‘You should be in bed, not wondering about death,’ said Mr Harris, who lived in number thirty-seven. He’d been in a bad mood since his wife left him the previous year, after her brief affair with (whispered) ‘another woman’.
‘I’d like to be Jewish,’ I pronounced, as Mr Harris dipped a large hunk of bread into the bubbling cheese.
‘We’ll talk about it in the morning,’ said my father, topping up the wine glasses.
My mother lay down with me on my bed, her perfume tumbling over my face like breath, her words smelling of Dubonnet and lemonade.
‘You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older,’ I said.
She smiled and said, ‘And you can be. But it’s not very easy to become Jewish.’
‘I know,’ I said forlornly. ‘I need a number.’
And she suddenly stopped smiling.
It had been a fine spring day, the day I actually asked him. I’d noticed it before, of course, because children would. We were in the garden and he rolled up his shirtsleeves and there it was.
‘What’s that?’ I said, pointing to the number on the thin translucent skin of his underarm.
‘That was once my identity,’ he said. ‘During the war. In a camp.’
‘What kind of camp?’ I asked.
‘Like a prison,’ he said.
‘Did you do something wrong?’ I said.
‘No, no,’ he said.
‘Why were you there, then?’ I asked.
‘Ahh,’ he said, raising his index finger in front of himself. ‘The big question. Why were we there? Why were we there indeed?’
I looked at him, waiting for the answer; but he gave none. And then I looked back at the number: six digits, standing out harsh and dark as if they had been written yesterday.
‘There’s only one story that comes out of a place like that,’ Mr Golan said quietly. ‘Horror and suffering. Not for your young ears.’
‘I’d like to know, though,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know about horror. And suffering.’
And Mr Golan closed his eyes and rested his hand on the numbers on his arm, as if they were the numbers to a safe and one he rarely opened.
‘Then I will tell you,’ he said. ‘Come closer. Sit here.’
My parents were in the garden fixing a birdhouse to the sturdy lower branch of the apple tree. I listened to their laughter, to their shrieks of command, to the ‘Higher’ ‘No, lower’ of clashing perspectives. Normally I would have been outside with them. It was a task that would have thrilled me once, the day being so fine. But I’d become quieter those last couple of weeks, gripped by an introversion that steered me towards books. I was on the sofa reading when my brother opened the door and leant awkwardly in the doorframe. He looked troubled; I could always tell because his silence was flimsy and craved the dislocation of noise.
‘What?’ I said, lowering my book.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
I picked up my book again and as soon as I did he said, ‘They’re going to cut my knob off, you know. Or part of it. It’s called a circumcision. That’s why I went to the hospital yesterday.’
‘What part?’ I asked.
‘Top bit,’ he said.
‘Will it hurt?’
‘Yeah, probably.’
‘Why are they going to do that, then?’
‘The skin’s too tight.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and must have looked confused.
‘Look,’ he said, a little more helpfully. ‘You know that blue roll-neck jumper you’ve got? The one that’s too small?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you know when you tried to put your head through and you couldn’t and it got stuck?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, your head’s like my knob. They’ve got to cut off the skin – the roll-neck part – so the head can be free.’
‘And make a round neck?’ I said, sounding much clearer.
‘Sort of,’ he said.
He hobbled around for days, swearing and fiddling with the front of his trousers like the madman who lived in the park; the man we were told never to go near, but always did. He recoiled at my questions and my request for a viewing, but then one evening about ten days later, when the swelling had subsided and we were playing in my bedroom, I asked him what it was like.
‘Happy with it?’ I said, finishing the last of my Jaffa cake.
‘I think so,’ he said, trying to suppress a smile. ‘I look like Howard now. I have a Jewish penis.’
‘Just like Mr Golan’s penis,’ I said, lying back onto my pillow, unaware of the silence that had immediately filled the room.
‘How do you know about Mr Golan’s penis?’
A pale sheen now formed across his face. I heard him swallow. I sat up. Silence. The faint sound of a dog barking outside.
Silence.
‘How do you know?’ he asked again. ‘Tell me.’
My head pounded. I started to shake.
‘You mustn’t tell anyone,’ I said.
He stumbled out of my room and took with him a burden that, in reality, he was far too young to carry. But he took it nevertheless and told no one, as he had promised. And I would never know what actually happened when he left my room that night, not even later; he wouldn’t tell me. I just never saw Mr Golan again. Well, not alive, anyhow.
He found me under the covers, breathing in my nervous, cloying stench. I was fallen, confused, and I whispered, ‘He was my friend,’ but I couldn’t be sure if it was my voice any more, not now that I was different.
‘I’ll get you a proper friend,’ was all he said as he held me in the darkness, as defiant as granite. And lying there coiled, we pretended that life was the same as before. When we were both still children, and when trust, like time, was constant. And, of course, always there.
My parents were in the kitchen, basting the turkey. The meaty roast smells permeated the house and made both my brother and I nauseous, as we attempted to finish off the last two chocolates from a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray. We were standing in front of the Christmas tree, the lights dangerously flickering and buzzing due to a faulty connection somewhere near the star (something my mother had already warned me not to touch with wet hands). We were frustrated, looking at the piles of unopened presents scattered about underneath, presents we weren’t allowed to touch until after lunch.
‘Only another hour to go,’ said my father as he skipped into the living room dressed as an elf. His youthful features stood out from under his hat, and it struck me that he looked more like Peter Pan than an elf: eternal boy rather than spiteful sprite.
My father was into dressing up. He took it seriously. As seriously as his job as a lawyer. And every year he liked to surprise us with a new festive character, and one that would remain with us throughout the Christmas period. It was like having an unwanted guest forcibly placed amidst our lives.
‘Did you hear me?’ my father said. ‘Only another hour till lunch.’
‘We’re going outside,’ said my brother sullenly.
We were bored. Everyone else on our street had already opened their gifts and were parading the Useful and the Useless in front of our envious eyes. We sat dejectedly on the damp front wall. Mr Harris ran past, showing off his new tracksuit, a tracksuit that unfortunately showed off too many parts of him.
‘It’s from my sister Wendy,’ he said before unnecessarily sprinting down the road, arms splayed out wide towards an imaginary finishing post.
My brother looked at me. ‘He hates his sister Wendy.’
I thought she couldn’t much like him, as I watched the purple, orange and green flash disappear round the corner, narrowly missing Olive Binsbury and her crutch.
‘Lunch!’ shouted my father at three minutes to two.
‘Come on then,’ said my brother. ‘Once more unto the breach.’
‘Once more where?’ I said, as he led me towards the dining room and the scent of my parents’ selfless and enthusiastic offerings.
&nbs
p; It was the box I saw first; an old cardboard television box that obscured my brother’s head and made his feet tap out their way like white sticks.
‘Am I nearly there yet?’ he said, heading towards the table.
‘Nearly,’ I said.
He placed the box down on the table. I could smell the fecund dampness of straw. The box moved jerkily, but I wasn’t scared. My brother opened the flaps and pulled out the biggest rabbit I’d ever seen.
‘I said I’d get you a proper friend.’
‘It’s a rabbit!’ I said with piercing delight.
‘A Belgian hare, actually,’ he said, rather brotherly.
‘A Belgian hare,’ I repeated quietly, as if I’d just said words that were the equivalent to love.
‘What do you want to call it?’ he asked.
‘Eleanor Maud,’ I said.
‘You can’t name it after you,’ my brother laughed.
‘Why not?’ I said, a little deflated.
‘Because it’s a boy,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ I said, and I looked at its chestnut-brown fur and its white tail and the two little droppings that had fallen from his arse, and thought that he did indeed look like a boy.
‘What do you think I should call him then?’ I asked.
‘God,’ said my brother grandly.
‘Smile!’ said my father, pointing his new Polaroid camera in front of my face. FLASH! The rabbit struggled in my arms as temporarily I went blind.
‘You OK?’ asked my father as he excitedly placed the film under his arm.
‘Think so,’ I said, walking into the table.
‘Come on, everyone! Come and watch this,’ he shouted, and we huddled around the developing image, saying, ‘Ooh’ and ‘Ahh’ and ‘Here she comes’, as I watched my blurred face sharpen into focus. I thought the new, short haircut that I’d pleaded for looked odd.
‘You look beautiful,’ said my mother.
‘Doesn’t she?’ said my father.
But all I could see was a boy, where once I would have been.
January 1975 was snowless and mild. A drab, uninspiring month that left sledges unused and resolutions unsaid. I tried most things to delay my imminent return to school, but eventually I passed through those heavy, grey doors with the sullen weight of Christmas Past pressed firmly on my chest. This would be a dull term, I concluded, as I dodged airless pools of malignant torpor. Colourless and dull. Until I turned the corner, that is, and there she was; standing outside my classroom.
It was her hair I noticed first, wild and dark and woolly, and breaking free from the ineffectual Alice band that had slipped down onto her shiny forehead. Her cardigan was too long – handmade and handwashed – stretched at the last wringing out, and it hung down by her knees and was only a little shorter than the grey school skirt we were all forced to wear. She didn’t notice me as I walked past her, even when I coughed. She was staring at her finger. I looked back; she’d drawn an eye on the skin at the tip. Practising hypnosis, she would later say.
I held up the final picture of my rabbit to the bewildered faces of my classmates.
‘. . . And so at Christmas, god finally came to live with me,’ I ended triumphantly.
I paused, big smile, waiting for my applause. None came and the room fell silent, unexpectedly went dark; the overhead lights useless and straining and yellow against the storm clouds gathering outside. All of a sudden, the new girl, Jenny Penny, started to clap and cheer.
‘Shut up!’ shouted my teacher, Miss Grogney, her lips disappearing into a line of non-secular hatred. Unknown to me, she was the product of missionaries who had spent a lifetime preaching the Lord’s work in an inhospitable part of Africa, only to have found that the Muslims had got there first.
I started to move towards my desk.
‘Stay there,’ said Miss Grogney firmly, and I did, and felt a warm pressure build in my bladder.
‘Do you think it’s right to call a hare—’ Miss Grogney started.
‘It’s a rabbit, actually,’ interrupted Jenny Penny. ‘It’s just called a Belgian—’
‘Do you think it’s right to call a rabbit god?’ Miss Grogney went on with emphasis.
I felt this was a trick question.
‘Do you think it’s right to say, “I took god out on a lead to the shops”?’
‘But I did,’ I said.
‘Do you know what the word “blasphemy” means?’ she asked.
I looked puzzled. It was that word again. Jenny Penny’s hand shot up.
‘Yes?’ said Miss Grogney.
‘Blasphemy means stupid,’ said Jenny Penny.
‘Blasphemy does not mean stupid.’
‘What about rude, then?’ she said.
‘It means,’ said Miss Grogney loudly, ‘insulting God or something sacred. Did you hear that, Eleanor Maud? Something sacred. You could have been stoned if you’d said that in another country.’
And I shivered, knowing full well who’d have been there to cast the first one.
Jenny Penny was waiting at the school gates, hopping from one foot to another, playing in her own spectacular world. It was a strange world, one that had already provoked the cruelty of whispers by morning’s end, and yet it was a world that intrigued me and crushed my sense of normality with the decisiveness of a fatal blow. I watched her wrap a see-through plastic rain bonnet around the mass of frizzy curls that framed her face. I thought she was waiting for the rain to stop, but actually she was waiting for me.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.
I blushed.
‘Thanks for clapping,’ I said.
‘It was really good,’ she said, hardly able to open her mouth due to the tightness of her bow. ‘Better than everyone else’s.’
I unfolded my pink umbrella.
‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘My mum’s boyfriend’s going to buy me one of them. Or a ladybird one. If I’m good, that is.’
But I wasn’t that interested in umbrellas any more, not now that she’d mentioned a different word.
‘Why’s your mum got a boyfriend?’ I said.
‘Because I don’t have a dad. He ran away before I was born.’
‘Gosh,’ I said.
‘I call him “my uncle”, though. I call all my mum’s boyfriends my uncles.’
‘Why?’
‘Easier. Mum says people judge her. Call her names.’
‘Like what?’
‘Slag.’
‘What’s a slag?’
‘A woman who has a lot of boyfriends,’ she said, taking off her rain bonnet and inching under my umbrella. I shuffled over and made room for her. She smelt of chips.
‘Fancy a Bazooka? I asked, holding the gum out in my palm.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I almost choked last time I had one. Almost died, my mum said.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and put the gum back in my pocket, wishing I’d bought something less violent instead.
‘I’d really like to see your rabbit, though,’ Jenny Penny said. ‘Take it out for a walk. Or a hop,’ she added, doubling over with laughter.
‘All right,’ I said, watching her. ‘Where do you live?’
‘In your street. We moved there two days ago.’
I quickly remembered the yellow car everyone was talking about, the one that arrived in the middle of the night pulling a dented trailer.
‘My brother will be here in a minute,’ I said. ‘You can walk home with us, if you like.’
‘All right,’ she said, a slight smile forming on her lips. ‘Better than walking home by myself. What’s your brother like?’
‘Different,’ I said, unable to find a more precise word.
‘Good,’ she said, and started once again to hop from one foot to the glorious other.
‘What are you doing?’ I said.
‘Pretending I’m walking on glass.’
‘Is it fun?’
‘Try it if you like.’
‘OK,’ I said, and I did. And it st
rangely was.