When God Was a Rabbit

The last August of the millennium drew upon us and my father suddenly cancelled all reservations and refused all bookings, and instead left our house empty and yawning and waiting, in preparation for us, his family. It was the first time we would all be together since the scattering of Ginger’s ashes, and it was an action so out of character for this man who flourished in the presence of guests that my mother found herself constantly monitoring his every move in case he should once again plummet to those unknown depths, where he would become a mere trophy to the power of the unresolved.

And yet it was simply excitement that had gripped him, nothing more sinister; the same excitement that had him wake us up as children in the middle of the night to watch his favourite film, a Western usually, or to watch Muhammad Ali box into legend in our sleepy minds. His excitement was the taper that ignited our sluggish souls, and drew us all towards him that summer; that summer when the light went out.

Joe flew over with Charlie on the red-eye and I met them at Paddington station, where we performed a ten-minute turnaround to catch the nine o’clock train to Penzance.

We dozed intermittently, fuelled by a passing buffet trolley. The boys started on beer as the coastline met the tracks, and I watched them – intrusively, I felt – for signs of burgeoning love, for signs of a commitment to a shared future. But the paralysis that had taken hold the moment of their reunion still remained, and they shared nothing – no home, no dreams, no bed – nothing, except the can of lukewarm beer now traversing the table. My longing was left unresolved; my meddling heart again dissatisfied.

Alan was waiting for us at Liskeard, as usual. But when he came down the slope with hands outstretched for handshakes and bags, I could tell he was different; the robust joviality was gone, his eyes heavy and dull. And as he was pulled towards my brother’s chest and embraced in a tight unforgiving clasp, he didn’t blush or pull away as he normally did, but offered himself up to the safe warmth of another’s hold.

‘All right, boys?’ he said as he took their bags and placed them in the boot.

‘Yeah,’ they said. ‘You?’

No answer.

We weaved through the familiar lanes with their tightly banked hedges and scattering colour of yellows and blues, and faintly tinged pinks, and we stopped and reversed more than usual as holiday-makers panicked in the face of an oncoming car. We passed the monkey sanctuary where years ago I saw an unprovoked attack on a man’s wig. And then as we turned onto the main road, Alan quietly reached for one of his fabled CDs, blew on its underbelly before slipping it seductively into his new state-of-the-art CD player, the one my father had bought as a surprise last Christmas.

It was a song about a depressed man and his longing for a girl and her selfless love. We joined in as the second line began, and captured the mood – the anguished tone – in a frenzy of descant; and even the hairs on Alan’s forearms rose, in, what I believed to be at the time, indescribable pleasure.

It was at the point, however, just after Mandy came, of course, and gave without taking, that Alan suddenly turned the music off. He said we were ruining it for him and he didn’t speak to us for the rest of the journey.

(My father later told us that there was trouble in Alan’s marriage, or rather he’d brought trouble into his marriage in the form of a foxy little hairstylist from Millendreath. Her name was Mandi.)

They waited for us at the top of the driveway, all four of them, like a motley picket line, holding tall glasses and a jug of Pimm’s instead of placards and banners, and sharing a roll-up cigarette, which at first we thought was a spliff, but soon realised it couldn’t be because my mother still had her top on.

‘What kind of shoddy welcome is this?’ said my brother as he jumped out of the car, and everybody laughed as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world, as if that roll-up cigarette had actually been a spliff.

We tried to persuade Alan to follow us down to the house for drinks but he wouldn’t, he just wanted to unload the bags and sulk. He drove back up the slope with the music blaring, and crunched into third gear a little too quickly and immediately stalled. In the heavy silence that surrounded him, the music echoed through the trees, pitiful and forlorn, wailing like an illdisguised omen. Oh Mandy.

Oh Alan, I thought.

I strode down to the jetty alone, disturbing a heron quietly lazing on the bank in the afternoon sun. I watched him take flight, groggy and lethargic, low over the water. I looked back up to the house and saw my mother framed in an upstairs window, preparing the rooms as she always did. And I remembered again the house as I first saw it as a nine year old, with its off-white peeling façade like a tatty crown on an uncared-for tooth, shadowed by ragged trees, and grieving the frail ruin at its side. I remembered again the sense of adventure that flooded my thoughts, the breathlessness of the what-ifs, the connection, the infinite connection to a horizon that reached beyond and whispered, Follow, follow, follow.

I sat down on the grass, lay down until my back was wet, uncomfortable and wet, and the aching gratitude that burnt my eyes had rolled away. I’d been feeling like this for a while, the continual looking back, the stuckness of it all. I blamed it on the coming New Year, only four and a half months away, when the clocks would read zero and we would start again, could start again, but I knew we wouldn’t. Nothing would. The world would be the same, just a little bit worse.

My mother leant out of the window and waved; she blew kisses to me. I blew kisses back. She was about to embark on an MA, the secret dream that had so recently found voice, and she no longer saw Mr A and the contents of his wayward mind. Three months before, he’d fallen in love with a holiday-maker from Beaconsfield and had stopped his sessions immediately, giving credence to the myth that love cures everything (except perhaps the settlement of an outstanding bill).

I stood up and ran back up the lawn towards the house and that upstairs room where I would shake the pillows and smooth the sheets and fill the jugs and arrange the flowers, and all just to be with her; to be with her with the something I could never tell her.