Human Croquet Part 5

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 sungla.s.sed eyes.

They buried Eliza in the sand. She sat unconcerned, reading a book and occasionally looking at her children over the top of her sungla.s.ses and smiling. (You've got me prisoner!) She wore a glamorous red halter-neck swimming-costume and the hot suns.h.i.+ne 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 s.l.u.t 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 sh.o.r.eline. 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 sh.e.l.l, its outside a rough calciferous white but its inside a s.h.i.+ny 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. 'b.l.o.o.d.y Queen Canute,' said Gordon, who didn't usually swear, 'let her b.l.o.o.d.y 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s stalks from the roller. The smell of gra.s.s 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 s.h.i.+n, 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 b.u.t.ter 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, sc.r.a.ping 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 b.u.t.ter a slice of toast the kind of response that made the Widow's blood boil. ('She makes my blood boil,' she muttered to Vinny, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pus.h.i.+ng her chair back as if she was about to attack the Widow with the b.u.t.ter 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 s.l.u.t,' 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 s.h.i.+rt (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 was.h.i.+ng done.'

'What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+rt 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, embarra.s.sing 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 'wh.o.r.e' 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, 'h.e.l.lo' 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 b.i.t.c.h.

'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 ap.r.o.n to dab at her eyes and Gordon said, 'There, there,' and put his arms round her.

Eliza lay coldly in bed next to Gordon. The second-best bed. The sheets in Arden were as stiff as brown paper. She spoke over her icy shoulder at him, Look at her why doesn't she move out and live with Vinny and give us this house, or give us some money from the shop? The shop should be yours, she's an old woman, why is she hanging on to it? We could sell up and have some money, get away from this b.l.o.o.d.y hole. Do something with our lives.

This was the most Eliza had said to Gordon in months. He stared through the dark at the wall opposite, if he stared hard enough at the wallpaper he could make out where the repeat began on the pattern of roses growing on a trellis. An owl hooted on Sycamore Street.

The Widow creaked stiffly into the front pa.s.senger seat of the big black car.

'It's half-day closing,' Gordon said to Charles, 'I'll be back at lunchtime.' Vinny climbed resentfully into the back 'How is it that I always have to sit in the back? Why am I always second-best?' and they all drove off to turn themselves into licensed grocers for the day, prut-prut-prut. Charles waved until the car was out of sight and then a little bit longer because one of Gordon's tricks was to pretend to have disappeared round a corner and then just when you thought he'd gone he'd suddenly pop back. Not this time though.

A picnic, Eliza said, stubbing her cigarette out on one of the Widow's flower-sprigged plates, it's half-term, after all, and we've done absolutely b.l.o.o.d.y nothing all week, and she hauled the old wicker picnic basket out of its hiding-place in the understairs cupboard and said, We'll take the bus into town and meet Daddy at lunchtime and give him a surprise.

As a treat they sat on the top deck of the bus, on the front seats, and watched the streets of trees go sailing by below. The big branch of a sycamore snapped unexpectedly against the window in front of them, rattling its dead leaves that were like hands and Eliza said, It's all right, it's just a tree, and lit a cigarette. She waved the smoke away from their faces and crossed her legs and tapped one foot as if she was impatient about something. She was wearing Charles' favourite shoes, high-heeled brown suede with little furry pom-poms. Mink according to Eliza. Her fifteen-denier stockings were the same shade. Mink.

The bus trundled on, running along the street where Vinny's house was. Eliza stubbed out her cigarette under her shoe, twisting her foot hard, long after the cigarette was extinguished. Her bad mood radiated off her like the cold October suns.h.i.+ne. There was a bus-stop right outside Vinny's door and all three of them looked down into her tiny front garden and tried to peer through her lace-curtained windows, safe because they knew she was at work. Their faces were level with her bedroom window but its curtains were permanently shut against nosy top-deckers and it revealed no secrets to voyeurs. Vinny's house was a thin redbrick semi with a small, square bay and a mean porch, built when the master-builder's imagination had run out and his veins were flooded with alcohol (the master-builder's solid trunk was felled by a stroke in 1930).

Ugh, Eliza s.h.i.+vered, although whether at the house or its absent occupant wasn't clear. Both probably. Charles and Isobel didn't like visiting Vinny's house. It smelt of damp and Izal and boiled vegetables.

When they arrived at the shop they found the Widow standing by the scratched red-metal Hobart coffee-grinder dreaming about money and things coming off ration. Gordon lifted Isobel on to the polished mahogany of the counter so she could watch him weighing tea. The tea smelt dark and bitter like the Widow's hot chrome teapot with its knitted green and yellow cosy. Vinny was cutting a piece of Lancas.h.i.+re as white as the Widow's skin.

'Well, well, well,' Mrs Tyndale, a regular customer, said, bustling fatly into the shop, 'if it isn't Charles and Isobel.' She turned to the Widow, 'She's the image of her mother, isn't she?' and the Widow and Vinny raised their eyebrows in unison, communicating mutely with each other over the ramifications of this statement. 'It's lovely, isn't it,' Mrs Tyndale said, 'to see a happy young family!'

Eliza didn't respond in any way and disappeared into the back of the shop, followed by Gordon on an invisible lead. Mrs Tyndale leant conspiratorially over the counter and said to Vinny, 'Flighty thing, isn't she?' Vinny gave a funny squint smile and whispered, 'Flirty, too,' as if Eliza was some strange species of bird.

Eliza and Gordon reappeared, their faces tight and blank as if they'd been having an argument. We're going for a picnic, we'll give you a lift home first, Eliza said to the Widow. The Widow demurred. She was going to Temple's for lunch, she said, looking saintly, as if she was going to a church service, as if Temple's might really be a temple, not a department store restaurant. 'A picnic in October?' Mrs Tyndale enquired brightly and was ignored by everyone.

Eliza picked Isobel up from the counter and started nibbling her ear. Why, Vinny wondered, was Eliza always trying to eat bits of her children? What a tasty little morsel, Eliza murmured in Isobel's ear while Vinny patted b.u.t.ter aggressively, imagining it was Eliza's head. If Eliza wasn't careful, Vinny thought, she'd look around one day and discover that she'd eaten them all up.

The Widow, meanwhile, was wondering if this picnic was perhaps another of Eliza's impulsive outings. Perhaps she'd come back with another baby. Or perhaps, with any luck, she'd get lost and not come back at all. Vinny slapped a lump of b.u.t.ter down on the marble slab, they would never think of asking her on a picnic, would they? Vinny, Eliza's voice purred sweetly, why don't you come with us? and Vinny recoiled in horror the last thing she wanted to do was go anywhere with them, she just wanted to be asked. 'Yes, do,' the Widow barked, 'some fresh air might put a bit of life in you.' Poor Vinny, Eliza said, fizzing with laughter.

It was quite a relief to see Eliza cheerful, even if it was only for a moment. She'd been bad-tempered for weeks. I'm not myself, she said and then laughed maniacally, but G.o.d knows who I am.

Gordon unwrapped himself from his grocer's bondage with a flourish and put his gabardine mac and trilby hat on so that he didn't look anything like a grocer. He could have been a film star with his thick, wavy hair. He stood at the door of the shop and raised his arms to play Oranges and Lemons and said, 'Off with her head!' and Isobel ran under the half-arch of his arms. Charles got excited and ran back three times to be executed. Gordon was just about to chop off Eliza's head as well when she said very coldly, very Hempstid Stop it, Gordon, and he gave her an odd look and then clicked his heels and said, 'Jawohl, meine dame,' and Vinny snapped, 'That's not funny, Gordon people died in the war, you know!' Eliza laughed and said, No, really, Vinny? and Gordon turned to her nastily and said, 'Shut up, why don't you, Eliza?'

I don't know what's the matter with you, Eliza said airily and Gordon stared at her very hard and said, 'Don't you?'

The shop bell clanged noisily on its springy strip of metal as Gordon pulled the door shut behind them. The Widow and Mrs Tyndale stood behind the gla.s.s in the upper half of the shop door and waved goodbye to the car, woodenly like Punch and Judy in their box. As soon as the engine started to prut-prut-prut they turned to each other, eager to comment on the behaviour of their not-so-happy young family.

'Where shall we go?' Gordon asked no-one in particular, tapping the steering-wheel with his leather-gloved hands as if it was a tambourine. Anywhere, Eliza said, lighting a cigarette. Gordon gave her an odd sideways look as if he'd only just met her and was wondering what kind of a person she was. 'How about Boscrambe Woods?' he asked, looking at Charles in the rear-view mirror. 'Yes!' Charles shouted enthusiastically. Eliza said something but Gordon accelerated noisily as he pulled away from the pavement and her words were drowned by the engine.

Vinny, relegated to the back seat as usual, was trying to shrink to protect herself from carelessly kicking feet and sticky hands. 'What do you think, Vin?' Gordon said and Vinny said, 'What you mean someone's actually asking my opinion for once?' and lit a cigarette without giving an opinion any way and disappeared in a cloud of tobacco smoke.

Isobel closed her eyes almost as soon as the engine started. She loved the feeling of slipping down into sleep, breathing in the soporific drug of seat-leather, nicotine, petrol and Eliza's perfume. They were still driving when she woke up. Eliza looked over her shoulder and said, Nearly there. Isobel's tongue felt like a pebble. Charles was picking a scab on his knee. His face was covered in freckles and the tiny elliptical craters of chickenpox scars. His snub nose twitched at the amount of cigarette smoke in the car. Gordon started to sing 'Down by the Salley Gardens' in his nice light baritone. In profile his nose was straight and Roman and from low down on the leather of the back seat you could imagine him flying his plane through the clouds. Occasionally, he cast a glance in Eliza's direction as if he was checking to see if she was still there.

He braked suddenly as a thin stream of grey squirrel streaked across the road in front of the car and they all jerked forward. Vinny bounced her forehead off the back of the front seat with a little screech. 'G.o.d,' said Gordon, looking shaken, but Eliza just laughed her funny annoying laugh. Gordon stared at the windscreen for a while, a muscle in spasm in his cheek.

'And are you all right, Vinny?' Vinny asked herself, 'Oh yes, thank you, don't bother about me,' she answered and was jerked violently again as Gordon revved up the engine and accelerated off.

The cold was a surprise after being in the heat of the car for so long, the clear woodland air a shock after the tobacco smog. Eliza turned up the collar of her camel coat and pulled on her delicate leather gloves. I should have worn a hat, she said as she bent down to tie Isobel's scarf round her neck. Isobel could see a stray speck of mascara on Eliza's cheek, beneath her lashes. Eliza tied the scarf so tight that it choked Isobel and she had to put her hands up and tug it looser.

The scarf matched her Shetland tammy, both knitted for Christmas by the Widow. Charles was wearing his school blazer and cap while Vinny had on her belted navy-blue gabardine with matching sou'wester. Anyone looking at them at that moment would have seen a nice family healthy, attractive, ordinary the kind that graced the advertis.e.m.e.nts every week in Picture Post. A nice ordinary family going for a walk in the woods. They would never have been able to tell, just by looking at them, that their world was about to end.

Eliza licked the edge of her Christmas present handkerchief and bent down again to wipe the corners of Isobel's mouth. She rubbed so hard that Isobel was forced to take an involuntary step backwards. From somewhere above her head, Gordon's voice sounded hollow, 'Don't rub so hard, Lizzy, you'll rub her out,' and she could see Eliza's eyes narrowing and a thin blue vein on her forehead the colour of hyacinths grow visible through her fine skin and begin to throb. Eliza folded the handkerchief in a neat triangle and tucked it into the pocket of Isobel's plaid wool coat and said, In case you need to blow your nose.

The picnic wasn't a great success. Catering wasn't one of Eliza's skills. The cuc.u.mber in the fish-paste-and-cuc.u.mber sandwiches had made the bread soggy, the apples had rusting, mottled bruises under their skins and Eliza had neglected to pack anything to drink. By now they seemed to have walked a long way into the woods. 'When you're in a wood,' Gordon said to Charles, 'always follow the path, that way you won't get lost.' What if there isn't a path? Eliza asked, bad temper sharpening her voice. 'Then walk towards the light,' Gordon said without turning to look at her.

Eliza had carried the big tartan rug from the back seat and spread it on a carpet of beech leaves. This is a lovely sunny patch, she said with a febrile gaiety that convinced no-one. Charles dropped to his knees and rolled about on the rug. Gordon leant back on his elbows and Isobel snuggled into the crook of his elbow. Eliza sat like a well-behaved aristocrat, her long, thin legs in their mink-coloured stockings and elegant shoes looking out of place, stretched across the homely tartan rug, as if they'd wandered in from a mannequin parade. Vinny cast them envious glances, her own scrawny legs had all the shape of clothes-pegs. Vinny forced her poker body to bend into a kneeling position on the rug and pulled her skirt over her legs; she had the air of a refined Victorian traveller amongst primitive forest dwellers.

The novelty of rug-dwelling soon wore off. The children s.h.i.+vered disconsolately and ate jam sandwiches and Kit-Kats until they felt queasy. 'This isn't much fun,' Charles said and threw himself off the rug into a pile of leaves and started burying himself like a dog. Having fun was very important to Charles, having fun and making people laugh. 'He's just looking for attention,' Vinny said. And he gets it isn't that clever? Eliza said. Charles' hair was almost the same colour as the dying forest tawny oak and curly copper-beech. He could have got lost in the pile of leaves and never be found until the spring.

Vinny heaved herself up from the rug with a struggle and said, 'I have to go and you-know-what,' and vanished into the trees. Minutes pa.s.sed and she didn't come back. Gordon laughed and said, 'She'll go for miles, to make sure n.o.body sees her bloomers,' and Eliza made a nauseated face at the idea of Vinny's underclothes and got up suddenly from the rug and said, I'm going for a walk, without looking at any of them and set off along the path, in the opposite direction to Vinny.

'We'll come with you!' Gordon shouted after her and she spun round very quickly so that her big camel coat swung round her legs, showing her dress underneath in a swirl of green, and shouted back, Don't you dare! She sounded furious. 'She has completely the wrong shoes on,' Gordon muttered angrily and bowled a rotten apple overarm into the trees behind them. Just before she disappeared round the turning in the path, Eliza stopped and shouted something, the words ringing clearly in the crisp air I'm going home, don't bother following me!

'Home!' Gordon exploded. 'How does she think she's to get home?' and then he got up too and set off in pursuit of Eliza, shouting over his shoulder to Charles, 'I won't be a sec stay here with your sister!' and with that he was gone as well.

The sun had disappeared from the trees, except for one little pool at the corner of the rug. Isobel lay with her face in the warm pool, drifting in and out of sleep, eventually woken by Charles leaping on top of her. She screamed and the scream echoed wildly in the silence. They sat on the rug together, holding hands, waiting for some other noise to take the place of the dying echo of the scream, waiting for the sound of Gordon's and Eliza's voices, of a bird singing, of Vinny complaining, of wind in the trees, of anything except the absolute stillness of the wood. Perhaps it was one of Gordon's disappearing tricks. One he was having difficulty with and any moment now he'd get it right and jump out from behind a tree and shout, 'Surprise!'

A leaf the colour of Charles' hair drifted down like a feather through the air and landed noiselessly. Isobel could feel fear, like hot liquid, in her stomach. Something was very, very wrong.

All sense of time had disappeared. It felt as if they'd been alone in the wood for hours. Where were Gordon and Eliza? Where was Vinny? Had she been eaten by a wild animal while doing you-know-what? Charles' broad, jolly face had grown pale and pinched with worry. Eliza always told them that if they got separated from her when they were out then you must stay exactly where you are and she would come and find them. Charles' belief in this statement had waned considerably over the last hour or two.

Eventually he said, 'Come on, let's go and find everybody,' and dragged Isobel up from the rug by her hand. 'They're just playing Hide-and-Seek probably,' he said, but his whey-face and the wobble in his voice betrayed his real feelings. Being the grown-up in charge was taking its toll on him. They set off in the same direction that Eliza and Gordon had followed, the path quite clear hard, trodden-down earth, laddered occasionally with tree-roots.

It was growing dark by now. Isobel stumbled over a tree-root snaking across the path and hurt her knees. Charles waited impatiently for her to catch up. He was holding something in his hand, squinting in the gloom. It was a shoe, a brown suede shoe, the heel bent at a strange angle and the little mink pom-pom dampened by something sticky so that it lay flat and limp like a wet kitten and the rhinestone was a dull gleam in the dying light.

Charles walked on more slowly now, carrying the shoe in his hand, then, without warning, he scuttled down into a dry ditch full of leaves, beside the path. The ditch was so full of leaves that they came up to Charles' play-scarred knees and made an attractive crispy-crunchy noise as he waded through them. For a moment Isobel thought this might be part of his endless quest for fun but almost as soon as he'd leapt in, he leapt out the other side. She followed him, scrambling down into the ditch and wading through the leaves. She would like to have lain down, sunk on to this comfortable leaf bed and gone to sleep for a while, but Charles was charging on so she clambered up the other side of the ditch and hurried after him.

He was brus.h.i.+ng his way through a curtain of twigs that snapped back and hit her in the face like thin whips. When she finally caught up with him he was standing as rooted as a tree with his back to her, as if he was playing statues, his arms sticking out from his body. In one hand he was holding the shoe. The fingers of the other hand were stretched out wide and flat and Isobel took hold of Charles' sycamore leaf hand and together they stood and looked.

At Eliza. She was lolled against the trunk of a big oak tree, like a carelessly abandoned doll or a broken bird. Her head had flopped against her shoulder, stretching her thin white neck like a swan or a stalk about to snap. Her camel coat had fallen open and her woollen dress, the colour of bright spring leaves, was fanned out over her legs. She had one shoe off and one shoe on and the words to Diddle-diddle dumpling ran through Isobel's head.

It was hard to know what to do with this sleeping mother who refused to wake up. She looked very peaceful, her long lashes closed, the speck of mascara still visible. Only the dark red ribbons of blood in her black curls hinted at the way her skull might have been smashed against the trunk of the tree and broken open like a beech-nut or an acorn.

They pulled her coat close and Charles did his best to put the shoe back on her elegantly arched stocking-foot. It was as if her feet had grown while she slept. It was so difficult getting the shoe back on that Charles grew afraid that he would break the bones in Eliza's feet and eventually he gave up on the task and shoved the shoe into his blazer pocket.

They cuddled up to Eliza, trying to keep her warm, trying to keep themselves warm one on each side of her like some sadly sentimental tableau ('Won't you wake up, Mother dear?'). Leaves drifted down occasionally. Three or four leaves were already snagged on Eliza's black curls. Charles stood up and, dog-like, shook leaves off his own head. It was really quite dark now, it was all very well saying follow the light but what if there was no light to follow? When Isobel tried to stand up her legs were so numb that she could hardly balance and fell down again. And she was so hungry that for a dizzy moment she wanted to bite into the bark of the tree. But she would never do that because Eliza used to tell them a story called 'The Oldest Tree In The Forest' so that Isobel knew the bark of a tree was really its skin and she knew how painful a bite on your skin could be because Eliza was always biting them. And sometimes it hurt.

Charles said, 'We have to find Daddy,' his voice shrill in the quiet, 'he'll come and get Mummy.' They looked doubtfully at Eliza, reluctant to leave her here all alone in the cold and the dark. Her cheeks were icy to the touch, they felt their own cheeks in comparison. If anything they were even colder. Charles started to gather up leaves and pile them over Eliza's legs. They remembered the summer at the seaside, burying Eliza's lower half in sand while she sat in her red halter-neck swimming-costume reading a book, wearing the sungla.s.ses that made her look foreign and glamorous, and stubbing out her cigarettes in the sand turret they'd built around her (You've got me prisoner!). For a warm second Isobel could feel the sun on her shoulders and smell the sea. 'Help me,' Charles said and she shuffled leaves forward with her feet for Charles to scoop up in handfuls and throw on Eliza.

Then they kissed her, one on either cheek, in a strange reversal of the bedtime ritual. They left reluctantly, looking back at her several times. When they reached the ditch of leaves they turned round one last time but they couldn't see Eliza any more, only a pile of dead leaves against a tree.

To go back to the tartan rug and abandoned picnic and wait for rescue? Or onward to try and find a way out of the wood? Charles said he wished they'd brought the uneaten sandwiches with them. 'We could scatter the crumbs,' he said, 'and find our way back.' Their only blueprint for survival in these circ.u.mstances, it seemed, was fictional. They knew the plot, unfortunately, and any minute expected to find the gingerbread cottage and then the nightmare would really begin.

Isobel was sorry now that she'd ever complained about Eliza's paste-and-cuc.u.mber, she wouldn't be scattering them, she'd be eating them. She was so hungry that she would have eaten a gingerbread tile or a piece of striped candy window-frame, even though she knew the consequences. They were both suddenly very sorry for all the food that they'd ever left on their plates. They would even have eaten the Widow's tapioca pudding. The big oval gla.s.s dish that the Widow made her milk-puddings in rose up before them like a mirage. They could feel the sliminess of the tapioca, taste the puddle of rosehip syrup that the Widow always poured in the middle, like a liquid jewel. Charles searched through his pockets and came up with a stringless conker, a farthing and a black-and-white striped humbug with a good deal of pocket-fluff attached. It was too hard to break so they took it in turns to suck it.

The wood was full of noises. Occasionally the darkness was shot through by strange sounds screeches and whistles that seemed to have no earthly origin. Twigs snapped and crackled and the undergrowth rustled malevolently as if something invisible was stalking them.

Every direction felt unsafe. An owl swept soundlessly on its flightpath, low over their heads, and Isobel was sure she could feel its claws touching her hair. She threw herself on the ground in a frenzy of panic that left Charles unmoved. 'It's just an owl, silly,' he said, yanking her back up on to her feet. Her heart was ticking very fast as if it was about to go off. 'It's not the owls we have to worry about,' Charles muttered grimly, 'it's the wolves,' and then, remembering that he was supposed to be the man in charge of this woeful expedition, added, 'Joke, Izzie forget I said that.'

Moving on was slightly less terrifying than standing still waiting for something to pounce, so they soldiered on miserably. Isobel found some comfort in the warm grubbiness of Charles' hand clasped around hers. Charles remembered a s.n.a.t.c.h of verse, It isn't very good in the middle of the wood.

Tree after tree after tree, all the trees in the world were in Boscrambe Wood that night. In the middle of the night when there isn't any light. Perhaps instead of letting them loose in her big green field, Eliza has chosen to set them free in an endless wood instead. Isobel thought she would have preferred it if she'd just returned them to the baby shop.

The path turned a corner and forked suddenly. Charles took the farthing out of his pocket and said, 'Toss for it heads right, tails left,' in the manliest way he could muster and Isobel said, 'Tails,' in a weak voice. The coin landed wren-side up and the little bird pointed its beak at the left-hand path. As if on cue, the moon full to bursting dodged out from behind her cloud cover and hung over the left-hand path for a few brief seconds like a neon sign. 'Follow the light,' Charles said decisively.

The path was becoming overgrown, brambles reached out and plucked at their clothes and tweaked their hair like bird's claws. It was so dark by now that it took them some time to realize they weren't really on a path at all any more. A few steps further on and their Start-rite shoes began to be sucked into the ground. Everywhere that they tentatively poked their toes proved wet and boggy. They had heard stories of people being drowned in quicksand, sinking into bogs and they plunged on quickly through thorns to a higher and drier piece of ground.

'Things can't get any worse,' Charles said miserably, just before the fog started to advance, wraithlike, towards them. It curled around the trees and grew thicker, like opaque water, wave after wave, engulfing everything in a ghostly white sea of fog. Isobel started to wail, very loudly, and Charles said, 'Put a sock in it, Izzie. Please.'

Too weary to go any further, too confused by the fog, they curled up at the foot of a big tree, nestling in between its enormous roots, which arched over the ground like gnarled bony fingers. There were plenty of dead leaves here for a blanket but they remembered Eliza under her leaf cover and pulled their coats tighter. A cold counterpane of fog settled itself around them instead.

Isobel fell asleep immediately but Charles lay awake waiting for the wolves to start howling.

Isobel dreamt the strangest dream. She was in a great underground cavern, warm and full of people and noise. By the light of hundreds of candles she could see that the walls and the roof of the cavern were made of gold. At one end of this great hall a man sat on a throne. He was dressed all in green from head to foot and wore a golden band round his forehead. Someone handed her a silver plate piled high with the most delicious food, like nothing she'd ever tasted before. Someone else pressed a crystal goblet into her hand, full of a liquid that tasted of honey and raspberries, only nicer, and no matter how much she drank, the goblet was never empty. The people in the hall began to dance, sedately at first but then the music grew more frantic and the dancing got wilder and wilder. The man with the golden band around his head appeared suddenly at her shoulder and shouted at her above the din, asking her what her name was and she shouted back, 'Isobel!' and immediately the hall along with the lights and the music and the people disappeared and she found herself alone in the wood, eating a rotting mushroom from a leaf and drinking ditchwater from an acorn cup.

She woke up with a jerk, her dream evaporating into the dawn there was no sign of crystal goblet or silver plate, nor even of rotting mushroom and acorn cup just the stillness of the forest. Charles was snoring, curled up tidily like a small hibernating animal. The fog had lifted, replaced by a watery dawnlight, nothing had changed, they were still alone in the heart of the wood.

PRESENT.

LEAVES OF LIGHT.

'Ancestral life the bacteria and the blue-green algae came a billion years later. The blue-green algae were the first to know how to turn molecules of light into food. The oxygen released by this process changed the atmosphere of the Earth for ever, allowing the creation of life as we know it.

'After the blue-green algae came the mosses, the fungi and the ferns. By the end of the Devonian Era the first trees genus cordates were already extinct.

'In the Carboniferous Era there were forests of giant ferns, the first conifers appeared and the coal fields were laid down. 136 million years ago, the flowering and the broad-leaved trees made their first appearance. Most of the trees we know today were in existence by twelve million years ago,' Miss Thompsett's voice drones through the cla.s.sroom. On my right-hand side, Eunice is as alert as a sheepdog as Miss Thompsett writes on the blackboard in her tidy writing CO2 + 2H 2A + light energy (CH 2) + H2O + H2A.

Miss Thompsett herself dark green twin-set and box-pleated tartan skirt is as tidy as her handwriting.

On my other side, Audrey is hunched up asleep, her arms pillowing her head on her desk. She has shadows as dark as bruises under her eyes and she is dreadfully pale. She's not really here at all, as if someone had made a really poor facsimile of her and sent it out into the world without telling it how to behave, an incompetent doppelganger.

Miss Thompsett bores on ... outer layer of the epidermis and into the palisade cells ... she's giving us 'a brief history of photosynthesis', and the effect is like a sleeping draught. Her words pour into my ear and then curl around my brain like green fog ... chlorophyll, grana, photons ...