Human Croquet

by Kate Atkinson

  Eliza lay coldly in bed next to Gordon. The second-best bed. The sheets in Arden were as stiff as brown paper. She spoke over her icy shoulder at him, Look at her – why doesn’t she move out and live with Vinny and give us this house, or give us some money from the shop? The shop should be yours, she’s an old woman, why is she hanging on to it? We could sell up and have some money, get away from this bloody hole. Do something with our lives.

  This was the most Eliza had said to Gordon in months. He stared through the dark at the wall opposite, if he stared hard enough at the wallpaper he could make out where the repeat began on the pattern of roses growing on a trellis. An owl hooted on Sycamore Street.

  The Widow creaked stiffly into the front passenger seat of the big black car.

  ‘It’s half-day closing,’ Gordon said to Charles, ‘I’ll be back at lunchtime.’ Vinny climbed resentfully into the back – ‘How is it that I always have to sit in the back? Why am I always second-best?’ – and they all drove off to turn themselves into licensed grocers for the day, prut-prut-prut. Charles waved until the car was out of sight – and then a little bit longer because one of Gordon’s tricks was to pretend to have disappeared round a corner and then just when you thought he’d gone he’d suddenly pop back. Not this time though.

  A picnic, Eliza said, stubbing her cigarette out on one of the Widow’s flower-sprigged plates, it’s half-term, after all, and we’ve done absolutely bloody nothing all week, and she hauled the old wicker picnic basket out of its hiding-place in the understairs cupboard and said, We’ll take the bus into town and meet Daddy at lunchtime and give him a surprise.

  As a treat they sat on the top deck of the bus, on the front seats, and watched the streets of trees go sailing by below. The big branch of a sycamore snapped unexpectedly against the window in front of them, rattling its dead leaves that were like hands and Eliza said, It’s all right, it’s just a tree, and lit a cigarette. She waved the smoke away from their faces and crossed her legs and tapped one foot as if she was impatient about something. She was wearing Charles’ favourite shoes, high-heeled brown suede with little furry pom-poms. Mink according to Eliza. Her fifteen-denier stockings were the same shade. Mink.

  The bus trundled on, running along the street where Vinny’s house was. Eliza stubbed out her cigarette under her shoe, twisting her foot hard, long after the cigarette was extinguished. Her bad mood radiated off her like the cold October sunshine. There was a bus-stop right outside Vinny’s door and all three of them looked down into her tiny front garden and tried to peer through her lace-curtained windows, safe because they knew she was at work. Their faces were level with her bedroom window but its curtains were permanently shut against nosy top-deckers and it revealed no secrets to voyeurs. Vinny’s house was a thin redbrick semi with a small, square bay and a mean porch, built when the master-builder’s imagination had run out and his veins were flooded with alcohol (the master-builder’s solid trunk was felled by a stroke in 1930).

  Ugh, Eliza shivered, although whether at the house or its absent occupant wasn’t clear. Both probably. Charles and Isobel didn’t like visiting Vinny’s house. It smelt of damp and Izal and boiled vegetables.

  When they arrived at the shop they found the Widow standing by the scratched red-metal Hobart coffee-grinder dreaming about money and things coming off ration. Gordon lifted Isobel on to the polished mahogany of the counter so she could watch him weighing tea. The tea smelt dark and bitter like the Widow’s hot chrome teapot with its knitted green and yellow cosy. Vinny was cutting a piece of Lancashire as white as the Widow’s skin.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Mrs Tyndale, a regular customer, said, bustling fatly into the shop, ‘if it isn’t Charles and Isobel.’ She turned to the Widow, ‘She’s the image of her mother, isn’t she?’ and the Widow and Vinny raised their eyebrows in unison, communicating mutely with each other over the ramifications of this statement. ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it,’ Mrs Tyndale said, ‘to see a happy young family!’

  Eliza didn’t respond in any way and disappeared into the back of the shop, followed by Gordon on an invisible lead. Mrs Tyndale leant conspiratorially over the counter and said to Vinny, ‘Flighty thing, isn’t she?’ Vinny gave a funny squint smile and whispered, ‘Flirty, too,’ as if Eliza was some strange species of bird.

  Eliza and Gordon reappeared, their faces tight and blank as if they’d been having an argument. We’re going for a picnic, we’ll give you a lift home first, Eliza said to the Widow. The Widow demurred. She was going to Temple’s for lunch, she said, looking saintly, as if she was going to a church service, as if Temple’s might really be a temple, not a department store restaurant. ‘A picnic in October?’ Mrs Tyndale enquired brightly and was ignored by everyone.

  Eliza picked Isobel up from the counter and started nibbling her ear. Why, Vinny wondered, was Eliza always trying to eat bits of her children? What a tasty little morsel, Eliza murmured in Isobel’s ear while Vinny patted butter aggressively, imagining it was Eliza’s head. If Eliza wasn’t careful, Vinny thought, she’d look around one day and discover that she’d eaten them all up.

  The Widow, meanwhile, was wondering if this picnic was perhaps another of Eliza’s impulsive outings. Perhaps she’d come back with another baby. Or perhaps, with any luck, she’d get lost and not come back at all. Vinny slapped a lump of butter down on the marble slab, they would never think of asking her on a picnic, would they? Vinny, Eliza’s voice purred sweetly, why don’t you come with us? and Vinny recoiled in horror – the last thing she wanted to do was go anywhere with them, she just wanted to be asked. ‘Yes, do,’ the Widow barked, ‘some fresh air might put a bit of life in you.’ Poor Vinny, Eliza said, fizzing with laughter.

  It was quite a relief to see Eliza cheerful, even if it was only for a moment. She’d been bad-tempered for weeks. I’m not myself, she said and then laughed maniacally, but God knows who I am.

  Gordon unwrapped himself from his grocer’s bondage with a flourish and put his gabardine mac and trilby hat on so that he didn’t look anything like a grocer. He could have been a film star with his thick, wavy hair. He stood at the door of the shop and raised his arms to play Oranges and Lemons and said, ‘Off with her head!’ and Isobel ran under the half-arch of his arms. Charles got excited and ran back three times to be executed. Gordon was just about to chop off Eliza’s head as well when she said – very coldly, very Hempstid – Stop it, Gordon, and he gave her an odd look and then clicked his heels and said, ‘Jawohl, meine dame,’ and Vinny snapped, ‘That’s not funny, Gordon – people died in the war, you know!’ Eliza laughed and said, No, really, Vinny? and Gordon turned to her nastily and said, ‘Shut up, why don’t you, Eliza?’

  I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Eliza said airily and Gordon stared at her very hard and said, ‘Don’t you?’

  The shop bell clanged noisily on its springy strip of metal as Gordon pulled the door shut behind them. The Widow and Mrs Tyndale stood behind the glass in the upper half of the shop door and waved goodbye to the car, woodenly like Punch and Judy in their box. As soon as the engine started to prut-prut-prut they turned to each other, eager to comment on the behaviour of their not-so-happy young family.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ Gordon asked no-one in particular, tapping the steering-wheel with his leather-gloved hands as if it was a tambourine. Anywhere, Eliza said, lighting a cigarette. Gordon gave her an odd sideways look as if he’d only just met her and was wondering what kind of a person she was. ‘How about Boscrambe Woods?’ he asked, looking at Charles in the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes!’ Charles shouted enthusiastically. Eliza said something but Gordon accelerated noisily as he pulled away from the pavement and her words were drowned by the engine.

  Vinny, relegated to the back seat as usual, was trying to shrink to protect herself from carelessly kicking feet and sticky hands. ‘What do you think, Vin?’ Gordon said and Vinny said, ‘What – you mean someone’s actually asking my opinion for once?’ and lit a cigarette w
ithout giving an opinion any way and disappeared in a cloud of tobacco smoke.

  Isobel closed her eyes almost as soon as the engine started. She loved the feeling of slipping down into sleep, breathing in the soporific drug of seat-leather, nicotine, petrol and Eliza’s perfume. They were still driving when she woke up. Eliza looked over her shoulder and said, Nearly there. Isobel’s tongue felt like a pebble. Charles was picking a scab on his knee. His face was covered in freckles and the tiny elliptical craters of chickenpox scars. His snub nose twitched at the amount of cigarette smoke in the car. Gordon started to sing ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’ in his nice light baritone. In profile his nose was straight and Roman and from low down on the leather of the back seat you could imagine him flying his plane through the clouds. Occasionally, he cast a glance in Eliza’s direction as if he was checking to see if she was still there.

  He braked suddenly as a thin stream of grey squirrel streaked across the road in front of the car and they all jerked forward. Vinny bounced her forehead off the back of the front seat with a little screech. ‘God,’ said Gordon, looking shaken, but Eliza just laughed her funny annoying laugh. Gordon stared at the windscreen for a while, a muscle in spasm in his cheek.

  ‘And are you all right, Vinny?’ Vinny asked herself, ‘Oh yes, thank you, don’t bother about me,’ she answered and was jerked violently again as Gordon revved up the engine and accelerated off.

  The cold was a surprise after being in the heat of the car for so long, the clear woodland air a shock after the tobacco smog. Eliza turned up the collar of her camel coat and pulled on her delicate leather gloves. I should have worn a hat, she said as she bent down to tie Isobel’s scarf round her neck. Isobel could see a stray speck of mascara on Eliza’s cheek, beneath her lashes. Eliza tied the scarf so tight that it choked Isobel and she had to put her hands up and tug it looser.

  The scarf matched her Shetland tammy, both knitted for Christmas by the Widow. Charles was wearing his school blazer and cap while Vinny had on her belted navy-blue gabardine with matching sou’wester. Anyone looking at them at that moment would have seen a nice family – healthy, attractive, ordinary – the kind that graced the advertisements every week in Picture Post. A nice ordinary family going for a walk in the woods. They would never have been able to tell, just by looking at them, that their world was about to end.

  Eliza licked the edge of her Christmas present handkerchief and bent down again to wipe the corners of Isobel’s mouth. She rubbed so hard that Isobel was forced to take an involuntary step backwards. From somewhere above her head, Gordon’s voice sounded hollow, ‘Don’t rub so hard, Lizzy, you’ll rub her out,’ and she could see Eliza’s eyes narrowing and a thin blue vein on her forehead – the colour of hyacinths – grow visible through her fine skin and begin to throb. Eliza folded the handkerchief in a neat triangle and tucked it into the pocket of Isobel’s plaid wool coat and said, In case you need to blow your nose.

  The picnic wasn’t a great success. Catering wasn’t one of Eliza’s skills. The cucumber in the fish-paste-and-cucumber sandwiches had made the bread soggy, the apples had rusting, mottled bruises under their skins and Eliza had neglected to pack anything to drink. By now they seemed to have walked a long way into the woods. ‘When you’re in a wood,’ Gordon said to Charles, ‘always follow the path, that way you won’t get lost.’ What if there isn’t a path? Eliza asked, bad temper sharpening her voice. ‘Then walk towards the light,’ Gordon said without turning to look at her.

  Eliza had carried the big tartan rug from the back seat and spread it on a carpet of beech leaves. This is a lovely sunny patch, she said with a febrile gaiety that convinced no-one. Charles dropped to his knees and rolled about on the rug. Gordon leant back on his elbows and Isobel snuggled into the crook of his elbow. Eliza sat like a well-behaved aristocrat, her long, thin legs in their mink-coloured stockings and elegant shoes looking out of place, stretched across the homely tartan rug, as if they’d wandered in from a mannequin parade. Vinny cast them envious glances, her own scrawny legs had all the shape of clothes-pegs. Vinny forced her poker body to bend into a kneeling position on the rug and pulled her skirt over her legs; she had the air of a refined Victorian traveller amongst primitive forest dwellers.

  The novelty of rug-dwelling soon wore off. The children shivered disconsolately and ate jam sandwiches and Kit-Kats until they felt queasy. ‘This isn’t much fun,’ Charles said and threw himself off the rug into a pile of leaves and started burying himself like a dog. Having fun was very important to Charles, having fun and making people laugh. ‘He’s just looking for attention,’ Vinny said. And he gets it – isn’t that clever? Eliza said. Charles’ hair was almost the same colour as the dying forest – tawny oak and curly copper-beech. He could have got lost in the pile of leaves and never be found until the spring.

  Vinny heaved herself up from the rug with a struggle and said, ‘I have to go and you-know-what,’ and vanished into the trees. Minutes passed and she didn’t come back. Gordon laughed and said, ‘She’ll go for miles, to make sure nobody sees her bloomers,’ and Eliza made a nauseated face at the idea of Vinny’s underclothes and got up suddenly from the rug and said, I’m going for a walk, without looking at any of them and set off along the path, in the opposite direction to Vinny.

  ‘We’ll come with you!’ Gordon shouted after her and she spun round very quickly so that her big camel coat swung round her legs, showing her dress underneath in a swirl of green, and shouted back, Don’t you dare! She sounded furious. ‘She has completely the wrong shoes on,’ Gordon muttered angrily and bowled a rotten apple overarm into the trees behind them. Just before she disappeared round the turning in the path, Eliza stopped and shouted something, the words ringing clearly in the crisp air – I’m going home, don’t bother following me!

  ‘Home!’ Gordon exploded. ‘How does she think she’s to get home?’ and then he got up too and set off in pursuit of Eliza, shouting over his shoulder to Charles, ‘I won’t be a sec – stay here with your sister!’ and with that he was gone as well.

  The sun had disappeared from the trees, except for one little pool at the corner of the rug. Isobel lay with her face in the warm pool, drifting in and out of sleep, eventually woken by Charles leaping on top of her. She screamed and the scream echoed wildly in the silence. They sat on the rug together, holding hands, waiting for some other noise to take the place of the dying echo of the scream, waiting for the sound of Gordon’s and Eliza’s voices, of a bird singing, of Vinny complaining, of wind in the trees, of anything except the absolute stillness of the wood. Perhaps it was one of Gordon’s disappearing tricks. One he was having difficulty with and any moment now he’d get it right and jump out from behind a tree and shout, ‘Surprise!’

  A leaf the colour of Charles’ hair drifted down like a feather through the air and landed noiselessly. Isobel could feel fear, like hot liquid, in her stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

  All sense of time had disappeared. It felt as if they’d been alone in the wood for hours. Where were Gordon and Eliza? Where was Vinny? Had she been eaten by a wild animal while doing you-know-what? Charles’ broad, jolly face had grown pale and pinched with worry. Eliza always told them that if they got separated from her when they were out then you must stay exactly where you are – and she would come and find them. Charles’ belief in this statement had waned considerably over the last hour or two.

  Eventually he said, ‘Come on, let’s go and find everybody,’ and dragged Isobel up from the rug by her hand. ‘They’re just playing Hide-and-Seek probably,’ he said, but his whey-face and the wobble in his voice betrayed his real feelings. Being the grown-up in charge was taking its toll on him. They set off in the same direction that Eliza and Gordon had followed, the path quite clear – hard, trodden-down earth, laddered occasionally with tree-roots.

  * * *

  It was growing dark by now. Isobel stumbled over a tree-root snaking across the path and hurt her knees. Charles waited impat
iently for her to catch up. He was holding something in his hand, squinting in the gloom. It was a shoe, a brown suede shoe, the heel bent at a strange angle and the little mink pom-pom dampened by something sticky so that it lay flat and limp like a wet kitten and the rhinestone was a dull gleam in the dying light.

  Charles walked on more slowly now, carrying the shoe in his hand, then, without warning, he scuttled down into a dry ditch full of leaves, beside the path. The ditch was so full of leaves that they came up to Charles’ play-scarred knees and made an attractive crispy-crunchy noise as he waded through them. For a moment Isobel thought this might be part of his endless quest for fun but almost as soon as he’d leapt in, he leapt out the other side. She followed him, scrambling down into the ditch and wading through the leaves. She would like to have lain down, sunk on to this comfortable leaf bed and gone to sleep for a while, but Charles was charging on so she clambered up the other side of the ditch and hurried after him.

  He was brushing his way through a curtain of twigs that snapped back and hit her in the face like thin whips. When she finally caught up with him he was standing as rooted as a tree with his back to her, as if he was playing statues, his arms sticking out from his body. In one hand he was holding the shoe. The fingers of the other hand were stretched out wide and flat and Isobel took hold of Charles’ sycamore leaf hand and together they stood and looked.

  At Eliza. She was lolled against the trunk of a big oak tree, like a carelessly abandoned doll or a broken bird. Her head had flopped against her shoulder, stretching her thin white neck like a swan or a stalk about to snap. Her camel coat had fallen open and her woollen dress, the colour of bright spring leaves, was fanned out over her legs. She had one shoe off and one shoe on and the words to Diddle-diddle dumpling ran through Isobel’s head.