Never Mind Miss Fox Read online

  Peter and Val’s routine had been upset by the trip to the market and at lunchtime they forgot their usual strictness. Eliot drank Campari, and Tom two glasses of beer. “All kids drink in France, Dad,” said Tom. “It’s the norm.” He burped. “Normageddon.”

  His mother pursed her lips but did not remonstrate. Even when Eliot wheedled a cigarette out of her jacket and lit it Val said only, “Dear child—do have a care for your poor little lungs.”

  In the car on the way back to their hotel Val snorted, woke with a start and yawned. “I’m pooped,” she said, and put a hand on Peter’s knee. “Why don’t we have room service and an early night,” she asked him, “as a treat?”

  Ranked behind him in the two back rows of the people mover—“It’s a type of car, Dad,” Clive had sneered at the rental kiosk. “Don’t you even know that?”—Eliot and Tom started giggling and Clive shrank with shame. Martha, sulking, gave no sign of having heard.

  At the hotel Peter and Val seemed elderly and incapable. “I’m all at sixes and sevens,” said Val in a worried voice. “It’s the early start, and wine at lunchtime.” Peter collected their room key and steered his wife upstairs.

  Martha went to telephone her father. “I haven’t spoken to him since I left,” she accused Clive.

  Tom sidled up to Clive and asked him to order drinks which he and Eliot could have upstairs. “They won’t serve us,” Tom said. “The staff, I mean. I think Dad must have told them not to.”

  Clive rang down to the kitchen. Minutes later an unsmiling waiter delivered two bottles of red wine on a tray. His disgust was palpable. Clive paid him in cash, too frightened to ask for change, and the waiter took a slow moment to fold the notes into his waistcoat pocket before he withdrew.

  Tom whisked in through the balcony door. “Merci, monsieur,” he said in a camp voice, picking up the tray. He was overexcited; he thought Eliot might kiss him tonight.

  Clive fretted. He got into the shower and worried there, lathering his head, and then lay on the counterpane and turned the pages of his book. Martha did not return.

  When he woke up later—stiff, cold and only half-covered by a damp towel—she was asleep beside him, her back as uncompromising as a sandbag. Clive stared at her shape and wondered what had woken him. There was a noise; lifting his head from the pillow he saw Tom, stepping into the room from their shared balcony.

  “Tom?”

  “Help—Clive—help—quick—”

  Martha was awake—entirely awake—at once. “What is it?” she said, sitting up and switching on the light. Clive flinched and blinked; his head felt dim; he was confused.

  Tom said, “Eliot keeps being sick”—his voice fluttered with panic—“and she won’t stop. Please—come—quick—”

  Martha pushed the bedclothes back and got up in her pants. She picked up a vest from the floor and pulled it on. “How much has she drunk?” she asked, already following Tom through the open door.

  “I don’t know,” said Tom and then added, miserably, “She just kept downing it.”

  Clive got to his feet, fumbled into a T-shirt and shorts and went after them.

  All the lights blazed in the next-door room and a bitter, stewed smell of vomited alcohol made his throat smart and his stomach clench. Eliot had been sick all over the bedclothes and in a splatter on the carpet. Claret-colored stains bloomed on the sheets; chunks of food were glued to the skirting board. Now she was propped against the door frame between bedroom and bathroom, flopping sideways like a worn-out teddy bear. She was white-faced but berry-mouthed and her hair was crimson-tipped and clogged with sweat. Clive stared at her, revolted.

  “Eliot? Eliot?” Martha was crouched on the floor, holding Eliot by the shoulders and speaking into her face.

  “Do we need an ambulance?” Tom asked in a blanched voice.

  Martha did not answer him, and Clive was speechless.

  Now Eliot moaned, hinged and scratched up a dry heave. Then she spoke: “Oh God I feel so bad.” It came out in a seagull’s mewl.

  “Are you going to be sick again?” Martha asked her.

  “It hurts it hurts,” Eliot wailed, “oh God—” She leaned over and gagged, but nothing came up. The breath rattled in her throat.

  Clive said, “What shall I do?”

  “Call room service,” said Martha. “Get that waiter up here.” She wetted a towel and wiped Eliot’s face and hands. “Eliot?” she said. “Don’t worry: you’re going to be all right.” Eliot clutched at Martha’s arms and started crying and gulping. Martha put an arm around her shoulders and a palm against her sweating, gray forehead.

  The waiter arrived and gave Clive a long, cool look before turning to Martha and Eliot, crouched in their heap on the floor. Martha—in her pants and damp, stained vest—turned her face up to him. Clive could see her breasts, her bare thighs and her knickers and he knew the waiter would be looking too; he wished she had been wearing more clothes, or wearing these clothes differently. Somehow the sweat and the smell—and even the ragged, fluttering seagull on the floor beside her—only increased her attraction.

  Martha spoke in rapid, fluent French and the waiter nodded and frowned. Stepping into the bathroom he turned on the shower and soaked a hand towel in the basin. Then he crouched and, with Martha’s help, hauled Eliot into the bathroom. The door was closed behind them.

  Tom and Clive were shut out but they continued to stand where they were and listen to a conversation they could not comprehend. For ten minutes they heard intermittent discussion, occasional retching and the patter and hiss of the shower. Then the bathroom door opened and the waiter emerged, holding Eliot under the arms as if he were ejecting a local drunk from the bar downstairs. He tugged her into Clive and Martha’s bedroom and slung her onto their bed. Martha perched next to her and the waiter fetched a blanket from the cupboard and tucked it round them both. Eliot, now exhausted, was forced by Martha to stay awake and take continual sips of water. Tom—desperate to do something—fetched his Discman and gave them a headphone each, asking, “William Orbit or Leonard Cohen?”

  Eliot’s complexion had now settled to a waxy pallor—“You actually look quite cool,” encouraged Tom, “like a zombie.” Martha’s tanned skin, by comparison, looked as tempting and restorative as a jar of honey. The waiter certainly thought so—Clive saw his fingers brush her bare shoulders as he arranged the blanket.

  “My throat hurts,” complained Eliot.

  “It’s all the puke,” said Tom. “No smoking for a day or so, Chuffy.” He was so relieved he shivered with a kind of hysteria.

  “Please,” whimpered Eliot, leaning into Martha’s shoulder, “I’ll never smoke or drink again so help me God.”

  A chambermaid appeared, at first curious and then dismissive, and dealt with the mess of the neighboring room. Clive handed the waiter every remaining note he had. Still not a word had passed between them. Clive knew he had been blamed and that he could not have defended himself in any language: it had been he who had ordered “les enfants”—as he heard the waiter describe Eliot and Tom—their wine.

  For the rest of the week the secret united Martha and Clive, and so did a new sense of responsibility. Tom begged his brother, “You won’t tell, will you?”

  Clive hesitated—here was power—but Martha broke in, saying, “No, he won’t.”

  The distance between the elder and the younger two grew again: Tom and Eliot were children; Clive and Martha adults. Clive had got his wish—but there was a spoiler: Eliot decided that she owed her life to Martha and began to worship her. While Martha bathed she sat on the lid of the loo and painted her nails. When Martha ate, Eliot ordered the same. A hundred times a day Eliot asked Martha, “Is it ‘le’ or ‘la’? ” In the evenings they swam together alone, their heads bobbing in the water for what seemed to Clive like hours: talking, talking, always talking—no doubt, he fretted, about sex and men in general, and himself and Tom in particular.

  Somewhat to Clive’s surprise his relationsh
ip with Martha survived the incident and the holiday. He judged that the trip must have been, overall, a success when she reached for his hand beside the luggage carousel. “Come to my house,” she said. “Don’t go back to College.” So Clive abandoned his single room on the Quad for Martha’s grubby, shared house in the Cowley Road.

  All this was good—it was far more and better than he had expected—but Clive recognized that their roles were as set, now, as if they had been married for a decade. The period of settling-in was over and he would play supplicant to Martha’s mighty goddess for as long as they were together. He had learned that as long as he loved Martha his happiness would only be a tributary of hers; she would be the only source of his contentment. He waited at her hand and foot on bended knee. If she wanted to see him he was summoned, but if she did not she would tell him to leave her alone. “You’re getting on my nerves,” she might say, almost teasing but not quite. “Come back tomorrow, when I’ve begun to miss you.” Clive was at the mercy of these savage instructions. He could see that it demeaned him to obey, but he saw no other way to keep her.

  2

  Finals blotted the landscape. Clive knew he would not excel—he did not have the ability—but his mother would not believe him. “You might get a First,” she said. “You never know.”

  “No, Mum,” said Clive, “I do know: I won’t.”

  “You might,” she soothed. “Don’t put yourself down.”

  He snapped at her, “Mum! Leave it, will you?”

  “I’m just—”

  “Forget it!”

  Martha was expected to get a First. “Bloody expectations,” she grumbled. “The bane of my life.” Her father, she said, would be satisfied with nothing less. “It’s either that or my dead body.”

  Clive met Martha’s father only once, but it seemed enough to satisfy all parties. On their way to his cottage—a perfect May morning—Martha said, “You know he’s a writer, don’t you?” She was nervous, which was unusual, and she seemed keen to signal to Clive that his occupation would explain or forgive what lay ahead.

  “I read that book about the raven,” lied Clive. “It was great.”

  As they drove up to the little house, Clive could see Aiden Doyle sitting on a stone bench beside the front door. They parked the car—borrowed from Martha’s housemate Viv—and walked right up to his feet before he stirred. “I suppose I should get up,” he said in a well-furred voice.

  “Don’t be silly, Dad,” said Martha, bending to kiss him. “This is Clive.”

  “Hello, son.”

  Aiden put down his glass to shake hands, and Clive realized that when Martha had said “writer” she had meant “drinker.” He felt a weariness spread through his limbs and a certainty that the day would not—could not—be a success.

  Martha opened more wine and they sat outside on the bench in a row. “PPE?” Aiden asked Clive. “Something to do with gymnastics?” He snickered, scrabbling for a match from the box on his knee.

  “Dad, don’t be a tit,” Martha said. “Clive’s going to be a barrister.”

  “Criminal?”

  “Commercial,” answered Clive.

  “Ah,” sneered Aiden. “Your bank manager will be very proud.”

  It was a long day, and at the end of it Martha was quiet. As they drove back into Oxford she suggested, “Shall I drop you off?” Clive’s heart sank: if she did not want him at her house tonight, he must have failed.

  Alone that night and all the next day Clive trod water, waiting to be told he was dumped. The next evening Martha came to see him in his room. She pulled him down to sit beside her on his single bed. “I’m sorry about my father,” she said. “He was a pig to you. He’s protective, that’s all.”

  Possessive, thought Clive, not protective. He was touched, however, and aloud he said, “That’s all right.”

  Martha fiddled with his fingers in her own. Clive loved it when she did this—it was as if she had muddled them together and forgotten whose were whose; as if she cared as much for his hand as for hers. He braced himself. The thought of losing her almost made him choke. “Clive,” she said, “you know I love you, don’t you?” She had not said it before. Clive held his breath. “I love you,” she went on. “You’re everything my father’s not. You’re kind and good, and you look after me.” She turned her head to look at him—shy, for once—and he thought he might collapse, he loved her so much.

  One Saturday they were surprised at home by a ring at the doorbell. Clive found Eliot on the doorstep. “Fuck it’s cold,” she said, stepping over the tiled porch floor, “and I’ve walked miles. Any chance of a cuppa?”

  She was on a school trip but had ditched the Ashmolean and come to visit, dressed in the army jacket, a pair of leggings and laced, black boots. “It’s my new look,” she said. “It’s kind of Patty Hearst minus the machine gun meets Patti Smith minus the microphone.” The gold bee clung to her lapel.

  Neither Clive nor Martha wanted to entertain her. They shut her in the kitchen like an untrained puppy whilst they held a consultation outside.

  “I’ve got so much work to do,” said Martha, panicking. “I can’t be distracted.”

  “Don’t worry,” soothed Clive. “I’ll take her out for a pizza or something.”

  Eliot ate a packet of Monster Munch, pulling it from one of her jacket pockets, and made herself a Nescafé. “You’re so lucky,” she said. “Boarding school is prison. I can’t wait ’til I’m at university.”

  She had been expelled from Tom’s London school and sent to board in the country. Eliot’s know-all attitude, her head teacher had written in the letter of expulsion, does not augur well for a happy future.

  “Stupid cow,” was Eliot’s comment. “I bet she had to look up ‘augur’ in the dictionary.”

  The new school was “dull as shit. Apart from music. If it wasn’t for that I’d run away and marry a millionaire.” She was coarse and foul-mouthed, and Martha was getting irritated.

  Clive intervened. “Look: Martha wants to work—shall we go and get a cup of tea?”

  “Fuck that,” Eliot said, grabbing his wrist to look at his watch. “Let’s go to the pub.”

  Already the pub’s interior was clouded by a haze of blue cigarette smoke which hung at eye level in the weak morning light. “What’ll it be?” said the landlord to Clive. The place still smelled of last night: stale beer and stale ashtrays, not freshened yet by today’s spilled pints and stubbed-out fags.

  Eliot pulled herself onto a stool. “I’ll have a Coke first,” she said, “and then a Bloody Mary.”

  “You’re not eighteen, young lady,” said the landlord. “So you can stick with a Coke.”

  Eliot blinked, opened her mouth and shut it again. “And a packet of dry-roasted peanuts,” she said in a small voice.

  They carried their drinks to a corner table. “That was so embarrassing,” said Eliot. “I never normally get stopped.” She took a pack of Marlboro from a pocket and lit one.

  “One day you’ll be glad to look your age and not three years older,” said Clive.

  “One day, maybe,” said Eliot, “but not today. Anyway, I’m nearly sixteen—my birthday’s next month. I’m going to have a party. Will you come? I’m going to invite Mr. Lennox, my old teacher, and get him to dee-vee me. I’m not at the same school now, so he won’t get the sack.”

  “How considerate of you,” said Clive.

  “I’m a nice girl,” she said. “Anyway, when did you lose your virginity? Were you drunk? Was it a one-night stand? Was she some gopping minger covered in zits?”

  “Shut up,” flushed Clive. “It’s none of your business.”

  But Eliot was not listening. “Oh my God,” she said. A peanut fell from her mouth onto the table.

  “What?”

  “The most good-looking man I’ve ever seen in my life has just walked in,” she said.

  Clive followed her stare. “That man?” he said. “I know him.”

  It was Danny, an old
boyfriend of Martha’s whose existence haunted Clive. “It was just a sex thing,” Martha had said of him. “A lot of fun, but not exactly a meeting of the minds.” Nothing could have made Clive feel worse. Just a sex thing. Viv had also slept with Danny and described him as “the best shag of my life.” Clive did not know what this meant—big cock? Unlimited stamina? The guaranteed delivery of multiple orgasms?—but he did not like the sound of it. Both women had agreed, “He’s a total bastard,” which meant no more or less than irresistible as far as Clive could tell. He feared and hated Danny, and dreaded a chance meeting.

  Now Eliot pestered him: “Can you say hello? Can we go and sit with him? Can you get him over here?”

  Clive was about to say “No!” and suggest they go somewhere else when Danny came over. “Don’t I know you?” he asked Clive. “Aren’t you a friend of Martha’s?”

  “I’m her boyfriend. I’m Clive.”

  “Right. Listen—can I pinch a fag?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Eliot. “They’re mine.” She pushed the pack towards him. “I’m Eliot.”

  “Thanks,” said Danny, taking one and lighting it. “I only came in for a quick half and a slash—I’m on my way to the races.”

  “Races?” said Eliot.

  “Yeah, it’s a local thing—a point-to-point.”

  “Can we come?” asked Eliot.

  Clive shot her a look but she ignored him.

  Danny pondered them both and blew smoke through his nostrils. “Sure,” he said, “if you like. Just let me go and have a wazz.”

  He disappeared into the Gents.

  “Don’t you have to be back at school?” Clive said to Eliot.

  “Not ’til seven,” she said. “I can get the bus. Come on, let’s have some fun. If you don’t want to come I’ll go on my own.”