Black Rabbit Hall (7 page)

There is a squeak and she immediately knows it’s the wicker chair in the conservatory, where he sits every morning, shaking out his newspaper, gazing at the empty seat next to him where her mother used to sit, the cushions indelibly squashed into the double dip of her neat bottom. ‘That’s better. Tight hips, according to the doctor. New doctor. Looks about ten. Told him he didn’t need to talk down to me, I know my ischial spine from my sacroiliac joint.’

Lorna feels a wave of sympathy for the doctor. Her father has always unquestioningly accepted the bigger picture – namely, being a devoted husband to her exacting mother – reserving all his voracious curiosity for the world outside it. Despite having left school at fourteen, Doug
claims to be ‘self-educated up to mad-prof level’, having worked his way through the shelves of all the local libraries, gobbling up what her mum fondly called ‘a galaxy of utterly useless knowledge’. His passengers would always step out of his cab altered in some way – if only utterly exhausted – having sat through an explanation of a pigeon’s digestive system or the physics behind the traffic flow around Piccadilly Circus. For this reason, and a few others, Lorna and Jon are both nervous about the father-of-the-bride speech.

‘And you’ll never guess what the name of the house is, Dad.’

She hears him take a short sip of tea. He drinks it too hot – all cabbies rush their tea, he says, which, like a lot of things he says, may or may not be true.

‘Black Rabbit Hall.’ She pauses, hopes for a start of recognition.

‘Rabbits can run up to fifty miles an hour, did you know that? Zigzagging to confuse predators. Not as dim as they look.’

‘Dad, does the name ring any bells?’

‘Nope.’

‘I’m almost certain Mum brought me here. It feels so familiar.’

‘Possible. Possible. I wouldn’t know. Never got along with those stuffy old houses myself. That was your mother’s thing, heritage and all that. She preferred your company to mine anyway – said I slowed her down and asked embarrassing irrelevant questions.’

‘How come Louise got out of it?’

‘Too little, Sheila said. The odd times she did take her,
Louise would start whining for ice-cream, moaning that she was bored and whatnot.’ He clears his throat. ‘Your mum said you got more out of it.’

Did she? It certainly hadn’t felt like it at the time. But here she is, all these years later, poking around a big old house, quite bewitched. ‘I wonder if there are any pictures. I’d love to see them.’

‘Why don’t you pop over, have a rifle through the boxes in the attic? There’s so much stuff up there.’

The Dunaways’ black boxes, Lorna likes to think, recording a family rather than an air flight, everything from her mother’s improbable years as a platinum Teddy girl in the early sixties, the subsequent buttoning down into marriage, a henna perm and prim, easy-iron dresses, the late, longed-for motherhood. A modest life collected and collated by someone who is now just a surprisingly hefty urn of grainy ashes on a shelf in the lounge.

Lorna tries not to look at it. She’d much rather remember Mum on holiday – she was one of those people who only ever seemed truly happy, and truly themselves, on holiday – bundled up in her woolly coat, sharing delicious hot vinegary chips on a windy beach, smiling at Lorna when their salty, greasy fingers briefly touched, the crashing of the waves removing any need to talk, relaxing with one another in a way they somehow never managed on the settee at home.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t really been able to face going through those boxes yet,’ Doug says, in a hushed voice. ‘I’m not sure I ever will, to be honest.’

‘I’ll do it, don’t worry.’ Poor Dad. She’s by the cabinets
again, her eye sucked towards the horse’s skull, the unsettling absence at its centre.

‘Lorna.’ The teary choke in her father’s voice takes her aback, reminding her of how raw his loss still is. ‘I’m sorry that I can’t answer all your questions about the past, not like your mum could …’

Doug’s words tail into a long, loaded silence that wraps around Lorna, like a scarf, tighter and tighter so that her throat locks too. Outside, a chatter of starlings lifts off the lawn. Memories of missed opportunities fly by just as fast. Oh, how Lorna wishes she’d made more effort to talk properly to her mother over the years. They’d never really connected – not in the easy, comfortable way she did with Dad – and she wonders if they avoided situations that made it obvious. They were always far better at
doing
things together – a Saturday cinema matinee, a ballet at Christmas, baking a Victoria sponge, taking turns to stir the bowl, Radio 2 blaring – than chatting intimately. And bringing up certain subjects about the past – the No Gos, Lorna and Louise secretly called them – had always felt so charged, horribly awkward, her mother usually jumping up to dust a skirting board or wipe down a clean surface, dispersing questions with mushroom clouds of Pledge. Then in May the conversation had ended for good.

The unfairness of it still taunts her. It turned out the council were due to mend the broken paving outside the Co-op the following day. Mum shouldn’t have tripped, surrounded by her marked-down fruit and vegetables – she never tripped – or banged her head in a freakishly bad place to bang it. She wasn’t meant to die at sixty-five:
perfectly healthy, she was part of that lithe post-war generation brought up on sluggy allotment cabbage and modest portions of home-cooked food, who walked to the shops rather than drove. Most unfair of all, Lorna thinks, pressing her nails into the palm of her clenched hand, is that when her life support was switched off it stole away any loving deathbed reckoning, made so much of her own past irretrievable. She blinks back a rush of tears.

‘Oh, you’re here!’

Lorna turns to see Dill standing in the doorway, dog in her arms, licking her mouth.

‘Ready to see the bridal suite?’

‘Dad.’ She smiles at Dill, tries to collect herself. ‘I’ve got to go.’

She hears a telling rustle and a sniff as he rearranges his feelings too. ‘Well, try not to get lost in that big house alone, okay?’

‘Don’t be a doughnut. Love you.’

But when Lorna starts ascending the steep shaft of the tower’s stairwell – dark, tightly enclosed, its exits unclear – she realizes that her father might be on to something. It really would be quite easy to get lost in Black Rabbit Hall. To think you were going in one direction but were heading entirely in another.

Amber

Boris leaps out of the undergrowth. He noses Momma’s face and whines. Daddy pushes him off and wraps Momma in his coat to keep her warm. ‘Find Barney,’ he shouts over his shoulder and charges out of the woods, Boris following, Momma in his arms, head lolling at a strange angle.

I don’t know how long I stand there numbly, heart hammering, the image of Momma’s head – the swinging red hair, the angle of her neck – everywhere I look, like the imprint of a light-bulb after it’s been switched off. What do I do? What do I do now?

Then I remember. Find Barney, Daddy said. Find Barney.

The storm clouds are parting. A bone-white moon jumps from behind one tree to another. Full moon. High tides. The lower part of the creek often bursts its banks in an early-evening high tide, especially after a storm. The water will wash through the wood beside the den. I haven’t got long.

I start running, praying over and over that it’s going to be all right. Safe, happy place. Safe, happy place. Black Rabbit Hall is our safe, happy place.

Barney is not in the den, or by the soggy char of the
bonfire. My feet start to squish beneath me. The water is coming.

‘Barney!’ I shout. ‘Barney, it’s me! Are you there? Barney, don’t be an idiot! Where are you?’

I wait, listening, heart pounding in my ears. There is movement in the undergrowth. Two yellow eyes. A hare? A fox?

I scramble deeper into the woods, calling his name, and it occurs to me he could be running away from me deliberately, hiding, playing a game – he loves to be chased – unaware of what has happened to Momma. ‘Barney!’ I shout louder, more desperate. Nothing. I stop, overcome by hopelessness. Unable to be brave any longer, I start to cry, the sobs rising out of me in blocked-drain snorts. And that’s when Boris appears, tail wagging. Never have I been so pleased to see him. I sink my face into his smelly fur, gripping the fat around his haunches. ‘Barney. Help me find Barney. Please.’

Boris cocks his head slightly to one side, as if he understands, hesitates for a moment, then dashes off into the woods. I follow him until he brakes beneath a giant beech, his paws sending a mash of wet leaves flying.

And there he is. Curled high in a tree. Owl eyes. I hold out my arms for him. He doesn’t move. I keep tugging on his foot – cold and bare – and tell him everything’s fine, it’s safe to let go, and very slowly he starts to skim down the trunk. He wraps his arms tightly around my neck and, trembling, buries his face in my shoulder. ‘What happened, Barney?’

He says nothing, his body heaving soundlessly.

‘What happened to Momma?’ I ask more gently. ‘Did you see?’

He starts to sob then. I take off my coat. He is passive – Barney is never passive – and lets me butler him into it. The sleeves dangle to the ground. But he won’t walk. ‘Piggyback,’ I say, kneeling down on the springy wet floor.

I run with him on my back all the way to the house. Fear makes me strong.

‘Momma is dead,’ says Toby, deadpan, leaning against Big Bertie in the hall, hands dug deep into his pockets, face scallop-white, staring up at the portrait of Momma. The clock ticks. The moon dial’s gold glows in the stormy light. It ticks another ten times. Then Toby repeats, ‘Momma is dead, Amber.’

Clearly Toby’s got this wrong. I shake my head, set Barney on the floor, peel his fingers off my neck. ‘Let go, Barney, will you? Find Peggy. She’ll warm you up.’

‘Excuse me. Raggedy Doll is late for tea!’ chimes Kitty, bustling past us, rattling her pram across the hall. ‘She’s properly starving for scones and bramble jelly!’

‘Is the doctor here?’ I whisper. Barney wraps a hand around my leg.

‘Too late,’ mutters Toby, blankly. Something has changed in his face. There’s a furious pulse in the hollow of his throat.

‘Raggedy Doll is most terribly busy today.’ Kitty sighs, pulling the doll out of the pram and frog-marching her up the first stair. ‘So much to do, so little time.’

The black and white floor tiles start to flicker and slide,
sweating the sharp smell of the vinegar that Annie uses to clean them. ‘Where’s Momma, then?’

‘In bed.’

I push past Kitty, leap up the stairs, two at a time. The staircase feels higher than ever, stretching as I climb. I’ll find Momma in bed. I’ll bring her tea. I’ll stroke her hair, like she does mine when I’m ill. I don’t believe she’s dead at all. And if I don’t believe it she won’t be.

I throw my shoulder against the door of the bedroom. And she is in bed, just as Toby says, tucked up like a sick child in a white sheet, her hair brushed over her shoulder. The curtains are shut, the lights low, the flowers carved into the bed’s thick dark posts picked out by the flickering candlelight. Momma’s clasped hands hold a posy too, the pale yellow daffodils that were in the blue teardrop vase on her bedside table this morning. I move closer, refusing to acknowledge the way her head is caved in above the ear, the strange dip where her hair has mashed with blood and fragments of bone.

‘Momma.’ Her hand is not freezing but it’s not warm either, like milk left out. The daffodils fall across her chest. She does not twitch them off. ‘Momma, please. Wake up, please.’

And that’s when I hear the groans coming from the other side of the bed. I peer over, still holding Momma’s hand in mine, shocked to see Daddy hunched, crouched on the floor, his face sunk into the sheet that falls off Momma. ‘Daddy?’ My voice comes out as high as Kitty’s. I want him to reach for me and tell me it’s going to be fine, that Momma will heal and mend, fill with warmth and blood again, thaw back to life, tuck the daffodils back into the vase. ‘Daddy, it’s me.’

He does not look up. The groans become quieter, more intense.

‘Amber,’ Toby whispers, suddenly behind me. ‘Come away.’

I let him pull me towards him. Toby’s skin smells of me and distinctly of itself, like the top of a knee. He is hot to touch. A boy on fire. I can feel his heart through the fabric of his rugby shirt. He holds me tight, tighter, so that we are pressed into one, fitting together perfectly again, two babies curled in the soft warm blackness of Momma’s womb. ‘We still have each other. I have you.’

‘Amber, Toby …’ Peggy is standing at the door, hand over her mouth. ‘What are you doing? Come out of there, please.’

‘Momma’s dead,’ I say, not sure Peggy has cottoned on.

Toby tightens his grip. ‘She’s dead, Peggy.’

‘And your father needs to be with her in peace, my love.’ She walks over to us, peels us off each other, glancing down anxiously at Daddy. ‘Amber, Toby, please. Let go of each other. Come downstairs.’

‘I want to stay with Momma,’ I plead.

‘You can’t, duck. Not right now.’

It’s then that Daddy looks up, removes his hands from his head. His face is swollen and monstrous with grief, his eyes red bulbs. He does not look like Daddy.

‘Is there anything I can get you, Mr Alton?’ She squats beside him, resting her roundness on her tiny feet. ‘Mr Alton?’

He looks at Peggy as if he can’t comprehend her.

‘A stiff glass of …’

‘
GO
!
’ he roars, making us leap from our skins. ‘
GO
!
’

Balancing on the fender, we sit around the drawing-room fire, into which Momma tossed a fistful of kitchen salt yesterday to make the flames dance blue for Kitty. There are still a few grains on the hearth.

Despite the heat, our outstretched hands, we’re not getting warmer. Toby and I sit next to each other, quivering, skinless, wedged together. Kitty is chatting nonsense to Raggedy Doll. Barney stares blankly into the flames, his lips still blue, wearing the stripy pyjamas that Aunt Bay sends over from Bloomingdales every Christmas. He has not spoken since we returned to the house. We have no idea what he saw, if he saw anything at all.

Boris lumbers in, sinks down beneath the globe, head on his paws, watching us. The globe is tilting Momma’s America towards us. I can see Seattle, a bit of Idaho, Oregon. Places she has promised to take me.

I cannot touch my hot chocolate. To drink hot chocolate while Momma lies still upstairs is impossible. After a few moments, Toby sips his. There is something brave about this, the attempt to be normal. I try to smile at him but my face feels frozen and I can’t make my mouth turn up.

Click, click, click
, go Peggy’s knitting needles. She sits very upright in the pink velvet chair near the window, fingers trying to make this evening like any other, long red scarf pooling around her feet.

Kitty breaks the clicks. ‘My hair needs brushing.’ She shakes it with her fingers, sending sand flying. ‘Momma doesn’t like sand in Kitty’s hair. Kitty wants Momma to brush the sand out. Where is she? Where is Momma?’

Peggy’s knitting needles still. She puts them down on her lap. ‘Momma’s in Heaven now, Kitty.’

‘She’s not,’ says Kitty, firmly, snuggling Raggedy Doll into the cradle of her crossed legs. ‘She’s in bed, Peggy. And she needs to get up and plait Kittycat’s hair.’

Toby and I exchange glances. There are shadows dark as river mud beneath his eyes.

‘I’ll plait your hair, Kits,’ I say, reaching out to her. ‘Come here.’

Kitty shakes her head. ‘Want Momma to do it.’

Toby drains his chocolate, glancing at me down the shaft of the mug, checking I haven’t gone anywhere since the last time he looked a second ago. Gravelly bits of cocoa leave a clown’s smile on his upper lip. He clinks the mug down hard on the hearth. We all flinch, watch the brown milk dribbling down the white enamel rim. Waiting.

Click, click, click.

Any minute now normal has to restart. Momma’s footstep on the stairs. A cough. Rush out to the hall and there she will be, hair curled over one shoulder, hand on the banister, ready for dinner in a green dress (‘A redhead has little choice’), her white rabbit-fur tippet over her shoulders, diamanté clasp winking. And after Momma, not long after, will come Daddy, pinging Barney’s curls, punching Toby playfully on the shoulder, asking where Momma is, always looking for Momma, his eyes hungry when he first sees her, making me and Toby look away. We’ll hear the chink of glasses. Smell pine cones on their fire. Laughter.

Bang!
A gunshot shakes the night.

‘Bang.’ Kitty smiles, raises Raggedy Doll to eye level. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’

Peggy throws her knitting to the floor, rushes to the window. The red skein of wool catches on her heel, unspooling behind her. ‘Christ almighty.’