Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase Page B

don’t like that idea at all.
    ‘But you can cry all the same. You’re allowed to cry, honey. Really.’
    I try to cry for Aunt Bay but my tears are stuck.
    Mouths open, sing, exposing jam-red throats. I turn to check Daddy is not going to mess up. He is staring directlyahead, face blank, back straight, chin raised but shoulders shaking, little judders, like the engine of the boat made when he and Momma used to putter up and down the creek, laughing, sharing a cigarette.
    Speeches. Poems. An American. A duke. A colonel. They talk about how Daddy fell in love with Momma’s spirit. Her ‘thirst for life’. Her love of home and family and horses. How Daddy brought her here from America and she fell in love with Cornwall. How she’d introduced the locals to the delights of pumpkin pie. How she didn’t even like killing the rabbits. Because that’s what Nancy was, a nurturer, a mother, an animal-lover, a Joan Baez fan, someone who saw the good in everyone and everything and liked to sing around the fire.
    Everyone is snuffling quietly. But Aunt Bay is howling and saying, ‘Sweet Jesus,’ not very quietly at all, over and over, even though she doesn’t believe in Jesus but a bearded man in orange robes who lives in India. ‘My baby sister. Oh, sweet Jesus!’
    I pretend to wipe away a tear, and keep focused on the others, making sure no one else causes a scene.
    They are all under orders to be brave. Kitty is fiddling with a stray thread on her button, flicking it back and forth with her fingers, Momma’s death still too vast for her to grasp. Barney is staring down at his shoes, polished to mirrors, biting his bottom lip, breathing fast and hard. Toby stares ahead, rigid, chest inflated, his neck blazing red at the back, as if his skin is bursting with the effort of holding the feelings inside. We all want it over. Anything but this.
    When Daddy steps out of his pew the church stills andthe snuffling stops. He looks older and smaller than he did only days before, the hair at his temples the colour of cutlery. When he looks up at the silent congregation his eyes are blank and bloodshot and make me think of the fish that get caught on the creek as the tide rolls out, flapping on the mud until they stop.
    The hush is broken by the crinkle-crackle of foil.
    ‘Kitty!’ I hiss, realizing that she is unwrapping a small chocolate egg in her pocket.
    She looks up, indignant, hot-cheeked. ‘It’s Easter! Aunt Bay gave it to me.’
    ‘You can eat it afterwards.’ Mildred’s mouth purses disapprovingly in the tail of my eye.
    Kitty drops the egg into her pinafore-dress pocket. I pull her close. Barney too. He feels limp and cool, all his usual fidgety energy gone. No longer more alive than everyone else. The opposite. He still hasn’t told us what happened in the woods – what he saw – and when pressed, he just says he can’t remember anything before sitting at the fireplace, drinking cocoa, the bang of the gun. I’m not sure I believe him.
    I think about Momma in London before we left sitting on the turquoise chair, saying, ‘Worrying is a mother’s job,’ and I feel as if I’m going to shatter into a million pieces. Who will worry about us now? Who will look after us now?
    The answer hits with a heavy punch. It. Will. Be. Me.
    Daddy’s mouth opens. At first nothing comes out. Toby and I exchange looks. From nowhere comes the urge to laugh. I bite down on my lower lip, terrified that I might actually do it. Then the piece of paper Daddy is holdingbegins to tremble, like the feathers on the sobbing women’s hats. And the giggle leaves me as suddenly as it came. Someone help Daddy. Someone help him. After a long stretch of awfulness, the vicar walks up to him and, gripping one of his arms at the elbow, tries to direct him back to his seat. But he refuses to go. The vicar, unsure what to do next, sheepishly retreats.
    ‘Thank you all for coming,’ Daddy says at last, raising his shot-red eyes again. ‘I know