When God Was a Rabbit (17 page)

The townhouse was nestled in the heart of the Village in a tree-lined street that was quiet and strangely remote, considering it was only a street away from Bleecker and two from Washington Square. We could see the realtor up ahead talking on the phone, standing next to a large ailanthus tree that offered little shade against the draining afternoon sun.

We ran the last fifty yards to meet him, a sudden race, a ready-set-go, which I won, because I reached and touched the black iron handrail first. The realtor seemed bemused; we looked hot and sweaty and, most of all, poor; as if we couldn’t even raise the price of a hot dog between us, let alone prime New York real estate.

The odour from the ailanthus became strong as we climbed up the steps to the front door, and as we entered it mingled with the smell of damp, a smell the realtor immediately assured was only a slight problem, rather than the structural signifier we both imagined. It was dark as we entered, thankfully unfurnished, and the rooms were concealed behind wooden shutters, which stalled midway as they were pulled back, refusing to offer light beyond the realms of dusk. The house was rather poky inside, with a cumbersome layout that mimicked a chicken run. Walls were plastered with striped paper, an orange and brown and black theme throughout, with dark oak balustrades clumsily painted and now hidden behind the heavy gloss of mocha stain. I traversed the hallway and followed its narrow ascent to the upper two floors, the highest one nursing a hole and a bird’s nest, and then precariously down to the kitchen and the small uninspiring garden beyond, which was landscaped with weeds and knee-high ailanthus trees, the seeds having been blown in from the front. There was so much wrong with this house, so much to do; but as I stood there, my brother secretly pointing to his watch, I immediately understood the layout, the how-it-should-have-been all those years ago, and the how-it-could-be now. And when my brother asked, ‘Well?’ with no enthusiasm in his voice, I said, ‘I love it.’ And I really did.

We got back just before six. I showered quickly and dressed; hid my nerves behind an article I needed to finish for the following day. It was a pitch, actually, a pitch for a regular column in a weekend newspaper which I’d hastily (and unimaginatively) entitled ‘Lost and Found’ – a name that would eventually and surprisingly stick. It was to be the story of Jenny Penny and her return to my life; stories cemented together by our correspondence and the memories of our past. And when I’d nervously written to her suggesting such an idea, asking for her opinion and maybe later her permission, I received a resounding
Yes!
by return of post, together with the new fictitious name I’d asked her to choose, to protect her fragile yet willing identity.

The buzzer rang; I wasn’t finished. The buzzer rang and my brother shouted from his bedroom. I opened the front door and stood a few feet back. I suddenly remembered the towel around my head and pulled it off, throwing it over the back of a chair, letting my hair fall damp, unruly, free. I felt anxious. Wondered how he would enter. Would he run in shouting, happy to see me? Or simply knock? I heard his footsteps, heard him pause. And then he did neither; simply pushed the door gently and stuck his head round and smiled, and said, ‘Hello, Ell, how’re you doing?’

The dark features were the same, the smile the same, but his voice had lost the flat Essex tones I could still remember. And he’d brought champagne. We were going out but he’d brought champagne because it was a moment for champagne, and he stood there with his hands on his hips and said, ‘You haven’t changed,’ and I said, ‘You neither,’ and we embraced, and he was still holding the champagne bottle as we embraced, and I felt it cold and hard against my back.

My brother came out to the sound of the cork popping. He came out still wet from the shower, wearing his choir T-shirt, a pink T-shirt that had ‘The Six Judys’ written on the front above a line drawing of that famous dame. And then underneath in smaller type: ‘We’ll Sing for your Supper’. It was something they did every time, had a new T-shirt printed for each new charity they supported. One year, they’d supported an elderly group and the T-shirt had said: ‘You’re Never Too Old to Sing’. This time, though, it was food for the homeless, and the provision of a new catering van.

I handed around the glasses of champagne. I’d filled them to the top, not something I usually did, but it had been distracting and I’d needed that because when my brother raised his glass and said, ‘To us. Finally together,’ I had to turn away as I felt the first of my tears, before I’d even had my first mouthful, before I could even join them to say, ‘To us.’

I thought he was in the study with Joe helping with a finance problem, but as I began to close down the computer, I suddenly felt his hand on my arm and I startled and he said, ‘Wait,’ and began to read the opening paragraph.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

My brother ran in and said, ‘The taxi’s here. Are you ready?’ before disappearing into his room for a pile of promotional CDs and photos.

‘I want to be in this,’ said Charlie quietly. ‘Write about me.’

‘In this?’

He nodded. ‘You lost me and now you’ve found me. I should be in it too, don’t you think?’

‘You’ll need to change your name,’ I said.

‘Ellis.’

‘What?’

‘That’s the name I’d like. Ellis.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘What’s Jenny Penny’s?’ he asked.

‘Liberty,’ I said. ‘Liberty Belle.’

We sat at a small unoccupied table at the back of the suite, away from guests we didn’t know, ignoring the ones we did, close to the ice-sculpted vodka bar and a never-ending supply of mini hamburgers and fat breaded scampi.

‘I thought you might be married,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, finishing my drink.

Silence.

‘That’s it? No elaboration? No one special?’

‘No.’

‘Never?’

‘In hindsight, no.’

‘In
hindsight
. God, you’re so like him,’ he said, waving to my brother who had just peeped out from behind the makeshift red velvet curtain. ‘Your own little club.’

‘It’s not like that. It’s complicated.’

‘We’re all complicated, Ell. Do you remember the last time you saw me?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You were nine, ten, right? And really pissed off at me.’

‘He never got over you.’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘Yeah, actually,’ and I reached swiftly for a glass of wine as it passed by on a tray.

‘We were what, fifteen? Fuck. Where did all the time go, Ell? Look at us.’

‘It’s as if it was yesterday,’ I said, downing half my glass. ‘So, are you fucking?’

‘God, you are all grown up.’

‘Yeah, happened overnight. Well?’

‘No,’ and he tried to swipe a glass of champagne from the tray, this time spilling it down his arm. ‘He won’t with me.’

‘Why not?’

‘He doesn’t go back,’ he said.

Bobby, the hairiest of The Judys, came out and introduced the rest of the group. He talked about the charities being represented that evening, talked about the artists exhibiting around the room. He talked about money and asked for lots of it.

‘By the way,’ I said turning back to Charlie, ‘the last time I saw you wasn’t then. It was when you were on television being bundled into a car.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that.’

‘Well?’ I said, but he pretended not to hear me as the opening bars to ‘Dancing Queen’ quickly filled the room.

I couldn’t sleep. Buoyed by the latent effects of jet lag and coffee, I found myself wide awake at three in the morning. I got up, crept to the kitchen and poured out a large glass of water. I turned my computer on. The sound of breathing was loud and close. My brother never shut his bedroom door. It was a security thing: he needed to hear the sounds of his home, needed to hear if a different sound entered. I gently closed his door. Tonight he was safe; safe with me, and safe with Charlie asleep in the adjacent room.

It was then, in the three o’clock darkness, that I wrote about the moment Ellis re-entered our lives that evening in August, as shoppers gathered at corner bars, swapping tales of sales and divorces pending, of who loves who and holidays to come. I wrote about how he entered with a wallet crammed with fifties, and memberships to MOMA and the Met, and loyalty cards for Starbucks and Diedrich’s too. I wrote about how he entered with a slight scar above his lip from an accident skiing, and how he entered with a wounded heart from a man called Jens; a man he didn’t really love, but he was someone there, a late-night-talk-to; we’ve all had one of them. I wrote about how he entered with a letter in his pocket, which his mother had written a couple of days before, a letter more emotional than usual, wondering how he was, wishing they spoke more, stuff like that. I wrote about how he entered with a terrifying ordeal that he wouldn’t talk about for years, with an empty space where once was an ear. And I wrote about how he entered with the knowledge that he was changing jobs, leaving the snow fields of Breckenridge and the Rocky trails behind, and swapping them for land in the Upstate quiet, where neighbours were unseen, and where the Shawangunk Mountains would watch over him like the eagles they unleashed; swapping it all to be with an unlikely someone from his distant past.

That’s how he entered; how I remembered he entered.

5 July 1997

Jenny,

Every morning I pick up the
Guardian
and the
News of the World
and walk through the double-arched gateway and enter the courtyard, with its fountain and car park and patients sitting on benches with drip lines for company. I never say hello to anyone, not even to the gatekeeper; just keep to myself and to the story that lives so quietly on that upper floor. Ginger has shrunk before my eyes; she stopped momentarily at a weight that would have thrilled her years before and given her what she would have referred to as a ‘figure’, before plunging her headfirst towards a skeletal state too weak now to support anything other than sleep.

We’d got used to the cancer and so had she in many ways, or at least used to the habitual cycles of medication and chemotherapy and what it did to her body throughout those seven years. But we can’t get used to this infection and the way it’s decimated her frame and clawed so hungrily at her spirit. She’s never once said her cancer was unfair, but this infection has eaten at her dignity, and the self-pity she banished from her life has appeared now and then, and made her hate herself more. She has been dealt a shitty hand, Jenny; the days she feels it pain us to the core. I feel inadequate.

As she sleeps, so I work at her bedside. I work on our column, which has become a surprising success. I say surprising, but you say you always knew. Liberty and Ellis are mentioned now on trains and on buses and in the chatter of work breaks. What do you think of that, Jenny Penny, my friend of old? Fame has found you at last . . .

I looked out of the window; night was closing in on the building works and the overgrown trees from Postman’s Park. The shadows were large and grotesque. I didn’t want to go home. This had become my home, the nurses my friends, and as the long nights stretched out before me, I eavesdropped on their problems as they talked about broken hearts and money, about rents and the price of shoes and how depressing London was before the change of Government.

I told them stories about Ginger; this woman who’d shared champagne with Garland and a secret with Warhol. I showed them old photographs because I wanted them to know this woman; this woman beyond the name and number and date of birth that was wrapped around her wrist. I wanted them to know this woman who still tingled when she heard stories about meeting Liza down Fifth Avenue, or seeing Garbo garbed in sunglasses and scarf on the Upper East Side, stories like that, for she still thrilled at such epic stardom; glowed in a fame that scoffed the talentless. She’d found hers; had had that moment, that golden moment, forever untarnished by advancing years.

‘What’s up, pet?’ said Ginger, suddenly waking, reaching weakly for my hand.

‘How’re you doing?’ I asked.

‘Not too bad,’ she said.

‘Water?’

‘Only with Scotch – you know me.’

I placed a cool cloth against her brow.

‘What’s going on in the world?’ she asked.

‘Gianni Versace was shot dead yesterday,’ I said holding up the newspaper.

‘Gianni who?’

‘Versace. The designer.’

‘Oh,
him
. Never liked his clothes,’ and she fell back to sleep, content maybe, that there was at least some justice in the world.

The summer evenings unfolded and I longed to take her out into the courtyard to get the sun on her face and to see her freckles appear once more in tanned clusters. I wanted to take her back to my flat behind Cloth Fair, the flat she told me to make my home five minutes into a first viewing the November before. I wanted us to sit on the roof and look out over Smithfield in the early hours, watching the meat market open up like some giant nocturnal bloom. I wanted us to listen again to the bells of Bartholomew, as we ate croissants and read the Sunday newspapers and gossiped about people we knew and those we didn’t. But most of all, I wanted wellness to seize her again and drop her running into the colourful wake of London life. But Ginger never got to go outside again, and in the end I told her she wasn’t missing much, because we’d done it all, lived it all, hadn’t we? So there wasn’t much point.

‘I’d like my ashes to be scattered here, love,’ she said to me one day, pointing to a picture of herself standing on the jetty, the river behind her full and bloated. ‘So I can keep an eye on you all.’

‘Anything you want,’ I said. ‘You just tell me what you want,’ and she did, and I hid my tears behind a sheet of A4 paper and a hospital Biro.

I went home that night for a shower and a change of clothes. The ancient road behind the church was deserted, and the whisperings of bygone lives accompanied me into the alleyway, to the safety of my front door. I turned towards the sound of footsteps; a fleeting shadow retreating into shadow; a laugh, a conversation, the see-you-later echoing across the brickwork, and afterwards the silence. Silence. Turgid and soulful. Edible.

I looked at my body in the mirror, a body I’d once disowned with the currency of scorn. It had never been good enough – not for me, not for others – but that night, it looked beautiful, it looked strong, and that was enough.

I opened the drawer and took the ring out of its hiding place. The worn inscription on the inside band:
Las Vegas 1952. Our memories. X

She never told me who he was, but Arthur reckoned he was a bad boy, a gangster, and so their memories would’ve been short. It fitted me now, fitted my ring finger. I put it on and held it up to the light. The diamonds and sapphires sparkled. I smiled like the child who’d received it, frozen in time. Frozen in time.

I picked up the phone and wondered what I was going to say to him. He’d last been here six weeks ago when she was first admitted. He’d flown back from New York and his boss didn’t want him to, threatened to fire him, but he’d flown back because he loved Ginger, so of course he’d come back. And when I took him onto the ward and she saw his face, she lit up with such delight, you’d have thought his mere presence had caused the cancer to retreat. And that week she seemed to get well,
did
get well, but that was before the infection. He left vowing to see her in October. It was now the third week of July. It was ringing.

‘Hey, Joe,’ I said.

There was silence the other end.

‘It won’t be long,’ I said.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Call me when you’re with her.’

‘Course I will.’

‘How are you doing?’

‘Wretched,’ I said.

Neither my parents nor Nancy came back for that final week because Ginger asked them not to. They begged her, fought with her, but she said she ‘didn’t want them to remember me like that’, but really it was because she couldn’t bear to say goodbye. Age had softened her and authenticity now squired her feelings. Words, once saved for a song, became her own. My parents found it hard to accept her wishes but they reluctantly agreed and prepared quietly for a life without her. My mother had her hair cut into a very nice bob. Nancy signed up for a TV series in LA. And my father went back into the forest and chopped down a tree. The sound of the trunk fracturing and splintering and falling to earth was the sound his heart would have made, could it speak.

And as Ginger became weaker, so I made the final call, the one that brought him to Paddington Station the following morning, where I met his shaky descent with a resigned smile from beyond the barrier. He looked old and troubled, and the cane he once used as a prop, was now used as a walking stick. He was quiet in the taxi and we avoided all mention of her name until we came down Farringdon Road and he asked me again what ward she was on and did she need anything.

‘OK?’ I asked, reaching for his hand.

He nodded and as we turned into Smithfield, said, ‘I used to have relations with a young butcher down here.’

‘Fond memories?’ I said.

He squeezed my hand and I knew exactly what that squeeze meant. ‘I haven’t written about him yet,’ he said, ‘but I will. Chapter thirteen, I expect; the one entitled “Other Distractions”.’ He was trying so hard.

He stumbled as we got out of the cab, and I heard him sigh deeply. ‘How’s she doing, Elly? Really?’

‘Not good, Arthur,’ I said, as I led him to the entrance.

He leant over her bed and touched the side of her face and said, ‘Who’s got cheekbones then?’ and she smiled and tapped his hand and said, ‘Silly old fool. Wondered when you’d get here.’

‘Still our Ginger,’ he whispered as he leant down and kissed her.

‘You smell nice,’ she said.

‘Chanel,’ he said.

‘Wasted on you,’ she said, and he reached into his bag and pulled out an almond tart.

‘Look what I’ve got,’ he said triumphantly, as he lowered it under her nose.

‘Almonds,’ she said. ‘Just like Paris.’

‘For us to share,’ he said. ‘Just like Paris.’

I never knew if she had any real appetite or not, for she hadn’t eaten solids for days. But he broke a piece off and held it to her mouth and she ate hungrily; for it was the memory she was tasting again, and the memory tasted good.

I moved a chair close to the bed for him and he sat down and held her hand. His own death he’d made peace with years ago, but everyone else’s still frightened him and so he held her hand to not let her go. He held her hand because he wasn’t ready to let her go.

I watched them from the door and listened to the stories billowing from youth to middle age and back again; stories from the little hotel on Saint André des Arts, where they drank into the early hours and watched the couple opposite make love, a sight so beautiful, it was still talked about forty years later. They were best friends, telling best-friend tales.

I left them and headed towards the stairs, and as I walked down I was overwhelmed with the gratitude of wellness. I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe. I said hello to the gatekeeper. He said hello back to me.