Black Rabbit Hall (31 page)

‘The baby’s dead!’ Kitty is screaming – eyes wide, electric blue – running up the front steps. ‘The baby’s dead!’

‘What?’ I grab her by the shoulders, kneel down on the wet stone. ‘Calm down, Kitty. What baby? What are you talking about?’

‘In the woods – the woods!’ She points with a finger. ‘I saw it. By the swing. I did, Amber. I did.’

Peggy and Annie, hearing the commotion, rush out but can’t coax sense from Kitty either.

‘A baby? Come now, Kitty,’ says Annie, shaking her head.

‘It was,’ sobs Kitty, burying her face in Raggedy Doll.

‘Annie, you get Kitty inside,’ says Peggy, looking worried all of a sudden.

‘Pegs …’ Annie picks up Kitty, lowering her voice to a whisper ‘… remember the St Mawes foundling last year? You don’t think it could be a local girl’s little ’un, do you?’

Peggy frowns. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, my giddy aunt! To think of such girls in our village!’

‘We shouldn’t judge them,’ says Peggy. ‘We should never judge the desperate.’

‘I suppose not,’ says Annie, doubtfully. ‘But not everyone’s so big-hearted, Pegs. It’s no wonder the wretched girl’s dumped it. Imagine the shame.’

‘Annie, please be quiet,’ says Peggy, irritable now. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing but I will get a blanket, just in case.’ She turns to me, cheeks flushed. ‘Amber, you run on ahead. I’ll meet you there. Hold it tight to your chest. Keep it warm whatever you do until I arrive.’

Glad to escape them all, I dash off, springier after my sleep, worrying not about a baby – for how can there be a baby in the woods? – but Toby. Where has he gone? What can he be thinking? I stop every few yards, peering through the tree trunks, calling his name. Only the birds call back. No sign of Toby. Or the baby, for that matter.

As I near the tree swing I slow. A few more paces, I stop. Squint.

There
is
something.

I creep closer, heart thumping, trying to make out exactly what it is. What it is not.

The creature is hanging by its feet, fur stripped off, pink, bald and sticky as a newborn.

But it is not a baby. It is a rabbit. Like something hanging in the butcher’s window. And beneath the carcass a black pelt hugs the bulging tree roots, bloodless, slit as expertly as dressmaker’s cloth. I cover my mouth with my hands. There is only one person I know who can skin an animal like that.

‘Poachers?’ Peggy pants up behind me, tartan blanket bundled in her arms. ‘Some sort of horrible …’ Her voice trails off. And she knows, as I know beyond doubt, because we have both spotted Great-Grandpa’s knife a few feet away, glinting in the wet green heart of a fern.

I recoil, dazed, sickened: in slicing up the rabbit Toby has sliced us all apart, cutting through our sinewy strings
and bonds, old loyalties, the soft tissue of our past. He has cut himself completely adrift.

‘Good grief,’ mutters Peggy, then strains for her competent housekeeper’s voice. ‘Right. Let’s get this poor thing down. We don’t want Barney finding it.’

She passes me the blanket, rubs her hands together, as if warming them up for the grisly task, unhooks the rabbit off the tree by its bunched feet. She might have been selecting it for supper if her eyes weren’t filled with tears. She hesitates, rabbit swaying from her hand.

‘What, Peggy?’

‘It’s cold. Stiffening. Must have been here some time.’ There’s a strange look on her face. She rolls the rabbit in the blanket – a pitiful veiny ear pokes out – and glances up at me. ‘Amber, love, when did you say Barney left again?’

We stuff the dead bunny into the small, stinky room above the cellars where pheasants hang, a place where Barney would never look. Inside, her back pressed against the closed door, forehead sweaty, Peggy fires dozens of questions – ‘Why would Toby do that to the rabbit?’; ‘Is this connected to Lucian leaving so abruptly?’; ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ – which I meet with stuttering unsustainable protestations of ignorance. I am on the verge of telling Peggy everything when she decides the dead rabbit is starting to smell so we leave, locking the door behind us.

We find Kitty calmer, eating custard creams on Annie’s knee in the kitchen. For Kitty’s sake, we tell them it was nothing, just a dead squirrel, caught on a branch. But I feel
Kitty’s eyes follow us as we leave the room, her child’s antennae sensing another story.

Peggy drags me on a search of the house’s most obvious places. Toby is not anywhere: no surprise, not after what he’s done. But neither is Barney. We get back to the hall, where we started. I feel dizzy now, my mouth dry and tasting oddly of ink. Peggy opens the front door, scans the lawns, glances over her shoulder at Big Bertie. ‘Well, it’s not yet five. At least Barney’s not been gone long.’

‘Oh, that clock’s been stuck on not-yet-five since me and Kitty got back in,’ says Annie, peering over a huge vase of flowers, cracking it down on the marble shelf. ‘Big Bertie’s started to slow again – have you noticed? Gets jammed just before the hour. So much for that silly man’s tinkering! I bet he charged a fortune as well.’ She shakes her head, tweaks a tall blue flower. ‘Really, all Mrs Alton’s clockwatching does is lead to confusion. It’s a darn sight simpler to look at the sun here. I always said so.’

Unease curdles in my stomach. It is suddenly far from clear how long Barney’s been gone, how long I slept, if he left around four, if he’d had time to find the rabbit. Should he be back by now? Are there unaccountable minutes we’re unaware of? Are they important? I cannot think straight. I cannot make out what matters and what doesn’t.

‘If he was upset he’d come back to the house, wouldn’t he? And there’s nothing to see in the woods now so we don’t need to worry about that,’ Peggy mutters to herself.

‘I’m going to find him.’

‘You are? Wait …’ Peggy hesitates, a thoughtful frown. ‘Don’t tell Barney what happened to his rabbit.’

‘Pegs, I thought you said it was a squirrel?’ says Annie, stepping closer curiously.

‘What shall I tell him?’ I ask, ignoring Annie.

‘Nothing. Just don’t hurry back too quickly. I’ve got a friend in the village who has dozens of rabbits in hutches for pies. I’ll pop over there now, find a match for Old Harry.’ She unties her striped apron, shoves it into Annie’s hands. ‘Right, I’m off. I’ll make that poor rabbit rise again, if it’s the last thing I do.’

I stand on the wet grass, arms crossed, shivering in the sunshine that has broken through the rainclouds. It’s so hard to scramble my wits together, push Caroline’s words out of my head. I see the raw pink rabbit everywhere I look. But there is no time for self-pity or distraction. I must find Barney. That is all that matters for now.

I take a deep breath, wonder where to start. It occurs to me that Barney might have expected to find the rabbit here on the lawn. Old Harry’s got as far before, freezing at the possibility of freedom, shaking at the scent of fox. But Barney did not find Old Harry on the lawn. Could not. So Barney would have gone on. He would have kept looking. Where?

The iron gate at the edge of the woods is ajar. Not much. About the width of a boy. Or did Peggy and I leave it swinging? Quite possibly.

Edgy now, I follow the narrow, twisting path through the trees, quick but silent on my rubber-soled plimsolls, eyes and ears alert for my brothers. The den by the tree swing first, I decide, then upstream to the tree house where, more than likely, at least Toby is hiding.

A few minutes later, I stop. After first searching the ground floor of the house, Barney would go through a back door. The kitchen garden. The vegetable patch. The outbuildings. Why did Peggy and I not think of those places? I will turn back.

But I do not turn back. Because my eye catches on something round and white on the path: a tennis ball, its yellow seam bright against the bark flakes. The tennis ball Barney was kicking in the drawing room earlier?

My heart starts to bang against the buttons of my dress. The tree we found Old Harry hanging from is only a short walk from here. Presuming Barney did find it, where would he run in his blind horror? Where on earth would he go, if not home?

Anyone for the beach?
The sound of someone blowing into a glass bottle. A rustle of leaves.
Anyone for the beach?

It feels like I’m flying then, feet barely touching the ground. And I get to the coast quicker than I ever have before, stitch stabbing my side. But, crushingly, Barney is not on the beach. There is not much beach left, the tide coming in fast. I scrabble back up the rocks and along the stony coast path, calling his name. I check beneath the gorse, part the long grass, the cow parsley and meadowsweet, shout for him from the top of the stiles, weave through the cattle to the field’s hedges. And he is nowhere, absolutely nowhere at all.

How long have I got? The sky is pinking but bright. There is still time. The ledge. Yes, I’ll go to the ledge. Nowhere offers a better view of the cliff tops opposite, or the coast path. If Barney or Toby is close, I’ll spot him easily enough.

But on the cliff – where that tussock of tough, spiky grass pushes up from a crack in the rock – I hesitate. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a sense of foreboding. Maybe it’s because Toby is not with me. I have to force myself to dangle my feet off the edge this time. Not look down. Don’t look down and you won’t fall, Toby always says. Falling is all in the mind.

I don’t fall.

I press myself to the cliff face, shade my eyes and scan the green cliff tops. No one. Might Barney have gone back to the house by now? I imagine us running in different directions, paths crossing a few seconds too late, just missing each other. So I sit, breath slowly easing, and start to lose myself in the big pink sky, plans of escape. After all, what loyalties tie me here now?

… a huge black bird diving over the cliff into my thoughts, so close its talons might catch in my hair. I instinctively duck in its wing draught, nose meeting the cool skin of my knees. And when I look up my eyes are no longer on the sky but flotsam bobbing on the high tide swell below. No, not flotsam. Something more alive. A dolphin? Or those jellyfish that have been washing up in the cove all week, like a lost cargo of grey glass bowls? Maybe. I lean forward, dipping my face over the edge to get a better view, hair blowing wildly, heart beating faster, sensing something terrible beneath the shimmering surface, not seeing it.

A moment passes. Another.

Then a dark shape rises, breaks the surface. What? An air-filled T-shirt. Hair, black-red curls, seaweed-spread …

Clumsy with panic, I scrabble off the ledge, kicking at the cliff face, unable to find my familiar foot holes, skid down rocks, desperate to get to the bottom, wade into the
sea and save Toby. But when I drop to the sand he is already out of the water, dripping over a small crumpled figure, on the last bit of beach left by the hungry tide. I blink and blink but it is still Barney and Toby is kissing him, blowing air into his mouth. Water is dribbling out of the corner of Barney’s lips. Toby looks at me and starts to sob, sorry sorry sorry, something about the rabbit being for Lucian to find and he didn’t know what he was doing until after he did it and he saw the knife was covered in blood and the fur on the ground …
Breathe, Barney, breathe!
He is pushing so hard on Barney’s chest – pumping, pumping, pumping, making his little body bounce on the sand – that I cannot bear to look, so I just hold his limp wet hand as the sea pulls at our ankles, the patch of sand at the foot of the cliff getting smaller and smaller until we are against the rock face holding Barney out of the water, our hands on his ankles, beneath his armpits, his head lolling back, and suddenly he coughs, spitting water, and he is alive! ‘Come, on, Barns!’ Toby shouts, but the next moment the cough stops and his body sags in our arms, and everything that ever happened to us draws to that black point, to the disappearing sliver of sand, until the water rushes in and that, too, washes away.

I watch them leave Black Rabbit Hall in disbelief, hands spread on the window. Why is no one looking up? Don’t they know I’m here? I wave madly, knock on the glass. But Toby’s face is buried in his hands as he staggers into Fat Tel’s taxi, a boy blinded by grief and guilt, the fight all gone. The putter of the engine soon drowns me out, whisking my poor brother away. A strict boarding school in the north of Scotland, Peggy says, where a frozen winter’s night falls shortly after noon. A second taxi, London-bound, shoots off a few moments later, Annie, Kitty and Boris huddled in the back. Daddy’s Rolls is nowhere to be seen. Has he left too? Was the silent kiss on my forehead late last night my goodbye?

And where is my dear little brother? Where
is
he? I refuse to believe he is caught forever in those lost minutes, the jamming cogs of a tall-case clock. I refuse to be the big sister who didn’t search for his rabbit because she thought it trivial. I cannot be her. And he cannot be dead. For how is it possible to show your sister a beetle on your finger and a few hours later simply not exist at all? I cannot grasp it.

Footsteps. I leap off the bed. Peggy. Let it be Peggy. But as the steps get closer I make out the hard peck of heels. It is not Peggy.

The key twists in the lock. Caroline doesn’t look at me,
slides a tray of food – soup, bread, water – across the desk near the door, banging it up against the plate of uneaten toast. I am still in my nightie, but she is immaculately turned out, perfectly made up. I picture her hand dipping a powdery puff into a mirrored glass pot, dragging her chalky-pink lipstick across her mouth, then reaching for the dirty bunch of keys that she is gripping tight in her fist.

‘Eat something.’ She nods at the tray.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You need to keep your strength up.’

‘I need to be with Kitty. Kitty needs me more than ever.’ My voice is a whisper, croaked from crying. ‘Please let me go with the others.’

She doesn’t waver for a moment. ‘Impossible.’

‘What good am I locked away up here? I cannot bear it.’

‘You should have thought of that before you screwed your brother.’

I don’t flinch. I don’t break her gaze. She’s lying, I’m even more sure of it. Toby warned me what she was capable of. I didn’t believe him then. I do now. He warned me, too, that a bad thing was going to happen. It wasn’t a meteorite. But it has crashed into us just the same.

‘And do stop banging on the door like a hooligan. No one can hear you.’

‘Peggy will hear me,’ I say weakly.

‘Peggy knows what has to be done, Amber.’ Caroline turns, reaches for the doorknob, draped silk sleeve swinging off her arm.

‘I demand to see Daddy.’ Not taking my eyes off that doorknob, I wonder how long it will take me to reach it, if I can grapple her away.

‘Your father is in a terrible state this morning. Now put him out of your mind. He won’t be visiting you for a while. No one will.’ Her voice hushes without softness, and her pale eyes seem almost to glow, winter light in cracks of ice. ‘Least of all Lucian.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Oxford. Getting on with his life.’

I ache for him, the pain physical. ‘Have you told him?’ I swallow. ‘Does … does he know?’

‘Of course not, Amber. This is our little secret. You, me, Peggy, Hugo. No one else must be troubled, not if we want to keep our reputations intact.’

It takes every ounce of strength not to cry. To stand firm as that small, claustrophobic room contracts, squeezing the air from my chest. ‘I refuse to be locked away like a criminal. I will escape.’

‘Amber,’ she warns. ‘I don’t want to have to break your spirit.’

‘You could never do that.’

The keys clink on the ring. ‘Don’t try me.’

‘I hate you. I hate you so much.’

She snorts. ‘I dare say you’ll grow to hate yourself more.’

I think of Momma, who would always tell us how precious we were, whatever we did, whatever mistakes we made. Then I just think of Momma. Try to will her into the room. It doesn’t work. Tears flood my eyes. I try to blink them back but they keep coming.

‘Listen, Amber.’ Her voice softens a little. ‘You are lucky, very lucky, to be kept at home, that your father is such a sentimental man. There are places that girls like you get sent away to and, believe me, they are rather worse than
this.’ She opens the door a little. The landing light twinkles through the gap. I count the paces. Four? Five? ‘And it is not forever.’

She reaches to pick the toast plate off the desk. I edge forward, bare feet soundless on the floor. Her eyes flick up, wondering if I have moved. Grandmother’s Footsteps. Not taking her gaze off me now, she grabs the plate quickly, barring the exit with her other arm.

I fly towards that door with everything I have left. It unfolds in slow motion. The shocked hole of her mouth. The smash of the plate. The toast and china scattering across the floor. Caroline only just managing to get out, slamming the door behind her. I rattle the knob fiercely. But she is already twisting the key in the lock. And I hear her breath, loud and relieved. Heels tripping down the stairs. I thump the door, calling Barney’s name over and over and over.

I don’t know how long I thump and shout but when I stop my hands and throat are sore. The room is kaleidoscope-shattered by tears. But it suddenly feels like Momma is there too, tugging on the sleeve of my nightie, pulling me to a precious place I thought I’d lost – ripped away like the soft fur from the rabbit – and a chilly, sunny spring day, a beach that is still benign, a sandcastle that has taken me and Toby hours and hours to build. The tide is playing at our ankles, bubbling around the bucket battlements, teasing them away. Our shorts are sodden, scratchy with sand. We’re hungry, thirsty, blue-toed. Momma is smiling, beckoning us to the shore for ham sandwiches. We ignore her, intent only on proving that this time – unlike all the other countless times – we can beat the tide
and our castle will hold. Toby digs frantically with his left hand, me with my right. Sand arcs through the air. We keep rebuilding, buttressing. One tower dissolves. Then another. And it’s all starting to go and Barney and Kitty are clapping and giggling on the beach and we are clinging together on the mound, wobbling, teetering, until a furious white wall of foam rushes in, flattening the sand, tumbling us into the freezing froth, stinging salt surging up our noses.

The next morning, we walk across the cliffs to the beach and start to dig another one, the same but bigger.