Never Mind Miss Fox (5 page)

This was mutiny. Clive somehow felt that if he stepped over the threshold all would be lost.

Martha leaned forward towards him and hissed, “What the fuck is your problem?”

“You're drunk.”

“So? You're being a
dick.
”

Now Clive began to panic. “Your breath smells of champagne,” he accused her, wrinkling his nose.

Martha laughed in his face.

Eliza shouted from the hall, “Why do we have to go home? There's nothing at home.
Nothing.
We never do anything, we never go anywhere and you don't have any friends.”

Eliot stepped forward from the shadowed room. “Hello, Clive,” she said. “Do you want to get back? But listen—” she turned to Martha, “Eliza doesn't have to go. She can stay with me, for pizza, if she wants. I can bring her back to you later.”

“Yes!”—this was Eliza, pirouetting on the bare floor.

“No.”

“Yes-yes-yes!”

“Why not? It's a good idea,” Martha said to her husband.

“I said,
no,
OK? We've got plans for the evening already, remember?”

This was not—quite—a lie, but nor was it a reason. Martha looked at him for a moment more but then she turned away and told Eliza to get her rucksack. “Don't argue and stop showing off. Just do as you're told.”

Clive had won. He stood on the step and waited. Sunlight pressed the back of his head.

“We can have pizzas next time,” Eliot said to Eliza. “And by the way: never mind ‘Miss Fox,' OK? Call me Eliot. Miss Fox sounds so…
wicked.
” Her eyes sparkled as she smiled at Eliza.

The compliment of familiarity made Eliza's day; her mood was restored at once. She skipped along the street ahead of her parents.

“We're taking a taxi,” said Martha.

“There won't be one all the way out here,” countered Clive.

Martha stuck out her hand and, on cue, a black cab stopped beside it. Martha was triumphant. “Serves you bloody well right for being such a toad,” she said. Her words seemed all to loll out together like an unrolling bandage—she must have drunk more than she thought. The air in the back of the cab seemed awfully close and she was sliding around on the seat as if it were the deck of a ship. Feeling suddenly sick, she opened the window.

“Don't do that,” snapped Clive. “The air-conditioning is on.”

“I want fresh air,” said Martha, with an edge in her voice. “Not conditioned air.”

Eliza was facing them from one of the jump seats and trying to make it flip up with her folded inside. They did not often take taxis—Martha was strict about public transport—so she was determined to make the most of the trip. “This is going to be so expensive,” she said happily. “It's
miles
to get home.” Her observation was greeted with silence. Looking from one parent to the other she saw two grim, set expressions; both faces turned to the window.

Arguments worried her. She thought of something to say that might interest them both: “Miss Fox—I mean Eliot—” she paused to blush and then repeat the name, “Eliot says air-conditioning gives her migraines.”

“That's impossible.” Her father did not turn to face her but addressed the passing traffic.

“Why?” asked Eliza.

“Yes, why?” Martha repeated, turning to query him.

Eliza did not wait for an answer but went on, “Eliot says in New York it gets so hot there's a hot draft if you leave the window open.”

Clive opened his mouth. He seemed to be about to say, “That's impossible,” again.

“Eliot says—”

“Please stop repeating everything Eliot says,” he cut in. His voice was dry and cool as if it too had been conditioned.

Eliza was so surprised she could do nothing more than gape at him.

Martha put her fingertips to her eyebrow for a second, then took them away again and said, “Clive—”

“What?” he rounded on her. “Would it be too much to ask for a conversation about something other than Eliot fucking Fox?”

“Shut up, Dad!”

“Sit
down!
 ”

The driver braked and Eliza tipped in a heap to the carpeted floor of the cab. She yelped, “Ow, my head!” and started to cry.

“Stop the cab!” Martha was frightened.

“I'm going to walk,” said Clive.

“No; we are.”

Martha scooped Eliza up off the floor and onto the pavement. She slammed the door behind them.

“She's
fine,
” said Clive out of the window. “Stop making a fuss—” But his face was as white and frightened as Martha's.

The traffic lights changed and other cars began to hoot. The taxi sped away.

“I hate him I hate him,” Eliza said. “My head hurts.”

“Ice cream is good for hurting heads,” said Martha, and so they stopped at their change of buses for pancakes and ice creams. They dawdled, eating at a café table and discussing Eliot.

“I wish she was here,” Eliza said. “I wonder what flavor she would have. What kind of ice cream did she eat in France?”

“It was a hundred years ago! I can't remember.”

“Oh, please, Mum, tell me more stuff.” Eliza was insatiable. “Did she speak French as well as you? Did she wear nice clothes? Did she play the piano then?”

“Yes! Yes to all those things,” laughed Martha. “Why don't you ask Tom about her? He was the one who really knew her.”

“He
loved
her,” gloated Eliza, licking the back of her spoon.

Back at the flat there was no sign of Clive. Martha said, “I bet you he's gone for a run.”

Eliza checked the cupboard. “Correct,” she said. “No shoes. I hope he runs into a big
hole.
Hey, Mum”—she hung around Martha's neck for a moment, smackering the side of her mother's face with big, open kisses—“I'm going downstairs to listen to my iPod”—
kiss
—“Eliot gave me some clavier music to put on it”—
kiss-kiss
—“That's another word for a piano.” She let go and scooted downstairs, calling over her shoulder, “Tell Dad not to come and say good night. It's
bad
night.”

If it were just the two of us,
Martha thought, smiling,
we could be like this always.

This thought was an occasional, luxurious indulgence, like a chocolate truffle. She would only allow herself to daydream about a life without Clive if he gave her an excuse—if he had been nasty, as he had today. It did not happen often. Sometimes she wished it would, so that her fantasies might be excused, but Clive was a fair, decent and proper husband who did not often slip up. Today, however, he had been a bully. She wanted an apology.

First, however, she would treat herself to five minutes of an imaginary life. As she undressed for the shower—swallowed Nurofen—crouched to pee—she let a picture be illuminated in her head: herself and Eliza sharing a two-roomed flat, perhaps in Hampstead, perhaps near Eliot's house. Now she saw the three of them—Sunday breakfasts—walks on the Heath—back and forth to the school together. Naked, dreaming, she clambered under the water.

The pummel of it on the crown of her head brought her straight back to her senses.
No; no.
This was dizziness; silliness. She lathered bubbles up her legs and let water run over her face and into her eyes.
Wash wash wash.
She played the day back through her mind: taxi—Clive—angry—Eliot—mysterious—Eliza—adoring.

Drying herself, she felt a weariness; a confusion. She did not understand Eliza, not always. Why did she insist on listening to Mozart and making friends with her piano teacher? She knew why Eliza was bullied—anyone could see.

“They hate me,” Eliza had shrugged once, rubbing the tears from her eyes and the ribbons of snot from under her nose. “They hate me when I'm good at something like maths, and they hate me when I'm rubbish—like at swimming. They just do.” It had been like this for so long that now she was matter-of-fact. “In the wild there's always one animal left out. It usually dies.”

Hearing this had made Martha roar inside, like a lioness—
How dare they? My daughter!
—but it had also made her swallow as if something sharp had caught in her throat. During those many long nights that she had lain awake and worried about Eliza her conscience had accused her:
You. You were a tormenter.
She could remember the name—Suzy Milburn—of the girl in her class who had had to be taken away.

One night she had mewled in the dark and woken Clive to confess, but to her surprise he had not understood—or even tried to. “Everyone's done something they regret,” he had said. “You can't get upset about it forever. It's not rational.”

“You haven't done anything bad,” Martha sobbed at him over the duvet. “You don't know what it's like. I was mean—I was horrible—and I never said sorry.”

“You have to stop this,” said Clive, terse. “It's pointless to punish yourself—for this or anything else.” He lay down again, facing the other way. “Go back to sleep. I love you; Eliza loves you.” It was what tired people told each other in the middle of the night.

Dressing again, Martha thought about her husband.
Your breath smells.
He had been sneering. Bother Clive! She had not been drunk, she had been enjoying herself.

This was a moment to remind him that she was not a drunken layabout but a clever and valuable person. A contributor. Arranging herself at her desk she put on her headphones and immersed herself in the translation of a long document. An American voice recited into her ears, “Section Four: Code of Conduct. This board requires at all levels impeccable values, honesty and openness. Through our processes we achieve transparent, open governance and communications under all circumstances with both performance and conformance addressed…” Martha's fingers flew over the keyboard and brought Arabic text to the screen.

When Clive walked into the flat he came and found her, still at her desk, and stood beside her chair. Martha took her headphones off and turned to face him. Clive looked at the screen for a moment as if for a prompt, but there was nothing written on it that he could understand. Then he looked at her. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“You should be.”

“It's…work. It's an old case.”

“That's not good enough.”

But there was nothing more.

After a silence Clive said, “Is Eliza OK? Shall I go in and say good night?”

“No. Leave her alone. She'll only get worked up again and you can see her in the morning.” After this, Martha picked up her headphones again. “I've got to finish up here, so—”

Clive took the hint. “OK,” he said, and went downstairs.

W
as everything all right, on Saturday?” Eliot asked Eliza when they were next seated together at the piano.

“Not really. Dad was weird. But then me and Mum got ice creams on the way home.”

“What about now?”

“I don't know; I'm not speaking to him. Correction: I am speaking to him”—she counted on her fingers—“I've said ‘fine' twice and ‘no' three times.”

This seemed to satisfy Eliot. She took a piece of paper from the top of the piano and gave it to Eliza. “This is a concert that's happening on Friday evening,” she said. “Would you like to go? With your parents? Or with me, if you like.”

“Mum and Dad hate classical music,” stated Eliza. “They're always trying to make me turn it off.” She read aloud from the slip of paper: “
Carnival of the Animals
by Saint…who?”

“Saint-Saëns,” pronounced Eliot.

“And,
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
by Benjamin Britten.”

“There are instruments in the orchestra,” said Eliot, “which are more sociable than the piano. It's not too late to start one—you could play with other people, you see, instead of always on your own.”

“I'm not always on my own,” Eliza said. “Now there's you.” She looked up from the flyer. “We could really go together?”

Eliza—being an intelligent and practical child—put the proposal to her mother in a manner which would produce the desired result: “Eliot says is it OK if she takes me to a concert on Friday? Please please please, Mum. She's got two tickets and everything.”

“How exciting!” said Martha. “I bet you'll have a lovely time.”

Now Eliza skipped around the room saying, “Yay—yay—yay—”

If Eliza was delighted, then Martha must be pleased. She spread a smile on her face, but—
What is this?
—a feeling had surprised her: the sneaking tread of loneliness in her veins.
They don't want me.
She was startled by the press of this sensation and she tried to turn it away but on it came.
I will be left alone.
This was not right; this feeling was unjust; it was troubling and unwelcome and could not be allowed—she shook her head at herself—but now in its wake came something worse: a fearfulness which flooded her mind, staining it with an unexpected color.

“They don't want me around,” Eliza had said of the girls in her class. “When I say something, it's wrong. I don't like the same stuff as them.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Oh…
you
know. Everything.” Her voice had quavered. “It doesn't matter,” she said after a moment. “I don't mind doing things by myself.”

Martha had smoothed Eliza's ponytail with one hand. “It won't always be like this,” she had said.

And now it was not.

Clive was not pleased about the concert and nor did he pretend to be. “But I wanted to go to the cottage on Friday,” he said, thinking quickly and chewing his cereal in the kitchen. “I thought we could have a weekend away.”

“Yes, let's,” said Martha. She was leaning on the counter, waiting for the kettle and eating muesli from the packet. The row of the weekend was not forgiven; she still did not like her husband enough to sit down at the table with him. “You and I can go, Eliot can bring Eliza on Saturday, and we can ask Tom and the boys. We could surprise him with Eliot—I still haven't told him.” She rummaged in the packet for a nut. “But—oh shit—what about the bats?”

Clive was reeling from the direction this conversation had taken. His mind had gone blank and he stared down at the bowl for inspiration. Playing for time, he cleared his throat. “Bats?”

Lifting the kettle Martha said, “For God's sake, Clive, what's the matter with you at the moment? The
bats.
”

Clive rummaged with his spoon. Where were the chips of banana? They were the only thing that had any flavor. “We don't know anything about Eliot,” he said when he had composed himself. “Are you happy for her to take Eliza? For the night? Home?”

Martha fired back: “I wish she'd take me too.” She dunked her tea bag and flipped it into the sink. Everything happened faster when she was irritated. “Clive, we've known her since she was a kid and she's a teacher—do you know the sort of checks they have to run on those poor people? I'd never be allowed to work in a school.”

Clive was fighting the desire for a sudden, unspeakable violence. He wished he could pick up his cereal bowl and dash it against the wall—or against his own head—but instead he chose another weapon, and used it on his wife: “No,” he said. “You wouldn't. They're quite particular about mental health.” He chewed his mouthful with brisk attention.

Martha folded as if she had been struck. She struggled to reply. “I can't believe you said that.” Then she slid away, down the stairs, and he heard the bedroom door click shut.

Clive crunched his breakfast. It made such a noise, in his mouth, and seemed to be taking forever. At last he had swallowed it all, and then Eliza came pattering up the stairs for her Shreddies.

After her lunch—a bacon and avocado roll, a Snickers bar and a cup of tea—Belinda lay on the floor of her office for twenty minutes with a thick hardback book under her head.

“It's for my back,” she had told Clive the first time he discovered her. “I broke it when I was a kid.”

“Falling out of a tree?” He had imagined a straw-haired, lawn-stained, country child.

“No. Jumping out of a window.” The statement had wiped his mind.

She lay quite still with her eyes shut and did not like to be disturbed, but today Clive had come to talk to her nonetheless, claiming special dispensation.

“I don't know what the hell I'm going to do,” he confessed. As he said it he felt better, but hearing it made him feel worse.

“‘The only thing we have to fear,'” Belinda quoted to him now, from the floor, “‘is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.' Although in your case,” she continued in her normal voice, “the fear is reasonable and justified.”

“Don't tell me what I already know,” Clive pleaded. “Tell me what to do.”

“I've told you: wait for Eliot to tell and deny it, or tell Martha yourself.”

“Eliot said she wouldn't tell. ‘I won't have to'—that's what she said.”

“Don't you see? She doesn't have to tell. You're going to fall apart.”

Clive was silent. Was Belinda enjoying this? Seeing him cornered? He was afraid and he wanted help but there was no refuge here. Belinda seemed to be unfurling a banner that did not protest his innocence but instead proclaimed his crimes.

Now she pressed her fingertips together over her chest as if she were a medieval lady on a church tomb. “You're in a hole, Clive. No two ways about it.” She spoke with relish; he could not doubt it any longer. This was unpleasant, Clive thought, and upsetting. He would not mention it again.

Miss Fox—Eliot, now that they were friends—had made school better. Just at the moment, in fact, school was nicer than home: her parents were still having an argument—a silent one—and Eliza did not like to be in the same room as them both.

Her father came to sit on her bed and talk about the concert. “Wouldn't you rather come to the cottage with us?” he said. “I haven't seen you all week.”

Eliza said nothing.
Because you've been working every night until bedtime,
she was thinking.

Every evening she had expected her father to come to her room, but he had not. She had heard him treading the floorboards in the kitchen above her head until she had either put on her headphones or fallen asleep. Now he was here, not to tell her he was sorry but to forbid her from doing what she most wanted. She knew that when he said, “Wouldn't you rather?” it meant, “I want you to change your mind.”

She frowned at the duvet. He was being unfair, she knew he was, but nonetheless he had brought guilt into the room with him and it was snouting and curling a place for itself on the bed. She pushed it away, cross and determined: if her father were going to shove, she would have to shove him back.

“We will come, on Saturday. Like Mum said we could. Please, Dad,” she appealed. “Eliot's my friend.”

“She's not your friend, she's your teacher.” This came in a different voice. “We
pay
her to teach you the piano. A friend would be a little girl your own age who liked spending time with you.”

“Eliot does.” Eliza was on the edge of tears—this was worse than the playground.

“Eliza love,” Martha came in, “have you done your teeth?” She looked at them both, and stayed at the door. “What's going on?”

“Dad's being horrible.”

Later Eliza heard Martha shout, “What is your fucking problem?” all in one breath.

The front door slammed. Eliza wondered who had gone out and her heart fluttered in her chest. She hoped it was her father and when she heard his shoes clop down the front steps to the road she was relieved.

Mum came into the room and said, “I said you can go and you can. I'll deal with Dad. But don't mention it to him again, OK?”

Eliza swallowed. In a mouse's voice she said, “OK.”

The end of the week arrived. Clive sat in his office and brooded. He fingered crisps from a packet on the desk and into his mouth where he let each one rest on his tongue like a communion wafer. When the caustic sting of flavoring began to burn, he crunched and swallowed.

He liked this sensation—it was absorbing and short-lived. He liked to think of such things as crisps, a headache, or the weather. He liked to wonder if it would rain, and whether he would be caught out when it did. He liked the thoughts which bobbed at the surface, but not the shapes that lurked on the ocean floor.

Carcasses on the seabed rotted in the end—he and Eliza had once watched a program about a dead whale. “Gross…” Eliza had said, her eyes like saucers and her face lit blue by the screen. “And amazing.”

Clive tried to remember the peace of a life before Eliot. Eliza had, that morning, avoided talking to him again. “How long are you going to keep this up?” he had asked her. She had continued to eat her Shreddies, wearing her earphones and staring straight ahead. The silence was as clear a sound as if she had told him to get stuffed.

Clive had said to Martha, “Eliza wears those things all the time.”

“Yes,” Martha had replied.

“She can't hear a word I say.”

“No.”

She had said nothing else, and Clive had left to catch the Tube.

With a blink Clive turned his thoughts instead to the weather.

“Got your brolly?” the man in the corner shop had asked, cheerfully handing Clive his change. “It's going to piss down all afternoon, apparently.”

Rain was a nuisance. Martha and Eliza—driving straight from the school gates—would be halfway to the cottage by now, but Clive had to cross London to get to the station and he risked a soaking. He did not fancy sitting on the train in a puddle, and other people smelled of charity shops when they were wet.

Outside the window the square dimmed from a gloomy afternoon to a night dark, a cupboard dark, as if the sun had not set but had been shut out by a closed door. Painted railings seemed to shine and window frames to glow, as they did at dusk. One front door turned the blood-soaked red of a toadstool and another the pungent milk-green of a moldering corpse. There would—there must—be a storm. A dreadful silence had fallen and the whole lidded city seethed with static.

Clive shifted from his seat to throw his rubbish away and to stand and stare at the window, wiping his hands on a napkin. He felt the creep and prickle of sweat under his hair.

The sky split with a flash and a simultaneous
crack-gulp-boom
of thunder that made the building—and everyone in it—jump with nerves. “Christ almighty,” Clive heard Belinda say in the corridor. From others came fearful laughs and exclamations.

The trees in the square—broad, sobbing planes—lifted the ends of their fingers all at once as a squall of wind caught their leaves underneath. A noise came from them, a great and glorious shushing like a wave pouring in over shingle.

There followed a series of flat thunderclaps and then, after a short silence, a murderous-sounding crackle. Clive was afraid—not of the storm but of something at large in the air, something coming to catch him in its claws. His shirt clung to his ribs. He would go—he would go now. He slammed out of the door, hurried to the Underground, plunged down the steps and scampered into the fug.

He was just in time. On the other side of London he emerged to find the city under a downpour and the station a slippery rink of puddles and newspaper pages. His train-carriage windows were sluiced by rain and steamed with vapor.

It took a small disaster for commuters to make friends: people clucked, laughed and shook out their clothes.

“Soaked!”

“Drenched!”

“Right down to my knickers!”

Clive, dry as a bone, stared and listened from his seat.
Why did I not get wet?
He did not feel blessed but cursed: condemned to a ghostlike solitude.