Never Mind Miss Fox (20 page)

Eliza did not answer but said, “Ow, Mum, you're
hurting.
” She hinged herself out of the embrace. “Has anything happened?” she asked. “Has anyone been?”

“The bat man,” said Martha. “He came especially to see you.” She heard the note of supplication in her voice and was surprised.
I am trying to appease,
she thought. With a sudden feeling of fright she knew that her authority had gone. Eliza had taken it with her, yesterday on the train, and had not delivered it back.

“What did he say?”

“He said they'll keep coming back and we ought to get used to it. He said they've been here, all these years, and we just didn't know.”

“That's what I said to Dad! See, Dad?” She turned to Clive. “It's their home too.”

Martha turned to Clive and when she saw his face, in her mellow forgiving mood, her heart flared a little in pity—
Oh! You!
—as if she had brushed together the sweepings of love and put a match to them.

But Clive was not listening. “Why are you covered in dust?” he asked Martha.

Martha patted her head. “Oh,” she said. “Because of the attic. I've been sorting out some of the rubbish up there.”

Eliza examined her. “It looks cool,” she said. “Like a witch or a ghost.”

Martha heard approval in that voice and felt the touch of loving tendrils reach around her heart. She was almost dizzy with relief, smiling and dazed, but then felt suddenly awkward—exposed—in front of Clive. “You could help,” she suggested to him, for something to say. “You could bring down some boxes.”

Clive did not want to commit. “I'll come and take a look,” he said.

Following him up the stairs, Martha wondered if they would always speak to one another—perhaps for the rest of their lives—as if they were two strangers on a train who agreed that the weather was wet and the carriage unusually crowded. But how should she proceed? Should she shake a fist in Clive's face, stamp her foot and say,
Listen to me: I kissed a boy! Eliza ran away! Be mindful of us!
Was it safe to go on as if nothing had occurred, with independent thoughts and plans growing like weeds in the cracks between them? She felt as alert and trembling as one of those tall grasses in the field.
We are separate after all,
she thought. She felt a premonition throb in her heart and quake the length of her body.
We were a family, but today we are three.

When Clive saw that a light had been lit in the attic he said, “That doesn't look very safe.” He switched it off at the wall. “What's wrong with using a torch?”

Martha felt very tired. “There's nothing
wrong
with it,” she said, “I just didn't.” She passed Clive a torch. “Here—you have this. I'll fetch another.”

When she came back Clive was bent over one of the boxes marked “Dump.” He had unsealed and opened it.

“What are you doing?” Martha asked him.

“Checking. In case there's something I want.”

“Oh, Clive, please don't.”

“Look,” he said in triumph, “what's wrong with this?” He pulled out a kite and its tangled knot of string.

Standing on the grass, Eliza stretched out her arms as far as they would reach and began to rotate. This was the way to make her head spin: she felt her thoughts mix and stir into a muddle.

She tipped back her head and watched a swallow dip and swerve its open-hearted path across the blue. Like the bats, the swallows would not stay. They had somewhere else to be.

That fragile feeling began to creep into her limbs again. She thought of the delicate life of Hector Fox. Heads were easily hurt: she pictured an egg in boiling water, and the banner of white that would bloom from a tiny crack.

Yesterday, on the way to find Eliot, Eliza had asked her grandmother, “What will happen, after today? Will it go back to normal?”

Val thought of a better question than an answer: “What do you want to happen?”

No one had asked her this. Eliza realized, to her surprise, that she did not know the answer. She frowned, thinking it over.

A newspaper blew past them along the pavement and was scattered into pages by the wind. Eliza felt sorry to look at it, and suddenly she knew: “I want all of us together,” she said. “And I want Eliot too. She's my friend.” It was simple.

Val reached for Eliza's hand. “Well,” she said. “There's nothing too hard about that.”

It was a long, tall hill up to Eliot's house, and they held hands all the way, pulling each other along.

Back at the cottage, Eliza felt bigger.

Aren't you grown-up.

Yes I am.

The adventure of yesterday—all that she'd learned—had expanded her.

She was beginning to feel sick but it did not stop her turning. Stopping would be worse—the world would spin by itself. She shut her eyes and drew slow, gliding circles on the grass. Alternate patches of light and shade dabbed at her closed eyelids. In the sun her vision turned to orange; under the blot of the tree there was nothing but black. Perhaps she would lose track of her position and twirl out of the garden and into the field or the sky; perhaps she would open her eyes and find herself high above the grass, the house and the tree—

She heard a car door slam and stopped her revolutions to stand still. The inside of her head churned and so did her stomach. She staggered, blinked, gulped and tried to pin her wandering gaze on something fixed.

There was Eliot: standing in the yard beside her little car. She was looking straight at Eliza, with that rare smile on her face.

“Eliot!” Eliza ran to greet her.

From inside the house, Clive and Martha heard Eliza's exclamation: “Eliot!”

Clive straightened his back and stood alerted, listening. He went quite still, as if he had heard a frightening noise in the dark. Then he said to Martha, “How did she find us?”

Martha had straightened up too. She was watching Clive. “I told her we were here,” she said.

Clive looked at her, disbelieving. “What?”

“I talked to her.” She waited a moment and then answered a question he had not asked. “It was the right thing to do.” Sounding peaceable, calm and collected she went on, “Eliza, me, your mother, Tom—we all trust her, Clive.” She spoke with decision:
we have settled this matter without you.
“It's what Eliza wants. She never did anything wrong.”

Was this Eliza or Eliot, who had never done anything wrong? Clive wanted to stop Martha—
Stop!
—and to contradict her—
No!
—and then to beg for a pause from time itself—
Wait!
—

But Eliza's bold voice called up the stairs from the hall: “Hey, Mum? Guess what: Eliot's here.”

Clive could picture his daughter swinging from the latch, just as she had since the day that she could reach it. Here was the pause he had wanted: for a moment he allowed the luxury of that image, now outgrown, to dab at his mind with its soft, remembered colors.

“I'm coming down,” Martha called. She turned to Clive. “Well?” It was almost a challenge. “What about you?”

But Clive could not respond. He did not move.

A moment of stillness—a question and an answer in the air—and then Martha turned and stepped down into the house. Confident, light-footed, she continued down the stairs with a free, careless stride that Clive could only envy. “I'm coming,” her voice sang out again. “Are you in the garden?” He heard a door slam.

In the thick, closeted air Clive waited and listened. The attic itself was a hood which muffled his head. He strained to hear any sound, any sign, that might help him. A tumble of boxes, some of them opened, were balanced on the beams around him.
I should have left all this alone,
he realized.

A laugh: Eliza's. The slam of two car doors. An engine sparking, coughing and stammering into life.

Clive's head swam. He found his feet and pounded down the stairs to the garden door. “Eliza? Martha?” No one answered. With a kicking heart in his chest he ran across the garden.

The car was perched at the lip of the yard and ready to leave. Eliot sat in the driving seat and Eliza waved from beside her. Martha, on her feet and smiling, waved back. Clive raised his own hand—
Stop!
—but now they were off: pelting away down the track in a clatter and spit of stones, pausing at the lane—the
clunk-rev
of a changing gear—and now they were gone.

“Where are they going?” Clive's voice was dry with dust and fright.

“Just for a spin in the car—Eliza's been longing to go.” Martha folded her arms and spoke with a kind of defiance. “I wanted to go with them, but there wasn't room.” Turning to Clive she examined his expression. “What's the matter?” She peered at him closely. “Clive?”

But Clive did not respond. He put a hand up to his brow, and looked across the field. A pitiless wind beat at his face; it hurt his eyes to search this empty view.

“Clive?” Martha said again. She glanced from his face to the horizon and back again. “There's nothing there.”

She was right—Clive knew she must be right—but he did not want to be told.

Martha turned away from him, to the house. “Are you coming?”

“Not yet.”

He stayed where he was, watching. Only the lifting spirals of dust, circling into the air, told him that the little car had ever come or gone.

Eliot drove fast: the passing hedge was a dark green blur. The car's roof was down, and the windows rolled wide open.

Eliza's hair, head and whole body were buffeted by the scented summer air. It was delicious and exciting. She raised her hands above her head for a moment, daring herself, and then she turned to Eliot. “It feels like we're flying,” she said. “It feels like we're free.”

Eliot seemed to take this remark very seriously. When, after a moment or two, she smiled across at Eliza she looked quite different. “That's how I feel too,” she said.

Olivia Glazebook was born in 1976. Her first novel,
The Trouble with Alice,
was published in 2011. She lives in Dorset, England.

The Trouble with Alice

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