Talking Book candidate by Masha Woollard

[John Dean]

FOXED

MASHA WOOLLARD

Every morning she took a cup of tea up to her room, postponing as long as possible the moment when she would have to get dressed, and face the world. This was the best part of the day. Her bed ran alongside
the window, facing the sun rise. She slept with the curtains open to show the colour gradually creeping across the sky, a moving picture framed by the window.
She thought she must always have a house where the bedroom faced east, to wake her in the morning, and the living room faced west to catch the evening sun. The garden was full of light. There were tree shaped shadows on the grass.
Malcolm, her next door neighbour had already left to take his grandson to nursery. He was proud of the fact that he had learned to ride a two-wheeler bike when he was only four. His own sons had been poorly at birth, and were bullied at school, so he was determined to
build on the strengths of his first grandchild, who he adored. Stella, his wife, left soon after him for her part time job, cleaning the Doctor's house.
Kneeling up on the bed, her tea cup on the window sill, she rested her cheek on the cool glass and looked across the lawn. It was her magic house; perfect like a child's drawing, with four windows, one in each corner, the front door in the middle, and cherry tree at the back. Then something caught her eye; a shape in the middle of the
lawn.
At first she thought it was a cat, but it was too big. She reached for her glasses to see more clearly. Surely it couldn't be - but yes - it was a fox. It must have crossed ten gardens to get there. It was lying on the grass in full view of all the windows. Its once rust red
coat was faded and rough. It was bald in places. Was it alive? She tapped the glass experimentally, but it did not move. She tied her dressing gown more tightly around her, and sipped her tea. Wasn't it afraid of being seen? She knew foxes came at night to raid the
dustbin. If the lid was not on properly she would find scattered traces of paper bags, wrapping and chicken bones all around. She tapped on the window again. It still did not move, but one ear twitched to show that it had heard. It was just stretched out enjoying the warm sun on its ragged coat.
She felt uneasy about going out and leaving it there. It was a wild animal after all. Was it so old that it had lost all sense of danger?
She went out at about eleven, hoping that the fox would be gone before she came back. She didn't want to go into the garden when he was there. Like many town dwellers she didn't approve of fox hunting, but the thought of this alien creature in her garden disturbed her.
What if he brought a dead rabbit into the garden, or dug holes in the flower beds to bury its prey, or worse still, attacked a neighbour's cat? Should she ring the R.S.P.C.A?
Hopefully he would just disappear and she wouldn't have to deal with it. She spun out her shopping as long as possible, finding excuses to go to one shop after another, trying on clothes and shoes, and calling on
various friends. But eventually she had to go home. She went straight up to her room and peered through the glass. To her relief the fox had gone.

He lay there, on his side, avoiding the shadows cast by the trees, flat as a rug, basking in the sun in the middle of the lawn. He heard the tapping on the window, but he felt too old and too tired to react, and no longer feared danger. He had come early in the morning, as
every morning, and licked the dew from the grass. The smell of food made his nostrils twitch; was it from the bins or from the houses?
People were cooking bacon, and he could hear voices drifting through the open windows. He was comfortable, and did not want to move.
Long ago there had been vixens and cubs, and bright mornings, and long cold nights, and he was young and strong, and cunning, and slunk like shadow silently between the houses and the bins. But now the sun
shone on him and there was warmth , and the warmth filled him, and he was warm, and the warmth was him. He was one with the sun and the grass, and the smells, and was content. Then he was a cub, romping with his brothers under the trees.
And then he shut his eyes.
And then there was nothing.


When Malcolm returned from the nursery he looked out of the window and saw that the fox had not moved. He had often seen it there early in the morning, when he walked round the garden before breakfast, but
it had always slipped away when it heard him coming,
Creeping nearer, he saw that it was dead. He knocked on his neighbour's door, and was relieved there was no reply. Foxes were vermin, he thought. He didn't want to admit, even too himself, how attached he had become to this scavenging visitor. He looked furtively up at the windows. No one seemed to be looking out, so he
wrapped the body in an old potato sack, and hid it in the shed, which he locked until he could bury it unobserved..
When she asked him later if he had ever seen the fox he simply replied, "Yes, it often used to come in the garden. I expect it's found a new hunting ground."