After Brock by Paul Binding Page A

brilliantly blue in flowers, like a score of little alternatives to the darker night. No shed of any sort whatever. Far too regulated a garden for even the most Londonised fox.
    I turned round to see if by any chance Josh or Katey had worried about me sufficiently to have followed me out of the press of people onto my wall-walk. However long had I taken to make it to here? Five minutes? Five hours? Five years? The party was still audible, though muffled, well beyond immediate hailing. Well, even if what was coming towards me wasn’t the happy couple, some interest had been taken in me; I was definitely being followed along the wall. Nearby house lights were showing me a moving streak of sandy hair, attached to which were two little bright living lights: a pair of eyes without doubt, advancing towards me. Katey on all fours, maybe?
    Just in case it was a guest from the party for me to impress, I had to do what the surge of excitement mounting inside me made virtually irresistible. I ripped off my shirt and threw it off the wall down into the entry below – the night was still warm, balmy – and then I let my jeans and boxers tumble to my feet (and thank the Lord I didn’t go on to chuck those items aside). ‘Hi there! Salut !’ I called.
    The being coming towards me stopped, astonished, in its tracks. It was, however, no person from Josh’s mega-party, but a fox. Long light-brown proboscis with twitching nostrils; face inquisitive, sensitive, suspicious, valiant; pricked-up ears; eyes of a burning yellow, and a scent strong enough to engulf me in all my nakedness. S/he, I thought, is every bit as much an individual entity as me, and like myself, is driven by wants and needs hard to name.
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    I’m travelling up to Lydcastle the way I usually do (except I’m not usually hungover; in fact I’ve never travelled in this condition before!): that’s to say, non-stop express from Euston to Crewe, where we invariably pull up at Platform 5. Then up the steps and along the covered bridge and down to Platform 6, to await the southbound train. This sometimes says it’s going to Caerdydd (Cardiff), sometimes Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen), and occasionally for somewhere which always, in the English form of its name, makes me think of ships sailing off into cold distant seas, Aberdaugleddau (Milford Haven). Too often with far fewer car-riages than the host of waiting passengers requires, this train’ll take me through Shrewsbury (that has a Welsh name too, of course, Yr Amwythig) to Church Stretton in the Shropshire Hills. Here Dad’ll meet me, as always, in his van (invariably dirty outside and untidy in, full of kiting clobber); most times he manages to turn up late. Then comes the ten mile drive over to Lydcastle, where ‘I’m sorry, I should have got some food in,’ Dad will say almost as soon as we’ve arrived ‘home’, ‘but I didn’t get round to it, I’m afraid. But there are a few eggs knocking about the kitchen, so could they – with a hunk of bread – do you for now?’
    This time I’m coming to Lydcastle a different guy, armed with knowledge of Dad that he’s withheld from me, his only son.
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    [Written same day, 10 pm]
    I was right, of course, would have been astounded if I hadn’t been. The Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen) train arrived at Church Stretton dead on time, but I had to wait a quarter of an hour for Dad and the dusty van to appear. (Didn’t call him on the mobile; he hates being ‘rounded up’ and grumbles whenever he has been.) But though I minded this just a bit (all the other passengers who’d got off here, expecting to be met, were collected long before me), it felt good (and, in truth, was good for my ‘morning-after’ headache) just to stand still quietly in the yard outside the little country station, washed by the midday sunshine and to look up at