The Death of Bunny Munro (18 page)

The night is a deep velvet blue and the moon an alabaster balloon and the planets and the stars are spilled across the heavens, in handfuls and heaps, like gold coins. The smell of brine lives deep within the breeze that blows up from across the ocean and speaks, in a secret way, to the crowd of women who walk down the main sodium-lit thoroughfare – it speaks of deep, feminine mysteries and unawakened and illimitable desires, of silver-haired mermaids and bearded, trident-waving mermen and the looped humps of sea monsters and bejewelled cities drowned beneath masses of unreadable water. No one can remember a night quite so magical in Bognor Regis for years.

Bunny stands at the window of his chalet and watches the crowd as it moves down the lamp-lined path and passes the swimming pool, pink and magical, where a reinforced concrete elephant in a yellow tutu spurts strawberry-coloured water from its upraised trunk. Bunny smiles to himself as the crowd of women, unsuspecting, pass the giant fibreglass rabbit, goggle-eyed and buck-toothed, that stands like a bizarre avatar or tribal fetish beside the water-slide. On a little track circling the main swimming pool sits a brightly coloured electric train for children, its engine adorned with the same rapturous face
of a circus clown that Bunny remembers from when his father brought him here as a child. He remembers, too, the fun fair, with its world-class monorail and Apache Fort and Dutch windmill that the crowd drifts past, as it winds its way around the empty swings and deserted slides and abandoned seesaws of the children’s playground.

A black rag of cloud slides across the surface of the moon and Bunny sucks on a Lambert & Butler and watches someone point at the Gaiety Building and someone point at the putting green (with its huge golf ball balanced on a thirty-foot golf tee) and someone point at the amusement arcade and everyone ascend the stairs and enter the Main Hall of Butlins Holiday Camp in Bognor Regis.

Standing at the window, there is a certain determination in Bunny’s posture, his feet firmly upon the earth, his chin raised, his shoulders serious and square and a look of concentration, but also mourning, around his eyes.

Over the entrance to the Main Hall the Butlins mission statement blinks in a candy-pink neon, ‘OUR TRUE INTENT IS ALL FOR YOUR DELIGHT’, and Bunny can see through the arched windows of the hall the crowd of women milling around, their invitations in their hands, staring at each other and wondering what they are doing there.

‘Our true intent is all for your delight,’ says Bunny to himself and he throws back his head and drains the contents of a can of Coca-Cola.

Bunny has put on a fresh shirt – thick red stripes with a contrasting white collar and cuffs – and the bizarre webbed scar curls from the open neck of his shirt like crystals of frost. He has loaded extra pomade into his hair and arranged his lovelock so it sits on his forehead with a new, almost yogic
serenity. His cheeks are freshly shaved and he smells heavily of cologne and there is a thin, embossed cicatrix above his right eye, an inch long, that looks like it has been sculpted from pink plasticine.

‘What did you say, Dad?’ says Bunny Junior.

‘I said, our true intent is all for your delight,’ says Bunny.

‘What does that mean?’ says the boy.

‘I don’t know.’

Bunny Junior sits sunk in a beige corduroy beanbag, his own scar across his left eye, faint and pale, like a distant, ghosted echo of his father’s. He is dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of blue gaberdine shorts and flip-flops.

Bunny turns to the boy, sucks on his cigarette, expels a funnel of smoke into the room and asks, ‘Will you be all right, Bunny Boy?’

‘
I’ll
be all right. But will you?’ says Bunny Junior.

Bunny crumples the can of Coke and lobs it into the sink in the tiny kitchenette and says, ‘Yes, I’m ready,’ then slips on his jacket, throws his arms out to the side and says, ‘How do I look?’

‘You look good, Dad,’ says Bunny Junior. ‘You look ready.’

‘Well, yeah, because there is something I’ve got to do,’ says Bunny.

‘I know, Dad,’ says the boy, and he picks the scorched remnants of his encyclopaedia, with its rain-swollen pages, off a low laminated coffee table.

‘You go wait for me down at the swimming pool, and I’ll come by and pick you up later,’ says Bunny.

‘Yeah, Dad, I know.’

Bunny sucks the last gasp out of his Lambert & Butler, crushes it in an ashtray, checks himself in the mirror (for the hundredth time) and says, ‘Sure you do, Bunny Boy.’

Bunny Junior lies back in the beanbag and opens his encyclopaedia and peels apart the ruined pages until he finds a definition of the word ‘Fantasy’.

‘A fantasy is a situation imagined by an individual which does not correspond with reality but expresses certain desires or aims of its creator. Fantasies typically involve situations that are impossible or highly unlikely,’ reads the boy and closes the encyclopaedia. ‘Who would have guessed that, Dad?’ he says, secretly pinching his leg.

‘See you, Bunny Boy,’ says Bunny, and he opens the door of the chalet and steps outside into the cool evening air.

Outside the night air carries within it only the faintest idea of a chill but it is enough for Bunny to register a shiver run through his body. At least he hopes it is the breeze and not some eleventh-hour lack of resolve, because, as he walks down the path towards the Main Hall, he feels a rising but not altogether unexpected suspicion that the course of action he is about to embark upon may not be as straightforward as he has planned.

He stops walking for a moment, puts a Lambert & Butler in his mouth and looks up at the night sky for guidance or strength or courage or something, but the moon appears counterfeit and merely cosmetic, the stars cheap and gimmicky.

‘Oh, man,’ he says to himself. ‘What happened to the night?’

Bunny Zippos his cigarette, takes a deep drag, holds it in his lungs and comes to understand that there is simply no point in turning back, he must do what he came here to do, and he expels a resolute stream of blue smoke into the air and moves on. He leaves the path, makes his way around
the side of the Main Hall and enters the stage door of the Empress Ballroom.

The carpeted stairs are rank with cigarette smoke and stale beer, and as he climbs them, Bunny sees within the bizarre amorphous pattern of the flock wallpaper a gallery of sinister faces with elongated and spiteful eyes. He sees these as a congregation of accusatory faces – a grotesque collection of the aggrieved – and he hopes that they are not some kind of premonition of things to come.

He traces his finger along the raised scar over his right eye and walks down a short hall, and as he draws closer he hears the dull murmur of the crowd gathering and he thinks he can hear, on the soft-pedal, a note of anxious expectation growing within it. He also senses, deeper down, a reverberation of malice and mistrust that he knows is imagined, or at least anticipated, but nevertheless implodes within him like a sadness.

‘Oh, man,’ he says again and he enters the cramped backstage area of the Empress Ballroom.

Bunny sequesters himself into the wings and, hidden there, takes a deep breath and pulls back one of the red velvet, star-spangled curtains and sees that the interior of the Empress Ballroom, with its purple-and-gold satin ceiling and its ornamental balconies, is filled to capacity with the crowd of women that he had observed walking up the main path. He feels his heart constrict and a bubble of dread rise in his chest.

On the tiny glittering stage, a three-piece band dressed in pale green velour jackets begins to play an instrumental version of a soft rock classic that Bunny feels is both familiar and foreign at the same time.

Bunny puts a Lambert & Butler in his mouth and pats his pocket for his Zippo.

‘Need a light, friend?’ says a voice.

Bunny turns and sees a tall, lean-looking figure standing, like a tower of obtuse angles, in the shadows. He has a cigarette dangling from his mouth and what appears to be a saxophone hanging around his neck. The man strikes a match and the flare of the flame reveals him to be a blue-eyed, handsome man in his early fifties. He sports a black moustache, wears a hairnet and is dressed in the same pale green velour jacket that the other band members are wearing. He reaches over and lights Bunny’s cigarette.

‘Shouldn’t you be on?’ says Bunny, keeping his voice low.

The musician takes a drag of his cigarette and blows a considered plume of smoke into the air and says, ‘No, man, they haul me in on the third number.’ Then he takes a step back, sucks on his cigarette again and gives Bunny the once-over. ‘Hey, man, I love the quiff. What are you?’ he asks, ‘A joke-man? A magician? A singer?’

‘Yeah, something like that,’ says Bunny, and then adds, ‘I dig your moustache.’

‘Thanks, man. The missus don’t go for it much.’

‘No, it looks good,’ says Bunny.

‘Well, it’s a commitment,’ says the musician and takes a final drag on his cigarette and with a swivel of his black leather boot grinds it into the floor.

‘I can see that,’ says Bunny.

‘But I do love my wife,’ says the musician, tracing his fingers along his moustache, a distant look in his eyes.

Bunny feels a wave of emotion erupt in his throat and he
presses his lips together and turns his face away, so that it is momentarily lost in shadow.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a tiny man in a red tuxedo with white piping and gold buttons the size of milk bottle tops and an immaculate strawberry-blonde toupee pushes past Bunny and bounds onto the stage. He executes, with a shimmy and a shake, a series of rolling gestures with his hands that brings the band’s song to a close.

The musician with the moustache leans in close to Bunny and behind his hand speaks to him out of the side of his mouth.

‘Hey, did you hear the one about the junkie who shot up a whole packet of curry powder?’

‘No,’ says Bunny, who has pulled back the curtain again and is anxiously scanning the crowd on the dance floor of the Empress Ballroom.

‘Yeah, well, now he’s in a korma.’

On the stage the diminutive Master of Ceremonies skips up to the microphone, pops his cuffs and throws his arms out wide and says in a voice that surprises Bunny in its depth and insistence, ‘Hi-di-hi!’

The audience responds with a smattering of non-committal applause.

‘I can’t hear you!’ says the MC, in a singsong voice, ‘I said “Hi-di-hi!”’ and then walks to the lip of the stage and points the microphone at the audience.

‘Hi-di-hi!’ says the audience, in unison.

‘That’s better! Are we gonna have fun tonight?’

The crowd, swept up, clamours its assent, with foot stomps and hand claps.

‘We are gonna dance!’ says the MC, and the little man does a nifty twisting movement with his tiny feet, his pink toupee shimmering in the stage lights, the buttons on his jacket twinkling. ‘We are gonna sing!’ he cries, and yodels horribly, then cocks his thumb over his shoulder at the band and says in a panto-whisper, waggling his thick black eyebrows, ‘I better leave that to the professionals!’ The crowd laugh and whistle and applaud. ‘And when the lights go down,’ says the MC, winking suggestively, ‘maybe make a little love!’

The crowd hoot and stomp their feet as the little man shuffles around the stage making suggestive movements with his tiny, gloved hands and grinding his child-like hips.

Bunny feels a thread of perspiration wind its way down the side of his face and he pulls a handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket and presses it against his forehead. The musician looks at Bunny with an expression of concern or sympathy or something.

‘What are you doing here, man?’ he asks.

‘I’m just trying to put things right, you know,’ says Bunny.

‘Uh-huh, I hear you,’ says the musician. ‘We’ve got to love one another or die, brother.’

‘Yeah, I heard that,’ says Bunny, and again a swell of regret blooms within him and he puts his hand up to his heart.

‘It’s super-glue, baby,’ says the musician, and blows softly into his saxophone. ‘It keeps the heart of the world pumping.’

Bunny peers around the curtain again, and the mirrorball that hangs from the ceiling of the ballroom has begun to revolve and splinters of silver light dance across the faces of the crowd and Bunny sees Georgia, standing in the front row, a thing of certain beauty, proud-looking, almost regal, in a cream chiffon evening dress with scarlet sequins sewn across
its bodice like a spray of arterial blood. Her yellow hair hangs in loose ringlets around her lavender eyes and she sways, back and forth, to some inner song, a content smile upon her face. Zoë and Amanda stand each side of Georgia dressed in identical indigo trouser suits. Bunny notices that Zoë now has the same candy-coloured hair extensions as Amanda, and they look happy.

Standing nearby, Bunny sees the Tae Kwon Do black belt, Charlotte Parnovar, dressed in a Mexican peasant skirt and a white embroidered blouse, and as Bunny unconsciously traces his fingers along the lumped bridge of his nose he sees that her face looks softer, less severe, all evidence of the unsightly cyst on her forehead gone.

Bunny sees Pamela Stokes (Poodle’s ‘gift’) with her arm around the waist of the cuckolded Mylene Huq from Rottingdean, both smiling and stealing shy and coquettish glances at one another.

Bunny recognises Emily, the cashier from McDonald’s, dressed in a snug yellow top and tight red trousers, her skin glowing, gazing about the Empress Ballroom as though she has never seen anything so beautiful in her life and applauding enthusiastically as the strange little MC, with the pink toupee, raises his hand to quieten the crowd.

‘But seriously, folks, before the fun begins, we’ve got a gentleman who has come along tonight and wants to say a few words to you.’

Bunny wipes his face with his handkerchief and says to the musician with the saxophone and the moustache, ‘I guess this is me.’

‘Knock ’em dead, brother,’ says the musician, and he pats Bunny on the back. ‘Knock ’em dead.’

Bunny takes a final, firing-squad suck of his Lambert & Butler and grinds it out on the floor. Then he pulls the curtain aside, pats at his lovelock and walks onto the stage as the MC executes a dainty little two-step, throws out his arms and says, ‘So without further ado-da-do, could we have a big round of applause for Mr Bunny Munro!’