Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

‘Christ, it’s freezing out here! What are you two doing?’

And before we could answer he looked down at Jenny’s leg and said, ‘Shit.’

‘She tripped,’ I said, not looking at her.

My brother bent down and held her leg up to the shaft of light emanating from the kitchen.

‘Let’s see what you’ve done,’ he said. ‘God, that’s messy. Does it hurt?’ he asked.

‘Not any more,’ she said, stuffing her hands into her overly large pockets.

‘You’ll need a plaster,’ he said.

‘Probably,’ she said. ‘Maybe two.’

‘Come on then,’ he said, and he lifted her up and held her against his chest.

I’d never thought of her as young before. There was something ageing about her nocturnal existence, about her self-sufficiency enforced by neglect. But that night, nestled against him, she looked small and vulnerable; and wanting. Her face rested peacefully against his neck; her eyes closed to the sensation of his care as he carried her inside. I didn’t follow them straight away. I let her have her moment. That uninterrupted moment when she could dream and believe that all I had was hers.

A few day later my brother and I awoke to shouts and terrifying screams. We converged on the landing holding an array of makeshift weapons – I, a dripping toilet brush; he, a long, wooden shoehorn – until my father raced up the stairs followed by my mother. He looked pale and gaunt, as if, in the hours between asleep and awake, he’d lost a stone in weight.

‘I said it, didn’t I?’ he told us, the fog of madness obscuring the familiarity of his features.

My brother and I looked at each other.

‘I said we’d win, didn’t I? I am a lucky man. A blessed man, a chosen man,’ and he sat down on the top stair and wept.

Heaving sobs tore at his shoulders, loosening years of torment, and momentarily his esteem seemed buoyed by the magic of that slip of grid paper held between his thumb and forefinger. My mother caressed his head and left him, foetus-like, on the stairs. She led us into their bedroom, which still smelt of sleep. The curtains were drawn, the bed scruffy and cold. We were both strangely nervous.

‘Sit down,’ she said.

We did. I sat on her hot-water bottle and felt its lingering warmth.

‘We’ve won the football pools,’ she said matter-of-factly.

‘Blimey,’ said my brother.

‘What’s wrong with Dad then?’ I said.

My mother sat down on the bed and smoothed the sheets.

‘He’s traumatised,’ she said, not hiding the fact that he clearly was.

‘What does that mean?’ I said.

‘Mental,’ whispered my brother.

‘You know what your father thinks about God and stuff like that, don’t you?’ she said, still looking down at the area of sheet that had hypnotised her hand into slow circular movements.

‘Yes,’ my brother said. ‘He doesn’t believe in one.’

‘Yes, well, now it’s complicated; he’s prayed for this and he’s been answered and a door has opened for your father, and to walk through that door he knows he’ll have to give something up.’

‘What will he have to give up?’ I asked, wondering if it might be us.

‘The image of himself as a bad man,’ said my mother.

The football pools win was to remain a secret to everyone outside of the family, except Nancy, of course. She was on holiday at the time in Florence with a new lover, an American actress call Eva. I wasn’t even allowed to tell Jenny Penny, and when I kept drawing piles of coins just to give her a clue, she took it as a coded message to steal money from her mother’s purse, which she duly did, and exchanged for sherbet dabs.

Excluded from talking about our win to the world outside, we stopped talking about the win to our world inside, and it soon became something that had momentarily happened to us, rather than the life-changing event most normal people would have allowed it to be. My mother still looked for bargains in the shops and her frugality became compulsive. She darned our socks, patched our jeans, and even the tooth fairy refused to reimburse me for a particularly painful molar, even when I left it a note saying that every additional day accrued interest.

One day in June, about two months after ‘the win’, my father pulled up in a brand-new silver Mercedes with blacked-out windows, the type usually reserved for diplomats. The whole street came out to witness the brutality of such ostentation. When the door opened and my father stepped out, the street echoed with the sound of broken teeth as jaws dropped to the floor. My father tried to smile and said something wan, something about a ‘bonus’, but unknown to him he had inadvertently climbed onto that ladder reserved for the élite, and was already looking down on the kind familiar faces he’d shared years of his life with. I felt embarrassed and went inside.

We ate dinner in silence that evening. The subject on everyone’s lips was ‘that car’, and it soured the taste of every morsel that passed it. Finally, my mother could stand it no more and calmly asked, ‘ Why? ’ as she got up to get another glass of water.

‘I don’t know,’ said my father. ‘I could, so I did.’

My brother and I looked to my mother.

‘It’s not us. That car is not us. It stands for everything ugly in this world,’ she said.

We turned to my father.

‘I’ve never bought a new car before,’ he said.

‘It’s not the newness of the car, for God’s sake! That car’s a bloody down payment on a house for most people. That car says we are something that we’re not. That car is not a car, it’s a bloody statement of all that’s wrong in this country. I shall never ride in it. Either it goes or I shall.’

‘So be it,’ said my father, and he got up and left the table.

Awaiting my father’s choice of Wife or Wheels, my mother disappeared, leaving only a note that said: Don’t worry about me . (We hadn’t been, but it suddenly made us.) I shall miss you, my two precious children – the bold omission of my father hovering in the air like the smell of last Christmas’s festering Stilton.

During this period of trial separation, my father drove to his Legal Aid position undaunted by his sudden singleness, and brought an unquestioning glamour to the potholed car park his offices shared with a greasy spoon. Criminals would enter and openly ask for the lawyer ‘who’s got them wheels outside’. They saw it as a badge of success, not knowing that the only person wearing it had never felt more of a failure.

One night he stopped me in the kitchen and asked me about the car.

‘You like it, don’t you, Elly?’

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘But it’s a beautiful car.’

‘But no one else has got one,’ I said.

‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it? To stand apart and be different?’ he said.

‘I’m not sure,’ I said, quite aware of my own muted need to fit in, somehow simply to hide. ‘I don’t want people to know I’m different.’

And I looked up and saw my brother standing in the doorway.

As my family fell apart, so did my school life. I happily abstained from reading and writing projects by wilfully letting the teacher know that there were domestic problems in our household, and I took every opportunity to embrace the possibility that I too might come from a broken home. I told Jenny Penny that my parents were probably divorcing.