Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘Mum!’ cried Jack. ‘It’s a fox.’

  I saw it as soon as I got in the room. Mary hadn’t fallen off the sofa, she’d been dragged – dragged by the ankle – and now she was halfway to the French doors. The fox, quite a big one, and fitter and redder than the London sort, had her ankle in its tight jaws.

  Chapter 25.

  Jack ran straight towards the fox, yelling. I expected the thing to let go of Mary and run off in fright, but it just kept tugging. Mary travelled about two feet with every jerk. She was obviously too heavy for the fox to pick up and carry.

  Keeping my eyes on the fox, I hurried towards the fireplace. ‘Don’t let it get away,’ I shrieked.

  I was reaching for one of the iron fire-pokers when Jack kicked the fox, hard, in the ribs – so hard that all its feet were lifted off the ground. I think I heard one of the ribs crack.

  Instantly, it dropped Mary and ran diagonally, loping, out of the door. Even with what it had been doing, I hated to see it injured. Jack had clearly put a big dent in it.

  Jack, my brave boy, was picking up Mary.

  ‘She’s okay, mum.’

  She wasn’t fine, she was screaming like I’d never heard her scream – thank God. It was such a great sound, an alive sound.

  I’d dressed her in a towelling babygrow, which now I started to pull off – the poppers going one after the other.

  ‘What is it?’ shouted Peter from the balcony.

  ‘It’s Mary,’ shouted Jack.

  I pulled the babygrow off Mary’s kicking legs. She’d gone blotchy pink with fear and fury.

  Peter’s feet banged down the zigzag stairs.

  There were two rows of teeth marks, about an inch and a half apart. They were angry red but I couldn’t see anywhere the skin had been broken. I checked again, squeezing the skin to see if any blood came out. What did foxes carry? Rabies? Tetanus? Who knows what else.

  Peter came into the room, breathless.

  ‘She’s all right?’

  ‘It was a fox, Dad,’ said Jack, almost gleeful. ‘I kicked it so it ran away. I kicked it like this – ’ He demonstrated.

  I was hugging Mary probably harder than the fox had bitten her. Peter came over and wanted a look – so I showed him the teeth marks. There was just a trickle of bright red blood.

  ‘Why was she on her own?’ he asked.

  ‘We were down the cellar,’ said Jack. ‘Mum was showing me. Can I go again? As a reward.’

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘Not now.’

  ‘He wanted to see,’ I said. ‘I thought Mary would be fine.’ Peter couldn’t make me feel worse than I was already feeling.

  ‘I’ll get the first aid kit,’ said Peter, and jogged through to the kitchen. He was back in moments, and disinfecting Mary’s leg – causing further screams.

  A figure appeared in the doorway to the garden. It was Robert Mew, the gardener.

  ‘I heard some screaming,’ he said. ‘Then I saw the fox go by. It was hurt.’

  ‘I hurt it,’ said Jack.

  Robert looked at the baby. He didn’t cross the threshold to come into the house.

  ‘Did it bite her?’ he asked.

  ‘Only round the leg,’ I said.

  ‘Lucky, then,’ he replied. ‘I did say…’

  ‘Say what?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Robert told me not to leave Mary alone in the garden. I didn’t realize the house wasn’t safe, either.’

  Peter said nothing, letting my words answer themselves.

  ‘It’s a nasty fox, that one,’ said Robert Mew. ‘Mr. Jonson wouldn’t let me kill it. He liked wild animals.’

  ‘Well, you can kill it now,’ said Peter.

  The gardener nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Jack, crossing his arms and jutting out his chin.

  A moment later, when he saw there was nothing more to be said, Robert Mew excused himself. ‘I hope she recovers quickly,’ he said. As he turned away, I noticed that he had a huge bunch of keys dangling from a chain tied to his belt. I knew that if I asked him about them now, Peter would think I wasn’t taking Mary’s injuries seriously enough. She was starting to calm down, a little. I could talk to Robert about his keys later.

  For the second time that day, Peter called NHS Direct. And for the second time that day, we were told to go to the hospital.

  I offered to take Mary by myself. But Peter wanted to come, and we certainly weren’t leaving Jack with just a distracted Mr. Gatward to supervise him.

  Peter locked the French doors, then went to tell Mr. Gatward what was going on.

  ‘He hardly even looked up,’ said Peter. ‘Completely absorbed.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s learning a spell,’ said Jack.

  ‘Perhaps,’ I said.

  Mary fell asleep just as we were driving past the turn to the village.

  She woke up as the nurse, a different nurse from the morning, thank goodnesss – a male nurse, took a blood sample.

  ‘Have you seen a fox bite before?’ I asked.

  ‘Once,’ he said. ‘On someone’s hand.’

  ‘Did they catch anything?’

  ‘No. Not that I know of. But I only saw them one time.’

  They gave her a couple more jabs, and told us to watch her closely for fourty-eight hours. If there was anything unusual in how she seemed, we were to bring her straight back.

  The whole round trip took about two-and-a-half hours – beating our record from the morning. I prayed we didn’t get another chance to lower it.

  Mr. Gatward came to greet us in the hall when we got back.

  ‘I’ve found some remarkable things,’ he said. ‘How is the little one?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Peter, ‘as far as they can see. Perhaps you could tell us about your discoveries tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow morning,’ I said.

  Mr. Gatward said, ‘Of course,’ and left straight away.

  Mary, understandably, was a more than little unsettled. She wanted to be held the whole time – which was good because I wanted to hold her the whole time.

  As we ate our small dinner of baked beans on toast (no one wanted anything heavier), Jack asked whether he could go down the cellar, as a reward for being a hero.

  ‘Another time,’ said Peter. Then said Jack could stay up a bit past his bedtime to watch TV.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ asked Jack, not distracted.

  ‘Yes?’ Peter said. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Morning?’ asked Jack.

  Peter gave Jack a look that he couldn’t misunderstand.

  Jack switched the TV on.

  Putting the children to bed took quite a while. Jack went off to sleep after I’d read him a couple of pages from Father Trovato’s picture book. It was a Life of Jesus, quite old-fashioned, with paintings of Mary and Joseph and their donkey. I didn’t mind Jack learning about all that, and it was hard to see him becoming totally Christian just because of a cartoon. Mary, though, wouldn’t settle and wouldn’t settle. I held her and cooed to her, but she needed to exhaust herself with crying and then get filled up with milk before she calmed down enough to close her eyes. I sang to her the same lullabies I’d once sung to Jack, before he began to prefer Beatles songs.

  By the time Mary was soundly asleep, I was exhausted and not a little frustrated. Despite my resolutions not to let her out of my sight, I needed some respite. She would be perfectly safe upstairs, with the doors and windows shut.

  Peter was lying on the sofa, eyes closed, when I came in. I told him straight away about the noises I’d heard in the cellar. I said I thought something was down there.

  ‘What?’ he asked. He was still furious with me – for scalding myself, for leaving Mary alone on the sofa, and most of all for believing the weird stuff I did. ‘An animal?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll look tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Why not now?’ I asked. ‘It won’t take long.’

  Peter looked at me closely. ‘I’m not sure I understand you an
y more,’ he said. ‘Are you testing me?’

  ‘I just want to see if there’s anything down there.’

  Without a word, he went to fetch the keys.

  Chapter 26.

  Very matter-of-factly, Peter unlocked the cellar door, switched on the lights and strode down the stairs. He had finished examining the place by the time I was there.

  ‘Empty,’ he said. ‘And no sign of droppings.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. But then I caught sight of something – a bright drop of water, like a raindrop or a teardrop, falling from the ceiling. It sliced down through the air, shining with a brightness that didn’t seem to come from the lightbulb overhead. I didn’t see it land, because of something I’d never noticed before. In the middle of the tiled floor was a drain with a thick metal grille covering it over. The water drop fell down through one of the square holes. The grille was the same grey colour as the rest of the cellar – easy to miss. The floor sloped towards it from every direction, like a very flat funnel.

  ‘Did you see that?’ I asked.

  ‘See what?’ said Peter.

  I went across for a closer look at the grille. ‘What’s this?’ I said.

  I tried to lift it, and it budged a little.

  ‘Give us a hand,’ I said.

  Peter joined me and together, with a bit of effort but not all that much, we lifted the grille – which was hinged – and let it fall to the side with a loud clang. A series of echoes came back from the dark hole we’d just opened up.

  We both stood frozen, listening to see if Mary had been woken up. I expected a restless night, from how she’d been ever since the fox. For the moment, though, she seemed to be contentedly asleep.

  There wasn’t a lot of light, in the cellar, not enough to see to the bottom of the hole. But quite clearly visible were the first and second rungs of a ladder.

  ‘Where do you think it goes?’ I asked.

  ‘Sewage pipe, probably,’ said Peter. The thing didn’t smell, though – or not of bad stuff. It smelt dry, woody.

  ‘I think someone came up through there,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ said Peter. ‘To sit in our cellar.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they have keys to the other doors.’

  ‘But you said the lights were off when you came in.’

  ‘Perhaps they heard me.’

  Peter looked around the whole room.

  ‘I suppose you want us to go down there,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not leaving the kids alone,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you want me to go?’

  ‘No,’ I said, too quickly. Because really I did want him to go. Very much.

  ‘Then you will?’ he said. ‘Fine. I’ll get you a torch. And check on the children while I’m at it.’

  He said the word children quite hurtfully.

  Peter went off up the stairs, leaving me alone for the first time in the room with four doors. I think he was trying to test me – to see if I’d really go ahead with this. He knew I was scared of enclosed spaces. I don’t think he expected me to be able to do it. And I didn’t expect myself to, either. If he hadn’t been so angry with me, he wouldn’t have allowed any of this to happen.

  Whilst Peter was gone, I went to the door of the water room, put my ear against it and listened. From inside, I could hear the constant gushing of the large pipe. Then I listened at the East door – the one with a door behind it, and another door behind that. I couldn’t hear a sound, except my own breathing and then, when that calmed down, my heartbeat. But I did feel something. A slight draught was coming from under the door, chilly and damp.

  I squatted down and held my fingers close to the narrow gap between door and floor. The air flowed between them. I could feel it twirling through.

  I got down flat on the floor, and tried to look through the gap. It was far too dark. But I could smell the air of the draught, and, like the hole, it didn’t smell bad. In fact, it was more like a breeze from outside.

  Behind me, I heard a faint but echoey drip. I thought it had come from somewhere inside the hole.

  As I was looking in that direction, I caught sight of a bright drop of water falling through the air – and down into the dark, where it made the drip sound.

  Another drop followed it, and another, evenly spaced, one starting off as soon as the last had landed.

  I stood up, went over to the edge of the hole. A drop fell past me, right into the centre of the black circle.

  Looking up towards the ceiling, I couldn’t really see where the next drop came from. There was no damp patch or area of shiny dimples. The drop just seemed to materialize in the air.

  Drip, it landed. And for the next one, I held out my hand.

  But the rhythm of drip and drop was broken. Nothing fell past me.

  I pulled my hand away, and immediately a drop went down into the hole and gave a little drip.

  Again, I put my hand out. And again no drop fell – until my hand was no longer there.

  A third time, I tried to catch one of the drops.

  This time, it did fall through the air. I saw it, in slow-motion. Everything in the world was slowed down.

  The drop fell towards my hand, fell through my hand – right through the middle of my palm, as if I wasn’t there at all.

  Drip.

  The footsteps on the stairs made me jump. And, when I glanced round, I was glad to see they belonged to Peter.

  I couldn’t speak until he’d reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘That door’s earth,’ I said. ‘That one’s water. And I think this one is air.’ I was pointing to the East door.

  Peter came across.

  ‘Feel,’ I said, and bent down as I’d done a couple of seconds earlier. Peter came close to me and put his fingers down to the floor.

  ‘You might be right,’ he said. ‘There’s a cool breeze.’

  ‘Which means this one’s fire,’ I said, and went across to the final door, the West door.

  I put the back of one of my knuckles against it. Because I’d been scalded once already that day, I was very cautious. The metal door was just as cold as you’d expect one to be, in an unheated, underground room.

  I knelt down and tried to sense whether the air around the gap beneath the door was warm. It seemed to be exactly the same temperature as the air in the rest of the cellar – apart from round the bottom of the East door.

  ‘Robert Mew has some more keys,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we could ask him if we could borrow them.’

  ‘They’re our keys,’ Peter said, ‘not his. Let’s get this over with, shall we?’

  He pushed the torch into my hands.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, suddenly fearful of the dark and what I might find in it.

  ‘Or have you changed your mind?’ he asked, aggressively. And that was enough to make up my mind.

  We went and stood on opposite sides of the hole. I shone the torch down as far as I could. There were another five rungs, then a floor. It looked dry. I couldn’t where the drips had landed. I couldn’t see any animal droppings, either. What I could see, though, was what looked like floorboards.

  ‘Will you wait for me here?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll stand at the top of the stairs,’ said Peter. ‘That way I can hear Mary, if she cries.’

  ‘Wish me luck,’ I said.

  I put my left foot on the first rung, my right on the second, lowered myself down.

  In a couple of seconds, I was down on the floorboards – which were actually the lining of a tube-like tunnel. There were smooth planks on the curving sides and ceiling. The tunnel led off in only one direction, sloping down slightly as it went.

  I shone the torch, expecting eyes to gleam back. The tunnel, all shiny wood, went on as far as I could see. It was like being inside a very long old-fashioned rowing boat.

  ‘You all right?’ said Peter, making me jump.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s not scary. I’m going to have a look.’

  The tunnel wasn’t big enough for me to walk
through upright, or even for me to shuffle along doubled over. I had to get down on hands and knees. I had to crawl.

  The floor wasn’t covered with anything disgusting. It was a bit dusty, and there were lines in the dust, where the toes of someone’s shoes had dragged. Perhaps more than one person. I couldn’t tell how recently they’d been made. The marks could have been there for ages.

  I stuck the torch into the front of my t-shirt, so it shone forwards, and set off along the tunnel.

  Chapter 27.

  The first few feet were easy. My knees slipped along the smooth boards, made even smoother by the dust.

  I remembered childhood games – crawling through the narrow spaces between chairs covered over with sheets and duvets. I used to make a circle all round my bedroom, so that I didn’t have to surface once.

  For quite a few feet, the tunnel went smoothly on. Then, very abruptly, the boards became rough and much older-looking. Holding the torch, I examined them closely. There was a line from top to bottom where new wood met old. But what was really strange was that this seemed to happen halfway along the same long plank.

  I guessed that I was now out from under the house.

  The going was harder on the rougher wood. Almost immediately, I got a splinter in one of my fingers.

  I slowed down, and went more carefully.

  It was hard to know how long I’d been in the tunnel. I wanted to shout back to Peter, just to check he was still there, to check that Mary was all right. I felt a strong desire to turn round and go back. However, the tunnel was too narrow for that. I would have to edge out backwards.

  Yes, I could do this tomorrow.

  I started to reverse along the tunnel, looking between my legs to check the way.

  Then I heard something unexpected – a gurgling, swishing sound. Water was in the tunnel, behind me, in the direction I was going. Perhaps it was coming from the water room. Or perhaps the drip from the ceiling had suddenly become a torrent.

  I lay on my back and pointed the torch towards the wet noise.

  There was water there, and it was flowing towards me, but just at the point where the new wood met the old, it stopped.