Little Foxes

by Michael Morpurgo

  That afternoon Mr Brownlow made them write a story about foxes, but Billy could not write a word. He sat stunned by his window, and when Mr Brownlow asked why he had not written anything he said he wasn’t feeling too well. And this time it was no lie.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THAT AFTERNOON AFTER SCHOOL, BILLY ran home and took three tins of corned beef off the shelf and just hoped he’d be able to replace them before Aunty May noticed. He took particular care no one was watching him when he crawled under the wire into the Wilderness. The fox cubs were ravenous, snarling and snapping at each other as they waited for the tins to be opened, and then they attacked the corned beef voraciously. When they had finished not a shred was left on the grass. In their anxiety to drink the milk, they stood on the edges of the bowls and upset them, sending the milk soaking into the ground. Twice more he had to fill them up from the canal and mix up the milk powder before they were satisfied. Then when Billy lay down they spread themselves all over him and cleaned themselves, each other and Billy, minutely.

  ‘You sillies,’ said Billy. ‘Why did you have to come out and show yourselves like that? I’d have brought the food. I’d have found it somewhere. I told you didn’t I? Have I ever let you down yet? Well, have I? Now they know where you are and I got to move you. That’s what your mother would do but I don’t know where I can move you to. There’s nowhere else round here for foxes ’cept the Wilderness. Can’t hardly take you home, can I? You must never, never come out again. They’re nasty out there, d’you understand, nasty. They’d shoot you soon as look at you.’ One of them, the one with the whitest muzzle, sat down on his face as if to stop him talking. ‘I’m beginning to think Aunty May’s right, you know. You do smell something rotten. Can’t see how ’cos you wash yourselves every five minutes. Still ’spect you think I smell pretty funny. Wonder what we do smell like, people I mean?’

  He stayed longer than ever that evening. He didn’t want to leave them alone at all; and when he did have to leave them at last he turned to give them a final warning, wagging his finger at them. ‘You ’member what I said, now,’ he said. ‘Stay here. Stay here and be good and I’ll be back tomorrow sometime. Corned beef, I promise. Dunno how, but corned beef it will be. But don’t you move out of the Wilderness, you understand?’ But the fox cubs were all busy washing themselves and hardly gave him a glance as he left them.

  Billy could not sleep that night. He lay on his back, hands under his head, and tried to think, but his thoughts were forever being interrupted by the rumble and roar of traffic from the motorway, by yowling cats, or by Aunty May turning over in her squeaking bed and coughing her dry smoker’s cough. It was the first warm night of the summer, and Billy discarded his blankets one by one until he was left only with his sheet. Even then he could not sleep. By morning he had still not worked out how he was going to find enough corned beef to feed his foxes; neither had he managed to think of a place where it would be safe enough to hide the cubs. But move them he knew he must, and quickly.

  He survived school that day only because Aunty May had unwittingly solved the problem of the corned beef for him. At breakfast she handed over his dinner money for the week. It wouldn’t be stealing, he thought, as he joined the cavalcade of children walking to school. It wasn’t as if he was taking from her any more than usual. He would spend it all on corned beef and go without school dinners for the week – just tell them at school that he would be going home for dinner. No one would know. Lots of children did it, after all.

  Throughout the dinner break there was a line of fox-watchers by the school fence, binoculars at the ready. But when after an hour nothing appeared, they soon gave up. By the time the bell went for afternoon lessons Billy found he was one of only a few left at the fence and he did not for one moment take his eye from the spot where the foxes had appeared the day before. He longed to run over to the Wilderness, crawl under the wire and be with them, to reassure them. More than once he thought he spotted some unnatural movement in the undergrowth beyond the wire and held his breath, fully expecting them to come out into the open. Forehead pressed against the school fence, he willed them to stay hidden, and they did.

  The appearance of the fox cubs was still the buzz of the school. There was talk of clandestine expeditions into the Wilderness to find them, talk of setting the dogs upon them. This only served to convince Billy that he had to act fast if he was to save them. By the time school finished that afternoon he still did not know what could be done. On the way home for tea he stopped at the shops to buy as much corned beef as his dinner money would allow. That problem at any rate he had solved, at least for the time being.

  He was into his second helping of baked beans and had scraped away all the beans off the toast as he always did, when Aunty May took the cigarette out of her lips, took the cosy off the teapot and poured herself a cup of tea. She sat down opposite him and flicked the ash off her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Did you hear about those fox cubs, Billy?’ she asked suddenly, but she did not wait for an answer. ‘Four of them there was – that’s what my friend Ivy told me, you know Ivy at number 38 – and she said Mrs Bootle told her and she’s on the Committee so she ought to know, shouldn’t she? Well, someone spotted one of them a few days ago just down by that old ruin, just outside the fence it was. You know the place, Billy? Then yesterday there was three of them seen from the school. Children came home full of it, Ivy said. You didn’t see them, Billy, did you? Don’t suppose you did – didn’t say anything about it, did you? Well anyway Mrs Bootle wasn’t going to have it. Vermin are vermin, like she says, and when they grow up they only breed, don’t they? And they’re into dustbins all the time, spreading litter and disease. And Ivy says she knows her tabby cat was eaten by a fox last year – couldn’t have been anything else, she says. And like Mrs Bootle says, they’re a danger to health. I mean did you smell that dead fox a few weeks back? And she says they’ve been known to attack children in their prams when they’re hungry enough. And they don’t wash, you know, they don’t ever wash. Well they wouldn’t, would they? Anyway, Mrs Bootle, she’s Chairman of the Committee now, you know, well she wasn’t having it, like I said. She rang up the Pest Control people last night and they came quick as lightning first thing this morning. Not surprising really – been a lot of complaints about vermin on the estate. What’s the matter, Billy? Don’t you like your baked beans? Told me you could eat like a horse. Something the matter with you? You eat up, there’s a good boy. Like I was saying, they went in and gassed them, just like that. Good thing too, I should say. Met Mrs Cole at the supermarket and her husband that works on the Council, he was there – he was one of them that did it. You won’t ever go near that place, will you, Billy? Mrs Cole told me, she said there’s been strange goings-on in there – you know, like rituals, witches and that. She said they found a cross of twigs stuck into the ground and a fresh grave with flowers on it. Don’t you ever go near that place, Billy, do you hear? Come on now Billy, eat your baked beans. I opened a big tin and you said you’d eat it. It’s not right to waste things, Billy, I’m not made of money you know.’

  ‘How many did you say they found?’ Billy asked, blinking back the tears that threatened to engulf him, wiping them away from the corners of his eyes.

  ‘One cross is quite enough, Billy,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘People get up to all sorts in places like that, Black Magic, Voodoo. You keep away, like I said.’

  ‘Foxes,’ said Billy patiently. ‘How many foxes did they find?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Think it was four. Do wish you’d stop playing with those beans and eat up, Billy. They’ll be all cold if you leave them much longer. No, perhaps it was three they killed. Maybe it was four, I don’t know. Three, four, what’s the difference? Anyway, Mrs Cole said they’d be going back in to flush out any more if there are any. Are you crying, Billy? Are you all right, dear? Oh Billy, there’s no need for that. You don’t have to eat the baked beans if you don’t want to. I can keep them back
for tomorrow. There’s no need to cry, Billy.’ Billy wept silently, his tears falling from his cheeks onto the baked beans. ‘All this fuss over beans, Billy,’ said Aunty May. ‘I’ve never known you cry before, and now this and all because of baked beans. You’ll spoil them, Billy. I don’t understand you at all, Billy, I’ve never understood you. I don’t like to see boys who cry, Billy. You’re a big boy now. Crying’s for babies, Billy, not big boys. You go and lie on your bed till you feel better, there’s a good boy.’

  Billy threw himself face down onto his bed and buried his face in his pillow. He had to bite on his knuckles to hold back the scream of anguish that threatened to burst from him. He was consumed with a terrible grief at the loss of his family, and a raging anger at the ignorance and cruelty that had killed them. As he lay there he could find only one vestige of hope remaining, the possibility that there could be one of them still left alive. Aunty May had not been sure whether it was three or four. He clung desperately to that hope, took his grey feather out from under his pillow and willed it to be three. When Aunty May came in later on he pretended to be asleep; breathing deeply as she covered him with the blanket. He waited until she had gone to bed and the light in the passage had been switched off before slipping out of the flat.

  It was one of those rare summer nights when the white light of the moon was strong enough to all but eliminate the omnipotent glare of the street lamps. Billy ran down across the estate towards the Wilderness, his grey feather in his pocket. He ran all the way there, half hoping, half dreading what he would find. Once in the Wilderness he moved silently through the graveyard and into the ruined chapel itself. The sound of his own panting filled the ruins as he sat down on the mound and waited.

  There was destruction all around him. All the entrances to the den had been caved in, and great mounds of fresh earth covered each one. He put his ear to the ground and listened. He could hear nothing but his own heartbeat and his own frantic breathing. He lay there for some time, hoping and praying that one of them might have survived the gassing, but as time passed and he heard nothing he feared the worst, but refused to believe it. It took several minutes of frantic digging to clear away enough earth from one of the holes so that he could call down into the den. ‘It’s me. It’s Billy. You can come out now. It’s me. It’s Billy.’ But there was no answering movement from inside the earth, no sound at all.

  Time after time Billy’s hopes were raised, only to be dashed again. There was a sudden rustling in the undergrowth that turned out to be a small hedgehog shuffling through the leaves, then a noisy commotion on the canal when something alarmed the ducks and sent them quacking into the air. Billy reached the canal in time to see a big fish jump – a marauding pike, he thought. Billy searched his Wilderness from end to end. He called down every rabbit hole; he even climbed the walls of the ruined chapel to check any window-ledge where a fox might be lying up. It was all for nothing.

  Towards dawn he found himself wandering disconsolately towards the canal bank where he sat down and at last accepted that all his foxes had been taken from him, that none of them had survived. The great white moon shone up at him from the water and he threw a stone at it angrily to stop it staring at him. It shattered into a million jewels before piecing itself together once again. He had no tears left now. Exhausted and drained of all care, Billy lay down and slept.

  The swan came out of the reeds, gliding across the water, and looked on as the boy slept. In his sleep Billy dreamed she was there and he smiled.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A COLD NOSE IN HIS EAR TRIED TO DRAG him from his dreams. He was dreaming that the swan had brought the foxes to him, and he did not want the dream to end, for he knew he was dreaming and that nothing now could bring them to him. He did not want to be interrupted and so he pushed the cold nose away. But the nose would not be denied and nudged him awake. Billy opened his eyes. The fox sat beside him, his tail curled round his feet, looking down at him. Billy still revelled in his dream. It was only when the fox yawned and came to lie down beside him, laying his head on his arm that Billy began to understand that he was living his dream, and that his dream was not a dream at all. Billy sat up at once and looked at the canal to see if the other part of his dream was true; but there was no swan, only the white moon still staring at him from the water. ‘You’re the only one, then?’ said Billy looking around him. ‘You’re the only one that got away, and I bet I know which one you are. You’re the biggest one, aren’t you? You heard them coming, didn’t you? Knew it wasn’t me, didn’t you? Bet you told the others to follow you and they didn’t. Where you been hiding all this time?’ The fox seemed to welcome his caresses, rolling on to his back as Billy’s hand ran through his fur. The fur was wet to the touch. ‘Not raining is it? Oh, so that’s it. You swam the canal, didn’t you? No other way you could have got wet all over like this is there? Foxed them, didn’t you? Foxed them good and proper. Now I’ve got to get you out of here. Aunty May said they’d be back. Can’t leave you here. There’s nowhere else to go but home. I’ll work something out, don’t know what, but something.’ He knelt up and put his arms around the fox and hugged him close. ‘I’m never going to let them get you. Never. But you’ll have to do as I tell you. First you’ll have to walk on a lead, so that I can get you home. You got to learn, and learn fast. Only got my belt. It’s a bit short but it’ll have to do.’

  Billy slipped the belt over the fox’s head, pulled it tight so that it fitted snugly around his neck, and then gently lifted the fox to his feet. There was some resistance at first, a shaking of the head, a few attempts to gnaw at the belt, but a turn or two around the graveyard and the fox seemed happy to be led, just so long as Billy did not jerk the lead too sharply. As they passed the vixen’s grave, Billy wanted to tell her what had happened but he could not find the words. He had let her down and he could not bring himself to confess it.

  The estate was just waking up when Billy came out of the Wilderness with the fox. The milk float was humming through the streets and the lights were on in the paper shop on the corner. The only car he saw was a police car cruising slowly around the estate. Billy dared not run too fast for fear of pulling too hard on the lead and upsetting the fox; so he trotted gently, keeping the lead slack. Every few paces though, the fox would stop and look about him. Billy had to talk him on, calming his fears, stroking his head and ears until he was happy to go on again.

  The journey seemed interminably long to Billy, but they reached the door to the flats without being spotted. Nothing would persuade the fox to follow Billy through the doors no matter how hard Billy tried to make him. In the end he was forced to pick him up and climb the echoing stairway to the tenth floor. Aunty May never woke up until the alarm went at eight, so he felt quite safe as he stole into the flat and closed the front door behind him. But even as he put his hand onto his bedroom door to push it open, he felt someone watching him from the kitchen.

  The light went on and Aunty May was there, standing by the kitchen table, her face pasty white and drawn without its make-up. Billy kept his back to her, one arm holding the fox tightly to his chest. ‘Billy, Billy,’ Aunty May was crying; Billy was not sure if she was crying with fury or with relief. ‘Where’ve you been, Billy? All night I’ve been up, all night. The police are out looking for you, have been ever since midnight, when I found your bed empty. Now what am I going to say to them, Billy? It’s too much, Billy, too much.’ She came towards him, gathering her dressing-gown around her. ‘What’s that you’re hiding there, Billy? Show me, show me at once.’ And she took Billy by the shoulder and swung him round to face her. Billy expected her to scream but she did not. Her mouth gaped in horror as she backed away from him, knocking over the kitchen stool behind her. ‘Get that thing out of here,’ she whispered. ‘Get it out. Billy, either you put that thing out of that door this minute or . . . or . . . Billy, either it goes at once, or you both go. Do you understand me, Billy? Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Yes, Aunty
May,’ said Billy. And with the fox cradled against him he walked to the front door and opened it. ‘Goodbye,’ he said, and he was gone before she could collect herself.

  Billy ran towards the canal, the only way he could go. The estate lay in a triangle of two main roads with the canal behind. The roads led only into the city and there was no refuge there for a boy and a fox on the run. Billy had often looked out across the canal and seen the hills rising into the clouds on the horizon, and common sense told him that this was where he had to go. There were scarcely any houses on those high hills, and that meant fewer people. It was the countryside, an empty place where people went for picnics in the summer time and where he had always longed to go. Billy had seen it fleetingly, flashing by out of coach windows, but he had never been there. It seemed to him the kind of place a boy and a fox could lose themselves and never be found. As Billy ran across the estate, the fox trotting out alongside him, he could hear Aunty May calling out after him to come back. It only made him run faster.

  Quite how he planned to cross the canal Billy did not know, and he had not had the time to think about it. Even as he stood now, looking out across the weed-choked water to the far bank, he still had no idea how he would get across, for Billy could not swim. He could splash and kick enough to keep himself afloat for a few brief seconds in the shallow end of the pool in swimming lessons, but then panic invariably overtook him and his legs would reach for the bottom. It had been different when he rescued the swan. Then he had had no time to think about it. The fox stood beside him panting hard, glad of the rest. ‘All right, so you can swim,’ said Billy. ‘Comes natural to a fox I suppose. Nearest bridge over the canal is the main road and they’d catch us before we got there. No choice, have we?’ He remembered then that he had not drowned the last time he jumped in. He remembered he had felt the mud under his feet and he had managed to keep his head above the water. That memory and the sight of Aunty May bearing down on him, dressing-gown flying out behind her, screaming out for him to stop, was all the spur Billy needed. He pushed the fox out into the canal and watched him paddle away before jumping in after him.