by Harper Fox
“Fine,” Sarah shouted back to him, waving. She assisted Tamsyn’s wriggling dismount from the bench and followed her over the lawn to the truck. “Right as rain, but we suddenly decided, midway through our tea and our CBeebies, that we wanted to come home. A bit emphatic, we were, so...” She paused for long enough to hoist the little girl up by the armpits and into Lee’s embrace as he got out. “So I was a bit concerned that things might not be all right with you.”
“Oh, no. We’re both okay.” He swung Tamsyn round in his arms then settled her in her accustomed place on his hip, heavy as she was getting these days, beginning to outgrow her perch. “What’s up, my merry morgawr? Why did you want to come home?”
“For Lee,” she said simply, as often addressing him as if he wasn’t there or was somebody else, a habit he found oddly soothing. “Lee was poorly. Got plants for you,” she added, suddenly switching to forceful direct contact. She planted a noisy kiss on his cheek. “Lemme down, please. Got to go and see Dada.”
Gideon came round the bonnet of the truck to intercept her. To Lee there was no finer sight than his strong, graceful move to scoop her up, all remaining fears about his injury long departed. “When you say emphatic,” he asked Sarah apprehensively, rumpling Tamsyn’s curls, “did she...”
“What, float me out of the window and down the lane? Not a bit of it, and you two gents can stop fretting yourselves about that, I reckon. She just... explained, like a proper little grown-up. I wish my lot would use their fists less and their words more.”
“What on earth did she say?”
“Pretty much what she just told you. Lee was poorly, and she had to go home to get his plants for him. She’s a convincing little beggar when she talks like that, so I brought her along. And we happened to meet Mrs Coulter on the way up, who was kind enough to sit with us and wait. She’s brought Tamsyn some new books—hasn’t she, Tamsie?”
Tamsyn left off trying to pull Gid’s radio out of its holster. Always a desirable toy, that had been, and once she’d raised a station-wide alert by hitting its mayday switch. She sat up and surveyed her father as if seeing him in a new light. Then she beamed. “Mr Policeman Badger!”
“Leave that alone, you terror. You know we talked about the improper use of police resources. Who the hell is Mr Policeman Badger?”
“Swear box,” Lee said promptly, holding out his hand. “Honestly, Dada.”
“Yeah. Sh-... I mean, oh dear. Sorry. How much is a hell these days?”
“50p, and another quid for reoffending.” Lee turned to look at the old lady, who was nodding benignly at this family scene from her place on the bench. “Thank you for bringing more books, Mrs Coulter, but you shouldn’t, you know. She’s already got hundreds, and hundreds again on her iPad.”
Mrs Coulter gave a kind of sneezing snort that flashed Lee back through four years to Granny Ragwen’s living room, and Rufus Pendower falling helplessly prey to the old pellar sorceress and her sympathetic magic. A little figure fashioned from blue-tack, trailed through the ashes, tormented by a feather-tip to the nose... “Her iPad?” she echoed. “That’s an outlandish device for such little hands.”
“She has to have one. They all do. The school sends out part of her homework that way.” Shaking his head, Lee wondered why he was justifying himself to her. “I’m not poorly, though, Tamsie.” It was always best to tell her the truth, so he added, “I was a few hours ago, and you’re a clever girl to know that, but I’m fine now. Will you show me your new books?”
“Show in a minute, Lee. Got to get bleujyow. Down, please, Dada.”
Obediently Gideon released her. He watched her patter off into the verdant jungle behind the house. “She’s gone to get her what?”
“Her bleujyow,” Lee said wonderingly. “Old Cornish word for flowers. Did you teach her that?”
“Not me. I just keep inadvertently teaching her to swear. Little imp, to know you weren’t well!” Gideon turned to meet Sarah’s concerned frown. “He’s better now, Sarah, but I’d just as soon get him indoors and—”
“No, no. I’m okay.” Lee went to sit on the bench, his eye caught by the bright front cover of the top book on the pile set up there, a vividly painted little squirrel holding hands with a long-necked weasel and a rabbit. “Look at this. The Tufty Club! I remember seeing one of these in my gran’s attic. They were meant to help teach road safety to little kids. This feckless weasel was my favourite. He keeps getting into trouble, but the others always forgive him.”
“Huh. A bit like Daz Prowse, eh?” Taking the book from Lee’s outstretched hand, Gideon leafed through it. “This is quite old, Mrs Coulter. Vintage. You don’t have to give her things like that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind, dear. Not having grandchildren of my own, it’s a pleasure to hand books on to such a careful little soul as Tamsyn.”
“All these cute bunnies and squirrels, though... They finish up here at the end saying their prayers to Jesus around the manger. Setting aside the outdated road-safety information, I’m not sure I want—”
“It’s a child of its time, dear, like the rest of us, and I don’t see what’s outdated about teaching a child not to run under a car. We have some other books, too.” She began to turn them over so Gideon could see. Musa Goes to the Masjid. K’tonton and the Gefilte Fish, Room on the Broom. Humanism—What’s That? “We’re interested,” she said tranquilly, watching Gideon adjust his ideas. “We’re finding out.”
Lee recaptured the book. The squirrel and his mates were endearing, brightly depicted in their post-war jackets and shorts. The prayers at the end seemed tacked on, as if the author had been reminded of her duties. For a shilling and a postcard, the back cover promised, you could get a Tufty badge and lifelong membership of the club. A shilling didn’t seem bad for lifelong anything. “If the Christian influence is limited to these little guys,” he said musingly, “I don’t think we need worry. Ezekiel had to learn a Bible verse a day at Tamsyn’s age, or the pastor would hit him across the palm with a ruler.”
Gideon flinched. The reaction was briefly delayed, as if having to cross the decades to reach him. “What? No. He was a grim old sod, but he never raised his hand to us.”
“That’s a family legend. Zeke let it go on to shield you and Ma, and the old man’s memory. The ruler never left a mark, but it stung, and the humiliation was the thing that really hurt.”
“Lee, can we... Can we talk about this some other time?”
Lee raised a horrified hand to his mouth. Gid had gone pale as ash beneath his summer tan. Sarah Kemp was staring, Mrs C nodding with a sympathy he desperately did not deserve.
Tamsyn shattered the moment, a stocky little saving grace. “Lee!” she declared, bursting like a tank through the barricade of adult legs. Her arms were full of stems almost as tall as she was, her fists clenched around bundles of leaves. She tumbled them into his lap and stood panting. “Dreams-of-mice, Murphy’s ears, bind-me-round-tightly. There.”
“Now, miss,” Mrs Coulter said, with the gentlest reproof. “Only the pellar-kind understand those funny old names. You know their proper ones.”
“Valerian. Wild lettuce, ivy.” She paused for a moment, ordering her thoughts, a little gleam of mischief brightening her face. “Valeriana officinalis, Lactuca virosa, Hedera helix. There!”
The old lady broke into a cackle. “There,” she crowed, hoisting Tamsyn up to sit between her and Lee on the bench. “There indeed! What a clever girl.”
“That’s Uncle Zeke’s work, that is,” Gideon said, finding and kindly holding Lee’s gaze. Lee knew what he was doing: getting Zeke’s name back into the air between them, as calmly and prosaically as he could. “He’s taken her round the lanes and taught her the Latin names since before she could walk. Hasn’t he, sweetheart?”
The endearment wasn’t aimed at Tamsyn. Lee nodded gratefully. “According to this, she thinks I need sedation, a good night’s sleep, and to be tied down to heart and home. Can’t argue with the first two, bu
t...” He inhaled the valerian’s mousy scent, the sticky white sap of the wild lettuce, then put the whole lot aside in favour of her warm little body in his lap. She was small for her age but compact with health and moorland muscle. “I don’t need ivy to tie me down here with you and Dada, do I?”
“Don’t go.”
“Poppet, I’m not.” Anxiously he wound one dark curl around his finger. “I just had a bad day at work. And I came back all stupid and saying stupid things. I just need a night in front of the telly with Dada and my spooky little mawgawr, that’s all. It was clever of you to know.”
“Clever,” she agreed, nestling against him. Her plants delivered and her object achieved, she was losing interest, watching down the track as if in anticipation of another visitor. “Zeke’s coming now. Zeke and Zold.”
Ezekiel had borrowed the dog for a week. Eleanor was convinced that children who grew up with a pet turned out to be kinder and more responsible adults, and she and Zeke had been experimenting to see if they could fit care, feeding and walks around the demands of three-year-old twins. Lee didn’t have to be psychic to know that battle was lost before it had begun: Toby and Mikey once having set their hearts on a pup, the creature would be waiting with a bow around its fluffy little neck on the morning of their birthday. “Not yet,” he said. “Zeke’s bringing Isolde back tomorrow. I know you’ve missed her, but you’ve been a good girl to share her...”
Promptly tyres began to crunch in the lane beyond the hawthorns. Lee and Gideon exchanged a look. “Do you ever feel like telling us,” Gid asked gently, “how you know this stuff, miss? About Zeke, and... about Lee feeling bad today?”
She wasn’t one to waste words. “Clever,” she said again, with a perfect blend of mischief and pity for her parents’ mental darkness. “Clever, Dada. That’s all.”
Zeke rolled his ministerial Volvo up the last few yards of the track and parked neatly behind the police truck. He got out, and held the back door open as if he’d been a chauffeur and the shaggy mutt inside a visiting peer of the realm. Isolde heaved herself off her travelling rug and out onto the lawn. Catching sight of Tamsyn, she launched an overjoyed charge. Tamsyn, all concerns with the adult world instantly forgotten, met her halfway, and the two collided in a noisy heap in the wildflower patch, petals and dislodged bees flying up around them. “Afternoon,” Zeke said, watching this reunion indulgently. “Sorry to return her a day early. Eleanor and I have been called to a conference in Sussex, and our sitter has an allergy to dogs.”
Gideon grinned. “So, you’ll be getting a new sitter, then?”
“What? No, Jennifer is very good.”
“Not when there’s a pup in the house. And I’m guessing there will be.”
Zeke glanced skyward. “We’ll see,” he declared, for what was clearly the thousandth time that week. “Is everything all right here? Lee doesn’t look very well. And Tamsyn’s given him herbs.”
“I’m fine,” Lee told him reassuringly. Gideon looked as though he could use to hear it too. “Rough day, and I came home with a headache. She knew about it, like she sometimes does, so I’m about to go push all this lot through the blender for a kill-or-cure smoothie, and—”
“No, Lee!” Tamsyn’s head popped briefly up over the chamomile daisies. “Tisane.”
She vanished before he could ask. “A tisane,” he echoed, turning to old Mrs C. “You’ll have taught her that, then?”
“Must have done, dear. I’m getting on, though, and I don’t always remember who I’ve been and who I haven’t. What I’ve said and what I haven’t, I mean, of course. She’s a very bright little girl.”
“She is that. Well, if everyone would like to come in and share my tisane, or just a pot of PG Tips, you’re very welcome—aren’t they, Gid?”
Sarah Kemp took an accurate read of Gideon’s expression. She got to her feet. “Oh, no. Time I got back to my bunch of savages. Wait, though—isn’t this f-... Er, the weekend Tamsie usually spends with me and Wilf?”
She’d almost choked on the effort not to say fuckfest. Lee carefully straightened his face. “It is. But I think we’ll hang on to her, now she’s home. How did you, er... know we call it that?”
“I might’ve heard Gideon strolling away from our house after dropping her off one Friday night, singing it to the tune of Surf’s Up. Meatloaf,” she added for Zeke’s benefit, nodding in his direction. “Oh, bloody hell—you didn’t know they called it that either, did you?”
“Can you imagine me telling him?” Gideon asked. “Honestly, Sarah!”
“Sorry. Sorry. Definitely my cue to be off, then. Sorry, Zeke.”
But Ezekiel, for once, didn’t seem to have picked up on his brother’s impropriety. He’d sat down in the space Sarah had vacated on the bench and was leafing through Tamsyn’s new books. “I like this one,” he said. “Sound road-safety advice, and...” He turned the last page and glanced up slyly at Gid. “Spiritually improving, too.”
“You would like it. It’s from the bloody fifties, just like your moral outlook.”
But Zeke seemed beyond provocation tonight. Maybe a week of negotiations with Toby and Mike had worn him down. He began to laugh helplessly. “Oh, good Lord. Look at this!”
He was pointing to one of the illustrations. A stout badger in 1950s police uniform, complete with helmet, was carrying a wounded bunny away from the scene of a road-traffic accident. His expression was severe, his grip on the little creature tender. The artist had depicted him mid-stride, one big foot poised. The resemblance was irresistible. Lee too began to laugh. Zeke pointed to Gideon and declared, just as Tamsyn had done, “Mr Policeman Badger!”
One huge sob cut Lee’s laughter. It felt like the edge of a shovel. He clapped a hand to his mouth, but too late—Sarah was staring at him in dismay: the dog too, frozen between one rollicking leap and the next. Tamsyn and Mrs Coulter seemed less concerned, as if this might be a natural development at the end of Lee’s kind of long hard day. But he had the full and overwhelming attention of both Frayne brothers. Zeke, for once, was closest. He put an arm around Lee’s shoulders, paling with shock. “Lee, my friend. What on earth’s wrong?”
Nothing, Lee wanted to tell him. Or perhaps to tell him the truth: monsters. A monster who gave it her all, lost and far away from Wonderland as she was. Count down from five, or four and three quarters... And here am I in the House of Love and Wolves, of loving wolves, where I have everything, husband, child, friends, family, an undreamed-of richness of life. If he moved his hand, would all this come tumbling out—or, worse, another racking sob? He took his chance. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
Gideon crouched in front of him. “And I’m a giant badger with powers of arrest, apparently. So if you don’t want to get carted into the house like...” He paused, took an upside-down look at the book still open on Zeke’s lap. “Like Harry the Hare, you’d better cooperate.”
***
Not quite asleep, Lee lay watching the Bodmin sunset, a gilded projection on the bedroom wall. The show could last for hours at this time of year. First the plaster cornicing would begin to shine. Then a vast rectangle of light would start its long journey from ceiling to carpet, holding between the shadows of the window frames bright blocks of gold, crimson, and finally the eerie bronze that presaged the dark.
To watch the whole process meant privilege. Meant life in a house so safe that evening hours could pass undisturbed, meant loving human presences close at hand, guardians of his peace. Tamsyn hadn’t let him out of her sight. She’d turned down teatime, TV and a final romp with Isolde, and was curled up tight by his side.
He’d tried to send her away but surrendered. She was exactly what he needed. She knew that as surely as she’d known what herbs to pick for his tisane, and she’d sat on the end of the bed, a small stern monitor, while he’d knocked it back, not omitting to stick out his tongue and make poison-victim faces for her amusement. Isolde had come thumping onto the quilt, completing his captivity. Zeke and Gid had made half-hear
ted efforts to dislodge child and dog, then given up in their turn.
It was infinitely reassuring to Lee to hear the brothers banging around downstairs. Probably they thought they were being quiet. Pans clattered in the kitchen. A door slammed, and elaborate shushing noises found their way into the gilded light, warm as the brush of a hand to Lee’s skin. Drifting, he caught snatches of their arguments, conducted in stage whispers whenever they met in the hallway. Did Lee need a doctor or not? Was what ailed him physical or spiritual? Once more, Zeke rumbled, he has exposed himself, without the least protection, to God only knows what evil. And Gideon’s countering growl: He’s got his own protections. And what if it’s just flu, an upset stomach?
The sunset flowed on. When Lee was next aware, the haunting bronze had filled the room, veils and wings of it, the very last trace of the day. The sounds were closer to him, as if the brothers had settled on the ottoman on the half-landing to talk. “Keep your voice down,” Zeke was saying, though the deep timbre of his own was making the crystals stir faintly in the old chandelier above the bed. “You may look like a moose, but there’s no need to bellow like one. You’ll wake him up.”
“I won’t. He’s out cold.”
Lee wanted to say that he wasn’t, to warn him, but it wasn’t quite true. Some part of his brain was blissfully asleep. “Here,” Gideon went on, “you’re the one who takes the kid botanising around the lanes. I know most of the plants Tamsyn brought him tonight, but what the devil are Murphy’s ears?”
“Murphy’s... Good grief, I haven’t heard them called that since I was a kid, and Granny Ragwen used to come pulling them out of the graveyard by the chapel. They’re a kind of wild-growing ancestor of the lettuce.”
