Sean Hannaway

S.P. Hannaway is drawn to the weird and wonderful. His stories have cropped up in journals such as Lighthouse, Neon, The Interpreter’s House, Ambit, Stand, and The Pomegranate London. His work was selected for the Bristol Story Prize ’21 anthology and the Crossing the Tees Story Prize ’24 anthology. He lives in London.

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Come the Fox

His face, McBane can’t find his face.

It isn’t there.

Where is his scowl?

Buff it!

Work it!

In his smalls, he trips round the mattress to the door. Tramps back round to the bare window — penned in. Why is there never any room in a spare room? Dusk is falling, deadly quiet. Light, what there is, filters through clouded glass.

He peers into the boot. His grizzled face, hardly reflected, his soul, is buried in the polish, in the surface black. Scratched. Scratchy. Locked away? If he could glimpse himself again, he’d understand.

How.

It’s come to this?

He shoves his hand inside the toughened leather.

Gloss it!

In regulation black socks, size 10s sliding on newspaper, he goads himself, polishes, gives it elbow. If anything brings out a face it’s a brush with horsehair.

— Eh? Eh?

He tilts it in the pent-up light. He searches for a likeness, a darkened eye. But all there is of him is a smudge, a shadowing. And then sideways through the pane, down the back, he sees it.

The fox — it’s come.

A shock of rust-red stands ablaze on top of the potting shed. Brazen-eyed, in off-white bib and dirt-black socks — the outfit of an interloper — unstoppable. McBane watches it scour the territory, take it in — two-and-a-half-storeys of house, the maroon dahlias, a divided sea of blushing bobbing heads, Mrs M’s garden of enticement.

He dumps his old work boot on the black-flecked paper, aching to see her. And she’s down there, she’s ... his Mrs M ... between her flowerbeds, adrift … adrift. Her inky hair pours across her shoulder as she stoops. It masks her face, makes her strange. McBane spies her neck, downy skin. It’s rare. He’s starved.

The fox turns an eye to Mrs M. Pale flesh, scented. McBane: an eye to the fox. They eye each other — opportunity.

— Supper! she calls.

The fox turns, nosedives into bramble.

●

He perches, gnome-like, on his high stool at the table end for his helping of dahlia soup. The umpteenth. It’s a Mrs M concoction. No time for a uniform, he’s still in socks and smalls.

Before, when he heard her whispering voice, her half-hearted call, he scrambled, was surprised. The spare room door was open. Sometimes, though, Mrs M forgets to unlock it. When he’s home, she has to keep him safe ... safe, she tells him.

— Eat up!

She doesn’t join him at the table; doesn’t take up her padded chair down the other end. It doesn’t distress her if she can’t find his face. She hovers behind, distantly: his guard. She tucks herself in to a corner of the galley kitchen as if, any moment, about to be attacked.

Her habit.

Head-to-toe in black, he can picture her pained face, in mourning for one thing or another.

The soup overwhelms him. It steams his straggly moustache. Wafts up his nostrils, hits him. Sharp. Earthy. Dark morsels of fleshy tuber bob, gasp on the surface.

Air!

Give me air!

He slurps it to avoid it. The soft lumpen bits circle. The liquid, it’s bitter.

— It could be my best batch, Mr M.

McBane draws breath. His short legs deaden, shake; reach for solid ground.

— It’s ... full of taste.

— Down the hatch, every tangy drop.

It turns him. His head. It burns. It tastes off, something rotten in it. But he drains it to keep her sane. He lets the spoon clang in the bowl.

It’s done.

Supper.

He doesn’t move, can’t. He can’t speak, doesn’t feel allowed to. He fumes quietly in his pants. And the silence of evening, of years, curdles between them.

— The police were fools to let you go. Should’ve kept you.

His guard’s voice delves, digs, under skin.

— The years of service. They didn’t understand you, your battle with rules: your short fuse. You were at home on the beat.

— Bloody was! Eh?

McBane slams the table, shunts the bowl away, stares into the heaving garden. The dahlias darken.

— You have to get out.

— Eh?

— Back out. The streets still cry after you. You should be a one-man task force — down alleyways, by the river, under bridges. Unfortunates lurk there without any purpose. You should clean up. Get rid. Grasp the opportunity. 

●

His brain, it feels gluey ... it short-circuits. Was there a pinch of ... ?

The soup, was it ... ?

Mrs M fashioned the fox head on his bed — moulded newspaper snout, pointy ears — part of a mishmash uniform he discovered — something old, something new. Inside his papier maché mask, he hears the key scrape in the lock. He’s enclosed. Caught.

Following orders, he slips dutifully into his white shirt, buttoning down a protruding gut. Doesn’t think about the shiny boots, trou; work belt with quickcuffs — old kit, pilfered from the station.

The orange-painted tail is new — scrunched paper, knotted — rustling behind.

— What am I? McBane growls.

His voice rebounds inside his paper head.

— A fox force?

Leaping on the bed, his long nose bashes into the dividing wall. He listens for Mrs M in their marriage bedroom, a faint sigh, her skirt dropping; a fingernail on black stockings.

— Mr M!

Her voice resounds. Where is she?

— On parade!

Outside? Every opportunity: Mrs M’s with her blasted dahlias.

He rough-handles the spare room door. It’s open! Did he imagine the key bite, the turning?

Down the hushed stairs, he slinks, and out the front because the door to the garden is always locked — Mrs M, her habit. Released, the fox force heads down the sleepy terrace in everyday evening shutdown, nips round the back.

— I’ll bloody show her! he spits.

Low-lying briars try to pilfer his new tail appendage. Lucky for McBane, police boots can clamber over a wooden fence themselves. He forces himself onto their shed roof.

— Passing out! Eh? Eh? he barks.

She’s gone. Dim light gleams in her upstairs window — an eye forever on the garden.

Through McBane’s new fox face the house looks different, yellowy, distant. The stone path hidden: flowerful. He could jump down; enter this undercover world. Go wild.

●

The fox force is on duty.

For Mrs M.

When the grit of evening falls, McBane, hard-nosed trouble-monger, stalks the town. Undercover. Let loose. Crazed. But locked-in still ... struggling inside his head, the fox: his guise.

He prowls through back streets — late now, glinting cars tick, deserted — shortcuts down to the river. The world is orange-hued, appears pasted on. It’s bizarre, through cut-out eyes.

Clatter!

Clatter!

Behind him: hooves — Cross Horse.

— Don’t need backup! McBane snaps, turns.

Black as tarmac, and unforgiving, the horse eyeballs his foxiness — no human face.

— What, Mr C? Do you want a crack?

Nostrils flare mistily, wordlessly, in the cold.

McBane picks up the pace. The racket follows — old horse habits. A stalker: stalked.

An ill-tempered liability on patrol, and a gelding, the police had to shut Cross Horse in the pound. Still cantankerous, he wangled an escape — McBane understood him; released him. But days later, found him at a crossroads, undone.

Which way now?

Mr C’s been waiting for an answer since. Left somewhat in the dark. McBane told him to blend by the bins, nibble on leftovers, act normal.

●

The tongue of his old riding crop keeps Mr C’s whiskery nose out — contained. Luckily, McBane has it when he sniffs out a riverite roughing it on a pallet — wooden battens encircled by a dirty wash of crumpled newspaper: red-tops. The reek of him: untouched by any current. Reedy arms shoot up from a duvet.

McBane edges close. A church bell sounds ... nine, ten. Tucked into the corner of the hoarding, bedroom walls in canary yellow, the man is mesmerised, temporarily unhinged, staring at his grubby fingers as if he can’t see them any more. Or they’re someone else’s?

Thwack!

Thwack!

McBane strikes the leathery soles of the man’s feet, spindly shins, makes him dance, sprite-like.

— What, man?

He backs away, in manky T, forces a gap-toothed grin.

— I’m Brian ...

He blinks hard.

— ... you a foxth man?

— Eh?

Behind the mask, McBane smirks.

— I’m what you see.

— That your croth horth?

His s’s: they’re lacking teeth.

— What horse?

Brian’s fingers flitter.

— Got a horse loose in your head, Brian?

Behind, Mr C paws the pavement, enraged, digs for words, an exit.

— Pack up! Fold your duvet. Leave it neat.

Swashing air, McBane drives Brian down the cobbled lane —

Gardener’s — used to be an old off-duty haunt — to the eddying river. He makes him lie face down on top of the lichen-bloomed wall.

Hooves scramble on stones.

Clatter!

Clatter!

Cross Horse? Charging into the fray?

McBane shunts Brian — into air. The drop, it’s instant. He peers down at the churn and thlap of water, at Brian adrift.

Tail waggling, grinning paper jaws: his appetite, it’s back.

●

Made spare. McBane.

No supper: no call. Dahlia soup is never not simmering. Its fog lies low on the stairs.

Chomping at the bit behind the spare room door he paces to distract himself from stomach pangs. He needs his daily dose. But he won’t break house rules; stalk her down the hall.

— Mrs M?

The house, his missus, close ranks; turn deaf ears.

— Mrs M! he cries.

She only answers to her title. In the long years of coupledom, togetherness, she’s always required it. He’s never got a handle on her; her batty ways, her keeping him in the dark, keeping him out, protecting herself — her cloistered heart.

But now his hunger has returned, his rediscovered purpose, that’ll change. He’ll parade his new crafty face at supper. His crinkled russet tail will hang tantalisingly over his boxers. He’ll impress her with the tale of Brian.

The door is locked.

He wrenches the brassy knob: stuck. She’s forgotten. He thumps the wood with a knuckled fist.

Shrieks.

A shrill female cry from the garden: another, pained. A mating call: unworldly.

Hup-hup-hup!

Barking: staking out territory.

McBane tramples over the wreckage of his bed to the uncurtained window — darkening glass, framed. Below, the intruder fox has come. Bides its time. Its bony rump, snout, flat on the felt of next-door’s dilapidated shed. Eyes, blackened, watch.

Mrs M.

Naked, back turned to McBane. Maroon fox dahlias cluster round her, her gleaming hips, ghostly skin. Night hair caresses them. Velvety petals — tongue tips — seem to whisper.

— Love me ... eat me up.

●

Dahlia fuel, planted, buds in his gut. Inwardly, it blooms. Drives him, drives McBane out late on uniform business.

Swagger.

Swagger.

Two tails on the beat, the deserted river walk — one, long, brittle-haired, the other, stumpy, twisted.

A flick of his crop keeps Mr C in check. Still on probation, he’s inclined to stick his outsized head in, then startle, wired, mane flying, mad-eyed.

For distraction, devilment, McBane’s on the trail. Fox head swivelling. Buried eyes in sockets flit.

A sludge-like creature, culprit, in woolly hat, parka trailing, arrests his attention along the narrow path — on his last legs? Already departed? Or blind? His eyes: dark glass circles.

— Help!

The air turns rank: river soup.

— Robbed! Police! he croaks. — Can I cadge five quid from you? Ten’ll do.

— I’m police, McBane snarls.

The man, stumped, sways. McBane nobbles opportunity. He cracks the man’s skull, spins him against the low concrete wall.

Clatter!

Clatter!

— I’m Chief round here, the man protests. — You shouldn’t have a horse storming the pavement.

— There isn’t!

Hooves rush in, crazed.

— Off the street, Chief! Out of bounds.

McBane charges, sends him fleeing among murky wharves, vaulted walkways, echoey tunnels.

Both tail him, bristling.

Chief stumbles into one phone box, another. Yanks the receiver.

— Hello? Police?

●

— Stop! he barks.

Blindly, Chief about-turns into Stew Lane? Narrow, doorless: a dead end. A rusty iron box lurks at the bottom into which he vanishes. And McBane, shadow fox, pursues but can’t see him inside. Someone’s papered the windows with red-tops.

Scrounging around, he nabs an orange road barrier — gummy, bared fox teeth — shunts it between the phone box door and the brick, jamming it.

Shut in: silent.

Muffled panic: Chief scrabbles, pawing.

— Help!

Two paper holes scrape away in a pane. Barmy eyes appear, glinting, unseeing: watchful. The phone box face, it’s his, glaring back. He sees himself. That’s what he is. In a dark lane, languishing: unspeakable McBane.

Clatter!

Clatter!

A Cross Horse kerfuffle canters into the stew. Perturbed, spooked. Ears twitching, he snorts at the phone box — black-hole eyes darting through paper.

— What, Mr C?

McBane whips his muzzle. Sharp. Tail switches.

— Speak!

Mr C backs up, wronged.

— Still shut in, eh? Impounded?

Muscled flanks tremble; glisten. Head shakes. Eyes glower, angered, in deep sockets. McBane’s cut-out eyes fix them.

— No words ... for you ...

Emptiness, reflecting.

— Inside. The key turns; the days turn.

Breath catches.

— No answer. No hand in the dark, reaching, consoling.

Whinnying: McBane tries to calm him.

— Eh? Eh?

Abandoned, their boxed-up spectator, Chief, his laughter chokes him.

— No, no, reason — to be.

Hooves scrape on cobbles. Cross Horse rears up, unwittingly, escapes McBane, and himself. Just clatters off.

●

Work for idle hands.

The shed roof dips, creaks; needs mending. Battens surrender under McBane.

Inside, Mrs M hoards her tools to prod, snip.

Inside his fox-head, sweat trickles, sticks. The paper has moulded to fit his hairy face.

Panting animal: he.

Shut out. The front door got a lashing from his leathery tongue: the house in lockdown.

No light. Not a pinch.

Dahlias shiver beneath him in the night cold. Marooned, they huddle. A current runs through — whispered air.

— Love me ... eat me up.

McBane rips his tail off, chucks it. He dives fox-nose-first into the bosom of a flowerbed. An interloper, he ravages Mrs M’s garden, decapitating each, every dahlia. Conspiring heads drop to earth. Petals, little red tongues, fly.

●

Let go.

McBane finds himself homeless. Someone Mrs M would want rid of. Fox-headed. A uniformed bandit, hung out. He takes up residence at the crossroads out of town.

Swagger.

Swagger.

Crossings are windy. But he swaggers still.

As evening light drains into tarmac, he grapples with the untethered hope that Cross Horse will appear.

Loiters: palleted: blind to the surging cars.

He stares ahead, perhaps at nothing. Waits for an opportunity, a four-legged friend.

●

The ragged fox springs into fiery being on the shed roof. Nimble, panting, it turns on itself.

Waits.

In the bramble at dusk, it watched through the slats — cracks made for hungry eyes. It spied Mrs M parade through a desecrated garden, in mourning for one beloved dahlia, another. Licked its teeth as she turned her rump, retreated inside.

— Eat me up.

Now the back door sits darkly, unknown, uncrossed.

Open.

The dog fox noses the air coolly, rampant. Noiselessly, off the roof, it slips through the garden — way clear — to the entrance.

Ears prick.

Forepaw on the flesh-pale stone — moves in.