Never Mind Miss Fox

by Olivia Glazebrook

  11

  In fact it was Tom who told Clive about the holiday. Martha asked him to make the telephone call.

  “We’re all going to the cottage. Martha too. I’ve got the time off, and I’m bringing Stan and Jack.”

  Clive ransacked his brain for excuses. “But…” he bleated, “the bats. And then there’s work. It’s not possible—”

  Tom might have said something in reply like, “Oh grow up, will you?” But a bus hooted behind him at that moment and the words—whatever they had been—were lost. “Just sort it out,” he went on, short-fused. “Believe me, the last thing Martha or I want to do is spend time with you. This is for Eliza.”

  Faced with this, Clive could not refuse.

  He came off the telephone and went back into the kitchen where his mother sat at the table with her newspaper.

  Val liked to read the newspaper first. “It’s not the same once you’ve pulled it to pieces. Can’t you get your own? At the station?” But Clive did not want his own, he wanted his mother’s. Depending on his mood he might delay his commute, waiting for her to finish reading, and then take the paper from the kitchen table. “You’ve read it,” he would bully her when she protested. “Who reads a newspaper twice?”

  Today would be one of those days: Clive had been wounded and he wanted to wound in return. He went over to the kettle and switched it on. “I’m going to go to the cottage,” he said. “Tomorrow. For the weekend.”

  “To talk to Martha?”

  “Sort of. We’re all going. It’s for Eliza’s sake.”

  “Good.”

  But Clive had not finished. “Tom seems to think that Martha is looking for a job, instead of working freelance.”

  “Well, that’s good too. She’s often complained about wasting her brain.”

  “It might be in Paris, Tom thinks.” Delivering this bombshell gave Clive a lick of satisfaction and then a sour taste.

  Val began to turn the pages of her newspaper faster and faster until she had reached the back page, when she pushed the whole thing away from herself and sat back in her seat. “You can take that, now, if you want it,” she said. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind, but empty. Although she did not like to argue with Clive—he was too skillful and it sapped her strength—Val knew how to make herself plain. After a pause she cleared her throat and asked, “Are you making one cup of tea? For yourself?”

  It was Clive’s policy not to respond to the most ridiculous of his mother’s questions and this was one: the answer was staring her in the face.

  “There’s a pot, you see,” Val said. “A teapot. It’s for when more than one person might want tea. It’s just more…sociable, I suppose.” She pursed her lips and spent a second or two arranging the salt and pepper cruets on the table. Then she continued, “I think after this holiday you had better look for somewhere to live. If you don’t sort things out with Martha, that is.”

  Clive stirred milk into his mug of tea, making a whirlpool with his rotating teaspoon and causing the tea to slop at the lip of the cup. Even my own mother. He was stung. Behind his eyebrows a horde of venomous thoughts amassed, ready to retaliate. Shut up, you bloody old woman. Afraid to say anything—in case he said everything—he merely chinked his teaspoon twice against the rim of the mug, and laid it on the scarred wooden counter. Now there was quiet in the room and the only noise—the surge of blood and fury—came from inside his head.

  But after a moment or two he was taken aback: he glimpsed, from the corner of his eye, a tissue flutter from Val’s handbag and up to her face. They came one by one, like hatching butterflies, and he knew she was crying.

  Martha took possession of the moral advantage and made good use of it, forging ahead with her desires.

  “Every memory I have is spoiled,” she said to Tom. “I need to take care of my future.” She was almost delirious with self-righteousness.

  Tom had been listening to this, and to other versions of it, for an hour. He was subdued. “You know,” he said, “once a broken bone has knitted, it ought to be used. You’d be surprised,” he went on, looking out of the window, “how often people go on limping longer than they need.”

  Martha pretended not to have heard him. “I want to work. I don’t owe Clive a bloody thing. All these years I’ve been trying to make up for”—she swallowed—“well, you know what. And all the time”—her tone grew triumphant—“his rotten secret! I want to go back to before. I want to start again.”

  “All this ‘I,’” protested Tom. “There’s Eliza too, remember?”

  Martha was surprised and annoyed. She did not need reminding of Eliza.

  It occurred to her, waiting to be petted in the delicious snug of the hairdresser’s chair, that as well as gaining a new career she might fall in love and have another baby. I might meet someone else, she thought as she leafed through a magazine. This happens to couples all the time.

  Val telephoned. “Eliza is very angry,” she said. “She’s not herself. You must be careful, Martha, and not be selfish.”

  “Selfish? Careful? Me? Your son, in case you’d forgotten—”

  “I’m not talking about Clive, I’m talking about Eliza,” Val said.

  Martha had never heard Val so assertive and it made her panicky. The hairdresser was poised, comb and dryer in hand. “I can’t hear you,” Martha said into the phone, indicating with her free hand that she was finishing the conversation. “You’re breaking up.” Now the dryer roared beside her ear.

  Eliza traveled to the cottage by Space Wagon with her two cousins, her uncle and her father. “I’ll come after my interview,” Martha had said. Eliza did not want to hear that word, and she had not wished her mother luck when asked.

  “You come in the front next to me,” Tom said to Eliza when they set off. “I like a bit of civilized company up top.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “He can go in the back.”

  It was a long journey and a tiring one—what with all the noise—but at last they reached the turning from the lane onto the track and there at the top sat the cottage, settled in its place like a bird on a nest. Tom stopped the car and said, “Right, who’s running?” The boys jumped out and were off like scudding rabbits across the grass. “You?” Tom turned to Eliza.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Wise old lady,” Tom said, driving on up the drive.

  Tom had only said one thing to his brother since they had left London, and that had been at the petrol station. “I want to make a phone call, Clive,” he had said, looking in the rearview mirror. “Will you fill up the car?”

  Tom had paced about on the grass where the litter bins were, speaking into the phone and kicking at a Coke can with one foot. Her father had filled the tank and gone into the shop to pay.

  Eliza had never been to the cottage without Martha. It was like walking into the wardrobe where her mother’s clothes were hung: private and somehow protecting. She had sometimes spent Sunday afternoons hiding in that cupboard, sitting cross-legged on the floor with the dresses and coats dangling over her head, peeling her fingers and worrying about school the next day. When she had been very small and ignorant she had wondered if there might be a hole at the back of the wardrobe and a magical world beyond. Now she knew those worlds did not exist.

  In the house Tom poured tea into mugs, and Eliza added milk. They listened to the weather forecast, which was for wind and rain, and Tom said, “Excellent,” and rubbed his hands together. After tea he put up two tents on the lawn and ordered Stan and Jack into one. “Go on, then: in you get. You wanted to go camping.”

  “But, Dad—”

  “You said—”

  “Somewhere nice.”

  “This is nice.”

  Stan and Jack were not convinced. They sulked and stared at their father with fishy faces. “This holiday’s rubbish.”

  Clive was embarrassed but Tom was not. “Hard cheese,” he said. “We’re staying here. You’re sharing that one, and me and Uncl
e Clive are in the other—”

  “I am not,” Clive expostulated.

  “—and if he snores like a pig, I’m coming in with you two.”

  This idea caused uproarious laughter from both boys, who got into their tent to make piglike snoring noises. Jack poked his head out and asked, “Like that?”

  “Yes, like that.”

  From inside the tent Stan said, “Dad, can we do whatever we want?”

  “Pretty much,” said Tom. To him a camping trip meant no washing, bathing, brushing of teeth or regular meals. “No fires, no explosions and no broken arms or legs, please. See how long you can go,” he suggested, “without coming into the house.”

  Eliza did not want to join in and muck about with her cousins. She did not want to stoop her way into their bitter-smelling tent. She felt too old and stiff for children’s games. “My head hurts,” she said when they asked her to play—it was an old trick she had not resorted to for years.

  She spent the afternoon in her bedroom, writing her diary and listening to her iPod. Every few minutes she thought she heard her mother’s car and took off her headphones to listen but no, it was always the wind. Hearing it moan under the eaves, rattle the window and shuffle the holly tree outside made her sadder and more lonely than she thought she had ever been. She turned up her music and cried.

  Loud knocking at the door woke her up. “Can you give me a hand? Please? I’m making supper for us and your mum.” It was Tom.

  Eliza was groggy. “Isn’t she here? When’s she coming?”

  “Before supper I hope.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “Gone to the shop. He took Stan and Jack, for his sins.” This was said in an amused tone of voice.

  Eliza got out of bed and stumbled downstairs. In the kitchen she stood next to Tom and pricked sausages while he cut up potatoes—very fast—for mash. “I may only know how to cook one thing,” he joked, “but see how handy I am with a knife?”

  He was referring to brain surgery but Eliza was not in the mood to play along. “You’re not a surgeon yet,” she said in a cold voice. “You might not even get to be one. You have to be amazing to be one. You don’t have to be amazing to cook sausages and mash.”

  “Quite right,” said Tom and went back to his chopping.

  Eliza felt horrible. Crying and sleeping had made her weak; now she was so weak she started crying again. She frowned, trying to stop, but tears splashed onto the sausages.

  Tom passed over a roll of kitchen paper to her and she mopped her face. When she had finished Tom said, “Did you know I used to know your friend Eliot?”

  Eliza nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  “She was my best friend, at school—when I was a bit older than you.”

  “What was she like?” Eliza managed to stutter it out.

  “She was…”—chop-chop-chop went the knife, slower and slower—“she made everything fun and exciting—”

  “She’s like that now.”

  “—and she made me feel just right. I don’t know how she did it.”

  “Me too. She—” Eliza faltered and then started again. “Dad said she was annoying. He said she was a show-off.”

  Tom did not seem to hear this. “And when she played the piano it was like she’d tamed it—like it was her pet wild animal.”

  Eliza remembered Eliot stroking the lid of her Bechstein. She felt love for Eliot expand in her heart like a blown-up balloon. “Tom, what’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No one will tell me.”

  “No one knows, not even your mum or dad.”

  “But it’s not fair.”

  “No, I know. It’s not.” This was what Eliot had said, and it was simple.

  “People don’t stay together. Not you and Kathy and not Gravel and Grumpeter either.”

  “They want to, but sometimes they can’t.”

  “What about you and Eliot?” It just came out; she couldn’t help it.

  “We never were together,” said Tom. He did not ask her what she meant and nor did she ask him anything else because just then his telephone bleeped in his pocket. It was a message from Martha: Got too late will come in the morning all love.

  Eliza put the sausage-pricking fork down and went back to her bedroom, climbing the stairs on all fours as she used to do when she was a much smaller child.

  There was a hole in this holiday and Clive knew he was the one slipping through it. He did not belong with the other four in their warm, gathered pocket; he was the toy that would be dropped on the road and not missed.

  He was distanced from Eliza, and Tom—although he had not mentioned that long-ago incident—spoke to his brother with the politeness of a stranger.

  My house, my daughter, Clive told himself, but these were just title deeds: Tom had taken possession with his great, open heart, and there was no competing with that.

  Clive knew that Stan and Jack had wanted to come to the shop because, for them, a trip in the Space Wagon meant an adventure, but he could not stump up the energy for a song or a guessing game. They were quiet in the back seat and it dawned on Clive, to his shame, that they were frightened of him.

  In the shop Stan cheered up and stuck his head in the freezer. “Ice cream!” he shouted, and Clive got out a tub.

  Jack ran a hand along the chocolate bars in an experimental fashion, looking over his shoulder to see if Clive would take the hint. Longing to make friends, Clive said, “You can choose one for each of us,” but in the end Jack took so long that Clive picked up a box of Maltesers and told Jack to put the others back.

  “No,” said Jack. Clive, exasperated, had to uncurl one of his tiny, gripping fists from around a Kit Kat, and the other from a Milky Way. Jack began to cry, scattering his treasures.

  Stan told him to shut up and the man behind the till peered over the counter in dismay. Clive exclaimed, “Stop it, both of you!” The rest of the mission was accomplished in silence.

  Clive felt as unfamiliar and lost as if he had been placed with a foreign family, in a different country, to learn a new language. Back in the car he rattled the gearstick and stared down at it, wondering where he would find “R” for reverse. On the way home he overshot the turning to his—Martha’s—her father’s—wretched house and had to drive on for a half mile before he could turn round. He swore, without thinking, and arrived back in the yard to the tune of “Bloody! Bloody! Bloody!” from the back seat.

  “Fun trip?” laughed Tom, coming to the door with a tea towel slung over his shoulder.

  In the morning everyone was gluey-eyed and cloth-headed, more tired and cross even than on school mornings. Tom had barely slept in his tent and Clive had been sleepless on the sofa.

  “Holidays,” said Tom, shaking his head and pouring coffee, “are knackering. Hospital hours are so much more relaxing.”

  After munching, gulping, stretching and roaring he said, “What we need is a walk,” and the children pulled on their boots.

  It seemed to Clive as if Tom could conjure a landscape out of the air for the exclusive adventures of his faithful, merry band. They crossed fields, leaped over streams and rummaged in woods Clive had not known about and never visited—but then, to his surprise, their path led them alongside a river that he recognized. He had been here once before, long ago.

  When he realized that this was the place where he had seen the otter, he felt apprehension beat a pair of dusty wings inside him. A gusting summer wind blew into the trees that lined the river, turning them white as they lifted their leaves to the sky.

  “How did you know about this place?”

  “I looked at one of Martha’s maps.”

  Martha. Clive cringed when he heard her name. He dreaded returning to the house, where she would be waiting.

  “I’ve been here,” Eliza said, “with Mum.” She took Tom’s hand and swung from it. “We had a picnic, when I was little. You were working,” she turned to accuse her father.

&nbs
p; “I’ve been here too,” said Clive. “Once, before you were born.”

  Jack began, “Dad—”

  But he was interrupted by Stan, “Dad—”

  “Wait, Stan, I was—”

  “Shut up. Dad—”

  Tom said, “Jack first, please,” and Stan dropped behind, whacking bits of bracken with a stick.

  “I can’t remember now,” admitted Jack.

  Tom laughed. “Pff! You are a pair of clots!”

  Eliza made a game of walking with Tom. She tried to match her stride to his and had to skip to keep up. “It’s like we’re in a three-legged race,” she said, breathless and laughing.

  Clive’s nerves hummed like wires in the wind.

  He had asked Tom, “Did Martha get the job?”

  “I don’t know. They kept her late, that’s all I know.”

  “Is that good?”

  “Depends who’s asking,” Tom had said, flinging spoons into the dishwasher. “What’s good for her is probably bad for you. Have you thought about Eliza moving to France?”

  No.

  Beside the river, a plan took shape in Clive’s mind: escape. A road trip. A visit to his father. Stopping off at châteaux and vineyards on the way. A dust-stained arrival. His father’s welcome: a honey-colored terrace; a canopy of vines; a bottle of rosé waiting, cold and fragrant. “I might go and visit Dad,” he said aloud, speaking over the chucking jackdaw voices of the two boys.

  Eliza shot him a look, and Tom said, “Bit of an odd time to go on holiday, isn’t it? Might be better to wait and see—” He was interrupted:

  “There’s a rope!”

  “Across the river!”

  Tom looked and said, “So there is.” With the children hung around him like three little pilot fish he trotted ahead to a place where, knotted between two trees, a rope had been slung across the open water.