Black Rabbit Hall (29 page)

‘I keep going back to the beginning, trying to make sense of it. Oh dear.’ She shakes her head. ‘That terrible moment in the dressing room.’

‘What happened in the dressing room?’ Lorna asks, her voice high, hands gripping the edge of the bench.

‘I became the monster everyone said I was.
I
became that woman, Lorna,’ she says, swinging to face her with fierce intensity. ‘Don’t you see? You can see that, can’t you?’

‘Sorry, I don’t really understand …’ Something dark and chaotic is tugging at the corners of the conversation now. She presses her feet into the boots, readying herself to stand up.

‘It was a lie, a silly, desperate lie, but it grew … it grew so big.’ Mrs Alton squeezes her eyes tightly shut. The wind flaps her cape like wings. She looks so odd, swaying on the bench, Lorna is no longer sure if she is cogent, whether this is the looping of dementia, or something else. ‘The most perfect August evening,’ she mutters. ‘Blue skies. It didn’t look like a day anyone might die.’

Lorna becomes certain that Mrs Alton has done something unspeakably terrible. ‘You don’t need to tell me this.’

‘Oh, I do.’ She opens her eyes, smiles. ‘Endellion has informed you that I am shortly due for dispatch?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, don’t be,’ she says dismissively. ‘I’ve lasted longer than anyone expected, or hoped. Stay out of hospitals and you stay alive. Remember that.’

Lorna stands up, desperate to run from this strange talk of terrible lies and deaths on perfect summer evenings. ‘Perhaps I should find Dill. Would you like that, Mrs Alton? Some help getting back to the house?’

‘It made keeping the baby utterly impossible, you see.’

Lorna runs the words through her head again, feels her way around each one, checking it for faults, misinterpretation. ‘Mrs Alton, do you mean that my mother wanted to keep …’ Something stops her finishing the question, too scared of the answer.

‘Oh, yes, she wanted to keep you,’ Mrs Alton replies matter-of-factly. ‘Very much.’ She raises her hand, holding it in mid-air until Lorna takes it, helps lift her slight frame off the bench. ‘Come. I’d like to show you the room where you were born. If you would guide me to the car first. My sight is not quite what it was.’

‘Blasted steering!’ Mrs Alton whacks the leather wheel with her hand. ‘Hasn’t been right since 1975.’

‘Wait. Don’t. Move.’ Lorna clutches her stomach, inches her nauseous gaze to the drop below: the nose of the blue car sticks cleanly, surreally, into the sky, like an aeroplane wing seen from a passenger’s window. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Mrs Alton’s left foot lift.

‘No!’ Lorna lurches for the gear stick, yanking it into
reverse a second before Mrs Alton can hit the accelerator and propel them over the cliff. The car judders, with a spit and spin of dust and grass, then reverses at high speed into the gorse hedge where the engine stalls, sending a cloud of tits fluttering upwards.

Still Mrs Alton will not be persuaded to swap seats – ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I can drive this road with my eyes closed!’ – and bends forward, pearls knocking against the steering-wheel, nose millimetres from the mud-splattered windscreen, speeding down the winding cliff road towards Black Rabbit Hall.

Lorna clings to the door handle, but it comes off in her hand. The roof flaps above her head, whipping rags of air into the cramped confines of the car. There is an alarming gash in the floor by her feet, where the road races past. The relief of not flying off a cliff to certain death is quickly superseded by fear of the car wrapping itself around a tree on the drive.

It bucks to a stop in front of the falcons. Mrs Alton pats her curls. ‘Car always did play havoc with one’s hair.’

Lorna shakily helps Mrs Alton out. It is disconcertingly quiet in the evening heat. She wonders where the others are, if they’re looking for her inside the house.

‘Tower,’ Mrs Alton barks, shielding her eyes from the sun, nodding up at the gloomy ivy-strangled east tower – her living quarters – with an unreadable look on her face.

In the hall, Lorna hears Alf’s faint chatter coming from somewhere in the direction of the enfilade. Mrs Alton catches her hesitation. ‘This way. Let’s not tarry.’

The east tower’s door is off the grand hall, sunk into a
pointed arch of mottled stone. She must have passed it countless times in the last couple of days, never noticed it. Mrs Alton swivels its brass knob one way, then the other. ‘After you,’ she says, when Lorna doesn’t move. ‘Goodness. Don’t look so terrified. I won’t lock the door behind us.’

As Lorna hadn’t considered this scenario, she lets out a high, nervous laugh, and has to force herself to step into what seems to be another hall, only on a much smaller scale. It is dark in here, stuffy. Its walls are a buffed boot-brown. The smell is distinctive, Lorna thinks, different from the rest of the house. Wet coats. Lavender. Dog. And something else. Something that smells of things hidden away for a long time. The smell you can never get out of clothes that have been stashed too long in an attic.

Mrs Alton unceremoniously pushes open another door with the tip of her cane. ‘This, my dear, is what I call home.’

It’s the suburban normality of Mrs Alton’s sitting room that steals the words from Lorna’s mouth: the twee china animals that look as if they’ve come from a market stall trotting along a modern pine fire surround; the hazardous five-bar electric heater; rose pink velveteen slippers, heels squashed flat with wear.

The oddest thing is that it is not unlike her nan’s house. The difference is that Nan’s place – a two up, two down in Hounslow – was so clean you could eat off the floor and this has a decidedly sticky patina. And while it was wallpapered in photographs of her nieces and nephews and grandchildren, the only family photo here – notable for its solitariness and prime position on the dresser – is a faded photograph of a handsome teenage boy with a floppy
1960s haircut, a little like one of the early Beatles. Mrs Alton’s armchair and slippers are positioned directly opposite the photograph, not the telly, as if she might spend hours just staring at this alone.

‘I find a smaller space much easier to manage,’ says Mrs Alton, briskly, as if reading Lorna’s mind. ‘And unlike the rest of the house, it is not so cold that the blood freezes in the veins come October. But fear not, you did not enter the world down here.’

Lorna tries not to look relieved.

‘Starward.’ She points at a door beside some bookshelves.

Heart jacking, she slowly follows Mrs Alton up a narrow, bare wooden staircase, up, up, up, past numerous other doors that lead, Mrs Alton says, to the landings of the upper floors in the main house. On a couple that are open, Lorna notices bolts. She shudders. How must a pregnant woman have felt, toiling up this tube of stone, knowing she could be locked behind them?

The staircase narrows and darkens. Dead bare light-bulbs swing on frayed cables above their heads. The acoustics are peculiar, their footsteps echoing against the hard, bare wood, sounding like a crowd of feet, not just four, as if every past inhabitant of this house is hot on their heels.

Finally, one simple white door. A black doorknob. Nowhere else to go.

Lorna stares at it, knees weak. The door is like a stone blocking an entrance to a tomb. She’s not sure she can go through it. She’s not sure she can do any of this.

‘It used to be the maids’ dormitory, back in the days when the family could afford them.’

Lorna nods, swallows. Staff quarters: that makes a sort of sense.

‘A perfect little hideaway with glorious views.’ Mrs Alton rattles the doorknob. ‘There was no reason for her to make such a ghastly fuss, no reason at all.’

Amber, a week before the end of the summer holidays, August 1969

‘It’s over,’ Toby whispers, ripping a fingernail with his teeth. ‘It’s started.’

Nothing’s started. Nothing’s over, I tell him. Things are admittedly pretty bad, but we’ve been in dark, fractured spots before, then good things suddenly happen and light shines through the cracks. I’m thinking of Lucian as I say this, so I quickly correct it to: life is strange and unpredictable and anything can happen and one day Toby will run Black Rabbit Hall exactly as he pleases, serve Twiglet sandwiches for supper and put Momma’s portrait back up in the hall.

Toby stares at me uncomprehendingly, the haunted look in his eyes just like Daddy’s cousin Rupert’s whenever you asked him about the war.

It is not good. Ever since Momma’s portrait was taken down, Toby’s spirits have shelved sharply, unexpectedly, like a treacherous beach. Something in him – maybe the last bit of fight and hope – has gone. The look in his eyes makes me feel panicky, as if I may not be able to fix him this time.

In the end, it was Daddy who failed Toby, not Caroline. Even though Toby said he was expecting it – he’d warned me, after all – when Daddy’s betrayal came it cut too deep.

As soon as Daddy returned from London, I rushed to the library, only to find that Caroline had got there first. Pressing my ear to the door, I heard the heat of their voices, Daddy shouting that it was goddamn insensitive, that she must take the blasted portrait down tomorrow. Then those sounds turned into other sounds, grunting, moaning, the telling thump of furniture against the wall, a long, high howl. Caroline’s portrait stayed.

That night Toby slept in the tree house, and the next, returning to the house to lie lifelessly with his head on Peggy’s lap, feet tangled in her knitting. Peggy picked out the twigs and earwigs from his hair, tried to feed him her ginger cake, breaking off small bits and dropping them into his mouth: it was an odd sight, the lithe teenager opening his mouth for Peggy’s tiny fingers. I think that’s all he’s eaten. You can see the buttons of his spine through his shirt.

Caroline says Toby’s ‘performance’ is ‘weak and tedious’; she has warned him he must snap out of it, ‘lest you achieve the remarkable feat of slipping even further in your father’s affections’. I don’t think she wants him to snap out of it, though. She’s clearly enjoying his suffering immensely, her own mood improving as Toby’s sinks. Daddy, on the other hand, did try to talk gently with Toby – ‘man to man’ – but the gentle talking quickly turned to shouting. Doors were slammed. Curses hurled. Daddy’s London diary got a whole lot busier. He returned there this morning.

The rest of us are trying to help. Lucian – mortified by his mother’s behaviour – has apologized on her behalf: Toby didn’t seem to hear, looked right through him. I’ve
been sitting with Toby on the cliff ledge or in the tree house, mostly in silence, as he doesn’t want to talk much. Boris waits loyally on his bed for him to return from the woods, nosing him when he stares out of the window, tears running down his cheeks. Kitty steals him jelly babies and wraps Raggedy Doll’s floppy arms around his neck. Barney even offers Old Harry for a cuddle – ‘He has soft ears that make things better, Toby’ – but is always fiercely rebuffed. Sometimes I think Toby blames that rabbit for everything.

Two days before the end of the summer holidays

‘Lucian, darling, an invitation to Bigbury Grange.’ Caroline presses the stiff pale pink card to her flushed clavicles. ‘Jibby has left me under no illusions that refusing it will ensure our quick and painful social death in the West Country. What do you say?’

Lucian and I privately agree that he must go, and with good grace. Caroline’s questioning of him has intensified in recent days, her appraisal of me – eyes sweeping over my horrible dresses, my neck, my chest – more blatant. We’re getting twitchy.

Now Lucian’s been gone six hours. The ‘light luncheon’ has turned into high tea. Big Bertie’s long, thin brass hands shudder from one minute to the next with agonizing slowness. Will Lucian even be back for the last day of the holidays tomorrow? It seems possible that he won’t. All sorts of bad things seem possible.

I try to talk myself round. Apart from anything else, he wouldn’t want to miss the high tide, would he? The locals say it’s going to be a big one, the biggest of the summer, a tide that will smash against the bone-dry bottom of the cliff, suck up treasures from the deep. No, no. He won’t want to miss that.

The next moment I’m racked with doubt. Of course
Lucian’s not interested in full moons and high tides! What am I thinking? He’s not Toby! He’s being entertained at one of the finest houses in the country, plied with cold champagne and lobster and the beauteous Belinda Bracewell.

Or he’s dead. Or about to be dead, the clock ticking down until the accident happens. I picture the car rolled upside down, like a beetle, wheels spinning in the air. I pray to God to keep him safe, pull him out of the tiny window before the flames leap. If He must take someone, please, please, take Caroline. Actually, take her anyway.

But God doesn’t take Caroline. Later that afternoon, she’s on the telephone, telling Peggy that the weather’s turned – liar, the sky is blue as a plate! – so they’ll be staying the night. Everyone is having a simply marvellous time.

By dusk there is no longer the slightest satisfaction to be found in sobbing. All I can do is stand on my packed suitcase, chin on the flaking windowsill, waiting for the little blue car that never comes up the drive.

A cough.

I turn and there is Toby, gaunt and wild-eyed, leaning against the wall. He has started talking more today, which, I hope, is a sign that the black gloom is lifting. ‘Hi. How are you feeling?’ I say, trying to sound cheery, hoping I don’t look swollen-eyed.

He speaks out of the corner of his mouth, lips barely moving. ‘You may as well get used to it.’

‘What?’

‘Lucian is an alley cat, Amber. He doesn’t give a damn who feeds him, least of all Belinda Bracewell.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of Lucian,’ I say quickly, taken aback. I thought Toby far too fogged and self-absorbed to notice where Lucian had gone. I was wrong. Today his eyes are glittering, hard and knowing again. This could be reassuring – he’s back, in part – but it’s not. It feels as if we are looking at each other through the thick ice of a frozen pond.

‘He’s going up to Oxford, a new golden life. He’ll soon forget about you, us, Black Rabbit Hall. You know that, don’t you? That this summer will just be an odd blip in his life.’

I bite the inside of my cheek, fighting a fresh flood of tears. If I react now I know all Toby’s suspicions will be confirmed. And the end is so close. Toby will soon leave for boarding school, me for London, Lucian for Oxford, our secret left behind at Black Rabbit Hall, sleeping, safe, its heart beating softly, until the Christmas holidays when Lucian and I will return and kiss it back to life once more.