Mr. Fox (8 page)

“Your heart is—
jerking,
” she mumbled.

“Oh, so you can hear that?” I said into her hair. “It’s saying: Da—phne, Da—phne. How embarrassing. Don’t tell anyone you heard.”

“She keeps calling,” Daphne said. “And hanging up. While you’ve been God knows where—”

“Who keeps calling and hanging up?”

“That girl you’ve got on the side. Don’t deny it, St. John, I just know.”

“You just know.”

“Yes.” She looked up at me, so piercingly that my first instinct was to look away—but that would have been a mistake. “But I don’t want to leave you. Not really. So just drop her, and we’ll forget about it.”

“Daphne. There is no girl on the side.”

“Say whatever you want, just drop her. Please.”

“I can’t,” I said. “She’s in my head.”

I saw her expression and I talked fast. “What I mean is, she’s not real, honey. She’s only an idea. I made her up.”

“What?”

“I know this sounds unlikely, but you’ve got to believe me. If you don’t, I’ve got nothing else to tell you.”

“Keep talking, St. John.”

“Not a lot to tell. Her name’s Mary. You’d like her, I think. She’s kind of direct. No-nonsense. I made her up during the war. She started off as nothing but a stern British accent saying things like ‘Chin up, Fox,’ and ‘Where’s your pluck?’ Just a precaution for the times I came dangerously close to feeling sorry for myself. Don’t look like that, D., I don’t need a doctor. Anyhow—you see now, don’t you, that she couldn’t possibly call the house? That’s just people getting wrong numbers, or one of your brothers phoning you up to ask for money and then losing his nerve.”

“Less of the stuff about my brothers. Back to Miss A Hundred Percent Imaginary, Miss Only an Idea. Do you take her out to the movies?”

I couldn’t tell if she was kidding. “Absolutely not,” I said vehemently.

“Do you tell her secrets?”

“It isn’t like that.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Uh . . .”

Daphne gave me a knowing look.

“Prettier than me?”

“D . . .”

“You say ‘It isn’t like that,’ so tell me what it’s like. I’m just trying to figure out whether you’re crazy or not.”

“I’m not crazy. At all times I remain fully aware of her status as an idea.”

“So she’s kind of like a character in one of your stories?”

“Kind of.” I resisted the urge to pat her on the head and tell her not to worry about it.

“So nothing I should worry about?”

“No, ma’am. Absolutely not.”

Daphne kissed my cheek and backed away. “Okay, honey. Sorry about the mess.”

I nodded and waved a hand, as if it was nothing. I was proud of myself. In the old days I would have lost my cool. But other things were happening now; I needed to focus on those, and I didn’t seem to have anything left over for rage. There’s also the fact that all the men in her family, and a few of the women, are basically thugs.

“I think I’ll go see a movie with Greta now.”

“Have fun.”

She closed the door very quietly behind her. Pinching my ear through Daphne’s handkerchief, I crossed the fallen bookshelf again and sat down at my desk, watching ink drip onto the carpet. Mary Foxe was trying to ruin my life. By rights I should be on the edge of some sort of nervous breakdown. But I was happy.

“Impressive conflict management,” Mary remarked from beneath my desk. Her arms were tucked around her knees, and her chin was resting on them.

“Well, hello, there.” I held out a hand to her, and she came out from under the desk. She settled on my lap with her arms around my neck.
Nice.
Carefully, I spun the chair around, for a garden view, and we watched the rain falling on the old cedar tree.

“Would you mind terribly if you die next time?” she asked.

“Yes, I’d mind. To be honest, I don’t like the sound of that at all. Why do you ask?”

“I just want to see . . .”

“No.”

“No?”

“But Mr. Fox,” she said. “It’s all just a lot of games. . . .”

NERUDA

 

 

T
here was a Yoruba woman and there was an Englishman, and . . .

That might sound like the beginning of a joke, but those two were seriously in love.

They tried their best with each other, but it just wasn’t any good. I don’t know if you know what a Yoruba woman can be like sometimes. Any house they lived in together burnt down. They fought; their weapons were cakes of soap, suitcases, fists, and hardback encyclopaedias. There were injuries.

The man liked to make things. He took a chisel to stone with kindness and enquiry, as if finding out what else the stone would like to be. But his woman kept him from working—that’s why they were poor. They wondered why things were like that between them when other people loved each other less and had peace. There were days when she’d open her eyes and be him for six hours in a row; she knew all his secrets and nothing he had done seemed wrong to her, she knew how it was, how things had been, she was there. There were days when he touched the tip of her nose and it was enough, a miracle of plenty.

But who finds happiness interesting?

One day the woman stamped her foot and wished her man dead. So he died. (And now you know what a Yoruba woman can be like sometimes.)

She had a devil of a time getting him back after that one. Books and candles and all the tears she could cry, and yet more—she had to borrow some from friends, and some from trees at dawn. Finally she had to give up all the children she might ever have had. In the dead of night they were scraped under the knife of a witch with a steady hand and a smile. . . .

It was the most expensive thing she had ever done. Once the woman was barren, her man returned. He wasn’t grateful. He was tired; it hadn’t been easy coming back. He said,
Let’s have no more of this.
She nodded slowly, saying,
I don’t dare go on.
She was still weak, and though he was only a little stronger he carried her to the car and sat beside her in there; he spread a map across their knees and told her to choose a place where he could leave her. She would not choose. Paris, then, he said. He remembered a visit he had made there long before he met her. He remembered how the river had charmed him, how it had seemed to talk to the sun and to the city it flowed through, bringing news from the sea rolling in under the bridges. He remembered lion heads carved above great heavy doors, and how in their old age the heads had yawned instead of roaring. He thought that she would like it there, and that she would not be lonely.

He showed her the route that they would take, and they agreed that at any point before Paris she could say “stop” and leave him then. She hadn’t packed any of her belongings. She wore a brown dress, flat brown shoes, and a shabby coat of the same colour. The coat belonged to the man, and he had put a little money in an inside pocket. The woman’s hands spent the entire journey folded on her lap, safe and still. Sometimes she looked out of the car window at the things that passed them by. Sometimes she looked at him. They didn’t really talk. At one point he coughed and said, “Excuse me.”

When they got to Dunkirk she didn’t feel able to say stop, nor could she say it at Lille, or Amiens. She wasn’t particularly worried about where she would go or what she would do. Those things didn’t seem important. Silently, he changed his mind again and again, but at every turn he remembered how she had told him to die.

At Paris, on a tiny street that ran alongside a vast busy one, he let her out of the car, and she was like a moth in her drab dress as she leaned in and told him that she had never meant him harm.

He mumbled that he hoped she would be well.

He drove away and the buildings around her drew closer together. With her eyes she climbed their sepia stonework, the curls and flourishes. There was a ring on her finger; he had given it to her in exchange for their thousandth kiss, and she turned it around and around, trying to find a way out of her skin. I have loved a fool who counted kisses, she thought. The sky passed above like glass. She sat down on the pavement and watched people walking around. There was a café directly opposite her. Couples went in holding hands, and the dust on the windows hid what they did next, where they sat, what they had to drink. A woman came out of the café alone. She was dressed entirely in navy blue. In one perfectly manicured hand she held twelve fountain pens. In the other she held a white cup. She took a seat on the pavement, too.

“Drink this,” said the woman in blue.

“What is it?” asked the woman in brown.

Blue became brisk: “It’ll buck you up. Hurry.”

Listlessly, obediently, Brown drained the little white cup in one gulp. Bitter espresso, that’s all it was.

“Now. Take these.” Blue handed Brown the fountain pens. “You have to go soon. You’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

Brown did not feel particularly bucked up. If anything, she felt duller. “Go where? Catch up on what?”

“Writing,” Blue replied. “You write things. I was never any good at it, but you will be. That’s where you’ll live and work.” And she pointed at the front door of a house a few steps away. The door was painted bright blue, so you couldn’t miss it.

“Er . . . What?”

Blue laughed; her laughter was delightful. “Oh . . . you’ll see.”

“Who are you?”

“That man who just dropped you off and drove away . . . I’m the one who was meant for him,” Blue said calmly. “There was a terrible mistake a few decades ago; there are many cases like ours, and they’re only just being sorted out. From now on, I’m in charge. I’ll take care of everything. All you have to do is go through that door and into your proper place in life. And you will forget him. You will forget today; you will forget everything.”

Brown was astonished, and said nothing.

“Doesn’t that please you?” Blue asked.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Brown. “I don’t want to forget about him. I don’t want my proper place in life. I don’t want to go in at that door. I don’t want—”

“Your heart is broken, poor little fool,” Blue interrupted. “You have no idea what you want.”

“It isn’t broken,” Brown said stubbornly.

Blue spread her hands: “Well . . . what do you propose doing instead?”

All around them people were speaking a language Brown didn’t understand; it was like silence with sharp edges in it. Sound broke against her eardrums. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t pleasant. Brown looked at Blue carefully. Their skin was more or less the same shade of brown, but after that there were only differences. Blue was much better-looking than Brown was; smaller and tidier-looking, too. There was a sweetness to the corners of Blue’s mouth, and her manner was warm. She would be good to him. Speaking as quickly as she could, Brown told Blue about the man she was meant for—just small details off the top of her head, the things that years boil down to. Blue produced a small book and pencil, nodded, listened, and made notes.

Then Brown went through her new front door with her hands full of fountain pens.

She didn’t look back, so she didn’t see Blue throw the notebook away. She didn’t see the car, returning to the spot where it had left her, inching along as her lover stuck his head out of the window, looking for her. Blue walked over to him, and as the man spoke, Blue tilted her head and listened with an expression of great sympathy. . . .

 

 

Brown walked into her home under a row of crystal chandeliers, their octopus arms outstretched, their hearts layered with old gold. The high ceiling was painted with a map that looked both old and new—it was faded, the paint cracked, but the fade was bright. The map showed that the world had edges you could fall off, into blank white.
Here . . . be . . . dragons.

Upstairs, on a desk by a window, there lay a fountain pen that looked identical to the ones she held. Brown picked up the fountain pen and shook it. The cartridge sounded empty. She wished she’d bought new cartridges instead of new pens; it would have been far more economical. Beside the desk was a wastepaper basket full of crumpled paper. There were more fountain pens in there, too. She didn’t really want to sit down at this desk; it seemed to be a place of nerves and wretchedness. But there was a fresh pad of paper open, and the chair was drawn out, so she sat down. She laid the new pens down one by one. She looked at them, twiddled her thumbs, picked a pen up, put it down, examined the notepad. She was clearly supposed to write something, but not a single idea made itself available to her. Was it meant to be a letter? Or a report? The fact that it was to be handwritten suggested a personal aspect. Her writing was to be addressed to someone in particular. Brown pushed a pen with her fingertip and it rolled against another pen, and all the pens fell off the table. How was she supposed to do this if she didn’t know who she was doing it for? It was ridiculous.

After about twenty minutes, she heard scrabbling at the door and leapt to her feet.

But whoever it was, they weren’t coming into the room, they were just pushing a piece of paper under the door.

It read:

“Stories?” Brown howled. “What stories?”

She ran through the rooms of her house, looking for the person who had ordered stories. She ran downstairs and watched the street. It could have been anyone. Anyone. How could someone have slipped in and slipped out again without her knowing? Perhaps they’d followed her in. . . .

Brown returned to the desk and picked the pens up off the floor. She wrote down the words:
Once upon a time,
and then she stopped. She looked about her. There was something missing. There was something wrong. She found a mirror and turned around in front of it with her arms held out in front of her. She was all there, all in one piece. Then what? What had she lost?