Never Mind Miss Fox (18 page)

What if home were no safer than the playground, or than outer space? Was this the very worst thing that could happen? The train pummeled on. Eliza held her pen over the page, not quite touching it. What if writing these words made them true?

All of a sudden she was tired—so tired she was not just drowsy but almost asleep and dreaming. She put the lid on her pen, leaned her rucksack on the window and let her head flop against it. Beyond the glass the blur of land and sky had grown pale: London. The cottage lay in country that was rumpled curves and burrows—a sleeping toy in an unmade bed—but London was edge and surface. Everything was exposed. Even leaves, blown into the playground from the street, were forced to dance in public circles by the wind.

Martha was white, sitting up on her bed in her clothes.
What? Gone? Where? Oh God
—

“Car keys,” Clive said, “please,
now.
I'll go. You—”

“Go where?” She got off the bed and searched for the car keys in yesterday's jacket. “Where has she gone? We're all here, for God's sake! Who would she—?”

She would not say the name—and nor would he—but they both knew where and who.

“Stay here,” he ruled, snatching the keys from her outstretched hand, “and phone the stations. And the police. Find her bike. Get them to look on the CCTV. And phone my mother—I'll never beat the train—get her to go to Paddington and wait.”

“But—”

The door flew shut behind him, and she heard his feet go thumping down the stairs.

Tom telephoned Val who said, “I'm not surprised, if you want to know the truth.”

“Save it, Mum,” said Tom. “Just get to Paddington, will you?”

“She's a very angry little girl,” said Val. “And with good reason.”

“Why are you telling me? I agree with you. Now can you get there?”

“Of course I can,” she said. “There's plenty of time. Aren't I always telling you how close I am to central London?”

On the train Eliza was snapped awake by the sound of a voice that carried the flat, attention-calling resonance of a handclap.

“Right, everybody! Tickets, please!”

Eliza unzipped her rucksack and held hers in her fist, trying to even out her heartbeat by thinking of minims rather than quavers.

She could tell from the sound of the ticket inspector's voice that he was a man who loved his job. As he approached he spoke to each passenger: “Hello there, thank you. Now, where are we off to? Lovely, thanks, there you are. Yes, madam, we are on time.”

Closer and closer he came. Why could she not have got one of those moody, silent ones? Today was a Sunday, and quiet. So far no one had said a word to her, and she had not needed to speak. She had operated two machines—one for cash and one for the ticket—but no living, breathing person had paid her any attention at all.

She knew the iPod would give her no cover and nor would it be any use to pretend to be asleep. The inspector would stand there—she had seen this happen to other people—repeating, “Excuse me,” until she opened her eyes. Now he was here and it was her turn; she licked her lips like a bad dog.

“Hello, miss,” said the man. He looked at her, first over his spectacles and then through them.

Eliza made a bared-teeth smile and held out her ticket.

“Thanks very much.” The man held the orange rectangle in his hand and seemed to read every single word as if he had never seen one quite like this before. “Where are we off to? London? On your own?”

Eliza did not trust herself to speak so she nodded.

“Aren't you grown-up.”

Was it a question? He seemed to expect a reply. Eliza cleared her throat and said, “Yes I am.”

The man gave her back the ticket and she took one end, but to her terrible fright he kept hold of the other. Now she was stuck, frozen in place. “Someone meeting you the other end, are they?” he said. His voice was kind but still it was the worst question in the world.

“Yes,” she gulped. “My mum.”

“Very good, well done. I wish my little girl was as responsible as you are.” He let go.

For an awful moment Eliza thought she might start crying. Tears pricked her eyes and an enormous lump, as big as if she'd swallowed a whole loaf of bread, sat in her chest. She smiled—mainly to crinkle up her eyes and stop the tears popping out—and looked down at her rucksack. She took a lot of trouble over putting her ticket away and opening and closing all the zips.

The conductor looked at her for three and a half more seconds—which she counted—and then turned to the next person and went on down the carriage: “Hello, hello, here we are, tickets please…” Eliza thought that everyone must be looking at her. She stared out of the window until the red-hot feeling went away.

At last the train began to slow down and it passed an on-the-top Underground station. When she saw that round red-and-blue sign it was so familiar that Eliza felt as safe as if she really were being met off the train—as if Eliot had come from Hampstead in her little car to stand at the barrier and wave. Even though this was not the end of her journey Eliza felt like cheering and running up and down the aisle with her shirt over her head, like the boys did when they scored at football. Instead she joggled in her seat and grinned at her reflection in the window pane. She made the face of a triumphant tiger at the swoop and dip of the neighboring tracks which were slowing down and turning from a formless gray mash into a neat threaded pattern of ribbons and streamers.

Everything that had come out of her rucksack was zipped back into its pocket. She fished out her Oyster card and gripped it in her hand, so hard that its edges marked her palm. She struggled to contain her elation. She wanted to shout and boast to everyone on the train and to chant under her breath something that would accompany the clatter and swallow of the train's wheels over the points:
Eliot Fox, Eliot Fox, Eliot Fox.

Eliot was not at the barrier but someone else, someone whom Eliza knew and loved, was there instead: her grandmother. Val was standing in a familiar pose—hands clasped in front of her and handbag tucked under one elbow—but she was looking older than usual. Eliza spent a moment staring—
Was it her? Could it be?
—before recognition spread like melted butter.

When she knew for sure that it was Val she wanted to laugh, cry and shout out her name. She slowed right down, faltering, and then speeded up and ran the rest of the way, saying, “Gravel! Gravel!” under her breath.

Her grandmother caught sight of her and right away looked ten years younger, as if she had swallowed a miracle drink. She broke into a smile, stepped forward and met Eliza's running—
flying
—body with open arms. They both hung on.

“Oh!” Val exclaimed. “Oh! Oh! Eliza!”

That was all she could say.

In a café at the station Val made telephone calls on the mobile telephone she kept for emergencies but did not know how to use. Eliza pressed the right buttons for her and then listened to one side of three separate but similar conversations with Tom, Clive and Martha. To each of them her grandmother said the same two sentences: “Yes, she's fine” and “No, you can speak to her later.”

When the telephone was switched off Eliza stared into the swirled pink galaxy of her smoothie. She stirred it with her straw. She had not decided whether she was pleased or sorry to have been caught; she still wanted to see Eliot, but she loved her grandmother. Taking a deep breath she plunged her straw up and down and said, without looking up, “I wasn't going to go home. I knew there was no one there. I was going to see my friend Eliot.”

“Eliot Fox?” asked Val, sipping her coffee and then putting the cup back in the saucer with both hands. She turned to Eliza with her expression interested and her head bobbed on to one side like a bird saying, “Any more crumbs?”

“Yes,” said Eliza. She could not imagine there might be another Eliot in the world.

Now she looked up from the smoothie and through the glass in front of her at the station concourse. Hundreds of people streamed in different directions like a sudden flood of rushing water; rivers and rivulets made up of dark-dressed human bodies. The noise was tremendous and her head felt full of it. With longing—a longing that puzzled her—she remembered the peace and snug of the train carriage. Behind her the coffee machine clattered and gasped in sudden and violent eruptions and from overhead the tannoy droned instructions with polite but insistent menace. Eliza was anxious and overwhelmed; it was too much to bear. The station was enormous but she felt pressed on every side. No one seemed to be speaking but the noise of thousands of traveling humans was a deafening clamor. It felt dark and tight with bodies yet when she looked up there was nothing but air between her head and the station roof—a distant pattern of black and white—and beyond that the sky, which after all was outer space.

The ultimate fate of the universe felt near at hand. Here with her grandmother she might be safe but in the open air there was nothing to cling to. Eliza thought of what had happened yesterday—her father, the river and the circling, lonely planets—and what might come today. “I don't want to go home,” she burst out. “I hate it.”

Val did not seem perturbed to hear this news. She ate some cappuccino foam from her teaspoon. “Tell me,” she said, “how were you going to get to Eliot's house?”

Eliza swiveled her face up to look at her grandmother's. “A bus?” she said. “Or maybe two?” She did not mention the walking.

“Well,” said Val, “why don't we do that? If you know where she lives. But we must send text messages to your parents, first, to tell them what we're up to.”

Then Eliza did start crying. She pushed the tall smoothie glass out of the way and bowed her head until her face rested on her fingers which she laid on the counter in front of her as if she were in church on Christmas Day. Val patted her between the shoulders and produced a tissue to soak up the tears. They remained in this pose for several minutes until they were interrupted by the café man who shouted, “Cheese-and-ham toasted panini!” and plonked a plate down between them.

Both Val and Eliza laughed, and the spell was broken. When Eliza looked up, squeezing the damp tissue in her palm, the people in the station were not surging up to the glass in front of her like a dirty tide but had returned to the bustle and hurry of their individual journeys. The noise was not a fearsome crescendo that bullied her ears—it did not seem to be ungovernable or hectoring at all. Instead it was something more sociable and perhaps even well-tempered: the continuous, measured putter of different feet crisscrossing the smudged, white floor.

V
al told Clive, “She's fine,” and then, “No, not while you're driving. You can speak to her later.” He did not argue; he felt relief surge from his body in a churning, white wave. Taking his foot off the accelerator he watched the needle drop below ninety. Eliza was safe and there was nothing to be gained by breaking the law. It occurred to him—with sudden urgency—that he would have to stop for a pee.

But a few minutes later his telephone delivered a message which drove all ideas of respite from his head:
We are going to see Eliot Fox.
Clive's foot went down on the pedal again and the sign for
MOTORWAY SERVICES
—the coffee cup and the cozy-looking single bed—flashed into his rearview mirror.

The sight of Eliza's empty bed had eviscerated Clive with the swift, efficient scoop of a mechanical claw. Now he pictured his innards in a dirty gray pile at the roadside, where the grit and rubbish was scattered and flung by the blast of traffic. That was where he belonged. He had put himself there: he felt the rummage of a rat, heard the scornful chuckle of a magpie and cringed at the blare and whisk of passing cars.

The cold of the river had stripped him; the empty bed had gutted him. Whatever skin and bone remained would be put in the stocks and made to face what he had cowered from all these years: the shaken fist, the chanted slogan—
What have you done? What have you done?
—and the punishment he deserved.

There had never been a reason, until today, for Clive to be afraid of his daughter. Now he was terrified: the threat of disappearance gave her absolute power. He would have confessed any crime, begged forgiveness of any person and accepted any sentence for the return of his daughter's affection.

On the night of her musical, saying goodbye, Eliza had put both arms around her father's neck and whispered into his ear, “
I
don't hate you, Dad. I love you.” She had clung like a kitten. But now? Did she love him at all? She had run to Eliot Fox; she had gone of her own accord. If she did not want to cling Clive could not make her.

His telephone rang. “Eliot's taking us onto the Heath.” Val said it in the special, bright voice which she saved for momentous occasions: “The Queen Mother's dead,” or, “Your father's moving to France.” “It's such a lovely day,” she went on, “we might have a picnic.”

Picnicking weather had come and gone by the time Clive set foot on Parliament Hill. Up he toiled, one slow step after another, a dirty wind blowing at his back and the tarmac path beneath his feet glued with the fruits of a London Sunday: dog mess, chewing gum and spilled ice cream. He stopped to look up at the reaching trees and the whipped, white sky.

He seemed to have become separated not just from his family but from ordinary human traffic, discourse and activity. People surrounded him, heading down the hill and home, and he scanned each summery face as it passed, searching for something familiar.

At every side were children, but they did not reassure him—they were nothing like Eliza. These tumbling, laughing creatures did not resemble her at all: last night she had spoken to him not with the voice of a child but with the sorrow and solemnity of a judge. He longed to hear her call out, “Dad!” in the voice with which she had claimed him all her life, but he felt so lost, so bereft and so unlike himself that he feared he would pass unrecognized.

Self-pity made Clive stumble; he felt the jostle and throb of his crimes. For a moment he faced the blue-shadowed city and heard its arterial rumble. Then he turned and pressed on his way, upwards and alone.

At the top of the hill that coursing bass note was overlaid with fluting treble sounds: the clatter of children's laughter, the yip of a running dog and the whir of a kite overhead. A huge box overflowed with rubbish and patient crows strode round it, stiff-legged on the grass.

“You'll see us,” Val had said with confidence. “We'll be there.”

Clive turned this way and that, shading his eyes, staring at strangers and away again, pleading—

Oh, Eliza—

—And there she was, already on her feet and running towards him.

Clive, half-blinded by relief, stumbled to meet her and she threw herself into his arms, open and delighted. Then—within a second—she had gathered up her feelings and angled out of his embrace.

“Are you angry?” she asked.

He tried to hold on to her—those shoulder blades like wings under his fingers, how he loved them! Those little elastic arms, that scented hair in its ponytail! If only she would cling to him, grip him as he did her!
Oh! Oh! Eliza! Please!
—but she slipped out of his grasp and to the ground.

For a moment he was so desperate he could not answer. “No,” he said in the end, “not angry. Scared. I was scared.”

He kissed his mother, and even squeezed her hand. “Thanks, Mum.”

She said, “Well,” and, “Here we are,” but that was all. Her expression was inscrutable.

“Where's Eliot?” Clive looked around.

“She had to go,” Eliza said.

“You've only missed her by a minute,” Val said. She turned, looked and pointed, “There!”

“Dad—”

“You two stay here—I want to talk to her.”

“Clive, are you sure—”

“Dad, don't be mean! It wasn't her fault!”

Clive set off at a run and shouted, “Eliot!” but the figure kept on walking away, under the trees and out of sight. He followed—saw the flicker of her figure in the shade—called her name again, but she did not stop. It was only when he had run right up behind her and said, “Eliot, please—” that she swung to face him.

“What do you want?”

Her question was so abrupt that Clive stepped back as if he had been shoved in the chest.
What did he want?
He took short breaths to calm his heartbeat, wondering what he would say. Into his focus swam something bright: a little gold bee, pinned to Eliot's collar.

“You found it,” he said.

Eliot lifted her thumb to the brooch and gave it a rub. “It's not the same one.”

Clive quavered. Would Tom appear beside them, like a genie from a lamp? He was afraid.
What did he want?
He opened his mouth. “I want to say sorry,” he said.

Eliot searched his face. “For what?”

“For all of it.” Clive swallowed. “For everything.”

“All of
what?
 ”

“For what happened on your birthday—”

“What did happen? Tell me.”

She waited, poised and expectant; Clive felt the breath of the sharpened steel.

He hesitated.

“You can't even say the words.” Her voice was scornful.

Now with the sudden complex sensation—a fullness; a prickling—that he might be about to weep or vomit, Clive found his voice. “What else do you want from me, Eliot?
I'm sorry.
Isn't that enough?”

Eliot did not reply but stood with folded arms. Clive could not hold her look. He raised his eyes to watch a canopy of bruised, dark leaves shift and move behind her, shaking a dappled shade onto her shirt and her fair head.

“You're sorry today,” she said, after examining him a moment. “I believe that.” It seemed to be a concession.

Now Clive did look at her, wondering.
Will I ever be rid of her?
Insight crept along his veins, as cold as melting snow.

“You're sorry today,” she said again, “because you're scared. You want to buy Eliza back, with ‘sorry.'”

“No,” Clive faltered, “no—” but he knew she was right.

“Not everything is fair, Clive,” Eliot went on. “Some things are unfair, and there's nothing to be done about it.” She tilted her head and looked him over. “Not even ‘sorry.'”

“Please—” Clive flailed, “please—”

She waited, cool and still, until he found the words and dragged them into the open:

“—leave my family alone!”

This was what he wanted:
Leave my family alone!
He wanted Eliot—all trace and memory of her—to vanish into the air from which she had sprung.

Eliot seemed to be prepared for this—she seemed to have expected nothing less. “Now I believe you,” she told him.

In the silence which followed she shifted on her feet as if to leave—she even seemed to move a little away—but then she turned back, lifted her head and met his eye. “But your family, Clive,” she said. “What do you think they want?”

She waited for an answer, but Clive did not reply.

Now with a light, slight smile—just the curl of it at her mouth—Eliot walked away.

“Did you catch up with her?” Val asked.

Clive had returned to the place where she and Eliza sat. He stared at them both. He felt as if a hundred years had passed.

Eliza was distressed. “It wasn't her fault, Dad,” she told him. “She didn't know I was going to run away. Please don't be horrible to Eliot.”

“I wasn't,” Clive managed to say, and then, “I won't be. I know it wasn't her fault.” He was close to tears but a nagging fear, tugging at his head like a bridle, kept them in check.

In the car on the way back to her house, Val sat in the back seat and went to sleep—or pretended to. She rolled up her jumper, very small and neat, and slid it under her head and over the strap of the seatbelt. “Don't mind me,” she said. “I might nod off. It's all the excitement.”

When her eyes had been closed for a few moments Clive began to speak to Eliza.

“Please promise me you'll never, ever,
ever
do that again. Promise.”

“I promise.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

“We can talk about everything, can't we? You don't have to run away?” He was pleading.

Eliza did not answer. Her elbow, resting on the window frame, seemed to keep collapsing under her so that she slumped against the door. She must be very tired. “What time did you get up?” Clive asked.

She had to clear her throat to speak. “Early,” she said. Then she remembered. “It was beautiful. It was—” But she stopped.

“What?” Clive wanted her to talk to him.

“Nothing.” The details of her adventure seemed to be private.

“Was it…were you scared?”

“No. I wanted to go, and that stopped me being scared.”

Now Clive did not want to hear any more.

“The man on the train was nice,” she went on. “The ticket man. He said I was grown-up.”

Clive did not respond. After a few minutes he said, “You know you can't get me and Mum back together like this, don't you? It's not the right way.”

“I know.”

Clive had not expected this reply. He tested her again, saying, “It has to be us who decides.”

“OK,” said Eliza, and yawned.

Clive was perplexed and alarmed. This resilient, mysterious person—who was she? He tugged at the string in his hands but the kite flew up regardless.

The rest of the journey to Amersham passed in silence, but for the
tock-tock-tock
of the indicator. There was one “sorry” left in Clive's head, rolling around like the last Malteser, but he did not say it.