Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

They cut his ear off. They wrapped it in a handkerchief and sent it to his father’s company; said they’d cut the other one off in time for Christmas Day, then his hands.

‘How much do you think an ear is worth, Nancy?’ I said quietly.

‘Everything,’ she said, as she layered cream onto a trifle that none of us felt like eating.

We sat in vigil in front of the television day and night, taking it in turns to relay news to those of us indisposed at the time. School took a back seat – I wouldn’t return now until the following term – and the routine of our days was simply forgotten. We had two guests left, happy guests who stood out like our decorations, garishly cheap and inappropriate, and we neglected them like Christmastime itself.

‘What goes on in other countries doesn’t really concern us, does it?’ they said.

‘How can it not?’ said my father incredulously.

My mother told them to help themselves to breakfast and anything else they needed. They did and then left without paying.

My brother no longer ate; nothing could tempt his stomach to unclench as he walked from room to room, pacing, bent double by the cold and his fear of what might come. He was shrinking, guilt was eating him, and only my father understood the power that such an emotion held.

I strode across the lawn, rudely disturbing the frost, and entered the forest like the early morning sun, so maddeningly awake. There was a metallic taste to the air, an expectant taste, and I ran through the undergrowth startling the squirrels and birds still lethargic with sleep, and slowed as I saw my seat up ahead. I sat down and shivered. I took the tin from my pocket and removed the elastic band. I prised off the lid and peeked inside. Just ashes, nothing more. No scent of peppermint, just ashes. I couldn’t think of a prayer nor even a song as I scattered his dusty life across the woodland floor.

‘Please find him,’ I said. ‘Please find Charlie.’

It was midday on 23 December. It was cold and overcast, and the whole village had awoken to news that a small fishing boat had been holed on the rocks out by the island. My parents and I watched the rescue from the shore. My mother had brought down flasks of tea and warm fruit scones for the rescuers and the inquisitives, and we watched the strange circling of the gulls, so predatory and foreboding, and their presence filled us with a nauseating doom.

We motored back solemnly, the high tide pulsing us towards home on swollen crested waves, and as we docked and then made our way up the lawn, Nancy and my brother ran towards us screaming.

The television was on as we ran in and my mother immediately started to cry. He looked shaken but still the same, the same old Charlie. His hair was long and scruffy and his eyes receded deeper into their sockets as if they’d tried to hide away in there. No interviews were given. Instead he was shielded by a blanket and bundled into a car and media obscurity, where no details of his release would ever be given although we would one day learn that a million had changed hands, and that somehow seemed fair. And then he disappeared once more from our lives, but not this time from our memories. His name was uttered from time to time, and a smile returned to my brother’s lips as he slowly let go of that joyless dance that had held him hostage over the years. He let it go and allowed possibility to once again enter his life.

Christmas morning. I looked out onto the lawn thinking that it was covered by a thick layer of snow, but it was actually mist and I could see it rolling up the river valley like white tumbleweed. I crept downstairs and peeked into the lounge and saw presents strewn under the tree. The smell of firewood was still so distinct; it was a smell that made me hungry, and I went to the hearth to see if the carrot and mince pie had been eaten, or if the sherry had gone. It was only half gone so I finished off the rest in one sweet mouthful.

I wandered into the kitchen to get a biscuit when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on our lawn. I felt it had a larger presence than a bird or a squirrel and I quickly put on some Wellington boots and my dad’s old jumper hanging by the back door and went out into the cold morning air. The mist hovered at knee height over the lawn and I found it hard to discern anything moving amidst its opaque haziness. And then I saw it. It bounced out of the mist and stopped about ten yards from me. His pointed skull and chestnut fur were so familiar, and those long legs and white-tipped tail.

‘I knew you’d come back to me,’ I said, and I crouched and went towards him but he immediately recoiled. I suddenly understood. This was the agreement, the same one my brother had made: I am here but I am not yours; and the rabbit hopped towards the forest and disappeared as quickly as an interrupted dream.

A new decade dawned, and my parents would eventually have guests who returned to them year after year, and who would all be a bit like us – a collage of the useful and impractical, the heady and the mundane.

It often occurred to me that normal people never stayed with us, or if they did it was certainly for no longer than the one eyeopening night. My mother loved this seasonal swell to our family, the ebb and flow of familiar faces that brought new stories and new delights to our door, just as the stagnancy of the everyday settled there like stubborn mould. Our lives had become tidal; friendships, money, business, love; nothing ever stayed the same.

It was a fine summer’s day, the day I first saw Mr Arthur Henry striding through the village leaving a trail of open mouths and Cornish gossip in his colourful wake. He was wearing linen plus fours, a yellow and blue striped shirt and a pink and white polka-dot bow tie that was so large it almost obscured his neck. He carried a cane in one hand and a newspaper in the other, and now and then he would waft away wasps attracted to the sweet floral scent that exuded from his pale skin. I followed him only as far as the amusement arcade, where the sudden need to play pinball overtook me and where I reluctantly entrusted him to the day ahead. I watched him saunter along the quay next to the crabbers and the ferrymen. I watched him weave in and out of parents holding cigarettes and lager instead of their children’s hands. He belonged to another time, a more genteel one; and yet he graced the modern with a simple inquisitiveness and charm that kept me spellbound for days.

The next time I saw him was in the forest. He was talking loudly to himself (Shakespeare, I later learnt) and danced like an aged elf in this unabashed green solitude. It was the type of dance not intended for an audience, for its form was wild and juvenile, and sprung from an uncritical source. He wore the same outfit but had walking shoes instead of polished brogues, and held a twig of leaves instead of his cane.

I felt shy watching his moment of privacy, and when my conscience could bear no more, I came out from behind a tree and said, ‘Good morning, sir,’ and held out my hand with an assurance beyond my years.

He stopped in the middle of a pirouette and smiled, and breathing hard said, ‘Good morning, young lady,’ and he shook my hand. He looked older up close but not that old; sixty probably, for his skin had the sheen of care and the trace of a long-forgotten vanity that once would have shone from mirrors with the radiance of sunrise.

‘I like your outfit,’ I said.

‘That’s very kind of you to say,’ he said.

‘This is my forest,’ I said.

‘Is it now? Then I am a trespasser and I am indeed at your mercy,’ and he bowed in front of me.