Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

‘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.

29 July 1997

Jenny

Something happened that I thought you’d like to know about. Last afternoon, riding painlessly on a wave of morphine, Ginger told us about a visit she’d had earlier in the day. That was strange because neither Arthur nor I had seen a visitor and we’d been there all morning. He’d brought her flowers, she said, this man; he’d brought her favourites, white roses; flowers that adorned her dressing room in her heyday and whose scent made her feel that anything was possible. I looked at Arthur and we shrugged, because there were no white roses, just a small vase of freesias that one of the nurses had brought in a couple of days before. But she made us smell the white roses, and we did and she was right, the scent was strong. Ginger said her visitor was an older man, sixty, maybe, but still handsome, but age didn’t matter because he’d found her and he was exactly as she’d imagined. His name was Don and he was her son. She’d given him up years ago, she said, but she knew it was him when he walked in. He’d brought her flowers, you see. Roses. White roses. And his name was Don. He’d come looking for her and he’d found her. And now she felt good. She was calm and now she could go.