There were still plenty of haunts to search.
* * *
THE NIGHT WAS so still that Mary, on her hands and knees, heard quite distinctly the metallic wobble of a pet bowl behind the Tangle Wood fence. That weirdo made his poor dog go outside to eat! She dropped her back and crawled through the long grass. Stones chewed her shins. Even when something sharp pierced her palm, her stomach muscles flattened her gasp. When she reached the wall, her hands felt their way up the bricks, and she stopped, as at the door of someone else’s bedroom. Through a gap between the trees, Mary caught a flash of floral silk, saw a fedora hung on a branch. She heard a muffled giggle, fed under breath from one mouth to another. The redhead moaned. Well, let her moan. Mary dropped to the ground in the woods and licked her hurt hand; then she began to edge toward Eric and Michelle’s. To her right, a fire flickered in a small clearing. Far from raging, it crackled calmly.
The gate was open. She didn’t even need to push it.
Eric and Michelle’s garden was quiet, the rear windows in darkness, just a pale glow seeped into the dining room from the front of the house.
Mary crept up the lawn, past the fox hole in the border, sniffing for his scent. When she reached the patio doors, she pressed her palms against the glass, as he had done this time a fortnight ago, and then her nose. There was nothing to see: just the dinginess of unlived space. The hideous bulldog lamp was back on the sideboard. Out of curiosity, she tried the door handle. Eric had locked up. She slipped back down the garden. She was a shadow passing through the woods, learning to make no noise, to leave no imprint. She slipped under the big hornbeam and was heading toward the far side, to see where the new light had come from, when another shadow reached out and grabbed her wrist. She screamed.
“Ssh! It’s me.”
“Christ! What are you doing out here?”
“What am I doing?” Mark whispered, incredulous. “You asked me to come out here. What are you doing? I said to stay inside.”
“I didn’t mean you should camp out all night. Just manage the mayhem for a bit. But you’ve done that.” Mary was unsure how much Mark had seen of her movements, so she said, “Brilliantly. I came out because I smelt smoke.” He was still gripping her wrist. Once, when they had gone for a walk and started arguing, he had held her like that the whole way.
“There’s no smoke. It’s all under control,” he said. “I’ve dampened the fire. Just like you asked. Our woods are safe!”
“Did you see the fox?” she asked, trying to take back her hand.
He frowned. “No. And neither did they. I thought you were out tonight?”
“Change of plan.”
“Get yourself indoors,” he said, suddenly letting go. “I’m keeping an eye on things out here.”
Her heart sank. She had asked for Mark’s help because what choice had there been? But now she worried she had unleashed a pet vigilante in her own backyard. She thought about all the ways he had helped her over the years. When she had been overlooked for the promotion, he had rushed to meet her, even though he had been on a construction site on the other side of London. For months afterward, he kept her afloat: patiently, repeatedly, enumerated her strengths. Then at some point, she couldn’t say when exactly, Mark’s comfort had begun to seem constrictive. She felt belittled by her reliance on his valuation of her. He praised her skills, character, sharpness, humor, her work rate and her ideas, and in all of that she heard her own dependency, as if she’d got stuck in his safety net.
A small, clear sound cut through the night from a distance, then again. Two barks.
“Get inside,” Mark said.
“How are you going to get back to the street?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Eric’s left the gate open.”
“You’re going soon then?” she said, and he nodded. “I think it’s fine to go now,” she said. “Job done. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you Monday,” he reminded her.
Two more barks came, the same intonation, the same interval. From far away he heard her. From far away he spoke to her. Wo wo. Go home.
As Mary walked back home, she glanced up to see that Eric and Michelle’s house was as she had left it, but to her other side, in Tangle Wood, one top window dimly glowed. Its curtains were closed so tightly that it was impossible to see where they met: they had the look of objects that had stilled themselves only because they knew they were being watched.
CHAPTER TEN
How many cries can an adult human make? Mary’s mother believed that babies had only three. One for hunger, one for exhaustion, and one for pain. Even when Mary entered her teenage years, a time when she hoped life would admit more possibilities, any sign of sadness was diagnosed as tiredness. There was no suffering that an early night could not cure. Adulthood had taught Mary to scoff at the limits of her mother’s understanding, but she still sometimes applied the old family prescription to random sorrow. She was harking back to all this because a continuous sobbing had drawn her to the lounge wall, making her wonder whether anyone had ever studied the cries of adults the way they had studied those of babies. If there were such a thing as a lexicon of tears, she would like to own it. And she would have a second copy delivered to her mother. Mary leant into the tremors. Oh, oh, here they came again, each sob a broken gasp, regularly spaced and oddly uniform, like a stuck machine. The hardest kind to stop. Where the sob itself is a hand laid over a wound, and there’s nothing to do but keep going because you don’t want to hear the thing you know you’d hear if you … She shut her eyes. It was actually quite comforting to stand there and listen. It must be George, because the sobs were too grown to be Flora, too quiet to be Michelle. Now she thought of it, she had never heard Eric cry. “Georgie, Georgie, Georgie…” Ah, there was Eric now, so it definitely wasn’t him. His low chant kept time with the cries, and the cries, enjoying the company, kept going. Oh Jesus, now what? Mary lifted her ear from the wall in disgust. She’d recognize that wailing anywhere. Michelle! What had set her off again?
The screeching was too much for Mary. She was already in the hall, through the kitchen, out of the door. She halted in the middle of the lawn, which was where the ringing in her ears stopped.
How quiet it was. Some guy’s saw drowsing through wood in a garden down the street. An airplane silently splitting scraps of cloud overhead. She exhaled noisily. Because where the bloody hell was he? The sun lit a white butterfly, and its wings strobed briefly in the laurel, then held their peace. In the Sunday stillness, her lawn and borders and everything out here pronounced his absence. She looked in at her shed and screwed up her nose. No news. Rather than leave empty-handed, she grabbed the glove-oath he’d brought her weeks ago. She would take it indoors because the sensible course was to follow police advice for loved ones of the missing and make sure she was home when he returned.
Mary walked slowly toward the house, trying to decide whether she hoped the noise from next door had stopped or whether it might be soothing to listen to someone else doing her crying for her, and she felt rather than saw the thing under her foot. Hard and stiff, like a tenderized muscle. She picked it up. The leather—it was a shoe—had been chewed to an indigestible putty, and the laces eviscerated from the eyelets. Her fox’s glorious rank truffle hit her nose.
A shoe, a glove … In the kitchen, Mary set the two deliveries on the sill beside the funny rag doll. It was becoming a squeeze up there on her little shelf of treasures. She lifted the magic egg, which looked whole but was really empty. Even when you knew the truth, its lightness still surprised. She moved it next to the glove, the pledge that had started them off. She could count back all the weeks of summer by these … Something was missing. Before the glove, of course, were the boxers, which she had dumped in the bin out front. She tapped the shoe and began to straighten an idea. When you looked at the objects together, imagined the boxers on the sill too, what he was really bringing her were the pieces of a new life.
They had known each
other only briefly, but standing before her collection, Mary understood that he had looked at her, quite possibly before she had ever seen him, and taken her in whole. He had seen what she wanted. Though she scarcely knew herself what to call it. A relationship seemed too obvious. But when she shut her eyes, here with one hand on the sill, and the light and the thought of him flooding through the window, tinging the dark refuge behind her eyelids russet, that is what it amounted to. Solidarity, partnership, comfort, company. Care that felt like love.
What an idiot she had been to dump the boxers, which in this light took on the appearance of crucial evidence. The boxers and the shoe belonged to a man, which begged the question, which man? Was it the same man or two different men? Had her fox found someone he thought she should meet? Christ, she hoped these things didn’t belong to Eric. Or maybe they were intended more generally. He was telling her that she needed male company. That was rich! She had male company. Or she would have, when he finally turned up. She glanced at the back door: she had left it open, as a sign to her fox that she was home and to herself that she had hope.
Her first thought in reply to the loud rap on the front door was that it must be him. But there in the fish-eye was Michelle, looking right at Mary. Her eyes were rimmed pink again, but the tiger-print top she wore cast the pinkness in a fierce light. Mary drew back the latch.
“I need to talk to you,” Michelle said, slipping off her shoes.
* * *
IN THE KITCHEN, Mary watched her neighbor lean out of the back door, inspecting the dingy side return, while she boiled the kettle. She had no idea what Michelle wanted, but she knew what Michelle was thinking. She was well aware of the state of the patio with its cracked concrete, pots of nettles, and old watering can, long since conceded through disuse to a frog.
“That’s odd,” Michelle said. “There’s an egg on your patio.”
It was a relief to Mary that her head was in the cupboard, looking for unchipped mugs. The fact was, and it was important to be clear about this, she never left food for him. That was not at all their relationship. She and Mark had once seen a documentary about people who put out peanut butter sandwiches and apple pies. The foxes loved those people. But not in the way he loved her. He came every day, and she left nothing for him except herself. The egg wasn’t food. It was a word from their shared vocabulary. All morning it had sat there, and she was starting to lose faith in its message.
“How bizarre,” she said. “What kind of an egg?”
Michelle’s stare was boring holes in her back, but what else was there to say about an out-of-place egg? It kept its secrets.
“Don’t you worry about leaving this open?” Michelle said, pulling the door shut.
“Worry?”
Michelle looked impatient.
“Oh, the fox? I never get any trouble from … them.” Mary remembered the plural just in time. The truth was, she never saw foxes. She saw only him.
She carried the mugs through to the lounge and watched Michelle settle herself into her own corner of the sofa. Her neighbor looked enormous. She was tall enough to lean against the backrest with both feet on the floor, and still her knees cleared the cushions. Mary felt freshly conscious of her decorative shortcomings, of this room’s insufficiency compared to Michelle’s lounge, with its ornamental knickknacks, its thematic organization. Granny Joan’s old chair gave a surprised creak as she sat. Visiting was something that people did who lived further apart or liked each other better.
“Is that pigeon?” Michelle said, staring at the bluish paint on the wall.
“I don’t know what it’s called.” It was duck egg. She had no wish to make small talk. She wanted Michelle to tell her what the hell she was doing here.
Michelle lidded her eyes and said, “My family.” Mary waited for what was to come next while Michelle wheezed and patted her chest. “My family has been the victim of a horrific attack.”
“What? Are you OK?”
Michelle gave a great sob. “Eric went into the garden this morning, and found … Eric found … Oh God…” She buried her face in her hands, and Mary strained to make out her words.
“Did you say a leg?” she asked.
“Tiggy’s leg!” Michelle sobbed again. “I was going to bring it. To show you what killers the foxes are. But Eric wouldn’t let me. He’s buried it!” she cried. “It breaks my heart to think of poor Tiggy’s last moments, of the fear he would have felt. Georgie’s bawled all morning. How do you explain a chewed-up cat to a three-year-old?”
“Ugh!” Mary said. “How horrible. Poor George. Poor you. But are you sure it’s Tiggy?”
Michelle shut her eyes again. “There was a patch of fur near the ankle.”
“Well, a patch of fur isn’t much to go on,” Mary said, trying to sound bright. “And if it is Tiggy’s leg, he could still be alive. You sometimes see cats with three legs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The animal that did this to Tiggy would not have stopped at one leg. Look. I’m not here to discuss the proof. The proof is buried in our garden. I’ve come to tell you we are sorting this out. Are you with us, Mary? That’s the question. Are you with us?”
“Of course I am!” she said. “How do you mean?”
“We’re going to get rid of the foxes. We are going to do this, Mary. I’d like to count on your support.”
“Do we really have a fox problem? I only ever see the odd one.”
Michelle laughed bitterly. “Don’t be an idiot, Mary. That’s what they want you to believe. You think you’re seeing one, but really there’s dozens. Like mice. One scuttles across your kitchen floor, you think you’ve got a little mouse coming to visit. It’s quite sweet. In a funny way, flattering that it’s chosen you? But it’s not really a little mouse, Mary; it’s a whole fucking family of mice. Under your nose all the great-aunts and cousins have moved in, and you’re living in a mousetropolis!” She slumped back on the sofa. “You just can’t tell them apart.”
That was not true. Mary could shut her eyes anytime she liked and see her fox. The white rib marking the black of his front-left shin, his distinguished bearing, the small tuft of hairs beneath his chin, the exact weight of his tail, the notch in its fur. It was not an exaggeration to say, “his character.” His face was his face alone.
“I’d have thought any animal would be mad to come back here after yesterday,” she said, scarcely managing to keep the sadness from her voice.
“Mary, there’s a half-eaten leg in our garden! It will take more than a few drunks to scare them off,” Michelle insisted. “Anyway, I heard them howling last night. They don’t see walls and fences, except as things to climb over or dig under. Perhaps you haven’t noticed that the bottom of the new fence is already broken from where they’ve clawed under it, dragging God knows what carcasses between our garden and yours? They’re even trying to dig under our house. Neville spotted it. They have no respect for our space or property. If I bang on the window, they carry on lying there. They have no fear. I can’t put nappies in the bin. I can’t leave the kids in the garden. I can’t even open windows. I am penned in, in my own house.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Mary said. “Poor Tiggy,” she added. “And poor you, and poor children.” She thought that covered it, but Michelle bowed her forehead and latticed her fingers tightly over her hairline. Like chicken wire to the brain.
Michelle looked up suddenly, and her eyes went straight to Mary’s. “It’s highly likely that someone round here is feeding them. That’s what Neville says. Otherwise—what is it they want?”
It was a question Mary had asked herself many times. Sometimes she pictured him as she had first seen him, lying out there peacefully, warm on the warm grass, the point in the compass while the sun drew its arc around him. He had asked for nothing, taken nothing, except a small amount of space which the Land Registry said belonged to her. When she had rapped on the glass—she felt ashamed to think of it now—he had left immediately, without fuss. It was so
hard to articulate, but really she believed that what he wanted was what she wanted. She had let him enter her head, with his printless steps and watchful respect, and she had come to feel his allegiance so totally that their desires overlapped.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked.
“Eric’s been making calls, but these fox experts are busy seven days a week. Our nightmare is playing out across the whole city. One guy told Eric ten thousand foxes live in London.”
“Look, I’ve got the week off. I’ll help. You’ve got enough on your plate with the children. Let me take the strain with this.”
“Are you on holiday then?”
“Just home for a couple of weeks.” To change the subject Mary said, “So where are the kids today?”
“Eric’s taken George swimming to cheer him up. Flora’s asleep.”
“Indoors?”
“Yes, indoors. I can hardly leave her in the garden. She’s sleeping, Mary. Sound asleep.”
“What, on her own?”
Michelle laughed. “Of course she’s on her own. Well, apart from Godfrey the bear. I’m not that irresponsible. She’s in the cot. She can’t go anywhere. The worst she can do is cry.” She gave a heavy sigh, leant back into the sofa, and stretched out her toes. “Total bliss to walk out of the house alone.”
“But what if she wakes?”
Michelle sipped at her tea and savored the question. “She might learn to appreciate me when I’m there.”
“You know, if you ever need a break, you can leave her with me for a bit,” Mary said, standing. “Give me your keys. I’m going to fetch her.”
* * *
“FLORA! FLORA! IT’S OK, darling,” she called from the hall. She took the stairs two at a time and arrived puffing over the cot, her heart thrashing in her chest, hands swooping over the side rail … then froze midair. Michelle was right. Flora was sound asleep, and her perfect peacefulness, instead of calming Mary, quickened her nerves. She was considering whether she still had a mandate to rescue the baby, when Flora’s eyelids sensed her shadow and twitched in affirmation. One purple vein was raised on her left lid, as if a loose thread had been overlooked when she was made. Mary ran her finger along it. The baby was sleeping with both palms turned upward either side of her head, in an attitude of total surrender.
How to Be Human Page 14
