The Secret Life of the Panda by Nick Jackson

Author:Nick Jackson
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Chomu Press
Published: 2011-12-11T22:00:00+00:00

The Rabbit Keeper

It was a hot summer evening. The swifts were shrieking outside the bedroom windows and at the end of the garden, where the sun was setting, a line of poplar trees pricked the bloodied sky.

Alexander’s mother was wearing a dress that had a design of birds in ornamental cages. There was a thick black belt around her waist. She was speaking in her funny voice for visitors and he knew that Carol was coming to baby-sit.

Carol had a black and white rabbit with dark knowing eyes, like a rabbit in a picture book. It had babies nestling in the back of the hutch but you couldn’t play with them because the doe would get nervous and eat them. He imagined her, setting about them, biting off their heads.

Her father was a doctor. He had worked overseas and got some disease that had left him yellow and crumpled like a wash-leather left to dry. It was this that made him seem special—enviable even.

Carol had round brown arms that swung heavily from the sleeves of her violent pink dresses. Alexander liked it best when she told him stories of African bees as big as apricots with stings that made their victims swell up like purple balloons and die screaming.

She was going to be downstairs with Vic, and Alexander was not to create trouble.

I don’t like that man, he informed his mother.

What’s wrong with Vic? He’s a perfectly nice young man. And he has to take Carol home afterwards.

She only lives next door.

He listened in furious silence to the story his mother read to him.

...and the wolf gobbled him up. She flicked off the light.

What happened then?

The wolf ate him—that’s it.

Is that the end then?

Yes.

Did the wolf take his clothes off before he ate him?

Of course not.

Did he die?

Yes, now off to sleep with you.

Out of a dense, dark thicket the wolf loomed with his hot red mouth and his long wet tongue and glistening teeth. Alexander squirmed, feeling the fangs on his legs. Feet first he went, down into the animal’s stomach. The lolling tongue dripped saliva over him as he went.

The wolf’s breathing was loud; it seemed to come from his mother’s room. Above him the ceiling revolved slowly, a changing pattern of yellow light, as a car passed. The window frame buckled and the curtains billowed like swans flapping their wings in fury. There was a noise like an animal in pain and a man’s deep-throated laugh.

Mum, Alexander called. The laughing stopped.

Mum?

Your mother’s coming back soon. It was Carol’s voice.

There was a very long silence and then more laughter, cautious nervous gulps of suppressed hilarity.

Alexander waited a while then shouted in a louder voice: Mum!

There were sounds of feet, or sinister paws, padding across the landing carpet. Vic’s head appeared in the bedroom doorway.

If little boys call for their mothers one more time... Vic peered blindly into the darkness but Alexander could see him, outlined against the door frame with the raffia lampshade swinging behind. He shut his mouth tightly and pulled the covers over his head.

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