Human Croquet (40 page)

It’s like Alice waking up and finding she dreamt the looking-glass world. It is difficult to believe that all those things that seemed so real have not happened. They felt real then, they feel real now. Appearances can be very deceptive.

She turns to look at me and the milk boils over. I snatch the pan off the cooker and turn off the gas. Debbie clutches her stomach and gasps. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask her more urgently. ‘Have you got a pain?’ She nods her head and grimaces. I coax her through to the living-room and she sits heavily on the sofa.

‘God, that was horrible,’ she says.

‘But you’re all right now? Shall I fetch Gordon?’

‘Oh no, don’t be silly,’ she says, ‘I’m fine, I just –’ She breaks off and gives a little scream, clutching herself round the middle. ‘I’ll call the doctor,’ I say hastily. Her eyes open so wide that they look almost big, she takes a huge breath of air and chokes on the word ‘No!’

‘No?’

‘No,’ she grunts, ‘s’too late.’

‘Too late for what?’ But she’s kneeling on the carpet making strange gestures at me and I shout for Vinny to come. ‘Something’s wrong with Debbie,’ I tell her, ‘get the doctor!’ Debbie screams again, not a high-pitched noise but a kind of groan that comes from some primitive place she didn’t know existed inside her.

She’s right, it’s too late, the baby’s head has already appeared. ‘Bloody hell,’ Vinny says succinctly. ‘Where did that come from?’

Vinny, more the midwife from hell than Queen Mab, gets down on the floor with Debbie while I rush and put the kettle on because we all know that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Debbie grunts and huffs and puffs and nearly blows Vinny down in her effort to give birth to this sudden child. The Dog stands by, head cocked to express interest, ears pricked to show it’s ready to help if necessary.

Vinny has a skirmish trying to get her to lie on her back but Debbie screams, ‘Not bloody likely!’ between two particularly violent contractions and then suddenly the baby shoots out and is caught – to her everlasting surprise – by Vinny. Vinny gets the first yell in, ahead of the baby and Debbie asks, quite calmly, for her dressmaking shears and with one confident
ssslicing
of blades sets the baby free of her. ‘Has that kettle boiled?’ she asks me impatiently. ‘I’m dying for a cup of tea.’

‘Your sister,’ Vinny says, quite tenderized by so much emotional trauma and hands me the scrap of baby, wrapped now in a towel.

‘Your sister,’ I say to Charles who comes home from work at that moment and takes the baby from me automatically but then nearly drops it. ‘Sister?’ he says, utterly baffled. Debbie chuckles and Vinny lights up a cigarette and I have to explain to him. Gordon comes home from work and Charles passes on the parcel, saying, ‘Your daughter.’ Gordon’s mouth drops open, ‘My what?’ and I jump up and explain to him that it’s not me, shrunk and gone backward in time but a whole new surprise Fairfax. ‘Just like that?’ he murmurs in amazement.

The baby already sprouts a crest of soft red-gold hair from its ‘Fontanelle’, I tell Charles knowledgeably.

‘Fancy that,’ Debbie says, ‘she’s got Charles’ hair. Someone in your family must have been red-headed, I wonder who?’

‘It must be a recessive gene,’ Gordon says quietly, as if this idea makes him sad somehow.

Apart from the red hair there are few similarities between this baby and the prototype doorstep baby. We call the baby Renee.

I stand up. If I look very closely at the trunk of the tree I can make out the famous faint initials of ‘WS’. I embrace the Lady Oak like a lover, feel its bark, its age, its electricity. I close my eyes and kiss the faded initials. What if it really was Shakespeare himself who carved his name here? What if we had both touched, embraced, admired, this same tree.

I call the Dog, we must be away – before the fairy king and queen make their appearance in the field. ‘Ah, Isobel,’ Mr Primrose says, striding towards me, his ass’s head under his arm, ‘come to watch the performance?’ What fools these mortals be.

The sun setting behind the Lady Oak bathes the green in gold. This is an ideal thing. Not a real thing. I sigh and turn away.

He’s there. He’s lying on my bed, one cynical, quizzical eyebrow raised at me, a lopsided smile as he watches me. I know him. I’ve always known him. Spaniel eyes and chestnut hair. Not yet bald, slightly greasy. Leather boots. Doublet and hose and rather grubby linen. I walk over to the bed and sit on the edge, next to where he is sprawled. It’s very warm in this room, under the eaves. There is a strange quality to the air … like magic, only less real.

I have only one question for him. ‘It
is
all about death, isn’t it?’ I say to him. He’s chewing a stalk of grass. A wood-pigeon on the dragon-scale slates above our heads gives a soft trill. He throws his head back and laughs. His breath smells of liquorice and he doesn’t answer, only extends an arm towards me. ‘And the end of the world, and time’s thievish progress?’ I persist, but he just shrugs.

If I take his hand will I go beyond time for ever? His forearm is curved and manly, a dusting of dark auburn hair. His fingernails are dirty.

The only sound is that of opalescent fairy wings, beating in the dark air and the sweeping of the tiny fairy brooms, cleansing our house. I take his hand. I let him pull me down next to him. I let him kiss me. He tastes of cloves. We melt into one and time collapses.

Only the imagination can embrace the impossible – the golden mountain, the fire-breathing dragon, the happy ending.

Everyone was made to admire the jewel he gave me for my wedding present – but for all its gold and emeralds it was still a picture of the dance of death which, if you ask me, is not such a pretty jewel to give your bride on her wedding day. I, of course was as much to be viewed by his fawning retinue as were his trinkets and baubles. He displayed me to his assembled company, lifting a strand of my hair and observing me with his thin-lipped smile. ‘Scotch,’ he said, as if I was a prized savage creature, and I corrected him, for that is a kind of mist.

On our wedding-night I began to understand what kind of a man it was that I had married. But I will not speak of it, only to say that he knew more tricks than the de’el himself. And then a few more. And now, also, I understood what manner of man it was he gathered around himself in his little court, the more corrupt and depraved, the more my master liked him. They pandered to his whims and inflated him like a puffed toad.

And as for my Lady Margaret … Sir Francis claimed Lady Margaret was his ward, but there was no document to this effect, no record, no provenance for her at all. He claimed she was the bastard of his dead brother Thomas, but rumour had it that she was his own ill-gotten child. Rumour would also have had it (there was much rumour in that God-forsaken country) that his relationship to her was far from that of protector.

Nothing there was as I thought it would be.