Human Croquet

by Kate Atkinson

  ‘That’s lucky, I expect,’ Malcolm whispers, and puts his arms round me. His breath is warm on my frozen cheek. This is it then. I close my eyes expectantly … ‘Time to go home,’ he says suddenly, and ploughs back through the snow, dragging me by the hand. I expect if we weren’t still full of Beefeater’s anti-freeze we’d both be dead of the cold by now.

  We find the car covered in a thick eiderdown of snow and have to brush it off with our poor ungloved hands. The tyres spin on the snow as the car reverses on to the pristine road. The snow has stopped falling now and we slip and slide down the twisting road. ‘I think you’re the only person I can be myself with,’ Malcolm says, more articulate than he’s been for hours. Why does everyone have so much trouble being themselves?

  He glances across at me to check whether I understand what he’s trying to say and from nowhere a deer suddenly appears ahead of us, caught in the headlights. Nightmarishly mute, I lift my hand and point at it. Malcolm carries on blithely about his true self and his problems finding it but then he follows the direction of my pointing finger and horrified stare and says, ‘Oh shit—’ It looks exactly like the deer we’ve just seen in the wood (although they all look alike really) but this is no time to be making comparisons. Not such a lucky deer, after all. Time starts to slow down. Malcolm slews the car to one side to try and avoid the deer. I can see it clearly – its eyes rolling, wild with terror, its muscles moving and rippling beneath its velvet skin as it gathers itself into one great desperate leap.

  The deer jumps free. And so does the car – taking off, jumping clear of the road, flying slowly through the air, gliding down the steep bank at the side of the road as if it had wings, all in perfect silence, as if the soundtrack to the world has been turned off, but then it hits the ground for the first time and sound returns suddenly – the noise of metal rending and glass breaking, the sound of the world ending, as we bounce off the snowy ground, splintering a young tree, crashing through gorse in a mad flurry of snow, the car an unstoppable wild animal intent on self-destruction before finally being tamed by a big sycamore standing sentinel in the frozen field.

  Everything’s quiet once more. No-one will ever find us here. I feel very tired but also very peaceful. The words to ‘Silent Night’ run through my mind. We could sing to keep our spirits up but it seems that neither of us is capable of opening our mouths; when I try to make the words come out they stick to my tongue. I can’t move my head at all in fact. Perhaps time has changed state again, now it is a solid, a great block of ice that has us trapped, frozen inside like flies in amber.

  By concentrating very hard on the muscles in my neck I manage to turn my head a few inches. I can just see Malcolm. His face is crazed with blood that glistens in the dark. He’s trying to speak as well. After a long time I finally understand what he’s trying to say. The words come out slowly, mis-shapen, grating in the silent night. ‘Help me,’ he says, ‘help me.’ But I know it’s no good because he’s already dead.

  KILLING TIME

  I wake up. I’m in my own bed. In my own room. In Arden. Gone are the snows (of yesterday), the trees, the deer, the car, the dead Malcolm Lovat. I’m wearing my nightdress and my body shows no sign of having been in a car-crash, although my brain is a wreck.

  My pink party dress is hanging on the outside of the wardrobe looking remarkably unsullied after everything it’s been through. It even looks stiff, as if it still has its petticoat attached underneath. The view from my window indicates quite different weather from yesterday – a mizzling, drizzling rain instead of a sharp frost. Did I dream yesterday? Was it just some dreadful, vivid nightmare?

  Out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of something on my bedside table – the gift-wrapped box of Bronnley soaps. I sit up and release them from their wrapping-paper. From somewhere down below I can hear the sound of the radio playing carols and the baby crying. Thoughtfully I hold one of the soap lemons in my hand where it sits heavily like a sour little moon. Angels and ministers of grace defend us and help me Boab.

  If yesterday was Christmas Eve then today should be Christmas Day – but of course I know that the laws of causality are as bent as time’s arrow and I am not the person to be trying to make predictions about sequential events.

  Perhaps there really is no permanent reality, only the reality of change. A disturbing kind of thought.

  On cue, Charles comes bursting into my room and says, ‘Have you got any wrapping-paper? I’ve only got one present left to wrap and I’ve run out.’

  ‘What day do you think it is?’ I ask, and he looks at me as if I’m mad (well, I am). ‘It’s Christmas Eve, of course. What day do you think it is?’ (Can time be this relative?)

  This is ridiculous. I put my head under the covers. Have I actually succeeded in calling back yesterday? Have I stepped in the same river twice? Is the whole dreadful day going to happen again? Isn’t it enough to have had the nightmare once without repeating it? How many rhetorical questions can I ask myself without getting bored?

  Maybe I’ve died and gone to hell and this is my punishment – to live the worst day of my life over and over again for eternity.

  Perhaps I’m dreaming my life. Perhaps I’ll wake up and find I’m a butterfly. Or a caterpillar. Or a mushroom, a mushroom dreaming it’s a girl called Isobel Fairfax.

  Do I still have free will – maybe if I just stay in bed – not go to the Walshes’ party, certainly not go driving anywhere with Malcolm Lovat – then everyone will be safe. I close my eyes and try and force myself back to sleep (perhaps this is what cats are doing – sleeping to try and make things disappear. Dogs maybe), but I’ve murdered sleep as soundly as I’ve destroyed the laws of time.

  But what if, I suddenly think, opening my eyes and staring at the pink dress, what if it isn’t my malign influence that precipitated (or precipitates, or will precipitate – take your pick) events? What if they’re going to happen anyway? And if they’re going to happen anyway then maybe there’s something I can do to stop them. And then, even if Malcolm and Hilary and Richard still die, at least it won’t be my fault. Which is something.

  But there again – for all I know they’re dead already. I drag myself out of bed, like it or not, I’m going to have to find out what’s going on. I lift up the skirt of the pink dress, yes, there is the petticoat, intact and in place. I give a weary sigh.

  There’s no-one about downstairs – Vinny, Debbie and Gordon are not at their previous stations, although the mince pies know their place in the plot, piled high ready on the kitchen table, nicely dusted with icing-sugar like snow. I eat one, then another, then a third – I’m ravenous. I haven’t had anything to eat since last night’s stale custard creams, although, of course, it’s possible that I haven’t actually eaten them yet. Reality’s slipping away from me faster than I can think about it.

  I phone the Lovats. Malcolm answers. ‘Hello? Hello?’ he keeps repeating until I put the phone down because I can’t think of anything to say that won’t sound insane. I try the Walshes next and Mrs Walsh’s flutey tones penetrate my eardrum. I mumble something about Hilary and Mrs Walsh says she’s gone into town with Dorothy.

  I decide not to check on the Primrose household, I don’t really care whether Richard’s dead or not and two out of three isn’t bad going. But how to keep them alive, that’s the question. The kind of question that Charles could get his teeth into but there’s no sign of him either. Arden’s like the Marie Celeste, the only survivor of whatever invisible disaster has occurred is the baby (it’s indestructible) which is in its pram in the hall wearing its lungs out.

  I take it (I can’t bring myself to call it Jodi) out of its pram and try and soothe it but it’s in a terrible rage, screaming its head off (well, not quite), every so often its body going rigid and stiff as if it’s having a fit. Its face is red with anger and its little fists are bunched up furiously as if it would like to punch somebody.

  I try and wrap it in its shawl but it’s too awkward so in the end
I just kind of bundle it up like a cabbage and carry it round to Sithean. Maybe Mrs Baxter will be able to do something with it. And anyway I’d like to talk to somebody about what’s happening to me, and preferably someone I didn’t help to kill yesterday.

  There’s an eerie feeling of abandonment in the Baxter household as well. Sithean seems as empty and deserted as Arden. There’s no answer when I shout ‘Hello!’ to the empty air, the only sound the sobs and hiccups of the baby.

  In the living-room a fire is blazing in the hearth and the Christmas tree lights blink on and off, but whether they’re supposed to do that or it’s due to my electrical interference I can’t say.

  In the dining-room, the table’s been set with the best china and plates. Mrs Baxter makes almost as much fuss about Christmas Eve as she does about Christmas Day. If it was up to Mrs Baxter she would probably celebrate Christmas every day of the year.

  In the middle of the table there are red candles and each place setting has a cracker and a Christmas paper napkin – red with green holly leaves – twirled into a fanciful shape. A prawn cocktail in a wineglass sits on each plate, ready to be eaten.

  I sit down on one of the chairs and pull a lettuce leaf from the prawn cocktail and nibble at it while I try to figure out where everyone’s gone. Perhaps the Baxters have taken to slipping down wormholes in time as well. Perhaps the Baxters are at this moment celebrating Christmas in the eighteenth century or the Dark Ages. I smear some of the pink-coloured salad cream from the prawn cocktail on to the baby’s lips and it’s shocked into silence.

  Without meaning to, I find I’ve finished the prawn cocktail. Perhaps if I go round the table and eat the other two it would look better, then I could pretend there were never any to begin with. But too late – the back door slams and Mr Baxter marches down the hall, glimpses me through the open dining-room door, marches on and then doubles back and snaps at me, ‘What are you doing here? Sitting in my place? Eating my meal?’

  ‘Where’s Audrey and Mrs Baxter?’ I ask, jumping up from the table guiltily.

  ‘What an interesting question,’ he says in the voice he reserves for the pupils he considers to be the greatest idiots. His eyes are bulging with madness. ‘I mean where are they?’ he says, enunciating each word carefully. ‘Hmm, let me see …’ He makes a face of mock-puzzlement and looks down one end of a cracker. ‘No,’ he says, ‘they’re not in there.’ (How tedious it must be to live with Mr Baxter.) This pantomime goes on for some time until the volume of noise from the baby (it has its uses) drives him from the room and he goes up to his study.

  I carry the baby through to the living-room and sit on the sofa with it. The blinking lights on the Christmas tree make the baby quite peaceable. It’s stuck its fist in its mouth as if to force itself to be quiet and my heart goes out to it. It’s got all its life ahead of it to be unhappy in, it seems a shame it has to start so soon.

  The back door opens and closes. I hope this is Mrs Baxter and Audrey and not Mr Baxter coming in the house for a second time without having gone out first (you become paranoid pretty quickly once time starts breaking down, or breaking up. Or whatever).

  But thankfully it is Mrs Baxter and Audrey. They’re wearing their outdoor clothes – coats and scarves and woollen hats – as if they’ve just been out for a walk. ‘We’ve just been out for a wee walk,’ Mrs Baxter says, ‘to give Daddy a chance to calm down. He was in a bit of a stushie with himself,’ she adds with a rueful little smile. She looks incredibly miserable.

  At the sight of the baby Mrs Baxter goes into maternal meltdown and sends Audrey to look for its present under the tree. Audrey unwraps the baby’s present – a rattle (as if it doesn’t make enough noise already) – and gives it to the baby with a lovely smile. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Mrs Baxter says. ‘You’ll have a cuppie, won’t you, Isobel?’

  ‘Daddy,’ Audrey says when Mrs Baxter’s left the room, and then stops, apparently incapable of saying anything else. ‘Is in a bit of a stushie?’ I prompt helpfully. She takes the baby and cradles it protectively, resting her chin on the top of its red-gold floss. Her eyes fill up with tears and she makes a tremendous effort to stop them spilling over on to the baby. ‘Boys,’ she manages to say.

  ‘Boys? He thinks you’ve …?’

  ‘He’s convinced I’ve been with a boy,’ she whispers.

  ‘And have you?’ (She must have surely, how else can we account for the phenomenon of baby Jodi? Although if anyone’s a candidate for immaculate conception then it’s Audrey.)

  She looks at me with her big pained eyes as if I’ve just asked the most ridiculous question and holds the baby closer. It’s quietened down now, has fallen asleep in fact, its fist still jammed in its mouth, perhaps in case it’s tempted to blurt out the truth in its sleep. They look like the perfect nativity scene, Audrey with her lovely Mother-of-God kind of smile and the baby sleeping happily in her arms. Cautiously, with one hand, Audrey unbuttons her coat, unwinds her scarf, puts her hand up to her head and takes off her woollen hat – but instead of shaking down her lovely Mother-of-God kind of hair there’s nothing there. I gasp in horror at her shorn head, not the urchin cut of a hairdresser but the ragged shearing of a wartime collaborator. ‘Daddy,’ Audrey says.

  Mrs Baxter returns with a tray piled high with Christmas baking and tries not to look at the results of ‘Daddy’s’ stushie on Audrey’s head. She’s about to say something when we hear Mr Baxter pounding back down the stairs and we listen to his footfall as if we’re in a horror film awaiting the entrance of some unknown monster and it’s almost a relief to see he’s still human when he comes barging in the room and scowls at me and says, ‘Still here? You’re a bad influence. I expect it’s you who’s been leading Audrey here astray, isn’t it?’

  ‘Daddy, don’t,’ Mrs Baxter says in her most cajoling voice.

  ‘And you can shut your face,’ he says in response. He puts his own face a few inches away from mine, a bully’s stance, and says, ‘Well, Isobel, who’s Audrey been messing about with? Some boy’s had her, who is it? Not that ugly little brother of yours, I hope.’

  ‘Daddy, don’t,’ Audrey pleads.

  ‘You shut up, you little whore,’ Mr Baxter bellows, rounding on her, ‘giving yourself to boys, letting them do God knows what to you! Who was it? Tell me!’ Mrs Baxter’s jigging on the spot, flapping her hands as if she’s trying to learn how to fly. Mr Baxter takes something from the pocket of his tweed jacket and starts waving it around. Something dark and metallic and gun-shaped. A gun, in fact.

  ‘Your old service revolver,’ Mrs Baxter marvels. ‘I thought you got rid of that years ago, Daddy.’ Mr Baxter puts the gun down on the mantelpiece with all the Grand Guignol exaggeration of a pantomime villain – the same way, in fact, that he used to put his cane on his desk – so that his pupils’ minds would all focus on it. (I suppose we were lucky he never brought the gun in as a classroom deterrent.)

  Then he makes a move towards Audrey, grabbing her by the remains of her hair, pulling her in towards him and roaring at her, ‘Who?’ heedless of the baby which is screaming in terror. More to try and calm the baby down than to appease her father, Audrey finally answers his question and, in a very small voice, says, ‘But, Daddy, it was you.’

  I lunge at Mr Baxter to try and make him let go of Audrey without digesting what Audrey’s just said to him. The next thing I know – WALLOP – Mr Baxter turns and punches me in the face. The blow lands square on my cheekbone, a prizefighter punch, the kind that splinters bones and causes brain damage.

  I drop to my knees in agony, trying to cradle my entire head while fighting for air. I feel incredibly sick as if I’ve just been dropped from a great height.

  Slowly, I grow aware of a strange silence in the room. We all appear to have been paralysed, as if time has actually stopped. I imagine us frozen in this tableau for ever, but just then, Mrs Baxter’s cat, which has been disguising itself as a brindled antimacassar on the back of a Parker Knoll chair, suddenly r
olls over and falls off, thudding heavily on its feet on the carpet, then the fire crackles noisily and a lump of coal falls out sizzling on the hearth and everybody wakes up.

  Mrs Baxter murmurs, ‘Daddy?’ as if someone’s just told her the improbable answer to a question she’s long puzzled over. Then there’s a little intake of breath from Mrs Baxter that makes me turn and look at her. She’s staring, dumbfounded, at Audrey and the baby. It is obvious when you see them together, I suppose – they actually look quite alike, not just the hair and the small features, but the whey-faced expression of misery they both tend to wear. ‘Audrey?’ Mrs Baxter whispers as big teardrops roll down Audrey’s cheeks. Audrey really should have put on her catskin coat and fled as far as she could from Mr Baxter before we got to this dreadful state of affairs.

  Mr Baxter meanwhile walks calmly over to the fireplace, takes his pipe off the mantelpiece and knocks the ash out of it on the hearth as if nothing has happened. I watch as if in a trance as he re-lights his pipe, sucking hard on the stem so that the tiny volcanic glow in the bowl heats and cools, over and over again, until Mr Baxter’s encircled in a faint blue haze. How can he be so calm in the face of so much domestic mayhem? But then I expect that Bluebeard probably locked up his secret butchery and went and made himself a cup of tea afterwards.

  I grow suddenly aware of Mrs Baxter in the doorway, standing perfectly still, like a statue. She must have left the room and come back in again because in her hand she’s holding a carving-knife.

  I have actually managed to find a scenario worse than yesterday’s! Christmas in Sithean is like being trapped in a nightmarish game of Cluedo – is it Mrs Baxter in the hallway with the carving-knife, or Mr Baxter in the living-room with a gun? Next it’ll be Audrey in the kitchen with the candlestick.