Shorecliff (10 page)

Condor and Uncle Eberhardt were inseparable. They were almost as bad as the Delias, and from what my mother told me, they had been like that for decades. She could not remember a summer when it had not been most probable for Eberhardt to be found in Condor’s cottage. Condor had been hired by my grandparents when he was still a young man and they were a newly married couple, giddily wealthy, thrilled to be buying an extravagant summerhouse. In that same conversation about Condor, Francesca declared that Grandmother Hatfield had had an affair with him and that Uncle Kurt and my mother were the result. This was patently absurd, since both of them were Hatfields to the bone, but the suggestion unnerved me, so much so that Isabella beckoned me away to assure me that Francesca was an oversexed maniac who thought about nothing but her own insatiable lust. Not surprisingly, this explanation did not enlighten me. The word “oversexed” wasn’t even in my dictionary, though at that point in the summer any word with “sex” in it triggered an alarm bell in my mind.

When Fisher and I arrived at the cottage, we found the door locked and the curtains drawn across the windows. Fisher knocked at the door, and from within we heard Eberhardt’s cracked, shrill voice shouting at us. “Keep away, whoever you are! If it’s one of you damn kids, go shove your snout somewhere else. You’re not wanted.” A low rumble sounded in response to this—Condor’s voice was unintelligible through the closed door. Then the knob rattled, the bolt shot back, and Condor appeared in the doorframe, bending to fit his head under the lintel, squinting from the sunlight. He was wearing, as he always wore, a spotlessly pressed dress shirt of a delicate pastel hue; that day it was mint green. I have no idea why Condor insisted on wearing the clothes a rich tycoon might have worn on his yacht in the Caribbean, but whenever he wasn’t working, he changed into his duck trousers and Oxford shirts. He had a Panama hat for the sun and a sporty fisherman’s sweater for colder days.

“Hello, boys,” he growled. “How are you today?”

“We’re very well, thank you,” said Fisher. “We just came to visit you and Uncle Eberhardt. If you’re busy, we can leave.”

“We’re not exactly busy, but we have a surprise that I’m sure you’ll like.”

Condor gestured us into the room. In the far corner, lit by a feeble desk lamp, Eberhardt crouched on a rickety stool, staring into a box on the floor. He looked more like a bat than ever, his knees sticking up to his chest and his elbows out at his sides.

“Well, you’re in now, aren’t you?” he sneered when Condor shut the door behind us, cutting out almost all the light. “You’ll have to share in our little surprise. You like surprises, boy?” he asked me.

I couldn’t decide whether or not he had really forgotten my name. “Yes, Uncle Eberhardt,” I said.

“You’ll love this one. Condor found it in the woods. It’s not a good sign. A very bad sign. We’re going to have to kill it.” He leaned forward when he said these last words and grinned at us, revealing teeth which, in spite of the fact that he showed enthusiasm about food only during the dessert course, had remained straight and healthy into his old age. The combination of his thin, cracked lips and gleaming horse teeth was very disconcerting.

Even Fisher was taken aback by Eberhardt’s latest pronouncement. He stuttered, “K-kill what, Uncle Eberhardt?”

Eberhardt let out a high-pitched chuckle and bent over the box. “Kids!” he muttered.

“We’re not going to kill it,” Condor reassured us. “Eberhardt knows that perfectly well. Would you like to see? I found it in the woods. I think its mother and siblings have all been killed or starved to death. Old Farmer Stephenson may have shot the mother.”

He gestured toward the box, and Fisher and I, sidling around to avoid touching Eberhardt’s cape, peered in. Cowering at the bottom was a minuscule red fox, clearly a young kit, its huge, sail-like ears flattened over its back; you could see the blood vessels in them through the skin. The kit was staring up at us with widened yellow eyes, terrified to the point of petrification. I didn’t think it was cute at all. I had no impulse to pet it or goggle over it. The expression in its eyes made me feel lost and angry. Uncle Kurt had recently told me the story of being surrounded in the forest by German soldiers, and it occurred to me that he and his companions must have felt the way the little fox felt now.

“Are you going to set him free?” I said. I had to speak around a lump in my throat, which was extremely embarrassing, and I backed away so that I wouldn’t have to look into the fox’s eyes anymore.

“Of course not!” Eberhardt snapped. “We’ve only just caught it!”

“It would starve in the wild,” Condor said. “And besides, Farmer Stephenson is quick on the trigger and just as likely to shoot kits as vixens. It’s better if we keep it here and raise it as a tame fox. People do, you know. I’ve always wanted one.”

I would have been more touched by this revelation of sentimentality in Condor if I hadn’t bent forward just then to look at the fox again. “He’s like…”

“Yes, what is he like, Richard?”

“He’s like—a little lost soldier,” I said, stammering because I was about to cry.

Fisher put his hand on my shoulder.

“Little Lost Soldier,” Eberhardt repeated, scrutinizing me. “An interesting epithet. Little Lost Soldier. His name is Barnavelt—I named him the moment I saw him—but you’ve come up with a good secondary name. You may be a more worthwhile child than the rest of those louts.” Fisher smiled at this, and Eberhardt, with his usual perspicacity, saw him do it. “You’re not included,” he said. “I’ve always known you were a bright boy. Don’t think I don’t notice just because I don’t care.”

“Thanks for that,” Fisher answered. Sometimes he trod a surprising line between awkwardness and self-assurance.

“Now then, Richard,” Condor said. “You were right in saying he’s like a little soldier. That fox is a fighter, and he’s not going to die of fright. He’s scared now, but he’s not going to be scared for long. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“But he’s young!” I said. I wanted to add, “Like me.”

“All soldiers are young,” said Eberhardt. “Look at your Uncle Harold—picked off before he was out of his diapers, practically. Kurt came back still talking baby talk.”

Condor took me by the hand—his own hand, the size of a small ham, engulfing mine—and led me into the tiny bedroom that opened off the main room. “You too, Fisher. And you, Eberhardt. Come in here. I’m going to show Richard something that I think will reassure him.”

Eberhardt flapped a hand, but Condor repeated his request, and eventually the old man staggered into the bedroom with us and sat down on the bed. The fox was left alone in the living room. Condor went to the kitchen and came back with a saucer of milk. “I’m going to put this on the floor,” he said to me, “and then I’m going to tip the box gently on its side. You see how long it takes the fox to find the milk. Hide behind the doorframe now.”

We hid, and Condor in the main room set down the saucer and slowly tilted the box until it was lying on its side. I imagined the fox slithering down and watching his view change. Condor retreated into the bedroom, and we watched. For a few minutes nothing happened. Then we saw a little black nose surrounded by whiskers poking out of the box. It was followed by the whole foxy face, complete with outsized ears. The fox sniffed, still quivering, looking disproportionately small in the dark room. Another few minutes passed before it emerged from the box, but soon after that it crept up to the saucer, nudged at the blue china, and then lapped cautiously at the milk. After the first few laps it set to work in earnest, and we could see its little sides heaving. When it was finished and looking around the room, I said, “Now it will be cold.”

“You’re a natural caretaker, Richard. I’m planning to put a blanket on the bottom of that box so he can curl up at night. Are you satisfied now?”

“I guess so,” I said, shrugging. But I wasn’t really. I still thought there was something not very nice about the whole business. On the other hand, I had seen that the fox was eating on its own and becoming curious about its surroundings. The blank fear was gone, and I relaxed.

Fisher had been more impressed than I’d realized by the incident. “That was something!” he breathed, staring at the fox in awe. “That was something, all right! Did you see him lap up that milk? How old is he?”

“Oh, he’s not an infant,” said Condor. “I would say he’s old enough to live without his mother but young enough to appreciate our help. How’s that?”

“Ah, Barnavelt, my friend, you’ll go far!” said Eberhardt, leaping off the bed. “You boys think I went round the bend long ago, but who has the fox now, eh? Who has the fox? That’s what counts.”

Eberhardt must have been experiencing senility that summer, but no one talked about it at the time, neither the children nor the adults. He was just Great-Uncle Eberhardt, difficult and eccentric and part of the family.

“Wait until the rest of them hear about this,” said Fisher.

His comment brought back the complex world of cousins that we had left behind at Shorecliff. The day with Fisher and its discoveries—the fields, the haystack with its hidden occupants, the woods, the fox—had cleansed my mind momentarily of familial intrigue. But after he spoke I was enchanted by the idea of reporting our findings.

“Should we go back?” I asked.

“We’ll go right now, if that’s all right. Condor, Uncle Eberhardt?”

They waved us out. Barnavelt raced back to his box when we went through the room, and Condor insisted that we wait to open the door until he had lifted the box upright. In time, he said, he would arrange matters so that the fox would not have to be imprisoned every time someone wanted to use the door.

Our return through the woods and over the grass to Shorecliff held none of the peacefulness of the beginning of our expedition. Fisher was talking so fast about the fox that his words piled up on themselves—I’d never heard him so excited. I desperately wanted to be the one to tell the news, but I suspected that he wouldn’t give me the chance. I was organizing the day in my mind and breaking it up into memorable episodes so that I could keep it all vivid. The lawn, abandoned in the languid hour before dinner, seemed mysterious and unfamiliar—our own private territory. As we walked the last stretch to the house, looking at the figures in the kitchen through the windows, I was filled with a sense of satisfaction. I had just had a marvelous time with someone I liked immensely. This was what a good day felt like.

I broke into a run, and Fisher obligingly followed suit. We galloped toward the back door, laughing in our exhilaration.

That was the last moment of the good day. The minute I stepped inside, I knew our timing was horribly off. Tension was crackling in the kitchen. All the aunts were there, but only a small assortment of cousins. Standing by the table were Pamela and Aunt Margery. It was strange enough for these two to be the focus of a crisis, but at Margery’s first words I felt utterly bewildered. As she spoke Fisher skidded up behind me, almost pushing me into the room, and we stood like that, with the door open and mosquitoes buzzing in.

“You’re ungrateful,” Aunt Margery was saying. Her tone hit me like a ruler across the knuckles, and I felt my limbs tighten. All children recognize the feeling. It doesn’t matter which adult is angry or why or at whom—your heart speeds up, your mood is shattered, and you feel dismal.

“I’m not ungrateful. Don’t boss me around in front of everyone!” Pamela’s face was pale, and there were tears in her eyes. I had never seen her emotional before, and I was astonished by the sight. I would almost not have recognized her except that she still held on to her overstated dignity.

“If you’re not ungrateful, then why don’t you eat your pie quietly without making offensive remarks?”

“I don’t want to eat your stupid pie! I hate this family and all of its endless pies and dinners and lunches and breakfasts. Everything’s awful!”

She turned and ran from the room. Everyone else tried to relax but couldn’t. The fight wouldn’t have seemed so terrible if it had involved someone other than Pamela, but it was painfully obvious that for her becoming upset was a self-betrayal.

“Does Pamela often get into states like this?” my mother asked Aunt Margery.

“Almost never,” said Margery. “I don’t know, Caroline.” She sat down, and the cousins in the room—Isabella, Francesca, and Delia Robierre, if I remember correctly—beckoned for us to follow them out.

“What happened?” Fisher asked as we went up the stairs.

“Pamela started getting strange about Aunt Margery’s pie,” Isabella whispered. “She said she wouldn’t eat it and that she hated the way Aunt Margery was always shoving sweets at us. I don’t know what she was talking about.”

“And then?”

“That’s it. Then you came in and heard the rest.”

“But that wasn’t anything,” said Fisher.

“I know, but that’s all there was.”

“You’d better go to her, Richard,” said Francesca.

I thought I hadn’t heard correctly. “Me?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. You two are always together. Go on up to her. Make sure Yvette isn’t in the room—Yvette is sure to say something wrong—and then drag it out of her. She’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“Maybe it’s something serious,” Delia said, her eyes wide. She was still too young to act older and wiser.

“Don’t worry, Deals,” said Isabella. “She’ll be okay. Richard will see to it.”

The responsibility had been placed on my shoulders, and they made an aisle so I could go up the stairs ahead of them. I hadn’t had time yet to feel bitter about my obliterated good mood. I had a mission, and I hurried to carry it out. When I got to the room where Pamela and Yvette slept, I found the door partly open. Pamela was alone, crying facedown on her bed. I pushed past the door and crept up to her.

“Pamela?” I said.

“Go away,” she replied, her voice muffled in blankets. There is something intolerable about hearing a sad voice muffled by a blanket. It makes you want to roll the person over and free the voice from its misery.

“What’s wrong? Will you tell me?”

“No. You won’t understand. Go away.”