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undiminished. “Would you like me to play it all the way through?”
    “No, I want to play.” I was determined to be visibly part of the game when Uncle Kurt appeared.
    Tom and Isabella, the only sibling pair, soon took the lead. Isabella told me later that all the members of their family were fanatical players down in Boston and that she and Tom had devoted hours to improving the accuracy of their shots. They didn’t mention this at the time, though—they gave the credit to natural talent. “Never picked up a mallet before in my life,” Isabella said, flexing her thin arms. Neither Aunt Rose nor Uncle Cedric saw fit to contradict her.
    Charlie swooped up from behind and hit their ball with his. “Watch out—you’re going to be skunked,” he warned.
    “Let me do it,” said Francesca. “You hit her. I get to skunk her.”
    “You don’t know how.”
    “Of course I do! I’ve played before. My mother taught us, and she’s better than any of you.” Francesca put one dainty foot on her own ball and raised the mallet.
    “You’ll knock your foot off,” said Charlie. “Let me help you.” He wrapped his arms around her and put his hands over hers on the mallet. With one massive toe he nudged her foot off the ball.
    Francesca’s laugh rang out from within his embrace. “Charlie, we’re in public!” she exclaimed, and the aunts’ eyebrows rose. Then she said, “Get off me, you big bear,” and all the cousins began to laugh. A few glanced toward Aunt Edie. It was the undying joke of the summer, with just enough flavor of reality to give it punch.
    Aunt Edie was trying to dominate the blue mallet and finding strong opposition in Aunt Rose. My mother and Aunt Margery had dropped out after the first round. “What’s the use?” Margery said, near to fuming. “They’ll just shove us to one side when they think they can make a better shot.”
    Yvette, who could play a game with complete indifference or with competitive zeal but never with anything in between, had set her eyes on victory. It took her at least five minutes to prepare for every shot, and she ignored the shouts and groans of the other players. She would bend over her mallet, her blond hair falling in a curtain beside her face, her concentration like a fish cutting a line through a stream. Most of the time her shots were accurate, but she was still no match for Tom and Isabella.
    The kitchen door remained obstinately shut, and Uncle Kurt did not appear. At last I asked my mother about him. “Why won’t he come out? Doesn’t he want to play with us? I thought he loved croquet.”
    “Well, you know, dear,” she replied, “he’s working on writing something this summer. I think he finds it hard to concentrate with all of us here, and that’s why he has to lock himself in his room during the mornings. You mustn’t bother him when he’s working, but he’ll find time to play with the rest of us, don’t you worry.”
    “What is he working on?” I asked, intrigued.
    “Oh, he’s just writing something up. About the war, I think.” My mother waved her hand vaguely. She didn’t like to think about the war because it reminded her of Uncle Harold. The two of them had been very close, and when he died in the war, she had been so upset that she left my father and me for a time. At three years old, I felt her absence vividly, but I couldn’t miss Uncle Harold because I had never met him. He is another famous Hatfield figure, one whose legendary status can never be dimmed by the mundanity of a long life.
    Uncle Kurt, then, was consigned to his room. The croquet game suddenly held less interest for me, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out which window was his.
    Though he never appeared, there was still a late entrant to the match. Our surprise was doubled because the latecomer was a stranger, and her arrival cost Tom and Isabella the game. Tom had just lined up their ball for the last shot before a certain victory when I, happening to