Human Croquet Read Online Free PDF Page A

his fingers like a bad conjuror, one red, red eyebrow cocked in the cartoon position of surprise (whether relevant or not) that he favours for most conversations. People plucked from their lives as if by an invisible hand, ‘Dematerialization, Izzie – it could happen to anyone,’ he says eagerly, ‘at any moment.’ Hardly a comforting thought. ‘Your brother’s a nut-cake,’ Carmen says, sucking a mis-shapen mint so hard that it looks as if her cheeks have just imploded, ‘he should see a trick-cyclist.’
    But the real question, surely, is – where do the people who vanish into thin air go? Do they all go to the same place? ‘Thin air’ must surely be a misnomer, for the air must be fairly choked with animals, children, people, ships, aeroplanes, Amys and Amelias.
    ‘What if our mother didn’t run off,’ Charles muses, sitting on the end of my bed now and staring out at the blue square of window-sky. ‘What if she had simply dematerialized?’ I point out to him that ‘simply’ might be the wrong word here, but I know what he means – then she wouldn’t have voluntarily abandoned her own children (us), leaving them to fend for themselves in a cold, cruel world. And so on.
    ‘Shut up, Charles.’ I put my head under the pillow. But I can still hear him.
    ‘Aliens,’ he says decisively, ‘these people were all kidnapped by aliens. And our mother too,’ he adds wistfully, ‘that’s what happened to her.’
    ‘Kidnapped by aliens?’
    ‘Well why not?’ Charles says stoutly. ‘Anything’s possible.’ But which is the most likely really – a mother kidnapped by aliens or a mother who ran off with a fancy man?
    ‘Aliens, definitely,’ Charles says.
    I sit up and give him a good hard punch in the ribs to shut him up. It’s such a long time ago now (eleven years) but Charles can’t let Eliza go. ‘Go away, Charles.’
    ‘No, no, no,’ he says, his eyes alight with a kind of madness. ‘I’ve found something.’
    ‘Found what?’ It’s still only eight o’clock in the morning and Charles is in his pyjamas – maroon-and-white striped flannel that say ‘Age 12’ on the label on the collar, but which he has never outgrown. If the aliens kidnap him will they believe what he tells them or what his label says? He seems to have forgotten that it’s my birthday. ‘It’s my birthday, Charles.’
    ‘Yeah, yeah, look—’ From his striped breast-pocket he takes something wrapped in a large handkerchief. ‘I found this’, he says in a church-whisper, ‘at the back of a drawer.’
    ‘The back of a drawer?’ (Not my birthday present then.)
    ‘In the sideboard, I was looking for Sellotape.’ (For my present, I hope.) ‘Look!’ he urges excitedly.
    ‘An old powder-compact?’ I ask dubiously.
    ‘Hers!’ Charles says triumphantly. I don’t need to ask the identity of ‘Her’ – Charles has a particular tone of voice, reverential and mystical, that he uses when speaking about Eliza.
    ‘You don’t know that.’
    ‘It says so,’ he says, thrusting it in front of my face. It’s an expensive-looking compact, but old-fashioned – thin and flat, like a heavy gold disc. The lid is a bright blue enamel, inlaid with mother-of-pearl palm trees. The clasp is still springy and snaps open. There’s no powder-puff and the mirror is covered in a thin film of powder and the powder itself – a compacted pale pink – has been worn down in the middle to reveal a circle of silver metal.
    ‘There’s nothing at all to prove it’s hers,’ I tell him crossly and he snatches it back and turns it over so that an almost invisible shower of powder falls out on to my eiderdown. ‘Look.’
    On its golden underside, striated in fine circles, there is an engraving. I hold it up to the square of blue and make out the stilted message:
    To my darling wife, Eliza, on the occasion of your twenty-third birthday. From your loving husband, Gordon. 15th March 1943 .
    I feel quite faint for a moment, even though