Human Croquet (5 page)

‘Well anyway,’ Charles says,
‘I
think it’s hers,’ and he pockets it moodily and leaves without wishing me happy birthday.

I myself am usually to be found lying on my bed imitating the dead Chatterton, killing time by reading book after book (the only reliable otherworlds I’ve discovered so far).

‘I expect Charles is in his room,’ I tell Gordon and he makes a surprised face as if this is the last place he expected him to be.

Of course, he could just have been Gordon come home after seven years’ absence with a new young wife and Eliza might never be coming back. But this version of reality was not to our taste. ‘He’s sad, your dad, isn’t he?’ Carmen says, unnaturally poetic. At least he’s not mad or bad. But we’d prefer it if he was glad. ‘Bit of a lad?’ Carmen offers. But no, not really.

Girls idolize him. He’s the kind of boy you could take home to your mother (if you had one), the kind of boy you could take up to Lover’s Leap and steam up the car – a boy for all seasons in fact. No-one ever mentions Malcolm Lovat without saying what a great future he’s going to have, he’s reading medicine at Guy’s and is home for the Easter holidays at the moment. ‘Following in my father’s footsteps,’ he says with a wry little smile. His father’s a gynaecologist. ‘Perverted’ is Vinny’s verdict on this particular speciality – she has had ‘women’s trouble’ treated by Mr Lovat – ‘what man wants to specialize in sticking his hands inside women? Perverts, that’s what kind.’ I wonder where Charles and I would get if we followed in our father’s footsteps? Lost, presumably.

Malcolm wants to be a brain surgeon, which seems just as perverted to me; what person in their right minds would want to stick their hands inside other people’s
heads?

Poor Malcolm, his mother is an ogress. Both his parents are so intolerant and snobbish that it seems a wonder they have a son like Malcolm. Perhaps not such a wonder, for Malcolm is adopted. The Lovats were quite old when they adopted him. ‘I don’t think they knew what to do with me when they got me,’ Malcolm says, ‘I didn’t drink gin and I didn’t play bridge.’ He has learnt to do both.

Unfortunately, he is a prince out of my star. ‘I don’t know though, Iz,’ he says, rather glumly, to me over a shared packet of crisps. ‘Do I really want to be a doctor at all?’ The dreadful thing is, he thinks of me as
a friend
. He runs a hand through his dark curls and brushes them away from his handsome forehead. ‘You’re a good pal, Iz,’ he sighs. I am his friend, his ‘pal’, his ‘chum’ – more like a tin of dog food than a member of the female sex, certainly not the object of his desire. Too many years of wandering around the streets of trees after him like a large faithful pet have robbed me of female qualities in his eyes.

Of course, I could have spent the weekend with Eunice. ‘How would you like,’ she asked enthusiastically, ‘to come caravanning with us in Cleethorpes? That would be a nice way to spend your birthday.’

Enthusiastic Eunice is the last person I would have ever
chosen
as a friend, but of course you don’t choose your friends, they choose you. Eunice arrived in secondary school on the first day and attached herself to me like a mollusc and has stuck firmly on ever since, regardless of the fact that I’ve nothing in common with her and spend a considerable amount of time trying to prise her off. I think I was just the first person she happened to see when she walked through the school gates. (‘Like she was under a spell or something?’ Audrey muses.) But Eunice isn’t the kind of girl to fall under enchantments, she’s far too sensible for that.

She’s very plain – white ankle socks, hair parted to one side and fastened in a hair-slide, heavy black-rimmed glasses. She’s looked exactly the same for the last five years except that she’s no longer flat-chested and has black hairs on her calves as if someone’s pulled the legs off a web of spiders and stuck them on Eunice’s legs. She’s a humourless girl who leads a very organized life – the sort who lays out all her clothes for the next day before she goes to bed and does her homework as soon as she gets in from school. My way of being organized, on the other hand, is to go to bed
wearing
my school uniform.

Eunice knows about
everything
and never lets you forget it, so that you can’t pass a post-box or a cat on the street without Eunice expounding on the invention of the postage stamp or the evolution of the sabretoothed tiger into the cat.
Click, click, click
, goes Eunice’s brain. It’s formed differently – where my brain, for example, is a gallimaufry of art and poetry and over-whelming emotions and you could dip into my mental hodgepodge and come up randomly with
Idylls of the King
, the sinking of the
Titanic
or the death of Old Yeller – Eunice’s brain is modelled on a reference library – holding an unnecessary amount of facts, a clinical retrieval system and an advice desk that won’t shut up.
Click, click, click
.

She’s a Guide leader, you can’t see her uniform for badges, teaches at Sunday School, sings in the school choir, plays in goal in the school hockey team, is the school chess champion and likes knitting. She intends to be a scientist and have two children, a boy and a girl (she’ll probably knit them), and a reliable husband with a well-paid job.

Her mother, Mrs Primrose, always says, ‘Oh you’ve brought your friends home, Eunice!’ – each time surprised anew that Eunice is capable of making friends. The Primroses live in Laurel Bank, which is too close for comfort.

‘Primrose’ we are all agreed, is a very pretty name and it’s only a shame it’s paired with ‘Eunice’ – she could surely have been called ‘Lily or Rose or Jasmine or even … Primrose.’

This remark is addressed to Charles over my birthday lunch of macaroni cheese in an attempt to get him interested in Eunice as a girl instead of her previous incarnation as a crashing bore, on the principle that two misfits together might make a fit. ‘Daisy,’ Mr Rice adds, uninvited, ‘Iris, Ivy, Cherry – I knew a girl called Cherry once,’ he snorts. ‘She was a bit of all right … Poppy, Marigold, Pansy … [Mr Rice is the most boring person alive] … Hyacinth, Heather—’

‘Gorse, wort, bladderwrack,’ Vinny interrupts him impatiently.

‘Violet,’ Charles says dreamily, ‘that’s a pretty name.’

Is this normal, I wonder? But then, what is normal? Not Carmen’s family, surely – the McDades are liable to such casual violence that even the friendliest exchange with them is liable to result in injury – a box on the ear, a punch in the stomach. ‘Yeah,’ Carmen says, cracking gum like a whip, ‘it’s not nice, is it?’

Carmen’s as thin as tapeworm and has waxy yellow skin that’s nearly transparent so that all her blue veins show like a human biology diagram. Her feet are the worst thing about her – skinny and flat with splayed toes and far too big for the rest of her body, the veins on them like tangled railway junctions. If this is what her feet are like at sixteen, what will they be like when she’s an old woman? But she’s an old woman now really.

Carmen left school at the first opportunity and is already engaged to a square-set boy with the unlikely name of Bash, who could easily pass himself off as one of her brothers. She’s got her future all mapped out – the wedding, the children, the house, the long path to old age. ‘It’s not very romantic, is it?’ I venture, but she just looks at me as if I’m speaking a different language, one she doesn’t know. Carmen’s got a job on the cheese counter in British Home Stores, forcing me to spend quite a lot of time hanging around British Home Stores looking as if I need half a pound of coloured Cheddar.

It doesn’t look such a bad job actually, I don’t think I’d mind working on a cheese counter. It would leave my mind free to do whatever it wanted – which is nothing in particular, it’s true, but I like being alone in my head, I’m used to it. But, of course, the very opposite would probably turn out to be the case and far from being free to roam around in its empty spaces, my mind would most likely be full of nothing but cheese. Carmen confirms this suspicion – ‘Red Leicester’ in particular, she offers, when I ask her to be more specific.

And poor Audrey, so quiet and self-effacing, so frightened of the blackhearted presence of Mr Baxter, that sometimes you have to look twice to make sure Audrey’s still there. Perhaps that’s how people disappear – not suddenly, as in Charles’ unexplained world where people are mysteriously plucked from their lives, but by slowly, day by day, erasing themselves.

Elfin-bodied and angel-haired, Audrey is insubstantial, hardly part of the material world at all. ‘Eat something, Audrey, please,’ Mrs Baxter constantly urges, sometimes even following Audrey round the room with bowl and spoon as if waiting for her to inadvertently open her mouth so that she can take her unawares and pop food inside her. One day I half-expect to see Mrs Baxter regurgitating a little pellet of food and stuffing it down Audrey’s beak. Audrey hasn’t been well for weeks with some bug she can’t shake off and mooches around Sithean bundled up in big cardigans and baggy jumpers looking miserable. ‘What’s wrong with Audrey?’ Mr Baxter keeps snapping as if she’s making herself ill just to annoy him.