Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

“Oh, J.P. — such a funny little man, isn’t he?” I said. “So short and squat. And I hardly know what he’s talking about half the time.” St. John didn’t stop crossing things out, but his lips twitched; I think he was happy I’d said that. But I felt terribly guilty, because that isn’t what I think about John Pizarsky at all. I honestly think he rescued me yesterday, and showed a sweet side I didn’t know he had. And while it’s true I’m not quite sure what he meant to tell me, it helped. It did help, and I’m grateful to him. I’d let J.P. down; I knew it in the pit of my stomach, but I told myself he’d never know that I’d talked about him like that. I’d make it up to him. I’d read that book he lent me six months ago, and I’d discuss it with him and pretend it had changed my life.

That thing he’d told me about Lady Mary conquering Mr. Fox just by telling him what she’d seen in his house. . telling him right to his face in front of all the guests at that ghastly betrothal breakfast. And all Mr. Fox could do was stand there denying it, his denials getting weaker and weaker as her story got more detailed. I know what you’re doing — I know what you are. She had power after that, the knowing and the telling — power to walk away, or stay, save his life, order his death. I don’t know what I’d have done in her place. It’s easier to picture Greta in that kind of situation — Greta would’ve blackmailed him, for sure. Just for fun, and pocket change.

Mary caused quite a stir at dinner, and I was glad to be there. She was a little sad to have to take the hat off indoors, but she ate and drank and touched the knives and forks and spoons and her wineglass with such delight, you couldn’t help but watch her. And she watched everyone, and told me what she thought of them. A group of four men moved tables so that they were in our line of vision, and whenever Mary looked over at them they toasted her. She got quite mischievous about it, and made them drop their cutlery at least ten times as they scrambled to lift their glasses. “It’s kind of like a jack-in-the-box,” she said. She was blushing because of all the attention, her cheeks a gorgeous shade of pink, and I said, quoting something I’d read, “Modesty is more effective than the most expensive rouge.” Then I realised I hadn’t read it anywhere and I’d just made it up. “Modesty is more effective than the most expensive rouge,” I said again.

“Hey, you should put that in your book,” Mary said, with a smile of approval. Two couples St. John and I knew, the Comyns and the Nesbits, came over to say hello and get an eyeful. I introduced Mary to them as “a second cousin of St. John’s’,” which seemed to satisfy them, and they shook hands with her without any difficulty, though I was very worried that there would be. Mrs. Nesbit is the yelling kind, and alarming her in any way is a surefire route to notoriety. The Nesbits and the Comyns were as nosey as they could be in a few brief minutes, and Mary told them she’d just come out of finishing school in Boston. She was a fluent liar, and really warm with it, really personal. If I hadn’t seen her come to life before my very eyes I’d have believed her.

“You must come to dinner next week,” Mrs. Nesbit said, before they left the restaurant. And Mary said she’d absolutely adore to. I began to foresee a disgustingly sociable future, then tried to see the three of us out for the evening; Mary, St. John, and I, and that jarred me out of my speculation.

“Mary. . what was that about a book? What do you mean, my book?”

Mary poured us both more wine, fixed me with a suddenly keen gaze. “Aren’t you going to write one?”

I’d won a couple of prizes for essays and things at school, and a prize for a short story. But that was all so long ago. And it wasn’t hard to shine at that sort of thing at my school; no one really studied hard because it was so unnecessary when you were going to marry well. Even so, maybe I would try. It could well go the way of the watercolor paintings, and the clay pottery, and the botany. But there would be many lonely hours ahead for me, and I thought it would be good to give them purpose.

“Did you put something in my wine, Mary? I’m just wondering how I’m keeping my temper. You just swan in, take my husband with one hand and offer me a hobby with the other. . ”

Mary’s hand hovered over mine. “We’re going to be all right.” She flexed her fingers, closed her eyes ecstatically, and breathed in and out. It was embarrassing, and I told her to stop making herself conspicuous.

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all.

I had a lot of questions for her. Whether she and St. John could read each other’s thoughts, what her first memory was, things like that. The first thing she remembered was a shilling with King George of England’s head on it. It had been very well taken care of, polished and kept clean, and it shone in St. John’s dirty hand down where he crouched in the trench. He’d swapped something for it — she couldn’t remember what he’d swapped, but she knew he’d wanted the shilling because it was bright. She told me about the first job St. John took after the war. He’d been a bill collector, but he doesn’t say much about those times. It was fascinating listening to her.

“He was one of the best,” Mary said, wolfing steak down as if she’d heard there was going to be a shortage. “He hounded debtors door to door, plucking away the false names and new addresses they tried to hide behind. He developed a method. Firstly, he paid no visible attention to the poverty or misery of the people on his list. Secondly, once he caught up with them he’d only ever say one sentence, demanding what was owed. That was it, his method. He repeated that one sentence over and over without changing the formulation of it, until he was paid. You should have seen him, Mrs. Fox. He was really kind of magnificent. Sometimes he’d get punched or interrupted or outshouted while he was saying his sentence. And, well, he’d just wait until the interruption was over. Then, rather than starting his sentence again, he just went on as if nothing had happened, picking up from the precise syllable where he had been forced to stop. It drove people nuts. His collection rate was outstanding. It doesn’t take much to horrify people who are already frightened.”

She frowned. “He was good at being a bill collector but it wasn’t good for him. For days at a time he hardly talked to anyone but me. And sometimes at the end of his workday he’d walk into walls and closed doors. He saw them up ahead but he just didn’t stop walking.”

I asked her about the first story he wrote, and she told me about the crummy boardinghouse he was living in back then, just a bed, a desk, a chair, and a few easels, which he placed open books on, to look at. Art monographs and cookbooks, poetry, a guide to etiquette, a dictionary, a Bible. He’d get back from work and walk from easel to easel, picking up fleeting impressions. Mary turned the pages for him. Gentility is neither in birth, manner, nor fashion — but in the MIND. Next: And what if excess of love / Bewildered them until they died? And: A woman is always consumed with jealousy over another woman’s beauty, and she loses all pleasure in what she has. . After that: Be careful that the cheese does not burn, and let it be equally melted. Then he’d spend the night bent over his notebook, writing in zigzags, his pace irregular.

She was very reluctant to answer my other questions, about the war, and I thought it must be because of terrible things he’d done, or because he’d been a coward. But she said it wasn’t that. “If I answered the questions you’re asking me,” she said, “you’d wish I hadn’t told you, because you wouldn’t know what to say. I think he worries that people sneer at him for coming back safe and sound, or think that he must have been taken captive and put to work tending enemy vegetable patches. But just trust me. Mr. Fox was decent in those times. He did what he could, and he was as decent and as brave as he could be.”