Mr. Fox Page 5

She assured him that there was nothing to tell. “Perhaps you could sing a song, then,” he suggested. “Or turn a cartwheel—or you could laugh, yes, laugh wonderfully, just as you are doing at the moment.”

  She left him with the cake and went up to her attic. She put on her nightgown, did her stretching exercises, applied cold cream to her face, and arranged herself on her bed with a stack of pillows supporting her head and neck. She looked up through her attic windows, up into the cloudy night. So Mr. Pizarsky had been a poet? That was how he’d said it: “I was a poet.” As if the poet had died. He was in hiding, perhaps. He might have written something that someone powerful hadn’t liked. . . .

  . . . There she lay, casting him as a character in one of her own romances. He didn’t cut anything like a dashing figure. And he’d need to be four inches taller before he could even make an appearance in her prose. No more nonsense. At the count of three I shall go straight to sleep, she informed herself. One. Two. Thr—

  Mary Foxe woke up feeling refreshed. And a little regretful. What if she were to abandon the task at hand? Mr. Fox was a hard nut to crack. It was good that he didn’t know how Mary tried to take care of him, alphabetizing his reference books and checking and correcting his spelling and grammar while he lay asleep with his wife in his arms. If he knew how Mary loved him he would turn it against her somehow; he would play with it. Because that was what Mr. Fox did—he played. And there was something appealing about this Mr. Pizarsky. . . . Perhaps she could find him, or someone like him, out in the world. She imagined their courtship—quiet, restrained, but full of tenderness. She would learn more about Poland and he would learn more about England and they would clear up many funny little misunderstandings. They would pore over maps together—I was born here, I went to school here. . . . They’d go to the seaside, and sit on the pier under umbrellas, in the rain. He would take her to the pictures and bring her violet creams. He would declare himself without words, bring her a daisy and retire with haste. And just thinking of how much he desired her but dared not presume, she would swoon over the tiny flower, dragging its petals across her lips and the backs of her hands, then shyly, languorously, along her inner thighs. . . . And in time, and by being a good woman, and a patient woman, she would have won a good and patient man.

  Mary turned onto her side. The pillow she was lying on was covered in spidery words: tiny but legible. She rubbed her nose against one of the words and smudged it. The words were carefully spaced so that the pale green of the pillowcase haloed them. “What . . .” Whole paragraphs. And they were numbered: 7, 8, 9. She turned again. Her head was surrounded with more writing. There was yet more under her hands; long lines of words meandered all along the duvet, some running horizontally, some diagonally, some fitting into one another like puzzles. And numbered, all numbered. Laughing in an appalled sort of way, Mary Foxe pulled the pillow out from under her head and read:

  1. I may not be here when you wake up. If I am not here, read on.

  2. Mary Mary, quite contrary. I’m the easy option. You won’t want me.

  3. I have bought you more pillowcases and another duvet cover, in case you cannot stand what I have done to these ones. I took them off the bed before I wrote on them, so there’s no need to worry about the ink bleeding into the pillows, etc.

  4. My English is probably better than yours. I deliberately muddle my grammar when I speak. It puts people at ease. They become friendly when I get things wrong—they speak slowly, use shorter words, to help me. I hate it, but it’s the best way to get on. You have never done this with me. Thank you.

  5. I often sing Christmas carols in June, and I don’t think it’s bad luck. Do you?

  6. It was on April 2nd last year that I discovered you had a dimple in your right cheek. You smiled at me for some reason. (Why? I had done nothing to deserve it. Please explain, if you remember April 2nd.) On the calendar in my office I made a note: “M.F. revealed dimple today.” What do you think of sentimental men? I’m sure you hate them. And you’d be right to.

  Mary sat bolt upright. Was Mr. Pizarsky a dream, or not? She studied her surroundings. She had no idea where she was. There was a vase full of foxgloves on her bedside table, their petals the pale, shocking blue of the veins in a wrist. She moved on to the next pillow.

  7. I learnt English when I went to war. People think I’m lying when I say that, but that’s how it was. We were in Galicia, Poles in Russian uniforms, trying to court independence; we managed to occupy only a slice of the place while the Germans and the Austrians made off with the rest. We were fighting so very hard and achieving so very little aside from staying alive. BUT THAT’S EVERYTHING, my father wrote to me, when I told him that in a letter. I studied to take my mind off things. At dead of night in the mess hut—Pride and Prejudice, an English-to-Polish dictionary, and a candle. I could have burnt the place down. But I had to do it. I needed words, lots of words to think about while I was going about the rest of the day. And I didn’t want anything affected. I wanted nothing to do with those Romance languages. I wanted clipped words, full of common sense. Thoughts to wear beneath my thoughts. Allow, express, oath, vow, dismay, matter, splash, mollify. I liked those words. I liked saying them. I still do.

  8. I helped to load cannons. People are not good at war. Can I really say that, when all I know is that I and those around me were not good at war? Don’t say our hearts weren’t in it—they were. But we got sick, some of us unto death. Spanish flu and the rot of trench foot, and there were such smells, they made us sick to our stomachs. A few of our men dropped cannonballs and broke their legs. That sort of thing. And then there was my cousin Karol. The first time he successfully shot a man, he didn’t see a way to stop shooting; he knew he had to do more, and with greater speed than the first kill. He couldn’t aim steadily at anyone else, so he turned his rifle on himself—and missed, and missed; each time he did it was as if he were playing some sort of horrible trick on himself, the worst kind of bluff. He told me all about it. “Calm down, Karol,” I told him. “You must keep your head.”

  9. Wake up, Mary.

  10. I had a great-uncle; he was rich, and we shared a Christian name. He liked me. I made him laugh, without even trying. I said naive things that I really believed in. Things about life, and money. He almost killed himself laughing at me. He liked to slap me on the back and tell me I looked like a peasant. When he died he left me a lot of money. I liked him then. Before that, I must say I had often daydreamed about punching him in the throat. His neck was very fat. He owned factories, and I used to think that people like him were the source of all that was evil in the land.

  11. Wake up, wake up. . . .

  12. When I was in Galicia I tried not to think of my fiancée. I didn’t write to her much, and in her own way she reproached me for that. She had every right to, so I won’t dwell on the maddening, indirect ways in which she reproached me. Anyhow, I lost her. When I came back she looked through me and seemed displeased—I might have been the ghost of Banquo for all the pleasure she took in my company. She’s happy now—she married my cousin, a good boy, who is tender with her. (Yes, Karol—I believe I mentioned him in point 8.)

  Round and round. Blissfully, Mary rolled in the words, propped her head up on some and her heels on others. She liked this man.

  13. When I saw you for the first time, I thought you had a secret life. You had your hair up out of the way and you were wearing your reading spectacles and your dress was buttoned up all the way to your chin. Still, I noticed—if you will excuse my noticing—the fullness of your lips, and the way they parted every now and then as if responding to changes in the breeze. And fleetingly, so fleetingly that it’s possible you weren’t aware you were doing it, you moved your hand from your cheek to your neck to the centre of your chest; you held your own waist and smoothed your skirt over your hips. Yes, you looked as if you had a secret, or you were a secret in yourself. I had seen better lodgings farther out—better lodgings for a bachelor, that is. A set of rooms I would ha
ve had all to myself, and I could have cycled to work and back. But I rented this house because of the lady who lived in the attic. To see if I could catch her out.

  14. I took a lot of my inheritance money and I told everyone that I would be a lawyer. And I came here to study. When I got here I was restless and nothing interested me. At the end of every evening I got very drunk and vowed to give up my studies, and every morning I was back at the books. I am just trying to show you that my nature is not a consistent one. Sometimes I do what I say I’m going to do, but more often I don’t. It’s a failing. The least of my failings, and the only one I feel up to admitting at the moment. The rest will emerge if you choose to see it. I don’t know if I’m the kind of man that is acceptable to you; I have heard that your father was a priest.

  15. Shall I tell you how many times I came up these steps while you were typing? Vowing that today would be the day that I asked you to the pictures. And I’d buy you a pound of violet creams, two pounds of them, whatever you wanted. But then I’d hear you at your typewriter, and I’d go away again. I decided that since I could not approach you, I would make you jealous. I asked my sister Elizaveta if it would work, and she said no. She also said you sounded too old for me. My mother and sisters are all very concerned about who I will marry. I am an only son.

  16. This Mr. Fox. Is he better-looking than me?

  Cold blew onto Mary Foxe’s blood, as if she had no skin at all.

  17. My hand is getting tired. That must be why I slipped up just now.

  18. You’re slipping yourself, Mary. Good thing you woke up before our little picnic on Murder Hill. A blue-eyed poet with some stories, a good line in wry humility and some English-as-a-second-language bullshit. . . . Is that all it takes to turn you fickle these days? Never mind. . . . We’ll pretend it didn’t happen. A hundred years hence (or a hundred washes, whichever comes first) these words will be gone. . . .

  The game was still on.

  FITCHER’S BIRD

  Miss Foxe referred to herself as a florist, but really she was a florist’s assistant. She swept plant debris off the shop floor, and she wrapped flowers for the customers and did everything else that the shop owner, Mrs. Nash, didn’t feel like doing. Miss Foxe wasn’t allowed to cut and arrange the flowers used in the window display; nor was she allowed to advise people on the perfect floral gift. Miss Foxe knew much more about flowers than Mrs. Nash, but all she could do was listen while Mrs. Nash told the anxious relatives of springtime invalids to send pink azaleas. Evidently Mrs. Nash was not aware that in the language of flowers azaleas meant “take care of yourself for me.” A touching thought, but by giving a sick person a bunch of azaleas you were telling them that they were on their own. Mrs. Nash’s agenda was simply to shift stock. In summer Mrs. Nash prescribed marigolds left, right, and centre—for birthdays, apologies, and romantic overtures—even though those flowers were better as especial comfort to the heartsick. But Miss Foxe kept all that to herself, for fear of losing her job. As it was, Mrs. Nash snapped at her and called her slow and asked her if she was an idiot nineteen times a day. Miss Foxe liked to be near the flowers, especially in winter, when it was easy to forget that there had ever been such a thing as a flower.

  Flowers, and thoughts of flowers, were Miss Foxe’s main occupation. She didn’t especially care for motion pictures; she found them too noisy. She would have liked to have had friends to lend books to and borrow pie dishes from. But it was difficult for Miss Foxe to reach that stage with anyone. She spoke so quietly that people couldn’t understand what she was saying and quickly lost patience. When she paid for things in shops, the change was invariably placed on the counter instead of in her hand. Miss Foxe occasionally wondered if she had spent her life approaching invisibility and had finally arrived at it. She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess.

  Miss Foxe’s other passion was fairy tales. She loved the transformations in them. Everybody was in disguise, or on their way to becoming something else. And all was overcome by order in the end. Love could not prevail if the order of the tale didn’t wish it, and neither could hatred, nor grief, nor cunning. If you were the first of three siblings, then you were going to make a big mistake, and that was that. If you were the third sibling, you couldn’t fail. Here is the truth about everything, Miss Foxe would think, after a night with Madame d’Aulnoy, or Madame de Villeneuve.

  Flowers and fairy tales were all very well, but they began to take their toll on her. Independently and in unison they made insinuations, the flowers and the fairy tales. When Mrs. Nash was being especially nasty, Miss Foxe imagined herself surrounded by leafy branches that changed as her tears dripped onto them—glossy green tips shrank and smoothed into skin; the branches gripped her firmly, like arms. . . .

  One morning Miss Foxe gave in. It was high time she found herself a companion. But how, and where? She knew what kind of man she wanted: someone passionate, someone who would understand her. But she didn’t meet people. Every man who came into the flower shop was invariably attached, or had someone else in mind.

  Miss Foxe went to bars, and was overlooked with a thoroughness that chilled her marrow. She had chosen seedy bars on purpose, bars where (she had heard Mrs. Nash say) the men were voracious and anything went. And it was true. Even cross-eyed girls who laughed like hyenas were bought drinks. Anything went but Miss Foxe. She wasn’t bad-looking—it was just that it took a great deal of effort to be able to actually see her, especially in noisy, crowded places.

  Miss Foxe tried libraries, but talking wasn’t allowed.

  Miss Foxe tried bookshops but was frightened off every time she saw the titles of the books the interesting-looking men happened to be holding. Such weighty and joyless words: Fear and Trembling, Anatomy of Melancholy, The Nicomachean Ethics, and the like.

  One afternoon Mrs. Nash barked at her. “You’ve been late back from lunch five days running now. Explain yourself. And don’t fob me off with any more lies, or you’ll be out of work.”

  Miss Foxe explained that she had been trying different things.

  “What does that mean? Spit it out.”

  “I’ve been looking in the bookshops for a gentleman friend,” poor Miss Foxe stammered.

  Mrs. Nash threw her head back and laughed for ten minutes without stopping. Then she said, “You’d better advertise.”

  And that is what Miss Foxe did. In a national newspaper, no less.

  Fairy-tale princess seeks fairy-tale prince. Sarcastic and/or ironic replies will be ignored; I am in earnest, and you had better be, too.

  If the advertisement sounded as if Miss Foxe was fed up, that’s because she was.

  As a result of her advertisement, Miss Foxe received seventeen moderately interesting propositions, fifteen pages of lunatic verse (from fifteen different lunatics), twelve sarcastic and/or ironic replies (six of each), and a single foxglove wrapped in clear cellophane. The foxglove was accompanied by a card that read: Fitcher. The name was printed above an address not too far from where Miss Foxe lived.

  Miss Foxe held the flower and walked all around her bedroom in quick circles. Her steps sped up so that she was almost running. She felt her heart beating in her fingertips. She knew the foxglove’s meaning in the language of flowers—beauty and danger, poison and antidote. The digitalis made the heart contract. If your heart was too slow, then it worked to make you well. If your heart was sound, the digitalis killed. This Fitcher, whoever he was, understood the beautiful risk of the fairy tale. She wrote to Fitcher at once, and three days later he met her at a coffee shop after work.

  Fitcher bemused Miss Foxe. He looked at her. He looked at her eyes, her ears, her teeth, her neck, her breasts. And he was a quiet man but not in the way that she was quiet. His quiet was of the measured kind, entered into to conceal his thoughts. He stepped noiselessly upon the floor. She dreaded that at first.

  “Is Fitcher your only name?” she asked him.


  He answered: “I have no other.”

  They spoke of fairy tales, and found their tastes were exactly matched. Encouraged, she met him again, and again. At their fourth meeting, as they walked between glass cases at the British Museum, Fitcher threaded Miss Foxe’s fingers through his own. She froze. She did not find it easy to be touched by Fitcher; she found that her hand was warming his, and that though his hand was strong, it moved gently with hers.

  At their sixth meeting, Fitcher brought Miss Foxe a nightingale in a gold-painted cage. He set the cage down on the shop counter and draped a black cloth over it. And the bird sang out its hope, the silly little romantic calling out for a mate, not caring if this nightfall was a trick.

  Mrs. Nash approved of Fitcher. “A proper Romeo, that one,” she said.

  “He doesn’t talk much, though,” Miss Foxe confided. “It worries me.”

  “It’s better that way,” Mrs. Nash returned. “Pay attention to what he does, not what he says—that’s the rule.”

  And to this she added various other adages, such as “It’s in his kiss,” etc.

  By their seventh meeting, Miss Foxe had grown so sure of Fitcher that she felt ready for the next step. She invited him to her flat, where she cooked him dinner and they drank wine by candlelight. Fitcher seemed appreciative but as usual said little. At last they were sitting on the sofa, together. She fed him bites of lemon tart. Fitcher looked as if he was enjoying both the food and the attention. Once that was over with, Miss Foxe reached behind the sofa and produced an antique sword that had been in her family for many years. It was half her height, and heavy, but shiny and sharp, as she had recently had it oiled and sharpened. She laid the sword across their laps.