Black Rabbit Hall (15 page)

He looks disappointed, as he always does when she leaves, then rallies himself, pushing back the chair, standing up. ‘Thanks for the fancy deli titbits. I’ll enjoy that salami.’

‘Call me if you need anything.’ She kisses his cheek – smells aftershave, toast, a shirt collar not wholly fresh – glances down at the brown envelope on the table. ‘Dad, do you mind if I take the photos?’

He hesitates, brow furrowed, then nods. ‘You know, I think they belong to you.’

It is only as Lorna turns the key in the ignition that his
last comment strikes her as odd – why do the photos belong to her? – and something her father wouldn’t normally say. But a Volvo is waiting impatiently for her parking space, another car stacked behind it, which has tooted once already, and it seems silly to go back and ask him now.

The taxi vanishes into the trees, leaving Lorna alone on the shingle beach of Pencraw Hall’s drive, weekend bag at her feet. It is quiet, unnervingly so, but for the wind and the laughter of seagulls she can hear but not see. The twin stone falcons at the entrance look alarmingly sentient, but the house itself seems sleepy and empty in the late-summer heat, a building patiently sitting out its own process of decay. For the first time, Lorna feels a twinge of apprehension. It’s not just the remoteness of the house, the fact that she hasn’t got a car – not keen to tackle those twisting narrow lanes on her own, she got the train from Paddington – or any means of getting away easily. It’s also because she left London on such a discordant note, one that has jangled between her and Jon ever since they got back from Black Rabbit Hall almost three weeks ago, pitch intensifying the closer they got to the weekend she was to return.

Jon’s seemed so quiet and preoccupied in the last few days, as if he’s struggling with something about the house that he’s not yet disclosed, or is unable to articulate. She’s felt misunderstood, judged too harshly for missing his ‘little’ sister’s twenty-seventh birthday party this weekend. She can’t help but wonder if Jon is simply irritated that she has come here without him. He’s always liked to keep her close. She loves him for this – the territorial male
thing – but it also, contrarily, makes her want to push him away. To love someone so much – to be loved back – scares her. It makes her feel exposed. So she kicks against it, vowing to stay as independent as possible, married or not. Never to be a woman who lives through her relationship.

Anyway, it’s no bad thing she’s here alone, she tells herself firmly. It will be easier to explore the house, dig around a bit, see if she can discover an explanation for those strange photos of her and her mother on the drive, photos she’s slid carefully between the pages of her book. On her own, she can immerse herself in Black Rabbit Hall. Conscious of doing exactly this, she closes her eyes for a moment, enjoying the warm breeze fluttering her dress, carrying delicious scents – seaweed, honeysuckle, lanolin – that are a tripwire back to her own childhood summers, country walks when she’d pick scuzzy bits of sheep’s wool off the barbed-wire fences and hide them from her mother in her anorak pocket.

The high-pitched scream of a gull startles her. She hurries up the steps and rings the bell. Nobody. She rings again. Thumps the lion’s-paw knocker. Nothing. Puzzling. She called a couple of days before, spoke to Dill and confirmed her time of arrival. Has Dill forgotten already? She checks her watch. Two o’clock. Could Dill and Mrs Alton still be having lunch somewhere? Yes, that makes sense. They’ll be poking smoked salmon around a bit of priceless family china probably, deaf behind thick stone walls. Lorna decides that the best thing to do is leave her bag here and take a walk around the grounds, call back in twenty minutes, when they will surely have finished.

The ornate wrought-iron gate at the edge of the woods leaves a dried-blood rust on her fingers, as if it wants to stamp its mark on whoever passes through it. It isn’t locked, but neither will it open easily, brambles snagging its hinges. This only makes Lorna more determined to get through it. She picks off the worst of the brambles without nicking her fingers too badly, then kicks the rest away, cursing the silliness of wearing thin-soled ballet flats. Pushing her shoulder hard against the metal, with a vaguely alarming crunch – she’s not sure if it’s the gate or her bones – it opens. She is through.

The narrow path through the woods kinks and twists away from the house so that when Lorna looks over her shoulder a few minutes later she sees that her route back is no longer visible. The trees become denser as she walks, the endless verticals of the trunks puzzling perspective so that she has no idea quite how far one tree is from another. Close up, the trees are enormous, gnarled, peculiarly human. They are the kind of trees Lorna dreamed about climbing as a child while she picked her way around her mother’s immaculate ‘no ball games’ chrysanthemum borders.

Water? Lorna stops. That is surely the whisper of water. She remembers Dill saying you accessed the river through the woods. But she’s lost all sense of direction, never having had much in the first place. Her pupils dilate, adjusting to the shadows. As she follows the sound, nettles lash at her legs. Carcasses of dead trees lie across the path, scorched by lightning. Oh dear. She is lost-
ish
. She now risks being the guest who arrived, wandered off into the woods and required a search party to retrieve her in time
for dinner. The moment she decides to retrace her steps – a vague backwards direction seems sensible – she glimpses a metallic shiver through the branches, like the flick of a carnival streamer. The river! It must be. She gambols towards it, jumping branches, newly energized, and arrives, breathless and tangle-haired, on its soft, marshy bank.

Lorna stands there, grinning like a loon at the dimpled water, lifting her hair off her neck, mouth open, sucking it all in, the boggy salty smell, the luminous water plaited by the tide, the thrill of being alone, soon to be married, a guest at Black Rabbit Hall no less. It all hits her with a drug-like rush. And she is filled with certainty that she is absolutely meant to be on this riverbank on this particular August afternoon, that whatever ructions it has caused, it is worth it. Feeling really quite buzzed, she leans back against the nearest tree, the bark rough and warm through the thin cotton of her dress. Her gaze travels its thick trunk to the canopy – a sunlit lattice of leaves – and down again. Marks on the wood catch her eye. Ridges. Scars. Letters.

The graffiti has clearly been gouged into the flesh of the tree with a sharp instrument, she decides, peering closer. Some are hard to decipher, their edges blurred by the tree’s growth, filled in by flaky lichen. They are old markings certainly, but how old she has no idea. Lorna reaches up, traces her fingertips over them. It’s silly, of course, but she cannot help feeling that this tree has waited a long time for her visit.

Strange symbols, crosses, triangles, wiggles … the doodling of the tip of a blade on bark? Yes, definitely a blade, a small knife of some kind. Oh, a rabbit! A cartoon rabbit
with long ears and two protruding comedy teeth. She smiles. And what is this? T-O-B-Y. Toby? Yes, quite clearly Toby. Who is Toby? She recognizes the hand behind the graffiti, not a young child, she decides, thinking of her primary-school pupils’ scrawls, but someone older, an early teen maybe, nicely schooled. Something about the letters – the obvious energy and determination of the hand that carved them – makes her heart pound. It’s like discovering the remains of an extinct tribe.

Lorna soon deciphers another group of letters. A-M … No, she can make out no more than that, the rest of the word rotted. But, oh, look. Here is another. Right down at the base of a branch. K-I-T. Kit? So there was
more
than one child living here at some point. An heir and a spare. She’s heard that expression before. There’s a brutal logic to it.

Lorna pulls a hairclip out of her pocket, twists up her hair into its jaws, away from the heat of her cheeks. And it’s then that the letters start to leap, jostling, jumping, rushing up to her like small children. ‘Little brother Barney,’ she reads out, fingertip dipping into the deepest gouge. ‘R.I.P. 1963–1969.’ Toby’s name is scrawled beneath this in the same hand. As the dates sink in, she clamps her hand over her mouth. Oh, no. The poor little mite was only
six
. The same age as her class, 1B. The same age as her little nephew, Alf. Feelings flip in rapid succession: sadness because she knows six-year-old boys so well, their kicky feet, gummy milk-tooth gaps, boundless energy; an aching sympathy for poor Mrs Alton, for this must surely be her child; and then, unexpectedly, a sense of responsibility to this poor forgotten boy, a similar tug that she gets
on learning that any child in her class is vulnerable or needs rescuing in some way. She isn’t one of those teachers who pretend not to notice, or who can switch off once she’s left work. She’ll lie awake at night thinking about those children. And she will about these.

She swallows hard. This graffiti – so close to being lost, swallowed by time and moss – is an epitaph to such a pitifully short life, the ‘little brother’ making it more heartfelt, more poignant, than anything on a grand marble headstone.

She feels a pulse of connection then. A quickening. She didn’t need to find this tree – there must be thousands, what are the chances? – but she did. Something has drawn her to this little boy – and the older brother who carved his name so sweetly – inviting her to find out more about his brief existence. She’s sure of it. Can she blithely get married at Black Rabbit Hall now
not
knowing what happened to him? No, she cannot. She needs to satisfy herself, make some sense of it, as she must the old photographs of her and her mother on the drive. The two things are unconnected, but as Lorna stands there – fingers on the crisp bark, sunlight dappling through the leaves – they start to stir in the same dark space in her head and chase one another like playful ghosts.

Amber, Christmas Eve, 1968

‘It wasn’t, Barney, I promise. There’s no such thing as ghosts.’ Barney’s a trembling fawn in my arms, all skinny limbs and long wet lashes. ‘It was Caroline in Momma’s white fur tippet, that’s all,’ I add, trying to sound like this was nothing. ‘It gave me a bit of a shock.’

‘Is my favourite monkey in there?’ Peggy’s at the nursery door. ‘Look. I’ve brought you a blanket. We don’t want you to catch your death, do we now?’ She shrugs it over Barney’s shoulders, tucks a fold under his chin like a bib. ‘Look what else I’ve brought you.’ She places a tray on my bedroom rug. ‘Crackers,’ she says. ‘Cheese. And a nice glass of warm milk with a dash of condensed from the tin. Your favourite.’

Barney’s arms loosen around my neck. He edges off my knees towards the plate.

‘If you hadn’t yelled blue murder at poor Mrs Shawcross, Amber, you wouldn’t have scared the living daylights out of him,’ Peggy hisses, in a furious whisper over Barney’s head as he nibbles on the cracker. ‘He’s just turned six, for goodness’ sake. It’s no wonder he’s upset.’

‘So it’s my fault?’

‘Well, yes. This time it is. Oh, Amber, don’t look at me like that. I know you still miss your ma, and you’re hurting
but you can’t show it by flying off the handle like a fury, not in front of a sensitive boy like our Barney.’ She puts her tiny hand on my shoulder. ‘We all have our crosses to bear in this life.’

‘You’ve got no idea.’ I shrug her off.

‘Well, maybe not.’ She sniffs. ‘But I do know it’s Christmas Eve.’ Her fingers walk to her crucifix. ‘And I do know that Mr Alton’s doing his best. And after a hard week in London he doesn’t need it. He wants his good little Amber back, not some kind of … doo-lally demon.’

‘
She
’s the demon!’

‘What’s a demon?’ asks Barney, cheeks fat with cheese.

‘Nothing you need to worry about, Barney. You just eat those crackers. Build up your strength,’ says Peggy, quickly, whispering to me over his head, ‘That Shawcross woman is trying very hard to be kind, if you and Toby would only let her. And spending a small fortune. Have you seen how many presents she’s piled up under that tree? It’s almost indecent. I’ve never seen so many. Or a woman trying to be liked more.’

‘Caroline gave us pear drops,’ Barney says matter-of-factly.

I flick away his sticky milk moustache with my finger. ‘She gave you sweets?’

‘Pear drops in a twist of paper.’

Peggy swivels her apron around her bottle-top waist, levers herself up with a sigh. ‘Well, your tea isn’t going to make itself.’

‘Wait! Peggy, where did Caroline find the tippet?’ The possibility that Caroline went anywhere near Momma’s
wardrobe – the place I can go and inhale the last atoms of her – makes me feel sick.

Peggy frowns, works her mouth. ‘It’d have been hanging in the cloakroom, I believe.’

I shake my head. ‘No. I’ve seen it in Momma’s wardrobe, hanging next to the red fox fur stole.’

‘Oh, don’t get caught up on details, Amber. You can blame me if you like.’

‘Why?’ I say crossly, knowing she’s going to try to take the blame to keep the peace.

‘Well, I bumped into Mrs Shawcross coming in from the terrace earlier, shivering she was. You’d think she’d have more sense, wearing a dress like that in December, shoulders bare like a butcher’s ham, but anyway. I suggested she might want to cover up, a fur or something, didn’t want to come down with a cold, not when you can’t find a sober doctor for love nor money during Yuletide. And the next thing I know …’ Peggy’s cheeks glow pink: she’s enjoying the drama ‘… there’s
only
Mrs Shawcross standing at the top of the stairs with your mother’s tippet wrapped around her, like something you’d see on screen at the Truro Coronet!’

A shudder passes through me. I see the clasp again, winking, a cat’s eye.

‘And she did look Christmassy, all that white fur. I thought, There’s a sight that might cheer up Mr Alton at least,’ Peggy says, looking a little irritated by this idea.

‘But it’s our first Christmas without Momma!’

‘Yes, Amber. And that’s
why
Mrs Shawcross is here, isn’t it? To jolly things along. Keep your pa’s spirits up.’

I sink my chin into Barney’s hair, all the fight sucked out of me, wondering if I’ve got it wrong after all and am being beastly selfish.

‘Don’t look so sad. Your ma would want you to be happy at Christmas, wouldn’t she? She hated a long face.’

My eyes fill with tears. I try to blink them away so as not to upset Barney.

‘Hey,’ says Peggy. She pulls me into a hug. The smell of sweat and cake and talc puffs out of the frilled collar of her shirt. ‘None of that, missy.’

‘But I – I feel like we’re all pretending things are normal, Peggy.’ I pull away from her, wipe the tears on the back of my hand. ‘Like Daddy’s asking us to forget Momma.’

She shakes her head. ‘No one’s asking you to forget her, duck.’

‘It feels like they are.’

‘Mr Alton believes the best way forward is to put one foot in front of the other, stiff upper lip and all that. There’s sense in it, Amber. If you live in the past …’ Peggy’s voice cracks a little ‘… you’re only living half a life.’

Barney coughs on a repressed sob. We both turn, terrified we’ve upset him again. He gets upset so easily.

‘Hey, mister, there, there. Don’t you be starting your racket up again, or you’ll send Mrs Shawcross running for the London train and we’ll all get it in the neck.’ She glances up at me, whispers, ‘I suspect Mrs Caroline Shawcross is not a lady who likes screaming children.’

‘I don’t think she likes children at all. I can see it in the way she looks at us. Even at Lucian.’

‘Well, Lucian doesn’t strike me as the easiest lad to get along with.’

An odd sensation crawls over my skin as I remember my encounter with Lucian in the woods, the way he appeared from the shadows. I push the image away, trying not to think about him. But the more determined I am not to think about Lucian the more indistinguishable it becomes from thinking about him. Like how wishing yourself asleep only makes you more awake.

‘You forget that not everyone’s as soppy as your mother when it comes to children, Amber. Seen but not heard. That’s the way it was for generations of Alton children. Maud Bean in the village, who knew your daddy’s Nanny Toots, says your father only met his parents between the hours of five and six. It was your mother – bless her – who shook things up here, what with her American ways. No one had ever seen anything like it.’

She squats down. ‘There’s a good boy, Barney. Finish up all that milk. Boys need milk to get strong. You want to get tall and strong like Daddy, don’t you?’

Barney nods, eyes wide, small pale fingers curled around the glass.

‘My nanna used to tell me, drink a glass of milk every day and you’ll live to a hundred.’

‘Did she?’ asks Barney.

‘Ninety-two. But that’s a long enough life for anyone.’ She winks at Barney, ruffles his hair. ‘We don’t want to outstay our welcome, do we?’

The seed heads nod like frosted skulls, caught in the bright shaft of light falling from the kitchen window. Silvery brambles steal across the ground in the borders. The ivy is denser than ever, as if it’s been creeping over the house by stealth
while we sleep, suckering to the windows like sticky frog’s feet. Nothing in the garden has been cut back or pruned this year. Momma and her team of gardeners did it every autumn – I used to help, holding the sack open for the tossed clippings, bringing out plates of warm shortbread to keep everyone going. No one came this year. I press my hands against the cold glass, trying to see out into the dark.

Still no sign of Toby.

Grateful not to be summoned to a grown-ups’ dinner, I attempt to eat the nursery food – a steaming slump of shepherd’s pie, cabbage, carrots from the kitchen garden, the promise of apple dicky for pudding, another mince pie – but since I met Lucian in the woods I’ve lost my appetite, belly full of other things.

Fifteen minutes later, Toby sidles into his seat, covering his face with his hand as he sits, blanking me. Is he still angry? I notice a rip on the collar of his shirt, mud stiffening his hair.

‘What’s happened to your eye, Toby?’ asks Kitty, cheerfully, as she feeds a carrot into Raggedy Doll’s black stitch of a mouth.

‘Nothing,’ he huffs.

I crane forward to see what he’s hiding. ‘Crikey. What happened to your eye?’

Toby stabs his fork into the potato. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’

Fear clenches my stomach: three knuckle marks on his eyebrow. ‘Did Lucian do it?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Toby …’

‘Get lost.’

It’s pitch black now, the long velvet curtains pulled against the spiking cold. I stop outside the door to the drawing room, listening to the carols crackling on the record player, Daddy’s cigar cough and the sounds of an unfamiliar woman.

Daddy’s face is lit by the flare of his cigar. The record has stuck: ‘
Silent night, ho-oo--oo …
’ He leans over, picks up the needle, places it back on a groove. The song jumps, the choir continues.

‘
Holy night
…’

I steal a glance at Caroline. She is not wearing the tippet now. But she is sitting on Momma’s chair by the fire – the plum-pink one opposite Daddy that none of us dares use – like it’s always been hers, legs neatly crossed at the knee, sitting very upright, cocktail glass in hand, smiling in that tight way of hers, as if invisible strings are pulling her lips up. She’s wearing a blood-red gown that shows off the flawless cream of her shoulders. Her eyes are the colour of a clear winter sky in the bleak cold hours just after dawn. ‘Good evening, Amber,’ she says, in a way that suggests she never wore Momma’s tippet earlier, that I never shouted in her face. ‘Excited about Christmas?’

I remind myself of Peggy’s words, how Daddy wants the old Amber back, so I try, for his sake. ‘Yes, thank you, Caroline,’ I manage, my voice coming out high and strange.

Daddy smiles at me. A relieved, grateful smile. I wonder if he knows what happened earlier. I haven’t had a chance to tell him because I’ve not been able to get him on his own. Maybe he’s had Caroline’s version.

‘Oh, look, the poppets.’ Caroline peers over my shoulder, hand at her throat. ‘How adorable they look, Hugo!’

Barney and Kitty stand in the doorway in their nightwear, shuffling shyly from one bare foot to the other, their just-brushed hair haloed with static, their faces scrubbed. Peggy passes behind them, like a shadow. Boris thwacks his tail.

‘Did you bring any more pear drops?’ Barney pipes up, making Daddy and Caroline laugh as if this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

‘I’m sure I could find you another little something. Would you like that? Something rather sweet and naughty?’

Barney and Kitty nod enthusiastically. I want to point out to Caroline that they have brushed their teeth but Kitty will be furious if I do.

‘Oh, Master Toby too.’ She stiffens on the chair. ‘Good evening, young man.’

‘What’s happened to your eye?’ asks Daddy, quietly, as if he’s not sure he wants to know the answer. Sometimes with Toby it’s best not to ask.

‘Fell off a tree. Branch snapped,’ mumbles Toby, barely audible.

Daddy says, ‘Mmm’, pretends to believe him.

‘Oh dear, quite a shiner,’ Caroline remarks, and is about to say something else but stops, as if it’s just occurred to her where he might have got it. After that no one mentions the eye or Lucian’s obvious absence from the room.

After a snap of awkwardness, Daddy opens his arms. ‘Come on, give me a hug, then.’ Barney runs up to him and leaps on to one knee. Kitty takes the other alongside Raggedy Doll. Boris lies down on his feet, dribbling over his shoelaces.

Toby stands firm, punishing Daddy for inviting the Shawcrosses to Black Rabbit Hall.

I hold out for a second or two but am unable to resist and press my face against Daddy’s chest – he feels safe and solid, smells right – and run my fingers through the back of his hair, not something I’d normally do but Caroline is watching. I stake my territory.

‘I’ve missed you all these last few weeks,’ Daddy says, dropping his chin into Kitty’s curls, watching Toby from the corner of his eye. ‘It’s just been impossibly busy at work.’

‘Raggedy Doll still loves you,’ whispers Kitty. ‘She’s made you a pink stocking.’

‘Has she indeed?’ Daddy’s eyes go soft with love. We laugh. And for a moment I almost forget about Caroline. ‘I’m very proud of you all. I hope you know that.’ He glances over at Toby as he speaks and I think this is because he wants Toby to know he means him too. But Toby looks away, spinning the globe in the corner of the room with his finger.

Caroline coughs, shifts on the chair, uncomfortable, as if she doesn’t quite know where to put herself.

‘You’ve all been so brave.’ This is the closest Daddy has come to mentioning Momma since he returned home for Christmas.

‘Next year will be better,’ says Caroline, a little shrilly, watching us over the rim of her glass with darting eyes.

‘It certainly will.’ Daddy smiles at her over Kitty’s head. I don’t like the smile. I don’t like the way it is full of conversations we’ve not heard.

‘Do you swear on your life, Daddy?’ Kitty’s gaze is fixed on Caroline’s sapphire earrings, glinting from her tiny, high-set ears. ‘That it will get better, and then better again?’

‘On my life, Kittycat.’ He kisses her forehead, eyes closed.

Caroline stands up abruptly as if the tenderness is too much. Her glass hits the marble fireplace with a sharp clink. ‘Who’s looked outside in the last few minutes?’

Barney and Kitty shake their heads. Toby spins the globe faster. The way he’s spinning it makes me think it will go faster and faster, then break away and fly across the room. A bit like Toby.

‘I’ve got something magical to show you.’ Caroline offers her hand. It hovers in mid-air, the jewelled rings glinting in the firelight. ‘Come, children.’

Kitty and Barney stare at the hand, then back at Toby, unsure of their loyalties. A muscle twitches in Caroline’s jaw. Kitty can’t resist the rings, of course. Caroline looks relieved and smiles over her shoulder at Daddy. Look at me, the smile says. Look how Kitty loves me and is holding my hand. They walk to the window.