| Fox
Talking
by Robert Burns
A while ago I ended my love affair with baguettes.
Back when I commuted through Marylebone Station everyday, I’d
grab a baguette from the baguette kiosk for breakfast and dinner.
I’d eat this baguette on the waiting bench outside the florist.
I don’t know exactly why I went for baguettes. All I know
is that out of all the other foods I tried to romance, it was the
firm crust and the variety of fillings the baguette offered which
helped me to unwind after a long day at work.
My legs would be aching around this time from standing up all day,
and I’d just kind of watch the people going past with their
briefcases and shopping bags; talking into their mobile phones,
and dragging their children round by the wrists. I’d eat my
baguette, ham and cheese, or bacon or whatever, and I’d just
watch. I’d watch and wonder where all those people were going
to.
One day I was sitting there with my baguette, I think it was some
kind of cheese with salad, I don’t remember. But I took a
bite and looked up, and saw this Fox, about five seven just standing
there in front of me, smoking his pipe and smiling. It scared the
life out of me. No kidding. I nearly choked on my baguette. I was
just trying to work out how best to react, when the next thing I
know, he’s sat down next to me and he’s smoking away
on his pipe, looking around at the people in the station through
his rimless spectacles and talking at me.
‘Fine evening for a train journey,’ he said to me. Fine
evening! I couldn’t believe it. I thought maybe I’d
lost my mind or something, that maybe they’d doped my baguette
back at the kiosk. But then the fox kept on talking. He introduced
himself to me. Said his name was Richard and he was from Hampstead.
Said he worked in publishing and had a wife and two children. He
showed me a picture of them and everything; of these two little
foxes, playing around a slide in the middle of summer, big smiles
with lots of teeth. Then he turned to look at me, and said the oddest
thing. ‘Is there anything you’d like to talk about?’
he asked me.
Now, under normal circumstances this might have seemed an ordinary
question. But from the way he said it I knew he didn’t mean
to talk about just anything. He meant did I actually want to talk
about something important. And when I thought about it I guessed
I did. I guessed I had a lot I wanted to talk about. And I looked
up into the fox’s eyes and, I don’t know, something
made me feel like I could trust them, you know. ‘Is it okay?’
I said to him.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘talk about whatever you
want and I’ll listen.’
And so I just talked, and that’s how it started. I just talked.
From then I met up with the fox maybe for three, maybe three and
half weeks, in the same place every night. I’d be there eating
and he’d stroll up and ask me what I would like to talk about
and from then on I’d just talk. It was strange. You’d
think people would notice this fox talking to a guy, but though
we were in a station full of people, nobody ever paid us any attention.
Sitting there with me, his pipe smoking up into the steel roof beams
it was like me and the fox were behind this invisible force field.
I told him about everything pretty much. All the business with my
Dad and brother, and what happened a few years ago when we were
on holiday, that came right out. Just like all the stuff about work.
At first I hadn’t wanted to go into details, but every time
I met him I ended up telling him more and more, and it was only
a matter of time before I talked about Hannah, before I ended up
telling him everything about that too. I told him everything. From
how we met and the places we went together, right down to the little
things, like the way I used to sort of rest her hand in mine in
winter so it wouldn’t get cold while we walked through the
street, and how she chewed her food slightly to the left of her
mouth.
I told him about how this one time, when we were making custard
in my kitchen, and she kept adding all this brown sugar to the mix
without me knowing, and how it got all grizzly and she couldn’t
stop laughing. I told him about that. And though I hadn’t
meant to I told him about how when she used to sleep next to me
and I was awake I would run my fingertips up and down her arms,
real slow and delicate-like, just to feel how soft her skin was.
It was stuff like that I told the fox.
Now that I think about it, it all seems a bit sentimental, but at
the time it seemed okay to say it and I told him about how when
Hannah used to come over to stay I used to make sure my flat was
always really tidy. Dust and hoover and go to town on the sheets
– iron them and everything.
‘Iron the sheets?’ he said, his fox eyes all wide. ‘You
ironed your sheets?’
I told him yeah. I told that even though it was stupid, I just liked
it that she was getting in clean sheets to go to sleep. I told him
it made me feel like I’d done something nice for her, you
know. Just something little that she probably wouldn’t even
notice, but something that I knew about all the same, and telling
him all of these little things eventually led to me telling him
about when she was meant to come round that night.
We were sitting on the bench. I’d just finished something
with beef in. A few bits of the meat were still between my teeth,
and I just went right ahead and told the fox about it. I started
slow, telling him how I did the usual thing and got the flat ready
that day. Did the hoovering, the sheets the whole shebang. I told
him how I bought the stuff to cook her this real nice meal, with
chicken and lots of vegetables – the healthy stuff. The stuff
she liked. I talked about how I waited for her most of the night
and she never came round, and then about how most of the other stuff
was a blur, how for a few days after I found out people were leaving
me messages all the time, wanting to know if there was anything
they could do… and how I just couldn’t go to the machine
to delete them. I said how for a couple of days I couldn’t
really move – which sounds really
dramatic, but still, that’s what it was like. She umm…
Yeah. I never felt like that before.
I told the fox all about what happened afterwards with the undertaker
and all that stuff with her parents at the funeral: ‘If she
hadn’t been on her way to you,’ all that stuff. And
the fox, he sat there and listened, smoking his pipe and nodding
and helping me along here and there. To this day I have no idea
why he did that. Never once did he tell me about himself. In fact,
now that I think about it, despite all the amount of stuff I told
him, I never really asked the fox a great deal about anything. I
never asked him about why he was a Fox or how come he could talk
and smoke a pipe. I never asked him about any of that. All I ever
learned about him was that he liked books by Hemingway and that
he lived close to the station.
‘This place is special for me,’ he said once. ‘You
could say there is a part of my soul here.’ And that was all
I ever got to know about him, because one day I went to get my baguette
and sat down and the fox didn’t show. Apart from me the bench
was empty. I finished up my dinner watching the people as I had
done many times before. I waited for a good half hour after I’d
finished, hoping he’d show. But he never did. OK, I thought,
maybe he got held up and couldn’t make it. I’ll see
him tomorrow, and I got up to catch my next train.
On my way to leave I saw this little note that he’d left,
that was addressed to me. It had my name on the back of this creamy
coloured envelope in fancy handwriting. I opened it up and read
it and got like a little stone in my throat. I still have the note
with me if you want to hear. Hold on a sec, I’ll just get
it out:
Dear Michael,
I regret to inform you that I won’t be able to make it in
future. Something has come up and I have to return to somewhere.
To a place I have been trying to avoid for quite some time. There
are many things I would enjoy explaining to you. Perhaps when we
meet again this will be possible. For now though, just let me just
say that over the past few weeks I have greatly enjoyed your company,
watching you eat your baguettes and listening to you speak. Though
you might not think so, for me it has been a joy. And I hope you
feel that talking to me has afforded you a release of some kind
from your troubles, however small a release it may be. I hope this
from the bottom of my heart.
Best wishes
Richard
That was when I ended my love affair with baguettes. I don’t
know why. I just didn’t feel like one after that.
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