Human Croquet Part 17

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 G.o.ds, 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.

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. s.e.x 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 circ.u.mstances so squalid that the inquest became a cause ceeleebre. 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, tortoisesh.e.l.l 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, succ.u.mbing 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 ma.s.sive 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 gra.s.s, 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 woodp.e.c.k.e.r, 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 b.u.t.ter. 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 a.s.sume it whenever a player is wanting to pa.s.s.

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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s. When one game has been played the players and b.a.l.l.s exchange roles.

Playing Human Croquet, showing how two players link hands

to form hoops. Other players, blindfolded, are b.a.l.l.s.

WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?.

Kate Atkinson.

'Genius . . . insightful, often funny, life-affirming' Sunday Telegraph In a quiet corner of rural Devon, a six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later the man convicted of the crime is released from prison.

In Edinburgh, sixteen-year-old Reggie, wise beyond her years, works as a nanny for a G.P. But her employer has disappeared with her baby, and Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. Across town, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is a former acquaintance - Jackson Brodie - himself on a journey that is about to be fatally interrupted.

'Funny, bracingly intelligent. . . Kate Atkinson is that rarest of beasts, a genuinely surprising novelist' Guardian 'An exhilarating read. Her wry humour, sharp eye and subtle characterisation are a constant joy' Daily Mail 9780552772457.