Nick Cave - The Death of Bunny Munro

Bunny pours himself another Scotch and lights up a Lambert & Butler.

‘Kill the bitch,’ he mutters.

Bunny Junior opens his eyes and, in a faraway voice that rises up from the soft curds of sleep, says ‘What did you say, Dad?’

‘Kill the bitch,’ answers Bunny, but the boy’s eyes have closed again.

Then the sound seems to drop out of the television and the face of the host, a guy with a floppy yellow fringe and a salad-green suit, seems to morph into that of a braying cartoon horse or laughing hyena or something and Bunny, appalled, closes his eyes.

He recalls, with a shudder, Libby standing in their kitchenette, red-eyed with confusion and disbelief, holding the baby and the telephone, and asking Bunny, point-blank, ‘Is it true?’

She had been on the phone with Sabrina Cantrell, who had rung up to inform Libby that her husband had groped her in the kitchen and was, in all probability, a sexual pervert or something.

Bunny did not answer but hung his head and examined the monochromatic checkerboard linoleum on the floor of the kitchenette.

‘Why?’ she sobbed.

Bunny, in all honesty, had no fucking idea and he said this to her, shaking his head.

He remembered, quite distinctly, the baby, sitting like a little prince in his wife’s arms, lift one well-sucked fist and uncurl his index finger and point it at Bunny. Bunny recalls looking at the child and having the overwhelming desire to go down to the Wick with Poodle. After half a dozen pints Poodle put a comforting arm around Bunny and bared his shark-like teeth and said, ‘Don’t worry, Bun, she’ll get used to it.’

Bunny opens his eyes and sees the boy has raised himself up and is sitting on the edge of his bed, a look of concern on his face.

‘Are you all right, Dad?’ says the boy.

But before Bunny can think of what to answer, the TV comes alive with a urgent blast of music and a voice that cries, ‘ Wakey-wakey! ’ and the boy and his father look at the screen and see an advertisement for Butlins Holiday Camp in Bognor Regis. Various photographs framed in yellow cartoon stars cartwheel across the screen, showing the range of activities offered at Butlins – the Tiki Bar with its simulated electrical storms, the Empress Ballroom with its crimson curtains and tuxedoed band, the indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the world-famous monorail, the putting green, the adult quiz nights, the giant fibreglass rabbit that stands sentry by the pool, the Apache Fort, the Gaiety Building and amusement arcade. Smiling staff members in their trademark red coats show smiling patrons to their individual chalets and finally, in pink neon, blinking hypnotically across the screen, the Butlin’s Holiday Camp mission statement, ‘Our true intent is all for your delight.’

Bunny’s eyes grow wide, his mouth drops open and says with genuine feeling, ‘Fuck me. Butlins.’ He sits straight up and jams another Lambert & Butler in his mouth. ‘Are you watching this, Bunny Boy? Butlins! ’

‘What’s Butlins, Dad?’

Bunny Zippos his cigarette and points at the TV, expels a noisy trumpet of smoke and says, ‘Butlins, my boy, is the best fucking place in the world!’

‘What is it, Dad?’

‘It’s a holiday camp,’ says Bunny. ‘My father took me there when I was a kid,’ and with the mention of his father, Bunny feels a butcher’s hook twisting in his bowels. He looks at his watch and screws up his face and says to himself, ‘Christ, my old dad.’

‘Why is it the best place in the world?’ asks the boy.

‘Has anyone ever mentioned you ask a lot of fucking questions?’

‘Yes.’

Bunny reaches across to the bedside table and grabs the Scotch and, waving the bottle with an extravagant flourish, says, ‘Well, let me just pour a little drink and I’ll tell you.’

Bunny slops whisky into his glass, then lies back against the headboard and says, with emphasis, ‘But you’ve got to listen.’

Bunny Junior’s head suddenly wobbles dramatically on his neck and he falls back on the bed, arms splayed. He closes his eyes.

‘OK, Dad,’ he says.

‘Don’t bloody ask me why Dad took me to Butlins. He no doubt had some raunchy tête-à-tête or some liaison kangaroo with some slapper or something, I don’t know, he was a squire of the dames, my old man, and he loved a bit of the fluff. Not bad-looking either, in his day,’ says Bunny.

‘When we arrived he changed his shirt, had a shave, put pomade in his hair, you know, then sent me down the pool, for a swim. He said he’d come by and get me later on.’

The boy’s breath deepens and he brings his little square knees up to his chest and appears to sleep. Bunny pours the Scotch down his throat, then attempts to place the glass back on the bedside table but he misses and the glass rolls around the shrieking paisley carpet. He retreats deep into his memory and he sees the throbbing terraced lawns and the turquoise water churning with screaming children. He sees the fifteen-foot bucktooth rabbit that stands by the swimming pool. His voice comes out tired and sad.

‘So I went down to the pool, and I was doing this thing that I liked to do. I’d crouch down with just my eyes looking over the top of the water and glide around like a crocodile or a bloody alligator and watch all the kids jumping around and doing bombs and cavorting about. I used to feel like nobody could see me but, you know, I could see them.’

Bunny attempts to make some gesture with his hand to illustrate a point and for a brief moment he wonders how on earth he ever ended up this way.

‘Anyway, on this particular occasion I started to get the feeling that someone was watching me and I turned around and there, sitting on the edge of the pool, was a girl… about my age… I was just a kid…’

Bunny sees, in his mind, the girl with her long wet hair and her nut-coloured limbs, and he finds that hot tears are running down his face, and once again he circles his hand in the air, his cigarette dead between his fingers.

‘And she was smiling at me… watching me… and smiling at me and, Bunny Boy, I got to tell you, she had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen and she wore a tiny yellow polka-dot bikini and she was all caramel-coloured from the sun… with these violet eyes… and something came over me, I don’t know what, but all the bloody emptiness I felt as a kid seemed to evaporate and I filled with something… a kind of power. I felt like a bloody machine.’

Bunny can see, in his mind’s eye, the afternoon sun spinning in the sky and the glare of it as it touched the surface of the pool. He can see the water part as he floated slowly through it.

‘So I kind of glided towards her and the closer I got the more she smiled… and I don’t know what came over me, but I stood up and asked her what her name was… fucking twelve years old I was…’

The cigarette falls from Bunny’s fingers and lands on the scarlet carpet.

‘… and she said her name was Penny Charade… I kid you not. Penny Charade… I’ll never forget it… and when I told her my name she laughed and I laughed and I knew that I had this power… this special thing that all the other bastards who were flopping around in the pool trying to impress the girls didn’t have… I had this gift… a talent… and it was in that moment that I knew what I was put on this stupid fucking planet to do…’

Bunny Junior, incredibly, opens one raw eye and says, ‘What happened then, Dad?’ and closes it again.

‘Well, it was getting late and her mum and dad came and got her and I stayed at the pool, happier than I’d ever been, just floating around… all full of this gift until I was the last person in the pool…’

Bunny could see, deep in his memory, the night fall over Butlins and a spray of stars spritz across the sky, and he wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand.