Human Croquet

by Kate Atkinson

  Oh, and big boys too, Eliza said in her affected drawl, dragging hard on her cigarette and staring through narrowed eyes at Gordon, eating the Widow’s full cooked breakfast. I often show Gordon what’s what, don’t I, darling? Eliza smiled like a cat in the sun and the Widow turned the colour of her home-pickled red cabbage and looked as if she’d like to brain Eliza with the big chrome teapot that always formed the centre-piece of the table. Gordon stoically ignored all of this and, standing up, he took a triangle of fried bread from his unfinished plate and said, ‘Come on, old chap,’ (being an officer in the war had influenced his previously plebeian vocabulary) ‘I’ll give you a lift to school in the car.’ Forced to accept the inevitable, a halo of doom hovered over poor Charles’ striped cap. When he went over to Eliza to kiss her goodbye, she whispered fiercely in his ear, You tell me if Mr Baxter ever lays a finger on you and I’ll rip his head off and pull his lungs out through his neck. If there was one person in the world more frightening than Mr Baxter it was Eliza.

  Christmas afforded two weeks of respite for Charles and he spent many patiently maladroit hours making paper chains and fashioning decorations out of silver milk bottle tops. Lovely, darling, Eliza said, garlanding herself with a chain of milk bottle tops under the mistaken impression that Charles had made her a necklace.

  Gordon drove into the country and came back with an enormous fir tree, stuffed into the boot of the big black car, its roots still clagged with soil. Eliza stroked its branches tenderly as if it were a wild animal and said, Smell that, and they breathed in the scent of coldness and pine resin and something even more mysterious. Gordon tamed it by putting it in an old barrel wrapped in Christmas paper and stringing it with tiny coloured lanterns.

  Eliza made little dwarves from tissue and crêpe, their tissue-paper faces had crayon smiles drawn on hastily and match-heads for eyes. Their pipe-cleaner arms and legs clung for dear life onto the tree. Sweet, aren’t they? Eliza said to everyone, delighted with her handiwork and no-one had the heart to tell her how dreadful they were.

  For Christmas, Gordon gave Eliza a Victorian gypsy ring – gold with little emerald and diamond starbursts. Eliza held it against her pale cheek and said, Does it suit me? to Charles. The Widow viewed Eliza through hooded hawk eyes, angry at the thought of how much the ring had cost her baby boy. She handed over her own dull and dutiful mother-in-law present – a boxed set of monogrammed handkerchiefs.

  Gordon had bought Charles a magic set which was far too old for him. ‘You bought that for yourself really,’ Vinny said, as prickly as pine needles. (Vinny had not been herself since peace was declared.) Make her disappear, won’t you, darling? Eliza whispered (loudly) to Gordon.

  The Widow carved the Christmas pork, a paper crown askew on her bun of grey hair, and Gordon proposed a toast to the future, in French wine, and Eliza gave Charles and Isobel a glass of watered-down wine. The Widow sipped at her glass of blood-red wine and said, ‘Liberty Hall here – we all know that, don’t we?’

  Summer came in and brought with it new next-door neighbours. The old people who’d lived in Sherwood since it was built died within a week of each other and the house was sold to a Mr Baxter. The very same Mr Baxter – to Charles’ unending horror – who was the headmaster at Rowan Street Primary. It did seem particularly unfair that Charles, after dodging Mr Baxter all day at school, wasn’t even safe in his own house and garden. Charles was fated – whenever he kicked a ball it had to end up on Mr Baxter’s side of the fence, whenever he chose to shout at the top of his lungs, which with Charles was frequently, it was Mr Baxter who was snoozing in a deck-chair on the other side of the privet.

  There was a shy Mrs Baxter too. Younger than her husband and built to motherly specifications – short and soft with no hard edges, unlike bony Mr Baxter. Mrs Baxter changed the name of her house, getting the man who did odd-jobs for the Widow to take down the brass plate on the gate that said ‘Sherwood’ and replace it with a wooden one with the word ‘Sithean’ carved into it. ‘Waste of good brass,’ was the Widow’s opinion, though whether she meant metal or money was unclear.

  ‘She-ann’, Mrs Baxter explained to the Widow, was a Scottish word. Mrs Baxter was Scottish too and had a lovely accent, peat and heather and soft sandstone houses.

  The Baxters had a daughter – Audrey – the same age as Isobel. Audrey was ‘a timid little thing’ (according to the Widow) with hair the colour of falling maple leaves and eyes the colour of doves’ wings. Mr Baxter was very strict with both Audrey and Mrs Baxter. How awful other people’s families are, yawned Eliza.

  The Widow didn’t respond enthusiastically to Mrs Baxter’s neighbourly overtures – she believed in keeping yourself to yourself. Who else would want her? Eliza said, lying in her swimming-costume on a rug on the grass, her long thin limbs looking incredibly pale as if they’d never seen the light before.

  There were very few people that the Widow wished for neighbourhood intercourse with. The Lovats were one of the few families she courted (‘Invite that little Malcolm home,’ she said to Charles, bribing him with barley sugar). She had an unnatural respect for the medical profession and no qualms about gynaecologists, never having had women’s trouble.

  Gordon came home one day and said, ‘How about a holiday then?’ and Eliza said, Not with her. And so just the four of them went to the seaside and stayed in a boarding-house where they were summoned down to the evening meal by the landlady beating a copper gong in the hallway and Gordon made the same joke every time about J. Arthur Rank until Eliza said, For Christ’s sake, Gordon, put a sock in it, will you? and then he didn’t make the joke any more.

  Gordon hired a beach hut from the line of primary colours that stretched along the promenade and devoted his time to building spectacular sandcastles. Charles had to wear a floppy cotton sun hat like a baby because his redhead’s skin burnt so easily. ‘Was there anyone in your family with red hair then?’ Gordon asked, unusually snide, but Eliza just stared at him from behind her impenetrable sunglassed eyes.

  They buried Eliza in the sand. She sat unconcerned, reading a book and occasionally looking at her children over the top of her sunglasses and smiling. (You’ve got me prisoner!) She wore a glamorous red halter-neck swimming-costume and the hot sunshine they had all week turned her white skin a deep exotic colour.

  In the evenings, Eliza and Gordon went walking along the prom, Eliza dressed in one of her expensive dresses. And when they came back to their room Gordon unzipped her out of her dress and undid her necklace and ran his fingers over her warm brown skin and buried his face in her dark, dark hair until she laughed and said, Sorry, darling, the baby shop’s closed, and Gordon said how come she was a slut with everyone but him? And Eliza laughed.

  I’m going for a walk, Eliza said, getting up suddenly from her deck-chair, don’t anybody follow me, she said in a warning voice when Gordon started to get up. I’m suffocating.

  She was wearing a red cotton skirt over her red swimming-costume and she’d hitched the skirt up high on one side so that men, sitting dutifully on the beach with their wives and children, turned their heads slyly to follow Eliza’s lazy gypsy progress along the shoreline. At one point she bent down to pick something up and examine it before wandering on her way.

  She walked a long way, until she was just a distant flame of red at the extremity of vision. By the time she wandered back the sun was no longer hot and the tide was lapping at sandcastles all along the beach.

  ‘I thought you were never coming back,’ Gordon said when Eliza finally returned. She ignored him and put her hand out to Charles, saying, Look what I found, handing him a big spiral shell, its outside a rough calciferous white but its inside a shiny satin-pink, the colour of a baby’s insides, Eliza said, and Gordon said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Lizzy.’

  Eliza lit a cigarette and watched as a wave crept up to her thin brown feet, with their toes painted the colour of holly berries.

  ‘Come on then,’ Gordon said to Charles and Isobel, �
�J. Arthur Rank’s going to be calling us any minute and we don’t want to miss our tea, do we?’

  They climbed the pebble-dash concrete steps up to the promenade but Eliza stayed where she was, the waves lapping her ankles by now. ‘Bloody Queen Canute,’ said Gordon, who didn’t usually swear, ‘let her bloody drown.’ But Charles cried out at this idea and ran back to drag Eliza by the hand.

  ‘You could make a friend of her,’ Gordon said to Eliza as they looked down on Mrs Baxter in her garden, ‘she’s not that much older than you.’ They were standing in the attic bedroom but Charles and Isobel weren’t in it, they were in the bath being supervised by the Widow who was pretending to be a U-boat captain so that Charles’ fleet of little boats could destroy her. Gordon stood behind Eliza, his arms round her waist and his head resting on her shoulder. Eliza was trying to ignore his head on her shoulder, trying not to flinch and push him off.

  Mrs Baxter was attacking the long-neglected grass in Sithean’s garden, leaning all her weight on the handle of the push-and-pull lawnmower and stopping every few minutes to untwine the long wet grass stalks from the roller. The smell of grass clippings invaded the hot attic room. ‘She shouldn’t be doing that in her condition,’ Gordon said (Mrs Baxter was pregnant), a frown of concern on his face. Mr Baxter came out and said something to his wife. ‘He’s a funny so-and-so,’ Gordon said. Eliza backed away from the window, backed into Gordon who encircled her waist with his arms and started walking her backwards, like a prisoner, to Charles’ little bed until Eliza jabbed her elbow hard into his ribs and kicked him with her heel on his shin, so that he fell back on the bed in surprise and pain.

  Gordon lay on the bed for a long time listening to the sound of the German fleet being destroyed (‘Achtung! Achtung!’ the drowning Widow screamed) and the noise of Mrs Baxter’s lawnmower clattering in the evening air. He listened to the sound of the front door banging shut. Eliza went out all the time in these long summer evenings. Where to? Just out.

  ‘An Indian summer,’ the Widow announced. It was September and all the leaves on the trees were turning an old green colour. Charles and Isobel had both had the chickenpox and Charles hadn’t started the new school year yet, Isobel wasn’t due to start for another year. ‘They’re as fit as fiddles!’ Vinny declared crossly whenever she encountered them.

  Breakfast was always a difficult time of the day. The Widow was at her most officious, Eliza at her most indolent. ‘You’ll be glad when Charles is back in school,’ the Widow said over a particularly fraught breakfast-table. The September morning sun was spreading itself like butter on the Widow’s white linen tablecloth. ‘When they’re both in school, come to that!’ the Widow pursued, borrowing one of Vinny’s exclamation marks. Gordon was still upstairs, shaving, scraping carefully at his handsome throat with an open razor.

  Will I? Eliza said, carelessly flicking open her cigarette lighter. She inhaled deeply and said that if it was up to her she wouldn’t bother sending her children to school at all. She hadn’t put her make-up on yet and her face looked scrubbed and clean and with her hair scraped back in a ribbon, her Eskimo cheekbones were suddenly obvious.

  ‘Well, it’s a good job that it’s not up to you then, isn’t it?’ the Widow snapped. Eliza didn’t reply, except to raise one indolent eyebrow and butter a slice of toast – the kind of response that made the Widow’s blood boil. (‘She makes my blood boil,’ she muttered to Vinny, pushing the old wooden Ewbank over the living-room carpet as if she was trying to mow it out of existence. Vinny, following her with duster and polish, had an unnerving vision of blood boiling up merrily in her mother’s retort-body. The Widow didn’t look as if her blood was boiling, she looked as if it was congealing with cold.)

  ‘What would you do with them if they didn’t go to school?’ the Widow pursued, driven by curiosity to prolong this conversation, when on the whole she would rather she never had to speak to Eliza at all.

  Oh, I don’t know, Eliza said carelessly, blowing a small, perfect smoke ring for Charles’ delight. She twisted a black ringlet, escaped from its ribbon fetter, around her finger and smiled at Charles. She was wearing an old paisley silk dressing-gown of Gordon’s and a nightdress fancy enough to go dancing in – a long lace body and a bias-cut skirt in oyster satin – and she looked so slovenly beautiful that Gordon, standing unnoticed in the doorway of the dining-room, felt his heart clenching. I’d set them loose in a big green field somewhere, Eliza said finally, and let them run around all day long.

  ‘What a lot of rot,’ the Widow rat-a-tat-tatted back.

  Isobel’s porridge was a little island, grey and lumpy like melted brains, floating in a pond of milk. She dug her spoon into the middle of the oatmeal island and imagined being in Eliza’s big green field. She could see herself, a tiny little figure in the middle of an ocean of green. ‘Are you going to eat your food or play with it?’ the Widow asked sternly.

  Don’t speak to my child like that, Eliza said, standing up and pushing her chair back as if she was about to attack the Widow with the butter knife. The shoulder of her dressing-gown had slipped down, exposing a naked shoulder and the northern hemisphere of one smooth round breast, rising out of the thicket of lace. Eliza’s skin was flawless, it made Charles think of the creamy junket the Widow made but without the nutmeg freckles that he’d been sprinkled with. ‘Look at you, you slut,’ the Widow hissed at Eliza and Isobel curled her toes up tightly and ate her porridge as fast as she could.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Gordon asked, walking into the middle of the room. Gordon’s shirt (starched white by the Widow) and his newly shaved face seemed so fresh and unsullied that they shamed the breakfast table into a truce.

  Gordon suddenly plucked Isobel out of her chair – spoon still in hand – and tossed her up so high that for a moment it looked as if she might not come down again. ‘You’ll hang her on the lampshade if you’re not careful,’ the Widow reproached. Vinny came in, hatted and handbagged ready for work. ‘She’ll wet herself,’ she warned. You wouldn’t think she had a house of her own, Eliza said loudly, the amount of time she spends here.

  Gordon put Isobel back in her chair and said to the Widow, ‘Wouldn’t it be dreadful if anyone had any fun in this house?’ and she said, ‘There’s no need to talk like that, Gordon.’ Vinny couldn’t resist chipping in with her two pennies’ worth. ‘Fun, Gordon,’ she sneered, ‘doesn’t get the washing done.’

  ‘What the bloody hell does that mean, Vinny?’ Gordon said, turning on her aggressively, and because she couldn’t think of a reply she sat down at the breakfast-table and poured herself a cup of tea.

  Oh darling, Eliza cooed, walking over to Gordon and pressing the full length of her satin-and-lace body against him, so that Vinny put her hand over Charles’ eyes. Eliza slipped her hands round Gordon’s waist and, undercover of his jacket, tugged the shirt and vest out of his trousers and ran the flat of her hands over his bare back all the way up to his shoulder-blades so that he let out an involuntary, embarrassing moan. Vinny and the Widow were the mirrors of each other’s disgust. Vinny’s mouth puckered like a carp as she secretly mouthed the word ‘whore’ to the teapot.

  Eliza stood on tiptoe and whispered in Gordon’s ear, her curls tickling his cheek, her voice like burning sugar, Darling, if we don’t get a place of our own soon, then I’m going to leave you. Understand?

  Mrs Baxter lost her baby. (‘How can you lose a baby?’ Charles asked in horror. Quite easily, if you try hard enough, darling, Eliza laughed.) She went to the hospital suddenly one night. Mr Baxter came round to Arden, dragging Audrey by the hand and asked the Widow if she would look after her. The Widow could hardly refuse and Gordon brought Audrey upstairs and tucked her into bed next to Isobel. Audrey was very quiet and said nothing beyond, ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodnight’ but snored very gently, like a kitten.

  Mrs Baxter’s baby was early, too early, and died before it even saw daylight. ‘Stillborn,’ the Widow said over a breakfast of poached eggs and Gordon said,
‘Ssh,’ and gestured at Audrey. But Audrey was too concerned with trying to stop her poached egg slipping off the plate to notice.

  Later, when Audrey had gone home, Charles asked what stillborn meant and Vinny said, ‘Dead,’ in her usual no-nonsense way. She was helping herself to toast while waiting for a lift to work. ‘Where do dead babies go?’ Charles asked. Vinny wasn’t fazed for a second, ‘In the ground,’ and the Widow tut-tutted at the directness of this statement. ‘Heaven, of course,’ she placated, ‘babies go to heaven, and become cherubs.’ Charles looked at Eliza for confirmation. They never really believed anything anyone said if Eliza didn’t verify it. Back to the baby shop to be repaired, she said, to annoy Vinny and the Widow.

  ‘And if you don’t get a move on for school, Charles,’ the Widow crowed, ‘you might find that you get sent back to the baby shop and get changed for another model!’ Gloating at this finesse, the Widow gave Eliza a triumphant smile and swept out of the dining-room. Eliza narrowed her eyes and lit a cigarette. One day, she said, one day I’m going to kill the old bitch.

  ‘We really will have to get a place of our own,’ Gordon ventured to his mother. The Widow was in the kitchen making pastry for a Sunday plum pie with plums from her own Victorias, a great china bowl of them was sitting on the kitchen table. A wasp crawled slowly over the red fruit, dizzy with plum fumes. The Widow folded her arms, propping up her scrawny bosom and got flour on her blouse. Much as she would like to get rid of Eliza, when it came to it she couldn’t bear the idea of Gordon (‘my son’) leaving home. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said, ‘not when I’ve got so much room – and you wouldn’t get looked after without me – and anyway this house is going to be yours one day, Gordon. One day very soon,’ she added with a little catch in her voice. She lifted her apron to dab at her eyes and Gordon said, ‘There, there,’ and put his arms round her.