Lady into Fox
A story of transformation
Lady into Fox by David Garnett
It is a fine day. Hunting season. A young couple are outside, in the land surrounding their estate. They’re quite newly married, justly called in love. The husband looks away, or is called away – only for a moment, but he looks away – and when he turns back or looks back, his young wife has transformed into a fox.
A miraculous thing, you must say. An absurd thing. And surely a mistake. Ladies do not turn into foxes. It is not known to happen. But there is no doubt about it. The lady is gone and there, aghast, a fox is standing on all fours. Her husband looks at the fox. It meets his look. And on its face and in its own behaviour his reaction is mirrored. He is afraid, worried, baffled. So is the fox – the fox that is his wife. They do nothing for some time but share this sudden sorrow.
What can they do? There appears to be no solution. She is not apt to transform back. One transformation is unknown in history; two would be asking too much. And it is the time of year where, in the country all around, sportsmen ride with their hounds after foxes. They have both seen the foxes done to death all around them in the months of the hunting and the sport.
The husband does not think more than a moment. He must take the fox, his wife, back into their home, and he must conceal her. He must send away the servants, the staff, the gardeners; give an excuse as to why the lady of the house is not there; shut the place up completely. No one must know. That is what he thinks at first.
He must send everyone away so that the two of them might work out how they must live. Outside, however, the world is not quiet. Two of his dogs have gone wild. They can scent the fox as they are trained to do. They are howling and calling, excited for the hunt they must soon be put up to do. The husband takes his gun and kills the two of them. They would have drawn too much attention had they lived.
The gardener’s last job before he departs is the hasty burial of the two animals. He is paid cash in hand, immediately, so he will do it.
Soon the outside world is quiet and cut off, and the house and its inhabitants are alone.
The next few days, the two of them, man and fox, spend in absurd pantomime. The husband finds some of his wife’s old clothes that the fox might wear. They together take time every day in making the fox cleaner than any fox would be in nature, to make her feel a little more like the woman she was. And they find little amusements they can still enjoy. The fox is just able to play a few simple card games. It is willing to look at stereoscopic images, bought at a happier time for simple amusement. It enjoys eating grapes in large quantities. Growing bold, it instructs the husband to play favourite pieces on the piano.
The man can honestly say he loves his wife, even if she is not as he married her. Soon he ceases to worry about what the neighbours might think because there are no neighbours. He has sent everyone away. To him, their life, if they shut themselves wholly away from the world, might still be worth continuing. But his wife the fox does not agree. He permits her to go out into the countryside, with his guidance and protection. She likes to run and initially to caper, but soon her movements become more furtive and even violent. She has what he thinks of as an unhealthy interest in the ducks that inhabit the icy water.
She seems more fox, less lady, as time goes on. Efforts to civilise the fox fall flat and keep failing. The husband tries to make a lady of the fox, and meanwhile, the fox bids to make the husband more like a beast. The pair, and the woman’s old nanny, who has inserted herself back into their lives, move to a new place, one with an enclosed garden which – the husband hopes – might prove a sheltered place for his wife to run.
But she spends her time there not as he would like her to spend it. She burrows under the walls of the closed garden; she climbs a tree’s extended limb, trying to get over and out and off into freedom. She deceives her husband; she bites him. Her teeth flash and are sharp. He finds less sympathy in her eyes than he has seen before. What is he to do?
This book by David Garnett is one of the best and most captivating pieces of allegorical fiction I have read in some time. What might have been pure fantasy is played remarkably straight and true. Books like this sometimes suffer because they are fantastical. We have all read, all seen, all – if you are like me – written of magical foxes. But this is not a magical fox. It is a fox, a real fox, a fox that was once a woman – a woman loved very dearly by her husband, even so. Even after it all.