Bears Discover Fire

for him, on the high shelf where the complete set, bound in morocco, resided in state. Then Mr. Fox walked to the cricket ground, so that Anthony might run with the boys and their kites until dinner was served at the Pig & Thistle. A whisky at nine with Harrison ended what seemed at the time to be an ordinary day.

The next day it all began in earnest.

Mr. Fox awoke to a hubbub of traffic, footsteps, and unintelligible shouts. There was, as usual, no one but himself and Anthony (and of course, the Finn, who cooked) at breakfast; but outside, he found the streets remarkably lively for the time of year. He saw more and more people as he headed downtown, until he was immersed in a virtual sea of humanity. People of all sorts, even Pakistanis and foreigners, not ordinarily much in evidence in Brighton off season.

“What in the world can it be?” Mr. Fox wondered aloud. “I simply can’t imagine.”

“Woof,” said Anthony, who couldn’t imagine either, but who was never called upon to do so.

With Anthony in his arms, Mr. Fox picked his way through the crowd along the King’s Esplanade until he came to the entrance to the Boardwalk. He mounted the twelve steps briskly. It was irritating to have one’s customary way blocked by strangers. The Boardwalk was half filled with strollers who, instead of strolling, were holding on to the rail and looking out to sea. It was mysterious; but then the habits of everyday people had always been mysterious to Mr. Fox; they were so much less likely to stay in character than the people in novels.

The waves were even closer together than they had been the day before; they were piling up as if pulled toward the shore by a magnet. The surf where it broke had the odd character of being a single continuous wave about one and a half feet high. Though it no longer seemed to be rising, the water had risen during the night: it covered half the beach, coming almost up to the seawall just below the Boardwalk.

The wind was quite stout for the season. Off to the left (the east) a dark line was seen on the horizon. It might have been clouds but it looked more solid, like land. Mr. Fox could not remember ever having seen it before, even though he had walked here daily for the past forty-two years.

“Dog?”

Mr. Fox looked to his left. Standing beside him at the rail of the Boardwalk was a large, one might even say portly, African man with an alarming hairdo. He was wearing a tweed coat. An English girl clinging to his arm had asked the question. She was pale with dark, stringy hair, and she wore an oilskin cape that looked wet even though it wasn’t raining.

“Beg your pardon?” said Mr. Fox.

“That’s a dog?” The girl was pointing toward Anthony.

“Woof.”

“Well, of course it’s a dog.”

“Can’t he walk?”

“Of course he can walk. He just doesn’t always choose to.”

“You bloody wish,” said the girl, snorting unattractively and looking away. She wasn’t exactly a girl. She could have been twenty.

“Don’t mind her,” said the African. “Look at that chop, would you.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Fox said. He didn’t know what to make of the girl but he was grateful to the African for starting a conversation. It was often difficult these days; it had become increasingly difficult over the years. “A storm offshore, perhaps?” he ventured.

“A storm?” the African said. “I guess you haven’t heard. It was on the telly hours ago. We’re making close to two knots now, south and east. Heading around Ireland and out to sea.”

“Out to sea?” Mr. Fox looked over his shoulder at the King’s Esplanade and the buildings beyond, which seemed as stationary as ever. “Brighton is heading out to sea?”

“You bloody wish,” the girl said.

“Not just Brighton, man,” the African said. For the first time, Mr. Fox could hear a faint Caribbean lilt in his voice. “England herself is underway.”

England underway? How extraordinary. Mr. Fox could see what he supposed was excitement in the faces of the other strollers on the Boardwalk all that day. The wind smelled somehow saltier as he went to take his tea. He almost told Mrs. Oldenshield the news when she brought him his pot and platter; but the affairs of the day, which had never intruded far into her tearoom, receded entirely when he took down his book and began to read. This was (as it turned out) the very day that Lizzie finally read the letter from Mr. Camperdown, the Eustace family lawyer, which she had carried unopened for three days. As Mr. Fox had expected, it demanded that the diamonds be returned to her late husband’s family. In response, Lizzie bought a strongbox. That evening, England’s peregrinations were all the news on the BBC. The kingdom was heading south into the Atlantic at 1.8 knots, according to the newsmen on the telly over the bar at the Pig & Thistle, where Mr. Fox was accustomed to taking a glass of whisky with Harrison, the barkeep, before retiring. In the sixteen hours since the phenomenon had first been detected, England had gone some thirty-five miles, beginning a long turn around Ireland which would carry it into the open sea.

“Ireland is not going?” asked Mr. Fox.

“Ireland has been independent since 19 and 21,” said Harrison, who often hinted darkly at having relatives with the IRA. “Ireland is hardly about to be chasing England around the seven seas.”

“Well, what about, you know…?”

“The Six Counties? The Six Counties have always been a part of Ireland and always will be,” said Harrison. Mr. Fox nodded politely and finished his whisky. It was not his custom to argue politics, particularly not with barkeeps, and certainly not with the Irish.

“So I suppose you’ll be going home?”

“And lose me job?”

For the next several days, the wave got no higher but it seemed steadier. It was not a chop but a continual smooth wake, streaming across the shore to the east as England began its turn to the west. The cricket ground grew deserted as the boys laid aside their kites and joined the rest of the town at the shore, watching the waves. There was such a crowd on the Boardwalk that several of the shops, which had closed for the season, reopened. Mrs. Oldenshield’s was no busier than usual, however, and Mr. Fox was able to forge ahead as steadily in his reading as Mr. Trollope had in his writing. It was not long before Lord Fawn, with something almost of dignity in his gesture and demeanor, declared himself to the young widow Eustace and asked for her hand. Mr. Fox knew Lizzie’s diamonds would be trouble, though. He knew something of heirlooms himself. His tiny attic room in the Pig & Thisde had been left to him in perpetuity by the innkeeper, whose life had been saved by Mr. Fox’s father during an air raid. A life saved (said the innkeeper, an East Indian, but a Christian, not a Hindu) was a debt never fully paid. Mr. Fox had often wondered where he would have lived if he’d been forced to go out and find a place, like so many in novels did. Indeed, in real life as well. That evening on the telly there was panic in Belfast as the headlands of Scotland slid by, south. Were the Loyalists to be left behind? Everyone was waiting to hear from the King, who was closeted with his advisors.

The next morning, there was a letter on the little table in the downstairs hallway at the Pig & Thistle. Mr. Fox knew as soon as he saw the letter that it was the fifth of the month. His niece, Emily, always mailed her letters from America on the first, and they always arrived on the morning of the fifth.

Mr. Fox opened it, as always, just after tea at Mrs. Oldenshield’s. He read the ending first, as always, to make sure there were no surprises. “Wish you could see your great-niece before she’s grown,” Emily wrote; she wrote the same thing every month. When her mother, Mr. Fox’s sister, Clare, had visited after moving to America, it had been his niece she had wanted him to meet. Emily had taken up the same refrain since her mother’s death. “Your great-niece will be a young lady soon,” she wrote, as if this were somehow Mr. Fox’s doing. His only regret was that Emily, in asking him to come to America when her mother died, had asked him to do the one thing he couldn’t even contemplate; and so he had been unable to grant her even the courtesy of a refusal. He read all the way back to the opening (“Dear Uncle Anthony”) then folded the letter very small; and put it into the box with the others when he got back to his room that evening.

The bar seemed crowded when he came downstairs at nine. The King, in a brown suit with a green and gold tie, was on the telly, sitting in front of a clock in a BBC studio. Even Harrison, never one for royalty, set aside the