took a cab out to the place directly after breakfast.

  He found Ford in the garden. It was not a garden at all, but only the property around the house, a wilderness of yellow mustard, nettles, unturned earth which gave unexpectedly underfoot, and of forgotten plants which came up year after year, steadily growing into a sterile mat, like the uncombed hair of crazy women. In this wilderness, with no particular skill and puffing with asthma, Ford yearly set out hundreds of bulbs, most of which he begged from friends and neighbours, very few of which he ever had to buy, and a good many of which actually came up, with twisted stems and the phthisic blooms of neglect. He did not care. He did not even look out the window at them, or pick them to put in vases. He had been victimized by a mother who would not die, for whom for forty years he had set out the bulbs of iris and tulip, and the act had become automatic with him. As long as there was a show of colour somewhere he was content. Filial piety with him went that far. But he did not look at them and he would not have them in the house.

  When the taxi dropped him Luke noticed that some speeding car had staved in the s
quare posts which, California style, supported the porch and that the break was so weather-beaten, no effort had been made to replace them, though the accident must have happened years ago. Ford was like that. Now he was out of politics he did not care much about anything.

  Beside the porch was a steep flight of waterlogged wooden stairs leading down to the garden. Luke found him there, bent over a spade which he used languidly, turning up the clods of adobe earth mixed with loam. He had already done a patch about six feet square. The broken, already wilting stems of wild mustard stuck out of the clods every way, determined not to die, brandishing their roots. Luke stood on the stairs, dismayed to see that the old man shuffled now, though he was still handsome. He had an enormous lower jaw that in old age had saved his neck from resembling that of a turkey.

  Ford looked up, as though taken by surprise, and grunted. “Go into the house,” he said. “I’ll be up.” And that was all the greeting Luke got. It was all the greeting anybody ever got, but Luke could see that the old man was resentful of the cut of his suit, full of Los Angeles prosperity, and of a cockiness that had made him what he was. He went into the house, for the front door was never locked. In six years nothing had changed. It was a double living-room, the outer half-tinted green, the inner maroon, and flooded with light that only made it look the shabbier. It was lined with books and plaster sculpture and pictures, and in the fireplace, for some reason, stood a moth-eaten stuffed ibis swathed in toilet paper, somebody’s idea of a joke on the old man that Ford had been too lazy to remove.

  Luke knew this house well. He had even once been impressed by it, briefly, chiefly by the culture strewn round it. In the old days it had given him a false sense of having a surrogate home, though there was nothing home-like about it. He knew he would not be offered anything to put him at his ease. Nobody ever was. The kitchen cupboards were lined with gift goodies from S. S. Pierce, that were only opened at random for the cats; and with half cases of Noilly Prat that were never broached for anyone, laid up against a party never given. It was not a comfortable house, and yet Luke felt oddly comfortable, perhaps because this was the one place in the region that he knew well.

  He heard Ford coming up the stairs and sat down to smoke a cigarette. The chipped ashtray was filled with the cinders of Asthmador. Opposite him, propped against the bookcase, was a Paul Cadmus he could not admire. He tried to think of something to say about it. It was an old man’s room and a sick, wistful room. He had outgrown it.

  But Ford was well-connected. Ford had the drop on everyone. Ford, if he wished, could tell him what to do.

  It turned out that he did wish. If his kindness was skittish and undependable, there remained the malice of the man. The malice was always helpful if you knew how to evoke it.

  Ford came in. He was more stooped than before but otherwise little different. He was too tall to be old and knew it. He folded himself down on to the couch.

  “I read the papers,” he said. “I thought you’d probably be here.” Then, to play for time, he lit his Asthmador. The Asthmador operated on the principle of those children’s toys called snakes and the fumes rose quickly, until Ford’s old eyes peered out among them like those of a sibyl of the wrong sex. He was wheezing badly. “It’s the old bitch,” he said. “I always told her that.”

  Hissing more slowly in the ashtray the fumes began to die down, leaving a smell in the room like the theatric presence of the devil in Don Giovanni. Luke knew all about the Asthmador. It was a stage trick to play for time.

  “Still in love with the girl?” Ford asked.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ford, looking at the ashtray. “It might be, you know.” He was being sarcastic. “What the hell are you here for otherwise?”

  Since he didn’t know the answer to that, Luke didn’t say a thing. In the circumstances possum was the only thing to play.

  “Oh, hell, the Barnes,” said Ford. “You’ve got a lot to learn about the Barnes, my boy. I was thinking about them this morning. A come-uppance is about the only thing they haven’t got. Why not let nature give it to them?” He chuckled and took out a cigarette. Luke flicked up his lighter and saw the old man look to see what kind it was. Apparently it was the right kind. “They’ve got it coming. They really have.”

  “It depends on how you look at it,” said Luke, wondering just how he did look at it.

  Ford stretched his legs out in front of him and puffed at his cigarette. He did not drink, but he smoked as other people drank.

  “You’ve come a long way, I guess,” he said. “Or have you? And probably you think it’s no thanks to me. Well, I got you here. And I got a lot of people here. It taught them where they didn’t belong, if nothing else. I don’t belong here myself. But I do know the Barnes. That’s why they don’t see me any more. I know them too goddam well.”

  Luke saw that familiar blend of childish malice and pleasure on his face that had always been so unreliable. It might be a good deal more reliable now.

  “Autobiography,” said Ford. “You want to get the kid off. It doesn’t matter whether you’re stuck with her or not, but you want to get her off. Okay?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Nothing’s ever exact. That’s the beauty of it.” He seemed to contemplate the beauty of it with some dissatisfaction. “Getting even,” he said, in a shorthand all his own. “It’s inexact.” He knew he was being provoking.

  “Now take you,” he said. He enjoyed being hostile about sex. It gave his own sexless life a meaning. “They both knew you’d come back, and you did, and you knew it, too. My advice to you is, save your own neck. You won’t take it, but that’s my advice.” He ran a withered finger under his collar, automatically, rather than to illustrate. “And now you want me to tell you something, but you’re damned if you know what, and I’m damned if I know what either. But being scared of Lily is no help.”

  “What makes you think I’m scared of her?”

  “I brought you up. I damned near brought her up for that matter.”

  There wasn’t any answer to that.

  “You’ve done pretty well so far,” said Ford. “But this isn’t your sort of thing, boy. Let ’em stew.”

  “Why?” asked Luke. It was the right thing to ask. He sort of thought it might be.

  Ford looked interested. He clearly wanted to talk. But looking at him, Luke wondered how he could ever have admired him at all and also, uncomfortably, if he would ever turn out the same way. He doubted it. The stock was different. Ford came from Sandusky, Ohio, straight Scots descent, and proud as Lucifer in a way that suggested matches burning out and not the devil. Little Mexico didn’t turn out that way. Little Mexico knew the devil when it saw one.

  “Look, son,” said Ford, and was only half lying. “Maggie doesn’t matter. Maggie never did matter. She’s only her mother’s daughter. Nobody ever loved her and nobody ever will. If you want to be romantic, don’t bother me. Be a fool. That isn’t my line. But you know that’s true as well as I do. What matters is something else. Something we could use Maggie for, you and me both. Suppose she murdered the bastard? Nobody cares about that. He was better dead. He never lived anyway. He was just one of those things. I saw plenty of him and I can tell you that. You know why you’re here? It’s because you want your own back. So do I. Son, you’re on the wrong side. Not that there’s any right one, mind you, but you always have been and you always will be. You belong back where you came from. You went back, I’ll give you credit for that. Go back again.”

  Luke looked at his own tie, his suit, and his shoes and his finger-nails and tried to think of something to say, but Ford did not give him time.

  “Take Jerome,” he said. “Jerome Barnes. He’s almost my age now, and God knows where he is. Funny duck, but clever. Always wore a dirty panama hat he’d picked up somewhere. He picked Lily up somewhere, too, and she ran him into the ground. That’s the answer to it all. She ran everything into the ground and she still wants to. Sh
e’s happier keeping things buried. She’ll bury you, too, and she tried burying me, but I was too smart for her. I knew the score.

  “Oh, she doesn’t count for much now. She made her mistake and she paid for it. But she used to run things, and she kept on thinking she still could. Charles slapped her down on that one. I slapped her down myself. That’s where she made her mistake about Jerome, for a woman can’t run things in this state. It takes a man. She can do a lot with a man, if she wants to, but still, it doesn’t matter what kind, a man has to be in front.

  “Why the hell should I help you,” he said abruptly. “You can’t even help yourself.” He looked around the room. It did not seem to comfort him, but then perhaps it was not comfort he was looking for. “You used to be pretty bright,” he went on. “At least I thought so. But you’re not being bright about this. Maybe the old woman scared you. She can do that. She even tried it on me. And maybe the girl is worth saving. I don’t know. If she murdered that fool, she wasn’t the first who wanted to. Did she?”

  “No.’

  Ford chuckled. “You wouldn’t tell me anyhow. I never liked her. Sort of mousy. But that doesn’t mean she has to hang. And you know what that means. That means Lily.”

  “Lily hates my guts.”

  “She probably wanted you once,” said Ford. “She isn’t what she looks, not by a long shot. She used to have parties, you know. She’d ask the football team up when Jerome was sick in bed. She did all right. And then suddenly she didn’t like the team any more. I guess she got tired, or maybe somebody told her something she didn’t want to hear, or maybe she just wore it out. And then there was Charles.”

  “Charles?”

  “Sure, Charles. Why the hell not? I guess she got bored. He was slimy, but he had something, you’ve got to grant him that. And by then she’d learned she couldn’t run the county, let alone the state. Jerome could, but she couldn’t. Jerome was a pretty good guy. But Maggie, hell, she can’t even run herself.”