The Lost Art of Gratitude

Jamie was standing in the middle of the lawn and Charlie—oh, relief—was sitting securely in his cart, looking up at his father, wondering why the ride had ended so abruptly. Adults could be relied upon, generally, but not always; there were puzzling interruptions of service.

Jamie, looking over his shoulder, beckoned to Isabel to join him.

“There,” he said. “Over there by that big …”

“Azalea?”

“Yes. That bush with all the red flowers.”

She strained her eyes. “What?”

“Brother Fox. Underneath.”

She stared at the shadowy undergrowth. Was that red shape him, or leaves?

“We were standing right here,” said Jamie. “And he went right past. Limping. He’s injured. I think quite badly.”

Isabel now thought that she could just make the fox out; and then, yes, his tail moved, and she saw the shape of a haunch. She took a few steps forward; the fox was not far away and he must have seen her coming. There was a sudden parting of leaves and he emerged, his head lowered, his body strangely twisted. She saw the patch of black on his side—a mat of hair and dried blood.

Brother Fox paused; he looked at Isabel, his head still held low, and then he moved away, going back into the undergrowth, heading for the back wall. She stood quite still. She wanted to go to him and tend him, but she knew that it was impossible; he would bite, and she would only make things worse.

She went back to stand next to Jamie. He had picked Charlie up out of his cart, and the small boy was watching his mother intently as she approached.

“Did you see that wound?” she asked.

Jamie winced; he was more squeamish than Isabel, who could look at blood dispassionately. “Think of it as tomato sauce,” she had once said to him. But that had not helped, and had made him think of blood when he saw tomato sauce, which was hardly the desired result. “It looks nasty,” he said.

“Has somebody shot him?”

Jamie shook his head. Brother Fox had his enemies in the neighbourhood, for sure, but he doubted if they were armed. “Maybe a dog.” Will there be dugs?

Isabel shivered; she did not like the thought of fox hunting. Why dress up, she wondered, to kill something? If foxes had sometimes to be killed—and farmers had to protect their lambs—she felt that it should be done with regret rather than delight. “His balance seems affected. When he came out he was … well, it was like a lurch.”

It seemed to Isabel that this was no different from any other situation where somebody needed her help. “We have to do something.”

“Yes.”

They walked back towards the house. She remembered the man in Dalkeith with his traps; she had never thought that she would have occasion to contact him, but now perhaps she did. They would never be able to catch Brother Fox unless they could get him into a trap. If they did that, then they could call the vet and the wound could be cleaned out. If they did not do this, then Brother Fox would either get better himself, as happened in the wild, or die a slow and painful death, as also happened in the wild. It seemed to Isabel that the second possibility was the more likely.

“I’m going to phone the man from Dalkeith,” she said. “His number must be in the yellow pages. Under Pest and Vermin Consultants.”

“Rat catcher,” said Jamie.

They went inside. Charlie was beginning to niggle, which meant that he was ready for his morning nap; he had been up since six that morning. While Jamie took him to his room, Isabel went into her study and took out the heavy volume of yellow pages from the drawer in which she kept it. She paged through it: Painters and Decorators—Quality Work Since 2001. And before that? Potato Merchants, Pipers—who would pay them? she wondered. Finally she found it. Pest and Vermin Consultants. She saw the distinctive advertisement, with its picture of a small army of cockroaches, wasps and moles in panic-stricken retreat. Moles? She did not think of them as pests, but then she had none burrowing under her lawn; her attitude might change if moles were actively undermining her. So William McClarty of Peebles Street, Dalkeith, was a mowdie man as well. The mowdie man was the mole-catcher in Scots, the subject of a poem she had once known by heart. The mowdie man came on to the land a figure of vengeance, and stalked the mole, the mowdie, whose velvet coat and tiny paws would break the heart of anyone, the poet said—except the mowdie man’s.