‘What about Turpin? Is that like the highwayman?’
‘Turpin is what they used to call a highwayman, any kind of scallywag. The white-spotted one is about the spots some hares have on their faces, they’re supposed to have the same number of babies.’
‘Can we have some more?’
She half-sang again:
‘The lurker in ditches, the filthy beast,
The one who doesn’t go straight home, the traitor,
The friendless one, the cat of the wood,
The starer with wide eyes.’
‘Hares never go straight home ’cos they’re always doubling back on themselves as they run. And they’re supposed to sleep with their eyes open, though how anyone would know that, I don’t know. You can’t sneak up on a sleeping hare, they’d smell you a mile off.’
‘And they do stare and they do have wide eyes. ’Least, the one we saw had. And what was that bit about a stag I remember?’
‘The stag with the leathery horns. I don’t know about that one – maybe once people thought they did have horns. Maybe they thought they were like little deer. Or their ears were like horns. Anyway, it’s weird, ’cos at the end it’s the animal that no one dare name, and you get all these names before that, so it’s like some kind of joke.’
‘Or a riddle, or a mystery.’
‘They’re mysterious, all right. Strangest animals I know.’
‘And the white hare?’
She squinted at him quickly like she did when she was uncertain. Then she huddled herself together and put her head back against the rock and said nothing. Robbie was beginning to think she’d clammed up for good when she suddenly relaxed, as if she’d been holding her breath all along, and said, ‘You really want to know?’
‘’Course.’
‘Okay. The white hare …’ She stopped and started pulling up little clumps of grass and throwing them, so they got caught by the wind and flew from sight. Robbie could see there was something wrong.
‘Mags …’
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ she said quickly. Then, as if she was trying to keep something down, as if she was quoting something, she continued, ‘When a woman dies abandoned by her lover she can return in the shape of a white hare.’
‘When a woman dies abandoned by her lover,’ he repeated.
‘Yes. That’s what they say. When a woman dies of a broken heart, or when in the old days she’s been jilted, you know, left at the altar or her expectations denied, and she goes to rack and ruin and solitary death in a dirty old room mourned by nobody. Or if …’ Her voice drifted to a halt, and she looked away down the hill at something.
‘Or if?’ he asked.
Her face screwed up into a ball for a moment, and she swallowed. ‘Or if she takes her own life.’ He could hardly hear her.
‘You’ve got to love someone a lot to do that.’
‘Well, I know one that did.’
‘Who?’
‘No one you’d have heard of.’
He thought about this, and thought about the legend. ‘So she can return as a white hare? I mean, they say?’
‘Not everyone can see her, but the lover always can.’
‘Okay.’
He must have sounded doubtful, because she scowled at him.
‘Believe what you want,’ she snapped. ‘It’s very old, I know that. I’ve told you now.’
‘No, I believe you, I believe you.’
He found himself remembering his dad outside the back door, that look on his face, something white far away on the hill. As if he’d seen a ghost.
And then he thought, wait.
‘But I could see her.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, you could. That’s interesting. I mean, you haven’t dumped anyone recently, have you?’
They both started to laugh, a little bit hysterically.
And you could see her too, Mags, so what’s that all about?
Robbie got up and shook himself and ran down into the first hollow and up the other side.
‘Come on, Mags, let’s go.’
There was sunlight on the fields between the racing shadows of the clouds. To Robbie it felt as if they were floating in the air up there, so far away from what was going on below. Yet looking out over the world everything seemed more in focus, closer.
Down in Dancing Lane he could see an old Land Rover beetling along to a gate. Someone, a young man with curly hair, got out to open it, then they drove to the low shoulder of a hill and disappeared round the other side.
‘Who lives over there?’
‘It’s not that way, it’s this.’ Now it was Mags who seemed eager to go, tugging at his sleeve.
‘Who lives over there, at the end of that lane?’
She didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t hear. Maybe she didn’t want to hear.
But as they set off she turned and squinted quickly back to where he had been pointing, muttering something and giving a small shake of her head.
She’d been looking there when she’d been talking about the person she knew who’d killed herself.
She leaped over the lip of a hollow and disappeared, and Robbie went with her. There was no wind. Robbie crouched next to Mags for a while, until he noticed the mouth of a passage opposite set deep in the turf. At the end it appeared to dive into a kind of small chamber that was lined with stones, its floor bare earth covered with sheep droppings.
‘What’s that?’
‘I told you. It’s where they used to live. The old people.’
‘It can’t be.’
She jerked her head forwards, stubborn as ever.
‘If you say so, Mags.’
After a while they picked themselves up and went inside.
Mags seemed at home. Another one of her hiding places Robbie thought. It wasn’t much to look at, stones had fallen out of the walls and no one had bothered to put them back. Mags was gently touching the ones that were left, as if she was making sure they were where they should be. There was a stone slab on the ground by the wall in one corner, worn smooth. Mags threw herself down on it and lay staring up. Robbie sat on the floor, taking care to keep well clear of the droppings.
‘This is a good place,’ she said. ‘We used to come here, Fran and me.’
‘Who’s Fran?’
‘The one I told you about.’
‘The one who—?’
‘Yes. I haven’t been back here since then.’
‘What’s it called?’
‘It’s not called anything. Not now.’
The place that no one dare name.
The sun’s warmth was stealing in as the day wore on. Outside sheep were bleating.
Yes, feels like a good place.
‘Mags?’
‘Mm?’
‘Do you ever think about how you want your life to turn out?’
‘Yup. I want to live in a castle and fill all the rooms with my favourite animals.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. What’s your dream, though?’
‘Just want my mum back.’ He thought this every day, but this was the first time he’d said it out loud to anyone.
Mags went over and put her arms around him.
‘I can’t imagine what it’s like,’ she said.
He didn’t cry so much any more, nothing like he used to. He just seized up in his head when he thought about it, which was almost preferable.
Sometimes, though, he thought he caught sight of his mum in the street in town among the crowds, or standing at the end of a lane, and his heart leaped.
The thing about tears, he noticed, was how they would start from your eyes wet and cold, then, after a while, as more and more ran down your face, they would dry out, but you could still feel their tracks as if there were warm ghost fingers cradling your cheeks.
He’d been dreaming a lot recently. He never used to dream that much before, hardly at all, in fact. And in these dreams he saw his mum, and it wasn’t quite true about him not crying so much, because
when he woke up the pillow was wet.
Mags’s face was soft against his.
There was a sound outside.
‘We’d better go, Mags,’ he said. ‘There’s someone coming.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I can hear a voice.’
‘Can you? You sure?’
He listened.
‘Yeah. Someone singing.’ He thought for a moment, listening hard. ‘It’s strange. It’s like the way you were singing, just now.’
‘There’s no one there. Isn’t it beautiful here, though, Robbie?’
‘Top. Let’s go.’
She sighed. ‘There’s no one there. Believe me. No one.’ She sounded sad. Then she got up and smiled at him as if she knew something he didn’t. ‘Okay.’
He was surprised. She didn’t usually do things he asked.
Outside the sheep crowded round, hemming them in.
Mags smiled at him again. ‘Nobody but us and the sheep.’
She took his hand and they walked to the road.
‘I’d better go back,’ he said, and dread surged inside him. Back to his happy home.
He turned to look behind one last time, at the world sunning itself for miles and miles, buffeted by the fitful wind.
There was someone there after all. A girl. For a moment he couldn’t tell how far away she was. She seemed closer than she should be. The sun was getting in his eyes, blinding him.
‘Hey, I was right, look.’
But Mags was too far ahead.
And when he looked again, all he could see was the sheep grazing.
7
THE FIRST time Robbie knew there was something wrong with his mum they had been in the supermarket. He had commandeered the trolley, jumping on the back, gunning down the aisles while Mum tried to choose between pepperoni and quattro formaggio. When he’d reached the end of the frozen foods aisle, he’d turned the trolley, seen no sign of her and rode it back again, wondering where she had gone.
He went on standing there, looking at everybody and waiting for his mum to turn up, until he thought he’d better go and look for her. Suddenly everything was much bigger than before, the trolley and the bright freezers with all the red meat in shiny plastic, and it was cold, and he began to shiver. He panicked. He was just beginning to run when a hand stopped the trolley and someone said, ‘I’m afraid your mum’s had a fall.’
People were leaning over her, and she was sitting up being supported on either side. She was white, white like everything in a supermarket’s white, but white mixed with grey so she looked like a crumpled newspaper on a street, and she looked much, much older. She’d smiled at him as though she’d forgotten how to, and her eyes were watery. She stroked his hand, and he saw that hers was trembling. He didn’t know whether to hug her or not, he’d never seen her like this. Then she put out her hand again, and he did hug her, but she didn’t hug him back properly. He was so glad to have found her he went on hugging her just the same, and she patted him on the back, and said, ‘Sorry, darling, must have tripped over something.’
Then the ambulance came, and as they helped her away she gave him a little wave, and after that the shop assistants looked after him until his dad came to fetch him. They gave him more sweets than he’d ever seen before, and he ate them until he felt sick.
Things seemed okay for a while, until one day he’d been waiting for his mum in the playground at school – this was his best moment of the day, when she stood chatting at the gate and he’d be playing football or some game that meant he could show off how fast he was and he knew she’d be watching him – but on this day a stranger came towards him and said, ‘Come on, Robbie, let’s go,’ and for a second he thought he was being kidnapped. Then something clicked and he saw it was his mum, only her hair was blonde and she looked so different he hadn’t recognized her. He didn’t realize it wasn’t her own.
Then, after that, he couldn’t remember how long, his dad came into his room and sat at the end of his bed. He’d patted Robbie’s leg through the duvet in a tentative sort of way and Robbie knew immediately that something was wrong. His dad never, ever did things like that.
‘Mum is going into hospital for a few days,’ he’d said. Robbie was terrified. He couldn’t imagine what a few days without her would be like. He’d become so agitated he frightened his dad, who clutched him by his arms, and whether he was trying to comfort him, or hold him down, neither of them knew.
Hospital. He got to know it inside out. Endless corridors, scrubbed and polished until the floors and walls were wearing thin, stuffed with nearly dead people being pushed on trolleys or not-really-alive ones shuffling around in dressing gowns and bandages. He remembered walking and walking, looking for the ward with his mum in it, past the chapel of rest and the garden of quietness with the pond full of giant goldfish, and room after room with strange-looking machines inside.
Then at last he’d find her. Sometimes she’d be too weak to move, sometimes she’d be bright smiles all for him, talking as if he was the one in trouble, doing anything to cheer him up. But she seemed to be melting away as he watched, her lovely face now moon-shaped, anxiety clouding her serious grey eyes.
And when she’d come home she was still in bed, and nurses came to look after her, so his home got to be like the hospital, like another bit of it, and his dad was kind of the receptionist, only the receptionist usually knows what’s going on.
Robbie would get out just to get out and stay out, that’s where it all started. He had a lot of mates, good and bad, smart and not so smart, but he liked hanging out with all of them.
Usually he would be down at the huge rec on the estate. They had giant walkways there, where the older crew hung out, and there were swings and roundabouts coloured yellow and red for the kids. At the other end the wall was a sludge colour where the council had tried to clean off the graffiti too many times. There was a never-ending game of football, and the kids who played in it were brilliant. There was a tiny one who was a cripple, and he swung around on crutches, better than anyone, untouchable. If any of them had played for England we might have won something, Robbie thought.
You couldn’t just play, though, you had to wait till they liked you. He was useless at first, but he worked at it until he could do a few tricks and then he found he could play all he wanted to. He was fast, very fast, and he could run round anyone.
Robbie wasn’t really part of it all, he just kidded himself he was to make himself feel better, and they let him. All of them knew about his mum and he knew they felt sorry for him. They were good friends at a bad time that was going to get a lot worse. Most of the big kids stayed at the other end of the rec. The walkways and cabins and stuff where the kids were supposed to be able to go was their territory. Sometimes someone in a peaked cap came along and tried to move them on, sometimes the police did. The meanest of them, Ali, lived in a red cabin on stilts meant for eight-year-olds, and smoked all day, and his crew spread about him, in a vague hierarchy. He always had some little distraction going on. Mostly setting fire to things; bins, normally. Robbie used to join in. Ali would break open a few lighters, pour the insides over a bit of tissue and drop it in a bin, then throw a lighted match in after it, and the whole thing would go off, pop.
Robbie loved watching those bins go up. Once they set fire to five in a row.
He got a taste for it.
Then one day he got back home to find his dad standing in the kitchen with a stretched look on his face and he knew what had happened before he opened his mouth. And after that … well.
Robbie couldn’t bear to go on living in that house. He was obsessed, he wanted the whole world in flames. He went and lit up a line of bikes, they were twisted skeletons after their tanks exploded. The plastic melted and they fell into each other.
Magic, Robbie thought.
*
He never thought she’d die. He never thought she’d never be there again. He thought she’d get better.
He thought maybe it w
as his fault. Maybe he shouldn’t have been with his friends, maybe he should have been with her in hospital more. He thought maybe this was a punishment for something, but he couldn’t work out what. All he knew was that the person who was always going to look after him wasn’t there any more. He hadn’t really thought about the word ‘never’ before, but suddenly it was always in his head. Never see her again. Never have her hug him, kiss his cheek, ask him how he was, tell him what to do, make everything all right, cook his favourite food (like macaroni cheese), take him clothes shopping for a treat, scold him into bed when it was late and he was poring over his laptop, help him with his maths homework. That wasn’t going to happen. Was never going to happen.
Home wasn’t home any more, it was just a collection of objects. Chairs and tables, books, bags, knives and forks in rooms that seemed to echo back at him. So he went on staying away.
Until the night he got caught.
8
THESE DAYS, strangely, one of Robbie’s favourite things was the journey to his school. Not being at school, particularly, though the lessons were fine, no better, no worse than at the last one. Just going there and coming back was what he liked. He and everyone else from the village went on the bus, and he could sit at the back and disappear into himself. The others all sat together, but Robbie loved being on his own, enjoying the places in between, when he was neither here nor there, and could watch the fields and hedges go past and sometimes listen to the branches of the trees drumming along the top of the bus.
One good thing about school was that no one knew much about him, though maybe that was a bad thing too, because they didn’t want to know, they just left him alone. It had been Mags’s school until the previous year when she’d bailed. It was just not for her, she said. He’d asked her, why didn’t you stay, you could have been a vet, but she wasn’t interested. She knew more than a vet already, animals just loved her; they treated her as if she was one of them. Horses, dogs, cats, cows, pigs, whatever, they all wanted to be her best friend. She held out her hand with its bitten nails and they started sniffing at it and nudging up to her, it almost made Robbie jealous.
The White Hare Page 3