Human Croquet (41 page)

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Authors: Kate Atkinson

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BOOK: Human Croquet
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I came upon my lord and his so-called ward in a position which did not suggest consanguinity, unless it was customary practice in that country for an ‘uncle’ to be so familiar with his ‘niece’. I thought Lady Margaret a sly thing, she would never meet my eye, only bob her demure little curtseys, yes m’ladying and no m’ladying to me. Yet I was a harsh judge of her for she was barely sixteen, nothing but a child, and was as much prisoner as I myself was.
She had a tutor still, as if she was a royal bairn and spoke three languages and sang very prettily. My Lady Margaret’s tutor, a Master Shakespeare, wrote Sir Francis an epithalamium, full of flattery of my lord, which was this tutor’s character. These folk were not fit company for any woman.
The first time we met was as I walked in the wood one spring morning. He was on his black pony and stepped off the path and dismounted for me to pass and bowed his head almost to his knee and I remembered that he thought himself a gentleman. He said nothing, but as I passed I saw that my good hound Finn, a very discerning animal, could not stop his tail from wagging at Master Kavanagh, which was the stamp of his approval.

I came unannounced into my Lady Margaret’s bedchamber – suspicious, thinking I would catch my husband in her embrace – and instead saw my Lady Margaret’s naked back – thin and supple as a deer, a young girl’s back of arcing blades and knuckled spine – and covered over all, as a map of the world, with a vast expanse of black continent – here and there shaded in yellow or purple. She covered herself hastily but not before I voiced my distress.

Who had made these vile marks? But I did not need to ask, my heart could tell me the answer. ‘My lord has a most foul and unnatural temper,’ she whispered. I told my husband, who was in his cups as ever, that she was not his dog to be whipped. In answer, he threw me across the room.
The first time we spoke was in the wood. I knew him well by then, our paths had crossed many times in the great forest, each time he bowed low and did not speak so that I began to wonder if he was dumb. But he was a man of few words, unlike our Master Shakespeare who gabbled like a goose. Master Kavanagh had that look about him, as if he felt himself to be no man’s servant. I could tell.
I was often in the forest, it was the only place in my lord’s domain where peace still reigned, for there was no peace to be had in the sty that was my lord’s house. I was not mistress there, the lord of misrule had sway. In the forest, I could imagine myself to be mistress of all the trees, they bowed their branches in obeisance, rustled their leaves in a murmur of fealty.

‘My lady will catch cold,’ he said, startling me half to death, for I had not seen his soft approach and my dog Finn was sleeping on the watch. But Master Kavanagh was no enemy. He wore a puzzled frown as if he could not understand why the mistress of so much should be making do with so little – and it is true I was not a happy sight, sitting on the ground in the cold and the drizzle under the shelter of a great oak tree. Wrapped in a thick wool cloak and with only my wet hound for company I was truly no better off than one of the serving-girls. And the first time I touched him was when he held out one of his brown, old-callused and new-blistered hands and said, ‘My lady, please, get up off the cold ground.’

I would my lord had looked at me with his eyes.

My Lady Margaret was with child. This was obvious to all. We need not ask the father. How came Lady Margaret into this den of vice? She could not remember, she was but a little child, she said. She had had no mother, no sister, no friend or comforter all those years. Her childhood had been stolen from her. ‘My lord has had me since a child,’ she said. She meant in every way.
Her cheek was pale. Her tutor feigned indifference for he was my husband’s pet, but he was not bereft of Christian feeling. ‘My lady is dreadful pale,’ he said to me, stopping me in the dark corridor and I replied, ‘Aye, as pale as any glass.’ I knew he had a fondness for her himself, I had seen the tender looks he gave her when he thought himself not overlooked.

There were no torches lit in the hallway, all was darkness, a single tallow candle waved wildly in the draughts. The wind had residence in this wicked house. Poor Shakespeare’s face was all craters and hollows in the feeble light, like the moon. I could see his skull. I could see the tear in his eye glitter and reminded him that he had behaved as badly as any man in my lord’s retinue. But he had me by the sleeve and would not let me go and I had to comfort him and tell him I would look after her.

The first time I saw him naked was in the heat of that summer when my Lady Margaret swelled and my lord grew blacker and the house that was so cold in winter became a sweltering stew.
I was sitting under a great tree, flapping away the forest flies with my hand, in a doze of heat, when the noise of chopping raised me from my slumbers and, treading quietly on the mossy path, I was able to view Master Kavanagh at work, chopping down a tree half-felled in the great winter storms. He was stripped of leather jerkin, and of his sark also, so that I was able to admire the fine brown skin of his back with its coat of sweat, like dew and the black curls of his hair lying damply on his neck. And much more. For a moment I could think of nothing but what he would feel like if I reached my hand out and ran it over his skin.

Lacking all shame, I followed Master Kavanagh deeper into the forest and when he left the path I left the path also and when he divested himself of his nether garments it would have taken a deal more than self-will to turn my head and not watch him dip himself in the cool black pool where the flag irises waved and the frogs were startled.

He knew I was there, he was a man who could hear the tread of the deer and the rabbit, who could hear the leaves unfurl and the cuckoo sleep, but he did not turn around – for he was a gentleman, remember – but continued with his exhibition of himself. And I was most pleased with what I saw. Sir Francis was no picture, he had nor flesh on his bones nor hairs on his head and his breath was rank and his farting more so. Naked, we are equal before God, they say, but I think Master Kavanagh would have seemed more noble than my husband.

I watched my son, who was a sickly thing, tainted with my lord Francis’s thin, bad blood, playing hoopla on the lawn. Maybe my husband had fathered something more robust on the Lady Margaret. She sat weeping by the fish pond, the great mound of her belly shaking with her grief. My lord had ordered her to a nunnery.

I saw him in the kitchens when I went to speak to the cook, for I had some say in my kitchens still, if nowhere else. He was sitting at the big scrubbed table eating bread and cheese. He was hardly ever seen in the great house, he had his own rough cot in the forest where, I had heard said, the deer would come to his door and feed from his hand. But that was probably rumour too.

I blushed. He blushed. We blushed. We were caught in the cook’s disapproval. ‘Manners,’ she said to him and hit him on the back of the head with a clout and he stumbled to his feet and laughed, then bowed and said, ‘Lady?’
I had never been this deep in the wood, never trod on this path before. Though I knew where it led. It led to great danger. It led to the little house in the heart of the forest. The forest paths were deep in leaves, like gold.
The fire was dead and the ashes were cold. Half a stale loaf was on the table, a rotten apple, a burnt-down candle. It was like a still life of what must come to us all, when we will dance with death and have our foot finally stilled. I shivered in the cold air.

But then his little dog came bounding over the threshold and he himself filled the doorway, silhouetted against blue October sky.

He did not bow. I thought he would say that I should not be there but he said nothing, only entered his own house as if it were a stranger’s, delicately, with trepidation, like a half-tamed deer. So that I had to encourage him and hold out my hand. And so he moved closer and stood before me, closer than he had ever been before, so close I could see the new-shaved bristle on his chin, the greenness of his eyes, the fleck of hazel that seemed gold. ‘Well, Master Kavanagh,’ I said, rather sternly, for my nerves were somewhat frayed, ‘here we are.’

‘Here we are indeed, my lady,’ he said, which was a very long sentence for him. And he took a step closer, which brought him very close indeed, so I took a step back and so we jigged prettily for a while until I had nowhere to go, for I was pushed up against the table. I could feel the heat coming from his body, see the sharpness of his eye-tooth and the fine shape of his top lip.

First the burnt-out candle went flying with a great clatter and then the rotten apple went rolling to the far corner of the room. And heaven only knows what happened to the loaf of bread. Then there was no more speaking, only the exquisite moans and dreadful sighs that must accompany such violent delights.

* * *
Lady Margaret was with us no longer, hanged herself from a tree in my lord’s apple orchard with rope from the stables. A gardener found her, dangling like a common felon, in the early light of morning, the babe already still in her womb. I locked myself in my room and wept fierce tears all morning and would answer to no-one, until Master Shakespeare wore me down, knocking at my door to tell me he was going and I replied that he may go to hell for all I care, but eventually I opened the door to him. He kissed my hand and said there was nothing to keep him at Fairfax Manor now and I told him he was right for there was no future for any of us in that accursed house.
He was leaving with the actors who had been with us and at whose words our poor Lady Margaret had both laughed and cried such a little time ago. These players were acquainted with our Master Shakespeare from his previous life and it was ‘Our Will’ this and ‘Our Will’ that and he was more than happy to join their baggage carts. I wished him well, though he was something of a weasel. He had already left wife and children and now he was leaving us. ‘You must do likewise, madam,’ he whispered, as he brushed my hand with his lips and I nodded my head and smiled for my husband had entered the room.
I had to walk through the forest at night to reach his little cottage the night that we left and there were many times I was feart to death, not by those things that I could see, but by those I could not.
We went on his black pony for the grooms would have been disturbed if I had saddled my fine dappled mare. It pained me more to leave my dappled grey than it did to leave my son, for he was a boy in his father’s image, only weaker. I was already carrying Robert Kavanagh’s child in my belly and I cared to take nothing of my husband’s with me. But I would take my dog. For he was a very good dog.

We left under the cover of the cloak of darkness but my husband was canny and had us followed and would have killed us with his arrows but he was not the great shot that he always liked to think himself. He would have to make do with a fine plump deer instead.

I ripped his not-so-pretty jewel from my neck and flung it through the trees and I felt Master Kavanagh flinch a little for that jewel would have paid our way into the unknown, but no matter. And the last time I saw my lord Francis, he was scrabbling in the leaves for his precious trinket. I would have taken all my fine silks off as well and gone from him as naked as Eve, but the leaves were already dropping from the trees and I would not freeze of the cold.

Robert Kavanagh put his arms around me and we trotted quickly on our way, our dogs bounding on ahead. He was my shelter and my safety, he was as strong as a great oak and as gentle as my hound. If you had known the full troubled history of my life, you would have sped me on my journey with many a blessing. A great happiness seized me at that moment, as if I had been given a vision of paradise.

‘And where will we go, Master Kavanagh?’ I asked him, when we reached the northern edge of the forest. And he turned in the saddle and smiled at me, showing his good teeth and replied, ‘The future, my lady, we shall ride into the future.’

FUTURE
STREETS OF TREES
The whirligig of time spins on. The world grows older. People live their lives, each life filling all the time available and yet – on the grand, cosmic scale – taking up less time than the tick of the clock.

Audrey became one of the first women to be ordained in the Church of England. She married a teacher with a beard and had three children. Her parish was a run-down area of Liverpool where she occasionally did a small amount of good (which is probably the best we can hope for). All three of her children, when they were babies, looked like variations on Arden’s imaginary doorstep baby. Perhaps that baby was a kind of ideal baby.

Audrey grew into being a mystic and a universalist, believing that every man, woman and child, every animal and plant, was a revered example of the unity of creation. And in this, we must presume, she was correct.

Six months pregnant, Carmen died, along with Bash, in a car crash in 1962.

Eunice married an engineer but never had her two children. She worked as a geologist for an oil company, digging down into the history of the earth, but then her life took a quite different turn and eventually she became an MP for the Liberal Democrats. She died of lung cancer when she was fifty-two and her funeral was surprisingly warm-hearted and generous. I missed her.

Hilary became a solicitor, married a doctor, had two children, divorced the doctor, married a journalist, had another child (born with a slight mental handicap), became a barrister, divorced the journalist, became human. Became my friend.

To the gods, looking down on earth, our lives might seem this simple.

Charles went to America and ended up on the West Coast working in the movies as a director of cheap science-fiction films, reviled by the critics and hopelessly unsuccessful at the box office but, as time went by, he came to have a cult following and by the time he was in his sixties he was in constant demand for retrospectives and chat shows and lecture tours and even had a television mini-series made about his life. Charles had a succession of beautiful blond wives and beautiful blond children and enjoyed his life enormously.

Debbie and Gordon were middling happy for the rest of their lives. Their baby, Renee, my sister, grew up to be a perfectly normal, cheerful person and ended up working as the senior secretary in Hilary’s practice.

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