Mr. Fox

BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD

February 17th, 1936

St. John Fox

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

Dear Mr. Fox,

I read Dr. Lustucru with great interest. It really wasn’t bad. In fact, I congratulate you on it. Whilst not expecting a reply, I feel compelled to ask why none of your books contain a photograph of their author. Are you particularly ugly, particularly shy, or is it simply that you transcend physical existence?

Best regards,

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

June 2nd, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Dear Mary (you will forgive my familiarity, as it is potentially less presumptuous than calling you “Miss” when you may be a “Mrs.,” or “Mrs.” when you may be a ‘Miss”),

Thanks for your letter — such courtesies mean a lot to me.

I’m replying to confirm that I’m astoundingly ugly. I have been the sorrowful owner of several dogs, each of whom I named Nestor, each of whom has found my features exhausting and run away from home.

I have a hunch that you, however, are the complete opposite. True? I invite you to enclose a photograph of yourself by return.

Cordially,

S. J. Fox

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

July 2nd, 1936

St. John Fox

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

Mr. Fox,

Having reread my initial letter to you, I don’t believe it merited such an insulting reply. If you are so sensitive about your looks, perhaps you ought to refrain from responding to enquiries about them. And if the short piece in January 4th’s New York Times is correct and you have indeed recently obtained your third divorce, isn’t it extremely unlikely that dogs would be repelled by you yet women continually attracted? They say sarcasm is the lowest form of humour, and I agree.

M.F.

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

July 6th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

M.F.,

How delightfully easily insulted you are, how unnervingly well informed. You also appear to be British (“humour”).

As you can see, I have rushed a reply out to you, so great is my anxiety that your opinion of me has been lowered. Has it? Say it ain’t so.

St. John

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

P.S. Your failure to include a photograph with your last letter has been noted.

July 11th, 1936

St. John Fox

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

You seem bitter, Mr. Fox. Are you having trouble with the next book?

M. Foxe

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

July 16th, 1936

“Mary Foxe”

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Dear “Mary Foxe,”

Is this your true name? Have we met someplace; are we acquainted? Have I wronged you in some way?

Be direct. Allow me to

make amends,

St. John Fox

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

July 22nd, 1936

St. John Fox

c/o Astor Press

490 West 58th Street

New York City

Dear Mr. Fox,

I found your questions asinine.

Yours sincerely,

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

July 28th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

My dear Miss Foxe,

That’s quite some vocabulary you’ve got there. But this is not the day and age to waste paper, ink, and stamps. What is it that you want from me?

S.J.F.

177 West 77th Street,

Apartment 25

New York City

August 2nd, 1936

St. John Fox

177 West 77th Street, Apartment 25

New York City

I’ve written a few stories, and I’d like you to read them.

M.F.

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

August 6th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Why me?

S.J.F.

177 West 77th Street,

Apartment 25

New York City

September 1st, 1936

St. John Fox

177 West 77th Street, Apartment 25

New York City

Mr. Fox,

I apologise for the brevity of my previous note, which was due to a combination of factors: I was surprised by the frankness of your letter and the fact that you had included what appears to be your actual home address. Also I had been having a difficult week but wanted to reply promptly, so was forced to do so without niceties. Why you? My answer is unoriginal: I-have-long-been-an-admirer-of-your-workand-have-found-it-a-great-encouragement- whilst-in-the-midst-of-my-amateurscribbling-to-imagine-you-reading-what-I- have-written. There, that’s over with. In short, I ask for nothing but your honest opinion of my stories. I’m aware that even asking this is an imposition, one that I would certainly resent if our situations were reversed, therefore I’ll take no offence at your ending this correspondence by dint of silence and shall remain,

Your interested reader,

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

September 10th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Little Miss Foxe,

If you’d really been doing your homework you’d know that I am the last person in the world to consult with about your writing. It surprises me that you’re able to make reference to the January New York Times piece about my third divorce without also recalling the February piece that described me as “a suffocating presence across the breakfast table. . harsh destroyer of the feminine creative impulse.” Why don’t you write to the author of that piece? I’m sure she has some handy hints for you.

Sincerely,

S. J. Fox

177 West 77th Street,

Apartment 25

New York City

September 13th, 1936

St. John Fox

177 West 77th Street, Apartment 25

New York City

Mr. Fox,

You are suspicious of me. Don’t be. You feel exposed by recent scrutiny of your private life and you sense that I am mocking you or preparing the way for some kind of punch line, that I will send you some satirical pages about a writer with thirtyseven ex-wives, all of whom hate him and blame him for their own failures. I find it disappointing that you so transparently view your every interaction as a narrative. It is cliché, if you’ll forgive my saying so.

I had a birthday in June and became twenty-one years old. No, I am not pretty. Not at all pretty, I’m afraid. Yes, I am a Brit, in fact directly related to the author of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (I am very proud — I consider Foxe’s Martyrs to be the sixteenth century’s best book). I grew up in a rectory, my father is a vicar, as a child I suspected him of having written the Bible. I am sole occupant of one medium-sized bedroom in a penthouse apartment not so very far from you; the place is full of Objects I am afraid I shall accidentally break. For almost a year now I have been tutor and general companion — there is not really a name for my job — to a fourteen-year-old girl who was asked not to return to school because the majority of her fellow pupils were frightened of her. On weekends the family usually leaves town, and that is when I take the opportunity to type what I have written in my notebook. I am not sure what I mean by writing this to you, or how much, if at all, my listing these things will strike you as reassuring, or even interesting. I’m not what you think I am, that’s all.

M. Foxe

85 East 65th Street,

Apartment 11

New York City

October 17th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Dear M.,

Your letters have interested me more than any I’ve been sent in a long while, and if you’d still like me to read your pages I’d be glad to. You must give them to me in person, though — I only read the work of people I am personally acquainted with. And before you make a smart remark, yes, I knew Shakespeare. I really am that old.

I almost always pass an hour or two at the bar of the Mercier Hotel of a Sunday — not even eavesdropping; everybody tries too hard to be shocking nowadays — just drinking. It would be my pleasure if you could join me there next Sunday. Seven p.m. No need to write back this time, just show up, and let’s see if we can pick each other out. If you have your pages in full view I’ll consider you a spoilsport.

Warm regards,

S.J.

177 West 77th Street,

Apartment 25

New York City

I received that letter on Wednesday morning and opened it at the breakfast table while Mitzi Cole licked grapefruit segments and Katherine Cole sat with her eyes closed, repeating “split the lark split the lark split the lark split the lark” in what she thought was an English accent. After a few minutes, Mitzi joined in: “Split the lark split the lark split the lark split the lark” but gabbled, her words hastily jammed into the pauses Katherine took to breathe.

Katherine opened her ice-blue eyes to intone: “And you’ll find the music.”

Mitzi poked my wrist with her spoon. “Anything of note?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Just a letter from my father.” I hadn’t exactly lied — beside my plate there was an envelope addressed in my father’s handwriting but unopened.

The Coles have a musical clock hung on a bracket in their living room; it is lantern-shaped with a circular opening for the clock face. It chimes the hour every hour from seven in the morning to ten at night, and it also plays a snatch of “Für Elise.” It makes me laugh now to think that “Für Elise” ever used to send a chill down my spine. Katherine has said several times that the clock offends her sensibilities, but Mr. Cole likes it, so it stays. When the family interviewed me in London, the second or third thing Mr. Cole told me after shaking my hand was that he had no culture, none at all. Mitzi, tiny, white-blonde, and warmly rounded, like a soft diamond, had immediately interjected: “God bless our Papa Bear; he doesn’t need any culture.”

The clock chimed nine just as Katherine turned to her mother and said, “You know, your elocution is really terrible.”

Mitzi smoothed Katherine’s hair and said, “Why, thank you, my sweet.”

Katherine replied, “You had grapefruit juice on your hands and now it’s in my hair.” She left the table immediately — with purpose more than petulance. Mitzi and I heard the bathroom taps go on and we looked at each other.

“I find it slightly ridiculous that Katy is my child,” Mitzi remarked, and resumed with her grapefruit. She was simultaneously reading the dictionary (I saw she had just begun the letter K) and looking through a Bergdorf Goodman catalogue, choosing clothes for Katherine.

Katherine returned to the table damp-haired. Mitzi tapped a page of the catalogue with her pen and asked, “Honey, what do you think of this little skirt suit here?”

“It’s great, I’ll take it,” Katherine said without looking. Katherine is Mitzi miniaturised, brunette, and wiped entirely clean of conscience. I have the strong feeling that unless Katherine is closely watched she will one day do something terrible to another person, or perhaps even to a large group of people. The key is not to aggravate her, I think.

Mitzi placed a large tick on the catalogue page.

Let’s see if we can pick each other out. .

I looked at the walls as I ate my toast — everything was butter and marmalade. The blondest wood that Mitzi had been able to find, yellow countertops, yellow tablecloth, linoleum of the same colour but in such a shocking hue that I can never quite believe in it and constantly find myself walking or sitting with only my toes on the ground, never my full weight.

Katherine’s white silk blouse was wet from her washing, possibly ruined. I would take it to the dry cleaner’s before our morning walk. Her pine-green skirt was cut so simply that I knew it cost the equivalent of at least three months of my wages.

“Better change your blouse, Katherine,” I said. If she heard me, she gave no sign. I took Mr. Fox’s letter (If you’d still like me to read your pages I’d be glad to. . Glad to, he’d be glad to. .) and the letter from home, took them to my bedroom, and tucked them in alongside the others, between the covers of my copy of Foxe’s Martyrs, a book to which Katherine had shown an aversion, so I knew they’d be safe from her eyes.

Mitzi had switched on the wireless set; a band was swinging Gershwin, trombones loudest. I returned to the kitchen to clear the plates and cups.

“I’ve been reading some of your poems,” Katherine told her mother. Mitzi went wide-eyed with alarm and said, “And?”

“They don’t make any sense,” Katherine said. “You know that? I have some questions.” She pulled a square of paper out of her skirt pocket and unfolded it. Mitzi looked to all four corners of the room for help. I turned quickly and ran water over the dishes.

“Oh, it’s blank,” Mitzi whispered, hoarse with relief. “Honey, it’s blank. What a dirty trick to play on your old ma.”

“April Fools’,” Katherine explained.

“It’s October,” Mitzi told her.

Katherine didn’t say anything for some time; she seemed to be brooding. No one else said anything, either. The band on the radio heaved into another song, and I began to dry the dishes. I would give Mr. Fox just three stories — I already knew which ones. The previous weekend I’d looked at the stories I’d typed, reading them over and over. If Mr. Fox doesn’t think you’re any good, I asked myself, what will you do?

The dishcloth was yellow, too — as I dried each cup I checked my hands for jaundice. Katherine appeared at my side. She had changed into a grey dress. “Come on, Mary,” she said, handing me my coat. “Let’s go for our walk.”

It had rained overnight, and in the trees it was still raining. Every branch along 65th Street shed leaves on us. The leaves were dark, and their moisture made noise. There was a sense that at any time they might bite — they were like bats. The Mercier Hotel was down the block on our way to Central Park. Pigeons stumbled across the white portico that jutted over the doors, and I could distantly hear the bustle, see people moving behind the smoky glass.

We stopped at the dry cleaner’s with Katherine’s blouse and a couple of Mr. Cole’s suits. Then I told Katherine about the literature assignment I was setting her: read The Woman in White and The Count of Monte Cristo, then answer the question “What is a villain?” I had two copies of each book in my satchel for when she settled down to read at the park. I meant to read along with her, to see if it was possible to catch her thinking. It wasn’t the reading itself that would throw Katherine — she read everything. The problem was eliciting a response from her afterwards. If asked for a review, she impersonally rehashed every detail of the story. “Oh, everyone’s got a view, haven’t they?. . Everyone’s got something to say,” she’d tell me, when all I wanted to know was whether she’d liked the book.

As I’d expected, Katherine wasn’t listening to what I was telling her. She picked leaves off her black beret. “Say, do you think Ma’ll let me bob my hair like yours?”

We crossed at the light, hand in hand.

“Your hair suits you as it is.”

“But I want a bob. Ma says it’s quaint because it’s so out of style.”

I blushed hard. No point asking whether Mitzi had really said that.

Katherine looked sideways at me. “Why do you bob your hair? Waiting on a flapper revival?”

“I bob my hair because I don’t care about trends, only about what suits me, thank you very much for asking,” I said severely.

Really I bob my hair because I’ve given up on it. It’s so palely coloured that if I pull it back from my face I look bald. My mother used to kiss my cheeks and run her fingers through my hair. She’d hold locks of it up to the light and say, “Look at that colour, spun gold. You’ll be such a beautiful woman. . ”

I always understood that it was a story, like all her other ones, the fairy tales she told. I’ve taken no harm from its not coming true. I don’t expect it to come true.

I spent Sunday morning typing fresh copies of the three stories I meant to give to Mr. Fox. Usually I make plenty of mistakes, and I waste quite a lot of paper that way. But this time mistakes were minimal — adrenaline lent me precision. I played “Mama Loves Papa” over and over on Katherine’s gramophone, which she’d placed in my room before leaving for Long Island with her parents. All three had left wearing starched tennis whites; they planned to take turns playing doubles on their tennis court, to help Mr. Cole forget the hassle of his working week. I haven’t been to the Long Island house, but I’ve seen photographs, and I hope the Coles never think to ask me along. Besides the tennis court they have a swimming pool and a topiary maze. Also a cook. What would I do in such a place? Die, I expect. Some Depression the Coles are having.

Mitzi occasionally asks me how I spend my weekends, and I tell her I volunteer at a soup kitchen on Times Square.

When I’d finished typing, I slid the pages into a black folder and put the folder in my satchel. My stomach sprang up my throat and I tried to be sick in the bathroom but had no such luck. I lay on my bed with The Count of Monte Cristo, rereading his astounding escape from the Château d’If. Good for you, Count of Monte Cristo. Your escape is one in the eye for jailers everywhere. I’ve given up trying to position my bed in such a way that the sky can be seen from the bedroom window — there just isn’t any sky in this part of Manhattan. On sunny days clouds are reflected in the plate glass halfway up the tallest buildings, but that’s the best this place can do.

It’s odd the way I keep to my bedroom even when the apartment is empty; more so when it is empty, actually. I can’t explain it — it’s not an attachment to the room itself, not anything to do with a sense of security or ownership. Not timidity, not disorientation. Maybe the Coles chose me for this very reason; they looked at me and thought, This girl is no threat to our home, to our cut crystal and heirloom silver, our framed landscapes and lace, oh, our lace. She’s English, but she’s not hoity-toity. She knows her place, she sure does know her place. There’s something ghostlike about this girl. . she will appear at certain times and in certain places, and at other times she will recede into a disinterested dark. Mary “Ghost” Foxe.

I would be at the bar before he arrived, I decided. To spy him before he spied me. I would sit close to the door with a glass of wine, drinking it slowly with my eyes half closed. Then, at seven p.m., I would look up and examine all those gathered around me. It would be like the ending of an Agatha Christie mystery, all possible culprits together in a locked room.

At three minutes after seven I would stride over to the man whose appearance was the least remarkable and say, “Mind if I join you, Mr. Fox,” without a question mark. We would talk for one hour; I would hand over the stories and be back by eight-ten, eight-thirty at the latest. The Coles would be home at nine.

I chose to make my entrance at half past six. His inviting me for seven made it unlikely he would arrive before six-thirty himself. Unless seven represented the latter half of the “hour or two” he passed at the bar, in which case he would be already seated, ice cubes melting into his whisky. None of the characters in any of his stories drink whisky — they drink everything under the sun but that, I’ve noticed — so whisky is probably a drink Mr. Fox reserves for himself. He’d wait until ice and alcohol had merged completely before taking his first sip. Whilst waiting he’d. . what? Did he really go to the bar of the Mercier Hotel alone most Sundays, or did he have a drinking buddy named something like Sal, flat-headed sleepy-blinking Sal, a sports journalist whose lethargy concealed an encyclopaedic knowledge of every professional boxing statistic since the sport began? Good old Sal, uncomplicated company. Or perhaps Mr. Fox liked to drink with admirers of his books, young newspapermen with rolled-up shirtsleeves, smartly dressed girls who typed rejection letters on behalf of various publishers and literary agencies. He probably liked actresses. He hadn’t yet been married to or linked to an actress, only writers, but maybe a Broadway starlet was in the cards, an antidote to his run of bad luck. If I found Mr. Fox sitting at the bar with a simpering actress, I wouldn’t bother speaking to him, I’d leave immediately.

At ten minutes to six I walked into Katherine’s room and opened her wardrobe, which was so tidy it looked empty. I took her green skirt off a hanger and put it on; it fitted well. Next I went into Mitzi’s room. The clock chimed six and hammered out “Für Elise.” I sat at the dressing table in Katherine’s skirt and my own black brassiere (twenty minutes left — it would take me ten minutes to walk down to the Mercier) and used everything in sight. I powdered my face, rouged my cheeks, painted my eyelashes, combed my eyebrows. When I finished, I washed my face clean, because the results were exactly as I had expected and I looked ghastly. With three minutes remaining, I buttoned up Katherine’s silk blouse, turned the gramophone off, and left.

The lift attendant asked if I was going on a date. I ignored him. It’s quite an experience, ignoring the speech of someone you’re sharing a lift with. I suppose it should be done only when one has absolutely nothing to say. He tugged his cap and said, “Well, la-di-da and good evening to you, too,” when I got out at the ground floor.

Inside, the Mercier was all brass and mahogany and polished rosewood. Red velvet, too, and perfume soaked so deep in tar that it smelt dirty, a nice sort of dirty. I took a cramped corner table that a couple had just vacated. They looked happy together, walked out with their coat collars turned up and their fingertips just touching. I put my wineglass down between their empty glasses and asked the waitress not to clear them away. From the bar’s vast marble crest to the bank of tables and chairs that surrounded it, hardly anyone sat alone. There were a few more couples but mainly mixed groups of five, six, seven, the women sipping at cocktails with prettily wrinkled noses, the men using their cigars and whisky tumblers to emphasise the points they were making.

At twenty minutes to seven someone said, “Hi, there.”

I looked up at a man with a beer glass in his hand. His hair was slicked across his head with each strand distinct, like the markings on a leaf. He grinned.

“All on your lonesome?”

“Are you Mr. Fox?”

He winked and drew out the chair opposite me. “Sure, I’m him. I’ve been looking at you, and—”

I dropped my satchel onto the chair before he could sit down. “I’m waiting for someone.”

The man moved on without argument, took a seat at the bar, swivelled his stool to face my table, and smiled at me whenever I looked his way. I couldn’t help looking every now and again, for comparison’s sake. I began to feel certain that the man at the bar was Mr. Fox after all. His eyes were quite beady, there was too much white to them and they sat too close together, but his smile was pleasant, soothing, despite them.

At ten minutes past seven a waitress came over with another glass of wine for me. “Gentleman at the bar’s taken a shine to you. Sends this with his compliments. Says his name’s Jack.”

I nodded and let her put the glass down before me. I didn’t drink from it. It sat there, buying me time to wait here alone in this place. I looked into the wine and felt myself drowning in it. Mr. Fox didn’t come, he didn’t come, he didn’t.

It was half past eight when I left the bar. The night was very stark, alternate streams of town cars and chequered taxicabs, blaring horns busily staking claims — here is the road and here is the sidewalk. But the road looked so much livelier, what if I tried the road?

I often think it would be such luxury to go mad, and not have to worry about anything. Others would have to worry for me, about me. There would be some sort of doctor there to tell me: “Don’t worry, Mary, it’s just that you are mad. Now, be quiet and take this pill.” And I would think, So that’s all it is, and I would be so glad. But aloud I would say, “What? I’m perfectly sane! You’re mad. . ” Only mildly, though; just for show, really.

November 1st, 1936

St. John Fox

177 West 77th Street, Apartment 25

New York City

Abominable Mr. Fox,

Contemptible Mr. Fox,

Nefarious Mr. Fox,

Vile Mr. Fox,

Loathsome Mr. Fox

Putrid Mr. Fox,

I closed my thesaurus and pulled the letter out of the typewriter with such haste that it tore; half of it was left in the scroll above the type bar. When I touched the two halves together they didn’t even fit anymore.

Katherine was on my bed, reading a book I hadn’t set her. She looked up when I crushed the letter to Mr. Fox in my hand — that’s Katherine for you, she’d hardly blinked while I was pounding the typewriter keys, but the moment I quietly made something smaller between my fingers, she was all interest.

I asked her what she was reading.

She shrugged. “Some book.”

“So you’ve already finished reading the books I set you, have you?”

She turned a page. “Not yet, I’m getting to it.”

“I shall tell your mother that you’re not applying yourself.”

Katherine seemed intrigued. I had never threatened her before.

“You probably should. After all, it’s my education that’s at stake. Maybe I need a new teacher or something. You missing London?”

I laughed at her indifference, the way she’d spoken without even bothering to inject a nasty insinuating tone into her words.

“Katherine, I could die horribly here in this chair, and my blood could spray all over the room and cover the pages of that fascinating book you’re reading, and I believe, I really do believe, that you’d just wipe the worst away and keep going.”

Katherine stretched her legs. “That’s a pretty gruesome thing to say, Mary.” She shook her head. “Pretty gruesome.”

She left the room, and I picked up the book she’d been reading. On the cover was an illustration of a steamboat. I glanced at the back. Vampires in the Deep South.

Katherine returned with The Woman in White and settled in the chair before my typewriter. “Happy now?” she asked. I said I was happy. I had gone from standing by my bed to lying on it. I had been quite tired the past few days: sleeping longer than usual, feeling the shock of waking throughout my body, as if I had been flung against a wall. Katherine started typing. I didn’t open my eyes (when had I closed them?), but I said, “Hands off my typewriter, Katherine.”

She didn’t stop. I hadn’t really expected her to. I like to hear the marching of typewriter keys, the shudder of the space bar, the metallic ding at the end of a line. Those sounds are encouraging, sounds made by someone who is interested in you and in what you’re saying, someone who understands exactly what you’re getting at. “Hmm,” the typewriter says. And “Mmmm. I-see-I-see-I-see.” And sometimes it chuckles. .

When I woke up my bedroom door was closed.

“Katherine,” I called.

“What?” she called back. So she had not absconded. I relaxed somewhat. She would not have to be collected from a police station at a quarter to midnight, as she had on the Coles’ London trip. Katherine had given Hester, her previous companion, the slip in Covent Garden in order to engage in a vigorous bout of shoplifting. Having deemed Hester unable to cope with Katherine, the Coles had sacked her, then advertised for an immediate replacement. They hadn’t employed an English companion before and wanted someone well spoken and unapproachable, as if these traits could cow their daughter.

I looked inside my typewriter. There’s a city in there. Black and grey columns and no inhabitants.

“I’ve done all my algebra. And I’m on page two hundred and goddamn five of this book you’re making me read,” Katherine announced.

“Don’t say ‘goddamn,’”I replied. “Walkies now!”

She barked quite realistically.

One evening I encountered Mr. Cole alone in the kitchen, bending over the toaster, using it to light his cigar. “Couldn’t find my matches,” he said when he straightened up. I said, “Ah,” and began going away again. My cup of tea could wait. But he reached out — not very far; he is built quite powerfully, and I’m like a doll beside him — and grabbed my hand. He twirled me around the room, propped me up with my back against the counter, then took a puff on his cigar (he had not troubled himself to put it out the entire time). He leant so close to me that I could very clearly see the roots of hairs that had escaped his razor. I looked at his mouth because I thought he was going to kiss me and I hoped that if I paid attention he would not kiss me. That would have been my first kiss and it would have tasted of ash.

He didn’t kiss me, but he put his hand on my breast. He continued to smoke whilst squeezing my breast through my brassiere and dress. I know I should have felt angry or violated, and I did try to, but his expression was distracted, as if he was doodling on a pad whilst mulling over another thing. Mainly I felt very confused. He had been looking at my forehead, but as he squeezed for the third time, he looked into my eyes. And let go immediately. “Places to go, people to see, Mary.” He walked backwards to the door, removing his cigar from his mouth for long enough to place a finger over his lips and wink. I wish there was someone I could have written to after that, someone I could have written to to explain how awful it was to have someone touch you, then look at you properly and change his mind.

Mr. Cole was at home when Katherine and I returned from our walk, sitting in an armchair with Mitzi on his lap. Mitzi opened her arms to Katherine, inviting her to join the tableau. Katherine regarded her parents with frozen eyes and swerved around them, opting for the dining room, where a coloured maid in a white cap stood beside a stacked trolley, covering the table with trays full of vol-au-vents that no one would eat.

“How much time do I have to get away before the ladies descend?” Mr. Cole asked. He seemed genuinely worried. Mitzi squeezed his neck and cooed that he was a grumpy bear, wasn’t he, wasn’t he.

Mitzi hosted her women’s club only once a month, so it was tolerable. The wives of her husband’s colleagues would gather at the Coles’ apartment and fill it with cigarette smoke. Nothing was consumed but cocktails and crudités; everyone was trying to reduce. They’d go around in a circle, these women, each telling the others what she’d been reading, what she’d seen at the theatre or at the pictures, which art exhibition was most divine. Katherine and I would barricade ourselves into my room or hers, with a chair against the door in case Mitzi had too much to drink and was suddenly possessed with a desire to display her offspring. We sprawled in a nest of our own laps and legs, reading and crunching animal crackers. Katherine swore she wouldn’t have anything to do with any goddamn women’s club when she grew up. My only reply was, “Don’t say ‘goddamn.’” Sooner or later Katherine will be expected to contribute to her mother’s gatherings, and having endured it once, the next time will be easier, and so on until this brief moment when Katherine and I are in perfect agreement is lost, and it’ll be strange to both of us to remember that we ever understood each other. Katherine is completely different from me, and it’s more than just the fact that her father’s money will erode her until she is no longer abrasive to the rest of her social set, until she is able to mingle and marry amongst them quite contentedly. It’s also that she’s already very pretty. A little long in the nose, but on the whole, very pretty. After a while it will seem odd that she has these looks and makes no attempt to use them. Why doesn’t she smile and bat her eyelashes, the way her mother must have practically from birth? I wanted to tell her. Don’t look at people so strongly, Katherine Cole. Let your gaze swoon a little. Don’t speak so firmly; falter. Lisp, even. Your failure to do these things made me mistake you for someone like me.

“Katherine is improving in English literature,” I told her parents, because I felt I should say something. Then I hurried to my room. Katherine joined me when the clock struck seven. And there we stayed, safe from the clinking of glasses and the lilting sound of civilised conversation. Katherine had been teaching herself how to read Tarot, and she told my fortune, laying down card after card, telling me what each one was supposed to predict. They were all bad cards. A heart spiked with sword blades, a lightning-struck tower, a demon holding a man and a woman on the same chain, a hooded figure walking away from cups that lay empty on the ground. She was taken aback; she reshuffled the cards. “Let’s start again,” she said.

“Let’s not,” I said. “That’s cheating.” We put on shoes and coats and slid past the lounge and out the front door. In the garden at the side of the building, we knelt by the pond and fed the koi. There had been more rain earlier in the evening, so we turned up plenty of their favourite food without much effort. The fish surged to the surface of the water and ate the earthworms live from our fingers. Lamps lit the rosebushes as bright as day and sirens sounded and resounded, their screams strangely pure, choral. I had been all over this city on my own, looked down from its heights, looked up from its swarming pavements — I’d spoken to no one; everyone passed me by at a clip. It occurred to me that I was unhappy. And it didn’t feel so very terrible. No urgency, nothing. I could slip out of my life on a slow wave like this — it didn’t matter. I don’t have to be happy. All I have to do is hold on to something and wait.

Once Katherine was asleep I read and marked her illustrated history project on the Church of England. I had to give her a C because she spoilt an otherwise thoughtful piece by suddenly concluding that the Church of England was Anne Boleyn’s “fault.” A Church is not the “fault” of anybody. Next, I set about preparing a lesson on stars, galaxies, and planets, poring over fat books I had withdrawn from the public library on Katherine’s ticket. There was so much information. I had to select things that would interest her, place them strategically alongside the things that were bound to bore her, the figures and units of measurement, in such a way as to disarm her objections to the important facts. I didn’t finish until one a.m., and by then it was too late to reach for my typewriter and add to the other pages I had been accumulating. So I sat beside the typewriter in the dark, and I pretended that I was working at it; then I pretended that all the work was finished, and I touched the keys that would make the page say

THE END THE END THE END

November 9th, 1936

Mary Foxe

85 East 65th Street, Apartment 11

New York City

Mary,

Many thanks for your letter of November 1st. Here is what I propose: to have my secretary wait for you this Saturday at one p.m., in order to collect the pages you want me to look at, and to buy you a consolatory lunch if you’re hungry. Salmagundi, on Lexington and 61st, is a personal favourite of mine — if you object to the time, place, date, or all three, then please say so by return. Otherwise, save your stationery.

Yours most chastened,

The abominable, contemptible, vile, execrable, etc.,

Mr. Fox

177 West 77th Street,

Apartment 25

New York City

I telephoned Katherine at the Long Island house. Mitzi answered, and I told her that this was an impromptu French oral examination, to keep Katherine’s skills elastic.

“Bonjour,” Katherine said, when she came to the phone. She was slightly out of breath — all that tennis. “Comment ça va?”

“Got a letter from Mr. Fox,” I said.

She laughed, and I heard her clap her hands. “What did he say? Did he sock it to you?”

She stopped laughing as she soaked up the realization that I couldn’t speak. I was in too much of a state.

Once I’d recovered I asked, “Why did you send it, Katherine?”

“I just thought it would be fun.” As she spoke I pictured her standing before me, eyeing me with all the defiance of Lucifer. In a smaller, meeker voice she said, “Stop hating me. . Who is he, anyway?”

“Just a man,” I said. In my mind I was already reorganizing the contents of the black folder. I’d kept working on the stories, and they were stronger now, and better; I was sure of it. It was just as well he hadn’t met me at the Mercier.

On Saturday afternoon I stood paralysed on the pavement outside the restaurant, which had these smart black-andsilver revolving doors; every time someone stepped into them I knew I was meant to take the next empty space and push myself into the lobby. But when I finally did I found that I couldn’t stop pushing at the door until I had spun back out onto the street again. I tried to be firm with myself, but with each glimpse of the restaurant full of marble and women genteelly eating salad, I lost my nerve to join them and ran inside the doors like a rodent in a glass maze. On the corner a man in a suit was standing beside an apple cart. “Apples,” he said. “Getcha apples!” No one was buying, so he began juggling them. “Look what I’ve sunk to,” he sang. “God, I hate these apples. I’d rather starve to death than eat these apples, tra la la.” He was a tenor. Finally he started telling the people passing that he had kids at home. Someone suggested he feed the apples to his kids. He caught my eye. “You’re my witness. When you’re out of work people think they can talk to you anyhow!” I nodded and went back in for another bout with the revolving doors. By now people trying to enter the restaurant from the street were asking me if I was crazy or what; the fifth time I saw the maître d’ frowning menacingly, and the sixth time a woman came to meet me out on the street. She seized my arm as if I was a naughty child about to scamper off somewhere. “That’s enough of that,” she said. “You’ll tire yourself out.”

I coughed out an “Ouch, do you mind?” and hoped the apple seller wasn’t looking. The woman’s grip was surprisingly strong. She wore a brown skirt suit and a tiny brown hat tipped coquettishly over one eye.

“Let go of me,” I said.

When she didn’t, I pleaded, “I’m meeting someone.”

“Who?” she asked.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business—”

She shook me a little. “Mr. Fox’s secretary,” I said. “I’m meeting Mr. Fox’s secretary.”

“Then it’s just as well, isn’t it, that I’m her.”

She released me at last, and we stood nose to nose. I glared, and she just looked back with an air of melancholy.

“You’d better prove it,” I said. For some reason, I’d thought the secretary would be a man.

“You’re. . Mary Foxe?” she said, looking me over.

“I’m Mary Foxe,” I said.

The woman produced an envelope from her handbag, pulled my letter out of it, and showed me.

Abominable Mr. Fox,

I read, then winced, and returned it to her, apologizing. She said: “Don’t apologise; I think it’s funny.” But she didn’t laugh, or even smile.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said.

I handed her the black folder full of stories, and I asked her what Mr. Fox was like.

The secretary blinked slowly, thinking. “He’s kind of quiet,” she said.

She wandered away with the folder sticking out of her handbag, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. I watched her, thinking she might suddenly remember something and turn around. Once I was sure that she’d gone, I hailed a cab.

A week went by; he didn’t write to me. He had my folder and he didn’t write to me. Then three more silent weeks, six, eight. My fingernails crept down into their beds, my eyes grew glassy, I brushed my hair with my back to the mirror. I had no interest in looking at myself; it was the sensation of teeth against my scalp that subdued me.

It was all I could do not to write to him again.

“You should go get your stories back,” Katherine said, when I briefly explained the situation to her. “He’s probably going to steal them or something.”

“How would you know they’re good enough for him to want to steal them?”

“Oh, I know,” Katherine said sagely. “I read ’em. All of them. I especially like the one about the disappearing zoo. That’s the best one.”

I grabbed her before she could escape and, unexpectedly, found myself hugging her. I liked the fluffy weight of her head against my chest. She was just as surprised as I was. I neutralised it by calling her a bloody nosey parker.

“Maybe that goddamn secretary stole the stories,” Katherine suggested.

“I told you not to say that word.”

“Which? Secretary? Stories? Maybe. .?”

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

One morning Mitzi said I ought to take a break. That was alarming. I stopped buttering my toast and said, “Why? I’m fine. Thanks all the same, Mrs. Cole, but the weekends are enough for me.” I made a swift analysis of my behaviour of the past two weeks or so. I had not said or done anything particularly strange; I had behaved more or less as I always did.

Mitzi rose from her seat and cupped my face in her flower-scented hands. I was so nervous I could have bitten her. “Honey, no one’s saying you’re not doing a good job. You’re doing a wonderful job. Isn’t she, Katy?”

Katherine said yes and stuck her tongue out at me.

“It’s just that you can’t give your weekends to a soup kitchen and your weekdays to this little fiend of mine and just go on and on without stopping. What if you burned out or something? Honey — I’m telling you, I’d never forgive myself.” She had a new bracelet on, stacked with emeralds brighter than her eyes. I hate rich people.

“Your face is all pinched,” Katherine told me helpfully.

So that morning, instead of taking Katherine to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I went to get my stories back.

One hundred and seventy-seven West 77th Street was easy to find. It was a posh apartment block, much like the Coles’ but smaller. More exclusive, I suppose. I entered the building behind a grocery delivery boy who pulled a small township of brown paper bags along on a trolley behind him. The building directory indicated that Mr. Fox, at number 25, was on the fourth floor. As I waited by the lift I caught sight of myself in the polished steel doors. I was grinning. On the fourth floor I approached number 25 casually, as if I might not stop, as if I might well walk past it and continue on down the red carpeted corridor. But I did stop at 25. And I rang the doorbell, and I knocked, hard.

The secretary answered the door. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick or powder, and she’d yanked her hair up into a knot on the top of her head. She had a pencil behind each ear and one in her hand. She looked very, very young.

“What can I do for you?” she asked. She didn’t appear to recognise me.

“My name’s Mary Foxe,” I said.

“Mary Foxe,” she said, as if repeating the name would help jog her memory.

“I corresponded with Mr. Fox about some stories of mine. He said he’d read them, but I suppose he’s too busy. I’ve come to take them off his hands.”

She hesitated. Oh, God. She’d thrown my stories away. Or there was a mountain of manuscripts somewhere behind her, and she’d never find mine.

“I met you outside Salmagundi on Sixty-first and Lexington a couple of months ago,” I said. “There was a bit of a fuss with some revolving doors.”

Her eyes lit up at last. “Oh, right,” she said. “Right.”

She looked over her shoulder, though no one had spoken. “Be right back.”

She closed the door before I could peer into the flat. It seemed strange to me that Mr. Fox’s secretary should be at his flat — I mean, secretaries belong in offices.

Ten minutes later she opened the door again and handed me my folder. I looked through it quickly — all the stories appeared to be there. The pages were well thumbed, and some parts were underlined.

“He — er — he read them?”

Suddenly I felt as if I could knock this woman down and charge into his study, pull up a chair, and settle down to talk. As if she knew what I was thinking, she took a firmer stance in the doorway. She twirled her pencil between her slim fingers. “Yes. He did.”

I didn’t like the look in her eyes. My throat went dry. “And?”

She shook her head. “You don’t really want to write. . What you want is love. Go find yourself a beau. You’re so young, Miss Foxe. Go have a little fun.”

“Did Mr. Fox say that? Or is this coming from you?”

She looked down.

“It’s coming from me,” she told the floor.

“I want to talk to Mr. Fox,” I said.

I stepped towards the secretary, and she held her pencil out at eye level, in an unmistakably threatening gesture. The point was very sharp.

“What did Mr. Fox say?” I said. “Just tell me that and I’ll go.”

She didn’t answer, and I said, “Are you Mr. Fox?”

She laughed. “No.”

“You are, aren’t you? You’re Mr. Fox—” I caught sight of a bare passageway, a telephone on a stand, the receiver off the hook — I heard no dial tone. “You’re him.”

She frowned. “I’m not.”

“What did he say, then?”

“Wait.”

The door closed again. When it opened, the secretary was holding a lit taper. The flame cast her eyes into shadow.

“He said. .” She paused, and sighed. “He said I should do this.”

She touched the taper to the black folder, and it caught fire. She blew the taper out before the flame struck her fingers. But I didn’t let the folder go. The leather cover burned with a harsh sound like someone trying to hold back a cry between their teeth. Still I held the folder. I felt the skin on my fingers shrink. I watched words turn amber and float away.

I liked these stories. Katherine liked them. I’d worked hard on them.

There was so much smoke in my eyes.

But I held on.

Mary Foxe had known that it was more than a matter of snapping her fingers and having Mr. Fox change his ways — she’d known it would be difficult, but this was beyond all her expectations. She’d been asleep for days, in a four-poster bed in a dark blue room. There wasn’t a part of her body that didn’t ache. Her brain ached most of all. She’d felt terrible burning his stories, which she’d actually thought were rather good. She couldn’t have let Mr. Fox get away with beheading her, though. That was exactly the kind of behaviour she had set out to discourage. She was aware of a large clock ticking outside the bedroom door, but it didn’t wake her up. Mary was busy having a very long dream.

In her dream, she was a spinster. Fastidious, polite, and thirty-eight years old. Her features were plain and unremarkable — they had always been plain and unremarkable. She had been a dutiful daughter when her parents were alive, and now Dream-Mary lived in the attic of the house her parents had left her. The remainder of the house she had hoped to let to a family — but no family liked the idea of living there with her up in the attic like that. So Mary let the house below to a solicitor named Pizarsky. He was out all day — that was good. He was punctual with his rent — also good. In the evenings, however, he hosted parties that were exclusively attended by attractive young ladies who giggled for hours on end. That was tiresome.

Mary and Mr. Pizarsky kept their exchanges as brief as possible.

“Morning, Miss F.”

“Good morning, Mr. Pizarsky.”

“Here’s the rent, Miss F.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pizarsky.”

“Off home for Christmas now, Miss F.”

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Pizarsky.”

On Valentine’s Day, Dream-Mary bought herself a single red rose, then immediately ran back into the shop, confused and embarrassed, to return it.

Most days Dream-Mary stayed at her desk until sunset, working in the special quiet of the otherwise empty house, the settling of floorboards and the ticking of clocks. She wrote romance novels under the pen name Wendy Darling. Hers were gloriously improbable tales, stuffed with happy coincidences, eternal devotion, and the unwavering recognition of inner beauty. They were in great demand, Mary’s novels. They were read-them-once-and-throw-them-away sort of books, really. And Mary had seen people doing just that, throwing her novels away, or very deliberately leaving them behind on park benches and bus seats once they had finished. She tried not to let it get her down. She didn’t like to brood. She kept a framed photograph of her parents on her desk, to remind herself of their story, which amazed her. They had fallen in love and kept it up far into old age; that was all. Her father was the hero in every story she wrote, and her mother was the heroine. They had been gone five years, but she brought them together again and again, thirty-five lines of cream-coloured foolscap folio at a time. And they never tired of finding each other, even when she was reduced, in the final chapters, to typing with just one finger, her little finger, jabbing out words until her hand curled up and could do no more. She completed a novel every other month and took August and December off.

It was Dream-Mary’s custom to read the local newspaper as she ate her evening meal in the dining corner of her attic. She read it thoroughly, without omitting a single paragraph or page. It was much more difficult to be alarmed by the events of a day that was almost over. After that she would go for a walk, to keep fit. And upon her return to her attic she would say a few phrases aloud, experimenting with a friendly tone of voice. She didn’t often socialise, but it was important to keep her hand in. She rehearsed small talk about the weather, and about children and the cost of living. From Mr. Pizarsky’s party below, a gramophone puffed jazz up at her like smoke rings until she stopped trying. She put on her nightgown, did her stretching exercises, applied cold cream to her face, and went to bed. Her days were pleasant and her mood was even.

One evening Mary went for her after-dinner walk as usual. She went through town, passing the tidy shop fronts, their signs beautifully lettered in glossy paint and print, striding over the mushy bank of sawdust outside the butcher’s. The entire neighbourhood was at home; wireless sets buzzed gently at her as she passed. Each house stood in its own square of garden, each garden with its own picket fence and its own garden gate. Not a curtain twitched. Mary climbed Murder Hill. It was a funny old hill. It started off as easily as walking on flat ground, and continued to seem flat, even after she had begun to feel short of breath. She looked down at all the chimney tops and picked lavender.

When she returned from her walk she found the house suspiciously quiet.

There was no rustling or giggling, no chiming of glassware to be heard anywhere in the house, she noticed. No party this evening. Mr. Pizarsky appeared, carrying a cake. It prickled with lit candles; at first glance there appeared to be hundreds of them. “Happy birthday, Miss Foxe,” he said, smiling warily.

He was right. It was her birthday. Dream-Mary thought she might be sick. “Mr. Pizarsky,” she said. “You shouldn’t have.” It was meant to sound light-hearted, but it didn’t.

He looked crestfallen. “You don’t like cake.”

“No, I do. How did you know it was my birthday?”

In the kitchen, Mr. Pizarsky carefully dropped his burden onto the table. He stared at the candle flames. They both did. It seemed rude to look at each other just then.

“I gave my room a good spring cleaning last week,” he said. “I found a birthday card. Dated.”

So he slept in her old room. She hadn’t known that, hadn’t checked to see whether or not he’d been keeping the lower half of the house in order, whether he had changed any aspect of the furnishing. The hallway and main stairs were tidy enough, and as long as the house didn’t fall down she didn’t care. In the last few weeks of her mother’s illness they’d spent whole afternoons in that room. Afterwards she’d moved out of that part of the house in a hurry. And she hadn’t gone back for anything since, had waited in the parlour while prospective tenants looked the property over. She must have left a great many things in there.

“I’ve taken a liberty, haven’t I?” Mr. Pizarsky gestured towards the birthday cake. “Even as I bought it, I wasn’t sure. You like to have secret birthdays? You English. . I am forever offending you.”

“No, no—” Mary searched for her manners and caught hold of them again. “It’s a lovely surprise.”

She pretended to make a wish and blew out the candles — only thirty of them, she counted. Such flattery. She found two small plates and put a slice of the cake on each, then remained standing, holding her slice away from her. He stood, too — he couldn’t very well sit down and eat while she stood there, not eating. As they exchanged remarks she was aware of treating him shabbily.

“I hope you didn’t cancel a gathering on my account, Mr. Pizarsky.”

“No, I’ve been abandoned tonight.”

Mr. Pizarsky was unkempt for a man of the law — his hair wanted combing, and the elbows of his jacket could have done with a thorough darning.

“I’m sure they’ll come back,” Mary soothed.

“I hope she will. That is to say — to tell you the truth, Miss Foxe, there is only one of them I particularly care for. The others are just her friends.”

She hadn’t taken a proper look at any of the girls that crowded the downstairs rooms most evenings; they all looked exactly the same to her.

“Well — best of luck, Mr. Pizarsky. Is your name Russian?”

“I’m a Pole, Miss F. . though I have met Russians who bear the name. Have you ever been to my country?”

“Poland? No — no. I haven’t been anywhere. Brighton. The Lake District and the Cotswolds, a few times. London sometimes.”

“A pity. Mine is a lovely country, in parts — simple and honest and strong. The landscapes, the buildings, the mead.”

“Oh — I must go there one day.”

He smiled sadly, with his mouth closed.

“One day. Not now. The rioting. And more to come.”

“Really. .?”

Her question was feeble, but he considered it with a quizzical twist of his mouth.

“Why, yes, of course! ‘Really,’ you say. You don’t think riots are so bad. Are you thinking of them as you do the weather here? A nuisance, but it’s not so difficult to get on with things despite them?” He described the three riots he had witnessed firsthand, in three different cities. He made the anger of the poor and put-upon sound like a storm on the ground; it scorched buildings when it woke, its first touch killed. “That is why I am here,” he finished. “Otherwise, pork pies and jellied eels be damned; give me my country.”

Mary suspected her father would have especially liked this man.

“Are you — forgive me, I know nothing about solicitors — but is it quite usual to find solicitors like you, Mr. Pizarsky?”

She had delighted him. “Let me see. . Perhaps not. I was a poet.”

“Oh, a poet. . but what’s that?” Wishy-washy, that was how she found most poetry — it just missed the point over and over again.

“What’s that,” he agreed, laughing. “What’s that. . ”

He took her plate from her hand. “And now I will release you, even though you are unfair and have told me nothing in exchange.”

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 have 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.