These Dreams of You

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Disembarking at Hampton Court, the four have lunch at a pub down the road. Parker listens to headphones plugged into the little green music player hanging around his neck; Sheba plays with Molly’s old camera. The group follows a small red bridge that leads to the palace. On this day the rare fine weather they’ve had in London finally succumbs to the norm, the palace’s bright sunlight-hued red and verdant rolling grounds clashing with the dark billows of gray rolling cross the sky.

Fully as Zan expected, the children’s fascination with the palace is minimal. Tales of wayward clergy and various kingly wives drugged or beheaded, or dying in childbirth, whose ghosts still reside only make Parker and Sheba uneasy or give rise to questions that Zan can’t answer. If he’s being honest, Zan’s interest in the palace isn’t so keen either, or maybe he’s just distracted; in any case the father, son, daughter and nanny move beyond the house onto the grounds where the court’s famous three-hundred-year-old maze rises against the blue and black sky in passages of brilliant foliage. Also fully as Zan expected, Parker and Sheba find the maze more interesting. The skies continue to threaten. “It’s starting to rain,” Zan says, as though the kids possibly would find this relevant; the boy and girl dash into the maze with the nanny behind. “Don’t get lost,” the father advises absurdly.