When God Was a Rabbit

I waited in line for the gates to open, surrounded by excited chattering families about to see a mum, a sister, a daughter, a wife. It was cool in the shade, and instinctively I blew on my hands, as much as for my nerves as for the initial feelings of cold I’d felt, and yet no longer did.

‘Cigarette?’ said a voice from behind.

I turned and smiled into the face of a woman.

‘No I’m fine – thanks, though,’ I said.

‘First time?’ she asked.

‘That obvious?’ I said.

‘I can always tell,’ she said, lighting her cigarette and smiling at the same time; an action that turned her mouth into a lopsided grimace. ‘You’ll be all right,’ she added, looking towards the gates.

‘Yeah,’ I said without any conviction, not really knowing if I would be or not.

‘Have you been coming here long?’ I said, regretting the line as soon as it had left my mouth, but she was kind and laughed, and knew what I meant.

‘Five years. She should be out next month.’

‘That’s great,’ I said.

‘It’s me sister.’

‘OK.’

‘I’ve got her kid.’

‘That’s tough.’

‘Happens,’ she said. ‘Which of yours is in?’

‘Friend.’

‘How long?’

‘Nine,’ I said, suddenly getting used to the clipped edit of this conversation.

‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘Serious.’

‘I s’pose.’

A child suddenly shouted and ran forward as the gates opened up.

‘Well, here we go,’ she said, taking a last drag on her cigarette before flicking it to the floor. The child ran back and stamped on it as if it was an ant.

‘Good luck, eh?’ she said as we started to move forwards.

‘You too,’ I said, suddenly nervous again.

I’d been searched before, of course – airports, stations, theatres, places like that – but this time felt different. Two months before, the IRA had started bombing again – once in the Docklands and then on a bus in the Aldwych. Everyone was jittery.

The officer went through the little bag of measly items I’d brought for Jenny Penny, those memories from outside, and laid each one out on the table as if they were for sale: stamps, CDs, a nice face cream, a deodorant and a cake, magazines and a writing pad. I could have amassed more, I could have kept going, believing such acquisitions would make her room feel bigger, would make her days seem shorter, would make her reality seem more bearable. The officer told me there would be no kissing and I blushed, even though the normality of such a statement had been a constant throughout my life. I placed the items back into their bag as he called the next person over.

I went through into the visitors’ hall where the air was still and remote, as if it too was living its own cloistered sentence, and I sat at my allotted table, which was number fifteen, and which gave me a good view of the rest of the room.

The woman I’d spoken to in the queue was near the front talking to a man at the adjacent table, adding to the low hum of expectant chatter. I bent down to my bag to pull out a newspaper and as I did, I missed the arrival of the first inmates. They came out in normal clothes, ambling and waving towards their friends and families, and their voices rose as normal, as normal greetings took place. I looked towards the door at the faces coming in. The thought that I probably wouldn’t recognise her suddenly became real. Why should I? I had no photograph and people change; I’d changed. What was the discernible characteristic I remembered of her as a child? Her hair, of course, but what if she’d cut it – dyed it, even – what was left? What colour were her eyes? What was now her height? What was the sound of her laugh; I had no recollection of her smile. As an adult she was a stranger.

I was used to waiting for her. As a child I’d waited for her all the time, but it never annoyed me because I didn’t have the one thing that unfailingly stole hours from her life.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she used to say. ‘It was my hair again.’

And she spoke of it as if it was an affliction like asthma or a limp or a problem heart, one that slowed her down. I’d once waited two hours for her at the recreation park, only to bump into her on my way home.

‘You won’t believe what just happened,’ she said crying uncontrollably.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I had to brush my hair twenty-seven times before it would tie up properly,’ she said, shaking her head. And I instinctively put my arms around her as if she was hurt, or worse – had been dealt the cruellest possible hand that life could deal – and she clung on hard to me, stayed like that for minutes, until she felt the safety again of our uncompromised world and she pulled away and smiled and said, ‘Don’t ever leave me, Elly.’

A woman came through the door by herself. Most of the tables were deep in conversation; only mine and one other were still waiting. Her hair was quite short and wavy and she looked in my direction and I smiled. She couldn’t have seen me. She was tall, slim, thin even, and her shoulders hunched forwards deflating her chest, causing her to stoop, ageing her by years. I didn’t think it was her, but as I studied her movements I started to read into her face features that might once have been familiar, and could even be now. And then as she came towards me I stood up as if she was joining me for dinner, but she walked past to the table of two behind and said, ‘How ya doin’, Mum?’

‘You look well, Jacqui. Doesn’t she, Beth?’

‘Yeah, she looks good.’

‘Thanks. How’s Dad?’

‘Still the same.’

‘Pain in the arse. Sends his love.’

‘Send mine back.’

It happened quite suddenly, the moment I knew she wasn’t coming. I heard her voice amidst the hundred others in that sealed room, and I heard her say, ‘Sorry, Elly, I can’t.’ It happened before the prison officer came towards me, before he bent down and whispered in my ear, before everyone in the room stopped to look at me.

It was the same feeling I’d had when I’d been stood up for the last time, when his rejection sent a spiral of self-disgust coiling itself around my brittle self-image. I’d tried to become what he’d wanted me to become, which was impossible because what he wanted was someone else. But I still tried in my tired, misjudged way. And I waited for him. Waited until the bar emptied, until the staff headed wearily towards the exit; waited until his absence lodged itself in my heart and became confirmation of what I’d always known.

I got up with half an hour to go and made for the exit, conspicuous in my embarrassment. I dropped one of the bags and heard the face cream smash but I didn’t care because it didn’t matter any more, because I’d dump it in the bin at the station.

The train journey back felt tedious and slow. I was tired of eavesdropping. I was tired of the constant stops at the villagelike stations ‘just a stone’s throw from London with the benefit of countryside’. I was tired of thinking about her.

The taxi across Waterloo Bridge revived me as it always did, and I relaxed as I looked east and took in the familiar sights of St Paul’s and St Bride’s and the disparate towers of Docklands glinting in the early evening sun. Commuters walked; buses were unnecessary. The old moored steamers were packed with drinkers, and the cool breeze that whispered through the city flicked the surface of the Thames, scattering sunlight as white and as piercing as ice.

We passed the Aldwych, the Royal Courts of Justice and headed down Fleet Street, where I had lived during my studies. There was nothing there then, very little now, (the cafés would come later), and I used to have to walk to a shop on the Strand if I needed late-night snacks or that forgotten pint of milk. As we drove level to Bouverie Street I looked towards the river and saw the imposing building at the bottom on the right, near to the old Daily Mail works.

There were seven of us then, scattered in tiny rooms on the two uppermost floors: actors and writers, artists and musicians. We were a hidden ghetto away from the lives lived among the legal offices below. We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, and uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn’t keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had.

I opened the balcony doors and looked out over the square. The sense of freedom and privilege the view offered was unimaginable in its calm and beauty, and never more so that evening. I undid my shirt. I’d felt dirty all day but now preferred a martini to taking a shower. Why hadn’t she come? Why at the last moment had she faltered? Was it me? Had I asked too much of her? My disappointment was raw, as if she held the key to something unnamed, something vital.

I sat down and rolled the olive around the edge of the glass. Music from next door rose up and soared across the square, taking my thoughts with it; leading me once again to childhood rooms and rediscovered faces and games and jokes we once found funny.

I thought back to the Christmas she’d spent with us; her fierce belief in the strange declaration that left us sleepless the long night that followed. I saw her again on the beach, walking on the surface of the water in the moonlight, her hair wild and uncompromising in the briny squalls, her ears deaf to my pleas.

‘Look at me!’ she shouted, arms wide at her side. ‘Look what I can do, Elly!’ before she disappeared down into the dark sea, not struggling but calm against the billowing waves, and only emerging at the heaving pull of my brother’s determined arms.

‘What the fuck are you doing, Jenny?’ he screamed, as he dragged her limp, smiling body through the surf, across the shingle. ‘You fucking little idiot! We’re all out looking for you, worried about you. How dare you? You could have drowned out there.’

‘I was never in any danger,’ she said calmly. ‘Nothing can ever hurt me. Nothing can take me from me.’

And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced it with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.

She never explained what happened, why she didn’t show, and I never pushed; instead she disappeared for weeks, leaving my letters, my concern, unanswered. And then as June approached, her reappearance was heralded by a familiar scrawl across a familiar envelope, inside of which was a familiar hand-made card, this time with a solitary rabbit on the front.

I’m sorry Elly, she wrote in her minuscule cut-out lettering. Be patient with me. I’m Sorry.