When God Was a Rabbit (13 page)

‘But this is so expensive, Ginger,’ I gasped.

‘Best you enjoy it now, rather than when I’m dead,’ she said.

‘Oh, I will, it’s so beautiful, thank you.’

‘That’s all right then,’ she said, and I felt her face flush with warmth as I kissed her and told her she was one of my most favourite people in the whole world. Because she was.

It was rare for Nancy not to be with us at Christmas, but we forgave her because she was skiing in Gstaad, allowing her heart to be mended by mountain air and a woman called Juliette. After lunch we called her and thanked her for our presents. She sounded ever so happy (drunk) on the phone, and Dad whispered to us across the table that Mum was probably a bit jealous.

‘So what has
she
got that I haven’t?’ we heard our mother say to her down the phone.

‘A girlfriend,’ Nancy apparently replied.

I left them all in the dining room to their brandies and After Eights and stories of Christmases past, and I crept into the hallway, the flagstones cold and unforgiving beneath my bare feet. This was the moment I’d been waiting for, the quiet moment when Jenny Penny would tell me all about her day.

Every year I called her at the same time, always after lunch because she never woke up early on Christmas Day – probably the only child in the world who didn’t – because she said she preferred to stay in bed and use the time to think.

‘To think about what?’ I said.

‘About the world. About life,’ she said.

‘About presents?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I know what I get every year. A craft set, bigger and better than the year before,’ (it never was) ‘and an item of knitwear that my mum starts making in July.’

She’d spent that first Christmas with us, that legendary first Christmas we’d talk about for years, when she’d arrived by train with my brother with a small bag that held only a change of jeans, a change of underwear, and a long-held yearning for a change of scenery. And he told us how she’d stood transfixed in front of the carriage window as it left Exeter and hugged the coastline – the closest she’d ever been to the sea – and the waves lapped against her forehead, against her beaming smile as her reflection never moved, never faltered, until that shimmering coast disappeared behind crags and trees.

When she arrived, she ran down the lawn with me and fell into the river, and her squeals of glee shamed our privileged hearts, for what should have been a birthright was, in a single second, a brace of unattainable riches. Even as she was pulled from those icy waters, her lips turning blue, her teeth chattering, her joy was contagious and we all knew immediately that this would be a time to remember.

The night before Christmas we guided her carefully into the darkened living room so she could turn on the tree lights, and when she did her body shook with the excitement of the overwhelmed. The lights were of every shape, size and colour, and in the darkness turned a make-believe world into one of incandescent reality. ‘Wishes come true in a room like this,’ she’d said.

Later that night, as we lay in bed, she told me what she’d wished for – that she might one day come and live with us – and in the darkness we listened out for the sound of sleigh bells, and even though we were probably too old to still believe, we heard them outside and I saw her smile, wide and uncynical, and I was grateful that I had a brother who’d wanted to stand outside in the cold and dark and shake a small church bell simply to make her feel good. But we all did everything that first Christmas to make her feel good.

The following morning, I woke her up early and we crept downstairs and saw the pillowcases bulging with gifts and the part-eaten carrot and mince pies and the half-drunk sherry and the soot scattered on the carpet leading from the hearth. I looked at her as she stood transfixed, as tears ran down her cheeks, as she said, ‘Father Christmas never visited me before. I don’t think he ever really knew where I lived.’

I picked up the phone. I knew her number off by heart now, it had the rhythm of a poem with all those fives and threes, and it rang briefly and clearly before she answered.

‘It’s me,’ I said, happy to hear my best friend’s voice. ‘Happy Christmas, Jenny Penny!’

‘Elly, I can’t talk for long,’ she whispered.

It was hard to hear what she was saying, so soft was her voice.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

‘It’s all gone wrong.’

‘What?’

‘We have to go,’ she said.

‘When?’ I said.

‘Now. Soon,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because we have to.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘We just have to,’ she said. ‘I can’t say anything else, I’m not allowed to. She won’t let me.’

‘But where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. Mum won’t tell me. She said it’s best that no one knows.’

‘Even me?’ I said.

‘I’ve got to go, she’s coming. I’ll let you know when I get there,’ she said. ‘Bye, Elly.’

The line went dead and the last of my words disappeared into an unforgiving silence.

I summoned my mother away from the television marathon that had become as traditional to our family as turkey and mince pies, and told her what had happened. She didn’t know anything for certain, she said. Just suspected.

‘We have to wait and see,’ she said. ‘When they get there they’ll let us know.’

‘Get where?’ I said.

‘To safety,’ she said.

Ginger stayed on with us after Christmas to perform at the Harbour Moon for New Year’s Eve. She was topping the bill with a Tony Bennett impersonator who she called T. B. and who she hated because he made her feel ill.

‘He doesn’t even look like Tony Bennett,’ she said when she got the news. ‘I look more like Tony Bennett than he does,’ and Arthur nodded in agreement. The money was good, though, and it was actually the party of the year for our village, which was a little bit like topping the bill at Vegas if you really used your imagination. The village became a playground for dressing up and people came from afar to show off their fancy-dress costumes, which had been planned months in advance. My father had started mine four months before and only he and I knew what it was going to be. All we said was that it was going to be bigger and better than the previous year’s attempt, which wasn’t going to be too difficult, seeing as I had been a thumb.

They were all in the living room, slouched around and unruly, and I could hear my brother goading Ginger and Arthur into another chorus of ‘Why Are We Waiting?’. My mother crept out into the hallway to make sure I was all right.

‘One more minute,’ my father said to her, as he shook out my costume.

The trouble was, my heart wasn’t in it any more. My worry for Jenny Penny had dulled all enthusiasm, and for a whole week I’d waited by the phone, waited for the news that never came. It was only because my father had made such an effort that I ultimately would too, and together we marched into the living room and waited for the lights to dim and the chatter to still.

I put on the shimmering grey dress with fin slits for hands and attached the long fish-tail train. I could have been a mermaid, or even one of the Three Degrees, at this stage and it was fun to keep everyone guessing. Then my father carried in a very large box and the room hushed. He opened the box and took out something shaped like a helmet, which was covered by a beach towel. He placed it over my head and through the eyeholes I could see the striped towelling pattern and what I could only make out was a piece of dry seaweed.

‘Da-nah!’ shouted my father, and he suddenly whipped the towel away. Everyone gasped. Through my eyeholes I saw hands quickly reach for mouths.

‘What is she exactly?’ asked Ginger, downing an early Scotch.

My father turned to me and said, ‘Tell them, Elly.’

‘I’m a MULLET!’ I shouted, and everyone went, ‘Ah yes, of course.’

‘Two gin and tonics and a water for the fish,’ said my brother for the fifth time that evening. He was dressed as Liza Minnelli, and looked really pretty until you saw that he hadn’t shaved, either his face or his legs. When we left the house both my mother and father had shed a tear as their beloved son walked out into the cold night air dressed as a daughter, unsure as to what he might return as. That, my father would later say, was one of the unexpected gifts of parenthood.

By the time we got our drinks Arthur had secured the best seats in front of the fire by cleverly feigning illness. My brother moved my seat a little further back from the hearth, reminding me that I was still flammable and that it would be really embarrassing if I caught fire. It was about this time, I think, that I spotted the Womble in the corner watching us. He had been following us earlier because I saw him in the Jolly Sailor, where he’d had an altercation with a dog (a real one). He was standing alone next to the clock and it said half-past eleven.

Arthur nudged my brother and said, ‘Womble, ten o’clock,’ and before I could say no it’s not, it’s half-past eleven, the Womble made his way over to us.

‘Hi,’ said my brother, ‘I’m Liza and this is Fish.’

I raised my fin and stifled a yawn behind my papier-mâché head, which was suddenly feeling very heavy.

‘And I’m Freddie Mercury,’ said Arthur, nervously securing his moustache.

‘I’m Orinoco,’ said Orinoco in a very deep voice; a voice that, had it really belonged to a Womble, would have frightened small children and would never have made them the popular creatures they became.

His name was Paul, I think, and he was from Manchester. When he took off his head, he had short brown hair – or maybe it was long; I can’t really remember – but all I knew was that the energy of our wonderful evening suddenly changed and he was the cause. I tried to stay awake, tried to hear their whispered banter, the jokes they steered away from me, but it was useless; I wasn’t part of them any more and my eyes started to close before the opening bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ gathered up the drunken, rolling voices. The worry about Jenny Penny, the glass of champagne, the subsequent sips of clandestine booze had ambushed my young mind and I couldn’t remember anything after that; not the journey home, or Arthur leading me through the front door into my mother’s arms. I didn’t remember Ginger tap dancing on the flagstones, or Arthur telling the rude story about Princess Margaret. All I did remember was my father kissing me good night and saying, ‘Have a wonderful year, Elly.’

I woke up four hours later, hungry and wide awake. The house still felt warm as I crept downstairs. I saw empty bottles and streamers strewn around the living room; Ginger’s shoes and her feather boa snuggled in a chair. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of water and went to the cupboard for a piece of Madeira cake. And as I put the glass onto the draining board, I looked through the window and saw the hazy shape of my brother running into the forest, followed at the tree line by a haggard shadow. It must have been my brother because he still had on his patent heels and his wig, and both caught the light from the moon. I stuffed the remainder of the cake into my mouth, put on my mother’s jumper and boots, and crept out into the cold, new January air.

I picked up a stick and ran as hard as I could to the edge of the forest. I stumbled twice until my eyes adjusted to the darkness, until I could again follow the sounds of breaking twigs up ahead. I wasn’t scared, felt emboldened by my imagined role as protector, and I raced ahead, dodging the low branches of naked shrubs. The sounds of giggling were to my left, beyond a cluster of heavy oaks and when I came to their wide trunks, I crouched down and carefully parted a clump of ailing ferns. And then promptly threw up.

I sat on my bed and looked over at the Womble perched on the dressing table. It had come with me from my other life, a present from Jenny Penny for my seventh birthday. She had given it to me at the end of my party, when the guests and the cake had all gone, and she’d said, ‘This is the best present you’ve ever been given. And I’ve given it to you.’

Now as I looked at it I no longer thought of her or the wrapping paper she made, or the poem attached to its scarf, entitled ‘Best Friends’; no, I now thought of my brother on his hands and knees blurred in the forest dark with the unmistakable shape of a children’s toy thrusting behind him; its deep Northern voice saying, ‘Happy New Year, Joe. Happy New Year, ugh, ugh, ugh.’

I got up and put the toy in an old plastic bag, which still smelt of onions, and placed it at the bottom of a cupboard with all my old shoes. The following week I would take it to a charity shop, where it would sit in the window between a battered copy of
Jaws
and a tarnished silver toast rack. It would sit there for weeks. Retribution of sorts.

I never told my brother what I saw that night, not until years later, anyway, when we were sitting by the jetty as adults with adult lives. And he wouldn’t remember that night, like so many others he wouldn’t remember, and when I told him he buried his head in his hands and laughed and simply said, ‘What’s a fucking Womble?’

And I never did hear from Jenny Penny to say she was safe. Never received the call or the letter to say where she was or why they’d left, or what she was doing now. I called her old number not long after she disappeared and a man had answered and shouted at me and I hung up, scared. Wondered what he might have done.

Then another time, about a year later, I sat quietly on my bed and thought about her, attempting to mend that telepathic bridge that had fallen in her wake, and as the room stilled and the sun shifted beyond the trees, numbers appeared behind my eyes, the order deliberate and significant, the numbers constantly repeating. It was her, I was sure. My hands shook as I picked up the phone. I dialled the numbers and waited for her voice. It never came. Instead I heard a woman ask, ‘Golden Lotus. What is your order, please?’ It was a Chinese takeaway restaurant in Liverpool; a place that would actually have tentative relevance years later.

I simply had to accept that she’d been swallowed by that New Year and I had to let her go. But every anniversary I heard her harried breath whispering, ‘I’ll let you know when I get there. Bye, Elly. I’ll let you know.’

I missed her. I would always miss her. I often wondered how it would have been if we could have experienced the coming years together. What would have been different? Could I have changed what happened to her? We were the guardians of a secret world; a lonely world without the other. For years I would flounder without her.