Golden Hour (5 page)

So he sits and waits, breathing softly, his hands clasped round his knees. He likes to try to guess which hole the first rabbit will come out of. From where he sits he can see two holes clearly, and another three through a fringe of grass and bramble. He thinks a lot about what it must be like underground, where the rabbit holes go. He imagines each hole is like a door, and each door leads to a passage, and each passage leads to the same big burrow with a round curving ceiling, which is like the living room. Running off the main burrow he imagines lots of smaller burrows, which are the bedrooms. The most rabbits he's counted outside this warren at once is nine, but there's probably lots more.

A flicker of movement. A whiskery rabbit nose peeps out of a hole, sniffing for danger. Cas sits motionless. Watching the first rabbit come out is the best bit. You can tell how timid they are, how ready to run at the slightest sign of danger. That makes the slow creeping out all the more exciting.

The rabbit is fully out now, crouched on the edge of the hole, on the little slope of bare earth that's always littered with droppings. Strange that they should do their poos on their doorstep. You'd think they'd want to go off into the nettles and make their mess in private. The rabbit crouches there, trembling, nose twitching, ears scanning from side to side. The soft sleek gray fur on its flanks moves in and out as it breathes. Then up it rises onto its haunches, front paws folded before its chest. Now it's a sentry rabbit, doing guard duty. The bulbous all
seeing eyes take in Cas, hunkered down on the edge of the field of corn, but because he doesn't move, he's invisible.

A few moments go by, then the rabbit drops down again, and starts to graze. Two more rabbits come out of the holes, moving more confidently than the first. How do they know it's safe to come out? The sentry rabbit sent no signal that Cas heard or saw. But now there are four rabbits, all with their heads down, nibbling away at the grass. The evening sunshine falls on them as they graze, making their coats gleam.

One of them hears a sound, and starts up into the alert position. The other three freeze. A soft whirr of wings high above: a sparrow-hawk circling overhead. The sentry rabbit doesn't look up, but his sticky-out eyes can see the hawk even so. A flash of white scut, and he's disappeared down the rabbit hole. The other three go within the same instant. The hawk flies on, no more than a speck against the great blue sky.

Cas hears the sound of a car driving down the lane half a mile away. He hears an airplane's low whine, heading south toward France. He hears the breeze clicking the stiff leaves of the corn.

Then a voice calling. Too far away to pick up words, but he knows both the sound and its meaning. His mother is calling him home for supper.

He jumps up, suddenly aware how hungry he is, and runs home through the rattling corn.

Sunshine pours through the open window onto the kitchen table. A plate of lasagne waits for him, and a glass of apple juice. His mother is at the sink, cleaning the pans used for cooking.

“You can eat in the garden if you want,” she says, not turning round.

“It's okay.”

Cas likes to eat at the table. It's the table they had in the
kitchen of their old house, so it's familiar but it's also strange. You sit at the same table, there's a window in front of you like before, but what you see out of the window is completely different.

“Been watching the rabbits?”

“Yes.”

“You and your rabbits.”

Actually it was one of the reasons they moved house, or that's the family story. Cas's famous passion for wildlife. “Cas will love it,” they told each other, his mum and dad. “There'll be badgers and woodpeckers and squirrels and rabbits.” He hasn't seen any badgers or woodpeckers, but he has seen the rest. The other reason for the move is so that Mum and Dad can have space to do their work. Dad is going to have a big new study in one of the empty buildings across the yard. Then Mum and Dad will each have their own places to go and they won't get cross with each other so much.

His dad comes into the kitchen.

“Is it too early for a drink?”

“Help yourself,” says his mum.

His dad gets a beer out of the fridge and drinks from the bottle, which Cas knows his mum doesn't like.

“I'm worried about Bridget,” says Cas's mum. Bridget is Granny's carer. “She says Mum's getting very difficult.”

“She's always been very difficult,” says his dad.

Cas hears everything. He knows how his mum finds Granny difficult, and how she feels bad about that, and how she thinks she should be a better daughter. He knows other things too. He knows they're worried about money because of buying the new house. He know his mum worries she might lose her job at the
Telegraph
and has to work extra hard to keep it. He knows his dad feels angry because his film story about the sheepdog has
been changed. The people in the film are assholes, he says. They don't care what he wants, they make him do what they want, and so he's sad and angry.

All these things Cas knows because he sits quietly in their midst and they forget he's there, just as the rabbits do. And at night as he lies in bed waiting to go to sleep—it takes longer to go to sleep in his new bedroom—he tries to think of ways to make them be happy again. He doesn't like it when Dad does something that makes Mum snap at him, especially when he can see that Dad only does it because he's feeling sad about his film.

This sunny summer evening he eats his supper and listens as they talk past him.

“I should go over and see her,” says his mum. “I don't go and see her nearly enough.”

“You could go every day and it wouldn't be enough,” says his dad. “She's a bottomless pit of need.”

“Even so. I'm the only family she's got.” She's finished her washing up at the sink but she's still standing there, head drooping. “It makes me tired just thinking about it.”

“Why don't you have a drink?”

“Because I don't want to turn into an alcoholic.”

That's a criticism of Dad. Mum thinks he drinks too much.

“Well, just feeling guilty's no use to anyone.”

That's a criticism of Mum. But what Mum wants is for him to give her a cuddle and say he understands. She doesn't want to be told what to do. She knows what she's going to do. But now she's going to get cross with him.

“I don't ask you to deal with her. It's not your problem.”

“Of course it's my problem. You think I like seeing you beating yourself up day after day? Liz, she's got a carer. She's fine. You have to let go.”

“Let go? You think I'm doing this for me?”

That's her angry voice. Now Dad's going to get cross back.

“All I know is every time you go over to your mother you come back upset and angry, but when I try to tell you that's not helping either her or you, you tell me you've got no choice. But you do have a choice. If it's a destructive relationship, then maybe you should cut it out.”

“Cut it out? She's my mother.”

“Yes, I know. That's the last word. That's the trump card. Mothers have to be loved by their children. It's a law of nature.”

Cas shifts slightly on his chair, making the chair legs scrape on the floor to remind them of his presence.

“Well, anyway,” says his mum, “I just don't know what I'll do if Bridget leaves.”

Cas feels his dad crossing the room behind him, coming close.

He's going to touch me now. This is what he does sometimes to calm himself down. Puts an arm round me, ruffles my hair.

“How's the rabbits, Cas?”

His hand stroking Cas's back.

“Okay,” says Cas.

“Heard them say anything yet?”

This is a question Dad and he puzzle over from time to time, how the rabbits talk to each other. They must squeak or something. But you never hear it.

“Not yet.”

“I learned something the other day about rabbits.” He goes on stroking Cas's back as he speaks. “You know how sometimes they hop about as if they're mad? It's got a name. It's called a binky. Or maybe it's a verb. The rabbits are binking.”

“Binking?” Cas laughs at that.

“It means the rabbit's happy.”

“Well, it would,” says Cas.

After supper he's allowed to watch TV. Flipping channels he finds
Grease
halfway through, and settles down to enjoy it, even though he's seen it before. Actually he likes films better if he's seen them before. His mum comes in to make sure he's all right and she stands there watching it for a bit with him, a smile on her face.

“I never dared admit it,” she says, “but all I ever wanted to be was Olivia Newton-John.”

“Watch it with me,” says Cas.

“Too much work.”

“Mum,” says Cas, “next time you go to see Granny, I could come too.”

“That's a lovely idea, darling. I'm sure she'd love that.”

Cas has two lovely ideas. One is that he can make Granny be happy about her carer, Bridget, and that will make Mum happy. The other is that he can make Dad be happy about his sheepdog film. Then when both Mum and Dad are happy, he'll be happy too.

Oh, those tractors! They drive too fast down these narrow roads, but complain to the farmer and you might as well be talking to yourself.
She
thinks I don't notice when she changes my pills, but I do. Why would anyone do that? She's not a doctor, she's got no right, but try telling her that! Elizabeth won't hear a word against her, but she doesn't see what I see.

Mrs. Dickinson sits on a green plastic garden chair, her bent upper body tilting a little to one side. The sun has just set, but she can still make out the busy forms of the guinea pigs moving about in their run. She watches the guinea pigs a lot these days. They eat grass, they scuttle in and out of their house, nothing of any great interest, but how else is she to pass the time? She is the prisoner of her aging body. She can still walk with the help of a stick, but not far. Her hands can no longer undo buttons, or use a pen. She is permanently tired. Television bewilders her, the pictures jump about so much, and she can't hear what they're saying. Reading is now beyond her. Somehow she loses track of what she's read after just a few lines. It's become hard to hold a thought in her head for more than a few seconds. Not that her head is empty. Quite the opposite. As she sits in the garden for hour after hour, watching the pigeons, or the guinea pigs, or just the leaves on the trees shimmering in
the breeze, her mental world is tormented by nagging voices, as if she is the host to a discontented mob.

Where is
she
now? She'll be shuffling about in the kitchen, moving everything round so I won't know where anything is. She knows I don't like it, which is why she does it. There should be two guinea pigs, where's the other one gone? She's killed it, she's fed it poison, it's the sort of thing she'd do. Ah, there it is. Am I supposed to sit out here in the garden till I die? She'd like that, she wants me to die, then she can have my house. That's her plan, and has been all along. Well, I'm not dead yet.

Bridget Walsh, Mrs. Dickinson's carer, comes out of the house into the twilit garden.

“Better be getting in, Mrs. D,” she says in her flat tones. “Getting quite nippy out here.”

“I won't,” says Mrs. Dickinson. “You can go away.”

“No, I can't,” says Bridget. “I have to see you safe in bed.”

“I'm not going to bed,” says Mrs. Dickinson.

She's tired and she longs to be in bed, but stronger than her need for sleep is her will to resist her carer.

“I'll give you a few more minutes, then,” says Bridget.

She climbs over the little fence into the guinea pigs' run and starts shooing them into their hutch.

“Don't do that!” says Mrs. Dickinson.

“You know they have to be shut up,” says Bridget, chasing the guinea pigs inside and closing the hutch door.

“I said don't—I said don't—”

Mrs. Dickinson is overwhelmed with rage and frustration. She wants to rise up out of her chair and strike Bridget's pale puffy face, but she lacks the strength. How dare she disobey an order! Who does she think she is?

My jailer, that's who she is. My prison guard. Oh, she knows just what she's doing. Those piggy eyes don't fool me. She
thinks she can break my spirit. She thinks she can turn me into a puppet who does her bidding. She's got another think coming. I'm not dead yet.

“I'll go and make a hot-water bottle for your bed,” says Bridget. “Then I'll come back out and help you inside.”

“Go away,” says Mrs. Dickinson.

Bridget goes into the house.

It's getting hard to see in the garden now, and the air is cold. Mrs. Dickinson longs to be in bed with her hot-water bottle, but she refuses to give in to her jailer. This is a battle of wills that she knows she can't afford to lose. Once she starts doing what Bridget tells her to do it'll all be over.

Shivering now, she looks at the shapes of the chestnut trees against the darkening sky. There are two, standing like sentinels at the bottom of her garden. Every year they grow taller and reach out further. The rest of the garden—well, what can you say? A boy comes once a week for what he pretends is three hours, Elizabeth pays him for three hours, but he does nothing. So naturally the garden is dying, uncared for, reduced to bald lawn. All her plants, so lovingly chosen and tended over the years, all gone. The path to the back gate choked with weeds. No one goes that way any more. And to think that for years she and Perry came and went through that gate twice a day.

Oh, Perry. It's all over now. I'll be coming to join you soon.

A wave of misery sweeps over her.

What am I supposed to do?

This is the question that torments her waking hours. Old age has taken away her ability to do things, but not her will. Always such a busy person, such an effective person, always more to do than there was time to do it. Well, when you live on your own for as long as I have you learn to do things for yourself. Many's
the time I've got out a screwdriver and tightened a loose door hinge, and if I haven't paid all the bills and always on time I don't know who has. So what right does she have to treat me like a baby? I go to bed when I choose to go to bed, not when some bossy little woman tells me.