Human Croquet (30 page)

I certainly haven’t arrived too early, the house is buzzing with chatter and excitement and svelte girls – all of them spilling over with self-confidence and spilling out of expensive dresses which are definitely not hand-made. ‘Go in the living-room!’ the boy at the door bellows cheerfully at me above the noise, pointing at a doorway on the left from which The Shadows are twanging loudly.

Inside the living-room Hilary’s parents – ‘John and Tessa’ – stand smiling, as if they’re part of a wedding reception party, only they have their outdoor clothes on. Dorothy, Hilary’s older sister, is hovering around next to them, a vision in lemon tulle.

‘We’re going to leave it to you now,’ Mrs Walsh laughs gaily, ‘you young things all together, while we have to go to the boring old Taylor-Wests’ do, I really rather envy you.’ Who this statement is addressed to isn’t entirely clear but as the nearest person I feel a duty to laugh and nod sociably as if I know
just
what she means. Mr Walsh gives me a funny look and, turning to Dorothy, says, ‘Now, Dotty, you’ve got the Taylor-Wests’ phone number if you need us. Just remember, don’t turn the music up too loud and make sure you give all these poor fellows a Christmas kiss.’

‘Dotty’ laughs graciously and says, ‘Don’t you worry about us, Daddy, you get yourselves off – and have a wonderful time!’

So this is how normal families behave, I always knew it! (Why, they might even be happy.) Oh, how I love John and Tessa and Dotty and Hilary. Where is Hilary? Not that I’m really interested in Hilary, but she is the thread that will lead me to the object of my heart’s desire (Prince Malcolm). ‘Where’s Hilary?’ I ask in my politest voice and Dorothy turns to look at me and smiles indulgently as if I’m a quaint but backward relative. ‘I think she’s in the kitchen with the fruit punch,’ she answers and then laughs uproariously at this ‘joke’. ‘That didn’t sound right, did it?’ and Mr and Mrs Walsh laugh as well, bright, tinny laughter that could set my teeth on edge if I wasn’t in such a festive mood.

Mrs Walsh pulls her mink coat (the foxes at my neck flinch in distress) closer around her body and kisses Dorothy’s cheek goodbye. I’m half-expecting her to do the same to me but her eyes gloss over me as she turns to Mr Walsh and trills, ‘Come on then, Johnny, we’d better leave them to it.’

Hilary and Paul seem very interested in each other and not very interested in me and so I help myself to some of the newly fortified punch (which now tastes of orange squash and Ribena, with a hint of nail varnish remover – a slight improvement) and slope off to try and find somebody who might be interested in
me,
like Malcolm Lovat, for example.

Everyone at this party seems to know everyone else and yet I know nobody – I’ve certainly never seen any of these people in school, where have they all come from?

The Walshes‘ house has many mansions and I wander through the different rooms, each one alive with chattering party-goers, each one presenting a different tableau of conviviality. Trying to infiltrate these hard knots of people is like trying to get into a rugby scrum. Emboldened by anonymity, I try varying social tactics. ‘Hello, I’m Isobel,’ I say shyly on the outskirts of one group – and am completely ignored. Perhaps I’ve accidentally put on my cloak of invisibility.

‘Hello, my name’s Isobel, what’s yours?’ I try, more loudly, on the edge of another group and everyone turns round to look at me as if I’m an unwelcome imbecile. There’s no sign of Malcolm Lovat anywhere.

I overhear someone say, ‘God, have you seen that dress, what does she look like?’ and the other person replies, ‘A strawberry tart,’ and hoots with laughter. Do they mean me? Surely not. I slink back to the kitchen. Hilary has disappeared (if only) and been replaced by her brother Graham who’s grinning at me in an odd way. ‘Hello, Is-o-bel,’ he says in an affected kind of way.

Graham’s with a group of his college friends, all dressed in sweaters and corduroy jackets and stripy scarves just in case anyone mistakes them for anything else. To my horror I suddenly realize that one of them is Richard Primrose.

‘Surprise,’ he says,
snarf-snarfing.

‘Why are
you
here?’

‘Graham, my good friend here,’ he says, draping his extra-long arm around Graham’s shoulder in a drunken way, ‘invited me, of course. And I told
him
to invite
you,’
he laughs, jabbing in my direction with his finger. He can hardly stand, he’s so drunk. ‘This,’ he says, gesturing to the rest of the group, ‘is my kid sister’s friend,’ his voice drops to an artificial whisper, ‘the one I was telling you about.’ They all look at me as if I’m an exhibit in the zoo and I feel myself blushing to a shade that probably accessorises quite well with my dress.

They crowd around me, one of them says, ‘Hello, Is-obel, my name’s Clive,’ and another one says, ‘Hi, I’m Geoff.’ This is amazing, to be the focus of so much male attention and for a deluded second I imagine the dress must be weaving its magic and I’ve been transfigured into a magnetically attractive person. They are so close that I can smell the alcohol fumes coming off them, more beerily pungent than just vodka-laced punch. One of them puts his arm round my waist and laughing and smirking, says, ‘Well, Is-o-bel, we’ve all heard what a goer you are. How about giving me a try?’

‘Goer?’ I repeat, mystified, wriggling out of his unpleasant embrace. ‘Goer? What do you mean?’ In my mildly befuddled brain I wonder if a ‘goer’ isn’t some kind of snake – or is it an island? ‘Goer?’ I puzzle to the nearest boy? (Clive, I think, but they’re indistinguishable really with their little beards – you can just tell they’re all jazz fans.)

‘Yeah,’ he says, fingering the edge of one of my cap sleeves, ‘we’ve heard how accommodating you are, Is-o-bel. Izzie-Wizzie, let’s get busy.’

‘Old Dick here,’ another one of them says, nodding his head in Richard’s direction, Richard sniggers, ‘has been telling us that you do anything, Is-o-bel.’ He snorts with laughter. ‘Things that
nice
girls don’t do.’
‘Nice
girls,’ another one chuckles and mimes being sick.

‘Not like Ding-Dong here,’ another one, possibly Geoff, says (they’re as numerous as mince pies). ‘We’ve all heard what Dick gets up to with you, Ding-Dong.’

‘Yeah, pussy’s in the well,’ another one of them leers. The foxes at my neck growl protectively.

I glare in disbelief at Richard. ‘What on earth have you been
saying
about me?’ He has the grace to look slightly shame-faced but at that moment Dorothy strides into the kitchen with a tray of dirty glasses and the pack of boys all wheel round to watch Dorothy’s magnificent breasts and bottom. ‘What an arse,’ one of them sighs quietly and Dorothy says, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Isobel!’ with a disgusted expression on her face, before sweeping out again.

Slightly chastened for only a moment by Dorothy’s commanding presence, the baying pack now close in on me in a way that’s really quite frightening. They’re all built like half-backs and I don’t think that the fox tippet’s going to be an adequate champion if it comes to a contest between us. Richard’s keeping his distance on the outside of the circle, reviewing my discomfort with a supercilious smile. I vow to kill him at the first opportunity.

One of them starts singing,
Ding-dong bell, pussy’s in the well,
and Graham makes an amateur pass at my sweetheart neckline. Flight’s the only solution here and I turn to one of them and give him a hefty kick on the shin before shouldering him out of the way and heading out of the back door and into the garden.

I’m expecting the Walshes’ back garden to be as tamely suburban as the ones on the streets of trees, but it resembles a stately home in its landscaped vastness, it’s like unexpectedly entering another dimension. (Appearances can be deceptive.)

I sprint across the grass as fast as I can but my movements are hampered by the heels on my shoes and the large volume of pink I’m wearing, and I haven’t got very far when Graham does a rugby tackle on me, sending me crashing on to the frosted grass of the lawn. His hand slips down into the bodice of my dress, determined apparently on this particular goal, but I manage to jab him hard in the ribs with my left elbow and he rolls off me, yelping with pain. I have lost one of my shoes by now, and I hastily kick off the other one as I scramble to my feet.

Up and running again, I make for the far end of the garden, thinking there might be a gate out onto the street somewhere. Glancing behind, I see two of them racing across the grass after me. Why is this happening to me? I’m supposed to be waltzing rapturously in Malcolm Lovat’s handsome arms not running for my virtue.

I’m running now over a smooth, flat piece of lawn and only realize that it’s not an ordinary lawn when I trip over a croquet hoop and thud heavily to the ground. (Maybe this is what
The Home Entertainer
means by Human Croquet.) One of the boys is on me now, hanging on to me round the waist as I struggle to get up. I wrench myself free and hear something rip. Maybe it’s his head coming off.

I set off again at a gallop, the two boys hallooing and tantivying behind me. I notice a big silver birch growing by a perimeter wall and veer over to it thinking that I might be able to scramble up it and on to the wall but when I get to it I discover that its branches are too high to reach. ‘Gotcha, Ding-Dong!’ one of the boys shouts.

I’m done for. All I can do is stand and try and get my breath back, I feel sick from exertion and can’t raise a scream no matter how hard I try. It’s like being trapped in a nightmare. I lean against the trunk of the silver birch gasping for air like a dying fish and send up a small silent plea for help. Why do I have no protector in this world, someone watching over me?

I can’t even move, my legs feel as though they’re full of lead shot and my feet are rooted to the ground. One of the boys, Geoff, I think, runs straight up to me and stops, the mad Dionysian light in his eyes turning to confusion. He seems to look right through me. The other one, Clive, runs up to join him, and then bends over double to get his breath. ‘Where’d she go?’ he asks, panting. ‘This way, somewhere,’ Clive says, looking around everywhere except at me. ‘Fucking little prick-teaser,’ he adds and puts his hand out on to my left shoulder and leans his weight against it as if I’m just part of the tree.

But when I glance down at his hand, I see that where my left shoulder should be, where my right shoulder should be – where my entire body should be, in fact – is the silvery, papery bark of the birch. My arms are stiff branches sticking out from my sides, my previously bifurcated legs have turned to one solid tree trunk. I would scream now, but my mouth won’t open. Call me Daphne.

Everything begins to grow dim and blurred at the edges and the next thing I know I’m sitting on the cold ground, underneath the tree, with no sign of any of the boys, and Hilary marching across the lawn towards me. ‘What on earth are you doing out here, Isobel? You haven’t seen Malcolm, have you? I can’t find him anywhere.’

I trail back into the house on Hilary’s heels. There seems little point in telling her that I’ve just recently turned into a tree. I am not what I am. I am a tree therefore I am mad, a mad person subject to massive delusions and hallucinations. ‘Having a nice time?’ Hilary asks dutifully, her eyes already scanning the kitchen for someone else to talk to other than me. ‘Oh yes, absolutely,’ I reply, taking a cocktail sausage from a Prima cabbage that’s stuck all over with sausages on sticks so that it looks like it’s just come from outer space.

I go up to the first-floor bathroom to try and clean myself up a bit. There are twigs and dead leaves in my hair, my stockings are laddered to shreds and my stiff net petticoat is in tatters. This must be what ripped during my ordeal out in the back garden. The pink dress is no longer the colour of sugar and spice, it is now the pink of pigs and embarrassment and tinned salmon.

I remove the ragged petticoat from the dress with one final rip. A couple of dead leaves are caught in the holes of the net. I look around for a bin but there isn’t one so in the end I stuff the petticoat behind the hot-water tank in the airing cupboard. The tank isn’t lagged and is giving off an incredible amount of heat, bubbling away like a particularly perverted medieval torture instrument. It’s huge, Hilary would fit inside exactly.

When I come out of the bathroom I almost trip over Hilary, who’s now locked in a swooning embrace with Paul Jackson, the captain of the football team. She seems to move around the house at a rapid speed, perhaps she has a
doppelgänger,
a kind of body-double standing in for her during the more tedious moments. Not that her clinch with Paul Jackson looks exactly tedious – his hand’s thrust up her skirt and his knee is pushing her legs apart. I wonder what Mr and Mrs Walsh would say if they could see her now. Had they any idea how much (if any) alcohol was going to be consumed on their premises? Or how much debauchery was going to be unleashed the minute their backs were turned? I doubt it very much somehow. Still, it’s encouraging to see Hilary being unfaithful to Malcolm, she seems indeed to have forgotten all about him. She looks as though she’s about to throw up and when she comes up for air reveals a vivid love-bite across her windpipe, I almost expect to see blood on Paul Jackson’s teeth. ‘Isobel,’ she slurs, trying to focus on me and going cross-eyed with the effort. If only Malcolm could see us side by side now – it would be only too obvious who was the right girl for him.
(Me.)

‘Isobel,’ she repeats with some effort, ‘have you seen Graham?’

‘Graham?’

‘Graham, my brother,’ her head lolls forward on to Paul Jackson’s shoulder, ‘insisted you were invited.’

‘Did he? What as – the entertainment?’ I ask her indignantly, there’s only one reason he wanted me and that was because of the lies Richard has told to get his own back on me. I start explaining this to her but she’s dropped off to sleep and is snoring pig-like and Paul Jackson is already twanging her suspenders again. He catches my eye and says, ‘Sod off.’ So I do.

I head down to the living-room again. Out in the hall, a big grandfather clock strikes the half-hour – half-past eleven – where has all the time gone? (Where
does
it go? Is there some great time sump at the bottom of the world?) My sojourn as a silver birch must have disposed of hours of it.

A lot of changes have taken place in the living-room since I was last in it. Gone are the innocent Shadows, the bright overhead lights, the junior cocktail party chit-chat. Now it resembles nothing so much as an inner circle of hell – the dark writhing shapes, the tortured moaning noises of people
in extremis
– and it takes several seconds for the dark shapes to resolve themselves into necking couples – standing, sitting, lying – all fumbling at each other with orgiastic enthusiasm.

In the hallway someone’s being sick, and Dorothy, also ravaged by drink by now but still immensely practical, gets the vacuum cleaner out and starts hoovering up the vomit. I debate with myself whether I should tell her what a bad idea this is but decide to keep my meagre housekeeping tips to myself when she hoovers in my direction and snarls, ‘You’re really a bit of a tart, aren’t you, Isobel? And keep your hands off my brother, you’re not his type.’

Graham is on the stairs behind Dorothy, pumping up and down on top of a big-frocked girl, who presumably is his type, and I push my way past their intertwined bodies and run up the stairs to try and have one last attempt at finding Malcolm Lovat.