When God Was a Rabbit

Three weeks later she told me everything. It tumbled from her pen like a confession, but not one she was forced to write because there were both sides to this story; intention and undertaking, freedom and consequence, she hid nothing.

The months leading up to the act were written unpunctuated as if every blow and insult ran from one to the other without a pause or break until she ended up bloodied on the bathroom floor with a shower nozzle forced into her mouth, drowning. She would have done it then, she said, as he leant over, playing with the taps. But there was nothing close to hand and anyway her wrist was broken and it dropped uselessly at a right angle and so she stayed leaning over the bath until the assault had passed, the footsteps receded, and the front door slammed shut.

I put too much salt in the spaghetti bolognaise! That’s what she wrote; with an ironic exclamation mark. It had the power to break a heart.

She didn’t report him. Instead, that night, she dragged herself into the rain to a secluded and notorious alleyway and emptied the contents of her bag over the ground and then stumbled to a phone box to call the police. She had been mugged, she said. They took her to hospital and looked after her and yet she knew they didn’t believe her, because no one ever believed the catalogue of ‘mishaps’ that had befallen her third and fourth years of marriage – not even Linda, nor the neighbours, who hid their disbelief behind a stuttering veil of silence. And when he came to pick her up he wept and said he’d murder the bastard who’d done this to her, and that’s when she realised what she was going to do and that’s when it became nine years.

The night it happened he came home to a take-out meal rather than the beef stew she’d promised to make him, and it was a Chinese meal, something she liked more than he did, something she hadn’t dared to order in months, but she needed his rage, you see. She got it from one of the oldest restaurants in Liverpool, the Golden Lotus. It was her favourite restaurant, which made her favourite dish – prawns with chilli, garlic and ginger – one of the few things that gave her confidence, together with a nice cold glass of Soave. Although her bruises had almost subsided (it had been six weeks), there were still dark rings under her eyes that made her look pitiful and harmless, which was quite useful, she wrote. He sat down and said nothing. She put rice on his plate and asked about his day and he told her to shut up. She ate a prawn cracker and handed him a beer. He smashed it over her head.

She fell to the floor, taking with her a bowl, a plate, a vase of budded flowers and her chopsticks. (She never used a knife and fork because it was important for her to be authentic whenever she ate Chinese food.) But that’s why she’d used a chopstick: it was the only thing close to hand; a pointed, black metal one that had been part of an unrequested wedding gift. It was reflex, you see; he’d leant over her and spat and had forgotten to hold down her arms. She thought it was his shoulder at first. Only afterwards did she realise it was his heart she’d punctured fifteen times.

‘Here,’ I said to my father, giving him the letter. He put the saw to one side and sat down on an old armchair that was covered in wood shavings and dust. He felt around for his glasses in pockets crammed with everything but, until I pointed to his head and he felt for them and pulled them down over his eyes. Those were the sole moments that gave away his age; chinks in the armour of our eternal boy. I watched him read. His face was still, placid, as he read over the initial greetings. He hasn’t turned the page yet, I thought.

I went outside and freed myself from the smell of sawdust and grease, the smell of his workroom. I hung out down there as a child, watched him make things: the shed, the jetty, climbing frames for our neighbours, cupboards, shelves, and our table, of course. I used to think it was just as well he didn’t have a proper job, because he really was simply too busy making things. He used to give me solid cubes of wood that I would plane and sand smooth until they resembled pebbles, good enough to give. He taught me about the grains of wood, the textures, how oak was a pale brown wood whilst beech was sometimes reddish brown; how oak was coarse, and sycamore fine, and ash good for bending. My life was full of moments like that, moments I’d taken so wonderfully for granted. But Jenny Penny had never known her father. She’d never been around a man who’d taught her about wood or fishing, or joy.

‘Elly.’

My father called to me. I went in and sat on the arm of his chair. He handed me the folded letter and said nothing. I expected more: a sigh of disbelief, a wise comment, something; but instead he lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as if he’d seen the brutality of her life, rather than had read about it. I put my arm around him in case his thoughts had gone back to Jean Hargreaves, the ghost we all thought he’d laid to rest, but maybe never had.

‘She said she sent a V.O.?’ he said.

‘Yeah, for next Wednesday,’ I said.

‘Are you going?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good,’ he said, and he got up and leant on his worktable. A nail fell to the floor and sounded like a tiny distant chime. He bent down to pick it up – never knew when he might need it.

‘She might not—’ he started.

‘Can you help her?’ I said, interrupting him. ‘If we got the papers and stuff from her lawyer, if we knew more. Could you help her?’

‘We’ll see,’ he said.

His voice promised nothing.