The Constant Rabbit Page 20

  ‘Well, no,’ I said, which was kind of true.

  ‘I’ve used all your shampoo,’ she said, ‘all two litres of it. I have a lot of fur. But I couldn’t find any conditioner.’

  ‘I don’t use it.’

  ‘Maybe just as well,’ she said, ‘as I tend to go a little fluffy. Would you pass me a towel?’

  So I did so as best I could without looking as though I shouldn’t be looking, but not wanting to appear prudish, I made sure I did look at her, but just her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, wrapping herself and stepping out of the shower. ‘You don’t have a hairdryer, do you? Fur takes an age to dry and can get a little spiky if not brushed immediately.’

  ‘I’ll get you Pippa’s,’ I said, and went downstairs to fetch it. When I got back Connie had dispensed with the towel and was staring at her naked self in the full-length mirror on the cupboard door.

  ‘Bunty teaches us that mirrors, endless selfies and self-aggrandisement on social media are the gateway to narcissistic self-absorption,’ she said, turning this way and that to get a better look at herself. ‘There are no mirrors in the colonies, we don’t have one in the house, and car mirrors are always reduced in size to avoid unseemly self-regard. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you are … very lovely, Connie.’

  She smiled, took the hairdryer and started to blow-dry her fur, which, being quite fine, seemed to dry quite fast. She started on her hind paws and then worked upwards, all the time seemingly unconcerned by my presence.

  ‘They returned Toby,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Bobby knows a rabbit who knows a rabbit who knows a rabbit.’

  ‘Are you with the Underground?’

  ‘All rabbits are with the Underground,’ she replied after a pause. ‘It’s an understanding rather than a recruitment. You get a nod or a tap on the shoulder or a phone call and you have to do the right thing, no matter what the personal cost. Unity and focus. Here, dry my back, would you?’

  She turned round and I directed the hairdryer at her furry back. She passed me a soft brush and I brushed the fur at the same time.

  ‘Do you remember all those terrible films we went to see?’ she said over her shoulder. ‘And we sat in the back row because of my ears and we didn’t hold hands or anything, but the seats were small so we were touching?’

  ‘I remember that very clearly.’

  ‘I liked that,’ she said after a pause. ‘A sort of understated intimacy. I always felt that we kinda just clicked, you and I. Never had that since. Not with a rabbit, not with a human, not really with any of my husbands.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I felt that too. OK, your back’s dry.’

  She turned round, took the hairdryer from me and then started to dry the fur on her arms and torso.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  She turned the dryer on to her ears, which flapped in a comical manner.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You know when I said I wasn’t a Spotter for RabCoT? Well … I lied. I am. For the past fifteen years.’

  I looked down and saw that my fingers were knotted together in a telltale fidget. My heart was thumping and it felt as though there was a tight band of steel around my chest.

  ‘I knew you had the gift thirty years ago,’ she said in a soft voice, ‘when you could pick me out of a crowd of rabbits back at uni. I often wondered if you’d realise you had the skill, and what you’d do with it. I accept your apology for lying earlier. The Rabbit Way allows one to quash the stain of an untruth so long as one makes good within the hour and there was no advantage. I think you just squeaked through.’

  And she smiled.

  ‘Nothing’s changed, Pete. Not between us.’

  I took a deep breath.

  ‘That’s not really what I’m sorry about.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, suddenly looking more serious, ‘then what?’

  I stared at her for a moment, opened my mouth to tell her about how I was the secondary Spotter the night Dylan Rabbit was arrested and that I was pressured to confirm the ID. That I should have done more, that I could have done more. But what came out was:

  ‘Not being at the demo when you were asked to leave the university. My aunt wasn’t that ill – and eventually pulled through. I should have been there, with you.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I’d have been chucked out irrespective. Your aunt needed you. I have no problem with any of that; it was UKARP policy to change the university’s admissions policy, not yours. And Peter?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry too.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  I was going to tell her that I’d always regretted not getting in contact, even after Helena had left, probably out of fear. Fear of seeing a rabbit, fear of me being wrong about what I thought we’d felt. But I didn’t get to say any of that, because Connie’s long and very elegant ears, which up until then had been draped in a relaxed fashion down her back, suddenly popped vertically upwards and she listened intently for a few seconds.

  ‘Bother,’ she said, ‘I just heard a car door slam.’

  ‘It won’t be Pippa back yet – probably a neighbour.’

  ‘It was the Dodge. A highly distinctive sound. Doc probably came back for the night. Rabbits become uneasy when not in their own bed at night.’

  ‘But … but the Middle East is a ten-hour flight away.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘not that Middle East – Nottingham.’ She pulled the sheet from my bed and wrapped it around herself while I went to the bedroom window and looked out. Sure enough, Doc had parked the Dodge and was hopping towards the front entrance of the house. Even though evening, being summer it was still quite light.

  ‘Well?’ asked Connie.

  ‘He’s gone into the house. No, hang on, he’s come out again.’

  Doc stood there, sniffed the air and then began to stride in our direction.

  ‘He’s walking over here,’ I said, a tremor of fear in my voice.

  ‘Does he have a purposeful stride in his walk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘It’s just possible he’ll get the wrong idea about this.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘he will definitely get the wrong idea about this. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, looking thoughtful, ‘he’s already suspicious, so he’ll interpret this as an appropriation and challenge you to a duel.’

  ‘That’s fine; I can just refuse.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘If he challenges you then it’s a goer – only a spineless reptile of the very worst sort would try and back out.’

  ‘A spineless reptile?’

  ‘Of the worst sort.’

  ‘I’ve a better idea,’ I said. Her Dumas novel and torch were lying on the bed, so I handed them to her and opened the wardrobe door. She half climbed in, then stopped and turned back to me.

  ‘Doc is very big on honour and duelling and you may have no choice in the matter, so this is something you need to know: his set of duelling pistols is decorated with animals, and you’ll be given the choice of which to use. The one that has a picture of a lark tends to shoot off to the left, while the one with the engraving of the crocodile on the handle is pretty much straight on the money.’

  ‘I’ll never remember all that.’

  ‘It’s easy: the shot hits the spot if you’ve a croc on the stock, while the mark of the lark shoots wide of the mark.’

  ‘The shot hits the spot,’ I repeated slowly, ‘if you’ve a lark on … no, wait, a croc on the stock, while the lark with the mark … er, mark with the lark shoots wide of the mark.’

  ‘Don’t forget that,’ she said, ‘it could save your life.’ She smiled, gave me a kiss and closed the door.

  The doorbell rang. Doc, it seemed, had a better idea of front-door etiquette than Connie or Bobby. I ran downstairs mumbling the rh
yme, then composed myself for a few seconds, and opened the front door.

  Connie & Caution

  Rabbit playwrights have rewritten Shakespeare to appeal to more rabbit audiences for a long time. The performance of Seven Thousand and Eighty-Three Noble Kinsmen was met with great acclaim in 1973, and 1982’s A Comedy of Ears is considered a benchmark adaptive literary work. Not all were so successful: A Winter’s Cottontail was panned by rabbit critics, all of whom thought it was simply an ‘excuse for a feeble pun’.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feigning surprise, ‘hello, Doc. I thought you were away?’

  ‘I was,’ he said, gazing at me dangerously, ‘and now I’m back. Kent said the increasingly poorly named Constance was over here running some lines from her new play or something.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘she was. But then she left.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, a hot stickiness starting to crawl up my back, ‘really. Something to do with Diane.’

  ‘Is that her new play there?’ he asked, pointing towards where the script was still lying on the hall table.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we were going to do some more later. Tomorrow, I think, or the day after.’

  I thought about having to face Doc in a duel.

  ‘Or if you’d prefer it, never.’

  I suddenly realised that her shoes were still where she’d left them, right there in plain sight, barely a yard from where we were standing. Although rabbits had outstanding peripheral vision for signs of movement, peripheral relevance was harder for them – one of the reasons they drive slowly. In high-rabbit-concentration driving areas, road signs have a small logo of a fox in the bottom left-hand corner to ensure they are noticed.

  ‘You’d better take the play with you,’ I said, reaching for the script while at the same time pushing her shoes underneath the umbrella stand with my foot. He didn’t take the proffered script and instead leaned closer to me.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if they were her shoes or not,’ he growled, ‘until you pushed them under the stand.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘You did,’ said Doc in a threatening murmur, ‘and if I know Connie she’ll be hiding in a cupboard somewhere with a Victor Hugo novel. Am I right?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said with perfect deniability. She was hiding in a cupboard, sure, but with a novel by Dumas, not Hugo.

  Irrespective, he pushed past me into the hall.

  ‘I know you’re in here!’ he yelled, lolloping through to the kitchen. I was going to follow him in but was distracted by two people outside, strolling towards me from the direction of the lane. It was Victor and Norman Mallett, and this was exceptionally bad timing.

  ‘Good evening, Peter,’ said Victor with thinly disguised aggression as soon as they were standing in my doorway, ‘we’d like a word.’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’ I said. ‘This is really not the best time.’

  ‘Line of Duty ended twenty minutes ago,’ said Norman, ‘so what can you be doing that’s so important—’

  Norman abruptly stopping talking as Connie, still wrapped only in my bedsheet, ran down the stairs. She gave me a smile and a shrug but then slid to a stop on the hall rug when she came face to face with Victor and Norman, whose eyes opened wide in surprise.

  ‘Back to the burrow!’ yelled Doc, who had seen her from the kitchen, ‘I’ll deal with you later!’

  ‘No!’ she said defiantly, her voice rising. ‘You can take your “back to the burrow” alpha-buck anthropocentric possessive misogynistic honcho machismo bullshit and shove it right up your pellet slot. You got a problem with me, you tell it to my face.’

  ‘Problem?’ he yelled back as they squared off to one another in the hall. ‘I’ll tell you the problem. You shagging the next-door neighbour is the problem. He’s a human, for Lago’s sake – have you not even a single shred of decency?’

  Victor and Norman turned to stare at me with a look of utter revulsion etched on their features.

  ‘I can explain,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do!’ yelled Connie as I saw two more people appear behind the Mallett brothers outside. They looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t at first place them. They were immaculately turned out, held a clipboard each and in their free hand expensive pens poised mid-air in a dramatic fashion.

  ‘Can’t we all just keep our voices down?’ I said.

  ‘Is this what you usually do?’ said Doc, turning to me. ‘Take advantage of vulnerable does when their husbands are out of town?’

  ‘I’m anything but vulnerable,’ yelled Connie. ‘I’m quite capable of making up my own mind, and let me tell you, Major Clifford Rabbit, Peter here gave me twice as good a time as anything you’ve ever handed out.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said Victor.

  ‘Reprehensible,’ said Norman.

  ‘But—’ I said as Doc made a lunge towards Connie. She ran off with a giggle but Doc – maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose – stood on the bedsheet and she was suddenly completely naked, right there on the IKEA rug in the hall. In front of everyone.

  There was a sudden hollow and very empty moment in time that seemed to hang for an eternity.

  ‘Whoops,’ she said with an embarrassed grin, then bounced out of the door past the Mallett brothers to spring with the utmost of elegance over the dividing fence. Within two more bounds she was back inside her house, her husband close behind. There was a crashing of furniture, some breaking of crockery – then silence.

  I looked back at Victor and Norman. They were all staring at me in shocked silence, mouths open.

  ‘This isn’t what it looks like,’ I said.

  ‘It seems abundantly clear to us that this is exactly what it looks like,’ said Victor.

  ‘Is this how Much Hemlock disports itself?’ said one of the people holding the clipboards, who I now recognised as Reginald Spick, one half of the Herefordshire Spick & Span award team. ‘As a hotbed of base, lewd and depraved behaviour?’

  ‘You would come around right now,’ said Victor, who had also just recognised him.

  ‘The judges appear randomly to maintain fair play,’ said Mr Spick in a haughty manner.

  ‘For a very good reason,’ said Mrs Span, Mr Spick’s partner.

  ‘Can’t you just pretend this never happened?’ said Norman. ‘Just go away and come back later?’

  ‘Nothing whatsoever happened,’ I said, partly for the judges, partly for me and partly for the Mallett brothers, ‘and even if it did, what is it to you?’

  ‘Quite a lot, actually,’ said Victor. ‘This is a good village, and we have a respectable way of doing things – and that generally excludes lying down with vermin.’

  ‘Connie’s not vermin.’

  ‘Not to you, obviously.’

  ‘I think we’ve seen enough,’ said the judges, making to leave. ‘This sort of thing never happens in Pembridge. Winning a Spick & Span award is not just about a fine herbaceous border, roses to die for and local honey of impeccable quality, it’s about cultural propriety. Why do you think Slipton Flipflop has never won a prize, when they have the finest hanging baskets in the county?’

  ‘But just a minute,’ said Norman, the issue over Connie and me momentarily forgotten, ‘this is emphatically not what we discussed – and considering the sum we paid you, we expect at the very least a fair shake of the stick.’

  ‘We’re bribed by everyone,’ said Mrs Span in a tart manner. ‘Don’t think we owe you any special treatment because of it.’ She paused. ‘But I suppose we could be persuaded to rejudge so long as your current issues have been … dealt with. Do we understand one another?’

  Norman said that they definitely understood, thanked them for their patience and forbearance and Spick & Span made their exit as Victor and Norman turned back to me.

  ‘I think the course of action is clear,’ said Norman. ‘The well-being of the village comes before you and your little bunny chums. But since you were once a friend and we are
reasonable people who embrace proportionality and fair play, we’ll throw you a bone. Forty-eight hours to get out, and you can take your fickle daughter and long-eared chums with you. It’s non-negotiable, Knox. And if you can’t persuade the Rabbits to go, then we will – using whatever means at our disposal.’

  Since I now knew Toby was TwoLegsGood, it stood to reason that his father and uncle were too. This wasn’t an empty threat.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘perhaps we can start a dialogue or—’

  ‘Forty-eight hours,’ said Norman, glaring at me in the sort of way I imagine a psychopath might do, just after they unchain you from the radiator, but just before they remove your liver with a spoon, ‘is that enough dialogue for you?’

  ‘Yes, OK,’ I said.

  And they left. I thought of going over to the Rabbits’ and warning them of the impending shitstorm, but instead locked the door, waited until the wash cycle finished, then put Connie’s dress in the tumble dryer. I waited until midnight for Pippa to come home, but when she didn’t, I turned in.

  Morning Mood

  At the last count there were eight hundred and seventy-two rabbits living in the Isle of Man safe haven. All had been granted full UK residency by the Tynwald and seventeen applications for passports were being considered at the time of the Battle of May Hill.

  I woke to the sound of the doorbell. I rolled over in bed, caught a whiff of Connie’s scent on the sheet and stared at the clock. Half past six. I pulled on my bathrobe and walked slowly downstairs. Pippa’s keys and bag were on the kitchen table so I was relieved at least that she’d made it home safe and well. I approached the front door and, without opening it, said:

  ‘Who is it?’

  I was hoping it was Connie, calling round to assure me she’d tell everyone that her comment that I’d ‘given her twice as good as her husband’ was to goad Doc, nothing more. Even if it was her and she wanted everything to be made right, somehow I felt the damage was already done.

  ‘Who is it?’ I said again. Silence.

  There was no one outside when I opened the door, and I stepped out into the early-morning light. It would be a hot day later, but for now, a low mist hung in the trees. Seeing no one, I turned to go back indoors and then noticed someone had spray-painted ‘Bunnyshagger’ on the garage door. I stared at the graffito, first thinking that it was outrageous, then thinking it was probably small beer to what the rabbit had to contend with on a day-to-day basis. I looked over the fence to see whether the Rabbits’ house had been similarly defaced, but it had not.