Never Mind Miss Fox (15 page)

“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.

“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.

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 second—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.