Never Mind Miss Fox (13 page)

“I know,” said Martha, trying to smile and squeeze Eliza's patting fingers on her shoulder. “I'm fine. A bit tired, that's all.”

But this was not “a bit tired,” Eliza knew. She wanted Dad, Eliot or Tom to come and help. “Mum,” she began.

“Please, Eliza, no more questions.” It was the voice which said, “You are trying my patience.”

After brushing her teeth Eliza snarled and roared at herself in the bathroom mirror. “We're a family group,” she said. “You and me and Dad.” She thought her mother might need reminding of something good.

But Martha—who was folding up towels in slow motion, as if each one was incredibly heavy—put her face in the one she held and started to cry again. “What about Eliot?” she asked. “What about her family group?”

“Eliot's not a lion,” said Eliza, turning round in surprise. “She's a tiger—she goes around on her own.”

Now Martha sat on the edge of the bath and smoothed the folded towel on her lap with both hands. In a slow voice she said, “Eliza, we're not going to see Eliot again.”

“What?” It was like ice cubes thrown in her face. “Why not?”

“Because…oh,
God,
it's impossible to tell you. I can't. But you'll just have to accept it.”

Martha was angry and tired, but Eliza was angry too. “What about the piano? I'm still doing that, aren't I?”

“No.” Silence. Then, “You said yourself you wanted to do another instrument.”

“But…I meant
as well.
” This was not fair. That was not what she had said. Eliza frowned. She wanted to cry, but also to throw her toothbrush at the wall. Crying won. “Please don't do that, Mum,” she begged. “Eliot's my friend and I love the piano, you know I do.”

“Eliza, stop it. I feel bad enough as it is—”

“Well now I feel bad too!” It was a shout and a blur. The toothbrush skidded into the sink and Eliza was gone from the room.

The next day Clive was standing outside the school when Eliza came dragging out through the gate with her rucksack bumping on the ground behind her. He smiled. “Well?” he said.

Eliza looked up. “Dad Dad Dad,” she said and brimmed with relief. They held hands and walked to the park. “Where have you been?” she asked him. It was all going to be all right.

“I'm visiting Mum. Your granny.”

“Visiting? What, still? Why? Is she ill?”

“No. I just…felt like it.”

Why did no one answer her questions? Eliza wondered. Everything she asked got a reply but not an answer. If she had said, “Because I felt like it,” she would have been told off.

“Without us?”

Clive said nothing to this at first and then, “For the moment.”

This was bad. It had been nice to see him, but this was rotten. Eliza was no fool: “Dad, you've got to make it up with Mum,” she said. “This isn't…it's not…” She struggled to describe it.

“Come on,” he said, getting up. “I said I'd get you back for tea.”

But Eliza did not get up. “No. Tell me you'll make it up.”

“I'll try.”

“No, Dad.” She pulled his hand. “You've got to actually do it.”

They walked home but he would not come in even though she tried to drag him. She dropped his hand, then, and climbed the steps on her own without turning round. On each step she said, “Pig,” under her breath.

Martha was waiting for her in the kitchen. “Oh, pet—” she said when she saw Eliza's face, and put out her arms.

“Go away,” shouted Eliza, in a furious kicking rage. “You don't get to hug me.” She ran down to her bedroom and slammed the door. When she looked out of her window and up to the pavement her father had gone.

C
live had gone to meet Eliza because Martha had sent him a message:
Collect Eliza from school pls. Get her back here by 5.
He had stared at the instruction, as formal as a summons, and felt sorrow give way to resentment, seething inside him. He had simmered through the rest of the day and then gone to the school gates.

“Get used to it,” Belinda said the next morning. “That's what life is like for divorced fathers: written instructions and penalties if you disobey.”

“Rubbish,” said Clive, quelling the flutter of panic. “And anyway, we're not getting divorced. Martha just needs time.”

“She needs an apology,” said Belinda in her sharp way.

“I don't understand why you're angry with me too,” complained Clive.

“Because”—she was so eager to tell him she bit his question off—“you never should have got away with your shitty, awful behavior and now you have to pay for it. You deserve this, Clive. You don't need better representation, you need to plead guilty. Don't you get it?”

Perhaps I don't,
Clive thought with a doleful—but somehow delicious—resignation.
Perhaps I only know the letter of the law. Perhaps I am amoral.
It was a tempting thought: everything beyond his control. He was confused and needy. “Are we friends?” he asked.

“Friends?” Belinda was nonplussed. She did not seem familiar with the word.

Clive put his query another way: “Do you hate me, because of what I did?”

“I hate what you did,” Belinda said. “And I wish you were sorry for doing it.”

“But I am.”

“No you're not,” she rebuked him. “You're only sorry because you're frightened of losing your family. You're sorry for yourself.”

Yes I am,
Clive thought.
What other way is there?
“Sorry” would always start and end with himself.

Clive's bedroom, in his mother's house, had been swept clean of childhood belongings and turned into a spare—a musty bottle of Highland Spring stood beside the bed. Tom's room had not been redecorated since he had spent his adolescence there, and Clive apologized for it to Eliza. “But I like it,” she said, dumping her rucksack on the bed. “It reminds me of Tom and that's nice.”

Clive was not consoled by this reaction. He grumbled to his mother, “Tom's room is like a shrine.”

Val did not hear him. She was worried and wearing a knitted face. “I think this trouble has hit Eliza very hard,” she said. “She's angry. With you and her mother. She doesn't know what it's about.”

“Thank God,” said Clive, alarmed. It was bad enough his mother knowing.

“I expect you blame me, do you?” his mother said. “Men usually blame their mothers when they do something horrible.” She was pulling no punches, at the moment. Clive accepted it as the penalty for living in her house.

Val lived alone because she and Peter had, as she said, “parted company.” She liked this description because it closed a door that opened when people asked her whether she was married. It seemed to satisfy them—she supposed because of her age—and it was accurate. She and Peter had been companions, but now they were apart.

It had not hurt to lose him but to live alone had been hard at first—not lonely, but difficult. Bills, insurance premiums, car maintenance, the garden, buying wine, her bank account, people who came to the door or rang her up out of the blue. But she had learned it all—so satisfying!—and now it was easy, even the internet. She could eat snacks and not meals, and watch what she wanted on television without being asked, “What else is on?” The lawn grew tousled—she did not care for neat, mown stripes and never had—and the shrubs grew tall and stout. She went more often to London, and took her time in the supermarket.

She had been surprised by how little the separation had affected her. Even when Peter took up with an English lady in France—“Dad's got himself a bit of stuff,” Tom had joked—she had tested her heart and found it not torn but springing and intact. “We led such different lives,” she had told herself, feeling a touch of guilt. “It was a long time coming.”

She knew she would mind much more if, say, Tom were to move out of London (the thought lifted tears to her eyes) or Martha and Clive were to split up. This latter idea, conjured up at random over the years, had become a sudden and present dread because attached to it came the greater terror: that Eliza would be taken away to live with her mother abroad.

Martha—with her translating work—could be carried off who knew where. “Anywhere from Laayoune to Muscat,” she had boasted once, long ago, and Val had pursed her lips when she had found those places on the map.

Then there had been that kerfuffle over the United Nations. “New York?” Val had queried Clive. “But what about you? You can't be a barrister in America, can you?”

“Of course not, Mum,” Clive had said. “I'd have to give it up, or not go.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. We haven't talked about it. Martha's away.”

“She's always away.”

“She likes to work.”

Val had dreaded the telephone call which would answer her question,
What are you going to do?
But it never came. The next time Clive rang it was to say that Aiden had died.

Eliza was angry. She loved Granny Val—Gravel—and being with her was normal and fine. But Dad was worse than nothing, at the moment. He was like someone ill, or old. He sat in a chair and said, “What?” whenever she asked him a question.

“Just like his father,” Val said. It did not sound like a compliment.

Eliza could only remember two things about her grandfather: his ears—enormous—had been clogged with yellow stuff, and he had always kept a Terry's Chocolate Orange in a secret cupboard. It had emerged, segment by segment, to reward good behavior, but now that Grumpeter lived in France the cupboard was unlocked and empty.

“Why did he go?” Eliza had asked her mother.

“Well…he always liked that funny little town.”

At Val's house Eliza found Tom's diary, the one he had written when he had been a teenager and in love with Eliot. She could not put it down—nothing had ever been so fascinating. Reading it late into the night tired her out and during the day her head buzzed with Tom: Tom at school, Tom and his friends, Tom and Eliot:
“I love her. I'll never love anyone else.”
He had kept writing until Eliot had stopped speaking to him—he had not known why—and then he had trailed off and stopped.

I love Eliot too,
thought Eliza. The story thrilled her and she yearned for
Chapter 2: A Happy Reunion.
Perhaps she could arrange it. She fantasized scenarios in which Tom and Eliot were together, happy and grateful. Perhaps they would ask her to live with them. She would practice the piano whenever she wanted and go to a different school. She would play in an orchestra, Eliot would teach and at home they would play duets.

After the weekend, despite knowing it had been forbidden, Eliza went to the music room and raised her hand to tap on the closed door. She could hear the piano and she knew it was Bach—the music which connected her to Eliot like a thread—but her nerve failed. She could not knock. She stood there, frozen, with one hand lifted and her breath making a furry disc of vapor on the glossy black paint. Perhaps Eliot would sense she was there and come out? Eliza waited, hoping, but the door remained shut.

In the playground before going home Eliot saw her and came up. “Your parents don't want me teaching you anymore,” she said. She made it sound simple and clear, standing in front of Eliza with her music books folded in her arms. She was wearing a denim shirt that she wore often. “It's because of something that happened before you were born. It's not your fault.”

“It's not fair.”

“No, it's not.”

This made Eliza feel better; peaceful. “You must really like that shirt. I like it too,” she said.

Eliot smiled, which was rare and therefore precious. “Listen,” she said, “I had an idea: why don't you sing in the musical? Then we can see each other in rehearsals. You could be a ‘workhouse boy.' It's like a chorus.”

Eliza shook her head. “Too scary.”

“No, not too scary. I promise.”

Eliza paused and curled her toes as if she were at the edge of the swimming pool. “Maybe.”

The musical was
Oliver!
Eliot played a rippling chord at the beginning of the first rehearsal and said, “Everyone should do
Oliver!
once in their life.”

“Did you, Miss Fox?” someone piped up.

“Yes I did, a hundred million years ago when I was at school. Now,” she went on, “I want this to be fun, but I also want it to be
good,
and that means we've all got to try our best.”

Eliza was to play a hungry orphan at the beginning and a “barrow boy,” whatever that might be, at the end. Both required rags, bare feet and a smudged face, which meant that costume and makeup would be easy.

Now that she had a secret of her own Eliza bought a diary—“Mum, can we stop at the shop on the way home? Can you lend me three pounds ninety-nine?”—and wrote everything in it: rehearsal times, Eliot's clothes, what had made everyone laugh, what was easy and what was difficult. She was surprised by how much there was to write. When she thought it over, after putting the lid on the pen and switching out her light, she knew she had been enjoying herself. This was like being in an orchestra: sociable.

“Are you an orphan, like Mum?” Eliza had stayed behind at the end of the rehearsal to help gather up the music from the floor, where everyone had dropped it. Now she sat down next to Eliot on the bench at the piano and traced her fingers over the keys.

Eliot took the score off the bracket in front of them and said, “No. My parents are alive but…we've lost touch.”

“How come?” Eliza lifted her hands off the piano keys and sat on her fingers.

“Well,” said Eliot, “I had a brother and when he was very small—and I was even smaller—he got ill and died.”

“Was it cancer?” asked Eliza. She knew about cancer—everyone did.

“A tumor in his brain. So my parents were pretty sad. Anyway later on, when I was a bit older than you, I got into trouble.”

“At school?”

“At home and then at school. One thing went wrong and then everything did. I failed all my exams and I ran away—I even stopped playing the piano. Mum and Dad got fed up. They said I had ‘wasted my opportunities'”—here she put on the deep voice of an angry father, “and they kept having to give me money.”

“What for?”

“That's what they said!” It was not an answer, but Eliot went on. “They told me to go away and leave them alone. So I did.” She had been looking down at the keyboard and wiping specks of invisible dust off the keys with her sleeve. Now that she had finished speaking she turned to face Eliza.

“And that's it?” Eliza drank it all in. “That's really sad.” In a dreamy voice she said, “If only Tom had been there.” The words fell out of her mouth before she could stop them.

Eliot looked at her. “What do you mean?” she asked in a surprised voice.

“Oh—because he likes brains. Children's brains.” Eliza explained herself hastily. “He could have saved your brother-who-died.”

Eliot smiled a faint smile. “He was called Hector.” She paused and put her fingers above the keys as if she might play a chord, but she did not. Her fingers hovered and trembled a little at their tips. Then she said, “Yes—I wish Tom had been there.”

“If it happened now, he would save Hector.” Eliza was keen to sing Tom's praises. “He knows how.”

Eliot said nothing.

“I love Tom,” hinted Eliza, her voice heavy with meaning.

But Eliot said only, “I bet you do, and I bet he loves you. How could he not? You're so completely-utterly-totally loveable.” It was said in a singsong voice and was sort of a joke but Eliza, ecstatic, hung her head and let the words throb in her ears. She was too delighted even to respond.

They were both quiet for a minute, sitting quite still and looking at the keyboard in front of them.

Eliza tried to gather her wits. All this new information, heaped at the door of her brain! It seemed a chaotic, unmanageable jumble and to think of it made her feel breathless and light like a blown leaf. She wanted to slip off the stool and lie curled up on the floor but she knew there was work to be done and that these humming thoughts would have to be sorted, ordered and tidied away.

The prospect was intimidating: her head might bulge or burst at the seams. Now it occurred to Eliza that a tumor would be the likely result of an overstuffed, disorderly brain. At once this idea seemed probable and her eyes widened in dismay. Heads were fragile—this much she knew for certain because Hector's had been and so was hers:
donk-donk-donk.

She gazed at the piano keys in front of her and lifted her hands to rest beside Eliot's on the keyboard. Her own fingers looked small and hopeless by comparison. She thought of Johann Sebastian Bach: he could have made something harmonious from the swarm of ideas which had hatched and taken flight inside her head. She wished she possessed his skill; without it the bump and drone of trapped, unanswered questions—connected but nonsensical—would turn to a blur and then a feverish, tumultuous roar. It would batter her ears:
What of the past, near and distant? What of the future?
She would be overwhelmed.

“There are
millions
of notes in the world.” She stuttered the words in a desperate voice. “It's too many. How am I supposed to manage?” She felt herself begin to wobble from the inside out; she wondered if this would be the beginning of a new, frightening and ungovernable experience.