Black Rabbit Hall

by Eve Chase

Any wedding here would feel ancient, primal, part of the natural order of things. It would feel right. It does feel right. Like the way Jon felt right the first time she’d kissed him (on Waterloo Bridge in a blizzard of snow). And, as she did on that winter’s night, two and a half years ago, she can’t wait to call her sister, Louise, and tell her.

“Am I allowed to point out now that Black Rabbit Hall is completely loony? Sort of like being trapped in a Kate Bush song.” “It’s a tad eccentric,” Lorna acknowledges, unwrapping a sticky mint. “But I love it.”

She’d hate to miss it. Momma’s pleasure in spring was one of the pleasures of spring. I wonder then if all children just love the things that make their mothers happy. If that’s what it comes down to, really.

I think that adults must get sort of worn away over time, like rocks out at sea, but remain who they are, just slower and grayer with those funny vertical wrinkles in front of their ears. But the young are a different shape from one week to the next. To know us is to run alongside us, like someone trying to shout through the window of a moving train.