Never Mind Miss Fox

by Olivia Glazebrook

  Clive stepped up behind the others, cautious. He saw the careless swing of the rope in the wind and read in it the grin—the challenge—of a malevolent spirit. Here the river ran deep, rolling a path downstream with lazy menace. Its puckered surface stirred as if knots of eels were rummaging through its depths. The water reflected the dull, mutinous gaze of a clouded sky. Clive felt a premonition and was hot and cold at once, as if he had a fever.

  “Who’s it for?” Eliza asked.

  “Anyone who can reach it,” said Tom. The boys jumped as high as they could, and Eliza got onto her tiptoes, but the rope was still beyond their fingertips. “See?” Tom said. “Grown-ups only.”

  Jack said, “Can you, Dad?” Tom stretched up a hand and pulled the rope into his fist.

  “Can you go across?” asked Stan, more curious than challenging.

  At once, Jack was distressed: “No! Don’t. I don’t want you to.”

  “Nor do I,” begged Eliza. “Please don’t.”

  Tom said, “All right, I won’t.” He let go, and the rope swung free.

  It crossed, Clive estimated, thirty feet of water. It was no distance at all—just a few strides. He heard a voice scoff, “But it’s nothing!” Too late he caught his tongue—he had spoken without thinking.

  They all turned to him. Tom said, “Well. Hear that, Eliza? Your dad says it’s easy.”

  “Not easy,” Clive stammered. “I said it’s not far, that’s all.”

  “I’ll go first, shall I, Clive?” Tom was mocking him. “While you limber up?”

  Eliza stepped back from them all and stood on one leg. Her teeth chattered. “Please,” she begged, wringing her hands, “don’t.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I’m closely related to a chimpanzee—didn’t you know?—so I’m good at this sort of thing.” He took off his sweater, held it out for Eliza, and began to do a comic routine of stretches and leaps as if he were warming up for a session of gymnastics. “Just oiling the wheels,” he said, jogging on the spot and swinging his arms.

  Eliza, despite her fears, began to giggle and hid her face in his jumper.

  Clive felt the prickle of poisonous envy. “You’re not really going to, are you?” His voice thickened and tightened as he spoke.

  “But it’s nothing!” Tom mimicked Clive. “There’s nothing to it!” He dusted his palms and caught the rope above his head in both hands. Then he pulled up his feet and secured them, crossed over one another, so that he was hanging like a three-toed sloth. He grunted—“Ouf—Prrff—Whuf ”—under his breath as he adjusted himself into the right position, and then he said in a decided voice, “Right.” With even, regular movements he shunted away from them, along the rope and across the river: shift arm—drag feet—shift arm—drag feet.

  Jack’s mouth fell open.

  Eliza said, “Wow.”

  “I bet I could do it!” This was Stan. “Dad, let me!”

  In no time at all Tom had landed on his feet on the grass of the opposite bank. His three admirers cheered him and he took a little bow. Then he lay down flat on his back and from this position he called to them, “That was harder than it looked.”

  “It looked hard!” said Eliza. “Really hard!” Her color had returned and her voice was overjoyed.

  “Now you’ve got to come back,” crowed Clive.

  “Shall I wait for you?” teased Tom.

  “No, Dad,” Eliza forbade him. “You are not going to.”

  On the opposite bank Tom got to his feet and clapped his hands. “OK, here I come.” He slung himself under the rope and came shimmying towards them, head first and feet shifting up behind, inch by inch. Halfway back he stopped, hanging above the water. “I’m very tired,” he teased, “and I’m very hot…What about a dip?”

  “No!”

  “No!”

  “No!”

  Tom laughed, “Fooled you!” and continued to wriggle in their direction. When he was within reach of the grass he dropped at their feet with a thud and spread himself out on his back.

  The three children knelt beside him and Eliza—whose face had flowered with relief—fanned him with a scrap of bracken. “Are you all right?” she whispered. “Tom?”

  Tom’s T-shirt had turned from gray to black with sweat. He lay with his eyes closed and said, “Not…quite…ready to get up…”

  “Dad, that was so cool—” Jack was awestruck.

  “You must be really strong”—Stan jumped up and leaped on top of Jack to wrestle him to the ground—“like me!”

  Eliza stayed beside Tom. “I should put one of those tinfoil things on you,” she said, “like after the marathon.”

  It was this voice—worshipping—that made Clive say, “OK: my turn.”

  Eliza looked up at him from her kneeling position and said, “Dad, no way.”

  Tom sat up. “Seriously, bro,” he said, “it’s knackering. Forget it.”

  “I don’t want you to,” Eliza said. “Don’t.” She got to her feet.

  But Clive had taken off his jacket. “Back in a minute,” he said to Eliza. He reached up to take the rope between both hands. “Worried I might do it, are you, Tom?”

  “No, I’m worried you might not.”

  “We’ll see,” said Clive, and swung himself into position as Tom had done. The four spectators fell silent.

  Clive, to his surprise, felt quite comfortable and secure. The bristling stoutness of the rope was reassuring, as if it were alive and on his side—as if he had taken hold of an obliging cart horse by the tail. Now he began to move.

  Although it might not have been the easy one-slide-two-slide of Tom’s crossing, he was not ashamed of himself. He felt confident. In a few moments—he could somehow feel the difference in the empty air below his back—he had left the bank behind and swayed from side to side above the roiling surface of the river.

  The knowledge that a fall, now, would end in a cold soak had a curious effect: Clive’s nerve stalled and his strength began a rapid ebb as if a plug had been pulled from a basin. He frowned at his two fists, clenched in front of his eyes, and at the empty gray sky behind them. Each motion took more effort than the one before it, and each had to be followed by a pause. Drag; cling. Begin again. Drag; cling. He shifted forward inch by inch.

  He was surprised by how soon and fast the pain came, and also by how difficult it was to breathe. His lungs were pincered by his ribs and his chest was squeezing his poor, struggling heart. His brain shouted only one message, over and over, to his arms and legs: Come down from there! A different command—Keep going!—seemed absurd; unsound; insane. Coordinated movement was beyond his strength and somehow his intellect. Pain made concentration impossible. His initial rhythmic motion was replaced by grabbing, jerking and shunting at random. A colossal weight seemed to hang from his waist, pulling him down, and a hot, metal rod seemed to press at his shoulders. The rope—his friend a moment before—now sawed itself a gutter in his palms.

  Tom called, “You’re doing really well,” from the bank.

  Clive set his jaw. You think I will fall but I won’t.

  “Hang on, Dad.” Tears blotted Eliza’s voice.

  Tom said, “If you do fall, try to go in feet first. Don’t splat onto your back, it’ll bloody well hurt.”

  “You said ‘bloody’!”

  “Shut up, Stan!” Eliza rounded on him.

  I will not fall.

  With every forward inch Clive felt the swell of rage inside, but he could not remember where it had come from or for whom it was meant. Eliot? Martha? Tom? He ground his teeth—this anger was distracting him—slowing him—pulling him down—

  I can do this.

  He remembered that people who completed incredible feats of human endurance often said afterwards, “I wanted to give up, but a little voice inside my head told me to keep going, and then I found that I could.”

  With a determined inner voice, Clive spoke to himself: Go on. You can. You must.

  But within another seco
nd—and to his great surprise—his strength gave out and he fell.

  Arriving at the cottage Martha made a cautious entrance and went about with quiet steps as if someone—an invalid, perhaps—were sleeping upstairs. A squad of empty mugs hunkered in the sink and the milk had been left on the counter but the house seemed replete, as if it had swallowed its guests.

  She pushed open the door to Eliza’s bedroom with one finger but did not go in. From the landing she looked down at two tents, shivering on the grass. The wind was getting up. In the sitting room she saw the discarded blanket and guessed that Clive had slept there. Clive. She turned from the room.

  This was her domain and she felt confident of it, but still she did not know quite what to do with the day. Where were the others? She had imagined them all coming out of the house to greet her, and Eliza running into her arms and asking, “Did you get the job?”

  Yes!

  But there was no one here to tell. Finding a corner of cheese in the fridge she smeared it with Branston’s from the jar and nibbled at it, staring through the kitchen window at the trembling holly. Beyond it the grass in the hayfield rippled to silver and back again. After the cheese she ate a Malteser which had somehow rolled into the cutlery drawer. Still her mood refused to settle. It was the wind, making her restless.

  She pictured herself and Eliza, bobbing on uncharted waters in a little boat. Do I dare begin another life? She thought of Clive and of what he would say. Worry shadowed her face.

  Abandoning the kitchen Martha went into the sitting room and, despite a guilty feeling as she did it, lay down on the sofa where Clive had slept. She pulled his blanket over herself and pressed a cushion under her cheek.

  She hoped no one would come in and catch her. What was wrong with her today? She did not have the nerve for confrontation; she did not have the strength to stand tall against this gusting wind. She only wanted to lie here in the quiet and stare through the glass at the galloping sky.

  The first thing Clive saw when he burst his head out of the water was Eliza’s face, staring at him with her eyes and mouth wide open. Tom was scrambling down the steep bank towards him and being torn at by brambles. At the water’s edge he shouted, “Are you OK? Can you swim all right? Kick off your shoes.”

  But Clive could not reply—he had concerns beyond his footwear. The water was pulling his clothes in all directions and he could not touch the riverbed with his toes. This was unexpected. He looked at the bank and saw that Tom had moved—no, that he, Clive, had moved; the river had moved him—and Tom was having to keep pace.

  “Dad,” cried Eliza—really cried—from the grass.

  Clive opened his mouth to say, “I’m fine,” but his head and shoulders went under and now his arms fluttered above his head and stayed there, tangled in his shirt, which seemed determined to come off. Arms up and feet down Clive sank, like a dart, until his toes touched the bottom. He pushed off with all his strength but to his surprise the mighty kick he had intended was only a feeble shove which did not deliver him to the surface. Again! he told himself, kick again! But his legs hung like ribbons and refused.

  He was startled—Oh! Is this how it will be?—and opened his eyes. With a wide gaze he looked at the water that heaved and coursed around him. His mouth gaped. Exhaustion thumped him like a thrown brick. He spun—limp and useless—in the water.

  And then a sharp and terrible pain as his hair, ear and head were clutched and yanked by pinching fingers—Tom! He was let go again—grabbed again—plucked—pulled—dropped. A fist plunged into his armpit and now he was hoisted and flung out of the deep water and into the shallows. He skidded onto the muddy shore, turned to a paste where cows had stood to drink. With a splash and a thud Tom, soaking wet, fell down beside him.

  “Christ,” said Tom, “my shoulder—” He turned from hands and knees onto his back, clutching one arm. “You idiot…”

  But Clive could take in nothing but the racing sky above him; he could not move one single muscle in his body.

  “You idiot,” said Martha to Clive. Hearing the approach of shrill, competing voices she had come to the door of the cottage and stood with folded arms and flashing eyes like the vengeful Boudicca.

  “River—”

  “Shoes got swished away—”

  “Glug glug glug—”

  Eliza, silent and pitch-faced, pushed past her mother.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my room.”

  Tom was white with pain. “Your bloody husband.”

  “Your bloody brother,” Martha retorted. She was furious: there would be no moment now to boast about her job and she felt the air escaping from her triumph like a punctured balloon. Clive’s failure had shot down her success.

  The culprit himself said nothing, limping past all of them and locking himself in the bathroom.

  Clive stayed upstairs, much to Martha’s annoyance, and she was forced to take her mood out on the pots and pans. She made spaghetti with tomato sauce and complained to Tom, who lay on the sofa and unbuttoned a packet of Nurofen Plus.

  “Have I come all this way to do the cooking and cleaning? What a surprise.” She heaved a boiling mountain of pasta into a colander. “After tea I’m going to the pub. I want to have some fun.”

  “Good idea,” said Tom in a faint voice.

  Now Martha was cross with him. “And yes I got the job, thanks for asking.” She took another swig of wine.

  Cycling to the pub she began to feel better inside (wine) and out (lipstick). She felt the wind behind her and fury blow out of her hair as she sailed along.

  Eliza had been sulky. “The pub? But you’ve only just got here!”

  No one had wanted to eat their supper, which made Martha crosser still. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Black bits,” Jack had explained when Stan pushed his bowl away. “Ours doesn’t normally have them.”

  Martha had aimed a furious look at Tom, but he was still on the sofa and dozy with painkillers.

  As she approached the pub Martha saw that there was something going on. She put on her front and back brakes to slow down and give herself time to look.

  A large, round tent with its sides pinned up stood in the field, and cars were parked all over the grass. A blackboard leaned against a post by the gate: THE MACCOUSTICS! TONITE! DANCING! Martha skewed to a standstill, putting out her feet and yet almost tipping over. Was she drunk? She thought back over the day and made a rough calculation: piece of cheese plus Malteser plus two glasses of wine equals drunk. The front wheel wobbled in confirmation.

  What the hell: she had wanted to have fun and now she would. She pictured breakfast in the morning and herself saying, It was such a laugh, you should have come! to Tom and Clive. She was here now, she was wearing lipstick and she had twenty quid in her pocket. She would smoke cigarettes, drink cider and dance.

  She tied up her bike to a post and approached the gate where a girl—dressed in tiny black shorts and a striped bikini top—stepped forward to take her money.

  “Just the one?” she asked Martha. “It’s six quid for one and ten for two.”

  “Oh,” said Martha, “there’s only me, I’m afraid.” She handed over a ten-pound note.

  The girl seemed to smirk, shrug and tug up the strap of her bikini in one sardonic movement. She handed Martha change, saying, “Have fun.”

  Martha flushed. She mumbled a reply and turned towards the tent, clutching her coins and feeling exposed for the sham that she was: not a tiger like Eliot but a mothy old lioness, lost without her family group. The wine jumbled the thoughts in her head and she rattled the coins in her hand, suddenly close to tears.

  But here was the tent and there was the bar and she must be brave—she must be—for this was her new life: separated and alone. These pods of friends who were standing, chatting and laughing a private hubbub—they could all be new friends of hers, if she chose.

  Inside the tent were bales of straw, a makeshift bar and a stage. Lots of people
—cider-warmed—were clustered on the grass. Some were older—affable, gray-haired men in waistcoats and rolled-up sleeves—and some were young and glowing, laughing in ripples. Children, big and small, threaded in and out to chuck fistfuls of straw at each other, pouncing with sudden shrieks and giggles. Looking at them Martha felt a three-note chord plucked in her heart: pleasure; sadness; longing. She felt her aloneness like a missed step.

  A drink: that was what she needed. She went to the bar, bought half a pint of cider in a plastic cup, drank it in slow sips and looked around her. She watched the children playing, thought of Eliza and felt a plunge—two missed steps—of guilt. Eliza. She had left her behind when she could—should—have brought her.

  Martha swallowed the thought in a gulp and turned back to the barman.

  Apart from a ringing, stinging pain in every fiber of his being, Clive was unharmed. From an upstairs window he watched Martha pedal away down the track. When she had wobbled out of sight he got up, staggered downstairs, ate a plate of spaghetti and drank three cups of tea. Then he went to watch television with the others.

  After the television had been switched off and Tom had taken the twins outside to persuade them into their sleeping bags, Clive went to Eliza’s room. She was lying under her duvet with her biggest muffling headphones set over her ears. When Clive sat down beside her feet she did not move but watched him with huge eyes. She was trembling like a trapped mouse.

  “What are you listening to?” he asked.

  “Piano.”

  “Will you turn it off?”

  “No.”

  He did not challenge her but waited a moment and then said, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  Clive took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Eliza.”

  Nothing.

  “I am.” He felt very small and feeble; too weak to say much else.

  Eliza moved one muffler from one ear. “I asked you not to.” Her voice was cold and liquid as the river.