Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

‘Let us begin,’ she said, and as if on cue the quiet of the Cornish air was fractured by the sounds of shattering shell and the first ‘ Ah ’s as the sweet white claw meat found its way to our mouths.

‘You’re quiet,’ whispered my father as he leant across to refill my glass. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Of course,’ I said, as Nancy reached across Arthur for a large langoustine. It was decapitated in seconds, its jacketed skin parted and cast aside and its flesh dipped into a pungent bowl of aioli, before the ascent towards open mouth. She licked her fingers and said something but it was lost in the chewing, in the licking; she said something like, ‘I’m thinking of getting married,’ and a sudden silence fell upon the table.

‘What?’ said my mother, trying hard to disguise the horror in her voice.

‘I’m thinking of getting married.’

‘You’re dating someone?’ I said.

‘Yup,’ she said, filling her mouth this time with bread and dark crab meat.

‘Since when?’ I said.

‘A while.’

‘Who?’ my mother asked.

Pause.

‘A man.’

‘A man ?’ my mother said, no longer bothering to disguise the horror in her voice. ‘But why?’

‘Hold on there,’ said my father. ‘We’re not all bad.’

‘Tell me – it’s not Detective Butler, is it?’ said Joe.

‘It is,’ said Nancy, giggling.

‘No way!’ said Joe.

‘Who’s Detective Butler?’ asked my mother; her voice getting higher, the more agitated she became.

‘The really hot, young one in the show,’ said Charlie.

‘But he’s so queer,’ said Joe.

‘He’s not queer,’ said Nancy. ‘I should know, I’m sleeping with him.’

‘You’re queer,’ said Arthur.

‘That’s different, Arthur,’ said Nancy, pulling apart a large claw. ‘My sexuality is fluid.’

‘Is that what you call it?’ said Arthur, randomly hammering at a crab’s head.

‘But why?’ asked my mother, filling her glass with wine and draining it almost before the answer had been given. ‘Why after all these years?’

‘I’ve changed, and it feels nice. We feel nice.’

‘Nice?’ my mother said, refilling her glass, her face pale and tortured in the flickering candlelight. ‘Nice? Nice has never been grounds for marriage,’ and she sat back, folded her arms and excluded herself from further discussion.

Nobody said much after that. There were a couple of banal comments about the size of the crabs and a discussion about whether whelks could ever rival oysters in gastronomic cuisine, and it would have stayed like that all night had my mother not softened and leant forwards and gently said, ‘Is this a phase, Nancy?’

‘Mid-life crisis, more like,’ said Arthur. ‘Why don’t you buy a Ferrari instead?’

‘I have.’

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nancy, reaching for my mother’s hand. ‘All the best women are taken.’

(My mother suddenly looked a little happier and blushed, although I can’t be sure of that because of the light.)

‘And,’ Nancy continued, ‘he doesn’t speak about his feelings, he doesn’t cause any dramas over exes, he doesn’t want to go shopping with me, he doesn’t wear my clothes and he doesn’t copy my hairstyle. It’s refreshing, to say the least.’

‘Nance, if you’re happy, we’re happy. Aren’t we everyone?’ said my father, and the table answered him with a pathetic scattering of ‘no’s and ‘suppose so’s.

‘So, congratulations,’ he said, ‘and I can’t wait to meet him.’

‘And neither can we!’ said Joe and Charlie a little too enthusiastically.

We raised our glasses and were about to toast the queer union, when all of a sudden we were interrupted by the sound of a heavy splash coming from the riverbank; a sound that propelled our drunken selves to the water’s edge.

We shuffled carefully along the jetty, huddled behind my father as he held the candelabra over the water, illuminating the black river with yellow. The overhanging trees danced grotesquely. Shadows of reaching arms and groping fingers came towards us. We heard another splash. My father turned to his left and it was then that we saw the frightened darting eyes; not the eyes of an otter this time, the size, the stroke of its paddle all wrong; no, what we saw was the gently lined face of a baby deer struggling to hold its head high above the water. It went under. Re-emerged. Its eyes terrified, staring into mine.

‘Get back, Elly!’ my father shouted, as I jumped into the shimmering cold.

‘Elly – it’s dangerous! For God’s sake get back!’

I waded towards the drowning beast; I heard another splash behind me and turned to see my brother thrashing towards me, water spraying as he kicked out towards me. The deer panicked as I drew near and it quickly turned and flailed towards the opposite bank. Its hoofs soon connected with an unexpected sandbank that had formed in the channel of the shallower waters, and I watched as it stumbled up the muddy edge, exhausted. It disappeared into the shadows of the forest opposite, just as the candles flickered and drowned in their own liquidity. We were left alone in the black.

‘Idiot,’ said my brother as he flung his arms around me. ‘What were you trying to do?’

‘Save it. What were you trying to do?’

‘Save you.’

‘If you didn’t want me to get married, Ell,’ bellowed Nancy across the Cornish valley, ‘all you needed to do was tell me, honey, not try to fucking kill yourself!’

‘Come on,’ said my brother as he guided me back to shore.

I sat in front of the roaring hearth and watched the men play poker badly and loudly. My mother bent down and filled my wine glass. Maybe it was the angle or the light, maybe it was simply her; but she looked so young that night. And Nancy must have noticed it too, because I caught her looking at her as she carried in a tray of teas, and it was a gaze, I could see, that extinguished all thoughts of her erratic marriage (a marriage that, incidentally, would never happen due to Detective Butler’s shameful ‘outing’ by National Enquirer magazine).

Later, as my mother entered my room to say good night, I sat up and said, ‘Nancy’s in love with you.’

‘And I’m in love with her.’

‘But what about Dad?’

She smiled. ‘I’m in love with him too.’

‘Oh. Is that allowed?’

She laughed and said, ‘For a child of the sixties, Elly . . .’

‘I know. Bit of a letdown.’

‘Never,’ she said. ‘ Never . I love them differently, that’s all. I don’t sleep with Nancy.’

‘Oh God, I don’t need to know that.’

‘Yes you do. We play by our own rules, Elly, always have. That’s all we can do. For us it works.’

And she leant over and kissed me good night.

The following day, the partial eclipse began just before ten. The sky was overcast, which was a shame, because the lessening of light became a subtle phenomenon rather than the dramatic occurrence of ancient times. We were out in the bay with other boats, surrounded by cliff tops dotted with hundreds of observers, their faces looking towards the cloudmasked sun, protective mirrored viewers held up like 3D glasses. Gulls were singing, and land birds too from the island haven, but there was chaos in their voices, melody gone. They were sensing the unusual, I was sensing the cold. The diminishing light felt like the approach of a storm, like something harmful, inexplicable. And then just before eleven fifteen, the last of the sun disappeared, and the darkness and silence were total, and the cold descended upon the water, and us, and the whole bay locked down into this ravenous silence; the birds quiet, confused into sleep.