When God Was a Rabbit

by Winman, Sarah

  He closed the lid on the small red biscuit tin and buried it under the slatted back fence shaded by the wall. He covered it with extra bricks, a sprinkling of camouflage dirt and leaves.

  ‘Do you think someone will find it one day?’

  ‘Nah, never,’ he said. ‘Not unless they know where to look . . . What did you put in?’ he asked.

  ‘Photo,’ I said. ‘You?’

  ‘A secret,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘No,’ he said, and looked at me strangely. I thought he might tickle me, or hit me even, but he didn’t. He reached out and cuddled me and it felt weird. As if he was saying goodbye to me as well.

  I never expected her to come and see me off – I’d tucked that hope away somewhere in the back between the towels and old linen – but when I heard the unmistakable sound of her unruly run, my heart leapt; and as she voiced my name – a shout verging on a scream – I ran towards her flaying arms.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Jenny Penny, breathing hard. ‘It was my hair.’

  We stood quietly looking at each other, frightened of speaking in case our words might wound.

  ‘I’ve got new shoes,’ she said finally in between quiet sobs.

  ‘They’re so nice,’ I said, and I held her hand. They were red with small white daisies positioned on the toe, and I really liked them; they were the best shoes I’d ever seen her wear and I told her so.

  ‘I wore them specially to show you,’ she said.

  ‘I know you did. Thanks,’ I said, suddenly feeling wretched.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again,’ she said, looking up at me, her face red and blotchy from her tears.

  ‘Of course we will,’ I said, putting my arms around her and smelling the familiar scent of chips in her hair. ‘We’re linked,’ I said. ‘Inextricably linked.’ (Something my brother had said about us the night before.)

  And I was right. We would see each other again, but only the once – as children, anyway – before our lives diverged like rivers separating and carving across new terrain. But I didn’t know that as I waved to her from the car and shouted, ‘See you soon, I’ll miss you!’ I didn’t know that as I shouted, ‘You’re my best friend! Write to me!’ I knew none of that as I looked back and watched her and our street recede like the point of light in a tunnel, until the moment we turned the corner and she and it were gone. I felt the air sucked out of my lungs like life itself.

  Trees surrounded us as we turned off the main road and left the holiday traffic to chug along in Bank Holiday formation. We followed the single-lane track down towards the river, veering sharply left then right, following raggedy signs that said Trehaven.

  The late afternoon sun hadn’t lost its heat, and leaves from overhanging branches were dappled by its fractured intensity and flickered like broken mirrors onto my face. I breathed in this new air; it was damp; warm damp, and now and then I thought I could smell the sea, and could actually, because the tidal waters that fed the small river below were on the turn.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ I whispered to my brother as I leant back into the car, and for the first time during the six-hour journey, he sat up, interested. He started to bite his nails.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said to him, and he smiled at me and took his hand away from his mouth and concentrated on the green world outside. I lifted god out of his box and showed him his new home.

  ‘You’ll be safe here,’ he whispered.

  The road levelled out and as we took a sharp right, it lost its tarmac surface and soon the car was riding uncomfortably on rocks and gravel and compacted dirt. We stopped in front of a dilapidated wooden gate, TREHAVEN carved down the left-hand gatepost. Moss had bedded down within its curves and edges, and made the lettering vivid green against the damp darkness of the wood. My father turned off the ignition. I held my breath, not wishing to impede on the sounds of birds and forest life; I was still an observer, a participant not yet.

  ‘We’re here,’ my father said. ‘Our new home. Trehaven.’

  We saw the removal van first and the clearing, and then finally emerging into sight came the house: large and square and off-white in the sunshine, and standing alone except for a small dilapidated outbuilding hiding in the shadow at its side. A small tree had taken sole occupancy of the neglected space within; its branches reaching for the sky.

  I got out of the car and stretched, felt small in the shadow of our home. This was a house for rich people and as I stood looking at its grace and majesty, I suddenly remembered that we were.

  I put god on a lead and ran down the lawn with him towards the river, carefully negotiating my footing on the flimsy mooring planks. They were rotten; eaten away by years of salt and wet and neglect, and there was a boat attached by rope, holed and half submerged, but clinging to its home like an elder with nowhere else to go.

  ‘What do you think?’ said my brother, suddenly behind me.

  I startled and turned around quickly, for this was the land of spirits and sprites and other beings too light to elicit the sound of tread.

  ‘Look!’ I said, pointing to the river. ‘A fish!’

  And my brother lay down on the jetty and placed his hands gently into the cold water. The fish darted to the side. I watched him look at himself; follow the ripple of his reflection as the waters slowly rose around his fingertips. I heard him sigh deeply. A melancholy sound.

  ‘How old am I?’ he asked.

  ‘Fifteen,’ I said. ‘Still young.’

  A kingfisher flew overhead and landed on the opposite bank. I’d never seen one before.

  It was the first of May, and the morning air was trying hard to lift my sadness. It blew fresh through the trees, so different from eight months before, when the forest was still and musty, and encroached upon our house like heavy rain clouds that refused to break.

  For decades the house had been sheltered from light, and soon its dampness started to camp out in our clothes, in our beds, and in our bones and one lunchtime, five weeks after our arrival, my exasperated mother issued the ultimatum that we either move the house or we move the forest, and in a rare moment of purpose my father went out and bought himself an axe.

  It looked clumsy and sinister against his willowy frame, but he was gripped by its fervent calling and strode into the forest alone, shunning all offers of help, all offers of the more practical chainsaws. This was his task, he said, and it would be carried out alone. Penance, my brother reminded me, was a lonely place to be.

  And as those oaks were thinned, so the clearing grew and receded from the house, taking the midges and mosquitoes too, and gradually sunshine came to our windows earlier, and light started to pierce that once thick canopy until a new shoot emerged, a flower maybe – a bluebell? – but something rare and unseen before. And soon those fallen trunks became planks, and the shelves our books leant upon, the table that held our fractious discussions, and the jetty that moored the surprise boat we were presented with that first Christmas.

  From behind the stone wall I watched the school bus pull away, the second time that week. My parents didn’t know I wasn’t on it, and wouldn’t, not until much later, anyway, when they lifted their heads out of the dust and chaos of renovation. They’d have something to say, of course – they always did – but I didn’t care. That was a long way off and the day was mine.

  I headed deeper into the forest where the oldest trees leant towards each other and formed a dome, and where the energy beneath hovered with the potency of a million words of prayer. For months I’d skirted the periphery of groups, laughing at jokes I never found funny, frowning at problems that never seemed insurmountable, only to have those self-same groups turn their backs on me beyond the stilted marker of school gates. ‘Fuck’em,’ my brother said, but I didn’t have the heart to. I wanted to be liked. But I was an outsider. And people didn’t miss outsiders.

  I sat down on the seat my father had built especially for my tenth birthday, and looked
up at the dense interweaving of branches and leaves that obliterated the sky. I’d sat here through a storm once and returned home dry. I took the letter out of my schoolbag and looked at her familiar handwriting. She was lefthanded and a trail of smudge followed her words across the envelope. I could see the ink now stretching down her little finger to her palm, where she would transfer it to her forehead in moments of hesitation and insecurity. But those moments must now be few, for she had a boyfriend and that’s what she was writing to tell me.

  His sudden presence omitted any mention of Atlantis, or the Christmas she’d just spent with us – that first, unforgettable Christmas at Trehaven – and my name and our once immutable friendship disappeared off the page to make way for Gordon Grumley, a new boy from Gants Hill. It was love, she said. I lowered the letter and quizzically repeated the word, as if such an emotion should have bypassed Jenny Penny as deftly as the gift of manageable hair. They’d met at a funeral, she said, and he now took her to the recreation ground to torment the man who played with himself in the bushes; he now walked her to school and he now plaited her braids with the patience of a god. The fact that she’d just been diagnosed with diabetes came as something of an afterthought right at the bottom of the page. She was OK, she said, but she always had to keep a bar of chocolate in her bag. She always did, I wanted to say.

  ‘No school today then?’

  Her voice bellowed through the trees.

  ‘Nancy! You made me jump,’ I said; a tone of admonishment in my voice.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, sitting down next to me.

  ‘I don’t go to school on Tuesdays.’

  ‘Is that right?’ she said as she nudged my bulging schoolbag with her foot.

  ‘Jenny Penny’s got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘That sucks.’

  ‘It does,’ I said, picking at a loose thread on my shirt, which quickly started to unravel. ‘I don’t think I like her any more.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Nancy asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Just don’t.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  I shook my head. ‘I just want my friend back,’ I said, tears burning behind my eyes. ‘I’ve become forgettable.’

  I crouched down in the front seat until Nancy pulled away from our driveway and we sped out onto the open road.

  ‘All clear,’ she said, and I sat up and saw the yellow fields of rape to my left, beyond which, and out of sight, was the sea. The breeze whipped around my ears, around my hair, and I swallowed mouthfuls of it. We turned left down a narrow single-lane track and I pressed the horn around every corner, alerting oncoming cars to our presence, but it was unnecessary for we met no one except a lady and her dog, who pressed themselves against the hedgerow as we passed. I’d have an ice cream soon and all would be well; I’d have an ice cream with a double Flake and think I wasn’t so bad.

  ‘Morning, Nancy, morning, Elly,’ said Mr Copsey. ‘What can I do for you today?’

  Mr Copsey owned the small kiosk at the back of the beach. He stayed open throughout the year, no matter how bad the weather was, and once Nancy asked him why he did it and he told her that without the sea he’d be nothing.

  We sat in our usual place overlooking the rocky beach. The tide was out and rounds of slate and seaweed and pebbles stretched chaotically from the road to the water’s edge. I looked up at the houses on the cliff and found it strange that three nights ago there had been a violent storm and waves had crashed over the gardens, depositing weed and, in one case, a dead seagull upon the lawns. Salt scum had to be scraped from windows to reinstate priceless sea views.

  We’d met that particular onslaught as we’d met most unexpected things of that year, with doors bolted and shutters firmly drawn. And as the wind funnelled up the valley it brought with it the skimmed-off detritus of every life it touched: a briny stench of dead fish and damp nets, of shrimp heads and fishermen’s piss, and trails of petrolstink and fear; an overwhelming scent that clogged our nostrils as efficiently as frost.

  ‘That’s an ill wind if ever there was one,’ said my mother, and my father agreed; carefully adding to the smell with a voluptuous fart.

  ‘Wait for me, Nancy!’ I shouted as I raced after her, stumbling down the craggy beach. She was carrying an old canvas tool bag that clunked heavy against the rocks. I didn’t know why she had it and could have asked, but actually I preferred to wait because Nancy was full of surprises and this was turning out to be a day of surprises. She stopped in the shadow of the furthermost cliff and dropped her bag. She took out a mallet and a chisel and scoured the surrounding area for thick plate-sized pieces of dark slate. I helped her and soon we had a pile next to us, stacked like pancakes. She sat down and took the top slate, positioning it sideways between her feet.

  ‘Right,’ she said as she carefully lined up the chisel against the edge of the slate. Two sharp taps and it separated cleanly in two, unfolding like two halves of a book.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘But what are we looking for?’ I asked excitedly.

  ‘You’ll know when you find it,’ she said, and picked up another slate ready to place it into position.

  Three hours later, the tide, together with Nancy’s mood, started to turn; a sense of failure lapped at the edge of her frayed enthusiasm and even a freshly baked scone with jam couldn’t lift her spirits. She was surrounded by mounds of splintered slate and unrewarded effort, but not unfortunately by the thing she was looking for. She stood up to call it a day.

  ‘Just one more, Nancy,’ I said, picking up the last and smallest of the pieces. ‘Come on. Just one more.’

  There was no clue that this might be the one. The mallet fell with the same heavy force and the chisel landed with the same perfect precision. Nothing was different, apart from Nancy’s face as we prised the pieces apart and she saw that her search was over. For there, snuggled in the middle, was the coiled impression of a creature from another time, almost as old as the world. I gasped; ran my finger round and round its grooved spiral, and then held it close to my chest.

  ‘Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we’re special and that we’re still here.’

  2 May 1979

  Dear Jenny,

  I’m glad you’re happy. Gordon sounds nice and I’m glad you have someone to play with. I miss you more than ever and I don’t like school. I still haven’t got any friends yet, but I never thought I’d make any as nice as you. I found this fossil on the beach and thought of you. Nancy says it’s rare and precious. Nancy says good things. I hope you like it. Keep it safe for me.

  Love,

  Your best friend, Elly xx

  PS. Sorry you’ve got diabeetis.

  Not once had our parents told us of their plans for a bed and breakfast, and not once had they ever revealed this unnatural desire to house people who wouldn’t normally be encouraged to share our lives. And yet here we were, looking down at the colourful magazine advertisement, placed just in time for the summer season.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ they said.

  Words like idyllic, unique, peaceful stood out next to the half-page photograph of our beloved home; a home that had exhausted our energies for almost a year whilst we transformed it into the idyllic, unique and peaceful space that it had stubbornly become.

  ‘Do we need the money?’ my brother asked quietly.

  ‘No, of course not,’ said my father. ‘We’re not doing this for money. We’re doing this because we can and because it’ll be fun. An adven-ture.’

  Only nursery school teachers broke up words like that, I thought.

  ‘Think of all the lovely people we’ll meet,’ said my mother, holding on tightly to the slab of pink quartz that hung around her neck, the one she’d uncovered at the clay pits in St Austell.

  My brother and I looked at each other as we imagined Mr and Mrs Strange holding up the advertisement and saying, ‘Look at this, dear, this looks nice. Let�
�s visit and never leave.’

  I reached for my brother’s hand but it was already firmly in his mouth.

  Our first two guests arrived just as the sealant had been placed around their bath. Mr and Mrs Catt pulled up in their sand-coloured Marina saloon and were greeted by my mother, who was wielding a bottle of champagne as violently as if it had been my father’s axe.

  They recoiled as she screamed, ‘Welcome! You’re our first!’ and she led them into the living room where she introduced Joe and me. I only grunted and raised my hand because we had decided earlier that I should pretend to be deaf.

  ‘Alfie!’ my mother suddenly shouted into the hallway, and my father jogged in wearing a pair of flimsy red running shorts. He may as well have come in naked, since the discomfort of our guests would have been exactly the same. He leant towards them with his outstretched hand and said, ‘Hi,’ with an elongated i.

  ‘Champagne, darling?’ my mother asked my father, handing him an oversized flute.

  ‘You betcha,’ he said.

  My brother and I looked at each other, quizzically mouthing the words ‘betcha’ and ‘hi’.

  ‘What about this effing travesty, eh?’ said my father holding up the Guardian, showing a photograph of Margaret Thatcher. ‘Two months on and still bloody with us.’

  ‘We both think she’s marvellous, actually,’ said Mrs Catt in a crisp estuary accent, forcefully adjusting her bra strap. ‘Doing a wonderful job.’

  ‘And I’m sure she is,’ said my mother sternly, looking towards my father.

  ‘If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask,’ said my father, about to swallow a large mouthful of discount-for-bulk Moët.

  ‘Actually, all we really want is a bath,’ said Mr Catt, placing his full glass of champagne onto the small table and rubbing his hands, as if the soap was in his palms already. My parents froze.