Smugglers’ Fox

The young fox caught the scent and sounds long before she spotted their source. She froze. What, or who, was coming through the hedge; their movements travelling through the wet ground towards her, trembling through her body?

Was it him? The man with the stick that beat the ground, the net that swept the air and reached for her? She hunched low, peered around the corner of the shed. She waited; eyes narrow, front paw raised in readiness for escape.

No. Not Net-and-Stick-Man. His scent was bitter on the air, his tread heavier. And it wasn’t the smaller human that picked his way on the shore like the beach birds. His sounds were soft, careful, less urgent than these new ones. And the scent of Beach-Bird-Boy was kinder, salty, wrapped within it, always the drift of woodsmoke – and food.

The hedge crackled and shook. Whoever was coming through thrashed and kicked as they went now, so that a smog rose in the fox’s sensitive nostrils, as if the earth was now air instead of ground. She flicked out her tongue, tasted rain and the bitter nip of leaves ripped from their woody stems, the spicy bleed of sap.

No. This was not the man she feared nor the boy she knew. But this was human scent. A scent the fox’s mother had taught her to fear, to run from. Even now, she kept her distance from Beach-Bird-Boy, lured only by the burn of her empty stomach; the hope of the sometimes scraps of his meal on the cave floor.

Adrenaline quivered in her limbs. She glanced over her shoulder, back towards her shortcut to safety. The squeezetight rock-space that led down to the darkness of the sandstrewn cave and, should she need it, the drip-drip musty darkness of the tunnels beyond. She measured the distance in her mind, tensed for the swift twist and dart that would take her out of danger in seconds.

Suddenly, nothing.

All was still. Quiet.

Then a thin sound threaded the air. It pulled at the fox, stirred something within her. A memory. Or a knowledge carried in her bones from somewhere else, somewhere before her time. She rose a little higher on her haunches, pushed her nose forward past the damp shed wall that hid her. Sniffed. Stared.

She knew this scent. This was the other small human. The one that threw down warm, meaty food that left salted fat on her whiskers.

The one that smelled of fear.

She tipped her head to one side. Watched him out of the corner of one golden eye. Why was he there, curled in a ball like the thorn-backed hedgehogs she had learned to leave alone? Rocking slightly, like a young tree in the wind and rain. Sniffling and snuffling, sick, perhaps.

The fox moved forward, just an inch. Curious now; sure of an easy escape, doubtful of any threat.

The hedgehog-human uncurled and crawled from the hedge. It lifted its head, turned her way. Twists of hair, black as old seaweed. Night-dark eyes, round and wet as seawashed pebbles, staring into her own. She’d been right that first time. Hedgehog-Boy was no threat.

She pushed her nose forward, sniffed again. No scent of blood. But he was wounded somehow . . .

And all alone, just like her.

Mam took a whole month deciding what to call me and my brother. ‘Because names, they’re important, Jonah. They say something about who you are.’

Turned out she was right, only in my case, not in the way she thought.

According to Mam (and Google) Jonah means ‘dove’. Doves, Mam said, are all about ‘peace’ and love’ and ‘new life’. And that was how she felt when I was born: peaceful and fizzing with love, all at the same time. Like holding me made everything new. Made her new.

It didn’t, though.

I didn’t.

I found out that lots of people around the world think the name Jonah is bad luck, because of a legend about a Jonah who was swallowed by a whale. Which is very bad luck, whichever way you look at it.

That’s the kind of Jonah I am. The bad-luck kind.

Mam chose well, just for the wrong reasons.

She called my little brother Rio, after a place called Rio de Janeiro, ‘where people party in the streets all day like brightly feathered birds, and the sun shines the whole time, even in winter’.

Mam got his name right too. But in a good way. Rio’s made of sunshine. He makes people happy. Or he used to. I haven’t seen Rio’s bright colours for a while now, not since – everything.

Mam’s name is Sarah. Well, that’s her real name anyway. It was written on a piece of paper, pinned to a yellow baby blanket, when she was found – left in a box, tucked between sand dunes and seagulls on Redcar beach. Those are the only two things she knows about herself for sure. So maybe that’s why she thinks names are important. Except it can’t be, because she doesn’t use that name any more. She calls herself Marina, which means ‘from the sea’. ‘Because I was,’ she says.

Maybe she’s right. And maybe it came back for her that last day in Whitby, and that’s why she’s vanished into thin air.

I had a weird feeling about our visit with Mam. The feeling got worse when Jo, our foster carer, said Mam wanted to meet in Whitby – a seaside place famous for storms and shipwrecks. And Dracula.

Mam was ‘definitely’ coming this time. Our social worker had called on her that morning, to check. So that was something. But my heart jumped around like an anxious bird as the clock ticked round towards ‘early lunch’ before setting off for Whitby. Because with Mam you never knew anything for certain.

And because when she did turn up to see us, she always had to leave again. Then it was like someone took the lid off a jar full of wasps, one that you’d tightened and tightened until your face went hot, but wouldn’t fit back on again. The wasps swarmed around your head; followed you wherever you went for days and days, stinging. Stinging. Until you found a new lid.

I glanced at the clock.10.45. Ages to go.

Rio was in busy-bee mode, ‘helping’ Jo tidy his room. His feet made tiny thunderstorms on the ceiling above the sitting room. How much did he remember about Mam’s other ‘visits’ – the ones when she didn’t turn up? The ones where she did, but hardly seemed to notice that we had? Hard to know. Maybe he didn’t have the words to talk about it. Maybe I didn’t, either.

I checked the clock again. Three minutes since the last time I looked. I needed to stop that; distract myself and the heart-bird banging against my ribs.

Maybe Mam would like it if I drew something, just for her. Maybe she’d be in the mood to look this time. And anyway, drawing helped. Usually.

I got out my new sketchbook – the one I spent two lots of Saturday money on – and the pencil crayons that are just mine and ‘too grown-up’ for Rio to use. I sharpened them one by one, watched the shavings curl on to the coffee table like apple peel, easy-slow . . .

The door banged open. A Rio explosion in the room. He leaped from sofa to chair like an excited squirrel, two early daffodils from Jo’s kitchen jug clutched in his fist. He landed next to me, banged into the table. Crayons skittered and skidded across the floor.

‘Take for Mam, Jonah,’ he shouted. ‘Daff ’dils!’

I leaned down, reached for my runaway crayons, began lining them up on the table: greens first, then blues. ‘Did Jo say you could have those, Rio?’ I asked.

He stopped bouncing, pushed out his chin. His fist tightened around the thin stalks. The flower heads drooped. ‘For Mam,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘But you’re supposed to ask first,’ I said. ‘Did you?’

Rio tightened his grip on the stems. A flower head snapped loose, fell to the floor. He stared down at it. ‘Sorry, f ’ower,’ he whispered. His eyes darted towards the door, round pools of panic. He remembered that then: how Mam felt about us breaking things.

He laid the remains of the daffodils on the table next to my paper, wiped sticky strings of sap from his fingers. He threw his arms around my neck. ‘Didn’t mean to, Jonah,’ he whispered. He squeezed on to the chair beside me, curled up like a cat, and started sucking his thumb.

I thought of the first time we took daffodils for Mam. Easter daffodils. Rio cradled them all the way in the car to meet her, even though they made him sneeze. Their yellow faces lit his chin like small suns. The sun was in Mam’s eyes when he handed them to her. She smiled. A real smile. But Rio’s sunshine disappeared when she told us she’d left our Easter eggs on the bus. ‘I’ll pop them in the post,’ she said.

They never arrived.

‘It’s OK, Rio,’ I said. ‘Jo won’t be cross. She’ll understand. She’s not – not like Mam.’

Mam who could fizz like an unexpected firework; burn the air with angry words. Mam who didn’t care about ‘sorry’ or ‘didn’t mean to’ . . .

I pointed to the white paper waiting in front of me. ‘We could draw daffodils, if you like? For Mam . . .’

Rio nodded. ‘Jonah do it,’ he said. His head pressed against my shoulder, heavy and warm. I let the Easter memory disappear into the green sweep of stalk and leaves, the careful curl of yellow petals and orange trumpet centre. I tried to put the sun there.

Rio stirred, pulled his thumb from his mouth with a pop.

‘Happy f ’owers, Jonah,’ he said. ‘So Mam happy too.’

‘That’s it,’ I said, handing him the picture. ‘Happy flowers.’

I just hoped we were both right.

We never got to find out.

Mam was waiting for us on Whitby beach. She waved, walked towards us. Slowly, like in one of those black and white movies with no words. Her long hair whipped around her face like seaweed, covered her smile. But it was there. I’m sure it was. She was happy to see us.

The sea was not. It threw sand in our eyes, hurled gritty missiles that stung our cheeks. It snatched the daffodil drawing from Rio’s hand as he held it out for Mam, spun it off across the sand and sent it tumbling and twisting in the air like an injured bird.

No more happy flowers.

Rio watched it go, still as stone. His face crumpled.

Mam looked at me.

‘Quick,’ she said. She turned and ran towards the sea.

‘Last one in’s a frog,’ she shouted, hands cupped around her mouth like the wind wanted to steal her voice too. She walked out into the waves, still in her socks and shoes.

Rio stared after her, grabbed my hand. ‘C’mon, Jonah,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

‘OK,’ I said, sliding my backpack from my shoulder. But my feet dragged in the sand. Mams weren’t supposed to run into the sea. Not on a freezing-cold day. And not in their socks and shoes.

What was going on?

And anyway, that sea did not want us here. Mam wasn’t listening.

Rio’s hand tugged in mine, let go. He hurtled off after Mam.

So no choice. ‘Rio, wait,’ I called. ‘Wait for me.’

But when we tried to paddle, a giant wave snatched his plastic sandal from his foot, whisked it away, making him scream and scream. He tried to walk out into the deepest, darkest, drowning parts to find it. Maybe he was looking for the lost daffodils too, because his Rio-storm was louder and scarier than usual. And Rio was good at storms.

Mam had to carry him back up the beach, promise him hot vinegar chips and new sandals before he stopped kicking her. When his storms came, he forgot to worry about getting told off. He only stopped screaming when we found sunshine-yellow flip-flops in a shop selling rainbow rock. He got two sticks of that too. Even though I said, ‘He’s not supposed to have too much sugar, and what if he bites off hard, sharp pieces and chokes, because he’s only three and a half?’

I don’t think Mam heard me over the wind and Rio’s whining, because she gave him the rock anyway.

I didn’t have any. Chips or rock. One of those whirling waves was trapped in my stomach, making me feel sick. And it was there before the sea stole Rio’s shoe. It was there before Mam turned up, and it got bigger and choppier when she arrived, even though I really wanted to see her.

We sat under the pier while Rio ate his chips. He said they crunched in his teeth. ‘That’s the sand, that is,’ Mam said.

Rio was just about to cry again because he ‘didn’t want the beach in his tummy’ when a fat raindrop splatted him on the nose, made him forget. I got our waterproof jackets out of my rucksack. The wind was in those too, trying to pull them away, puffing them out like blue sails. Rio’s face went red when I put his over his head, which meant he was about to lose it again. So I pretended the pier was a massive ship. Its tall legs were the rigging, and we were pirates. Rio loves pirates. Well, he did then.

We searched the wet sand for seashell treasure. Rio tried to persuade a fat seagull to sit on his shoulder like a parrot, but it turned its back on him, flew away. I found him a driftwood telescope instead, and he climbed on the bottom rung of the ‘rigging’ to look out for enemy ships.

Mam didn’t know how to play pirates. I think she felt left out because she went quiet. She kept checking her phone for something, saying, ‘We’ll have to go soon, mind, boys,’ without looking up.

I went and sat with her for a minute because it’s not nice being left out. But she just put her phone in her pocket and watched the waves crawl further and further away, like I wasn’t even there. Like she was moving further and further away too.

‘Pictoors on the sand,’ Rio shouted, hopping around like a sea sparrow. ‘Draw sand pictoors, Jonah.’

So we found more washed-up sticks and Mam joined in, then. She drew a parrot that looked more like a sausage, and started laughing like maybe she wouldn’t be able to stop. Rio laughed too. That was the best bit of the day. Rio’s laugh is hiccoughs and happiness rolled up together. When I looked back down the beach, the sea had disappeared; joined up with the sky, like someone had rubbed out the line between. Tiny diamond