Black Rabbit Hall (3 page)

The storm will barrel up the creek around six o’clock, Daddy says, standing on the terrace in his crumpled cream suit, tilting back his fedora with one finger and sniffing the air, like a hunting hound. It’s actually pretty obvious a storm is about to hit – the air is sticky, dark clouds are jamming the sky above a mirror-black sea – but it’s not our place to point it out. We all know how much Daddy loves standing on the terrace, one hand gripping the balustrade, chest puffed, muttering about the weather and the fallow deer, complaining about the rabbits and the leaking roof. Not that anyone does anything about it.

Our house in London doesn’t leak. Or drip. Or rattle in the night. Your hair doesn’t get blown about as you cross the bedroom landing. Bits of the roof don’t fly off in a high wind, like laundry from a line. And if it did my parents would get someone in to fix it. But at Black Rabbit Hall, none of that stuff bothers them. In fact, I’m beginning to think that, secretly, they may quite like it.

At the moment there’s a bowl in the corner of my bedroom that Toby calls a potty. (‘Oh, you’ve filled the potty again, Amber!’ he hoots, and I whack him around the head with
Jane Eyre
.) There’s at least six buckets in the old ballroom, which is so leaky only the little ones use it, whizzing up and down on their trikes.

Momma likes to keep things ‘simple’ at Black Rabbit
Hall: we don’t have proper staff, just Peggy, who lives in, cooks when we’re at the house, Annie, a distracted girl from the village who pretends to do the cleaning – Peggy dismissed her for laziness two summers ago, but she carried on turning up for work anyway – a loyal troupe of aged carpenters, one with a glass eye he’ll tap with his screwdriver if you ask nicely, and even older gardeners, who have worked here on and off all their lives, stink of horse manure and look as if each gasping plunge of the spade might be their last. No nanny. Not when we’re in Cornwall. None of my friends can believe it. But Momma didn’t want us to be brought up by staff, like Daddy was, like Grandpa was, and all the other dead people hanging off the gallows of the family tree, hidden third drawer down in Daddy’s desk.

You never know what you’ll find stuffed in the drawers here: ration books, gas masks, a loaded pistol, a sheaf of golden curls from a dead baby, who, Daddy says, would have been our great aunt had she lived. Oh, yes, and Princess Margaret’s glove. That’s about as exciting as it gets.

We can only dream of a television set. Even the ancient wireless sparks when you plug it into the wall. It barely catches a signal, just a ragged stream of crackles, or broken messages picked up from local fishing boats about wind speeds and mackerel hauls. The pipes clank and groan all night, and if someone fills one of the big iron baths, it sounds like the earth itself is heaving open. There are constant power cuts – a brilliant flash, then mothy darkness – and we must make do with oil lamps from the storeroom until someone can fix it, which can take days, so the ceilings are all smudged with lamp smoke.

‘It’s like the twentieth century never started!’ Momma laughs, as if this is the best thing ever, rather than the thing that puts me off inviting any of my friends to stay. Or maybe I just use that as an excuse. The truth is, I like it when it’s just us down here. We don’t really need anyone else.

I drag the Bottom Biter, the world’s most uncomfortable cane chair that Great-Grandpa brought back from Bombay and can therefore never be replaced – when I’m married I’m going to buy new furniture from a department store – across the terrace. Not too far from Toby. Despite all the acres, Toby and I always seem to end up within five feet of each other here.

I’m now in prime position to watch the lightning tinselling the top of the woods. But the storm is indecisive. As if it can’t quite summon the energy to break.

Toby sits on the stone balustrade in the stormy lemon sunshine, idly kicking his legs. The cat dozes beside him, tabby tail twitching against the tiny blue flowers that have seeded in the mortar. Daddy strides off to investigate the pterodactyl – according to Barney – nesting in the chimney. Momma is trying to brush Kitty’s hair. Kitty squirms and protests as she always does, clings tight to the grubby scrap of cloth that is her beloved one-eyed Raggedy Doll. Barney puts his murky jam-jar of tadpoles on the ground and starts to kick a ball against the wall, his strawberry curls bouncing. The whack of rubber on dry stone sounds like every sunny spring day we’ve ever spent here.

That’s the thing. I know this exact scene – me on the cane chair, Toby kicking his legs on the wall, looking at me, looking away, Momma brushing Kitty’s hair, the smell of
laundry and seaweed, me yearning for something, possibly a ginger biscuit – will repeat itself another day, as this day is a repeat of those that have come before it in other holidays. Nothing changes that much. Time goes syrupy slow. The family joke is that a Black Rabbit hour lasts twice as long as a London one, but you don’t get a quarter of the things done. The other thing about Black Rabbit Hall is that when you’re here it feels like you’ve been here for centuries but when you leave it feels like the entire holiday happened in one afternoon. Maybe that’s why nobody cares that the clocks are all set wrong.

Not much ever happens.

Books help the time pass. But I have left my novel beside my bed and can’t be bothered to climb all the stairs to the turret. Instead I press my toes against the armrest and steer my mind into the exquisite torture that is thinking about the birthday party I missed: Fred mostly. Thinking of him fills my body with a curious sweet heat. It comes out in a long sigh that sounds like something from the cinema, not mine at all.

Toby looks up instantly, eyeing me sharply through the spikes of his fiery lashes as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking about. Annoyingly, I blush, confirming his suspicions.

Toby and I were born fifteen minutes apart. I came first. Toby had the cord around his neck and Daddy almost lost his male heir that day. We’re from two separate eggs, not connected beyond being siblings and sharing Momma’s womb, yet sometimes weird things happen: things that aren’t meant to happen to non-identical twins. Like when he smashed his nose crashing off the tree rope swing last
year, I got a nose bleed for no reason. If I wake up unexpectedly in the night, I’ll often get up and discover he’s just woken too. Sometimes we even dream the same dream, which brings with it the mortifying possibility that he will dream about kissing Fred. We laugh at the same things, ‘Dumb-rabbit stupid things,’ as Toby always says – this is in itself a joke but I don’t know why it’s funny. He doesn’t have to say much to make me laugh. It’s the way he can hitch just the tiniest muscle in his face, or fill a silent pause with an unspoken rude word. He takes things too far. Always. It’s my job to pull him back. But if I wasn’t here I don’t think he’d do it in the first place. He falls, knowing I’ll catch him. Sometimes literally. He’s usually covered with bruises. We both hate liquorice.

For most of our lives Toby and I have been at the same height, same stage, so that we’ve met each other eye to eye, our feet the same distance from the wooden end of the bed when he flumps next to me in the morning, chatting away while I’m trying to read. But I’m now one inch taller. I have two breasts with sore nipples hard as boiled sweets (still hopelessly minuscule, compared to Matilda’s, but showing promise). On 22 January – identified at 3.05 p.m. in the girls’ toilet – a sticky brown smear had appeared on my underwear, something that Momma later confirmed was the quietly triumphant arrival of the Curse. But Toby at fourteen is still the Toby that was: wiry, fiery-haired, ‘weirdly beautiful for a boy’, Matilda once said, denying it afterwards. His voice has gone crackly, a bit like the radio signal, and his shoulders wider, but we no longer look the same age. We no longer look much like twins either, apart from the hair. I don’t think he likes that very much.

Toby starts to pick the moss from between the grey stones of the balustrade, roll it into hairy green balls and flick it off the ledge with his forefinger and thumb, seeing how far the balls will jump. We can kill hours like this at Black Rabbit Hall. We have to.

‘Here, hold this for me, would you, darling?’ Momma calls to me, brown elastic hairband dangling between her teeth. She waves some yellow ribbon above her head. Her hand – ‘cured by Cornwall!’ – is free of its splint now. ‘Seawater just makes the most terrible tangles. Have you seen the state of your little sister’s hair?’

I walk over to Momma, pendulum the ribbon while she brushes. ‘She’s been rolling around in the breakers, Momma.’ Unlike the rest of us – who have Momma’s scribble of a figure – Kitty is soft and plump and doesn’t feel the coldness of the ocean. Like Barney, she doesn’t have any fear of it either – wading out into the waves until Momma sprints in and yanks her back – which I personally think is pretty spunky for a four-year-old girl. She’s quite something, our Kitty.

‘Ow.’ Kitty backs away from the brush. ‘You’re tugging Kitty’s head off, Momma.’

‘You should try not to get sand in your hair. Then Momma wouldn’t have to brush it all the time,’ I point out.

Kitty sticks out her bottom lip. ‘If I was a crab I wouldn’t have to brush my hair.’

‘You tell me when you develop that hard shell then, Kittycat.’ Momma gives up on the brush and uses her fingers to pull apart the knots in my little sister’s fine blonde hair. Momma hums beneath her breath – the hum hasn’t changed since I was Kitty’s age: I could sing it in my sleep
but I have no idea what it is – and squats down behind her, so that Kitty is tightly wedged between her knees and unable to fidget.

‘Momma, will you take me to the den in the woods?’ Barney heads the ball over the balustrade, wraps his twig arms around Momma’s neck. ‘I want to show you the den.’

‘The den?’ she says, like mothers do when they’re not really listening.

‘The new one.’

‘Sounds very exciting.’ Another thing mothers say when not really listening. ‘You can show me later. After the storm. Easy, easy, Barney.’ She picks off his fingers one by one. ‘I can’t breathe.’

My little brother is like one of those mini-monkeys in the Harrods pet shop, all eyelashes, mischief and bendy limbs. He’ll hang upside down until his eyes pop pink. And he’s at his happiest in the company of animals: a line of ants marching over his foot, a slowworm cupped in his hands, rabbits. Barney adores rabbits. He found a baby bunny on the lawn last year with sealed-shut eyes and fur like a dandelion clock and fed it warm milk through a pipette. When it died a few hours later, he cried for a whole day. He’s been looking for a replacement ever since. But Barney’s not a cry-baby, not normally, not like those whimpery little boys you see pulling on their nanny’s hands in London parks. Barney’s too busy, too curious to be miserable for long. Same as Toby like that: more alive than anyone else. The difference is that Barney is happy rushing about on his own – Peggy says he should be on a lead – while Toby always wants me around, close as possible. Until recently we’d curl up together, like two question
marks, on the sofa. The tips of our fingers would touch beneath the table at supper. Now, we don’t so much. We’re a bit too old. Someone might see.

‘Now, Momma. Please. There might be a badger in the trap,’ Barney whines.

The ‘trap’ – a cage of twigs Toby made for him – is no more likely to catch a badger than a baby rhino. But Barney is convinced he’s going to catch a badger cub and hand-rear it, even though this has never happened before and you wouldn’t want to rear it even if you did catch one. They’ve got a terrible bite. We’ve been warned about the dangers of badgers. And riptides, adders and foxgloves.

‘Please, Momma.’

‘If you’ve got so much energy, how about you practise those neat little cartwheels Kitty taught you earlier?’

‘I’m better at cartwheels,’ says Kitty imperiously.

‘So. Cartwheels are for girls. I’m better at rockets. You’re completely useless at rockets, Kitty.’

‘Mom-
ma
, Barney says I’m useless at rockets …’

‘Don’t you two start squabbling. Here, Toby,’ Momma calls, over Kitty’s head. ‘How about taking your little brother for a kick-around?’

‘Do I have to?’

‘Yup.’

‘Pssst!’ Toby beckons him over. ‘Better idea.’ He lines up a moss ball on the balustrade and, using finger and thumb, flicks it across the terrace. Barney scrabbles up on the wall beside him. ‘A bit of target practice?’ Toby is looking at me, even though he’s whispering into Barney’s ear.

I shake my head like I’m above it all.

‘Now, choose your moment carefully, Barney.’ Toby
rolls a moss ball on his flattened palm. ‘If you waste one you’re in trouble.’

‘I won’t, Toby. Promise.’

‘What do you think? Inanimate object, or …’ Toby hushes his voice, glances over at me again and grins ‘…
Homo sapiens
?’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ I hiss.

Toby glances across the terrace. ‘Okay, let’s do Peggy. But the deal is you won’t blame me if you get told off.’

‘Deal,’ says Barney.

They sit and wait for a couple of minutes, two pairs of honey-brown eyes – flecked with gold, exactly like Momma’s tiger-eye earrings – fixed intently on the small wooden gate that leads from the terrace to the area at the back of the kitchen garden, where the hens peck the ground and washing billows on the line. I settle back on my ringside seat, feigning disinterest.

‘The target is in sight.’ Toby flicks his red curls out of his eyes. His hair can’t sit still either. He’s got three natural partings, so it grows at different angles from his multiple crowns, and a cow’s lick, so he always looks faintly electrified.

I sit forward, hugging my knees.

Peggy is out of the door. She is moving across the terrace, the wicker basket on her hip filled with white washing, wooden clothes pegs dangling in the cloth bag.

‘At the ready, Barney.’

Peggy is two feet away. Toby stills Barney’s eager thumb. ‘Wait for it … wait for it …’ Peggy is one foot away. ‘And … fire!’

Barney’s first moss ball falls short. Peggy doesn’t even notice it. The afternoon already feels anti-climactic.