When God Was a Rabbit

June moved idly into July. The sun was high and burning and would be for another four hours, and I’d wished I’d worn my hat: the white hand-me-down cricket hat that Charlie had given me last month. I knew I was late and ran up the road panting for breath. I felt a trickle of sweat run down my back and imagined it cool rather than hot and clammy. I put my hand in my pocket and silenced the clinking coins, soon to be exchanged for an icicle or two.

I’d just got back after escorting Jenny Penny home from the recreation ground where she’d tripped and got her hair caught in a fence. A large clump hung down like sheep wool and she’d screamed in distress. She was convinced she was bald but I told her a lot more would have to come out before she could use an adjective like that, and this calmed her for ten minutes until she fell howling into her mother’s arms.

I turned the corner and ran towards the bus stop where my brother was standing and pointing at his watch.

‘You’re late,’ he said.

‘I know. But Jenny Penny almost died,’ I said.

‘Here’s the bus,’ he said, uninterested in my life, and stretched out his arm to stop the chugging 179.

We sat upstairs. I wanted to sit in the front and he wanted to sit in the back and we sat separately until we got to Charlie Brown’s roundabout, where I conceded defeat and went back amidst the stained seats and cigarette butts that had become the fantasy of every school child’s life. ‘Andy 4 Lisa’, ‘Georges a fat pig’, ‘Mike’s got a nice cock’. My reading was succinct and brief, and I wondered who George and Mike and who Lisa were, and whether Andy still liked her.

I stood up and positioned my face next to the sliver of open window. The air was still and uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable. My brother was biting his nails again. He’d stopped for a bit during his happy phase, but now he’d started again. It was an action he should have outgrown, and whether it was out of nerves or comfort he still relied upon it and it made him look unnecessarily young. He hadn’t seen Charlie for a week. Charlie had taken time off school, but he wasn’t ill and he couldn’t talk about it, but he would tell my brother everything later. And here we were later, and I felt sorry for my brother but I didn’t know why yet.

By the time we got off the bus a breeze had picked up and made us more hopeful, and we laughed as we walked down the tree-lined streets with their low hum of mowers and sprinkler systems that flicked water over us, the passers-by. And then we saw it: the large removal van parked outside the house. We slowed down, delaying the truth, and I asked my brother for the time, trying to make him happy, but he ignored me and I understood why. The sun was hot; an irritant. So was I.

We stood and watched familiar items loaded into the van; the small silver television from Charlie’s room, his skis, the large free-standing dresser he said was mahogany and came from France. My brother gripped my hand.

‘Maybe he’s moving nearer to us,’ he said, forcing a smile. I could say nothing. Suddenly Charlie came out of his house and ran over to us as exhilarated as ever.

‘We’re leaving!’ he said excitedly.

‘What do you mean?’ my brother said.

‘My dad and I are going to Dubai. I’m already enrolled in school there,’ he said, looking at me rather than at my brother.

I said nothing.

‘He’s got a new contract; new country; we’ve got no choice.’

‘You could have come and stayed with us,’ I said.

‘When are you going?’ my brother said, pulling his fingers out of his mouth.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Charlie.

‘That’s quick,’ I said, my stomach starting to clench.

‘Not really. I’ve known about it for weeks.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ said my brother quietly.

‘Didn’t seem important.’

‘I’ll miss you,’ said my brother.

‘Yeah,’ said Charlie, turning away.

‘It’s really hot there, you know,’ he added.

‘It’s really hot here,’ said my brother.

‘We’re going to have servants,’ said Charlie.

‘What for?’ I asked.

‘I could come with you,’ said my brother, and Charlie burst into laughter.

Two men carried a large leather armchair in front of us and noisily positioned it in the back of the van next to a large silver planter.

‘Why did you laugh at me?’ said my brother.

‘He could go with you,’ I said, reaching up for my brother’s hand, ‘if you wanted him to. All it would take was a phone call.’

‘I’ll ask my dad and maybe you can come and visit me one day. How about that?’ said Charlie, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Fuck off,’ said my brother. ‘I’d rather die.’ And he swiftly turned to leave.

We strode up the road, the pace too fast in the murmuring heat, and I couldn’t make out if it was sweat or something else coursing down my brother’s face, but soon he was way ahead of me and my tired legs refused the fight, and instead I dropped my pace and sat on a wet wall, sprinkled intermittently by a flickering hose. I was expecting to hear a knock on the window, an angrily motioned hand waving me off this private wall, but I didn’t; I heard his footsteps running towards me, and I didn’t look up because I didn’t care, because I hated him and I hated his desertion. He sat down next to me.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie.

‘Then go away,’ I said. ‘You’re an idiot an idiot an idiot an idiot.’

‘Elly, come on.’

‘Idiot.’

‘Just wanted to say goodbye properly, that’s all,’ he said, and I turned round and punched him hard.

‘Goodbye,’ I said.

‘Ow, fuck, Elly! What did you do that for?’ he said, rubbing his shoulder.

‘If you don’t know then you’re stupider than you look,’ and I punched him hard again in the same place.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’

‘Because you shouldn’t have done that to him.’

‘I had to be careful,’ he said. ‘My dad, you see. He keeps watching me, he’s really weird. Tell him that for me. Tell him . . . something nice.’

‘Fuck off and tell him yourself,’ I said, and started up the hill, suddenly revived, suddenly powerful; suddenly changed.

Had my parents ceased for one glorious moment, to stop and be still in the silence, they would have heard the sound of my brother’s heart break in two. But they heard nothing except the sound of the Cornish waves and birdsong that were to fill their lives and ours to come. It was left to Nancy and me to pick up the pieces that my brother had become; to resurrect his shrunken spirit and pull his pale tear-stained face from beneath his pillow and give sense to a world that had given him none: he loved, yet wasn’t loved back. Even Nancy had no words of comfort or explanation. This was part of life and she was sorry that the realisation had hit him so young.

We stayed with her at Charterhouse Square as the cavernous summer holidays opened up, and she kept us busy with continual visits to museums and art galleries and cafés, and gradually his lack of interest in everything except his wounded self started to wane, and he tentatively emerged, squinting into the late July sunshine, opting to give life one more chance.

‘When did you know?’ he asked her as we walked along the Thames, heading towards the South Bank complex and an old black-and-white film.

‘A bit older than you, I suppose. Sixteen? I’m not sure really. I knew early on what I didn’t want, and I got a lot of what I didn’t want, so my choice became easy.’

‘But it’s not easy, is it?’ he said. ‘It stinks. All that hiding and shit.’

‘Then don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t hide.’

‘Sometimes I wish I was like everyone else,’ he said, and Nancy stopped in front of him and laughed.

‘No you don’t! You’d hate being like everyone else. Don’t kid yourself, sunshine – being gay’s your salvation and you know it.’

‘Bollocks,’ he said, trying to stifle a smile. He unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and checked out the dark-haired man who passed in front of him.

‘Saw you,’ I said, nudging him with my elbow.

He ignored me.

‘I saw him look, Nancy. At that man there.’

‘Shutup,’ he said and walked on, hands stuffed in too-tight jeans, the ones my mum said would make him sterile.

‘So, has your heart ever got broken?’ he added nonchalantly.

‘Oh God, YES!’ said Nancy.

‘Her name was Lilly Moss, actually,’ I said, finally able to interrupt their conversation, ‘the main one, that is. Everyone knows that story, Joe. She two-timed Nancy and tried to take her for all she was worth. Didn’t get away with it, though, did she, Nancy?’

‘No she didn’t,’ said Nancy, ‘although she did get away with a rather expensive diamond necklace, if I remember rightly.’

‘I’m never going to fall in love with anyone again,’ my brother declared robustly, and Nancy smiled and put her arm around him.

‘Never’s a long time, Joe. Bet you won’t make it.’

‘Bet I will. How much?’ he said.

‘Tenner,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ he said, and they shook hands, and Nancy walked on, safe in the knowledge that the ten-pound note would one day be hers.