Human Croquet (42 page)

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Authors: Kate Atkinson

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: Human Croquet
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I can tell you something about Malcolm Lovat. When he drove off into his own future he went all the way across Europe and then back again. He worked in Paris as a hospital porter, stayed in Hamburg, lived with a woman in West Berlin and then moved to Corfu where he lived for a year in a commune of artists.
Eventually he came back to England, to London, and got involved in the music scene, becoming the manager of a group of teenagers from Hull with good teeth and hair and hardly any musical skill who went all the way to the top. By then Malcolm had got into wild excesses of drink and drugs.

I last saw him in a pub in Fulham, in 1967, when he was very drunk and morbid but none the less, when he suggested I stay the night at his place I did, because that was 1967 and in 1967 I slept with anyone.

He was completely different, of course – I suppose he’d become the person he used to have to hide inside himself.

In bed, in his staggeringly untidy garden flat in Chelsea, his limbs were marble, his flesh was ice. Sex with Malcolm Lovat was like the dance of death. ‘I always wanted you,’ he whispered, ‘I just never knew how to tell you.’ Of course, it was too late then. ‘We’re so alike,’ he sighed. But I don’t think we were, not really.

He died six months later in circumstances so squalid that the inquest became a
cause ceéleèbre
. Afterwards, I carried him around with me in a small secret place inside me (the heart, which was the same place I kept my mother). Just because you can’t see someone doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Vinny lasted the whole century, outliving both Gordon and Debbie, lingering on in Arden with the support of a succession of home helps. She celebrated the millennium and a hundred years of Vinnyhood by turning into a cat – small, tortoiseshell and disappearing into the night. Probably. I came back to nurse her at the end and somehow stayed on. It was my house after all.
I was successful by then – I wrote historical romances, (under my own name – an appropriate kind of name) – and Arden was a good place to work in. I turned the dining-room into a study and hired a man to clear the garden and trim the hedges so that I had a view of the Lady Oak. The tree didn’t last long into the twenty-first century, succumbing to some kind of terminal rot. I watched them chop it down, although they didn’t chop – but lopped all its arms off and then sliced through its trunk with huge whining chainsaws. I watched its death and wept.

My daughter, Imogen, came up to stay with me and then joined a self-styled tribe of tree people who were camped out in Boscrambe Woods preparing to fight the road contractors who were building the Glebelands Outer Ring Road. I drove out there sometimes, taking food parcels, video cameras, e-mail, anything else they wanted. When the time for the final battle drew nearer I lay in bed at night fretting over my aerial child hanging high up in the trees, climbing on webs and suspended by harnesses like some grubby Peter Pan. She was arrested several times and was finally bound over to keep the peace and when she refused was sent to prison for a while.

By that time, the contractors had moved in and trees that had stood for hundreds of years were felled in an afternoon. Not long after they’d started clearing the first trees someone spotted a long bone poking through the soil in the shovel of a JCB. The forensic pathologists eventually recovered nearly a whole skeleton from the spot that must have once been in the heart of the heart of the forest. A woman who died a long time ago, they said, too long for them to be able to say how she died, everything but the bones had decomposed and foxes had disturbed the body. Imagine – small animals eating the flesh, pulling at the bones, the eyelids closed by drifting leaves.

Hilary, who was having an affair with one of the forensic pathologists, told me that they had found a gold ring still circling one of the fingers. She said the ring was set with diamonds and emeralds and inscribed with the words ‘
To EF with all my love, G
’ and that that made her feel very sad somehow.

I believe my mother had such a ring but I knew she couldn’t be the forgotten body in the wood for I never thought of her as dead, and anyway she had made herself manifest to me not long before. I was standing in the queue in Tesco’s and the woman in front of me – in her late twenties, immaculately dressed in a tweed suit, narrow belted at the waist, high-heeled shoes and seamed stockings, black hair in a French pleat and makeup like an actress. She was just paying as I lifted out a plastic bag of fruit to put on the conveyer belt when the bag burst suddenly and the fruit went tumbling everywhere. We both bent down and scrabbled around picking up the apples – Red Delicious, waxed and polished so that they didn’t look at all real. I was so near to the woman that I could smell her grown-up scent –
Arpege
and tobacco. My own perfume by then. She stood up, teetering slightly on her heels, and handed me the last apple and she said,
There you are, darling
.

And then she was gone and I knew there was no point in saying anything to the check-out girl about her because some things are known only to ourselves.

Other lost things were also found – the Fairfax jewel, so long sought after, was discovered not far from the unknown woman’s body and took pride of place in the Glebelands Museum.
When I was clearing out after Vinny had gone I found a whole box of photographs – photographs not just of the Widow and her family and her ancestors, but of Charles and Gordon and me – and Eliza, a treasure trove of Eliza. An Eliza forever young, forever beautiful, squinting against the sun or laughing in the back garden. I wept for days over my newly found mother. Although in some ways the photographs made her even more unreachable and mysterious, it was, none the less, a relief to have tangible proof of her existence in this world.

Time carried on its thievish progress towards eternity. Imogen became a mother, and so I became a grand-mother. Mrs Baxter met a mysterious end, the only person who truly disappeared – walking, they say, into the side of a green hill one day. Some say that at the moment she vanished she was transformed into the Queen of Elfland and wore a dress of finest green and a crown of glittering gold. But that was just rumour.

The world carried on spinning. So many stories to be told, so little time.

How does the world end? In fire? With a great star falling from heaven? Imagine – the comet Wormwood ploughing through the night sky at 40,000 miles an hour on its apocalyptic journey to Earth, burning like a billion suns as it falls. Nearer and nearer. The mayhem that must follow – the hail and fire mixed with blood, the massive earthquake at the impact site, the crater a hundred miles wide, the rocks vaporized, the thunderings and lightnings, the molten rocks flung into the atmosphere and raining down on earth, a third part of the trees burnt up, and all the green grass, the great mountain that falls, burning with fire, into the sea, the sea turning into blood while the debris from the impact spreads across the skies, so that the sun and the air are darkened, extinguishing the moon and putting out all the stars. Imagine.

Or in ice? With no cataclysm, only slow decay, the stars burning out, the black holes sucking in everything around them and the slow gravitational dance of death stretching the elastic universe further and further apart. A slush of sub-atomic particles. Pea-soup.

Or in green? Imagine the wood at the end of time. A great green ocean of peace. A riot of trees, birch, Scots pine and aspen, English elm and wych elm, hazel, oak and holly, bird cherry, crab apple and hornbeam, the ash and the beech and the field maple. The blackthorn, the Guelder rose and twined all about – ivy, mistletoe and the pale honeysuckle where the dormouse nests.

The forest will be full of flowers, snowdrops and primroses, bluebells and cowslips with pearls hanging in their ears. Woodruff and herb Robert will grow, columbine, lords and ladies, Solomon’s seal and the heart-leaved valerian, enchanter’s nightshade and ox-slip, love-in-idleness and the common dog violet.

On the forest floor the insects work hard – click beetles and the robber flies, weevils and hornets, slugs and snails, the spiders and the patient earthworms. And the invisible life, the amoeba and bacteria cleaning up and recycling.

The sound in the world now is birdsong – the joyful treble of the mistle thrush announcing spring, the chaffinch singing for joy, the beautiful trilling of the wood warblers. Blackbirds and robins, soft wood pigeons and pied flycatchers, the long-eared owl and the greater spotted woodpecker, the world belongs to them now.

And also to the voles and the badgers, the squirrels and the bats, the hedgehogs and the deer and the little foxes that play untroubled by hound or man.

And, finally, the wolves come back.

Here and there in the green and gold of the sunlit wood flicker the fragile purple emperor, the white admiral, and the Duke of Burgundy fritillary. Soft moss and ferny green and the splash of toad and frog in the dark ponds in the cool glades. The song thrush in the trees spins his threads of song three times. Lilies of the valley and heart’s tongue fern crowd the shade. The tiny wren bird hops from branch to branch and the pearl-bordered fritillary kisses the strawberry and the wild thyme. The smell of sweet musk roses and eglantine.

Autumn must come.
Et in arcadia ego
. The surreal, sprouting landscape of the fungi takes over – the pennybun caps, King Alfred’s cakes and Jew’s ears, stink-horns and witches butter. Everything is mould. Angels’ wings sprout from the rotten conifers and elf caps run riot on the oak stumps. The last powdered Quakers and Kentish glories visit the night. The soft
hoo-hooo
of the owl fades. The leaves fall, drifting down like feathers. The nights draw in.

Colder and colder. One day, the last bird sings its feeble farewell and drops like a stone. On another day the final leaf falls and no more buds come. In the beginning was the word, but at the end there is only silence.

I am the storyteller at the end of time. I know how it ends. It ends like this.
‘Ah see ye not that broad broad road
That lies by the lily leven?
O that is the way of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to Heaven.
‘And see ye not that narrow road,
All beset with thorns and briers?
O that is the way of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.
‘And see ye not that bonny bonny road,
Which winds about the ferny brae?
O that is the road to fair Elfland,
Where you and I this night maun gae.’
From ‘Thomas the Rhymer’, Anon
A GOOD GAME FOR A PARTY
A game which provides little exercise, but plenty of laughter, is
Human Croquet.
A large number can take part, and no previous experience at all is required.
First the ‘hoops’ must be placed in position – scattered about the field, in approximately the same fashion as for real croquet. Each hoop consists of two people who stand facing each other, with hands clasped and arms raised so as to make an arch under which another person can walk. It will not be necessary for the hoop to remain in this position all through the game; it is quite enough if the two people assume it whenever a player is wanting to pass.

Each ‘ball’ is a person who is blindfolded, and who does not move except when ordered to.

Finally, there are the ‘players’, each in charge of a ‘ball’.

As far as possible the game follows the style of ordinary croquet. Each player has one stroke in turn, and is allowed an additional one when his ball passes through a hoop or hits another ball.

To begin the play the first player gets his ball on to the starting line, standing behind him gripping his arms, and aims him at the first hoop – which of course the ball cannot see. Then the player says ‘Go,’ and the ball trots forward, until his owner calls ‘Stop.’ If the ball has passed through the hoop another ‘stroke’ is allowed; if not, the second player makes his attempt.

Every ball must run in a straight line, and must promptly stop when ordered. When two balls collide the one that is struck stays where it is, but the other is given another ‘stroke’, and ordered off afresh. No player may speak to his ball while it is in motion, except to stop it, nor touch or re-direct it in any way.

That player wins who first gets his ball through all the hoops, in their proper order, and back to the starting line, or to a post at the middle of the ‘court’.

Interest and fun is added to the game if each player and his or her ball are made to wear some distinguishing colour – either ribbon or hat or rosette, so that couples are more obviously linked.

Hoops must never move from their stations, and must give no indication of their whereabouts to oncoming balls. When one game has been played the players and balls exchange roles.

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