‘Have you seen a dead body before?’
‘Yep,’ she said. ‘In a coffin. The lid was off. They made me kiss it.’
‘Why?’
‘God knows.’
‘What did it feel like?’
‘Kissing a fridge.’
She pressed a key and a clear mid-range note rang out.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t touch anything,’ I said.
‘It’s all right, no one can hear,’ she said, and pressed the note again. Bing, bing, bing. She closed her eyes. Breathed intently for a moment. Then brought her hands up in front of her chest and blindly laid them on the black and white keys in front.
‘Do you know how to play?’ I whispered.
‘No,’ she said, ‘but I’m trying something,’ and as she pressed down on the notes, I was ambushed by the most beautiful music I’d ever heard. I watched her sway, overcome. The rapture across her brow, the luminescence. I watched her be someone in that moment; free of the shunting, and the making-do, and the calamitous criticism that forged her way and always would. She was whole. And when she opened her eyes, I think she knew it too.
‘Again,’ I said.
‘Don’t think I can,’ she said sadly.
All of a sudden organ music boomed around the church. The music was dulled by the stone walls of the room, but the heavy bass notes reverberated throughout my body, ricocheting against my ribs before barrelling into the cavern that was my pelvis.
‘That’ll be the coffin,’ said Jenny Penny. ‘Come on, let’s have a look, it’s really cool.’ She opened the door and we caught its slow procession as it passed.
We sat on the wall outside and waited. The clouds were quite low, arm’s length from the steeple, falling, falling. We listened to the singing. Two songs, joyous songs, hopeful songs. We knew them but didn’t join in. We kicked our legs and had nothing to say. Jenny Penny reached across and held my hand. Her palm was slippery. I couldn’t look at her. Our guilt and our tears were not for each other. They were for someone else that day.
‘You two are so boring,’ said Mrs Penny, as we sat in the Wimpy Bar, trying to eat lunch.
She looked refreshed and invigorated, with no sign of the morning’s events clinging to her once mournful face. Normally I’d have been ecstatic eating food I rarely ate, but I couldn’t even finish my beefburger or my portion of chips or the tumbler of Coca-Cola that was as big as a boot. My appetite, along with the one for life, had momentarily disappeared.
‘I’m out tonight, Jenpen,’ said Mrs Penny. ‘Gary said he’ll look after you.’
Jenny Penny looked up and nodded.
‘I’m gonna have fun! Fun! Fun!’ said Mrs Penny as her mouth gorged a quarter of the bun, leaving a smear of lipstick to compete with the ketchup. ‘Bet you girls can’t wait to grow up, eh?’
I looked at Jenny Penny. Looked at the circle of gherkin on the side of my plate. Looked at the wipe-down table. Looked at everything except her.
All through the evening, the visions of the tiny white coffin, not even two feet long, stayed with me. It was bedecked with pink roses and a teddy; carried in protective arms like a newborn. I never told my mother where I’d been that day, nor my father; only my brother learnt of that strange day, the day when I discovered that even babies could die.
Why were we there? Why was Mrs Penny there? Something unnatural held their world together and it was a feeling that, at that age, I couldn’t yet put a word to. My brother said it was probably the braided twine of heartbreak. Of disappointment. Of regret. I was too young to disagree. Or to fully understand.
There had been a bomb blast on a tube train leaving West Ham station. My father had left his meeting early and was on that train when the blast occurred. That’s what he told us during the brief phone call to say he was fine, to say he really was all right and not to worry. And when he walked through the door that Monday evening in March, with flowers for his wife and early Easter eggs for his kids, his suit was still coated with dust and the last tread from the carriage floor. A strange smell hung about his ears – a smell that alternated between burnt matches and singed hair – and a patch of dried blood had pooled at the corner of his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue in shock, and after checking that it was miraculously still intact, he’d calmly picked himself up and wandered silently with the other passengers towards the exit doors and the fresh air beyond.
He laughed and played football in the garden with my brother. He dived to save goals and muddied his knees. He did everything to show us how far away he’d been from death. And it was only when we went to bed and decamped back down to the middle stair, that we heard the house groan, quite literally, with the deflation of his spirit.
‘It’s getting closer,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk such rot,’ said my mother.
‘Last year, and now this. It’s hunting me down.’
The previous September, he’d travelled to the Park Lane Hilton to witness passport forms for an important client, and was about to leave when a bomb tore through the foyer, killing two people and injuring countless others. And had it not been for a desperate last-minute piss he’d needed to take, he too might have been added to the casualty list that mournful week. Instead, a weak bladder had saved his life.
But as the weeks proceeded, instead of accepting that both brushes with death were in fact miracles of survival, my father convinced himself that the vengeful shadow of Justice was looming ever closer. He believed it was simply a matter of time before its jaws would shut and he would find himself a prisoner behind those gated slabs of bloody teeth, realising that all had passed. That life had, in fact, gone.
The football pools rapidly became my father’s lifeline – or obsession – and a win had become so necessary to his existence that some mornings he convinced himself it had happened already. He’d sit at the breakfast table and point to a magazine and say, What house shall we buy today? This one or this one? And I’d look at this deluded man masquerading as my father and quietly reach for the toast. He’d never been bothered by money before and probably wasn’t then, but the winning had become a test of faith. He simply needed proof that he was still a lucky man.
I chose the same numbers every week: my birthday, Jenny Penny’s birthday and Christmas Day – days that were important to me. My brother never went for numbers, rather closed his eyes and allowed his pencil to hover over the grid and to move across the teams like a cup in a séance. He believed he was touched by the god of fortune or some other such notary, and that was what made him different. I said what made him different were ‘those shoes’ he secretly wore at night.
My mother on the other hand, chose anything. ‘Let me have a look,’ she used to say and I would sigh because she didn’t have a method and when she said, ‘Let me have a look,’ I knew she was being random, and such randomness annoyed me; it was like someone carelessly colouring in an orange using only a blue pen. I was convinced that’s why we never won and never would win, but my father still ticked the box that said No publicity, and placed it on the mantelpiece with the exact change to await its midweek collection. And as he did he left with it his pledge: Come Saturday our life will change.
That Saturday we waited for our life to change on the touchline of a rugby pitch, which seemed as good a place to be as any. It happened to be my brother’s first rugby match, this boy whose idea of a contact sport had previously only been conkers, and yet here he was jumping up and down, eagerly awaiting the second half of the match like any normal boy; and normal I wasn’t used to. He’d started secondary school the year before, a private school my father was paying an arm and a leg for (leaving the remaining two for my own education, he’d said) and one in which he’d reinvented himself as someone completely different from the one before. I liked them both, worrying only that the new one, with his new normal interests, might not like me. My feet felt the earth as fragile as eggshells.
A player ran over to my brother and whispered to him. ‘Tactics,’ my father said.
My brother nodded and then bent down and rubbed dirt into his hands; I gasped. It was an act so unnatural and queer that I froze in anticipation of the repercussions. And yet once again there were none.
A piercing chill had settled on our side of the pitch, and the listless sun, which had graced us earlier, was now playing hideand-seek behind the tall towers of council flats that dominated the sports field, and left us shivering in shadow. I tried to clap my hands together but I could hardly move. I was wedged into a coat that Mr Harris had bought for me the week before – a totally erroneous purchase that gave benefit to no one except the shop. It was the first time I’d ever worn it, and when I’d finally squeezed into it and gasped at the true horror of its visual impact, there wasn’t enough time to get back out of it and into the car, without one of my parents purposefully breaking my arms to do so.
Mr Harris had seen it in a sale and instead of thinking: would Eleanor Maud like this coat? Would this suit Eleanor Maud? He must have thought: that ugly thing is nearly her size and won’t she look stupid in it? It was white with black arms and a black back, and as tight as a knee support but less useful, and although it was keeping the cold at bay, I felt it was simply because the cold stopped as it approached me and burst into laughter, rather than by any practical means. My parents were too polite (weak) to say I didn’t have to wear it. All they could say was the gesture was kind and better weather would be here soon. I said I could be dead by then.
The whistle blew and the ball was kicked into the air. My brother ran towards it, head high, never taking his eye off it as it descended; watching, instinctively veering around obstacle players, surprisingly fast, and then the jump. He hovered as he gathered the ball and then offset it with a simple flick of his wrists to the man inside. My brother had my mother’s hands: he made that ball talk. I cheered and thought I’d raised my arms in the air but I hadn’t, they were still stiffly by my side; ghost arms of a paralysed person.
‘Come on, the blues,’ shouted my mother.
‘Come on, blues!’ I screamed, making her jump, making her say, ‘Shh.’
My brother raced down the line, ball tucked neatly under his arm. Thirty yards, twenty yards, dummy to his left.
‘Come on, Joe!’ I screamed. ‘Go, Joe! Go, Joe!’
A tap to his ankle, he didn’t fall, no one with him still; fifteen yards and he’s looking around for support, the goal line in sight; and then out of nowhere, rearing from the mud, a five-headed human wall. He hit it at speed, and bone and gristle and teeth collided and bedded down with him into the blood and mud. Bodies fell on top of him, toppling from both sides until the supporters and the pitch fell silent.
The sun slowly reappeared from behind the tower and illuminated the sculpture of human rubble, under which my brother lay. I looked up at my parents; my mother had turned round unable to watch, her hands shaking, covering her mouth. My father clapped and shouted loudly, ‘Well done, boy! Well done!’ – an unusual response to a possible broken neck. It was obvious I was the only one to sense any danger, and so I dashed onto the pitch. I had only got halfway towards him when someone shouted, ‘P-p-p pick up a Penguin!’
I stopped and looked around. People were laughing at me. Even my parents were laughing at me.
The referee peeled off the battered players, until there, crumpled at the bottom, lay my brother, motionless, half embedded in the mud. I tried to bend towards him but was hindered by my strait-jacket, and in one momentous effort, I lost my balance and fell onto him and winded him, the force of which propelled him into a sitting position.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’
He looked at me strangely, not recognising me.
‘It’s me. Elly,’ I said, waving my hand in front of his face. ‘Joe?’ I said again, and instinctively slapped him across his cheek.
‘Ow,’ he said. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘I saw someone do it on the telly.’
‘Why are you dressed as a penguin?’ he said.
‘To make you laugh,’ I said.
And he laughed.
‘Where’s your tooth?’ I said.
‘I think I swallowed it,’ he said.
We were the last to leave the ground, and the car was slowly heating up by the time they clambered into the back.
‘Have you got enough room?’ my mother asked from the front.
‘Oh, yes, plenty of room, Mrs P,’ said Charlie Hunter, my brother’s best friend, and of course he had plenty of room because my mother had pulled her seat so far forward that her face was pressed against the windscreen like a splattered fly.
Charlie had played scrum half in the match (so I was told), and I thought it the most important position because he decided where the ball should go, and in the car on the way home I said, ‘If Joe’s your best friend why didn’t you give him the ball more?’ And laughter and a vigorous rub of my head came as my reply.
I liked Charlie. He smelt of Palmolive soap and peppermints, and looked like my brother, but just a darker version of him. It was this darkness that made him seem older than his thirteen years and a little wiser. He bit his nails like my brother, though, and as I sat between them, I watched them gnaw at their fingers like rodents.
Mum and Dad liked Charlie and always gave him a lift home after matches because his parents never came to watch him play and they thought that was sad. I thought that was lucky. His father worked for an oil company and had shunted his family back and forth from oil-rich country to oil-rich country until the natural resources of both were exhausted. His parents divorced – which I found extremely exciting – and Charlie opted to live with his father and a latchkey existence, rather than with his mother, who had recently married a hairdresser called Ian. Charlie cooked his own meals and had a television in his room. He was wild and self-sufficient, and my brother and I both agreed that should we ever be shipwrecked, it would be better if we were shipwrecked with Charlie. Around corners I leant unnecessarily in to him to see if he’d nudge me away, but he never did. And as the heat finally reached the back seats, the red in my cheeks masked the blushes I felt as I looked from Charlie to my brother and back again.
Charlie’s street was the show street of an affluent suburb not far from us. Gardens were landscaped, dogs clipped and cars valeted. It was a way of life that seemed to drink the remaining dregs of my father’s half-empty glass and left him wilting in the weekend traffic.
‘What a lovely house,’ said my mother, with not a jealous thought coursing through her mind.
She was always like that: grateful for life itself. Her glass was not only half full, it was gold plated with a permanent refill.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ said Charlie, opening the door.
‘Any time, Charlie,’ said my father.
‘Bye, Charlie,’ said my mother, her hand already on the seat lever, and Charlie leant across to Joe and said quietly that they’d talk later. I leant in and said I would too, but he’d already got out of the car.
That evening, the sound of football results droned in from the living room; a distant update like a shipping forecast, but not as important and certainly not as interesting. We often left the television on in the living room when we went into the kitchen to eat. It was for company, I think, as if our family had been destined to be bigger and the disconnected voice made us feel complete.
The kitchen was warm and smelt of crumpets, and the darkness from the garden strained at the window like a hungry guest. The plane tree was still bare; a system of nerves and veins stretching out into the blue-black sky. French navy, my mum called it; a French-navy sky. She turned the radio on. The Carpenters, ‘Yesterday Once More’. She looked wistful, sad even. My father had been called away at the last moment, offering support and options to a rogue many would say was undeserving. My mother started to sing. She placed the celery and winkles onto the table, the boiled eggs too – my favourite – which had cracked and spewed their viscous fluids into patterns of white trailing innards around th
e pan.
My brother came in from his bath and sat next to me, shiny and pink from the steaming water. I looked at him and said, ‘Smile,’ and as if on cue he smiled, and there in the middle of his mouth was the dark hole. I fed a winkle through it.
‘Stop it, Elly!’ my mother snapped, and turned off the radio.
‘And you,’ she said pointing to my brother, ‘don’t encourage her.’
I watched my brother lean over and catch his reflection in the back door. These new wounds went with the new him; there was something noble about the landscape that now inhabited his face and he liked it; he gently touched the swelling around his eye. My mother slammed a mug of tea in front of him and said nothing; an action purely to interrupt his brooding pride. I reached for another winkle; hooked it with the end of my safety pin and tried to pull its uncoiling body away from the shell, but it wouldn’t come. Instead it clung on hard, which was odd; for even in death it said, ‘I won’t let go.’ Won’t let go.
‘How are you feeling?’ my mother said.
‘Not too bad,’ I said.
‘Not you, Elly.’
‘I’m fine,’ my brother said.
‘Not nauseous?’
‘No.’
‘Dizzy?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t tell me, though, would you?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said, and laughed.
‘I don’t want you to play rugby any more,’ my mother said curtly.
And he calmly looked at her and said, ‘I don’t care what you want, I’m playing,’ and he picked up his tea and drank three large gulps, which must have burnt his throat, but he never let on.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ she said.
‘Life’s dangerous,’ he said.
‘I can’t bear to watch.’
‘Then don’t,’ he said. ‘But I’m still playing because I’ve never felt more alive, or more myself. I’ve never felt so happy,’ and he got up and left the table.
When God Was a Rabbit Page 5