Human Croquet (41 page)

I came unannounced into my Lady Margaret’s bedchamber – suspicious, thinking I would catch my husband in her embrace – and instead saw my Lady Margaret’s naked back – thin and supple as a deer, a young girl’s back of arcing blades and knuckled spine – and covered over all, as a map of the world, with a vast expanse of black continent – here and there shaded in yellow or purple. She covered herself hastily but not before I voiced my distress.

‘My lady will catch cold,’ he said, startling me half to death, for I had not seen his soft approach and my dog Finn was sleeping on the watch. But Master Kavanagh was no enemy. He wore a puzzled frown as if he could not understand why the mistress of so much should be making do with so little – and it is true I was not a happy sight, sitting on the ground in the cold and the drizzle under the shelter of a great oak tree. Wrapped in a thick wool cloak and with only my wet hound for company I was truly no better off than one of the serving-girls. And the first time I touched him was when he held out one of his brown, old-callused and new-blistered hands and said, ‘My lady, please, get up off the cold ground.’

I would my lord had looked at me with his eyes.

There were no torches lit in the hallway, all was darkness, a single tallow candle waved wildly in the draughts. The wind had residence in this wicked house. Poor Shakespeare’s face was all craters and hollows in the feeble light, like the moon. I could see his skull. I could see the tear in his eye glitter and reminded him that he had behaved as badly as any man in my lord’s retinue. But he had me by the sleeve and would not let me go and I had to comfort him and tell him I would look after her.

Lacking all shame, I followed Master Kavanagh deeper into the forest and when he left the path I left the path also and when he divested himself of his nether garments it would have taken a deal more than self-will to turn my head and not watch him dip himself in the cool black pool where the flag irises waved and the frogs were startled.

He knew I was there, he was a man who could hear the tread of the deer and the rabbit, who could hear the leaves unfurl and the cuckoo sleep, but he did not turn around – for he was a gentleman, remember – but continued with his exhibition of himself. And I was most pleased with what I saw. Sir Francis was no picture, he had nor flesh on his bones nor hairs on his head and his breath was rank and his farting more so. Naked, we are equal before God, they say, but I think Master Kavanagh would have seemed more noble than my husband.

I saw him in the kitchens when I went to speak to the cook, for I had some say in my kitchens still, if nowhere else. He was sitting at the big scrubbed table eating bread and cheese. He was hardly ever seen in the great house, he had his own rough cot in the forest where, I had heard said, the deer would come to his door and feed from his hand. But that was probably rumour too.

But then his little dog came bounding over the threshold and he himself filled the doorway, silhouetted against blue October sky.

He did not bow. I thought he would say that I should not be there but he said nothing, only entered his own house as if it were a stranger’s, delicately, with trepidation, like a half-tamed deer. So that I had to encourage him and hold out my hand. And so he moved closer and stood before me, closer than he had ever been before, so close I could see the new-shaved bristle on his chin, the greenness of his eyes, the fleck of hazel that seemed gold. ‘Well, Master Kavanagh,’ I said, rather sternly, for my nerves were somewhat frayed, ‘here we are.’

‘Here we are indeed, my lady,’ he said, which was a very long sentence for him. And he took a step closer, which brought him very close indeed, so I took a step back and so we jigged prettily for a while until I had nowhere to go, for I was pushed up against the table. I could feel the heat coming from his body, see the sharpness of his eye-tooth and the fine shape of his top lip.

First the burnt-out candle went flying with a great clatter and then the rotten apple went rolling to the far corner of the room. And heaven only knows what happened to the loaf of bread. Then there was no more speaking, only the exquisite moans and dreadful sighs that must accompany such violent delights.

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.’

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.

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 gods, 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.