Black Rabbit Hall (12 page)

‘Amber,’ Toby says, after a while, knocking his knee against mine to grab my attention. He lowers his voice: ‘Do you think it really is business?’

I turn to look at him, suddenly uneasy, unsure why. ‘What?’

He frowns, his eyes flecking a dangerous gold. ‘Daddy being in Paris.’

‘Well, what else would it be?’

Christmas Eve, 1968

‘Breathe in!’ Peggy puffs, as she knits the hooks and eyes up my spine.

‘This dress is far too small.’

‘You’ll fit. Lucky thing. I’d kill for a figure like yours.’ She swivels me around to face her. Her cheeks are still a lively pink from the village dance the night before, hair prettily curled, traces of lipstick on the outer edge of her mouth, all suggesting the improbable idea that she actually has a life outside this one. ‘Lovely.’

‘I hate yellow, Peggy. I look like a daffodil.’ I immediately think of the daffodil posy in Momma’s dead white hands as she lay on her bed.

‘Well, nothing wrong with a daff. The colour sets off your hair. There. Pretty as a picture. What a difference a nice dress makes. Don’t look at me like that. If you think I’m going to let you all run around half naked like you did in the summer, you’re very much mistaken. Oh, someone’s moulting.’ She brushes fine red hairs off my arm. I visited Momma’s wardrobe this morning, wrapped myself up in her fox-trimmed coat. ‘That’s better.’

‘My plait is too tight.’ I pull at the French plait stitched to my scalp, trying to loosen it. Boris looks up at me sympathetically.

‘Too tight! Too loose!’ mutters Peggy, beneath her breath. She was at the ‘end of my tether’ two hours ago, so I don’t know where she is now.

‘You seem to have forgotten I’m fifteen years old. Not five. I don’t even wear my hair in plaits to go to school now, Peggy.’

‘Amber …’ She suddenly looks very tired and baggy-faced. ‘Your dad will want to show you all off to his smart London friends, you know that.’

I scowl, freshly enraged that he’s invited another two families to share Christmas with us, especially other children, a boy of about Toby’s and my age apparently. We want Daddy to ourselves. We want ourselves to ourselves.

‘I’m not going to ruin it by presenting him with a huddle of ragamuffins, am I? The plait stays.’

Eight months since Momma walked out of the kitchen in her riding boots to her death. Things she’s missed already: her favourite baby-pink clematis blooming on the garden wall; small sweet strawberries from the kitchen garden; the leaves in the woods crisping gold; her wedding anniversary surprise, a week in Venice; Bonfire Night in Regent’s Park, the air scorched with gunpowder and smoke and wet, singed wool; Thanksgiving with American friends in her Kensington club, coming home smelling of cigarettes and other ladies’ scent; the Oxford Street lights; Harrods; dancing; Christmas Eve.

Except it doesn’t feel like Christmas Eve. When we woke up this morning there were none of the trails of ivy that Momma loved to thread between the banister posts, no freshly cut holly in bell jars, no slings of paper chains we’d all made together on the dining table. In fact, this
year Peggy has barely used the old family decorations at all – ‘Dusty and musty,’ she groaned, sniffing the boxes from the cellars – and has bought new ones ‘to cheer everyone up’ from St Austell, shiny red and green baubles, snakes of thin tinsel in gold and purple, and new lights, which flicker on and off, then pop dead.

There is a giant stack of presents under the swaying, enormous tree in the hall – a gift from the villagers because everyone feels sorry for us. And the smells are almost the same – pine needles, woodsmoke, pastry – but not quite because Momma’s candles aren’t burning. Peggy prefers the electric lights. So it doesn’t smell right. It doesn’t smell right at all.

For the sake of Barney and Kitty (and, secretly, Toby, even though he says he couldn’t care less), I tried to make some Christmassy things this morning, like Momma used to do. I found some old white tissue paper – the stuff Daddy uses to pack his suits – and got the younger ones to screw it into balls, coat the balls in glue, roll them in glitter and hang them up above the fireplace in the hall. They look silly – like balls of screwed-up paper dunked in glitter – but Kitty loves them. Next to these, Toby has hung some of his prized bones – horse’s teeth, a sheep’s skull, buffed white with his sock – on bits of string, like wind chimes. Obviously Peggy hates all of these things, especially the dangling teeth, but knows Barney and Kitty will scream blue murder if she dares to take any of them down. And Daddy’s about to arrive so she cannot risk it.

‘Just the bow now, Amber.’ She gives the sash a yank.

‘Too tight.’

She yanks again, harder than necessary. ‘To think you used to be the obedient one. Whatever happened to –’

She stops. We all know what happened.

‘There,’ she says more softly, adjusting the sash at the waist, so the tortoiseshell buckle sits centrally among the folds of the full skirt, and nods approvingly. ‘You’ll do.’

I scowl at her then. I don’t want to be in the yellow dress. I don’t want to be at Black Rabbit Hall. The day we returned – three days ago – was a shock, like the coldness of the seawater is always a shock, even when you’re expecting it: it creeps into every crevice of you just the same. I’d only just got used to London after the drift of the summer. We’re expected to flip between our different lives, like acrobats twisting in mid-air.

I haven’t dared tell Toby that I’m missing London – he’d see it as unforgivable disloyalty. He loves it here. Us together. The woods. The wildness. In a funny way, he only makes sense at Black Rabbit Hall. But I can’t help yearning for those easy afternoons after school in London, chewing Black Jacks in Matilda’s bedroom, painting each other’s toenails with her sister’s scarlet varnish, discussing the Christmas parties, boys we’d die to kiss. In London I can pretend I’m just a normal fifteen-year-old. Like the accident never happened.

I cannot pretend here. Not even the rabid winter storms can wash off the dull brown stain on the stone by the stable. Knight’s skull is now in a velvet-lined black box in the library – Daddy’s way of saying sorry for shooting Momma’s beloved horse, I think – alongside all the animals in boxes. Whenever I see it I hear
bang bang bang
. Picture entrails of red wool trailing across the floor. Memories
press up against the present, like bodies in a crowded street.

But London at Christmas helps me forget it all, for a few moments at least. Carols gust out of shop fronts. Singers call at the door. Bags of roast nuts, heavy and hot in the hands. Hundreds, thousands, millions of jostling elbows and clicking heels and shopping bags. A tug of life that forces you to keep your head above water whether you like it or not. But if we venture out to the village here, people stare and clutch their children tight, as if our bad fortune might be catching. Maybe it is.

London’s lights glow gold as far as the eye can see. Look out of a window at Black Rabbit Hall and it’s just sky, a bottomless black that goes on forever, with star after star, like dozens of glinting nail studs on the stable wall, mocking the idea that there is even room for a Heaven. Not that I believe in Heaven, or God. I only pretend to believe for Barney and Kitty’s sake. I know He won’t return Momma any more than He returns the gull-pecked eyes to the dolphin dying on the beach.

‘The car’s coming up the drive!’ Peggy furiously pats her hair, tidies herself. ‘Now, remember. Stand straight. Manners. Don’t go frightening anyone with talk of the accident, for goodness’ sake. There will be other children. Show them the ballroom or something, Toby. No, not your collection of bones. Just try to be – be normal, please. Make your father proud of you. Go on, then. Into the hall. What are you waiting for? Don’t just stand there like frozen lollies.
Move
.’

He is not what I was expecting.

This ‘boy’ is at least a foot taller than his mother. He
stares at the floor, black hair flopping over one eye, like a pirate’s patch, hands dug deep in his pockets, so that we cannot see his face. When he does look up it is straight at me, a jet gaze so defiantly charged it makes my breath hitch and my dress tighten around my ribs. I hear Daddy saying, ‘Caroline, this is my eldest, Amber,’ as if I’m under water. ‘Amber?’ Daddy repeats.

I quickly look from the boy to his mother. She is picking off white kid-leather gloves, one finger then the next, eyeing the portrait of Momma on the wall above the fireplace with a stitch of a frown. I remember her gas-ring blue eyes from the funeral, the sharp features, the confrontational tilt of her chin. I remember it all as if it happened five minutes ago: Daddy staring at her during his speech, the funeral lurching to its side, like a boat in a storm, before it righted itself. Of course it would be her.

Then I notice the differences, and these seem more important. The way her hair is no longer scraped up into a tight topknot but a soft puff of blonde on her shoulders, curling up beneath her small, high-set ears, mingling with the white fur at her neck. The heavy eye-liner has gone too. She looks older somehow – seeing her close up, it’s obvious she’s quite a bit older than Momma was – and altogether less racy, more sensible, more like one of the mothers at my school. It occurs to me that she’s done this on purpose.

‘This is Caroline Shawcross, Amber,’ says Daddy, with fake cheeriness. I can tell he’s nervous and about to start tweaking his earlobes. He takes off his trilby and passes it to Peggy, who is waiting to receive it as keenly as Boris waits for a ball on the beach.

‘Good evening, Mrs Shawcross,’ I say politely, keeping my expression blank, feeling the heat of her son’s eyes on me. I suddenly know that I will always remember this moment, standing in the black and white hall in my too-tight lemon yellow dress. That it feels like the beginning of something that hasn’t happened yet.

‘It’s lovely to meet you, Amber. I’ve heard so much about you from your father.’ Even though she’s smiling, her voice is metallic and her gaze flits, wary, fast, reminding me of a bird on the lawn. It darts from Momma’s portrait straight to me, as if spotting the likeness that everyone says is so startling. ‘Not Mrs Shawcross, please. You simply must call me Caroline.’

I nod, fighting the urge to look at her son.

Daddy introduces Toby, Kitty and Barney in brisk succession and takes the heat off me. Peggy propels them all forward with a nudge in the back.

‘What a beautiful collection of children, Hugo.’ Boris rudely sniffs her skirt. Daddy has to pull him back. She laughs nervously. ‘Let me introduce my son, Lucian.’ She shoots a sharp glance in his direction, as if she’s already expecting him to do the wrong thing. ‘Lucian Shawcross.’ He does not move. ‘Lucian,’ she repeats, through a gritted smile. Reluctantly he steps forward into the space his mother has cleared.

I get to stare properly then.

Lucian is a different species of boy from anything I’ve ever seen, tall and slim but incredibly dense, wide at certain points, his shoulders straining in his heavy woollen navy blazer, sullen stoop failing to hide his height. His eyes are lamp black, unlike his mother’s, his face all rough angles
and juts, reminding me of the young men in bashed-up leather jackets who sit around on motorbikes, cigarettes dangling from their lips, near Grandma’s house in Chelsea. Men, Grandma warns, whose eyes I must never catch: ‘Very much the wrong sort.’ Thrilling.

‘Lucian,’ murmurs Caroline, fingers twisting the pearls at her neck. ‘Say hello, darling.’

‘A pleasure to meet you,’ he says, in a way that suggests it is no pleasure at all. The silence stretches.

Peggy smiles too hard into the awkwardness, freshly pressed apron a triangle on her hips. ‘What time might the Moncrieffs be arriving, Mr Alton?’

The Moncrieffs! My spirits lift. I remember the Moncrieffs: their white house in Holland Park, endless stairs, sprawling palms in pots, children and dogs. There’s a girl of about my age called Emily, who is transparently blonde and has an easy laugh.

‘The Moncrieffs?’ repeats Daddy, blankly. ‘Oh, gosh, sorry, Peggy. I haven’t told you, have I?’

‘Lady Charlotte’s youngest has terrible croup again,’ says Caroline. ‘Such a pity. She was determined to come, being Lady Charlotte, but I strongly advised her to stay in London near the hospitals. She can’t risk being marooned in Cornwall. You can never be too careful with croup.’

Peggy nods politely, even though I know she’ll be thinking that the best cure for croup is sea air. Peggy thinks it cures everything: coughs, rashes, broken hearts.

‘Sensible advice,’ murmurs Daddy, pulling at his left earlobe.

I glance at Toby, confused by what it all means. But Toby is glaring at Lucian, radiating his own peculiar kind
of storm static. I fear it’s only a matter of time before he blows.

‘Well, the poor Moncrieffs are missing out horribly, aren’t they?’ Her smile reveals intriguingly small white teeth, each one like the tip of a blackboard chalk. ‘The house is delightful. Oh, just look at that staircase. Do look at it, Lucian.’ Her heels peck across the hall. She wraps her fingers around the banister. ‘To find a house this grand so far west …’ she says, as if it’s a wonder we don’t all live in beach huts.

Daddy rises on his heels, looking pleased. ‘Well, admittedly a bit rough around the edges. But we like it, don’t we, Barney?’

‘So did Momma. That’s Momma.’ Barney points proudly at the portrait above the fireplace, his skinny wrist gaping from the sleeve of his too-small blue sailor suit. ‘She’s called Nancy. Nancy Kitty Alton. She’s American. But she’s gone to Heaven because I chased rabbits and there was a storm and she had a bad leg and Knight bucked like a devil and Momma got a hole in her head and we didn’t have a big enough plaster.’ He glances nervously at Toby, checking he’s got it right. ‘The doctor put a sheet over her face.’

Caroline’s fingers seek her pearls again. ‘I am sorry, Barney.’

‘Daddy shot the horse. Toby has the brains in his special collection.’

Caroline adjusts to this news with a rapid succession of blinks.

‘They’ve gone crispy,’ says Kitty, matter-of-factly. ‘Like seaweed purses.’

‘Goodness.’ A flush steals up her neck.

‘Daddy put the skull in a box.’

Caroline’s eyes widen. Peggy wrings her apron helplessly.

Barney looks up at her from beneath his mop of strawberry curls. ‘Do you want to see it?’

‘Don’t be a clot. Of course she doesn’t,’ says Peggy, with a small, shrill laugh, clipping Barney affectionately around the head.