The Death of Bunny Munro Read online

  ‘My gift to you. She lives in Newhaven,’ he says out of the corner of his mouth, running a buffed fingernail along his cheekbone. He licks his lips and says, ‘Ouch!’

  Bunny rolls his eyes towards the boy and then back to Poodle, who is unconsciously dabbing at the raw and flaky entrance to his right nostril with his finger.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ says Poodle. He crouches down and says to the boy, ‘Hey, Bunny Boy. Nice shades.’

  ‘Hi,’ says the boy.

  ‘No school today?’ says Poodle, clamping a Mayfair Ultra Light between his teeth and torching it.

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘Lucky you,’ says Poodle.

  Then he looks at Bunny, and his face elongates into something sleek and lupine, and the transformation is so convincing that Bunny can almost hear the bones snap in his face.

  ‘You’ll find her a most accommodating customer,’ says Poodle in a stage whisper, and then leans through the window. Bunny can feel his breath, hot and excited, against his ear. ‘It will help with the grieving process,’ he says.

  Bunny stares blankly at Poodle, the nerve under his right eye contracting. Poodle stiffens and tiny beads of sweat appear on his upper lip. He tries to smile but cannot, overrun by a kind of rigor.

  ‘Sorry, Bun, that was out of line.’

  Bunny reaches up and pinches Poodle’s shaved and polished cheek and says quietly, ‘You’re a cunt, Poodle. Did you know that?’

  Poodle grins sheepishly and draws on his fag, his hand betraying the faintest of tremors, ‘Ah … yes, actually I do.’

  Bunny pats Poodle’s cheek gently, almost strokes it.

  ‘But I love you,’ he says.

  ‘And I love you,’ says Poodle.

  ‘Now, fuck off,’ says Bunny and rolls up the window.

  Bunny screws up the piece of paper that Poodle has given him and tosses it on the floor at Bunny Junior’s feet. Poodle stands on the pavement, hand raised in a sardonic goodbye, and then fucks the air lewdly, the shape of his penis curled and visible against the inside leg of his jeans. Bunny guns the engine and veers blindly into the traffic on Western Road.

  ‘He’s a funny one, isn’t he, Dad?’ says Bunny Junior.

  ‘Poodle, my boy, is a bloody idiot,’ says Bunny.

  ‘What are we going to do now, Dad?’

  But Bunny barely registers his son’s question because suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, Bunny is experiencing something beyond the realms of anything he has experienced before. The simple act of crumpling up Poodle’s ‘gift’ and casting it aside has filled Bunny with a belief that he is in command of his life. He is also registering, in an unprecedented way, a feeling of virtuousness. He feels a momentary wave of euphoria course through his system, a cup of love in his bowels, and he turns left at Adelaide Crescent and heads down towards the sea.

  ‘I am in control of my appetites,’ says Bunny, quietly, to himself.

  ‘Me, too, Dad,’ says Bunny Junior.

  They pass the majestic downward sweep of Regency terraces along Adelaide Crescent and watch in silence as a father tosses a Frisbee to his young son in the public gardens, while the mother lays down a tartan rug, then bends over a wicker picnic basket. Ouch – thinks Bunny.

  ‘What are we going to do now, Dad?’ says the boy.

  ‘Now, we are going to shake the old money tree, that’s what we’re going to do,’ says Bunny.

  Bunny Junior takes off his shades and screws up his face.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘We are going to relieve a few boobs of their cabbage.’

  The boy smiles at Bunny, but the smile is the kind of smile that looks like it has fallen off the child’s face, shattered on the ground and then been glued back together at random – it’s a zigzag smile, a seesaw smile, a wonky little broken smile. Bunny registers this but also the look of unknowing on the child’s face, the total lack of comprehension, the giant cartoon question mark floating over his head, and thinks – This kid doesn’t understand a fucking thing. And what’s with that smile?

  ‘We’re gonna sell some stuff!’ says Bunny, exasperated.

  ‘You’re good at that, aren’t you, Dad?’ says the boy, shifting in his seat and spinning his sunglasses around like a propeller.

  Bunny leans in close to him and says, with a flush of awe and wonder, ‘Bunny Boy, I am the best!’

  Bunny hears the boy say, ‘Everybody thinks you’re the best, don’t they, Dad?!’ but they are passing a bus shelter, advertising Kylie Minogue’s brand new range of lingerie for Selfridges called ‘Love Kylie’, and Bunny tries to remember what Poodle told him he had seen on the Internet about Kylie but draws a blank. Instead he feels a rush of blood, viral and urgent, throb in his extremities, his fingers pulsing on the steering wheel. He looks at the boy.

  ‘I could sell a bicycle to a barracuda!’ says Bunny, and the boy laughs.

  ‘No … no … I could sell two bicycles to a barracuda!’

  The boy looks up at his father and, seeing the ease with which he moves in and out of the traffic, one hand on the wheel, his elbow out the window and his brilliant sense of humour and how he can make everybody like him, even complete strangers, his world-class smile, his wraparound shades, his tie with the cartoon rabbits on it, his amazing curl, his fags and the whole thing with his sample case, he shouts, ‘You’re fantastic, Dad!’

  Bunny throws back his head and shouts back, ‘Shit, Bunny Boy, I could sell the whole bloody bike shed!’ and laughs and then remembers what it was that Poodle had said about Kylie Minogue – how he had read a blog somewhere saying that Kylie went off like a fucking firecracker in the sack and that there was, like, nothing she wouldn’t do! She was insatiable!

  Bunny glances at the crumpled piece of paper that rolls around Bunny Junior’s feet and bares his teeth and wrenches his eyes away and makes an emphatic change of gear and presses on, and says, ‘You’ve got a lot to learn.’

  ‘I know, Dad,’ says the boy.

  13

  ‘It’s like this, Bunny Boy, if you walk up to an oak tree or a bloody elm or something – you know, one of those big bastards – one with a thick, heavy trunk with giant roots that grow deep in the soil and great branches that are covered in leaves, right, and you walk up to it and give the tree a shake, well, what happens?’

  Bunny drives the Punto super-slow through the Wellborne estate in Portslade and looks at the customer list Geoffrey has given him. The towers cast long, dark shadows across the courtyard and Bunny hunches down in the Punto and peers up through the front windscreen searching for the flat with the corresponding number.

  ‘I really don’t know, Dad,’ says Bunny Junior, listening intently, retaining the information and knowing, in time, he will probably understand.

  ‘Well, nothing bloody happens, of course!’ says Bunny and slows the Punto to a halt. ‘You can stand there shaking it till the cows come home and all that will happen is your arms will get tired. Right?’

  The boy’s attention is diverted momentarily by three youths that perch on the back of a wooden bench, smoking. Depersonalised in their massive jeans and their oversized sneakers, the ends of their cigarettes flare from deep within the dark recesses of their hoods and Bunny Junior slips on his shades and shrinks down in his seat.

  ‘Right, Dad,’ he says.

  Bunny rolls down the window, sticks his head out and looks up at the flats.

  ‘Jesus! They could put fucking numbers on the doors, at least,’ he says.

  Then he adjusts the rear-view mirror and looks at his reflection and manipulates the waxed curlicue of hair that sits on his forehead like the horn of some mythological beast.

  ‘But if you go up to a skinny, dry, fucked-up little tree, with a withered trunk and a few leaves clinging on for dear life, and you put your hands around it and shake the shit out of it – as we say in the trade – those bloody leaves will come flying off! Yeah?’

  ‘OK, Dad,’ says the boy, and he watches as one o
f the youths pulls back the edge of his hood and reveals a white hockey mask with a human skull printed on it.

  ‘Now, the big oak tree is the rich bastard, right, and the skinny tree is the poor cunt who hasn’t got any money. Are you with me?’

  Bunny Junior nods.

  ‘Now, that sounds easier than it actually is, Bunny Boy. Do you want to know why?’

  ‘OK, Dad.’

  ‘Because every fucking bastard and his dog has got hold of the little tree and is shaking it for all that it’s worth – the government, the bloody landlord, the lottery they don’t have a chance in hell of winning, the council, their bloody exes, their hundred snotty-nosed brats running around because they are too bloody stupid to exercise a bit of self-control, all the useless shit they see on TV, fucking Tesco, parking fines, insurance on this and insurance on that, the boozer, the fruit machines, the bookies – every bastard and his three-legged, one-eyed, pox-ridden dog are shaking this little tree,’ says Bunny, clamping his hands together and making like he is throttling someone.

  ‘So what do you go and do, Dad?’ says Bunny Junior.

  ‘Well, you’ve got to have something they think they need, you know, above all else.’

  ‘And what’s that, Dad?’

  ‘Hope … you know … the dream. You’ve got to sell them the dream.’

  ‘And what’s the dream, Dad?’

  ‘What’s the dream?’

  Bunny Junior sees his father adjust his tie, then reach into the back seat of the Punto and grab his sample case. He unlocks it, checks its contents, and closes it again. He looks at Bunny Junior, squares his shoulders, opens the door to the Punto, points his thumb at his chest and says, ‘Me.’

  Bunny climbs out of the car then leans back in through the open door.

  ‘I won’t be long. Stay in the car,’ he says, and closes the door.

  Bunny Junior looks around nervously, then thinks – Well, nobody is going to hurt a nine-year-old, especially one who is wearing shades – but as a precautionary measure slides down a little further in his seat and, over the top of the window, watches his father approach the juveniles – who are probably responsible for about one hundred heinous murders between them and have intercourse all the time – sitting on the bench.

  ‘Any of you guys know which is flat ninety-five?’ asks Bunny.

  The youth in the middle – although Bunny is not completely sure – says ‘Fuck off’, then executes an unconscious variation on the Mos Def Wave but with the middle finger extended.

  Bunny smiles deferentially and says, ‘Well, yes, OK, but do you think number ninety-five is in this block?’ He points west. ‘Or in this block?’ He points east.

  The young men suck on their cigarettes, jets of nostril smoke issuing from the obscurity of their hoods. No one says anything, but there is a general ratcheting-up of the potential for violence as the youths realign their bodies inside their giant, comic-book clothes. The youth in the middle propels a bead of spittle into the air and it lands at Bunny’s feet.

  Bunny takes a step closer and addresses him.

  ‘You know what you remind me of, son?’

  ‘What’s that, granddad?’

  ‘A clitoris.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I think it’s the hood.’

  Bunny turns and walks towards the first of the buildings. The lit butt of a cigarette flies past his ear and Bunny calls out, without looking back, ‘They’ll kill you, those things! You’ll get cancer and die!’

  He reaches the stairwell of the building and waves his arms theatrically, as if addressing the world, and yells, ‘Think of the great loss to humanity that would be!’

  Then Bunny disappears into the sunless vestibule of the stairwell. He hop-skips over a condom full of dead teenage spunk that lies among the debris that has collected around the steps. He heads up the stairs, the acrid chemical tang of bleach and urine hitting him in the face like a slap, and for no particular reason at all he thinks of the sexy-surreal dichotomy between Pamela Anderson’s furry Ugg boots and her (almost) shaved pussy. By the time he reaches the top of the staircase, there is a radical teepeeing of the front of his trousers. To his surprise he finds, as if by some miracle, that he is standing outside No. 95. He turns and looks over the balcony and concentrates on the galactic pattern of seagull shit that decorates the roof of the Punto until his erection subsides.

  He notices that the youths have left the wooden bench and in their place is a fat guy in a floral dress growling like a beast and pulling the price tag off what looks like a large potted orchid.

  Bunny hopes, in a peripheral way, that Bunny Junior has locked the car door. Then he turns around and knocks on the door of No. 95.

  Bunny Junior opens his encyclopaedia at the letter ‘M’ and reads about the mantis, an insect with a well-camouflaged body, mobile head and large eyes. He reads that the female eats the male head-first during copulation, then looks up ‘copulation’ and thinks – Wow, imagine that. He commits this to memory by putting it in a virtual colour-coded box and storing it in the shelved data bank of his mind. He has hundreds of these boxes that relate and interrelate and can be drawn upon at will, in an instant. Ask him about the Battle of Britain or about the deathwatch beetle and he can tell you. If you want to know about Galapagos Islands or the Heimlich manoeuvre, then Bunny Junior is your man. It’s a talent he has.

  But two things worry Bunny Junior as he sits slumped in the front seat of the Punto.

  First, when he tries to call to mind his mother he finds her image is still disappearing. He can remember the year they started building the Eiffel Tower but he finds it increasingly difficult to recall what his mother looked like. This makes him feel bad. He tries to arrange his memories of the things they did together in the form of exhibits, frozen in time, like the stuffed birds in the glass cases in the world-famous Booth Museum. He arranges them in his memory as if they were waxwork statues or something. But the image of his mother is vanishing, so that when he goes to look at the scene of, say, the day his mother pushed him on the swing in the playground of St Ann’s Well Gardens, he can see himself vaulted high into the air, his legs kicking out, his face alive with laughter – but who is doing the pushing? A slowly dissolving ghost-lady as incomplete as a hologram. He feels, in this instance, forever suspended on the swing, high in the air, never to descend, beyond human touch and consequence, motherless, and after he has stopped crying and dabbing at his tears with the sleeve of his shirt, he worries about the other thing.

  On the bench where the juvenile delinquents were sitting is a fat guy in a dress, playing with a pot plant. He wears a lilac wig. Every now and then he looks up at the boy and makes a noise like some kind of monster – maybe a werewolf or a hellhound or something. This scares Bunny Junior and very secretly he reaches across and pushes down the lock on the car door. As he does this, he looks over at the entrance to the stairwell where his father disappeared and standing there, with her back turned towards him and partially lost in shadow, is a woman with blonde hair, dressed in an orange nightdress. Bunny Junior puts his hands up to his face and before his eyes he sees her step deeper into the shadows and disappear or dematerialise or atomise or something, he can’t decide which.

  14

  ‘Now, let’s see what we’ve got here,’ says Bunny, the oiled spiral of his hair – his lovelock – relaxing attractively on his forehead. ‘Zoë, I’ve got you down for the Replenishing Hand Cream, the Elastin Extra Relief Hand and Body Lotion, the Almond, Honey, Milk and Aloe Mask, the Phytocitrus Hair Masque, the Re-Nutriv Lifting Cream and Morrocan Rose Otto Bath Oil, very nice, that one, the ladies tell me …’

  Bunny sits at a circular table in a neat kitchen with three women in their mid-thirties. Zoë is dressed in chocolate-brown velour tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt from LA Fitness on North Road. She is tall, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes and a little pink butterfly tattooed on the inside of her right wrist. Crazy – thinks Bunny – as he leans towards her a
nd reads from his order form. He notices, momentarily, that the miniature crystal snowflakes that dangle from her ears refract diamonds of light unflatteringly on the underside of her jaw.

  Amanda, on the other hand, is small and reminds Bunny of Kylie Minogue, except that she is goblinned by a mass of candy-coloured hair extensions and has enormous breasts, tiny hips and practically no rear-end at all. She also wears the same chocolate-brown velour tracksuit bottoms as Zoë and jiggles an infant on her lap that gurgles and points at things that are not there or that are there but only it can see.

  Georgia, whose home it is, wears a peach-coloured T-shirt with what appears to be a metallic-silver representation of a mushroom printed on the front. She wears blue jeans and matching denim espadrilles, has violet eyes and is overweight, and although each of the women has the high-hearted but baby-blasted look of new mothers, there is an air of jeopardy about Georgia that produces a nervous, tinkling giggle.

  Zoë gestures at the order form and says, ‘If that doesn’t sort me out, nothing will!’

  Tiny Amanda has a large and guttural laugh while big Georgia’s laugh sounds like the ringing of little bells and, in an oblique way, this weird mismatch amuses Bunny and his cheeks dimple. He turns his attention to Amanda and touches her briefly on the wrist with his index finger. The infant lets forth a wail of protest at this intrusion and, without taking her eyes off Bunny, Amanda works a dummy into the child’s mouth.

  Bunny consults his order form.

  ‘Now, Amanda, I’ve got you down for the same as Zoë but not the Hair Masque because of your …’

  ‘Hair extensions!’ say Zoë and Amanda, craning forward. They are on their second bottle of red and Amanda, in particular, appears a little flushed. On the table in front of them sits Bunny’s open sample case, displaying the little bottles and sachets of lotions and creams.

  ‘… Hair extensions. And very nice they are too. Plus, you wanted the Dermo-expertise Eye Solace,’ says Bunny. ‘And … a bottle of Scotch and a good night’s sleep.’