Winman, Sarah: When God Was a Rabbit

And they said, ‘Who?’

And he said, ‘Mr Golan.’

And they said, ‘For what?’

And he told them.

I waited for them outside. It was a cold night but I felt nothing as I sat and watched a bat flicker across the French-navy sky. I knew I’d kept them from my life. Certain years I’d closed doors on them, as if it had been about preventing them from knowing that damaged part of me, the part that once, only they could have put right. I knew I’d hurt them with this distance, with this silence, and now they’d understand; but at what price?

I heard the door open behind me. Saw the shaft of light move left to right, then still. My parents appeared in front of me, bereft and inadequate. My mother sat next to me and took my hand.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

I shrugged. Even then I didn’t have the definitive answer.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was shy. And he was my friend. And I didn’t really know what to say.’

‘But what about after? When you were older?’

‘I got on with life. It’s what children do. And I became OK.’

‘But we never had a chance to look after you,’ my father said, ‘or to make it right.’

‘You’ve always made it right,’ I said. ‘Both of you. Things happen. To everyone. No one escapes.’

‘But it’s been hard,’ she said.

‘And I’ve done all right. Please, let’s not go back.’

‘But you have to let us,’ said my mother, and she reached for me under those covers and pulled back the years. And she enveloped me and took me out of that darkness, and for a brief moment in her arms, as time and memory receded, I faltered and we did go back. And it was right.

‘Can I swim?’ was all my brother had said. A question of possibility or safety, I couldn’t fathom which, but I dropped anchor and harnessed us to the sandy floor, a mere twenty feet below.

It was three weeks before Christmas and we’d been blessed with a day of freak sunshine that felt like the start of summer again, a day when the air was warm and unchallenged, and only the lack of bee sounds and leaves on trees placed us in the grip of a much later season. My brother felt the temperature – still in December’s icy grip – and his flesh pimpled as he peeled off the last layer of clothing.

‘Coming in?’ he said.

‘No, thanks,’ I said.

‘Charlie?’ he said, goading him with his eyes.

‘Maybe.’

He dived off the stern and we watched him glide just below the surface like the lone seals that often played along this stretch of coastline. He surfaced spitting sea water and laughter, and it was another first for him. The cold didn’t matter as the sensation gripped his body, another reminder of the return of life, a reminder for us to live. I hurriedly peeled off my clothes and beat Charlie to entry, and the cold took my breath away as I swam below into the sandy green depth, my eyes adjusting to the quiet lone world below. I remembered the first time I discovered this world – I must have been ten – eleven, maybe – and I wore a wet suit stuffed with rocks to weigh me down. Now as I sat on the rippled seabed, I looked up and was sure I saw their legs entwined above me. But the water could play tricks. Things distorted, things magnified; even hopes. My lungs felt tight – I was out of practice – and I swam eagerly to the shimmering line above my head and surfaced away from the boat. I saw them holding on to the rope that hung from the stern. I saw my brother place his hand over Charlie’s hand. I saw him reach towards his mouth and kiss him. I saw their future at last.

We were scattered about that afternoon, embroiled in tasks long kept on hold. My parents were inside creating a new on-line advertisement for their bed and breakfast, now that they felt ready again for guests. Nancy was sitting in a deck chair next to Nelson and me on the lawn, finishing off her screenplay about a Second World War bisexual double agent, which she’d casually entitled ‘Playing for Both Sides’. (A film that would actually go into pre-production the following year, but not, thank goodness, with its working title.) Charlie and Joe were at the bottom of the lawn by the water playing an extreme form of catch. They were throwing it as if it was a rugby ball and launched it high into the air, careful not to let it fall in case it should crack.

I didn’t know why they’d bought it in the first place, all they’d said was that they were cooking that night, cooking authentic Thai curry or something similar, and they needed it because it would make all the difference to the flavour, and so they bought it – the only one in the shop, of course – and now they were playing with it as if it was a rugby ball. It was Joe who threw it that final time, launched it high into the air, and Charlie knew it had gone too far, way before it had passed over his head, and he ran back just as Arthur unexpectedly came out of his cottage. It would have been all right if Arthur had stopped momentarily to tuck in his shirt as he usually did, or if he’d fumbled just that second longer, positioning his cane in front of him, or even if he’d just kept going. But he didn’t. He stopped, sensing something hovering above him, a bird maybe? And as he instinctively looked skywards, a shadow quickly descended upon his head and a smile formed upon his lips, until there was an almighty Crack! and Arthur lay motionless on the floor; a smashed coconut by his side.

Nancy and I got to him first and shouted that he wasn’t breathing. I saw Charlie fumble, look for a phone and then he ran inside. I felt for a pulse; nothing.

‘Try again!’ shouted Joe, running up the slope.

‘He’s dead,’ Nancy whispered to me.

‘Impossible. He can’t be. It should have happened ages ago.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Nancy.

‘This is all wrong.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The yogi ,’ I said.

‘What yogi ?’

Suddenly Joe ran over to us. ‘Count me,’ he said. ‘Let me know when I’ve done thirty,’ and we watched as he pumped and willed life back into the bony, unresponsive body. At thirty he bent down and breathed into his mouth, twice. Back up to the chest, thirty. Down to the mouth. Twice. No response.

‘Come on, Arthur,’ I said. ‘Don’t do this now.’

‘Come back to us, Arthur,’ said Nancy. ‘Fuck the yogi.’

Charlie ran out with my parents and took over as Joe sat down exhausted onto the lawn. I counted for Charlie. Thirty; down to the mouth; no response. The sound of an ambulance racing towards us. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

‘Come on, Arthur,’ said my mother. ‘Come on, you can do it.’

‘Come on, honey,’ said Nancy. ‘Breathe, damn it!’

And then all of a sudden, on twenty-seven, I think it was, Arthur coughed, or gasped for air; something that forced his body back to breath. He reached for my hand, and squeezed it frailly; but squeezed it. And just as the paramedics were running across the lawn he looked over at Joe and said, ‘Wipe those tears away, my boy. I’m not dead yet.’

I bent down towards him and said, ‘How did you know he was crying, Arthur?’

And he said, ‘I can see again.’

Everyone told me not to bother, but to wait. Said she’d be out sometime in the New Year. Should have been out before Christmas; I knew that, my father knew that, but the Powers That Be refused. And so I turned up that freezing Wednesday, even though I knew she wouldn’t see me – she never had, even after all these years. But I had to see it out, the pact we’d invisibly made, the one that said I am always here for you, communicated in letters and a newspaper column limping towards its finishing line, screaming for her return.