When God Was a Rabbit

‘Two gin and tonics and a water for the fish,’ said my brother for the fifth time that evening. He was dressed as Liza Minnelli, and looked really pretty until you saw that he hadn’t shaved, either his face or his legs. When we left the house both my mother and father had shed a tear as their beloved son walked out into the cold night air dressed as a daughter, unsure as to what he might return as. That, my father would later say, was one of the unexpected gifts of parenthood.

By the time we got our drinks Arthur had secured the best seats in front of the fire by cleverly feigning illness. My brother moved my seat a little further back from the hearth, reminding me that I was still flammable and that it would be really embarrassing if I caught fire. It was about this time, I think, that I spotted the Womble in the corner watching us. He had been following us earlier because I saw him in the Jolly Sailor, where he’d had an altercation with a dog (a real one). He was standing alone next to the clock and it said half-past eleven.

Arthur nudged my brother and said, ‘Womble, ten o’clock,’ and before I could say no it’s not, it’s half-past eleven, the Womble made his way over to us.

‘Hi,’ said my brother, ‘I’m Liza and this is Fish.’

I raised my fin and stifled a yawn behind my papier-mâché head, which was suddenly feeling very heavy.

‘And I’m Freddie Mercury,’ said Arthur, nervously securing his moustache.

‘I’m Orinoco,’ said Orinoco in a very deep voice; a voice that, had it really belonged to a Womble, would have frightened small children and would never have made them the popular creatures they became.

His name was Paul, I think, and he was from Manchester. When he took off his head, he had short brown hair – or maybe it was long; I can’t really remember – but all I knew was that the energy of our wonderful evening suddenly changed and he was the cause. I tried to stay awake, tried to hear their whispered banter, the jokes they steered away from me, but it was useless; I wasn’t part of them any more and my eyes started to close before the opening bars of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ gathered up the drunken, rolling voices. The worry about Jenny Penny, the glass of champagne, the subsequent sips of clandestine booze had ambushed my young mind and I couldn’t remember anything after that; not the journey home, or Arthur leading me through the front door into my mother’s arms. I didn’t remember Ginger tap dancing on the flagstones, or Arthur telling the rude story about Princess Margaret. All I did remember was my father kissing me good night and saying, ‘Have a wonderful year, Elly.’

I woke up four hours later, hungry and wide awake. The house still felt warm as I crept downstairs. I saw empty bottles and streamers strewn around the living room; Ginger’s shoes and her feather boa snuggled in a chair. I went into the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of water and went to the cupboard for a piece of Madeira cake. And as I put the glass onto the draining board, I looked through the window and saw the hazy shape of my brother running into the forest, followed at the tree line by a haggard shadow. It must have been my brother because he still had on his patent heels and his wig, and both caught the light from the moon. I stuffed the remainder of the cake into my mouth, put on my mother’s jumper and boots, and crept out into the cold, new January air.

I picked up a stick and ran as hard as I could to the edge of the forest. I stumbled twice until my eyes adjusted to the darkness, until I could again follow the sounds of breaking twigs up ahead. I wasn’t scared, felt emboldened by my imagined role as protector, and I raced ahead, dodging the low branches of naked shrubs. The sounds of giggling were to my left, beyond a cluster of heavy oaks and when I came to their wide trunks, I crouched down and carefully parted a clump of ailing ferns. And then promptly threw up.

I sat on my bed and looked over at the Womble perched on the dressing table. It had come with me from my other life, a present from Jenny Penny for my seventh birthday. She had given it to me at the end of my party, when the guests and the cake had all gone, and she’d said, ‘This is the best present you’ve ever been given. And I’ve given it to you.’

Now as I looked at it I no longer thought of her or the wrapping paper she made, or the poem attached to its scarf, entitled ‘Best Friends’; no, I now thought of my brother on his hands and knees blurred in the forest dark with the unmistakable shape of a children’s toy thrusting behind him; its deep Northern voice saying, ‘Happy New Year, Joe. Happy New Year, ugh, ugh, ugh.’

I got up and put the toy in an old plastic bag, which still smelt of onions, and placed it at the bottom of a cupboard with all my old shoes. The following week I would take it to a charity shop, where it would sit in the window between a battered copy of Jaws and a tarnished silver toast rack. It would sit there for weeks. Retribution of sorts.

I never told my brother what I saw that night, not until years later, anyway, when we were sitting by the jetty as adults with adult lives. And he wouldn’t remember that night, like so many others he wouldn’t remember, and when I told him he buried his head in his hands and laughed and simply said, ‘What’s a fucking Womble?’

And I never did hear from Jenny Penny to say she was safe. Never received the call or the letter to say where she was or why they’d left, or what she was doing now. I called her old number not long after she disappeared and a man had answered and shouted at me and I hung up, scared. Wondered what he might have done.

Then another time, about a year later, I sat quietly on my bed and thought about her, attempting to mend that telepathic bridge that had fallen in her wake, and as the room stilled and the sun shifted beyond the trees, numbers appeared behind my eyes, the order deliberate and significant, the numbers constantly repeating. It was her, I was sure. My hands shook as I picked up the phone. I dialled the numbers and waited for her voice. It never came. Instead I heard a woman ask, ‘Golden Lotus. What is your order, please?’ It was a Chinese takeaway restaurant in Liverpool; a place that would actually have tentative relevance years later.

I simply had to accept that she’d been swallowed by that New Year and I had to let her go. But every anniversary I heard her harried breath whispering, ‘I’ll let you know when I get there. Bye, Elly. I’ll let you know.’

I missed her. I would always miss her. I often wondered how it would have been if we could have experienced the coming years together. What would have been different? Could I have changed what happened to her? We were the guardians of a secret world; a lonely world without the other. For years I would flounder without her.