Winman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbit

‘I’m Alan, Joe. I’ve known you since you were a little boy. Since you were that high,’ and he gestured with his hand at a height that would actually have made my brother a midget.

‘Since he was sixteen ,’ I said.

‘Was he really that old?’ Alan said, turning to me.

‘Yes. I was eleven.’

‘Well, you weren’t a big sixteen,’ Alan said. ‘That’s all I can say.’

‘Well, that’s good to know,’ said my brother. ‘And Alan, don’t worry. I remember you.’

‘Ah, you’ve made my day,’ he said, and picked up our bags and marched ahead of us up the slope towards his new people carrier with electric sun roof and ‘nat sav’, as he called it, and the hanging air freshener that held the photo of six-year-old Alana.

Joe suddenly stopped halfway up and looked down on the small station, soft and blurred in the light, the hanging baskets rocking gently in the breeze, the contents forlorn and brown and long since passed, like the summer they coloured. He did that often; just suddenly stopped to help a crippled memory as it faltered midway to comprehension.

‘What is it?’ I said.

‘Ginger, I think,’ he said. ‘Singing down there. “Beyond the Sea”? Evening dress? Could that be real?’

‘Turquoise, high cut?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yep, that’s real. Welcome to your family,’ and I ushered him up to the car.

Alan dropped us at the top of the track and we waved as he disappeared along the roadway, carving through the desolate hedgerows like a wheeled scythe. I could smell salt in the air; the tide was probably high and a breeze skipping on the surface welcomed us back. We headed down the gravel track, now more leaf covered than ever, until Charlie shouted, ‘Race ya!’ and we ran towards the wooden gate, the imaginary finishing line at the end of the way. Charlie got there first, Joe second, my heart wasn’t in it so I gave up, and they waited panting as I approached, soaking up the smells and sights of the trees naked in the harsh light of an overcast day. I looked up and saw a lone blackbird plume puffed and unmoving on a branch shrunken by the cold. It buried its beak back into its chest. I blew on my hands and ran towards the gatepost.

‘This I remember,’ said my brother, as he bent down and trailed his finger down the letters TREHAVEN, leaving a green stain on his skin. And then something caught his eye, on the outer surface, to the left of the letters. I knew he saw it, knew he saw the JP and the badly carved heart and the letters CH falling beneath, letters over twenty years old, feelings over twenty years old, hidden, though, for weeks. I knew he saw it, but he didn’t say anything, not to me, not to Charlie, and we quickly marched down the slope, he momentarily falling behind, watching us, his eyes piercing my back, finally wanting something, as the pieces shifted and sense came back, and the unspoken that hung above their friendship suddenly spoke in letters as raised as Braille.

We turned the corner, and I’d almost forgotten the effect the house had, bone white and stately in the clearing. In that moment it reached into my heart and buried itself there for ever. They were lined up in front of it in what looked like order of height, and as we got closer – as my brother got closer – this formality became unbearable for them and it was my father who broke rank first, then my mother, and they ran towards him, arms splayed out wide, adults playing planes, bearing down on him, shouting and smiling, until they took him in their arms and held him and quietly said, ‘My boy.’

‘I’m your aunt. Nancy,’ said Nancy, breathless from the run. ‘I expect you remember me, though.’

‘Of course I do,’ my brother said, and smiled. ‘ Raining in my Heart .’ 2

‘Ah,’ said Nancy, pretending to be shy.

‘Storm in a teacup, more like,’ said Arthur, trying hard to rein in an over-excited Nelson.

‘You were really good in that film, Nance,’ my brother said.

‘Thanks, honey,’ she said, beaming, as if awards season were suddenly approaching.

And then Joe turned to Arthur.

‘Hey, Arthur,’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Everything you need to know about me is in this,’ he said, and pulled his autobiography out of his jacket pocket.

I could hear them downstairs, laughing, and I should have got up but the mattress felt good against my back and I wanted to sleep through the afternoon into the night, through the days and weeks that would follow, so heavy were my eyes after the long hours of empty waiting. But I sat up and poured a glass of water, drank half of it, then some more.

I went to the window and saw them wander down the lawn to the jetty, just as the light was losing its battle against thickening cloud cover. My brother bent down and looked at himself in the water. Charlie knelt down next to him. It was an image I thought would be lost to me for ever, lost under the dust and rubble of that other time that haunted the past, nightghoulish and unwelcome, a time that ripped you from the safety of sleep like flesh away from bone.

My mother came up behind me. I’d heard her on the stairs, heard her call my name, but I felt too tired, too quiet to answer. I felt her breath on my neck.

‘Thank you for bringing him home.’

I wanted to turn round and say something, but there were no words, just this image of her son, my brother, amidst us once again; the light clinging to him in the frail dusk, the light that said never go out .

Things came back to him consistently after that; slowly at first, sometimes erratically, once even in the middle of a weather front that tore through the landscape, uncovering images and moments that placed him firmly at the scene. He re-covered his tracks along moors and cliff tops, secret paths down to beaches, ice-cream cones he hadn’t eaten for years, the taste of vanilla – leading to a memory of a bell floating on the water. ‘Could that be right?’ he asked. I nodded. Yes .

We would follow him, this motley crew of a family, rediscovering memories and incidents long lost to the busyness of life, and we lived again through the vividness of his recall. He’d listen to our stories and ask questions and piece together events, mentally linking the participants until a connection was made, a ragged family tree held together by used tape.

And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember. But I’d relinquished my claim to such a position a long time ago. He was so often not the person I remembered him to be; long gone was the fragile cynicism that kept him away from normal human encounter, now replaced by a bountiful enthusiasm that saw life like a child. Sometimes I’d miss it, the barbed comment, his darkness, dangerous and poetic, that kept me on the edge, those three-o’clock-in-the-morning calls that I somehow doubted would ever happen again, those calls that made me feel whole and well.

And sometimes his memory buckled at discretion and gave way to the revelations of secrets he’d once promised never to disclose, like the moment he turned to me on the path down to Talland and said, ‘So how much did Andrew Landauer pay you for sex?’ to which I replied, ‘Not enough,’ as I marched off arm in arm with Nancy, away from the shocked faces of my parents, who were trying to put two and two together, and coming up with nothing close to thirty pounds and sixty pence, the price of that mini cab from Slough.

Or like the moment we settled down for dinner and he turned to my parents and said, ‘Have you ever forgiven him?’