When God Was a Rabbit (7 page)

The bunting was up and the mercury slowly rising, and capes made from Union Jacks rose and fell against the contours of our young backs. It was the last weekend in May. 1977. Our Queen had never been so popular.

The Sex Pistols blared out from the record player that Mrs Penny had held hostage ever since her dramatic arrival at the street party, half an hour before.

She’d cut a towering figure as she’d tottered up the road in an unbuttoned silk shirt that reminded our neighbour Miss Gobb ‘of a pair of jammed curtains. And no one needs to see what’s going on in
her
living room’.

Mrs Penny stopped at the first trestle table and handed over the box she was carrying.

‘Made it myself,’ she said.

‘You didn’t?’ asked Olive Binsbury nervously.

‘No, I nicked it.’

Silence.

‘Joke.
Joke
,’ said Mrs Penny. ‘It’s a Victoria sponge – after the old Queen,’ and everyone laughed. Too loudly. As if they were scared.

She pogoed and spat and flexed her studded fist, and came close to electrocution when her four-inch stiletto heel got caught in the precariously long extension lead that had started to fray at the edge of a mossy wall. Only the quick thinking and even quicker reflexes of my father prevented her cindered demise, when he shoved her gently onto a pile of beanbags and sent the remaining two inches of her skirt up to her exposed waist.

‘Oh, Alfie, you are naughty!’ she shouted as she rolled laughing into the gutter, and as my father tried to help her up, she pulled him down on top of her ripped fishnets and tiny leather skirt, which, Miss Gobb also noted, would have been more useful as a purse. My father stood up and brushed himself down. Tried to rid himself of her perfume, which clung like tired fingers to a cliff face.

‘Let’s try again, shall we?’ he said, as he lifted her to her feet.

‘My hero,’ she said, licking her purple pouting lips.

My father laughed nervously. ‘Didn’t have you down as a royalist, Hayley.’

‘Still waters, Alfie,’ she said, reaching for my father’s arse and finding my mother’s hand instead.

‘Kate, didn’t see you there, love,’ said Mrs Penny.

‘Can you give Greg Harris a hand with traffic patrol?’

‘I’ll give him a hand with something,’ she said, and teetered off to our makeshift barricade that hadn’t as yet got the required police approval, as it temporarily blocked off our road from Woodford Avenue.

Jenny Penny and I were on trestle-table duty, covering them in Union Jack paper tablecloths and placing paper cups and plastic cutlery at ‘sensible’ intervals along the edge. We laid out plates of jam tarts and chocolate rolls and Wagon Wheels, that immediately started to glisten in the rare, balmy sunshine.

‘I wrote to the Queen once,’ said Jenny Penny.

‘What did you write?’

‘Asked if I could live with her.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Said she’d think about it.’

‘Do you think she will?’

‘Can’t see why not.’

A car beeped angrily behind us. We heard Jenny Penny’s mother shout, ‘Oh, fuck off. No I’m not. Go on, back up. You’re not coming through.’

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Jenny Penny looked pale. Someone turned the music up – my mother probably – to drown out the louder expletives.

‘Oh, listen,’ I said, raising my finger heavenwards. ‘This is my favourite.’

Jenny Penny listened. She smiled. ‘Mine too. I know
all
the words. I’ll start. “I see a little silhouetto of a man. Scary mush, Scary mush, will you do the fandango?” ’

‘You’re not coming through!’ screamed Mrs Penny.

‘ “Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening. MEEE!” ’ I sang.

Mr Harris ran towards us. ‘Where’s your dad, Elly?’

‘ “Galileo, Galileo, Galileo.” ’

‘ “Fig Roll!” ’ screamed Jenny Penny.

‘Your father, Elly? Where is he? This is serious. I think there’s going to be a fight.’

‘ “I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me,”’ I sang.

‘Oh, fuckit,’ said Mr Harris, walking off.

‘And that’s what I think of your cousin in the police!’ shouted Mrs Penny as she exposed her jiggling breasts.

‘Yikes,’ said my father, running past us, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Trou-ble,’ he said in that broken-up, annoying way of his.

‘ “Let him go!” ’ sang Jenny Penny.

‘ “I will not let you go,”’ I sang.

‘It’s just a simple misunderstanding,’ said my father.

‘Let me go!’ shouted Mrs Penny.

‘We can sort this out over a cup of tea,’ said my father calmly.

‘ “I will not let you go!” ’

‘ “Let him—” ’

‘WILL YOU TWO SHUT THE HELL UP NOW!’ screamed Mr Harris, pulling the plug from the record player. He led us by the arm to the dappled shade of the large plane tree.

‘Now sit down and don’t move until I say so,’ he said, wiping away the sweat that had formed under his nose. Jenny Penny moved.

‘Don’t you dare,’ he said before unscrewing his pewter hip flask and downing at least half of its contents. ‘Some of us have duties to perform.
Important
duties.’

Mr Harris officially opened the party at two o’clock that afternoon, heavily aided by the remaining contents of his hip flask and his sailing horn. He made a rousing speech about the importance of monarchy and how it separates us from the uncivilised world. Especially the Americans. My parents looked down at their feet and said something uncharacteristically rude. He said that queens are necessary to the heritage of our country, which made my brother and Charlie laugh, and said that should the monarchy ever fall, he would hang himself and finish what his first wife had promised.

‘To His Majesty,’ he said, raising his glass and sounding his hooter.

Nancy turned up dressed as Elizabeth the First. She was in disguise because she’d just had a film out and wanted to avoid a photographer who was keen to catch her in a compromising position.

‘Hey, beautiful!’ she said when she saw me.

‘Nancy,’ said Jenny Penny, barging her way through, ‘can I ask you a question?’

‘Course you can, darling.’

‘Is Shirley Bassey a lesbian?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Nancy, laughing. ‘Why?’

‘Alice Cooper?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

‘What about Vanessa Redgrave?’

‘No.’

‘What about Abba?’

‘Which one?’

‘All of them.’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘So none of them are?’

‘No. Why do you want to know, sugar?’

‘Well, it’s for my school project.’

‘Really?’ said Nancy, looking at me. I shrugged. I hadn’t got a clue what she was going on about. My school project was about pandas and elephants. The theme for us all being Endangered Species.

Night fell heavily. The smell of sugar and sausages and onions and stale perfume hung above the tables, warmed by tealights and chatting breath, and it merged into a giant scent that ebbed and flowed like a spring tide. Cardigans were pulled across shoulders, and neighbours – once insular, once shy – leant upon those same clad shoulders and whispered boozy secrets into disbelieving ears. Nancy helped Joe and Charlie on the drinks table, ladling out the non-alcoholic punch called Silver Jubilee, and the much more popular alcoholic version called Jilver Subilee, and people danced and told jokes, all in celebration of a woman no one had ever met.

And cars were finally admitted and they came beeping horns, this time in solidarity, not annoyance, and they rolled by with hazard lights flashing, adding disco beams to our Motown tunes, and their open windows added laughing, singing voice to already tipsy banter.

Mrs Penny was as drunk as I’d ever seen anybody be. She lurched like a dying man from one dance move to another and disappeared occasionally down the alleyway to expel vomit or urine, only to emerge refreshed and almost sober, ready for another ladle of toxic punch. That night, though, the neighbours watched with care, not judgement, and hands were gentle as they rested on her back, guiding her to safe passage that was a chair or a wall, or sometimes even a lap. For that night they all learnt that the boyfriend had gone. Had taken a bag of his things and some of her things – things she wouldn’t even know about until much later – things like an egg poacher and a jar of maraschino cherries. As I passed her dancing shadow, she reached out and grabbed my arm tightly and slurred a word that could have been
lonely
.

With the last record played and the last sausage roll eaten, Jenny Penny and I went with my mother in search of Mrs Penny. The street was virtually empty, now that the tables had been swiftly stacked on the pavement for the Council’s removal.

We went up and down the street several times in case she’d taken refuge in a bush or in an unlocked car. But it was as we were heading down the alleyway for the second time, that we saw two shadows swaying towards us, and as they came close to the flare of a streetlight we could see that it was Mr Harris holding up Jenny’s mother. She looked sheepish and wiped her mouth. Smudged lipstick, mouth of a clown. Sad not funny. Jenny Penny said nothing.

‘I was simply helping the woman,’ said Mr Harris tucking in his shirt. ‘The woman’, he’d said. She’d been
lovely Hayley
to him all night.

‘Of course you were,’ said my mother, sounding unconvinced. ‘OK, girls, help Hayley back to the street and I’ll join you in a minute,’ and as we walked away, her weight evenly balanced on our small frames, I turned back and saw my mother poking Mr Harris angrily in the chest and I heard my mother say, ‘If you ever
ever
take advantage of a woman in that state again, God help what I do to you, you arrogant shit.’

My mother and father didn’t even get her anywhere near upstairs before she vomited in her hallway. Jenny Penny turned away embarrassed until my father’s reassuring smile made her feel less alone. But she remained quiet throughout the clean-up proceedings, following my mother’s orders like a besotted disciple. Bowl of hot water, towel, sheets, blanket, empty bucket. Pint of water. Thank you, Jenny, you’re doing really well. My father helped Mrs Penny onto the sofa and covered her with lilac sheets, and as she slept my mother stroked her forehead, kissed it even, saw the child.

‘I’m going to stay here tonight, Jenny,’ my mother said. ‘You go back to ours with Elly and Alfie. And don’t worry about your mum, she’ll be fine. I’ll look after her. This is simply what happens when adults have so much fun. She didn’t do anything wrong, Jenny. Just had fun, that’s all. And she was a lot of fun, wasn’t she?’

But Jenny Penny said nothing. She knew my mother’s words were mere scaffolding holding up a crumbling wall.

Our slow footsteps echoed along the dark street. Jenny Penny reached for my hand.

‘I wish my mother was like—’

‘Don’t,’ I said harshly, interrupting her. I knew the word that was to follow, and that night it was a word that would have punctured my heart with guilt.

Looking back, it’s quite clear my parents had made the decision to move by the time they returned from their trip to Cornwall that Easter. They’d been on a second honeymoon, Nancy said. They’d needed to reconnect, to find each other as people once again and when they walked through the door, ruddy and salty, there was an energy about them, an energy I’d never seen before; a kindness not bound by familiarity or duty, and when my father sat us down and declared that he had decided to quit his job, I felt relieved that the fragility of expectation that had hung over us during the last eighteen months had finally turned into the decisiveness of action.

My father worked out his notice by the end of June and then, shunning all goodbyes and celebrations, sat in his car in the deserted car park and cried late into the night. The police found him hunched over the steering wheel, eyes red and swollen like boils. When they opened his door, all he could say was, ‘Forgive me. Forgive me,
please
,’ and for a young policeman three weeks out of Hendon this appeared to be a shocking confession, as his imagination jumped from textbook to crime novel in one easy leap. He believed my father had murdered his family, and called for a squad of cars to rush over to our house. The door thundered under the blows of fists, and my mother, disoriented, torn from sleep, rushed down the stairs, fearful that the bearer of unbearable news had once again found his way to her door.

‘Yes?’ she said in a tone that was neither helpful nor passive.

‘Are you Mrs Kate Portman?’ said the policeman.

‘I am,’ said my mother.

‘Do you know a Mr Portman?’ said the policeman.

‘Of course I do, he’s my husband. What’s happened to him?’

‘Nothing serious, but he seems a little distressed. Could you come down to the station with me and collect him?’

And my mother did, and found my father pale and trembling in the fluorescent light under the care of a kind station sergeant. He was wrapped in a grey blanket and was holding a mug of tea. The mug was patterned with the insignia of the West Ham supporters’ club and somehow made my father look more pathetic, my mother said. She took the mug from him and placed it on the floor.

‘Where are your shoes?’ she asked.

‘They took them from me,’ he said. ‘It’s procedure. In case I did anything to myself.’

‘What? Like trip yourself up?’ she said, and they both laughed and knew that it would be all right – for the moment, at least.

And as they walked out to the car park, she stopped and turned to him and said, ‘Leave it here, Alfie. It’s time. Leave her here.’

Her
name was Jean Hargreaves.

My father had been working in Chambers at the time and was chosen to defend a Mr X against child molestation charges. It was one of his first cases and, emboldened by new fatherhood and the responsibility placed on his green shoulders, he undertook Mr X’s defence as a sort of quest, a noble vocation against the dragon of slander.

Mr X was a known man, a respectable man of such gentle ways that my father found it unspeakable that he should be forced to defend himself against such heinous allegations. Mr X had been married for forty years. There was no whisper of affairs or marital grumblings, and their union was held up as the pinnacle to reach. They had two children; the boy went into the army, the girl into finance. He was on the board of directors of several companies; he was a patron of the arts and financed underprivileged children through university. But more importantly, he was the man my father wanted to be.

And then one day, a young woman called Jean Hargreaves walked into Paddington Green police station and unburdened herself for the first time in thirteen years, revealing the humiliating secret that liked to visit her at night. She had been ten at the time and subjected to a cycle of horrendous abuse, whilst her mother diligently cleaned the outer reaches of Mr X’s house. The police would have thrown out the case if it wasn’t for one mitigating circumstance: Jean Hargreaves could describe perfectly the heraldic ring her attacker wore on his little finger, and had noticed the smallest fissure across its shield.

The moment Jean Hargreaves took to the stand, her life was all but over, my father later told me. He broke her story down with swipes and body blows, and parried her uncertainty until she sat back slumped and unsure of everything including her name. It took the jury no time at all to say not guilty, and for Mr X’s firm cool hand to be thrust into my father’s naïve palm.

And then came the worst of timings. My father was leading Mr X down the corridor, when all of a sudden they saw Jean Hargreaves sitting alone on a bench, awaiting the arrival of her best friend, who had disappeared ten minutes earlier to look for a taxi. My father tried to pull his client back, but it was as useless as dragging a baying hound away from a bloodied fox. Mr X pulled away and strutted down that silent corridor, his heels clicking as arrogantly as fingers, and at the moment of passing he didn’t yell or vent his anger, instead he turned to Jean Hargreaves and whispered something and winked at her, and in that moment my father knew. Nancy said he stopped and reached for the wall; tried to pull himself free from his skin, something he tried in vain to do throughout the rest of his life.

Two weeks later Jean Hargreaves committed suicide, and in the time it took for her to fall twenty floors, my father lost faith in everything; but most of all in himself.

My father knelt down on the tarmac as cars came and went. The soft drone of traffic competed with his past. The June breeze billowed around his shirt and dried his damp skin – an illicit, welcome sensation to the memory of life. My mother stroked his hair.

‘I love you,’ she said, but my father couldn’t look at her. It was the final chapter of his breakdown, the moment when his glass was drained of everything, and its emptiness awaited only the choices to come.