Black Rabbit Hall (34 page)

Authors: Eve Chase

‘Would you like to take a minute, Amber?’ Jon asks, as I wipe my eyes. ‘I should have warned you. But I didn’t want to get any hopes up.’

‘No, no, really. I’m fine.’ I catch tear-smudged mascara on the edge of my finger and try to smile. ‘Please go on. What else did he say?’

‘Not much. He couldn’t come to the wedding, but he wished us all the best.’ Jon drops his eyes. ‘There was a crackle, then the line went dead.’

‘I – I still don’t understand. How did you know where to send the invitation? He phones or writes to me every few years, telling me he’s alive and well, but that’s it. He never leaves a number, nothing.’

‘Dill found his address.’

‘
Dill?
’ I’m almost too stunned to speak.

‘A few days before Caroline died, she handed over a huge damp bundle of old letters, admin and documents – they were tied together with garden twine – the stuff she thought Dill would need to keep things going here. Dill found Toby’s details somewhere in that – various addresses over the years, Kenya, Jamaica, Ireland, Scotland, letters from Caroline’s solicitor, demanding money for the upkeep of the house, all sorts of things. Not much mail coming back the other way. But still …’ He pauses as I shake my
head in mute disbelief. ‘I guess it makes sense that Caroline knew where he was all along. She could manage the estate but never owned it.’

My head is spinning. I don’t care about the estate, who owns it, who doesn’t. Only one thing matters. ‘Where? Where
is
my bloody brother?’

‘A smallholding on the Scottish Isle of Arran.’

‘Arran!
Arran?
That is
the
most dumb-rabbit stupid – Give me his number, Jon. I’m going to call him right now.’

‘I knew you’d want it. But no number came up on my phone when he contacted me. I’m so sorry.’

So he’s slipped out of reach again. All I want to do is shake Toby, my selfish, wild, beloved brother, shake him and shake him for his self-imposed exile. By punishing himself for everything that happened, he’s punished everyone else, too. But that was the thing about Toby: if he was up, he raised you with him, like a god; if he was down, he dunked you under, too, hand hard on your head. God, I miss him.

‘I’m sorry if it’s not a good time to tell you,’ Jon says, biting his lower lip, ‘but it’s the first chance I’ve had all day and I thought you’d want to know. I haven’t even told Lorna yet.’

Lorna appears like a vision then, running across the lawns in bare feet, glossy dark hair studded with white flowers, coiled over her shoulder. Alf skips behind, carrying her shoes. I have to scramble myself together. I don’t want anything to colour her wedding. It’s not about me or Toby.

‘We gave up on my heels, didn’t we, Alf?’ She laughs, sits down beside us in a puff of tulle and cool evening air.
Her elated face is flushed by the sun setting behind the woods, beautifully framed by my mother’s white fur cape, slung over her shoulders, diamanté clasp winking. ‘Hopeless on grass. Come on, Jon. To the ballroom with you! Dancing!’

Jon stands up rather quickly. ‘I’ll see you up there.’ He shoots me an apologetic smile, takes Alf’s hand. ‘Come on, Alf.’

‘But I am the carrier of the shoes!’ Alf protests, wedging himself on to Lorna’s knee so that he can’t be easily extracted.

‘A very serious job.’ Lorna wraps her arms around him, smiling up at Jon. ‘Do you mind if I come up in a bit? I’ll bring Alf. Could do with a break from your uncle Reg, actually.’

‘He’s not comatose under a tree yet?’ He bends down, kisses her. ‘Seriously, take as long as you need. Everything’s running late anyway. Nobody seems to have noticed.’

We are silent – I’m still reeling about Toby – until Jon is out of earshot. Then, over Alf’s head, Lorna leans towards me and whispers, ‘Good together, you think?’

I take her hand and squeeze it, probably too intensely. I’d hold her hand all day if I could. ‘Lorna, you two are simply wonderful together. Perfect.’

She smiles, kicks out her feet, wiggles her toes into the grass. They are my mother’s feet, I notice, the second toe longer than the first. ‘I think so, too.’

We sit there companionably, me still not able to say much, her chattering easily with Alf, pointing out the first bats of the evening, the woods, through the trees to the cliffs, a teeny beach where four children loved to play, the
ribs of a smuggler’s boat poking out of the sand at low tide, dolphins in the deep. Alf is transfixed. But then the sun sinks abruptly, as it does in autumn down here, as if yanked by a puppeteer’s string, and it is cold.

Time to go back! Alf jumps up. Time to dance! We walk to the house, Alf stopping every few steps to poke a curious chubby finger into the sugary brown molehills. The terrace is a roar of noise. More people are dancing, even though you can’t hear the music. Alf pulls on Lorna’s dress, ‘Aunt Lor …’

Lorna cannot hear him. Uncle Reg is staggering along the balustrade towards her, singing, ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow!’ in a drunken baritone. A woman in canary yellow is pressing glasses of champagne into our hands. A camera flashes. ‘Smile!’ Another flash. ‘And again. One for the grandkids. Lovely!’

‘Aunt Lorna,’ Alf says, tugging on her sleeve more crossly. ‘I want to show you something.’

It is at this exact moment that it starts, the internal twanging, the beep of an old long-forgotten sonar. I look up from the rim of my champagne glass, puzzled, wondering if we’re due an electrical storm.

‘Aunty Lorna, will you just
look
?’

‘Sorry, what, Alf?’ Lorna peers down at him, distracted.

‘Black rabbits!’

The noise fades, everything fades, as I follow Alf’s pointing little finger, past the rabbits hopping out of the burrows, to the edge of the woods where someone – it must be a man, it is a man – is walking up the slope silhouetted against the blood-red sky, his outline sinewy. His head is bent into the wind. His hand on his hat. Walking
slowly but purposefully, like a farmer out in his fields at dusk. He short-cuts up the steepest slope, as he always did, and pauses at the top, pushing the rim of his hat up with one finger, gazing at the house from beneath it, just for a fleeting moment, but long enough for the last flare of sun to catch the fire in his beard before it sinks behind the trees.

I call his name, start to run.

Epilogue

Nancy Alton, April 1968, the day of the storm

My children’s foreheads: Toby, tree resin; Amber, a hormonal tang of late; Kitty, milk. Barney is not in the kitchen to kiss or sniff. I check under the turned feet of the table, half expecting to see him there. ‘Where’s Barns?’

Rabbits, they tell me. Off on one of his capers with Boris.

A moment later, we find the daft old dog skulking behind the door.

Thunder. Peggy stares out of the window, fiddling with that crucifix necklace of hers, muttering unhelpful things about the storm being ‘blown in by the devil himself’.

It’s certainly a squall. So often the storms that announce themselves early, those mighty black operas rolling in from the sea – keenly spotted by my dear husband on the terrace – disperse before they hit with any force. It’s the ones that give no warning and crack across the sky like a shotgun that you have to watch out for. Still, the garden needs the rain.

Where will I find your imp of a brother?

In the den by the swing rope, Amber tells me, flicking up those serious green eyes of hers, squishing cream on to her scone. As my daughter is right about most things, I determine to start looking there.

Toby, my sweet gallant boy, offers to go instead. No, he
must finish his tea. They must all finish their tea, which is terribly late today – that range is such a rogue. Always hungry, the children have shot up like reeds since we were last here, ankles shooting out of the bottom of trousers, long, pale wrists from shirts. Peggy can’t cook fast enough.

I leave them chatting, squabbling, walk across the hall, decide against a mackintosh or hat. Crazy, really, but after days of being trapped in London, looped with painkillers, leg up on that damn stool, I’m desperate for a drench of rain. A Cornish storm beats coffee mornings in Fitzrovia.

Knight doesn’t share my enthusiasm. He is fussing, twisting back his ears, not himself at all. I mount him, wrap my arms around his neck, murmuring in the silly baby voice he likes best. He calms a little but remains reluctant. I push down in the stirrups. A shooting pain flies up my leg, a reminder of the accident, all those dead city days stuck in that turquoise velvet chair. And I feel a wave of gratitude to Barney for getting me out here, the wind ripping through the trees, thunder crashing, like a wonderful mistuned school orchestra.

Through the gate to the woods – the hinges need oiling, must mention it to Hugo – it is quieter, hard to ride. Some of the trees have come down; branches and twigs are still falling. We pick our way through until I spot the swing rope rocking in the strange yellow storm light, as if a child has just leapt off it. ‘Barney?’ I shout. ‘Tea!’

A giggle. I whip around, trying to spot him in the gloom. ‘Barney?’

He springs out of a wigwam of sticks, a laughing, leaping creature, his pale bare soles flashing as he runs. ‘Catch me if you can!’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, where are your shoes?’ But he isn’t listening. He is hopping over fallen logs, glancing over his shoulder to see if I’m on his tail. ‘I’m warning you!’ I shout, getting mad, even though I was just the same as a child.

He starts to scrabble up a tree, wilfully disobedient, as Hugo will fume later, bare feet curled around the bark like a bear’s, higher and higher into the dark canopy, looking down at me, grinning. I think I see my boy exactly as he is then, he me, and we both laugh.

But Knight starts to hoof backwards, agitated by the storm, the thunder rolling through the valley. My blouse rips on a branch and flaps in the wind. And suddenly Barney is gone, swallowed by leaves. I begin to panic. Will he fall? Has he fallen? No, Barney never falls from anything. ‘Enough now, Barn …’

A flashbulb fork of lightning: Barney’s face, silver in the leaves. Knight wants to run. I pull him back hard. My weak leg slips from the stirrup. I really need to get the horse out of the storm now, Barney home. ‘Grab my hand!’ I shout, reaching up to Barney.

Boom!
A clap of thunder so loud it trembles the leaves. Too loud.

Knight snorts, bucks, piston-rises, up, up, up, until there is nothing solid beneath me, no saddle, no stirrup, no hot horse flesh. Only hands outstretched, fingertips touching for a fraction of a moment, a surge of love, white-bright, shooting through the sky like a star.

Acknowledgements

A heartfelt thank you to the talented, passionate teams at Michael Joseph and Putnam, especially my brilliant editors Maxine Hitchcock and Tara Singh Carlson who have made this novel immeasurably better and are such a joy to work with. Louise Moore for the wise advice and encouragement that first got me thinking about this story. My wonderful agents – Lizzy Kremer and Kim Witherspoon – whose unwavering belief in
Black Rabbit Hall
from the outset played a huge part in its creation. Also Harriet Moore, Alice Howe, Allison Hunter, and the rest of the teams at David Higham Associates and InkWell Management. Keeping the home fires burning … Mum, as ever. Tess, Emma, Kirsty, Izzy and Flip for being so welcoming since I moved to the manor. My children, little tribe of three: the best lines are all yours. And Ben, for pulling the rabbit out of the hat every time. Thank you.