When God Was a Rabbit

by Winman, Sarah

  ‘We were what, fifteen? Fuck. Where did all the time go, Ell? Look at us.’

  ‘It’s as if it was yesterday,’ I said, downing half my glass. ‘So, are you fucking?’

  ‘God, you are all grown up.’

  ‘Yeah, happened overnight. Well?’

  ‘No,’ and he tried to swipe a glass of champagne from the tray, this time spilling it down his arm. ‘He won’t with me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He doesn’t go back,’ he said.

  Bobby, the hairiest of The Judys, came out and introduced the rest of the group. He talked about the charities being represented that evening, talked about the artists exhibiting around the room. He talked about money and asked for lots of it.

  ‘By the way,’ I said turning back to Charlie, ‘the last time I saw you wasn’t then. It was when you were on television being bundled into a car.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that.’

  ‘Well?’ I said, but he pretended not to hear me as the opening bars to ‘Dancing Queen’ quickly filled the room.

  I couldn’t sleep. Buoyed by the latent effects of jet lag and coffee, I found myself wide awake at three in the morning. I got up, crept to the kitchen and poured out a large glass of water. I turned my computer on. The sound of breathing was loud and close. My brother never shut his bedroom door. It was a security thing: he needed to hear the sounds of his home, needed to hear if a different sound entered. I gently closed his door. Tonight he was safe; safe with me, and safe with Charlie asleep in the adjacent room.

  It was then, in the three o’clock darkness, that I wrote about the moment Ellis re-entered our lives that evening in August, as shoppers gathered at corner bars, swapping tales of sales and divorces pending, of who loves who and holidays to come. I wrote about how he entered with a wallet crammed with fifties, and memberships to MOMA and the Met, and loyalty cards for Starbucks and Diedrich’s too. I wrote about how he entered with a slight scar above his lip from an accident skiing, and how he entered with a wounded heart from a man called Jens; a man he didn’t really love, but he was someone there, a late-night-talk-to; we’ve all had one of them. I wrote about how he entered with a letter in his pocket, which his mother had written a couple of days before, a letter more emotional than usual, wondering how he was, wishing they spoke more, stuff like that. I wrote about how he entered with a terrifying ordeal that he wouldn’t talk about for years, with an empty space where once was an ear. And I wrote about how he entered with the knowledge that he was changing jobs, leaving the snow fields of Breckenridge and the Rocky trails behind, and swapping them for land in the Upstate quiet, where neighbours were unseen, and where the Shawangunk Mountains would watch over him like the eagles they unleashed; swapping it all to be with an unlikely someone from his distant past.

  That’s how he entered; how I remembered he entered.

  5 July 1997

  Jenny,

  Every morning I pick up the Guardian and the News of the World and walk through the double-arched gateway and enter the courtyard, with its fountain and car park and patients sitting on benches with drip lines for company. I never say hello to anyone, not even to the gatekeeper; just keep to myself and to the story that lives so quietly on that upper floor. Ginger has shrunk before my eyes; she stopped momentarily at a weight that would have thrilled her years before and given her what she would have referred to as a ‘figure’, before plunging her headfirst towards a skeletal state too weak now to support anything other than sleep.

  We’d got used to the cancer and so had she in many ways, or at least used to the habitual cycles of medication and chemotherapy and what it did to her body throughout those seven years. But we can’t get used to this infection and the way it’s decimated her frame and clawed so hungrily at her spirit. She’s never once said her cancer was unfair, but this infection has eaten at her dignity, and the self-pity she banished from her life has appeared now and then, and made her hate herself more. She has been dealt a shitty hand, Jenny; the days she feels it pain us to the core. I feel inadequate.

  As she sleeps, so I work at her bedside. I work on our column, which has become a surprising success. I say surprising, but you say you always knew. Liberty and Ellis are mentioned now on trains and on buses and in the chatter of work breaks. What do you think of that, Jenny Penny, my friend of old? Fame has found you at last . . .

  I looked out of the window; night was closing in on the building works and the overgrown trees from Postman’s Park. The shadows were large and grotesque. I didn’t want to go home. This had become my home, the nurses my friends, and as the long nights stretched out before me, I eavesdropped on their problems as they talked about broken hearts and money, about rents and the price of shoes and how depressing London was before the change of Government.

  I told them stories about Ginger; this woman who’d shared champagne with Garland and a secret with Warhol. I showed them old photographs because I wanted them to know this woman; this woman beyond the name and number and date of birth that was wrapped around her wrist. I wanted them to know this woman who still tingled when she heard stories about meeting Liza down Fifth Avenue, or seeing Garbo garbed in sunglasses and scarf on the Upper East Side, stories like that, for she still thrilled at such epic stardom; glowed in a fame that scoffed the talentless. She’d found hers; had had that moment, that golden moment, forever untarnished by advancing years.

  ‘What’s up, pet?’ said Ginger, suddenly waking, reaching weakly for my hand.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Not too bad,’ she said.

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Only with Scotch – you know me.’

  I placed a cool cloth against her brow.

  ‘What’s going on in the world?’ she asked.

  ‘Gianni Versace was shot dead yesterday,’ I said holding up the newspaper.

  ‘Gianni who?’

  ‘Versace. The designer.’

  ‘Oh, him. Never liked his clothes,’ and she fell back to sleep, content maybe, that there was at least some justice in the world.

  The summer evenings unfolded and I longed to take her out into the courtyard to get the sun on her face and to see her freckles appear once more in tanned clusters. I wanted to take her back to my flat behind Cloth Fair, the flat she told me to make my home five minutes into a first viewing the November before. I wanted us to sit on the roof and look out over Smithfield in the early hours, watching the meat market open up like some giant nocturnal bloom. I wanted us to listen again to the bells of Bartholomew, as we ate croissants and read the Sunday newspapers and gossiped about people we knew and those we didn’t. But most of all, I wanted wellness to seize her again and drop her running into the colourful wake of London life. But Ginger never got to go outside again, and in the end I told her she wasn’t missing much, because we’d done it all, lived it all, hadn’t we? So there wasn’t much point.

  ‘I’d like my ashes to be scattered here, love,’ she said to me one day, pointing to a picture of herself standing on the jetty, the river behind her full and bloated. ‘So I can keep an eye on you all.’

  ‘Anything you want,’ I said. ‘You just tell me what you want,’ and she did, and I hid my tears behind a sheet of A4 paper and a hospital Biro.

  I went home that night for a shower and a change of clothes. The ancient road behind the church was deserted, and the whisperings of bygone lives accompanied me into the alleyway, to the safety of my front door. I turned towards the sound of footsteps; a fleeting shadow retreating into shadow; a laugh, a conversation, the see-you-later echoing across the brickwork, and afterwards the silence. Silence. Turgid and soulful. Edible.

  I looked at my body in the mirror, a body I’d once disowned with the currency of scorn. It had never been good enough – not for me, not for others – but that night, it looked beautiful, it looked strong, and that was enough.

  I opened the drawer and took the ring out of its hiding place. The worn inscription on the inside ba
nd: Las Vegas 1952. Our memories. X

  She never told me who he was, but Arthur reckoned he was a bad boy, a gangster, and so their memories would’ve been short. It fitted me now, fitted my ring finger. I put it on and held it up to the light. The diamonds and sapphires sparkled. I smiled like the child who’d received it, frozen in time. Frozen in time.

  I picked up the phone and wondered what I was going to say to him. He’d last been here six weeks ago when she was first admitted. He’d flown back from New York and his boss didn’t want him to, threatened to fire him, but he’d flown back because he loved Ginger, so of course he’d come back. And when I took him onto the ward and she saw his face, she lit up with such delight, you’d have thought his mere presence had caused the cancer to retreat. And that week she seemed to get well, did get well, but that was before the infection. He left vowing to see her in October. It was now the third week of July. It was ringing.

  ‘Hey, Joe,’ I said.

  There was silence the other end.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Call me when you’re with her.’

  ‘Course I will.’

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Wretched,’ I said.

  Neither my parents nor Nancy came back for that final week because Ginger asked them not to. They begged her, fought with her, but she said she ‘didn’t want them to remember me like that’, but really it was because she couldn’t bear to say goodbye. Age had softened her and authenticity now squired her feelings. Words, once saved for a song, became her own. My parents found it hard to accept her wishes but they reluctantly agreed and prepared quietly for a life without her. My mother had her hair cut into a very nice bob. Nancy signed up for a TV series in LA. And my father went back into the forest and chopped down a tree. The sound of the trunk fracturing and splintering and falling to earth was the sound his heart would have made, could it speak.

  And as Ginger became weaker, so I made the final call, the one that brought him to Paddington Station the following morning, where I met his shaky descent with a resigned smile from beyond the barrier. He looked old and troubled, and the cane he once used as a prop, was now used as a walking stick. He was quiet in the taxi and we avoided all mention of her name until we came down Farringdon Road and he asked me again what ward she was on and did she need anything.

  ‘OK?’ I asked, reaching for his hand.

  He nodded and as we turned into Smithfield, said, ‘I used to have relations with a young butcher down here.’

  ‘Fond memories?’ I said.

  He squeezed my hand and I knew exactly what that squeeze meant. ‘I haven’t written about him yet,’ he said, ‘but I will. Chapter thirteen, I expect; the one entitled “Other Distractions”.’ He was trying so hard.

  He stumbled as we got out of the cab, and I heard him sigh deeply. ‘How’s she doing, Elly? Really?’

  ‘Not good, Arthur,’ I said, as I led him to the entrance.

  He leant over her bed and touched the side of her face and said, ‘Who’s got cheekbones then?’ and she smiled and tapped his hand and said, ‘Silly old fool. Wondered when you’d get here.’

  ‘Still our Ginger,’ he whispered as he leant down and kissed her.

  ‘You smell nice,’ she said.

  ‘Chanel,’ he said.

  ‘Wasted on you,’ she said, and he reached into his bag and pulled out an almond tart.

  ‘Look what I’ve got,’ he said triumphantly, as he lowered it under her nose.

  ‘Almonds,’ she said. ‘Just like Paris.’

  ‘For us to share,’ he said. ‘Just like Paris.’

  I never knew if she had any real appetite or not, for she hadn’t eaten solids for days. But he broke a piece off and held it to her mouth and she ate hungrily; for it was the memory she was tasting again, and the memory tasted good.

  I moved a chair close to the bed for him and he sat down and held her hand. His own death he’d made peace with years ago, but everyone else’s still frightened him and so he held her hand to not let her go. He held her hand because he wasn’t ready to let her go.

  I watched them from the door and listened to the stories billowing from youth to middle age and back again; stories from the little hotel on Saint André des Arts, where they drank into the early hours and watched the couple opposite make love, a sight so beautiful, it was still talked about forty years later. They were best friends, telling best-friend tales.

  I left them and headed towards the stairs, and as I walked down I was overwhelmed with the gratitude of wellness. I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe. I said hello to the gatekeeper. He said hello back to me.

  29 July 1997

  Jenny

  Something happened that I thought you’d like to know about. Last afternoon, riding painlessly on a wave of morphine, Ginger told us about a visit she’d had earlier in the day. That was strange because neither Arthur nor I had seen a visitor and we’d been there all morning. He’d brought her flowers, she said, this man; he’d brought her favourites, white roses; flowers that adorned her dressing room in her heyday and whose scent made her feel that anything was possible. I looked at Arthur and we shrugged, because there were no white roses, just a small vase of freesias that one of the nurses had brought in a couple of days before. But she made us smell the white roses, and we did and she was right, the scent was strong. Ginger said her visitor was an older man, sixty, maybe, but still handsome, but age didn’t matter because he’d found her and he was exactly as she’d imagined. His name was Don and he was her son. She’d given him up years ago, she said, but she knew it was him when he walked in. He’d brought her flowers, you see. Roses. White roses. And his name was Don. He’d come looking for her and he’d found her. And now she felt good. She was calm and now she could go.

  We’ll never know the truth of that story, and I don’t think either of us wants to really. It was a story that began and ended in that room. Arthur says everyone takes something to the grave . . .

  There were no long speeches or great goodbyes in the end; Ginger simply slipped away at four in the morning whilst we were sleeping. I awoke soon after – an intuition, maybe? – I looked over at her and knew she’d gone, as if the very air that once inhabited her body had been sucked out and replaced by a contoured landscape of concavity. I kissed her and said goodbye. Arthur stirred; I knelt down and gently woke him up.

  ‘She’s gone, Arthur,’ I said, and he nodded and said, ‘Oh,’ and then I left him to say his farewell, as I went to find a nurse.

  I walked down the one hundred and thirty-one steps that I had walked four times a day for six weeks and went into the square. It was dark, of course; sporadic lights and the sound of the fountain. I looked up at the sky. ‘There’s a new star tonight,’ my brother would have said, had I been younger, had he been there; and for forty minutes I looked for it. But I had become too old. I couldn’t see her anywhere. Where she had been, was now just space.

  She died a month before Princess Diana.

  ‘So as not to steal her thunder,’ we all said.

  7 September 1997

  Dear Elly,

  The whole prison watched the funeral yesterday. Those poor boys walking behind. It was very quiet in here. Everyone had their own sadness. For many it was the wasted time – the time they’d spent inside away from families or the time spent drinking or on drugs or the death of Loved Ones they never got to see again. Or the children taken away from them and put into care. Westminster Abbey looked beauti ful. I’ve never been. Never been to St Paul’s either or the Tower of London. So many places to see.

  There are lots of conspiracy theories in here. Always are. I said people should have stopped calling her ‘Di’, that would of been a start.

  You mentioned Mr Golan in your last letter.

  I had a Mr Golan in my life too.

  One
of my mums old boyfriends.

  Sometimes when I’d arranged to meet you and I was late, it wasn’t because of my hair. I wish I’d told you of all people. Im sorry. Their helping me in here about it. Its good. Talking. Lots of talking.

  I shaved my head two days ago. I thought I might look like a man but everyone says I look pretty. I feel strangely free. Funny what hair can do to you.

  Sorry about your last visit. Never stop being patient with me Elly.

  Take care always

  Your Liberty, your Jenny x

  The last August of the millennium drew upon us and my father suddenly cancelled all reservations and refused all bookings, and instead left our house empty and yawning and waiting, in preparation for us, his family. It was the first time we would all be together since the scattering of Ginger’s ashes, and it was an action so out of character for this man who flourished in the presence of guests that my mother found herself constantly monitoring his every move in case he should once again plummet to those unknown depths, where he would become a mere trophy to the power of the unresolved.

  And yet it was simply excitement that had gripped him, nothing more sinister; the same excitement that had him wake us up as children in the middle of the night to watch his favourite film, a Western usually, or to watch Muhammad Ali box into legend in our sleepy minds. His excitement was the taper that ignited our sluggish souls, and drew us all towards him that summer; that summer when the light went out.

  Joe flew over with Charlie on the red-eye and I met them at Paddington station, where we performed a ten-minute turnaround to catch the nine o’clock train to Penzance.

  We dozed intermittently, fuelled by a passing buffet trolley. The boys started on beer as the coastline met the tracks, and I watched them – intrusively, I felt – for signs of burgeoning love, for signs of a commitment to a shared future. But the paralysis that had taken hold the moment of their reunion still remained, and they shared nothing – no home, no dreams, no bed – nothing, except the can of lukewarm beer now traversing the table. My longing was left unresolved; my meddling heart again dissatisfied.