Black Rabbit Hall (19 page)

‘Devon?’ The word ‘girlfriend’ echoes mockingly in my head. It is at this awful moment that I realize I haven’t changed out of the clothes I wore on the train and probably smell of Kitty’s wee.

‘Bigbury Grange.’ His voice trails off and he looks at the ground, as if wishing he hadn’t mentioned it.

‘Oh.’ Bigbury Grange is one of the finest houses in the West Country, a huge estate, sugar-paste white, and much gossiped about a few years ago when the Bracewells – ‘Newly minted frozen-food millionaires,’ sniffed Daddy – had bought it from old friends of my parents, the impoverished Lord and Lady Fraser, who could only afford to heat the gatekeeper’s cottage and eat pheasants and raw honey from the hives. ‘Well, tea if you want it,’ I say, trying to hide my crashing spirits, turning back to the house.

He throws down his cigarette, unsmoked, and stamps on it. ‘I’ll come with you.’

We walk up the slope of lawn, his hand swinging about six inches from mine. I sneak a sidelong glance at him and blush furiously when it meets his.

When we reach the terrace, he says in a fast, garbled way, words pushed up together: ‘
Doyouwanttogoforadrivetomorrowmorning?
’

‘I …’ I glance back at the house, see Toby watching us from the kitchen window, a fleshy pale dot where his forehead is pressed against the glass.

‘It’s a Lotus Elan.’ His jet eyes glitter. ‘The roof rolls down and stuff.’

‘I said I’d go to the beach with Toby,’ I say, forcing the words out against my will, like when Matilda asked me to Greece.

‘Of course,’ he says quickly, as if it didn’t matter anyway, and we walk into the house in embarrassed silence.

Tomorrow arrives, flat as a cancelled party. From my bedroom window, I spot Caroline, who arrived late last night but is already up, inspecting the flower borders, lilac headscarf knotted under her chin, enormous white-framed sunglasses. Worse, after breakfast she announces an ‘Easter family luncheon’, chin raised, eyes showing too much white, like a declaration of war. ‘One o’clock sharp in the dining room,’ she adds, shooting an expectant smile across the room to Daddy, as if anticipating praise for taking control of a household where nothing has happened ‘sharp’ in living memory. ‘Latecomers will pay the price in lost Easter eggs.’ She laughs shrilly.

Unwilling to take the risk that she might not be joking – not after last year’s chocolate wash-out – Barney and Kitty scamper between Big Bertie and Black Rabbit Hall’s other clocks, trying to work out the right time. Then, sensibly
deciding that none are to be trusted, they hover beside the sundial on the terrace, impatiently waiting for the shadow to creep across its bronze face like a frown, leaving me and Toby to go to the beach alone.

‘Well, I’m not going to the lunch if you’re not,’ I say, as we trudge back from the beach along the cliff path, bags heavy with sandy towels and wet swimming costumes, watching out for the adders that nest in the long grasses, stirred by the unexpected spring heat.

As I walk I start to feel my fingers and toes again. The sea – a shimmering iceberg blue today – was bearable for only a few seconds. Toby stayed in far longer than I did, his skin boiled red, gasping at the cold, as if he was enjoying the pain of it. I insisted he get out in the end, worried that he’d stiffen and float out into the ocean, like a driftwood log.

‘A
family
lunch!’ snorts Toby. ‘Since when were that ridiculous woman and her spoilt son family?’

I swing the heavy straw beach bag over my shoulder, thinking that Lucian should be spoilt but isn’t somehow. His joy in the sports car seemed genuine. ‘It’s all a bit odd, isn’t it?’ I say mildly, hoping to calm him down.

‘No, it’s not odd! Or random or coincidental, Amber. That’s the flipping point! The Shawcross invasion is going
exactly
to plan. It’s been executed by Caroline, sure as a military exercise. Why else would they be here again?’

‘You know why. What Daddy said.’ The Shawcrosses were to join friends in Gloucestershire for Easter but the friends had cancelled at the last minute, leaving their guests at a loose end. So Daddy had done ‘the decent thing’ and
invited them here, ‘as everyone got on so terribly well at Christmas’.

‘That’s rot and you know it.’ Toby kicks a stone over the cliff, spinning it into nothingness. He shoots me a sidelong glance. ‘I’ve been working on a contingency plan, these last few days. Since I heard they were coming.’

‘A what?’ I ask, not liking the sound of it.

‘It’s a surprise. In the woods.’

I like the sound of it even less.

‘It’s not quite ready, though.’

‘Oh, Toby. Just go along with lunch today,’ I say, trying again, fearing yet another row between Daddy and him. I realize now that Momma was the bridge between their two clashing personalities. The long school terms don’t help: Daddy looks at Toby as if he doesn’t recognize him sometimes. ‘Please?’

‘Stop trying to be peacemaker. Incredibly tiresome.’

I look away, furious that Toby is beyond manipulation, even when it’s in his best interest. It’s almost as if he sees things too clearly, in unforgiving sharp focus, like someone looking at skin through a magnifying glass and seeing only its ugly bumps and hairs. ‘Daddy will be awfully upset if you don’t come.’

‘Well,
I
’m awfully upset he’s invited the Antichrist to stay on the anniversary of Momma’s death. Aren’t you?’ With no warning, he lurches towards the cliff edge and, to my horror, poles off it on one arm, so that in a blink only his shock of red hair is visible, two fists gripping the snake-nest cliff grass. I lunge forward, reaching for his hands. ‘Tob –’

He releases his fingers. There is a sickening scuffle of stones, the sound of something heavy falling. Wild laughter.

I peer tentatively over the edge. He is on a ledge a few feet below, a narrow band of flat rock, like a camp bed sticking out from the cliff. It’s a ledge I’ve seen hundreds of times from the beach but never considered attempting to land on. But the parts of the estate that seemed dangerous when Momma was alive seem less so now. After all, if you can die just falling from a horse, you may as well climb to the top of a tree.

‘Swing your feet over, sis! Don’t look down!’

I hesitate, wondering if I can play it to my advantage. ‘Only if you come to the Easter lunch.’

‘Boring,’ he says, which means yes.

I have to do it then, crawling backwards on my hands and knees, one foot dangling in mid-air.

‘Foot hole to the left. No, no, left, not right, you twit! I’ve got you. Really, I’ve got you. Let
go
. Amber, you actually have to let go of the grass. The dangling is the dangerous bit. Believe me, I’ve been practising. You can’t hang there. Trust me. Leap of faith.’

‘Argh.’ I grab him as I land – the drop only a few feet but feeling much more – making us both wobble precariously. I squat, root myself on the rock floor: it feels safer than standing. ‘You scare me sometimes, Toby.’

‘Why? I’ll always catch you,’ he says simply. And I know he will.

‘This must be how gulls feel.’ The view is dizzying, almost too beautiful. It makes my eyes water. ‘Like we’re sitting in the sky.’

‘We are.’ He grins – one of his charming, crazy grins – and peels off his shirt, exposing a startling winter-white chest, spinning it above his head before tossing it over the edge with a whoop. He leans over fearlessly, watches it flutter to the rocks below.

‘You’ve gone quite nuts alone here,’ I say, rolling my eyes, wondering what Daddy and Caroline will think when he struts into the house half naked.

He lurches back, stretching out his legs, head rolling heavy on my crossed knees, as if he doesn’t need to ask because I belong to him again. The distance I felt earlier is closing. But I still feel uneasy.

We stay like this in silence for a while. A grey-winged kittiwake eyes us warily from its seaweed nest in a crevice nearby. The wind picks up. My legs go dead. Toby closes his eyes, lids flickering madly. I peer down at him breathing, quick, intense breaths, like inside he’s still running, and wonder about the yellowing bruises on his biceps, the surprise waiting for me in the woods and how the splatter of fiery freckles stirring on his cheekbones somehow look like warnings about the days to come.

Toby makes it impossible for me to behave normally around Lucian. The most mundane moments – passing the water jug, or each other on the stairs – have become oddly charged and clumsy. When I have to speak to Lucian in Toby’s presence my voice always sounds too high, my laugh too shrill. Even when Toby’s nowhere near, the self-consciousness follows me like an awkward friend, made worse by the fear that Toby will pop up at any minute, eyes narrowed, territorial as a tom cat.

This morning, thank goodness, I don’t have to worry. It’s D Day: Toby is finishing the project in the woods. After wolfing his breakfast, he’d stalked off, swinging a mallet from one hand, a tent of rusty chicken wire over a shoulder.

As soon as Toby’s out of view, Caroline presses the napkin to the corners of her mouth and suggests that I show Lucian the cove: he and I glance at each other for a blaze of a second, look away in embarrassment. But Caroline’s suggestion remains, shimmering above the bowl of cold stewed apple, just within my grasp.

‘Well? Gracious, you’re both very silent this morning, I must say.’ She sips her tea delicately. ‘But I do think you should get some colour into those pale cheeks before you leave for the shooting party at Bigbury Grange tomorrow, Lucian. The Bracewells are terribly outdoorsy. You don’t want Belinda to think you’re just a city boy, do you?’

I try to hide my crush of disappointment at him leaving by playing with the edge of a fork.

‘What the beach lacks in amenities, it makes up for in seclusion,’ Caroline continues, placing her cup carefully on the saucer, sunlight catching on its gold rim. ‘It’s rather like being marooned at the end of the world. You won’t see another soul.’

‘Crabs have souls,’ Barney points out shyly, throwing a crust to Boris beneath the table. ‘But Momma says the soul has probably gone by the time you actually eat the crab sandwich, so it’s fine to eat the sandwich.’

Caroline’s smile vanishes at the mention of my mother. ‘What a curious idea,’ she manages, the words sliding between her tiny teeth. She gets up abruptly, cup of tea not finished, and leaves the room. Which is something.

I discover that I’m far less likely to be a twit around Lucian when I’m in motion. Walking, I can hide an unexpected blush with my hand (and there is only one hot cheek to hide). I don’t have to look into his eyes either, reveal things I don’t want to. And knowing that Toby is nowhere nearby stops the words knotting quite so thickly on my tongue. This is not so bad.

We climb the cliff path like stairs, up and down the headland, cutting over the dry-stone walls, the scrambles of windblown pine. The spring sun feels hotter – closer – on the cliffs. Wind gusts beneath my skirt, trying to flip it inside out like an umbrella in a storm. I push it down and secretly check to see if Lucian’s looking at my legs. He is.

But Kitty is trying to make him look at her, swinging from his hand, chattering and giggling. If Lucian finds her
as trying as I do, he doesn’t show it. Neither does he dismiss Barney’s endless patter of questions – ‘Would someone with fifteen fingers play the guitar better than someone with ten?’ – but patiently answers each one, so that we have very little time to talk about anything that might matter. He smiles at me sometimes, looking up through his dark fringe while he’s talking to them, when I least expect it, and it’s a funny, shy half-smile that makes me forget about Toby and nesting adders and the fact he has a stinking-rich girlfriend called Belinda who lives in a house in Devon with central heating and no blood splatters outside the stables.

When we get to the edge of the cliff – just above the ledge where Toby and I lay the day before – Barney pulls on his arm and points proudly. ‘That’s our beach.’

Lucian glances across at me, a smile playing on his lips. ‘You made it sound huge.’

‘Did I?’ I don’t know how to explain that it felt huge when I was a little kid and somehow still does.

Barney starts to gambol down the narrow rumble of stones to the sand. He gets there before anyone else, happily wading where the underground stream skirts out as a bubbling petticoat of water. Back in his element.

In the distance, the sea is jelly green, the tide so far out you can see the stumpy brown ribs of the little rowing boat poking out of hard rills of sand. I tell Lucian the locals say it’s the remains of an old smugglers’ boat and he listens intently, staring at my mouth as I talk.

We sit down on some rocks, smooth and grey as seals’ backs, almost a yard apart. He takes off his shoes. I can’t help but notice that his feet are very pale and soft-looking,
as if they have been wrapped in socks far too long and never run free. Something about them makes me feel rather sorry for him.

We chat about nothing much – the weather, how a high tide can cut this beach right off – and Kitty wanders away with her bucket, scouring the foamy strandline for shells and smooth green glass. Barney rolls up his trousers, paddling along the shore. I watch Barney closely – you can never take your eyes off him by the water – but still manage to sneak the odd glance at Lucian, while pretending not to.

‘You’re lucky having all this,’ he says, pulling one leg towards him, letting the other dangle long. I notice how the black hairs on his legs stop in a perfect bracelet around his ankle, his very own strandline.

‘I know.’ I squeeze my skirt between my knees so that it doesn’t fly up again, even though a part of me rather wishes it would. ‘We don’t need a bigger beach.’

‘I don’t mean the beach.’

I turn to him, puzzled, pulling a lock of hair out of my mouth. ‘What then?’

He gazes at Kitty, rattling her bucket of shells. ‘Brothers, sisters, you know.’ He shrugs.

I try to imagine a silent world without responsibilities and divided loyalties and squabbles over the biggest slice of cake. ‘It must be nice to have peace and quiet too.’

‘Not really,’ he says, digging his toes into the sand. ‘That’s why I started to play the guitar.’

‘Well, if you had noisy brothers and sisters you’d probably never have learned to play it like you do.’ Realizing I’ve revealed that I’ve been listening (ear pressed to the
floorboards), my face explodes. I cover my cheek with my hand, feel the heat of my blood pulsing through my fingers.

‘You know what?’ He drags his heel across the sand, leaving a trench that quickly fills with water.

‘What?’

‘I wanted a twin.’

‘That’s funny.’ I laugh.

‘A brother twin. Someone to do boy things with.’

‘I do boy things,’ I say indignantly.

‘Yeah, I know.’ Is that a funny sort of respect in his eyes or is he mocking me? I can’t tell.

The uncertainty makes me say the wrong thing: ‘I cannot imagine you being a twin.’

‘Why not?’ He looks put out.

‘You’re too …’ I’m not sure how to explain that he has solid edges and Toby and I have blurred ones. That Toby is left-handed and I am right-handed, that sometimes it’s like there’s a mirror line between us. ‘… complete as you are, I think.’

His laughter erupts across the beach. I’ve never heard Lucian laugh like that before. Like something smashing out of him. I see then what I suspected in his bedroom at Christmas: he is impossible not to like. Beneath all his deadpan sullenness there is warmth and laughter: it’s like finding shiny gold coins in mud.

‘So you feel incomplete without Toby?’ he says, when the laughter subsides and his face closes once more.

‘It’s not quite like that,’ I say quickly, even though in many ways it is.

He frowns up at the cliff. ‘Where is he? I haven’t seen him all morning.’

‘Woods.’ I shrug, even though the question makes my heart patter. It’s as if in asking he’s creating the possibility that Toby isn’t in the woods but scrambling furiously along the cliff path towards us. ‘Making something. He won’t tell me what.’

‘Intriguing.’

I feel a bit embarrassed on Toby’s behalf. It strikes me how much more grown-up Lucian is than Toby, far more than the extra two years. I cannot imagine Lucian making things in the woods at fifteen, or whooping across the river on a swing. Did part of Toby stop developing when Momma died? Did part of all of us? Our bodies changed but inside we stayed the age we were then.

I suddenly want to grow up, and quickly.

‘When do you reckon he’ll finish?’ he asks hesitantly.

‘Oh, he’ll probably be out there all day. Won’t leave anything alone until it’s done.’

‘Right.’ Lucian pushes his foot into the sand, back and forth, as if trying to decide whether to ask me something. Then he does.

‘Faster!’ I shout over the engine, sounding thrillingly unlike myself.

‘Sure?’ He laughs.

‘Yes!’ The car roof is pushed back like a pram hood. The air rushes into my mouth. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

‘Hold tight!’

The engine growls – and it’s like we’re riding a living thing, not a car at all. It splices the cliff road in half, scattering gulls and butterflies, throwing me against the side on bends. I twist, steadying myself with a hand on the glossy
wooden dashboard. Black Rabbit Hall is a doll’s house in the distance.

‘My hair!’ I shriek, because it’s candy-flossing above my head, catching in my mouth.

‘I love your hair.’

I love your hair.
Could that really be what he said? It’s so hard to hear over the roar of the engine. But it makes me grin stupidly anyway. I never want to get out of this amazing little car that can take you away so quickly from somewhere so big and inescapable that, within seconds, it’s like it never existed at all.

‘Fun?’ he asks, his hair streaming too, flat black feathers. ‘Damn.’

A huddle of sheep is pouring out of a farm gate into the lane. We’re going to crash into them but we don’t – the brakes screech and I’m thrown forward in my seat, laughing – and I love this, the cheating of the bad thing, the writing over the disaster. The sheep stagger up the bank, push up against the fence. Lucian reverses back down the lane, while the farmer shakes his fist.

We park, then sit on the white bench at the edge of the cliff, gazing out at the slowly shifting purple and green patches on the ocean, like a pod of whales deep below the surface. My legs feel wobbly, disoriented, just as they do on solid ground after I’ve been on a boat in choppy water. The back of my cotton dress is sodden with sweat. Lucian is sitting so close to me that if I moved my leg just two inches to the right it would touch his. And I can feel him staring, as if his eyes are all over me, soft and warm as hands. I’m not sure I can remember a nicer feeling. I try to
store it up, so I can tell Matilda about it in detail when I’m back in London.

‘Sorry for nearly killing you.’

‘That was the best bit actually.’ I dare to meet his gaze. His pupils have eclipsed the chocolaty iris and he has an odd expression of awe on his face, as if he’s not seeing me but someone wondrous.

Then, because I’m overexcited and scared that I’m going to say the wrong thing, I say, ‘I have dead flies in my hair,’ and ruin the moment completely.

He reaches over and, with agonizing slowness, picks out a midge, running it down the hair shaft, flicking it off at the end. He does it again. Everything sucks tight inside. This is already the most perfect moment of my life so far.

‘Done.’

‘Thanks.’ I sound almost normal. Inside, everything is liquid.

‘Toby’s going to go mad, isn’t he?’

‘I won’t tell him,’ I say, panicking less about Toby finding out and stabbing Lucian repeatedly with the penknife than the drive coming to an end. My eyes fall to his lips and I wonder what it would be like to kiss him, if a boy’s mouth has a particular taste. ‘I love the motor-car. Let’s go out again.’

‘Amber …’ he says, then stops. For a wild, magical moment, I think he’s going to kiss me. That everything – the night in his room at Christmas, sitting on the rock in the cove watching Kitty fill her bucket with shells – has been leading to this point. I brace myself, trying to remember
how people kiss in books, terrified about doing it wrong, clashing teeth and noses.

But he doesn’t kiss me. He stands up. ‘Let’s go.’

My spirits crash, then fly again when he pulls me up by my hands. His are hot, quite damp and feel wonderfully big. My skirt flutters in the wind and I’m sure that if he lets go I’ll fly off the cliff like a kite.

‘I’ll get you home.’ He grins, that wonderful surprising grin. ‘And this time I promise to drive like a vicar.’

‘Thank you,’ I say, desperately wishing he would do neither.