Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

hear him speak ill of his neighbours and then frisk off in different form to pass it on. Not that they can’t be useful, when the fancy takes them, but the problem is they’re not human and you can never predict or depend on their fancies. No consistency even in evil-doing. So some fox owners, kitsunemochi, find extraordinary fortune, might become quite rich for no obvious reason, and it might last several generations. But that kind of money’s like fairy gold, not to be relied on, liable to disappear into thin air, or sometimes turn to grass, just when you really need it.’

Tom nods, though he’s quite lost. Friedrich Anders is also leaning on the table and his blond hair falling over his forehead, deep in red-faced conversation with the Dutchman and the man across from him. The servants are beginning to bring pudding, big bowls of something placed centrally, one between four.

‘So they’re the village ne’er-do-wells, fox owners?’ Tom asks. ‘They’re the family that always borrows and never lends and their children are always ragged and snot-nosed?’ Not that he can see any way that this description fits Makoto’s family.

Professor Baxter drains his glass. ‘Can be. But then you see even when they do well, that’s because of the foxes too. Of course if they do well enough for long enough they can marry anyway, but people are pretty chary of them. You wouldn’t want your son to marry a fox owner and you’d only give them your daughter if she really couldn’t do better. And the land’s not worth much, however good it is. No one wants to risk owning foxes because it goes on for generations.’

It reminds him of something. For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. He remembers hearing the verse at school, and all the others about fathers, and wondering what he might unknowingly carry. Foxes, iniquity, red hair, the way the corners of his eyes fold when he laughs. Still, there are worse things, than to have an empty space where a parent should be. Tom leans aside to let the waiter put down the crystal bowl. Something creamy, a fool or syllabub, and a plate of biscuits to go with it. There are dairies now in Tokyo, and a public campaign to persuade the Japanese to drink milk and grow taller.

‘Can they ever get rid of the foxes?’ he asks. ‘Does it ever end?’

‘Oh, sometimes they just go away. Not often. And of course you never know when they might come back. Have some of this? You never know, it might be good. They’ve quite taken to ice cream.’

‘There goes the candle,’ Tom says. ‘Look.’

They watch, the spoon raised in the professor’s hand, as the meniscus on the water bowl rises, swells, breaks and the candle takes on water, fills, and sinks. The talking filling the room is too loud for Tom to hear the hiss as the flame goes out.

T

HE

G

AP IN THE

H

EDGE

Papa came home last night, so at least she is not to be alone with Mamma today. Standing in the kitchen, she does not know what to do. She cannot recall that breakfast on Christmas Day used to be any different from usual, but ‘usual’ used to mean porridge, tea and toast, the lighting of the range and the warming of the pot. Will Mamma want the present usual today, only rusks? Or will she say that Ally seeks to deny her parents even the most sparing recognition of Our Lord’s birth. Ally fills the water jug and begins to slice bread. Under the bandage she stole from May’s Welfare Centre the broken skin of her forearm throbs and burns, and under her breastbone shame simmers. Behaving like a hysterical young girl at your age. Betraying your training, betraying the title in which you take such unwarranted pride.

The dining room is always dark, now the laurel bushes are starting to grow up into the windows. She begins to set the table, the silver cold in her cold hands. In other houses, she thinks, children are waking to bulging stockings by a crackling fire, and already the smell of roasting meat and plum pudding seeps from the kitchen. Because in those houses the servants have been working since before Ally awoke, and in other houses—more houses—there is scant heat and no pudding or meat in the children’s hope or memory. Ally remembers being called to the fall of one of the children of Aunt Mary’s neighbours on Boxing Day and finding the bruises of a beating across the girl’s legs and up her back; yes, said the governess, I am afraid she is often a naughty girl. It is not as if ribboned parcels and a tree with candles on it are any guarantee of happiness.

Her stomach skids at the sound of Mamma’s key in the door. She should not be so weak, so nervous. I am thirty years old, she thinks, I am a doctor. I did not rise early to attend church because I do not believe a god can be omnipotent and benevolent, because I do not believe in a man born of a virgin, because the whole thing is a collection of stories used for centuries to keep poor, uneducated people poor and uneducated. She goes into the hall to greet Mamma, to begin the day as if this were an ordinarily happy family.

‘Good morning, Mamma. Happy Christmas.’

Mamma takes off her hat. ‘Good morning. I trust you are refreshed by your long rest?’

Ally feels her fingers tighten on the fork she is still holding. ‘I rose at the usual hour, Mamma. I have prepared breakfast.’

‘So I would expect. There is no need for that tone, Alethea, I said only that I hope you are well rested.’ Mamma goes into the kitchen. ‘But I see you have not troubled to light the range.’

I am a bird in a net, Ally thinks.