Black Rabbit Summer (13 page)

And, besides, I was starting to feel sick again. And my head was throbbing. And my feet hurt. And I was still feeling so weird
… hearing weird noises, imagining weird sensations inside my body, seeing weird things. I just didn’t know what was real any more.

And I still don’t know, even now.

All I know – or
think
I know – is that I was sitting on a pile of wooden boards near the exit, trying to decide what to do next, and the last few fairground stragglers were wandering past me, heading back home, and I was beginning to think that maybe I should join them. Just forget about everything. Forget about Raymond, call it a night, and go home.

Get some sleep.

Get up in the morning.

Get back to normality.

I was trying to imagine it: Sunday morning, the church bells ringing, the sun shining brightly as I made my way down the street towards Raymond’s. Along the alleyway, turn left, down to Raymond’s back gate, feeling for his presence…

And that’s when I felt it.

His presence.

Right here, right now. And when I raised my head and looked across the fairground, I saw him.

He was on a merry-go-round – an old-fashioned, brightly coloured merry-go-round. It was about twenty metres away from me, just to the right of the fairground entrance, and I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t seen it before. I’d been everywhere, I’d searched every inch of the fairground, I’d seen everything there was to see – every ride, every stall… absolutely everything. So why hadn’t I seen this merry-go-round? I mean, how could I have missed it? It was right there, right in front of me – a beautifully painted carousel, like something from a dream. A rainbow
circle of wooden horses – white horses, silver horses, bright-red horses, spotted horses – with golden saddles and sparkling blue eyes and luscious flowing manes…

And Raymond.

He was right there too. Sitting astride a jet-black horse, holding on tightly to the scrolled silver pole, smiling at me as the merry-go-round slowly revolved…

I knew it couldn’t be real.

A fairground organ was playing, pipes and drums swirling in the air, and I could hear the sound of children’s laughter – excited voices, faint cries of delight… but there weren’t any children around. There was hardly anyone around at all. The only other person I could see was a slightly odd-looking man with a moustache, standing in the shadows, watching the merry-go-round. He looked like an over-concerned father, keeping an eye out for his child… but there weren’t any children on the merry-go-round. There was no one on the merry-go-round.

Only Raymond.

I watched him as he came round again. He was still smiling at me, still gripping the curlicued pole, but this time his jet-black horse was a rabbit. A horse-sized rabbit. It was a beautiful thing – glossy and smooth, with shining black eyes, a necklace of flowers, a painted face that seemed to be frowning…

I smiled to myself.

The carousel kept turning, taking Raymond away, and as I waited for him to come round again, I wondered what would happen if I went over and joined him. There was plenty of room for me, plenty of horses or rabbits to ride… we could sit there together, like two lost cowboys riding in circles, both of us going nowhere, and I could ask Raymond how he was feeling and where he’d been and what he’d been doing…

But after a while I realized it was too late. He wasn’t there any more. The merry-go-round was still turning, but the horse-sized rabbit was just a horse again, and its golden saddle was empty.

Raymond had gone.

And so had the man with the moustache.

I wasn’t really aware of much after that. I suppose I must have known what I was doing, and where I was going, and I remember thinking to myself at the time how wonderfully clear everything was… and it
was.
Everything in and around me was clearer than it had ever been before: my thoughts, my senses, my feelings, the world. But it was the kind of clarity that only works in isolation – like the concentrated beam of a spotlight, lighting up one thing at a time – and every time the spotlight moved on, focusing brightly on something else, I’d forget what had been left behind in the darkness.

It was like existing in a series of perfectly lucid moments, none of which were connected. It was just one thing, then another thing. One thought, another thought. One step, another step…

One step at a time.

That’s all I was doing as I left the fairground and headed back across the recreation ground – taking one step at a time. One step, another step… along the pathway, away from the lights, into the darkness… one step, another step… one step, another step… all the way down to the recreation ground gates. They were still open, and I wondered briefly – and pointlessly – if they’d stay open all night, or if someone was supposed to shut them… and if so, who? A fairground worker? Someone from the council? A policeman?

I paused outside the gates and looked around, trying to
decide which way to go. The little street that led up to Back Lane was on my right, and the street on my left would lead me round to Recreation Road, then along the other side of the old factory, and eventually back to the north end of St Leonard’s Road.

I checked the time on my mobile.

I don’t know why I bothered – whatever time it was, it didn’t matter. And by the time I’d put the phone back in my pocket, I’d already forgotten what time it was anyway.

As I looked over to my right again, I thought I saw someone turning off the little street into Back Lane. It was only a very brief glimpse, and the street was pretty dark, and I was finding it really hard to focus on anything more than a few metres away… but just for a moment I was convinced that it was the odd-looking man with the moustache. I didn’t actually see his face, so I couldn’t tell if he had a moustache or not, but there was just something about him – a feeling, a sense… his slightly hunched posture, the way that he moved…

He
moved
like an odd-looking man with a moustache.

I didn’t know why the sight of him bothered me, and I knew I was probably just seeing things anyway. In fact, a few moments after he’d gone, I was already pretty sure that he’d never been there in the first place. But even so, I could still feel my heart beating hard as I turned left and started heading away from Back Lane, and I didn’t stop looking over my shoulder every ten seconds or so until I’d reached the street-lit security of Recreation Road.

Eric and Nic’s place is about two-thirds of the way along Recreation Road, about thirty metres or so past the main entrance to the old factory. It’s a big old detached house, set
back from the street, with a small front garden, a gravelled driveway, and posters all over the windows. Mr and Mrs Leigh are the kind of people who like to put posters in their windows: local theatre productions, protest meetings, Green Party politics… that kind of thing.

I didn’t know if I’d been meaning to go to Eric and Nic’s place or not, and even as I opened the front gate and started walking up the path, I still didn’t know what I was doing there. I was so tired and wrecked by now that my brain seemed to have shrunk. It was still there, still thinking, but it felt so small… so far away. It was as if my skull had thickened, so most of my head was solid bone, and all that was left of my thinking mind was a tiny little cavity deep down inside.

What are you doing here?
it said.

What?

What are you doing here?

I don’t know.

There’s not going to be any farewell party…

I know.

Nicole won’t be here, she’ll be off somewhere with her waltzer guy.

I don’t want to see Nicole.

So what are you doing here?

I don’t know.

Are you looking for Eric?

No.

Pauly?

God, no…

Raymond?

Yeah, that’s it. Raymond. I’m looking for Raymond. That’s what I’m doing here – I’m looking for Raymond.

And why would Raymond be here?

I don’t know.

Did you tell him you were coming round here after the fair?

I can’t remember…

Christ, it’s hot…

I was at the front door now, swaying slightly, trying to remember if I’d told Raymond anything about coming round here after the fair… but it was too hard to think any more. My head was too thick.

I leaned back and gazed up at the house. The lights were all out, the curtains drawn. Everything felt still and empty. I knew there was no one home, but I reached up and rang the bell anyway.

It sounded the same as it had always sounded – a distant
ding dong
– and just for a moment I remembered all the times I’d stood here before, ringing this bell, calling on Nic, calling on Eric, awkwardly saying hello when one of their parents answered the door. Mr Leigh, with his craggy face and his shoulder-length hair and his slightly unsettling blue eyes. And Mrs Leigh, always embarrassing me with her low-cut dresses and her black-haired beauty and her dark and sexy French accent…

But there was no one home now.

No one was in.

The house was empty…

What are you doing here?

I couldn’t remember… it was something about… I was trying to remember something, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Something about Raymond… something about…

What was it?

I was too tired to remember.

I sat down on the front step.

The air was hot.

The night sky rumbled faintly in the distance.

I was so tired…

I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes.

I woke up to the sound of the world exploding, and for a nightmarish moment I thought I’d died and gone to hell. My head was throbbing, my eyes were burning, the air all around me was booming and rumbling… and then something flashed in the distance, and another huge crash of thunder ripped through the sky, and as the rain started falling, pouring down like a tropical storm, everything suddenly came back to me.

Eric and Nic’s place…

I was at Eric and Nic’s place. I was sitting on the front step, getting soaked to the skin, and it seemed to be daylight. I was cold, confused, my backside ached…

I must have been sitting here for hours.

I must have fallen asleep…

Lightning flashed again, thunder boomed, and suddenly the rain was really lashing down. I stretched the stiffness from my legs and painfully got to my feet. My clothes were already soaked through, so there wasn’t much point in getting out of the rain, but I edged back into the doorway anyway. I was shivering, feeling sick. My hand shook as I reached into my pocket, took out my mobile, and checked the time.

It was 6.02 a.m.

I put the phone back in my pocket, took one last look at the still-empty house, then I turned round and started walking.

There was no one around as I headed back home along Recreation Road. The thunderstorm was fading into the distance now, but the rain was still pouring down, and no one in their right mind was going to be out and about at this time in the morning. The streets had that tired-out Sunday morning feel to them – the morning after the Saturday night before – and I don’t mind admitting that I took some kind of pitiful pleasure from the gloom and the emptiness all around me. I
wanted
everything to be miserable. I’d been through a night of madness. I’d lost Raymond. Messed it all up with Nicole. I was cold, I was wet, my head was still throbbing…

I
wanted
to feel sorry for myself.

So I did.

I walked through that cold summer rain, sulking and shivering and hurting, and I let myself wallow in whatever misery I could find. I knew it was stupid and selfish and childish, but I didn’t really care any more. I wanted to wallow. I wanted to be selfish and childish. I wanted to be the guy in the movie who’s down on his luck and all alone in the rain, and if I could have had some miserable music playing in the background, and a million people watching me on TV, I probably would have wanted that too.

But you can’t have everything, can you?

So I just carried on moping in my unseen silence – along Recreation Road, down St Leonard’s Road, left into Hythe Street, up to the lane that leads down to the river…

The gate to the lane was open, its padlocked chain smashed off. There were fresh tyre tracks leading down to the river, and
I could smell the stink of burning rubber in the air. It wasn’t anything to worry about, just another stolen car. Almost every weekend there’s at least one or two left burning by the river. They usually smoulder there for a few days or so before the police eventually tow them away, and then a man from the council comes along and fixes a new padlock and chain to the gate, but it never makes any difference. The kids who steal the cars
like
driving them down to the river, they
like
racing them around for a while before setting fire to them, and that’s all there is to it.

I walked on.

It was still raining, but not so heavily now. The thunderstorm had left the sky with a washed-out daylight darkness, and as I moved down the street towards my house I could see a faint glow of light in the kitchen window. Dad’s car was parked in front of the house, so I guessed he’d just got back from work and was making himself a cup of tea before he went to bed.

I wondered how wrecked I looked. Dad could always tell… he just had to look at my eyes and he’d know what I’d been up to. Mind you, he was usually pretty good about that kind of thing. I mean, he never really made a big deal about anything, but he wasn’t a pushover either. If he ever thought I’d gone too far, he wouldn’t just leave it. He’d want to talk to me, man to man, tell me a few home truths…

And I couldn’t face that right now.

I didn’t want to be a man.

I didn’t want to know any home truths.

So I crossed the street – like
that
made me invisible – and carried on down to Raymond’s place.

His house was dark, as miserable and dingy as ever, and as I followed the alleyway round to his back gate, I could feel a
cold shiver creeping inside me. Something felt wrong. There was something missing, an emptiness… a lack of something. I paused for a moment and looked around. Wet bin bags were slumped all over the place, their sodden guts strewn across the path – wads of stained tissue paper, chicken bones, bits of greyed meat – and as I breathed in deeply, trying to steady myself, my stomach lurched at the fetid smell of rotten waste. I closed my eyes for a second, concentrating on keeping the sickness down, and in that momentary darkness I suddenly knew what the emptiness was. It was Raymond… his presence. It wasn’t there. There was nothing there. No feeling of Raymond at all. I couldn’t feel his presence
or
his absence…