The Skeleton in the Grass (10 page)

“Croquet,” he said, with no particular invitation in his voice. Never since she came to the Hallams had Sarah been told more clearly that she was a nursery governess.

Some obstinate instinct made her say: “I'll play.”

He looked at her insolently for a moment, then turned back into the doorway that led to the rest of the house.

“Come on, all the croquet players,” he shouted.

On the lawn outside the darkness was broken only by the lights from the house. A little knot of six players assembled, but they were watched from the wall of the house by the Major, a saturnine, unfestive presence. Simon introduced Sarah to nobody, and seemed to think it neither funny nor fun to play croquet in the dark. The squeals of laughter inside were not reproduced on the lawn. It was the oddest game of croquet Sarah had ever played. The near-darkness made it difficult at the beginning to see the hoops. Even when Sarah's eyes had accustomed themselves to the murk, it was not possible to see all the balls. It became clear after about ten minutes that Simon Killingbeck's team was the less proficient of the two. From that moment Sarah was conscious of oddities in the game—balls, mainly Simon's, that seemed to have been moved, discrepancies in the scoring, to his advantage.

Others, she felt sure, had noticed too. They did not protest. Simon was, after all, the son of the house. And of course they probably knew him better than to protest. Sarah wondered whether the Major was proud of his protégé's cunning. As the game was drawing to its close she realized the Major was no longer watching, and wondered which of the laughing groups he was making uneasy by his participation in their fun.

“Thank you for a splendid game,” said Sarah to Simon at the end. “It's always stimulating to play with someone who has the will to win.”

Inside the house the various festivities were going on with great zest and noise. Sarah looked in on the smallest guests, who were playing Happy Families, which was Chloe's favourite game. In another room the Killingbeck girls were amassing huge sums of paper money at Monopoly, and in the study Waddy was doing his performance from Dickens.

He was standing at a lectern, rather in the manner of
late photographs of the author himself, and performing with all the dreadful enthusiasm of the amateur actor.

“ ‘The African project at present employs my whole time,' ” said Waddy, his eye fixed on some distant, unhealthy shore. Ah, so he was doing Mrs. Jellyby. At least Oliver had got the book right. “ ‘We hope by this time next year to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger.' ”

He had a little knot of listeners, for whom no doubt this was an annual treat, or tour of duty. Probably like most customs this one had become enjoyable after a time. Certainly Lady Wadham seemed to be loving it, and plenty of the others were laughing dutifully. Sarah stood in the doorway for about five minutes, then felt she could slip away.

In the conservatory food had been set out. Most of the guests had been roped in for one game or another, but one or two had managed to resist. Sarah saw Dennis capture Elizabeth on her way from a game of Sardines, looking for another game to join. He was pressing her to some of the fare, and Sarah went over to join them.

The food was less than inviting—but then nobody came to the Waddies for the food, Dennis said. It was, as Elizabeth had prophesied, nursery food, and like nursery food it was lukewarm. There was an awful preponderance of jellies and junkets and tinned fruit with cream, but if one really looked one could find Cornish pasties, cottage pie and macaroni cheese, all kept warm on chafers. Sarah took a dish of kidneys that would have been nice if it had not entirely lacked salt or pepper in the preparation. Dennis and Elizabeth were already deep in a typically Hallam discussion about why mad women wore ankle socks.

“It's an observable phenomenon,” insisted Dennis. “And all over the country. Mad women wear socks in Scotland and Wales too.”

“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Elizabeth. “But does a taste for ankle socks drive you mad, or does madness somehow create a taste for ankle socks?”

“And are all ankle-sock wearers mad, and do all mad women wear ankle socks?” contributed Sarah.

“Ah,” said Dennis. “Here we must go carefully. It was our respected hostess who raised the question in our minds. And personally I would contend that Josabeth—”

“I could hardly believe that was her name,” said Sarah. “How unfortunate.”

“Yes, isn't it? Her father was a church organist with a passion for Handel. The name comes from one of his lesser-known oratorios. Anyway, I would contend that Josabeth, though eccentric, is by no means mad. If we certify her, we would have to certify half the House of Lords.”

“That would make the debates much less entertaining,” agreed Elizabeth. “Certainly madness requires more than a scatterbrain. It requires obsession. Apropos of which, Sarah, did Major Coffey get hold of you again?”

Sarah screwed up her face.

“We exchanged two words, unavoidably.”

“We evaporated when we saw him,” said Dennis. “It used to be our policy to be impeccably polite, if cool. I would find it difficult to keep to that, after all this.”

“I must say I was surprised to see him here,” said Elizabeth. “Not at all the Waddies' type. And what jolly game can one imagine him playing?”

“He seems to be here as Simon Killingbeck's friend,” said Sarah. “He stood watching us play croquet, but he didn't join in.”

“Have you been playing croquet with the Young Master?” asked Elizabeth, eyebrows raised. “And did he cheat?”

“He did.”

“He always does. That's why we never have the Waddies
over while he's at home. It's worst in his own home, because you can't say anything.”

“It seems so unnecessary,” said Sarah. “He made no effort to get the best players in his team.”

“You miss the point. If he
won,
it would merely prove that he was better at croquet. If he wins
by cheating
it proves that he is cleverer than everybody else. Oliver has declined to play with him for years, and so has Will. They refuse to turn a blind eye to it, and have terrific rows with him . . . Where is Oliver, by the way?”

“Haven't seen him for ages,” said Dennis. “He went in with Chloe to start the young ones off, but since then I haven't seen him. There are so many damned games in so many damned rooms, he could be anywhere.”

“You could hide yourself for Sardines and not be found for months,” agreed Elizabeth. “I was afraid I'd have to come out, and it'd be a bit like waving the white flag. Oh well, I suppose we'd better get back to the fray. Come on, Aged P.”

“Actually,” said Dennis, “I'm going to see if there is a little tiny room somewhere that is
not
devoted to board games or card games or ping-pong or billiards. I have a piece to do on D. H. Lawrence and Women, for the Sunday after next. I'm going to curl up with Frieda Lawrence, though I don't think I should like to in real life.
Not I, but the Wind.
Have you ever heard a sillier title? It sounds like an apology for belching.”

So Dennis went off in search of a bolt-hole, and Sarah and Elizabeth went in search of some other game to join. They were drawn towards ping-pong, but when they went in the direction of the appropriate sounds, they found that Simon Killingbeck had taken over the table, and was directing a tournament he was surely destined to win. They retreated upstairs, and found themselves welcomed into a game of Murder. All the
nicest
people in the county were
involved, Elizabeth whispered, and it certainly seemed that the game attracted a pleasant type.

“I love murder, don't you?” said Winifred Hallam to Sarah. They were waiting around for the next game to start. “I mean detective stories. Mostyn is awful, he says he never guesses them, and sticks with John Buchan and Dornford Yates. But not guessing the murderer is part of the fun, isn't it? Have you read
The ABC Murders?
It's pure heaven, and quite impossible to guess. Actually, I don't like the
game
of Murder quite as much . . .”

Nor, when it came to playing, did Sarah. Probably she would have done, had it not been for the recent incidents. They had made her jumpy—was someone doing something nasty in her vicinity, was she being watched? Murder in an old house rather increased the jumpiness. Mostyn Hallam was the sort of man who entered with an avuncular zest into games of this sort. “Ho-ho,” he would say as he strangled someone, “I've wanted to do this for years.” Or if he was not the murderer he would enjoy the girls' squeals if he brushed up against them in the dark in a way that Sarah wondered a little about. They only used the first and second floors of Beecham Park, since the ground floor was entirely given over to the various games, but still there was ample area to give Sarah at times a nasty feeling of eeriness, abandon, or—worse—the feeling that she had thought she was alone, but now realized she was not.

All in all Sarah was rather glad when they had finished with it.

“Oh dear,” said Winifred, mopping her sweating face. “It's like being a child again. Childhood
is
rather scary, often, isn't it?”

“Nonsense, it was pure fun,” said Elizabeth robustly. “I wasn't scared for a moment. I wish I could think we would play games like this during the Season!”

“Elizabeth—are you coming out? How delightful! I never
would have guessed you'd do it. You won't regret it. I enjoyed every moment of my coming-out Season . . .”

Helen, whom they had seen little of all evening, was in the hall looking for everyone when they finally went down. She had made the mistake, she said, of getting involved in the second game of Monopoly. By pure luck she had got marvellous properties, and in spite of a valiant struggle by the Killingbeck girls, had won. They had taken their failure rather as their great-grandfather would have taken the bankruptcy of his firm. “They seem to confuse it with real life,” said Helen. “It's rather frightening. I would have lost if I'd known . . .”

Anyway, where was everyone?

Chloe, apparently, had insisted on playing Happy Families the entire evening, and had somehow had her way by charm, cajoling or sheer bossiness. Oliver appeared through the front door while they were talking, and said he had been having a practice knock at croquet while the appalling Simon wasn't there to cheat. When Sarah and Elizabeth said that Dennis had intended to go to earth and read a book they organized a Dennis-hunt, and eventually found him in a primitive loo intended for the servants. He had a sheaf of shiny toilet paper covered with scrawl, and he said he had his piece on Lawrence and Women roughed out.

Downstairs was something of a free-for-all, as the party drew to its close. Since the Hallams knew almost everybody there, they had a great many goodbyes to say. When Mostyn and Dennis shook hands the former said:

“Remember what we were talking about last time we met, Dennis? You mark my words, the King's Matter will be out in the open before Christmas at the latest.”

“Mostyn, Will is fighting in Spain,” said Dennis, with traces of irritation. “I'm really not very interested in the King's Matter.”

“Oh, sorry, old man. I forgot. Bad business. Worse than I thought. But I'm sure it will all die down.”

Waddy and Lady Waddy had disentangled themselves from their various games, and they stood at the door to wave their guests goodbye, spooning junket into their mouths the while. “Spiffing fun,” said Waddy, kissing the ladies of the party, and shaking hands with the men. “Top-hole,” responded Dennis. “Your Mrs. Jellyby was marvellous.”

As the car drove off Sarah waved to them in the square of light in the middle of the façade. Behind them in the hallway she spotted Simon Killingbeck and the two lumpish girls. In the driveway people were milling around, saying farewells and finding their cars. And in a patch of light under an oak tree she saw the figure of Major Coffey, surveying their departure from beneath bushy, overhanging eyebrows.

They were all quite boisterous on the way home. They agreed they'd had a gorgeous time, and it was really lovely to let your hair down once in a while and be a child again. Dennis drove through the ink-black darkness, and left the car by Hallam's main entrance. There was nothing on the gatepost, nothing on the front door. Sarah did, when she pulled her bedroom curtains, think she saw an odd light, at the far end of the lawn as it dipped down towards the river. But she decided it was a trick of moonlight, and didn't think to investigate further.

Thus it was Pinner the manservant, early next morning, who found the body that was to change the course of Sarah's life at Hallam.

I
t was nearly forty years after she left Hallam before Sarah visited it again. By then it was a National Trust property, and she got in free with her member's card. She had one of her grand-daughters with her, and she walked around the house with something like apprehension in her heart. But all the old, family furniture of the Hallams' time had gone, replaced by solid Elizabethan and Jacobean pieces. Where Helen's picture by Sir Philip de Laszlo had used to hang in the hall, a be-ruffed and bearded gentleman stared belligerently out. Her grandchild was bored, and Sarah felt alien. It was like visiting present-day Bucharest with memories of the pre-war city—different in essence, however similar the frame might be. When the little girl tugged at her hand and pointed through the windows at the lawn, Sarah did not resist.

The grounds, at least, were largely the same, and though the grand-daughter was plump and serious, the sight of her running across the lawn brought a lump to Sarah's throat as she remembered the beauty of the child Chloe. (Chloe, whom she lunched with once a month in Soho, plump, nicotine-stained, and working for the
Sunday Times
colour magazine, a job which Sarah thought was beneath her.) The little signposts directing visitors to the Adventure Playground and the Garden for the Blind were a distraction at first, but as she strolled over the lawns, almost alone in
the May sunshine, the familiar magic reasserted itself and she felt an incredible peace. It was only when the little girl ran towards a weeping willow, silver-yellow with its new leaves, that a lump rose in her throat and she felt the urge to shout “No!” and run and gather her up in her arms.