Never Mind Miss Fox (16 page)

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.

“I know.”

“I asked you not to,” she repeated. “We all knew you couldn't do it; you were the only person who thought you could. I thought you were going to die.” She might have been an old lady speaking.

“It wasn't far to fall; it wasn't deep; I wasn't going to die.”

“I thought you were,” she said again. After another silence she said, “Why don't you know what you can and can't do? Everyone else does.”

She did not say another word but put the muffler back on her ear and shut her eyes. Tears pushed out from under her lashes and ran into the hair at her temples. Clive was too ashamed to stay and watch them. He got up and left the room.

Alone with Tom in the kitchen he got drunk and after that, maudlin and self-pitying. “I let Eliza down,” he said, his head heavy with sorrow, wine and water. “I let everyone down.”

“Not me,” said Tom, shaking his head in sober denial. “I had absolutely no expectations of you in the first place.”

Cider really was delicious, Martha thought, smacking her lips. She noticed a warm, melting sort of drunkenness but it did not feel at all serious—it was only apples, after all. She smiled into her plastic cup.

In the tent the band materialized one by one and, crablike, snuck up onto the stage.
We might play; we might not,
they seemed to say.

Martha perked up. This was pleasant. No one knew her. She could do as she chose. It was exciting. There were girls whose long hair lay placid on their bare, brown shoulders and men who rocked on their heels and laughed in unison. Screaming children pelted through the throng like a gang of swifts. They—these rowdy, rackety kids—had found a flag and come up with a game: whoever held it had to be chased and caught. The little children and the yelling dogs leaped in the air to try and snatch it.

It was the kind of game that would have caused Eliza's teeth to chatter in her head. “Don't make me join in, Mum, please,” she would have begged, twining her fingers through her mother's. “Can't I stay here with you?”

It was getting busy at the bar and Martha begged a cigarette from a boy who came to wait beside her. He had a nest of blond hair tied up in an orange bandana. “Do you mind a rollie?” he asked in reply.

“No—but will you make it for me?”

“Honestly!” the boy joked, rolling his eyes. “Here, take this.”

Martha held his glass while his nimble fingers rolled a cigarette. Now her hands were full and so he put it in her mouth and lit it before taking back his drink. Up close—his tanned hands sheltering the lit match—she saw he was not a boy, but only dressed like one. He might have been Tom's age, or Eliot's. “Are you on your own?” he asked.

Martha gulped. “Yes—well—I'm staying with…someone, but she's ill.” When she said this Martha wondered whether every word she spoke tonight would be a lie.
No, I'm not married
—perhaps those words would come lolling out next. It was cider and loneliness, loosening her tongue, and she did not care; she only wanted to make a friend.

“I'm Jimmy.”

“I'm Martha.”

The band struck a chord and all the dogs barked; the crowd laughed, cheered and pressed into the tent.

The music began and Martha stared at the stage, holding her plastic cup of cider and her cigarette. She felt quite different. Sociable. If Clive were here she would have tugged him to the dance floor by his thumbs, laughing and saying, “You know you'll like it once you're up there.”

Clive.

Now that she was drunk she considered him with a little more kindliness. If only she could stay drunk, she thought with a blurry grin, perhaps she could stay married. She was used to it, that was the trouble, but familiarity and easiness—neither of those had much to do with love.
Oh!
Her head ached with the beating pulse of these thoughts and the noise and clamor around her.
Stop my mind; stop my minding.
She was bored of herself.
I want to get out of my head.
“Let's dance,” she said to Jimmy.

He hid their drinks at the bottom of a tent pole, the two cups tilted against each other. “We'll come back for them,” he said. He led her towards the stage and they danced amid the merry wriggle, leap and clap of people round them.
This is fun,
Martha thought, and all at once she was loving it—music, dancing and Jimmy too who was sweet and did not stray too far but took hold of her hand every now and again, to turn her under his arm or spin a slow and solemn circle under hers.

As the music played and they plaited and wove, Martha could not decide whether she was sadder than she had ever been before, or whether this was the happiest moment of her life. All at once she felt sick. She stopped dead and rocked on her feet.

“Are you all right?” shouted Jimmy to her.

“Air—” she managed to say, “sick—”

They stumbled out of the tent together, Jimmy laughing at her white face, and strolled across the field and up the slope, away from the tent and the cars.
“Ouff,”
said Martha. “Too much cider; too much spinning; not enough to eat; cigarettes.”