Human Croquet (29 page)

Mothers and their sons,
Eliza laughed (rather spitefully),
how they want them.

Don’t you? No, I don’t suppose you do.

And in her room the Widow took off her layers of strict underwear and viewed her saggy, baggy wrinkled body with her ancient dugs and her chicken neck and cursed Eliza.

‘I have to go to the police,’ he said as soon as the Widow had given the children breakfast (‘First things first’) and got them to bed. ‘Stuff and nonsense,’ the Widow said. ‘You’re not going to hang over
her.’
But Gordon didn’t care. They could have erected the gibbet right there in the kitchen of Arden and he would have mounted the scaffold. ‘No, Gordon,’ the Widow said grimly, ‘absolutely, definitely not.’

‘Abroad?’ said Vinny, who’d never been further than Bradford, of course.

‘Abroad,’ the Widow said firmly.

The wood had been so much more than a wood for Vinny, it had been an ordeal by twig and bramble, spectre and will-o’-the-wisp and for this she entirely blamed Eliza. If she hadn’t finally stumbled into Gordon after hours of wandering and weeping she would have undoubtedly gone mad. Although, of course, what happened then was almost as bad.

Vinny was glad she was dead. That’s what she said to herself anyway, but she couldn’t forget the sight of Eliza’s rag-doll body under that tree. Vinny had touched the blood on her hair, felt the ice on her skin. Vinny had done something she never thought she would do – she’d felt sorry for Eliza.

And then suddenly he had to go back. He had to see his children. His mother. He had to go back to England and find the old Gordon. He didn’t realize that none of these things were the same any more.

‘You killed my mother?’ I prompt him. He looks up at me. In the dark his eyes are like black holes. When he opens his mouth – another black hole. He shakes himself like a dog, pulls himself together. ‘Well, what I mean …’ He stumbles then visibly pulls himself together. ‘What I mean is I killed her spirit.’ He shrugs. ‘I wanted her for what she was, but when I got her I wanted her to change.’

That’s an old familiar tale, but it’s all I’m going to get. Gordon pats my leg under the eiderdown – ‘Sorry if I woke you, old thing,’ – and disappears back into the night. The Dog follows him as far as the doorway, and then flops down on the threshold with a sigh of exquisite misery.

I struggle out of bed, feeling exhausted, it’s as if I haven’t slept at all. My party dress is hanging on the wardrobe door but it’s too early to put it on, that would be like asking an accident to happen. Despite what Hilary said about not bringing a present I have bought her a boxed set of Bronnley lemon soaps which are sitting gift-wrapped ready on my bedside table. I think it is best to smooth my passage into this sophisticated milieu of the Walshes. Although, of course, the only reason I want to be at this party is to steal away Malcolm Lovat from under Hilary’s little nose.

I come downstairs still in my dressing-gown. Debbie and Gordon are both in the kitchen, Gordon at the sink wrestling with tomorrow’s turkey, a small frozen butterball, lethal enough to fling from a catapult and destroy an entire castle and its occupants. The relation of dead poultry to male genitalia is still something of a puzzle to me but it’s hardly something I can discuss with Gordon, heroically delivering the turkey of a bloody plastic bag of giblets. We would be better off with a roasted suckling baby at our festive table, at least then there might be enough white meat to go round.

Gordon sees me and smiles. He seems to be completely ignoring his mad wife who appears to have turned into a mince pie factory – there must be a hundred of them piled on the kitchen table. I hope she’s not planning some kind of Christmas party. ‘You’re not planning a party, are you?’

‘No. Should I be?’ she asks, attacking a helpless rectangle of pastry with a fluted cutter like a little hollow crown. I decide to leave her to it.

In the hall Vinny is wheeling the baby up and down in its pram. The baby regards Vinny with a glum expression as if it had been expecting something better from life. Who can blame it? Vinny seems to be disappearing before my eyes, so thin and insubstantial that she’s more like a cloud of dense ectoplasm than a human being. She’s drying up, desiccating like a dead beetle and she’s developing a strange aura, a cross-hatching of cobwebs around her outline as if she’s fraying at the edges (it could be her nerves). Perhaps the baby’s sucking the life out of her.

The baby has a name at last, I suppose if it had been left much longer Vinny, the Keeper of Cat Names, would have ended up christening it Tibbles or something. Although Tibbles might suit it better than the new-fashioned name it’s been given – Jodi.

‘I’ll do that,’ I offer reluctantly, taking over the pram handle from Vinny who staggers off gratefully to her room, followed by several Cats who have been prowling around jealously.

Perhaps we could take the baby and leave it on someone else’s doorstep, they might be fooled into thinking it was an anonymous Christmas present. They might even think it’s a manifestation of the second coming – Jesus come back to earth as a girl. (Now that would be something.) But the baby doesn’t look like it wants to save the world, it looks as if it would settle for what we all crave in Arden – a good night’s sleep.

It’s quite a peaceful activity walking up and down the hall with the pram, rocking up and down on the handle occasionally. There’s no hurry anyway – ‘Don’t go too early,’ is Mrs Baxter’s advice, ‘there’s nothing worse than being first at a party,’ well, except perhaps for never being at parties at all.

‘I thought you had a party to go to?’ Debbie says, breaking into my reverie. I look at my watch in amazement – it’s several hours later than I thought it was. How can that be? I must have completely lost track of time. Again.

‘Time playing tricks, eh?’ Gordon laughs (almost) as I pass him on the stairs.

‘Where are you going?’ Gordon asks.

‘Just out,’ I say airily and a little frown pinches his brow. ‘I’d give you a lift,’ he says, ‘but – ’and he indicates the kitchen at his back, now so full of mince pies that they’re rolling out of the door. ‘It’s OK, I’ll get the bus,’ I reassure him hastily.

He reaches out and straightens my coat collar. But I have no time now for such
tendresse,
I am away to forgo my virtue and the clock’s upbraiding me with the waste of time. ‘How are you going to get back?’ Gordon shouts after me. ‘There’ll only be a skeleton bus service tonight.’

‘It’s OK. I’m getting a lift off Malcolm Lovat,’ (there’s nothing like being optimistic). Although the idea of a skeleton bus service has a certain novel – if somewhat ghoulish – attraction.