When God Was a Rabbit

by Winman, Sarah

  I leant down and held him, kissed the back of his neck; gripped hard.

  ‘Don’t you walk away from me now,’ I said.

  I couldn’t look at him, as I went back inside. I knew I’d just condemned him.

  Joe didn’t emerge for two days. Finally stepped out with the sun, as Ginger would have said, and he walked into the kitchen offering to make us toast. We’d already eaten but we said Yes, the gesture was fine and he looked like he was trying. He hadn’t shaved in days and a beard was taking hold, and I felt glad. He looked unfamiliar and that made it easier to hate him.

  We ate on the deck and dressed against the chill, commented on the sun, all said it was warm. The talk was polite. He asked what I’d been doing. ‘Writing,’ I said.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, and ate his toast.

  I waited for him to add something critical, something provoking. I didn’t have to wait long.

  ‘I think you’re one of those people who write instead of live, aren’t you?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said, adding a smile – a composed smile – the way Nancy always did.

  ‘Touched a nerve.’

  We stared at each other for a moment; uncomfortable and smiling.

  ‘I’m building shelves in the pilot’s hut,’ said Charlie. ‘I could do with the help.’

  ‘OK,’ said Joe.

  And as soon as they’d finished their coffees, they headed to the small building on the edge of the runway, striding over clumps of coarse grass, carrying saws and tool boxes, joined in a shared task. Jealousy was what I felt.

  I took the car into town and bought supplies for the evening meal, wanted to get steak but ended up with crab – didn’t know if I could be bothered with the fiddliness of it all. But he liked crab and so did I, and the fridge would be full so we could last the next few days until decisions were made. He wasn’t coming back to England, we were sure of that. Hadn’t told my parents. How could I? Nancy was with them now, and that was better. Nancy would be with them when I told them. Nancy, the holder of other people’s pain. I suddenly rammed on my brakes. Their eyes stared at me. I nearly hit them. Daydreaming. Had to stop. Just missed the woman and child. The woman was screaming at me, threatening me, the child crying. I pulled into a side street until the shaking had stopped. I was becoming a mess.

  They worked not by the clock but until the light ran out, and he seemed revived by the physicalness of the work, the unconscious memory his body felt at working with wood, with the feel of wood. As they walked into the kitchen, with its smells of boiling crab and garlic mayonnaise, they were collaborators in a successful day and my exclusion felt ever more intense. They washed their hands and chatted about the new shelving, the possibility of laying a wood floor, and I listened as I dropped the crabs onto the newspaper, half hoping they would scuttle to the floor and interrupt their rigorous prattling. I placed two bottles of wine on the table and sat down exhausted.

  Joe reached across to hold our hands.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he said, bowing his head.

  I looked at Charlie. What the fuck is this now?

  He shrugged.

  ‘For what we are about to receive,’ said Joe, and then he stopped; looked at us. We lowered our heads and repeated what he’d said.

  ‘I’m only joking,’ he said as he reached for a crab and broke off its large front claw. ‘Just kidding,’ he added, and Charlie laughed. I didn’t. Fucker, I thought.

  I retreated, said nothing all night, simply drank – we all did; no one was counting – and I felt my rage burn acid hot as I watched him grow in his present, seem happy in his present. I didn’t know why I felt like this. Normal, the doctor would have said, my feelings were normal. That’s what we paid him for, for the diagnosis of normal.

  Charlie rubbed my leg under the table, a feeble reassurance; he looked at me and grinned, happy with his day of work, with his reconnection. Joe suddenly stopped chewing, and held his mouth; I thought he was about to be sick. Fucking crab shell, I thought, another fucking tooth.

  ‘Spit it out,’ I said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he murmured.

  ‘You used to like crab.’

  He held up his hand for me to stop. A palm in front of my face. New gesture. I hated it.

  ‘You used to love it,’ I said. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot – I’m not supposed to mention what you used to like, am I? Too much pressure.’

  ‘Ell, please,’ he said, still not chewing, holding his mouth; eyes closed, thinking maybe, trying not to speak. I got up and went to the sink.

  ‘I can’t fucking stand this,’ I said, and filled my glass with water.

  ‘Elly, it’s OK,’ said Charlie.

  ‘It’s not OK. I’ve had enough.’

  The sound of his chair grated against the flagstones as he pushed it away and came towards me. He reached for my arm.

  ‘Fuck off, Joe,’ I said.

  ‘OK,’ and he moved away.

  ‘It’s too easy, isn’t it? You fight for nothing. You’re just not interested in any of it. Not us. None of it. You don’t care about what went before. You just fucking mock us.’

  ‘I care.’

  ‘Leave it, Elly,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I want to tell you so much but you never ask.’

  ‘I don’t know where to start, do I?’

  ‘Just start,’ I said. ‘Just fucking start. Anything. Something.’

  He stood looking at me, formulating nothing, no words. He held his mouth again, closed his eyes.

  ‘Ell,’ he said quietly.

  ‘OK, how about I start? You like bananas. And fried eggs well done. You like swimming in the ocean but not in swimming pools and you like avocados but not with mayonnaise, and little gem lettuce and walnuts and sponge cake and date slices and Scotch – blended, surprisingly, not single malt – and you like Ealing comedies and Marmite and lardy cake and churches and blessings, and you even thought about becoming Catholic once, after attending Mass with Elliot Bolt. You like ice cream, but not strawberry, and lamb rare – but not well done – and first-of-the-season chard. You weirdly like boat shoes and collarless shirts, orange round-neck jumpers, Oxford over Cambridge, De Niro over Pacino and—’

  I suddenly stopped and looked at him. His eyes were shut and tears were rolling down his face.

  ‘Ask me something,’ I said. He shook his head.

  ‘You’ve had measles and chicken pox. And one girlfriend, Dana Hadley. You’ve broken three ribs. And a finger. In a door, not playing rugby. You don’t like raisins or nuts in chocolate, but you like them in salads. You don’t like rudeness. Or ignorance. Or prejudice or intolerance. Ask me something.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You don’t like rollerblading, or Starbucks coffee, or their fucking mugs.’

  He sat down and held his head. Charlie moved over to the table.

  ‘You can’t throw a Frisbee. And you can’t dance. You see, that’s who you are, Joe. All these things. That’s the person I know, and through him is the way you’ll know me, because connected to all these things are moments, and for so many of them, I was there. And that’s the thing that hurts so much.’

  ‘Elly,’ whispered Charlie. ‘Stop.’

  ‘You see, you were the only person who knew everything. Because you were there. And you were my witness. And you make sense of the fucked-up mess I become every now and then. And I could at least look at you and think, at least he knows why I am the way I am. There were reasons. But I can’t do that any more and I feel so lonely. So forgive me. There’s not much point any more, is there?’

  And for the first time ever, I emerged from his shadow and walked out, unready, into the darkness, and startled the bats at rest.

  It was cold, my breath misted, and I realised that autumn had now gone, it was winter once again. I suddenly didn’t know where to go, this was not my land, and the darkness here was fierce; strange sounds, a dog bark or coyotes? I should have known the difference but I didn’t. This was ancient land, and the fu
rther I went towards the shadow of the mountain, I felt its rage and the visions of history.

  I sat down in the middle of the old disused runway, a plaything, once, for a rich landowner, now cracked with grass and daisies growing amidst the tarmac. I watched it reach into the night like a frozen river until it disappeared into the black wall of trees, the land boundary of nothingness at the edge of the world.

  He came out of the blackness, boldly striding, his blond curls picking up the remnants of moonlight, a white aura surrounding his head. His strange presence had uncovered a loneliness of such devouring longing, one that reached cruelly back into the past, and I knew I could no longer be around him. I would leave the next day; take the bus back to the city, a plane back to London and an explanation back to Cornwall. One day he might return. One day.

  He was no longer striding but running towards me and he frightened me. I stood up and started to back away from him, away from his words, away from, ‘Ell, wait,’ and his outstretched hand, and before long I was running towards the blackness, into oblivion where nothing existed that night except the call of owls and the flight of midges and the ghosts of planes landing, their stuttering engines reaching for land in the bleakest of silence.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I shouted.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, and I felt his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ I said, my fist clenched at my thigh.

  ‘It’s just . . . something came back, Ell. In there. Charlie said I needed to ask you.’

  ‘Ask me what?’ I said, my voice cold, unrecognisable.

  ‘The word “Trehaven”. What is it?’

  I looked up and saw Alan waving from the bridge. He looked nervous as we approached and when we stood in front of him he spoke clearly and loudly as if it wasn’t only memory that my brother had lost, but his hearing too.

  ‘I’m Alan, Joe. I’ve known you since you were a little boy. Since you were that high,’ and he gestured with his hand at a height that would actually have made my brother a midget.

  ‘Since he was sixteen,’ I said.

  ‘Was he really that old?’ Alan said, turning to me.

  ‘Yes. I was eleven.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t a big sixteen,’ Alan said. ‘That’s all I can say.’

  ‘Well, that’s good to know,’ said my brother. ‘And Alan, don’t worry. I remember you.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve made my day,’ he said, and picked up our bags and marched ahead of us up the slope towards his new people carrier with electric sun roof and ‘nat sav’, as he called it, and the hanging air freshener that held the photo of six-year-old Alana.

  Joe suddenly stopped halfway up and looked down on the small station, soft and blurred in the light, the hanging baskets rocking gently in the breeze, the contents forlorn and brown and long since passed, like the summer they coloured. He did that often; just suddenly stopped to help a crippled memory as it faltered midway to comprehension.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘Ginger, I think,’ he said. ‘Singing down there. “Beyond the Sea”? Evening dress? Could that be real?’

  ‘Turquoise, high cut?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yep, that’s real. Welcome to your family,’ and I ushered him up to the car.

  Alan dropped us at the top of the track and we waved as he disappeared along the roadway, carving through the desolate hedgerows like a wheeled scythe. I could smell salt in the air; the tide was probably high and a breeze skipping on the surface welcomed us back. We headed down the gravel track, now more leaf covered than ever, until Charlie shouted, ‘Race ya!’ and we ran towards the wooden gate, the imaginary finishing line at the end of the way. Charlie got there first, Joe second, my heart wasn’t in it so I gave up, and they waited panting as I approached, soaking up the smells and sights of the trees naked in the harsh light of an overcast day. I looked up and saw a lone blackbird plume puffed and unmoving on a branch shrunken by the cold. It buried its beak back into its chest. I blew on my hands and ran towards the gatepost.

  ‘This I remember,’ said my brother, as he bent down and trailed his finger down the letters TREHAVEN, leaving a green stain on his skin. And then something caught his eye, on the outer surface, to the left of the letters. I knew he saw it, knew he saw the JP and the badly carved heart and the letters CH falling beneath, letters over twenty years old, feelings over twenty years old, hidden, though, for weeks. I knew he saw it, but he didn’t say anything, not to me, not to Charlie, and we quickly marched down the slope, he momentarily falling behind, watching us, his eyes piercing my back, finally wanting something, as the pieces shifted and sense came back, and the unspoken that hung above their friendship suddenly spoke in letters as raised as Braille.

  We turned the corner, and I’d almost forgotten the effect the house had, bone white and stately in the clearing. In that moment it reached into my heart and buried itself there for ever. They were lined up in front of it in what looked like order of height, and as we got closer – as my brother got closer – this formality became unbearable for them and it was my father who broke rank first, then my mother, and they ran towards him, arms splayed out wide, adults playing planes, bearing down on him, shouting and smiling, until they took him in their arms and held him and quietly said, ‘My boy.’

  ‘I’m your aunt. Nancy,’ said Nancy, breathless from the run. ‘I expect you remember me, though.’

  ‘Of course I do,’ my brother said, and smiled. ‘Raining in my Heart.’2

  ‘Ah,’ said Nancy, pretending to be shy.

  ‘Storm in a teacup, more like,’ said Arthur, trying hard to rein in an over-excited Nelson.

  ‘You were really good in that film, Nance,’ my brother said.

  ‘Thanks, honey,’ she said, beaming, as if awards season were suddenly approaching.

  And then Joe turned to Arthur.

  ‘Hey, Arthur,’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Everything you need to know about me is in this,’ he said, and pulled his autobiography out of his jacket pocket.

  I could hear them downstairs, laughing, and I should have got up but the mattress felt good against my back and I wanted to sleep through the afternoon into the night, through the days and weeks that would follow, so heavy were my eyes after the long hours of empty waiting. But I sat up and poured a glass of water, drank half of it, then some more.

  I went to the window and saw them wander down the lawn to the jetty, just as the light was losing its battle against thickening cloud cover. My brother bent down and looked at himself in the water. Charlie knelt down next to him. It was an image I thought would be lost to me for ever, lost under the dust and rubble of that other time that haunted the past, nightghoulish and unwelcome, a time that ripped you from the safety of sleep like flesh away from bone.

  My mother came up behind me. I’d heard her on the stairs, heard her call my name, but I felt too tired, too quiet to answer. I felt her breath on my neck.

  ‘Thank you for bringing him home.’

  I wanted to turn round and say something, but there were no words, just this image of her son, my brother, amidst us once again; the light clinging to him in the frail dusk, the light that said never go out.

  Things came back to him consistently after that; slowly at first, sometimes erratically, once even in the middle of a weather front that tore through the landscape, uncovering images and moments that placed him firmly at the scene. He re-covered his tracks along moors and cliff tops, secret paths down to beaches, ice-cream cones he hadn’t eaten for years, the taste of vanilla – leading to a memory of a bell floating on the water. ‘Could that be right?’ he asked. I nodded. Yes.

  We would follow him, this motley crew of a family, rediscovering memories and incidents long lost to the busyness of life, and we lived again through the vividness of his recall. He’d listen to our stories and ask questions and piece together events, mentally linking the participants until a connection was made, a ragged family tree he
ld together by used tape.

  And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember. But I’d relinquished my claim to such a position a long time ago. He was so often not the person I remembered him to be; long gone was the fragile cynicism that kept him away from normal human encounter, now replaced by a bountiful enthusiasm that saw life like a child. Sometimes I’d miss it, the barbed comment, his darkness, dangerous and poetic, that kept me on the edge, those three-o’clock-in-the-morning calls that I somehow doubted would ever happen again, those calls that made me feel whole and well.

  And sometimes his memory buckled at discretion and gave way to the revelations of secrets he’d once promised never to disclose, like the moment he turned to me on the path down to Talland and said, ‘So how much did Andrew Landauer pay you for sex?’ to which I replied, ‘Not enough,’ as I marched off arm in arm with Nancy, away from the shocked faces of my parents, who were trying to put two and two together, and coming up with nothing close to thirty pounds and sixty pence, the price of that mini cab from Slough.

  Or like the moment we settled down for dinner and he turned to my parents and said, ‘Have you ever forgiven him?’

  And they said, ‘Who?’

  And he said, ‘Mr Golan.’

  And they said, ‘For what?’

  And he told them.

  I waited for them outside. It was a cold night but I felt nothing as I sat and watched a bat flicker across the French-navy sky. I knew I’d kept them from my life. Certain years I’d closed doors on them, as if it had been about preventing them from knowing that damaged part of me, the part that once, only they could have put right. I knew I’d hurt them with this distance, with this silence, and now they’d understand; but at what price?

  I heard the door open behind me. Saw the shaft of light move left to right, then still. My parents appeared in front of me, bereft and inadequate. My mother sat next to me and took my hand.