Telling Lies to Alice (2 page)

I had a calendar once, with quotations on it, and there was one that said, “Life is lived forwards but understood backwards.” It’s true, isn’t it? If you ever understand it at all, that is. I’m starting to wonder. I mean, I’ve been over and over Lenny’s death in my head, but I’ve never come up with any real answers. Except that I failed him. It always comes back to that. It’s like those words you sometimes see on gravestones,
If love could have saved him, he would not have died.
But you can’t save people with love, can you? You should be able to, and it happens in books and things, but you can’t, not in real life.

The cottage where Lenny killed himself was on the same estate. It belonged to the bloke who’d had the party. Marcus’s father was the earl of Ivar. He died a few years ago. Marcus, I mean, not his dad. Drug overdose. He can’t have been more than thirty-five.

This cutting’s from the
Mirror
. That’s the paper I get—if I get a paper at all. Even if I do, I hardly ever get round to reading it. Just use it for lining the guinea pigs’ hutch. You’d have a job lining a matchbox with this little scrap of newspaper. Might as well chuck it away. Concentrate on routine. Looking after the animals, riding . . .
life,
really. Roll up your sleeves and keep pedalling, as my granddad used to say.

But it’s hard when you’re on your own a lot. I wish there was someone I could talk to—someone I trusted enough—but there isn’t, really.

I thought I’d made myself safe here, but I don’t feel safe anymore.

I’m frightened.

Since I came here, I’ve tried not to think about the past, but sometimes you can’t help it. Even with little things. Like yesterday, I was looking for a pair of socks and the drawer wouldn’t shut, and when I pulled it out and peered down the back to see what was jamming it, there was this grey furry thing wedged in there. I thought it was a dead mouse, but when I got the rubber gloves on and fished it out, it was a bunny tail. Filthy, with a big black mark across it where it was stuck against the back of the drawer. I stood there with it in my hand, and I thought, I can’t believe I used to have a job where I had to pin this on my bum. Mind you, if you’d gone to the Bunny Mother with a tail like that you’d have got what-for. . . . She used to inspect us before we went on the floor—check your nails were painted, no ladder in your tights, no bits of loo paper sticking out of your top. You’d wrap it round your hand, stuff it down there, give a little shove, and Bob’s your uncle, beautiful cleavage, and it looked all real. They fitted the costumes individually, but they only came in two bust sizes, 34D or 36D, and most of us couldn’t fill that without a
bit
of help. We used to use old tights, too, and the spare tails, stick them in there. When I told that to Lenny I thought he was going to die laughing. He had a real
thing
about my tail. He even bought one from the gift shop. It was mounted on a plaque with
Caught at the Bunny Club
or something written underneath.

The one I found was my special tail—I’d written my name on the back. I used to take it home myself and wash it and fluff it up with a dog-grooming brush to get it looking really smart . . . I can’t believe how long I used to spend getting ready. Nowadays I spend more time on the horses than I do on me—I hardly bother with mascara, let alone two sets of false eyelashes. I suppose I must have a few pairs of those left over somewhere. Hate to think what they’d look like now—like having two old spiders crawling across your eyelids. Actually—confession time—I kept a whole costume when I left the club. That was naughty, because they didn’t belong to us, but I wanted a souvenir and I’d been there the best part of three years so I thought I’d earned it. God knows where that went—probably in the attic. I haven’t looked at it in years.

Lenny didn’t know I was a bunny when we first met. It was on the motorway. I didn’t have my own car, I’d sort of borrowed one—when I say “borrowed,” I don’t mean stole because I returned it afterwards, but it belonged to this guy called James Clarke-Dibley who used to come to the club . . . this was in 1967 when I’d just started working there. Anyway, he was quite keen on me. First time I met him was at a photographer’s studio. I was modelling swimsuits or something, and he came in and asked me out. I went once but then said I couldn’t because I was working in the evenings, so he started coming to the club. He was very rich—from what I could make out his father owned half of Scotland—and quite good-looking, but for some reason I just couldn’t fancy him baked, boiled, or fried. They had a rule that you weren’t allowed to date customers, so I used that as an excuse. But he paid for me to have driving lessons, and when I passed my test I didn’t have a car so he used to let me drive his, but only if he came with me. I tell you, if I’d been him, I wouldn’t have let me drive in a million years, because I used to go like a mad thing and it was this beautiful white Mercedes Cabriolet which cost a fortune.

There’d been a party at his house. I’d gone there after my shift—in my own clothes, of course, not the costume—and I’d stayed the night. Not in his bed—he wanted me to, but he was too plastered to do anything about it, and I don’t drink much so I was all right. I just went up to the top of the house and found a nice little room and made myself comfortable. The next morning, everyone left was sleeping it off so I tiptoed downstairs and took the keys out of his jacket. I thought I’d go and visit my mum. Well, that’s what I said to myself, but really I just wanted the chance to be in that car on my own and see what I could do.

It was a beautiful day—July, with bright blue sky like on a postcard, and I was flying along with the top down and my blonde hair streaming out behind me and my bare arms and the sunglasses and all the rest of it. . . . It was perfect. I was like a girl in a film with the music playing along in my head and this lovely warm gooey feeling inside my stomach and this sensation of being so
alive,
so sexy, and able to do whatever I wanted. . . . There wasn’t much else on the road so I put my foot right down, ninety miles an hour, it didn’t matter, I just wanted to go
fast
.

I was in the middle lane, and I suddenly noticed this car come up alongside me, a gunmetal-blue Aston Martin Coupe. I thought, that’s funny, because it wasn’t overtaking, so I looked across and there was this gorgeous man sitting behind the wheel. I saw black hair, tan, sunglasses, open-necked shirt, all in a blur, and then he gave a little nod and accelerated past me. I thought,
right,
because the way he’d done it was like a challenge, and I went after him, a hundred, a hundred and ten, we were neck and neck and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I nearly drove into the back of some old man in a Ford Anglia and I screamed and put my hand up to my mouth and he went zooming in front and when he turned his head to look at me I saw he was laughing. So I got into the outside lane after him, then back into the middle lane and overtook him—naughty—then he did the same to me and cut someone off and of course they sounded their horn so it was my turn to laugh at him. Then he swerved in front of me so I had to stand on the brake not to smash into him. . . . We went on like that for a bit, waving and laughing at each other, and then he grinned at me and motioned with his arm towards the side of the road. He cut straight across me into the slow lane and indicated that he was coming off, so I followed—didn’t think, just did it—and he turned off the motorway and down another road and in a minute we were in these twisty country lanes with all the trees and hedges, going seventy miles an hour with me right behind, almost nudging his bumper, and him glancing in his mirror every few seconds to make sure I was still there. God knows what would have happened if anything had come the other way because the road was only wide enough for one car, but nothing did. Just as I thought I’d better ease up a bit—I mean it was James’s car, after all—he disappeared round a corner. I thought I’d lost him, but then I saw the back of his car going off up a track into a field. I pulled the wheel round so fast I nearly ended up in a ditch—thank you, Guardian Angel—and went bumping across all these ruts to where he had parked. It wasn’t a proper farmyard, just a big old barn with straw piled up inside and a bit of concrete out the front.

I drove up right next to his car and stopped. He didn’t get out, just leant over the seat. . . . “Hello.”

He
was
really handsome. A bit older than me, with thick hair so black that it was almost blue, and a lovely wide mouth . . . broad shoulders and strong brown arms—he had his sleeves rolled up—big hands . . . I couldn’t stop looking at him.

He took his sunglasses off—lovely deep dark eyes with crinkly lines from laughing.

“You’re not going to go all shy on me, are you?”

“No . . .” It was like a film, two sports cars side by side, the bonnets shining in the sun, all the colours so bright and perfect, and the way he was looking at me . . . I’d no idea who he was—it was just at the time when he and Jack had their first television series, but I hadn’t seen it because I was always at the club, and I never read the papers in those days, either.

“You’re quite a driver. What else can you do?”

I said, “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” and I hopped across the seat and out of the passenger door and ran over to the barn. There was a big door, open, and I stopped just inside but so he could see me. I waited until he’d got out of his car and then I kicked my shoes off and ran up the ladder into the loft. He chased me but I was too quick, jumping over all the bales, twisting and turning, giggling, and all the time I had the film running in my head, him and me, my hair across my face and the dusty sunlight coming in through the door. I was in love with all of it, the
idea
of it. . . . Then he caught me and held me tight so I couldn’t struggle and kissed me.

It wasn’t the first time I’d done it, but it was the first time it had meant anything. Afterwards I felt so happy I just lay there and laughed. He said, “You liked that, didn’t you?”

I said, “Yes, so did you.”

“Yes.” And he laughed, too.

Then he got out his cigarettes and I said, “You’ll start a fire with all this hay.”

“It’s straw, not hay.”

“It’ll burn just the same, won’t it?”

“Who bought you the car?”

“Nobody.”

“Did you beg, steal, or borrow?”

“Borrow.”

“I stole mine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I could buy you a car.”

“I don’t believe that, either.”

“You don’t believe very much, do you?”

“I believe I’m here with you.”

“You’re not here. Neither am I. We’re just an idea in the mind of God.”

“Then God’s got a dirty mind, hasn’t He?”

He laughed and stroked my hair and said, “You shouldn’t do this, you know.”

“Do what?”

“What you’re doing. I could be anyone. I could have done anything . . . I could have killed you. I could kill you right now.” He wrapped the ends of my hair round my neck like a rope.

“But you won’t, will you?”

He let go of my hair and kissed me on the forehead. “No.”

I was so happy I almost couldn’t have cared if I had died right that minute as long as it didn’t hurt. I said, “You’ve got a nerve, telling me I shouldn’t be doing this. Whose idea was it?”

“You were the one who came running in here. You led me on.”

“Why, did you have something different in mind?”

“I was going to instruct you in the rudiments of haymaking.”

“You just told me it was straw, not hay.”

He laughed again and said, “You’re not frightened of much, are you?”

“There’s nothing to be frightened
of
.”

He raised his eyebrows, then rolled over and pulled his clothes on. He went down the ladder and I thought he was going outside to have the cigarette, but after a couple of minutes I heard his car start. By the time I’d straightened my clothes and found both my shoes there was no sign he’d ever been there except tyre marks and a note tucked under one of my windscreen wipers:
I’ll find you xxx.

I thought,
you’d better
. Because I’ve just had the best day of my life and I don’t even know your name.

Next time I saw Lenny it was in the Playmate Bar at the club, about a month after our
encounter
. It was Saturday night and packed, and I was weaving my way across the floor with a tray of drinks when someone pulled my tail. It gave me a shock and I spun straight round because that was a real no-no, a customer touching you. I’d been doing what we called a high carry, with the tray up by my shoulder, and I nearly dropped the lot. I was too busy doing a juggling act with the glasses to look up and see who’d done it. I could hear these guys laughing, which annoyed me, but I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of showing them how furious I was. Anyway, I’d just got it all under control and I was about to call the floor manager when I heard one of them say, “Well, look what’s hopped out of the haystack.”

I knew straightaway who it was. As soon as he’d said the first word I was staring at him, “Uuh?”—ladylike or what—but I couldn’t stop myself. There were three of them: Donald Findlater and Jack—although I didn’t know that then—with Lenny in the middle, all laughing their heads off.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so on-the-spot in all my life. My heart was thumping and I was sure they could all tell. Lenny was smirking as if he knew I’d been thinking about him ever since, because it was true, I had been. He leant over to see my name—we had them on rosettes pinned over one hip—“Hello, Bunny Alice.”

I said, “Don’t you Bunny Alice me. It would have served you right if I’d tipped this lot straight into your lap.”

Lenny said, “But you won’t, will you?” It struck me that that was my reply when he’d said he could strangle me in the barn, and I wondered if he remembered. But I was still pretty angry so I said, “Don’t bet on it” and stalked off. I spent the rest of my shift ignoring them. It wasn’t too hard to avoid going near them because they weren’t on my station, but I was so conscious of them that I couldn’t concentrate on what I was meant to be doing for more than a few seconds at a time. You had to set up the tray with the right glasses and garnish—olive for a martini, lemon twist if it was dry, cocktail onion if it was a Gibson, and some drinks had cherries or other bits and pieces—before you took it up to the bar. I knew the call-in order backwards—still do: Scotch, Canadian, Bourbon, Rye, Irish, Gin, Vodka, Rum, Brandy, Liqueurs, Mixed, Blended, Creamed . . . the bottles were arranged in the same sequence so you called and the barman poured, except yours was right to left and his was left to right, if you see what I mean.