Human Croquet Part 12

I glare in disbelief at Richard. 'What on earth have you been saying about me?' He has the grace to look slightly shame-faced but at that moment Dorothy strides into the kitchen with a tray of dirty gla.s.ses and the pack of boys all wheel round to watch Dorothy's magnificent b.r.e.a.s.t.s and bottom. 'What an a.r.s.e,' one of them sighs quietly and Dorothy says, 'I hope you know what you're doing, Isobel!' with a disgusted expression on her face, before sweeping out again.

Slightly chastened for only a moment by Dorothy's commanding presence, the baying pack now close in on me in a way that's really quite frightening. They're all built like half-backs and I don't think that the fox tippet's going to be an adequate champion if it comes to a contest between us. Richard's keeping his distance on the outside of the circle, reviewing my discomfort with a supercilious smile. I vow to kill him at the first opportunity.

One of them starts singing, Ding-dong bell, p.u.s.s.y's in the well, and Graham makes an amateur pa.s.s at my sweetheart neckline. Flight's the only solution here and I turn to one of them and give him a hefty kick on the shin before shouldering him out of the way and heading out of the back door and into the garden.

I'm expecting the Walshes' back garden to be as tamely suburban as the ones on the streets of trees, but it resembles a stately home in its landscaped vastness, it's like unexpectedly entering another dimension. (Appearances can be deceptive.) I sprint across the gra.s.s as fast as I can but my movements are hampered by the heels on my shoes and the large volume of pink I'm wearing, and I haven't got very far when Graham does a rugby tackle on me, sending me crashing on to the frosted gra.s.s of the lawn. His hand slips down into the bodice of my dress, determined apparently on this particular goal, but I manage to jab him hard in the ribs with my left elbow and he rolls off me, yelping with pain. I have lost one of my shoes by now, and I hastily kick off the other one as I scramble to my feet.

Up and running again, I make for the far end of the garden, thinking there might be a gate out onto the street somewhere. Glancing behind, I see two of them racing across the gra.s.s after me. Why is this happening to me? I'm supposed to be waltzing rapturously in Malcolm Lovat's handsome arms not running for my virtue.

I'm running now over a smooth, flat piece of lawn and only realize that it's not an ordinary lawn when I trip over a croquet hoop and thud heavily to the ground. (Maybe this is what The Home Entertainer means by Human Croquet.) One of the boys is on me now, hanging on to me round the waist as I struggle to get up. I wrench myself free and hear something rip. Maybe it's his head coming off.

I set off again at a gallop, the two boys hallooing and tantivying behind me. I notice a big silver birch growing by a perimeter wall and veer over to it thinking that I might be able to scramble up it and on to the wall but when I get to it I discover that its branches are too high to reach. 'Gotcha, Ding-Dong!' one of the boys shouts.

I'm done for. All I can do is stand and try and get my breath back, I feel sick from exertion and can't raise a scream no matter how hard I try. It's like being trapped in a nightmare. I lean against the trunk of the silver birch gasping for air like a dying fish and send up a small silent plea for help. Why do I have no protector in this world, someone watching over me?

I can't even move, my legs feel as though they're full of lead shot and my feet are rooted to the ground. One of the boys, Geoff, I think, runs straight up to me and stops, the mad Dionysian light in his eyes turning to confusion. He seems to look right through me. The other one, Clive, runs up to join him, and then bends over double to get his breath. 'Where'd she go?' he asks, panting. 'This way, somewhere,' Clive says, looking around everywhere except at me. 'f.u.c.king little p.r.i.c.k-teaser,' he adds and puts his hand out on to my left shoulder and leans his weight against it as if I'm just part of the tree.

But when I glance down at his hand, I see that where my left shoulder should be, where my right shoulder should be where my entire body should be, in fact is the silvery, papery bark of the birch. My arms are stiff branches sticking out from my sides, my previously bifurcated legs have turned to one solid tree trunk. I would scream now, but my mouth won't open. Call me Daphne.

Everything begins to grow dim and blurred at the edges and the next thing I know I'm sitting on the cold ground, underneath the tree, with no sign of any of the boys, and Hilary marching across the lawn towards me. 'What on earth are you doing out here, Isobel? You haven't seen Malcolm, have you? I can't find him anywhere.'

I trail back into the house on Hilary's heels. There seems little point in telling her that I've just recently turned into a tree. I am not what I am. I am a tree therefore I am mad, a mad person subject to ma.s.sive delusions and hallucinations. 'Having a nice time?' Hilary asks dutifully, her eyes already scanning the kitchen for someone else to talk to other than me. 'Oh yes, absolutely,' I reply, taking a c.o.c.ktail sausage from a Prima cabbage that's stuck all over with sausages on sticks so that it looks like it's just come from outer s.p.a.ce.

I go up to the first-floor bathroom to try and clean myself up a bit. There are twigs and dead leaves in my hair, my stockings are laddered to shreds and my stiff net petticoat is in tatters. This must be what ripped during my ordeal out in the back garden. The pink dress is no longer the colour of sugar and spice, it is now the pink of pigs and embarra.s.sment and tinned salmon.

I remove the ragged petticoat from the dress with one final rip. A couple of dead leaves are caught in the holes of the net. I look around for a bin but there isn't one so in the end I stuff the petticoat behind the hot-water tank in the airing cupboard. The tank isn't lagged and is giving off an incredible amount of heat, bubbling away like a particularly perverted medieval torture instrument. It's huge, Hilary would fit inside exactly.

When I come out of the bathroom I almost trip over Hilary, who's now locked in a swooning embrace with Paul Jackson, the captain of the football team. She seems to move around the house at a rapid speed, perhaps she has a doppelganger, a kind of body-double standing in for her during the more tedious moments. Not that her clinch with Paul Jackson looks exactly tedious his hand's thrust up her skirt and his knee is pushing her legs apart. I wonder what Mr and Mrs Walsh would say if they could see her now. Had they any idea how much (if any) alcohol was going to be consumed on their premises? Or how much debauchery was going to be unleashed the minute their backs were turned? I doubt it very much somehow. Still, it's encouraging to see Hilary being unfaithful to Malcolm, she seems indeed to have forgotten all about him. She looks as though she's about to throw up and when she comes up for air reveals a vivid love-bite across her windpipe, I almost expect to see blood on Paul Jackson's teeth. 'Isobel,' she slurs, trying to focus on me and going cross-eyed with the effort. If only Malcolm could see us side by side now it would be only too obvious who was the right girl for him. (Me.) 'Isobel,' she repeats with some effort, 'have you seen Graham?'

'Graham?'

'Graham, my brother,' her head lolls forward on to Paul Jackson's shoulder, 'insisted you were invited.'

'Did he? What as the entertainment?' I ask her indignantly, there's only one reason he wanted me and that was because of the lies Richard has told to get his own back on me. I start explaining this to her but she's dropped off to sleep and is snoring pig-like and Paul Jackson is already tw.a.n.ging her suspenders again. He catches my eye and says, 'Sod off.' So I do.

I head down to the living-room again. Out in the hall, a big grandfather clock strikes the half-hour half-past eleven where has all the time gone? (Where does it go? Is there some great time sump at the bottom of the world?) My sojourn as a silver birch must have disposed of hours of it.

A lot of changes have taken place in the living-room since I was last in it. Gone are the innocent Shadows, the bright overhead lights, the junior c.o.c.ktail party chit-chat. Now it resembles nothing so much as an inner circle of h.e.l.l the dark writhing shapes, the tortured moaning noises of people in extremis and it takes several seconds for the dark shapes to resolve themselves into necking couples standing, sitting, lying all fumbling at each other with orgiastic enthusiasm.

In the hallway someone's being sick, and Dorothy, also ravaged by drink by now but still immensely practical, gets the vacuum cleaner out and starts hoovering up the vomit. I debate with myself whether I should tell her what a bad idea this is but decide to keep my meagre housekeeping tips to myself when she hoovers in my direction and snarls, 'You're really a bit of a tart, aren't you, Isobel? And keep your hands off my brother, you're not his type.'

Graham is on the stairs behind Dorothy, pumping up and down on top of a big-frocked girl, who presumably is his type, and I push my way past their intertwined bodies and run up the stairs to try and have one last attempt at finding Malcolm Lovat.

The first door I try appears to open into Mr and Mrs Walsh's bedroom, huge twin beds like barges dominate a room heavy with brocade. The next room reeks of Dorothy. It's frilly and girly and organized on lines of military precision a shelf of science books, fiction in alphabetical order and toiletries laid out on the dressing-table with mathematical regularity. If a single Q-Tip moved in this room she would know about it.

I go up to the next floor and try another door. This bedroom is frilly and girly too but sporty as well tennis rackets, sportswear and riding-hats everywhere this must be Hilary's room. On the bedside table there's a photograph, head-and-shoulders, of a horse and on the bed a huge a.s.sortment of dolls dolls with baby faces, dolls in full Highland regalia, dolls in flamenco dress, moppety rag dolls and antique dolls with yellowing ringlets and astonished expressions.

And there, incongruous amongst the dolls, lies the much bigger body of a supine Malcolm Lovat. He greets me cheerfully, and drunkenly, waving a half-empty bottle of gin in his hand. 'h.e.l.lo, Izzie.'

'I didn't think you were here.' I take a swig of neat gin from the green bottle, slugging in a cavalier fashion, and I'm quite pleased with myself for not choking to death. 'Smell that,' Malcolm says, suddenly rolling over and plunging his face into the pillow, 'essence of horse!' How we laugh!

He pats the s.p.a.ce next to him on Hilary's (almost certainly) virginal divan and I squash myself into the s.p.a.ce. 'That's a big dress,' he says pleasantly and puts his arm round my shoulder and we lie there quite companionably, drinking gin and a.s.signing imaginary personalities to Hilary's dolls, most of which are extensions of her own character.

We're approaching the bottom of the gin bottle now. The inside lining of my body feels as if someone's set a match to it, a not entirely unpleasant sensation, and the distracted globe of my brain has turned into porridge. Most of Hilary's poor dolls have been kicked to the floor by now. Or have jumped to safety.

I think I drift in and out of consciousness a few times. Time seems to have become slower, more viscous somehow, as if the molecules of time are indeed capable of changing state and are no longer an invisible gas but a flowing liquid (perhaps that's the Herac.l.i.tean flow). 'Kiss me,' I mumble suddenly, emboldened by gin and the strange fluidity of time. Malcolm opens his eyes, I think he's been asleep, and hauls himself up into a cobra position on his elbows and gazes at me. 'Please,' I add, in case he thinks I'm being impolite. He frowns deeply at one of the few remaining dolls a baby-doll about the size of 'our' baby and says, 'Isobel,' very seriously.

This must be it then he's realized the cosmic links that bind us, he's about to kiss me and open the seals on our love we will be transported to some transcendent place where the music is by the spheres and the lighting by Turner I hope I don't turn into a tree before this can happen, or go flying through time again. I close my eyes hopefully. And pa.s.s out cold.

When I open my eyes again the room is dark and someone has covered me up with Hilary's eiderdown. Someone has also been busy gluing my brain to the inside of my skull and when I try and sit up it does its best to wrench itself free in a way that's quite, quite horrible. For extra effect, the fibres of my brain have been soldered together. The bedroom door opens and I close my eyes against the shock of the light.

When I force them open a slit I can see a furious Hilary, mascara and lipstick smudged, hair a haystack, skin deathly pale (presumably because Paul Jackson has drained all the blood out of her body by now) staring at me in repulsion. 'What are you doing on my bed, Isobel?' I make an attempt at sitting up and break out in a cold, clammy sweat. Feebly, I try to wave a warning at Hilary with my hand because I know she isn't going to want to see what's about to happen.

But too late I clutch my forehead in a vain attempt to staunch the throbbing and lean over the side of the bed and empty what remains in my stomach (bits of gin-soaked c.o.c.ktail sausage mainly) all over Hilary's startled dolls.

Hilary starts screaming at me, a torrent of ladylike invective that pours from her mouth in a tumbling stream of toads and ashes.

'Drop dead,' I moan at her.

Mr and Mrs Walsh come home not long after ('What's happened to the Hoover, Dotty?') and turf out the remnants of the party in disgust, including me, especially me. 'Get out,' Mr Walsh hisses nastily. 'G.o.d only knows what else you were doing in my daughter's bedroom. I can tell your sort, you're nothing but a wh.o.r.e.' How unkind. There's no sign of Malcolm Lovat, which isn't entirely a bad thing, because at least that means he isn't in Hilary's arms.

My foxes are waiting for me on the hall table and I pick them up and stagger out into the night a night glazed with frost and freezing cold, so that I almost expect Mr Walsh to shout, 'And never darken my door again, young lady!'

'And I don't want to see your face in my house again, you little tart!' he shouts, in character. I get as far as the wrought-iron gates before being overtaken by the most overwhelming lethargy. I am indeed a fallen woman, or at any rate, a fallen girl fallen by a huge laurel bush by the wrought-iron gates, fallen and crawled under and curled up and snoring as quietly as a hedgehog, determined to hibernate. Snow begins to dust my face like cold icing-sugar.

I'm rudely awoken by Malcolm Lovat trying to stuff me into the pa.s.senger seat of his car and muttering, less charitably this time, about 'what a b.l.o.o.d.y big dress' I'm wearing. 'That's how people die, you know,' he says crossly, starting up the engine and backing away from the Walshes' driveway. My brain is no longer glued to the inside of my skull, now it has shrunk to a hard, gin-pickled walnut and is rattling around, bouncing off bone, unanch.o.r.ed by membrane.

'Hypothermia,' Malcolm says, as if he's having a stab at naming our abandoned baby. We provide the perfect cautionary tale against alcohol as we weave a delicate drunken path along the icy road. 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' Malcolm exclaims grimly as we occasionally skate across the road and pirouette and spin as if the car's turned into a tipsy Sonja Henie.

I have several attempts at lighting up a cigarette and on the fourth, successful, attempt drop a lighted match on my dress and a large pink patch of it instantly melts and I narrowly avoid turning into a human torch. How shall I die? Fire or ice?

Somehow or other we end up at the top of Lover's Leap once again but Loving and Leaping are the last things on our minds, wading through blood up to my knees would be easier and we both fall asleep the second the engine is turned off. When I wake up it's cold. A drizzle of saliva seems to have turned to ice on my chin and my eyes are crusted with sleep. I root around hopelessly in the glove compartment and am surprised to find half a packet of stale custard creams which I fall on like an animal. After a while I nudge Malcolm awake and offer him one. It's such a shame that I'm in no fit state (my head's about to fall off) to sit and appreciate his beautiful profile, the curve of his lip, the black kiss curl that loops around his ear. I open the car door and throw up on the ground.

We set off again on another seemingly endless journey. The streets of Glebelands are deserted, everyone is in bed waiting for the rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Our odyssey takes us once more past the street where the Walshes live, but here, unlike the rest of town, is the most extraordinary activity. I suppose if we hadn't been asleep on Lover's Leap we might have seen, from our vantage point, the fire engines racing across town, seen the flickering flames burning up the Walshes' house down in the little model town at our feet, heard perhaps the ringing bells of the desperate ambulances trying to save the occupants.

The street is choked with fire engines and ambulances and policemen. We stumble out of the car and hang around the wrought-iron gates like sightseers. The red ribbons on the holly wreath hang limp in the still air. There is ash and soot in the air, the smell of charred frocks and canapes. I remember suddenly the net petticoat stuffed so carelessly behind the boiling water tank, imagine it catching and spreading to the neat stacks of sheets and towels, and eventually engulfing the entire house. Everyone has safely escaped the inferno it seems, except 'Richard and Hilary,' Malcolm says, his voice blank with disbelief.

As we approach the streets of trees it begins to snow properly. At first the little fluttery flakes stick to the windscreen, crystallize and melt and are washed away by the windscreen wipers, but soon the flurry of snowflakes grows bigger and they begin to cling to pa.s.sing objects, aerials, chimney pots, rooftops, trees.

Instead of turning into Chestnut Avenue, Malcolm drives up Holly Tree Lane. We're both so numb with shock at the sudden demise of Hilary and Richard that I don't think we really know where we're going. (Drop dead did I really say that to both of them?) The snow is now swirling around in the darkness in a menacing kind of way. We are driving past Boscrambe Woods, the trees an inky black ma.s.s at the side of the road. Abruptly, Malcolm swings the car into one of the entrances to the woods and parks in front of a row of fire-beating brooms that poke up towards the stars. They're in the wrong place. There could be no fire in these woods tonight. The ground is hard as iron, the waters in the streams turned to stone. When Malcolm turns the engine off it's quieter than anything I've ever heard.

'Come on,' Malcolm says, opening the car door, even though the snow is now blowing a blizzard. Reluctantly I tramp into the wood behind him. In the wood there is no blizzard, everything is still. The snow must have been falling for hours longer in the wood than outside the wood (how could that be?), for snow is piled up everywhere Christmas-card snow, winter-wonderland snow, crisp and virginal. The bare branches of the deciduous trees, rimmed with snow, spring and arc overhead like the vaulted roof of a great cathedral. It is like being in church, hushed and reverent, but more spiritual.

The wood is full of evergreens too, firs have gathered from all over the world the Norway spruces (abies picea) and lodgepole pines (pinus contorta), alpine firs (abies lasiocarpa) and European silver firs (abies alba), the balsam fir (abies balsamea) and the beautiful n.o.ble firs (abies procera) crowd together under their snowcoats like an eternal Christmas waiting to happen.

We plod along, silent in the silence. It's like being the last two people in the world. Perhaps we are, perhaps we've entered a time warp that's propelled us forward to the last, cold days. Only in the wood can you truly lose track of time. A rabbit bounces across the snow in front of us.

Ahead of me, Malcolm stops suddenly and, turning to me, puts his fingers to his lips. A red deer, a female, is standing ahead of us on the path, sniffing the air for us, knowing we are here but not quite seeing us. Then, in one startled leap, she's gone, crashing through the frozen branches so that the sound of snapping twigs echoes noisily in the cold silence around us.

'That's lucky, I expect,' Malcolm whispers, and puts his arms round me. His breath is warm on my frozen cheek. This is it then. I close my eyes expectantly ... 'Time to go home,' he says suddenly, and ploughs back through the snow, dragging me by the hand. I expect if we weren't still full of Beefeater's anti-freeze we'd both be dead of the cold by now.

We find the car covered in a thick eiderdown of snow and have to brush it off with our poor ungloved hands. The tyres spin on the snow as the car reverses on to the pristine road. The snow has stopped falling now and we slip and slide down the twisting road. 'I think you're the only person I can be myself with,' Malcolm says, more articulate than he's been for hours. Why does everyone have so much trouble being themselves?

He glances across at me to check whether I understand what he's trying to say and from nowhere a deer suddenly appears ahead of us, caught in the headlights. Nightmarishly mute, I lift my hand and point at it. Malcolm carries on blithely about his true self and his problems finding it but then he follows the direction of my pointing finger and horrified stare and says, 'Oh s.h.i.t-' It looks exactly like the deer we've just seen in the wood (although they all look alike really) but this is no time to be making comparisons. Not such a lucky deer, after all. Time starts to slow down. Malcolm slews the car to one side to try and avoid the deer. I can see it clearly its eyes rolling, wild with terror, its muscles moving and rippling beneath its velvet skin as it gathers itself into one great desperate leap.

The deer jumps free. And so does the car taking off, jumping clear of the road, flying slowly through the air, gliding down the steep bank at the side of the road as if it had wings, all in perfect silence, as if the soundtrack to the world has been turned off, but then it hits the ground for the first time and sound returns suddenly the noise of metal rending and gla.s.s breaking, the sound of the world ending, as we bounce off the snowy ground, splintering a young tree, crashing through gorse in a mad flurry of snow, the car an unstoppable wild animal intent on self-destruction before finally being tamed by a big sycamore standing sentinel in the frozen field.

Everything's quiet once more. No-one will ever find us here. I feel very tired but also very peaceful. The words to 'Silent Night' run through my mind. We could sing to keep our spirits up but it seems that neither of us is capable of opening our mouths; when I try to make the words come out they stick to my tongue. I can't move my head at all in fact. Perhaps time has changed state again, now it is a solid, a great block of ice that has us trapped, frozen inside like flies in amber.

By concentrating very hard on the muscles in my neck I manage to turn my head a few inches. I can just see Malcolm. His face is crazed with blood that glistens in the dark. He's trying to speak as well. After a long time I finally understand what he's trying to say. The words come out slowly, mis-shapen, grating in the silent night. 'Help me,' he says, 'help me.' But I know it's no good because he's already dead.

KILLING TIME.

I wake up. I'm in my own bed. In my own room. In Arden. Gone are the snows (of yesterday), the trees, the deer, the car, the dead Malcolm Lovat. I'm wearing my nightdress and my body shows no sign of having been in a car-crash, although my brain is a wreck.

My pink party dress is hanging on the outside of the wardrobe looking remarkably unsullied after everything it's been through. It even looks stiff, as if it still has its petticoat attached underneath. The view from my window indicates quite different weather from yesterday a mizzling, drizzling rain instead of a sharp frost. Did I dream yesterday? Was it just some dreadful, vivid nightmare?

Out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of something on my bedside table the gift-wrapped box of Bronnley soaps. I sit up and release them from their wrapping-paper. From somewhere down below I can hear the sound of the radio playing carols and the baby crying. Thoughtfully I hold one of the soap lemons in my hand where it sits heavily like a sour little moon. Angels and ministers of grace defend us and help me Boab.

If yesterday was Christmas Eve then today should be Christmas Day but of course I know that the laws of causality are as bent as time's arrow and I am not the person to be trying to make predictions about sequential events.

Perhaps there really is no permanent reality, only the reality of change. A disturbing kind of thought.

On cue, Charles comes bursting into my room and says, 'Have you got any wrapping-paper? I've only got one present left to wrap and I've run out.'

'What day do you think it is?' I ask, and he looks at me as if I'm mad (well, I am). 'It's Christmas Eve, of course. What day do you think it is?' (Can time be this relative?) This is ridiculous. I put my head under the covers. Have I actually succeeded in calling back yesterday? Have I stepped in the same river twice? Is the whole dreadful day going to happen again? Isn't it enough to have had the nightmare once without repeating it? How many rhetorical questions can I ask myself without getting bored?

Maybe I've died and gone to h.e.l.l and this is my punishment to live the worst day of my life over and over again for eternity.

Perhaps I'm dreaming my life. Perhaps I'll wake up and find I'm a b.u.t.terfly. Or a caterpillar. Or a mushroom, a mushroom dreaming it's a girl called Isobel Fairfax.

Do I still have free will maybe if I just stay in bed not go to the Walshes' party, certainly not go driving anywhere with Malcolm Lovat then everyone will be safe. I close my eyes and try and force myself back to sleep (perhaps this is what cats are doing sleeping to try and make things disappear. Dogs maybe), but I've murdered sleep as soundly as I've destroyed the laws of time.

But what if, I suddenly think, opening my eyes and staring at the pink dress, what if it isn't my malign influence that precipitated (or precipitates, or will precipitate take your pick) events? What if they're going to happen anyway? And if they're going to happen anyway then maybe there's something I can do to stop them. And then, even if Malcolm and Hilary and Richard still die, at least it won't be my fault. Which is something.

But there again for all I know they're dead already. I drag myself out of bed, like it or not, I'm going to have to find out what's going on. I lift up the skirt of the pink dress, yes, there is the petticoat, intact and in place. I give a weary sigh.

There's no-one about downstairs Vinny, Debbie and Gordon are not at their previous stations, although the mince pies know their place in the plot, piled high ready on the kitchen table, nicely dusted with icing-sugar like snow. I eat one, then another, then a third I'm ravenous. I haven't had anything to eat since last night's stale custard creams, although, of course, it's possible that I haven't actually eaten them yet. Reality's slipping away from me faster than I can think about it.

I phone the Lovats. Malcolm answers. 'h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo?' he keeps repeating until I put the phone down because I can't think of anything to say that won't sound insane. I try the Walshes next and Mrs Walsh's flutey tones penetrate my eardrum. I mumble something about Hilary and Mrs Walsh says she's gone into town with Dorothy.

I decide not to check on the Primrose household, I don't really care whether Richard's dead or not and two out of three isn't bad going. But how to keep them alive, that's the question. The kind of question that Charles could get his teeth into but there's no sign of him either. Arden's like the Marie Celeste, the only survivor of whatever invisible disaster has occurred is the baby (it's indestructible) which is in its pram in the hall wearing its lungs out.

I take it (I can't bring myself to call it Jodi) out of its pram and try and soothe it but it's in a terrible rage, screaming its head off (well, not quite), every so often its body going rigid and stiff as if it's having a fit. Its face is red with anger and its little fists are bunched up furiously as if it would like to punch somebody.

I try and wrap it in its shawl but it's too awkward so in the end I just kind of bundle it up like a cabbage and carry it round to Sithean. Maybe Mrs Baxter will be able to do something with it. And anyway I'd like to talk to somebody about what's happening to me, and preferably someone I didn't help to kill yesterday.

There's an eerie feeling of abandonment in the Baxter household as well. Sithean seems as empty and deserted as Arden. There's no answer when I shout 'h.e.l.lo!' to the empty air, the only sound the sobs and hiccups of the baby.

In the living-room a fire is blazing in the hearth and the Christmas tree lights blink on and off, but whether they're supposed to do that or it's due to my electrical interference I can't say.

In the dining-room, the table's been set with the best china and plates. Mrs Baxter makes almost as much fuss about Christmas Eve as she does about Christmas Day. If it was up to Mrs Baxter she would probably celebrate Christmas every day of the year.

In the middle of the table there are red candles and each place setting has a cracker and a Christmas paper napkin red with green holly leaves twirled into a fanciful shape. A prawn c.o.c.ktail in a winegla.s.s sits on each plate, ready to be eaten.

I sit down on one of the chairs and pull a lettuce leaf from the prawn c.o.c.ktail and nibble at it while I try to figure out where everyone's gone. Perhaps the Baxters have taken to slipping down wormholes in time as well. Perhaps the Baxters are at this moment celebrating Christmas in the eighteenth century or the Dark Ages. I smear some of the pink-coloured salad cream from the prawn c.o.c.ktail on to the baby's lips and it's shocked into silence.

Without meaning to, I find I've finished the prawn c.o.c.ktail. Perhaps if I go round the table and eat the other two it would look better, then I could pretend there were never any to begin with. But too late the back door slams and Mr Baxter marches down the hall, glimpses me through the open dining-room door, marches on and then doubles back and snaps at me, 'What are you doing here? Sitting in my place? Eating my meal?'

'Where's Audrey and Mrs Baxter?' I ask, jumping up from the table guiltily.

'What an interesting question,' he says in the voice he reserves for the pupils he considers to be the greatest idiots. His eyes are bulging with madness. 'I mean where are they?' he says, enunciating each word carefully. 'Hmm, let me see ...' He makes a face of mock-puzzlement and looks down one end of a cracker. 'No,' he says, 'they're not in there.' (How tedious it must be to live with Mr Baxter.) This pantomime goes on for some time until the volume of noise from the baby (it has its uses) drives him from the room and he goes up to his study.

I carry the baby through to the living-room and sit on the sofa with it. The blinking lights on the Christmas tree make the baby quite peaceable. It's stuck its fist in its mouth as if to force itself to be quiet and my heart goes out to it. It's got all its life ahead of it to be unhappy in, it seems a shame it has to start so soon.

The back door opens and closes. I hope this is Mrs Baxter and Audrey and not Mr Baxter coming in the house for a second time without having gone out first (you become paranoid pretty quickly once time starts breaking down, or breaking up. Or whatever).

But thankfully it is Mrs Baxter and Audrey. They're wearing their outdoor clothes coats and scarves and woollen hats as if they've just been out for a walk. 'We've just been out for a wee walk,' Mrs Baxter says, 'to give Daddy a chance to calm down. He was in a bit of a stushie with himself,' she adds with a rueful little smile. She looks incredibly miserable.

At the sight of the baby Mrs Baxter goes into maternal meltdown and sends Audrey to look for its present under the tree. Audrey unwraps the baby's present a rattle (as if it doesn't make enough noise already) and gives it to the baby with a lovely smile. 'I'll put the kettle on,' Mrs Baxter says. 'You'll have a cuppie, won't you, Isobel?'

'Daddy,' Audrey says when Mrs Baxter's left the room, and then stops, apparently incapable of saying anything else. 'Is in a bit of a stushie?' I prompt helpfully. She takes the baby and cradles it protectively, resting her chin on the top of its red-gold floss. Her eyes fill up with tears and she makes a tremendous effort to stop them spilling over on to the baby. 'Boys,' she manages to say.

'Boys? He thinks you've ...?'

'He's convinced I've been with a boy,' she whispers.

'And have you?' (She must have surely, how else can we account for the phenomenon of baby Jodi? Although if anyone's a candidate for immaculate conception then it's Audrey.) She looks at me with her big pained eyes as if I've just asked the most ridiculous question and holds the baby closer. It's quietened down now, has fallen asleep in fact, its fist still jammed in its mouth, perhaps in case it's tempted to blurt out the truth in its sleep. They look like the perfect nativity scene, Audrey with her lovely Mother-of-G.o.d kind of smile and the baby sleeping happily in her arms. Cautiously, with one hand, Audrey unb.u.t.tons her coat, unwinds her scarf, puts her hand up to her head and takes off her woollen hat but instead of shaking down her lovely Mother-of-G.o.d kind of hair there's nothing there. I gasp in horror at her shorn head, not the urchin cut of a hairdresser but the ragged shearing of a wartime collaborator. 'Daddy,' Audrey says.

Mrs Baxter returns with a tray piled high with Christmas baking and tries not to look at the results of 'Daddy's' stushie on Audrey's head. She's about to say something when we hear Mr Baxter pounding back down the stairs and we listen to his footfall as if we're in a horror film awaiting the entrance of some unknown monster and it's almost a relief to see he's still human when he comes barging in the room and scowls at me and says, 'Still here? You're a bad influence. I expect it's you who's been leading Audrey here astray, isn't it?'

'Daddy, don't,' Mrs Baxter says in her most cajoling voice.

'And you can shut your face,' he says in response. He puts his own face a few inches away from mine, a bully's stance, and says, 'Well, Isobel, who's Audrey been messing about with? Some boy's had her, who is it? Not that ugly little brother of yours, I hope.'

'Daddy, don't,' Audrey pleads.

'You shut up, you little wh.o.r.e,' Mr Baxter bellows, rounding on her, 'giving yourself to boys, letting them do G.o.d knows what to you! Who was it? Tell me!' Mrs Baxter's jigging on the spot, flapping her hands as if she's trying to learn how to fly. Mr Baxter takes something from the pocket of his tweed jacket and starts waving it around. Something dark and metallic and gun-shaped. A gun, in fact.

'Your old service revolver,' Mrs Baxter marvels. 'I thought you got rid of that years ago, Daddy.' Mr Baxter puts the gun down on the mantelpiece with all the Grand Guignol exaggeration of a pantomime villain the same way, in fact, that he used to put his cane on his desk so that his pupils' minds would all focus on it. (I suppose we were lucky he never brought the gun in as a cla.s.sroom deterrent.) Then he makes a move towards Audrey, grabbing her by the remains of her hair, pulling her in towards him and roaring at her, 'Who?' heedless of the baby which is screaming in terror. More to try and calm the baby down than to appease her father, Audrey finally answers his question and, in a very small voice, says, 'But, Daddy, it was you.'

I lunge at Mr Baxter to try and make him let go of Audrey without digesting what Audrey's just said to him. The next thing I know WALLOP Mr Baxter turns and punches me in the face. The blow lands square on my cheekbone, a prizefighter punch, the kind that splinters bones and causes brain damage.

I drop to my knees in agony, trying to cradle my entire head while fighting for air. I feel incredibly sick as if I've just been dropped from a great height.

Slowly, I grow aware of a strange silence in the room. We all appear to have been paralysed, as if time has actually stopped. I imagine us frozen in this tableau for ever, but just then, Mrs Baxter's cat, which has been disguising itself as a brindled antimaca.s.sar on the back of a Parker Knoll chair, suddenly rolls over and falls off, thudding heavily on its feet on the carpet, then the fire crackles noisily and a lump of coal falls out sizzling on the hearth and everybody wakes up.