Winman, Sarah: When God Was a Rabbit

Nancy was at the bar ordering a beer and a lemonade when a young woman, soaked to the skin, barrelled through the door, and headed over to where she was standing. Nancy was transfixed. She watched the young woman order a Scotch, watched her down it in one. Watched her light a cigarette. Smile.

They were soon in conversation. Nancy learnt that the woman’s name was Kate, and her pulse flared at the solid sound of her name. She was in her second year, studying English, and had just finished with a boyfriend the previous week – bit of a dullard, she said – and she laughed and threw her head back, revealing the soft down of her neck. Nancy gripped the bar and blushed as the sudden weakness in her legs moved north. And that was the exact moment she decided that if she couldn’t have this woman, then her brother should.

‘Alfie!’ she screamed. ‘Come here and meet someone really nice!’

And so it was Nancy who did the courting for my father during his final break from university. It was Nancy who delivered the flowers to my mother, Nancy who made the phone calls and Nancy who made the reservations for the clandestine dinners. And finally it was Nancy who wrote the poems that my father never knew about, the ones that made my mother fall in love with him and ‘reveal’ the hidden depths to his oft stagnant emotions. By the time the new term started, my father and mother were head over heels in love, and Nancy was a confused fifteen year old limping away on the uneven surface of a bruised heart.

‘Is she still in love with her?’ I asked.

My brother sighed. ‘Who knows?’

‘Good morning,’ said Nancy, opening her eyes to the dull November morn.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘What’s up?’ she said, rolling over and meeting my face.

‘It’s the auditions today,’ I said to her quietly, placing my red and blue school tie over my head.

‘What auditions?’ she said, quickly sitting up.

‘For the Nativity play,’ I said.

‘I didn’t know you were interested in that.’

‘I wasn’t, but Jenny Penny persuaded me.’

‘What part are you going up for?’ Nancy asked.

‘Mary, Joseph, the usual,’ I said. ‘The lead .’ (Omitting baby Jesus since it was a nonspeaking part and also I didn’t know if I’d been forgiven for saying he was a mistake.)

‘What do you have to do in the audition?’ she asked.

‘Just stand there,’ I said.

‘Nothing more?’

‘Nope,’ I said.

‘You sure?’

‘Yes, Jenny Penny said so,’ I said. ‘She said they can tell star quality just by that. She said it’s in my jeans.’

‘OK then. Well, good luck, angel,’ she said, leant across to her bedside table and opened the drawer.

‘Take these,’ she said. ‘For luck. They exude star quality and always work for me.’

I’d never heard her use the word exude before. I would use it later that day.

I walked briskly to the end of the road where a large privet hedge had made its home. It was where I always met Jenny Penny to walk to school; we never met at her house because it was difficult at her house, something to do with her mum’s new boyfriend. She got on OK with him, she said, when her mum was there. But her mum wasn’t always there, you see; she was often at funerals now, a new hobby that she had recently embraced. I guessed her mum simply liked to cry.

‘Laughing? Crying? It’s all the same really, isn’t it?’ said Jenny Penny.

I didn’t think it was but I didn’t say anything. Even then I knew her world was different from mine.

I looked up the road and saw Jenny Penny running towards me with a shimmering line of moisture hanging off her plump upper lip.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said.

She was always late because she had unmanageable hair.

‘That’s all right,’ I said.

‘They’re nice glasses,’ she said. ‘Did you get them from Nancy?’

‘I did,’ I said proudly. ‘She wears them at premieres.’

‘I thought so,’ said Jenny.

‘They don’t look too big?’ I ventured.

‘No, they don’t,’ she said. ‘But they’re really dark. Can you see all right?’

‘Of course I can,’ I said, lying, having just missed a lamppost but not unfortunately the curl of dog turd that was positioned at its base. It coated the underside of my shoe like grease and its sour smell lounged around in my nostrils.

‘What’s that smell?’ asked Jenny, looking around.

‘Winter drawing in,’ I said with a heavy sigh, and I grabbed her arm and we marched towards the safety of the black iron gates.

In hindsight, I probably should have taken the glasses off for my audition, because I stumbled towards the school assembly hall like an old seer.

‘Sure you’re OK?’ said the prefect, leading me by the arm.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I said as I tripped over his shoe. The large doors opened and Jenny Penny ran out.

‘How’d it go?’ I asked eagerly.

‘Great,’ she said, giving me the thumbs up.

‘What part did they give you?’ I whispered.

‘The octopus. Nonspeaking,’ she said. ‘What I wanted.’

‘I didn’t know there was an octopus,’ I said.

‘There’s not,’ she said. ‘They asked me to be a camel. But with all the animals marching in two by two, there must have been an octopus.’

‘That’s Noah’s Ark,’ I said.

‘Same thing. Still the Bible,’ she said. ‘They’ll never know the difference.’

‘Probably not,’ I said, trying to be supportive.

‘I’m making the costume myself,’ she said, and I suddenly felt nervous.

As I walked into the great hall, I could barely make out the five faces seated behind the desk; but there was one face that cut through the blackness like the all-seeing eye of Horus: my old teacher, Miss Grogney. The Nativity play was her ‘baby’ and she boasted that she had written it all by herself; strangely omitting any mention of either Matthew or Luke.

‘Eleanor Maud?’ said a man’s voice.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Are your eyes OK?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, nervously adjusting the frames on my face.

‘Don’t fidget,’ shouted Miss Grogney, and I waited for her to add, You blasphemer .

‘What do you have for us?’ asked the man.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Your audition piece,’ said Miss Grogney.

Panic gripped my unprepared being.

‘Well?’ said Miss Grogney. ‘Hurry up.’

I moved slowly to the front of the stage, words floating in and out of my mind, some lucid, many random, until a group huddled together and I recognised the coherent rhythmic pattern. I couldn’t remember it all, but it was one of Nancy’s favourite speeches and I’d heard her practise it as religiously as a scale. I didn’t understand it all, but maybe they would and I coughed and said, ‘It’s from the film The Covenant 1and I’m the character Jackie and I’m ready.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Miss Grogney.

I took a deep breath and opened my arms.

‘I know you won’t pay for the shoes or even the dress. But what about the abortion, godammit! At least give me money for a bottle of gin.’

‘That’s enough!’ screamed Miss Grogney, and she pointed her finger at me. ‘You. Wait .’

I stood in my self-imposed darkness and watched them huddle together and whisper. I heard them say, ‘ Interesting ’. I heard them say, ‘ Great idea ’. But what I didn’t hear them say was Mary or Joseph .

That night, my mother carried in her favourite casserole dish and placed it, steaming, onto the table. The kitchen was dark and candles flickered on every surface.