Never Mind Miss Fox Read online

This was enough to persuade him. “All right,” Clive said, “we’ll go.”

  Danny climbed into a large, dirty Mercedes which was parked outside the pub. Eliot slid across the leather back seats. “This car is fucking cool,” she said. Every “fuck” startled Clive like the sudden bark of a dog.

  “It’s not mine,” said Danny. “It belongs to a woman who owes me money.”

  Eliot picked up a stack of sports pages from the seat next to her and asked, “Are you a bookie?”

  “Sort of,” said Danny. “Sometimes.”

  “But I thought you were a student?” said Clive.

  Danny laughed. “Student? No, mate. Didn’t see the point.”

  They stopped for fuel, Coke and cigarettes before Danny headed southwest towards the high, pale crease of the chalk downs. It was a raw day to be outdoors: the approaching hills looked cold and bare and a torn, white sky scudded behind them. The hedges beside the road were black and glittering after a long night’s rain.

  Eliot rummaged through a box of cassettes next to her in the back. “I like your music.”

  “Pass me something and I’ll put it on.”

  She was struck by a sudden shyness. “Oh,” she said, “no—it’s OK.”

  There was something already between them—a current; a recognition—that Clive did not feel party to. Without Martha he had lost his mooring; he did not know where to put himself, or what sort of person to be. He felt a cold key turn in his guts, and wished they had not come.

  Danny turned from one road to another, each more slender than the last, following yellow-painted signs that stuck out from the hedges and read, RACE MEETING. A sloshing, puddled lane led them into a greasy field where the heavy Mercedes glided to a stop. “We’ll never get out,” said Eliot cheerfully. “It’s a swamp.”

  A white-faced crowd stood hunched against the blast of wind and ice-splintered rain. Two tents—one labeled “Beer” and the other, “Food”—billowed and guttered on their ropes. Children with mottled, marbled faces were galloping through the chalky paste, skidding and jumping to keep warm. Dogs trembled at the end of their leads, hovering above the turf as if they could not bear to stand or sit.

  Clive stared through the car window. He yearned for the fug of Martha’s bedroom: the flickering blade of the gas flame; the smell of her Golden Virginia; tea going cold in the mug and a stilted trickle of condensation puddling on the windowsill.

  “I’m going to freeze my tits off,” Eliot said.

  Danny was unfazed. “Not if you drink enough,” he said. “Guinness and whisky—”

  “Yum.”

  “—and there are coats in the back.”

  They got out of the car—even Clive swore when the wind hit him—and Danny pulled a long, dark-checked cashmere overcoat from the boot. “This looks expensive,” he said. He handed it to Eliot.

  She put it on, knotted the belt and said, “Holy crap, this is gorgeous. I’m never taking it off.”

  Clive turned to look and saw a person quite altered: dressed in a woman’s coat, Eliot had borrowed a woman’s glamour. Danny lifted his head from the boot and looked her over. “Wow,” he said, and Eliot glowed.

  Clive felt a pinch in his heart. “Anything for me?” he asked. Danny passed him a green cagoule and a pair of rubber boots and Clive dithered, dismayed. He wanted to be warm but not to look ridiculous. He shrugged his way into the anorak and looked down at himself.

  Eliot saw him and laughed. “Jeremy Fisher,” she said, her wicked little head cocked to one side.

  Clive blushed and tried to think of a reply but Eliot had already turned away, trotting alongside Danny towards the beer tent. Clive slid and floundered behind them. Jeremy Fisher. He smarted.

  The beer tent was stifling and clammy and roared with noise. Everyone seemed to be drunk and laughing. Eliot looked around, delighted. “This is going to be fun,” she said, but Danny was steered away by welcoming arms and without him she seemed to deflate. “I’m hungry,” she whined, “and I want a drink. Will you buy me one?” They pushed their way to the bar. Eliot whispered, “Why am I getting funny looks?”

  “Because you look like an anti.” It was Danny, appearing beside them.

  “Do I?” Eliot looked down at herself. “Anti what?”

  Danny laughed. “Come on, get the drinks in and we’ll go outside for the first race.”

  Clive ordered three pints of Guinness and three whiskies and they swallowed them in that order. Eliot went pink and cross-eyed. “Shall we put some money on?” she asked Danny.

  “Put a tenner on Mr. Bricks if you like—but don’t go blaming me if he doesn’t win.”

  “Clive, have you got another tenner?”

  “It’s my last one.”

  “I bet it’s not—you’re always loaded.”

  “Not loaded. Careful.”

  “Not around me you’re not,” she jeered. “Come on—don’t be such a tight-arse.” She followed Danny out into the wind.

  Clive placed the bet and joined them by the finishing post. Danny was standing behind Eliot and had wrapped both arms around her to keep her warm; her heels rested on the toes of his boots and she was leaning back against him, laughing.

  Looking at them Clive felt a stab of pain that surprised him. He turned away to recover himself, before it showed on his face. These feelings were alarming; he did not want to name them. He was confused. He would have felt better with Martha here but nevertheless he was glad she was not. A mass of people stood and jostled him and he thought he might be trampled underfoot or lost like the frantic dog which trailed a scarlet lead and scanned the crowd, over and over, with worried eyes and a dipping, searching nose.

  The noise was non-stop: talking, laughing, calling and shouting that grew to a chorus and then to a blurring, beating roar as the race began. Behind it the commentary fogged out of the loudspeaker but Clive could make neither head nor tail of it—how could anyone? It was deafening but incomprehensible—and nor could he see anything but heads, legs and mud.

  “Come on, Mr. Bricks!” shouted Eliot. “Get a fucking move on!”

  A tidy couple beside them turned at her voice with eyebrows raised and Danny said, “Sorry,” to them and then added, “I can’t take her anywhere,” and squeezed Eliot until she yelped and wriggled in his grasp, wild with whisky and excitement. Clive, watching, felt a throb of anger. She is not yours, he thought. But whose?

  The pulse of the crowd became more thunderous still. “Christ alive,” said Danny, leaning forward, “he’s going to do it.”

  He did not shout, but Eliot did: “Come on! Come on!”

  Clive could not seem to raise his voice; he could not bear to hear his feeble bleat amid that dreadful roar. All around them people yelled, cursed, stamped and shook their fists and then in a gasp and a blur the two leading horses ground past the post, filthy and exhausted. At once the noise became an indeterminate groan of relief or disappointment. Eliot turned to Clive. “How much did you put on?”

  “That tenner I had.”

  “Only ten quid? Fuck! We could have minted it. What have we won?”

  “What did you get? Nine to one? Something like that?” Danny quizzed him.

  “Something like that,” lied Clive. It had been more like seven.

  “Well, that’s not bad,” said Eliot, rolling her eyes to the sky as she did the maths in her head. “Plenty for cakes and ale!” She snatched the betting slip from Clive’s hand. “Come on, Pops,” she said, “let’s go and fetch our winnings.”

  But neither money nor beer could bring Clive back from where he teetered, at the edge of a blind rage. He sensed Danny and Eliot pulling away from him as if they had climbed into a little two-seater and left him standing at the curb.

  “Why are you in such a grump?” Eliot asked him, back in the tent with more drinks.

  “Because I should be working,” said Clive in a sulky voice. “I can’t just piss about.”

  “Piss about?” said Danny. “This is my office. I’ve
made a killing today—you’ve brought me luck.” He ruffled Eliot’s hair and planted a kiss on her hot cheek.

  She blushed and stammered, “Have I?”

  Clive had had enough—he wanted Eliot’s joyous, laughing attention turned to him and if he could not have it, he wanted to go home. Now she was trying to pick a horse to back in the next race: “Some of these names are hilarious,” she said. “What about Miss Demeanor? That’s got to be worth a fiver.”

  “You’re what my nan would call ‘a caution,’” commented Danny.

  “Or, Frankly Marvelous? That’s a good one for you. Hey, here’s one for Clive,” she went on. “Rigger Tony. Geddit? Rigatoni. Isn’t that a kind of pasta?” She turned to Danny. “Clive’s real name is Tony but he hated it so he swapped.”

  “Swapped it for Clive?” They both looked him over.

  This was not the attention Clive had wanted. “No one calls me Tony anymore,” he said.

  “My dad was called Tony,” said Danny. “He’s dead now.”

  “That’s shitty,” sympathized Eliot. “I had a brother who died when I was a baby.”

  In the silence that followed, Clive, with dark fury, considered his family: alive and well, and at home in Amersham. Peter would be in the garden, Val in the kitchen and Tom in his bedroom with the music on loud. They would eat a homemade curry later and then Tom would say, “I’m going out,” and his mother would try to stop him. “Must you?” she would say. “It’s so cold. Don’t you want to stay and watch a film with us?” Tom would kiss her and go, nonetheless.

  “Amersham is so convenient,” Val always said. “It’s only forty minutes to John Lewis on Oxford Street.”

  This comment irritated Clive every time he heard it. “Mum, it’s not. It’s an hour to Baker Street, and then you have to change to the Bakerloo line, and there’s the taxi from here to the station, and back again in the evening. It all mounts up.”

  But his mother would play deaf, look away, and not respond.

  Clive had never heard before about Eliot’s dead brother—he wondered if she were even telling the truth. She was a climbing weed that twisted round them, rootless and threading, a clinging twine. She would attach herself to anyone. She had been Tom’s—Martha’s—his parents’—and then this morning—for a moment only—she had been his, but now she was Danny’s. Danny had eclipsed them all.

  “My dad was a bastard,” he was saying. “I was glad when he died.”

  “My mum’s a cow,” commiserated Eliot.

  Clive was sick of the pair of them. “I want to go,” he said. “I’m cold.”

  “You should drink more,” said Eliot.

  “No—you should drink less.” He hated himself but he could not resist: “I don’t fancy cleaning up your mess again.”

  Eliot flushed and said nothing.

  “You can both relax,” said Danny. “No one’s going anywhere until I’m done.”

  “I like your job,” said Eliot. “I’m going to be a concert pianist when I grow up, and Clive’s going to be a barrister.”

  “I’m grown-up already,” spluttered Clive.

  “A barrister?” said Danny. “That’s good—I can come to you when I get done for illegal gambling.”

  Eliot giggled. “And I can come to you when I divorce my first millionaire.”

  They both laughed.

  “No you can’t,” said Clive. “You’ll need a solicitor—and anyway, it’s a different kind of law.”

  At last they were back in the car and Danny turned the heater to full blast. “Where’s school?” he asked Eliot.

  “Ugh,” she said, tipping her head back onto the headrest. “The other side of Swindon. Why?”

  “Because we might as well drop you off.”

  “Shit, that would be amazing,” said Eliot. “I was just thinking how much I didn’t want to sit on that frigging bus.”

  Eliot had got into the front—“Come on, Clive, be fair, you were in the front on the way”—and Clive the back. He was the toddler strapped into its seat; the dog kept behind a grille; the spare wheel in the boot. He stared at the backs of their heads and hated them.

  On the road again, Danny switched on the radio and a piano concerto poured out like a torrent of water.

  “Can we have this?” asked Eliot. “It’s Brahms.”

  Danny turned it up. “Brahms what?” he asked, impressed.

  “Second piano concerto,” said Eliot. She tugged at her ear-lobe, self-conscious. “Not just a pretty face, you see,” she joked.

  Clive could not bear it: “Proper little madam, aren’t you?” he said, “with your hockey stick and your piano lessons.”

  Eliot said nothing, and Danny reached forward and turned up the radio’s volume.

  They drove in silence until Eliot cleared her throat and said, “It’s the next right turn.” As they pulled in between wrought-iron gates the headlights swept over what looked like miles of parkland.

  “Blimey,” said Danny. “Can I stay too?”

  Eliot giggled. “Only if you wear a skirt—no boys allowed.”

  “I could teach you sums.”

  “I wish,” sighed Eliot. She pointed into the dark and said, “Hockey pitches, tennis courts, running track. That’s the science department”—they passed a jumble of modern buildings—“and that’s the headmistress’s house.” As they drew alongside a stolid little bungalow she added, “The stupid turd.”

  At the end of a slick, black drive the car scrunched onto a lake of gravel. Danny pulled up in front of the house: a vast, sand-colored building which sheltered behind six towering columns. A flight of stone steps led up to the front door and on either side of the bottom stair lay a stone lion with crossed front paws and a “Have you been drinking?” expression.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Danny said, putting the car into park, “it’s a bloody palace.” They all three sat in contemplative silence for a moment. Then Danny turned to face Eliot and asked, “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes of course,” she said. “And thank you for a lovely day.” It was a different voice from the one which had demanded beer and cigarettes, and it sounded much younger. As she fiddled with the door handle Clive saw that she was trying not to cry.

  “That’s all right, pet,” said Danny. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

  Eliot nodded.

  “Here, you’d better take some fags,” said Danny. He handed her the pack from his pocket. “And what else? Have a look in the glove box.”

  Eliot clicked open the glove compartment and pulled out a Twix. “Can I take this and the fags?” she asked, sounding happier. “I’ll pay you back.”

  Danny laughed. “Yes, you can.”

  Clutching her presents Eliot turned in her seat. “’Bye, Clive,” she said. “See you in London. Come to my birthday, will you? Both of you? It’s in a month.” She opened the door and got out. Then she said, “Oh shit, the coat,” and started to take it off.

  “Keep it,” said Danny. “It suits you.”

  “Really?” Eliot was ecstatic. “Thanks.” She put the cigarettes and the chocolate in her pocket and tied the belt tightly around herself.

  “Hang on,” said Clive to Danny, “I’m going to get in the front.” He got out of the car and tried to grab Eliot’s elbow as she turned away. “’Bye, Eliot,” he said. He had thought he might hug her but she had stepped just out of reach and was walking away from him, turning up the collar on her wonderful coat.

  She sang out a loose “Goodbye” over her shoulder.

  Clive watched her go up the steps, two by two, until Danny said, “Get in, will you? It’s too bloody cold to hang about.”

  Martha lifted her head and laughed when Clive told her they had been asked to Eliot’s birthday party. “How sweet,” she said, poised above her revision.

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Go? Are you mad? I’m trying to get a First, Clive, not a degree in being a teenage dropout.”

  “It’s Primrose Hill. Isn’t tha
t your neck of the woods? Where your dad used to live?”

  Martha gave a snort. “Believe me, Primrose Hill is a long way from Kilburn.”

  Part II

  3

  Did he remember Eliot Fox? In his London bedroom Clive folded his suit trousers neatly in half at the waist so that he could press the two legs together and smooth them over a wooden coat hanger which hung from a hook on the back of the bedroom door. He had left the jacket in the kitchen, slung over the back of a chair, and he wondered whether or not to retrieve it. What a lot of effort it all was.

  He stood in his shirt, pants and socks and looked up at the trousers on their hanger until Martha said, “Earth to Clive?” and he turned to see her watching him, amused, wiping one eyelid with a cotton-wool ball.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to remember. She was Tom’s friend, right?”

  “Yes! God!” said Martha. She turned away again with her attention on the other eye. “I thought you’d be more interested—I can remember everything about her: she came to France, Tom was in love with her (but of course they were only about fifteen so it wasn’t really love-love) and then she got the hots for Danny—remember him?—and Tom nearly went demented.”

  “That’s right,” said Clive. His voice sounded as pale as he imagined his face to be. “Now I remember.” But what to do about the jacket? He would leave it where it was, he decided. What harm could it come to in the kitchen overnight?

  “Oh”—now Martha was rubbing cream into her hands—“and there’s some other news, deadly dull: there are bats, having babies in the cottage roof. It’s called a maternity colony—there are hundreds of the little buggers. Steve found them, looking for the leak. He says they’re protected and he can’t fix anything up there ’til they’ve gone.”