Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (23) - Flipbook - Page 87
They have questions. Once reassured that my intentions are normal (ie not here to shag the
livestock) they manage to free me with soap. The fox is then captured with a handheld trap
like a big webbed pair of tongs and presumably set free. I reveal the big truth distilled from
my night of hell:
“I need to find my car and see my son.”
“Dressed like that?” says the moustached one.
So I pull on my cold, sopping clothes. Moustache agrees to drive me towards town (where he
has an errand) and drop me near the rag-and-bone yard to start looking for Mr Car. Hope’s
pilot-light burns gradually through the mist around the van. Fields rear like wings in the slow
updraft of light as all becomes dawn.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” Moustache moans, projecting his ire at me through the
windscreen.
“Would be good if we were panthers,” I say, seeking common ground. “Jungle predators
have the best eyesight on the planet.”
“That’s eagles,” he snaps.
Well, not a biggie. Still got hope.
Around a bend, tyretracks crush a five-foot hedge and slew towards a misty oak. Against the
oak, a blackened, crumpled car lies smoking.
“Stop, please, that’s him! In that field.”
I hare through the ridged earth towards the oak. Mr Car’s airbags have turned to ash
and the chassis is a cartoon concertina. A skeleton sits charred at the wheel, hands stuck to
former rubber. Squares of plastic are all that’s left of my beloveds. I reach through the
smashed window and open the glovebox. Orchid Jeffrey’s stem is in bits, miraculously green.
Dead without knowing it…
The pilot-light gutters. You try, don’t you, you try and try but you’re always worth a good kick
because there is no bottom to it, how much you can take. It’s always a joke: that’s your role.
“Don’t cry, man,” says Moustache. “I’m calling the police. Just wait and we’ll see you
right, okay?”
I dry my eyes because my arm can still move up to my face and dry them.
“I’m going to see my son,” I tell him. “Don’t bother. I can walk from here.”
…Into the low sun for nine miles, through hedges and hoarfrost and spider-hung lace, past
barns and broke-backed cottages, through to neighbourhoods with garden furniture and
Christmas lights. Maud’s new semi-detached has robins on the roof: bright jittery apples. I’m
going to see my son.
“What happened to your face?” Maud asks on the porch.
“A fox bit it.”
“A fox bit your face? One fox?”
Steve jogs downstairs in his bathrobe.
“It was a fox,” Maud says, pointing.
“Try to shag it?” Steve jokes.
Maud asks, “What happened to your clothes?”
I take a deep breath and come clean. “Orchid Jeffrey is dead. All of Jeffrey's
inheritance is gone. I effed up.”
Steve sighs and grips my shoulder fondly. “Well no one gave a crap, so that’s fine.”
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