The Constant Rabbit Read online

  ‘Probably because Hemlock Towers is Grade II listed,’ said Pippa when I told her two hours later over breakfast. ‘Remember that 2LG’s core demographic is middle-class professionals who would be more likely to have a subscription to Radio Times than be a member of a far-right gang.’

  I outlined what had happened the previous evening. I told her about Connie, the script, Toby’s reappearance and the shower, the bedsheet, the Spick & Span judges and finally Norman’s forty-eight-hour ultimatum. I decided not to tell Pippa that Toby had slept with Arabella at the pony club.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, taking a slurp of coffee.

  I sighed. Although I’d never consciously discriminated against rabbits, read a single issue of The Actual Truth or considered myself leporiphobic in the least – I was. As a young man I’d laughed at and told anti-rabbit jokes51 and I never once challenged leporiphobic views when I heard them. And although I’d disapproved of encroaching anti-rabbit legislation I’d done nothing as their rights were slowly eroded. My words and thoughts had never progressed to positive actions. No rallies, no angry letters, no funds to RabSAg, nothing.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘I’m still thinking.’

  But even if I had made a stand, my long-term and sustained employment at the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce would have negated everything. My most pressing emotion right now was not a sense of righteous indignation, frustration at the unfairness of my situation or even a courageous sense of justice that a fight needed to be fought and won. No, what I truly felt was a sense of deep and inexcusable shame.

  ‘I have no idea what to do,’ I said finally. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘How bad do you think things might get?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Worst-case scenario: petrol through the letterbox, a broken jaw and TwoLegsGood run the Rabbits out of the village. Best-case scenario: no one in Much Hemlock talks to you or me for the next six to eight decades.’

  ‘That sounds quite attractive,’ she said.

  ‘It does, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m staying,’ said Pippa. ‘They’re not likely to attack me, are they? Even 2LG losers draw the line somewhere.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said with a smile, ‘and if you’re staying, so am I.’

  We fist-bumped nervously and sat in silence for a few moments. I don’t know what Pippa was thinking about but I was wondering what a broken nose felt like.

  ‘So,’ I said finally, ‘how was your evening?’

  ‘Harvey was there,’ she replied, glad too of the conversational change. ‘We went to Vegamama’s afterwards with Bobby. Had a good chat over dinner, mostly about MegaWarren. They’re all extremely suspicious of the Rehoming, and feel that this might be the last chance rabbits get to make a stand before losing any of their hard-won rights for ever. There’s talk of the Venerable Bunty issuing an edict about a refusal to be rehomed, but Harvey is worried that rabbits, naturally polite, compliant and disliking of confrontation, will not be able to refuse the order – and with Senior Group Leader Ffoxe and fifteen hundred foxes assisting with the Rehoming, restraint isn’t likely to be on anyone’s agenda, especially as foxes can use what force they wish with impunity.’

  This didn’t sound at all good.

  ‘Are they thinking of another demonstration?’ I asked.

  ‘I think they’re beyond that. Harvey said that any attack on the colony permits the Grand Council to invoke Bugs Bunny Protocols – namely, that almost any behaviour is permissable once a rabbit is pushed into a corner – even violence.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I think Harvey and I have a chance together,’ said Pippa, looking me straight in the eye, ‘and yes, I will be careful and I do know what I’m doing.’

  Despite Lord Jefferson’s celebrated proclamation of love for Sophie Rabbit, mixed-species relationships remained illegal and open to prosecution. When outed, most couples simply took up residence in the colonies. At the time of the Battle of May Hill, an estimated four thousand humans were living on-colony, eight hundred of them lopped to show thumbless allegiance to the Rabbit Way. Smethwick regarded them as ‘traitors to our species’ and ‘beneath contempt’. Rabbits regarded them as ‘welcome guests’.

  ‘You know what, Pip?’ I said. ‘I really hope it works out.’

  Sally called to say she wasn’t going into college that day, and since I guessed Toby would not be going to work either – if ever again – I decided to take Pippa myself.

  ‘It was Toby,’ she said, looking at the graffito once we were outside. ‘I recognise his handwriting. I can’t imagine what I saw in him.’

  We also noted that the Rabbits had not been entirely unmolested overnight: sitting on their lawn was a forty-gallon oil drum, the usual receptacle for a jugging. Although the unspeakably cruel act was mercifully rare, the very threat was usually enough to have a rabbit family packing their bags and gone within the hour. I was confident it would have little effect on Connie and Doc.

  ‘Good morning!’ came a voice, and Doc bounded in from the direction of the lane, presumably back from his usual five-kilometre early-morning bounce, as he was wearing a tracksuit top and a Nike sweatband around the base of his ears.

  ‘Good morning,’ we said.

  ‘Looks like 2LG have been busy,’ he said, staring at the forty-gallon drum. ‘With a lick of paint it will make a nice planter for my aspidistra.’

  ‘You don’t seem very worried,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve had death threats before,’ he said. ‘At our last place someone daubed kill dat pesky wabbit on our drive and sub-standard photocopies of rabbit pie recipes were pushed through the letterbox. The work of sad little cowards, trying in vain to staunch a losing battle with irrelevance. But you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I was going to kill someone, I wouldn’t warn them first.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, as Doc had said it in a particularly menacing fashion, and I wondered whether that was what he had planned for me.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘about last night—’

  ‘Water under the proverbial bridge, old chap,’ he said with a grin. ‘When one is married to a doe as dazzling as Constance, one must expect to have to fight suitors off every now and again.’

  ‘I’m not a suitor,’ I said hurriedly, ‘and nothing happened.’

  ‘And I will do all I can to ensure it stays that way,’ he replied evenly. ‘Mind you, if Connie gives you the nod and you want to challenge me to a duel I’m totally up for it. Pistols, mind – my swordsmanship is a little rusty.’

  ‘No challenge from me,’ I said hurriedly, ‘truly.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  And without another word he bounced clean over my car, the garden fence, his car – and went back indoors.

  Pippa and I were on the road five minutes later. It was a delightful morning, sunny and bright, but neither of us was feeling that comfortable. Worry has a way of sitting on your chest like a baby elephant. Of the forty-eight hours we’d been given, we now had thirty-seven left. It felt good that Pippa and I were going to make a stand, but I couldn’t helping thinking that however the Malletts expressed their displeasure, it would be neither pleasant nor proportional, and that our stand, with all the human privileges defaulted to us at birth, would probably not be a stand at all. We were human. Ultimately, we’d be just fine.

  ‘You’re visiting MegaWarren?’ said Pippa when I’d told her what I was doing that day.

  ‘It’s part of management’s efforts to make the move as easy as possible.’

  ‘For the rabbit?’

  ‘No – for the staff at the Taskforce.’

  There seemed little point in secrecy now. Today’s tour, I told her, was for staff at RabCoT to see first-hand just what the new facility was all about. How RabToil would manage the workforce and manufacturing areas, the living facilities, security, that sort of thing. She asked about the timescale, and I said it would certainly be th
is year, ‘perhaps just months’.

  ‘Did anyone ever ask the rabbits what they thought?’ she asked.

  They were asked, but only in a roundabout way. The Grand Council of Coneys was part of the consultation process and was assured that ‘every opportunity would be used to ensure that the best interests of all the UK residents would be foremost in the Rehoming Committee’s thoughts’. It didn’t help that there were no rabbits on the committee, and that Nigel Smethwick had chaired the proceedings.

  I dropped Pippa at college then went on to the Taskforce offices.

  Since we were going on the MegaWarren tour that day I didn’t go to my office, just had my name ticked against a box and was given a lanyard with a visitor’s pass and allocated seating on the coach. We waited in the canteen for half an hour, then were addressed by Taskforce PR guru Pandora Pandora.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, her dress and demeanour seeming somehow darker than usual this morning, ‘and welcome to the MegaWarren tour. You’re going on this trip because you have been selected to be part of the Advance Rehoming Implementation Team. Look upon this as early orientation.’

  There were murmurings at this, mostly because this was the first indication that the long-expected redundancies were actually going to go ahead – and who might be staying on. Needless to say, my colleagues were looking quite happy. Rehoming work, because of the greater responsibilities and potential for stress, would be carrying generous bonuses.

  ‘I’ve only one major point to make this morning,’ she continued, ‘and this is it: six members of the press will be accompanying us, and we need to keep a firm control of the way in which MegaWarren is perceived by the public. There are some deluded Social Justice Warriors out there who do not have a clear enough understanding of the issues involved to be a meaningful part of the dialogue. I have my people embedded near the press corps, but if any of the hacks go rogue and ask you anything at all – anything – you are to say nothing and send them over to me or a member of my team. Speak out of line and you will have to explain yourself. Not to me, not to a disciplinary panel – but to the Senior Group Leader personally. Have I made myself understood?’

  We all grunted our agreement, and half an hour later we were in the coach heading west. I was next to an empty seat, presumably Toby’s. We’d got as far as Llandrindod Wells when I noticed Lugless get up from his seat at the front and lumber back through the coach. He was dressed in his usual grey duster coat, the stumps of his cropped ears covered by a flat cap. I noticed that he wore a shoulder-holster containing his largest hammer. I ignored him, hoping he wouldn’t join me, but he did.

  ‘Is that Knox?’ he asked – since I was out of the office and thus out of context, I was not wholly recognisable to his rabbit eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ I said without looking up, and he sat down next to me.

  ‘Where’s Toby Mallett?’ he asked.

  ‘Resigned,’ I said, still staring out of the window.

  ‘Do you think he was compromised? Think the Underground got to him?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him that.’

  I turned to face Lugless and almost gave out a cry. The rabbit sitting next to me wasn’t Lugless at all. He was definitely missing his ears but was subtly different in many other ways. I was about to ask him who he was, but he put out a paw to quieten me and made a familiar gesture – a wink and a click of his tongue, the same gesture I had seen when he had arrived to pick up Bobby and Pippa in the RabCab.

  It was Harvey.

  MegaWarren

  Finkle had been arrested dozens of times, usually on account of some obscure medieval law that could usefully be modified as required. When escorting his then partner Debbie Rabbit to dinner, a contravention was found in the 1524 statute that disallowed ‘the carrying of live game in a tavern or eating house’.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, my mind in something of a whirl. I was on the coach that day, and Toby wasn’t – the only two people in the Compliance office who would have seen the Lugless/Harvey switch immediately. I suddenly wondered where the real Lugless was, and marvelled that Harvey had wanted access to MegaWarren so badly he had cropped his own ears. Only a rabbit like Lugless could hope to gain access: one who had been given security clearance by a fox.

  While Harvey stared at me, presumably trying to gauge my intent, I noticed a small trickle of blood creeping down from his cap. If he’d cut off his own ears, the wounds would still be raw and freshly stitched. To uncover the impostor, all I had to do was to flick off his cap. It would be that easy.

  But I didn’t. Instead, I simply touched my head in the place where I could see the blood on his. He got the message, touched the area with the tip of a claw and stared at it for a moment. He said nothing, got up and walked towards the back of the coach, where there was a toilet.

  ‘Oi,’ I heard a human voice say, ‘humans only. Tie a knot in it, Hoppy.’

  ‘Really?’ came Harvey’s voice. ‘Want to see me tie a knot in yours?’

  There was silence, and I heard the toilet door close and lock.

  Now thoroughly unnerved, I looked out of the window, and noted we were driving through a cordon where a group of protesters – humans and rabbits – were holding banners at the side of the road. Several yurts had been set up, and a couple of fresh burrows in the verges had been repurposed into pop-up cafés offering cappuccinos and sandwiches free of charge.

  ‘Ten-mile exclusion zone for protesters,’ I heard one of the other passengers say. ‘The Taskforce don’t want to deal with the added burden of protesters above the complexity of the Rehoming. Anyone in the zone without a legitimate reason for being there can be prosecuted for criminal trespass.’

  I looked about at my fellow passengers, mostly Compliance Officers who worked on the main floor, and all seemed to be in something of a party mood, buoyed by the attraction of a new workplace and the bonuses. Near the front were the journalists, each of whom was accompanied by their own dedicated Pandora Pandora PR clone – all pencil-thin, all blonde, all dressed in black, all supremely confident.

  From their conversation, none of the press seemed unduly concerned over the Rehoming. ‘Not before time’ was a comment I heard, and a well-known TV anchorwoman two rows up referred to it as ‘the best thing for them’. As we drove along, I could see that the main road to Rhayader had been greatly improved in terms of access, all paid for by the Rehoming Commission – there were several billboards proclaiming such – and on the opposite bank of the River Wye I could see where the railway tracks had been relaid, again at huge expense, to facilitate the transportation of the rabbit.

  We drove into town, turned left, crossed the bridge and then parked up. I surrendered my mobile phone, stepped from the coach and had my first view of the MegaWarren complex.

  It was, firstly, huge. The main gates were set into a brick-built gatehouse of baroque design, and from both sides of this central tower a wall at least thirty feet high stretched off to left and right, changing to a double-layer fence after about 250 yards. We were parked at the railway terminus, which had one long platform and a siding; built around it were office blocks, presumably for Compliance staff.

  We obediently followed Pandora Pandora to the main entrance, the access road lined by raised borders which had been recently planted with bedding plants. It all looked extremely twee and friendly – the sort of thing the Spick & Span judges might go for.

  We continued on to the main gateway, had the barcode on our passes scanned and moved into a large open area surrounded by smaller admin buildings, the higher doorways indicating they were designed for rabbits. I could see four large factory units behind this emblazoned with the RabToil logo, at least an acre of greenhouses, a Lago meeting house and what looked like a funfair beyond.

  Dotted around were dedicated MegaWarren security officers, who all seemed to be keeping a careful eye on us. I was aware of an altercation behind me so turned to see several of the security s
taff talking to Harvey at the entrance. One was looking at his ID and a second was talking on his radio. I stopped in my tracks, took a deep breath and walked back towards the main gate.

  ‘Problems?’ I asked. The two officers looked at me suspiciously, then grunted. Harvey/Lugless was staring at them, presumably awaiting whatever the situation might bring.

  ‘We need secondary identification for non-humans,’ said the first, ‘Mr Ffoxe told me personally we were to triple check for infiltrators.’

  ‘Isn’t the lack of ears something of a giveaway?’ I said.

  ‘Mr AY-002 filled out his birthdate wrongly on the security confirmation form,’ said the second, ‘and the secure link to the Spotting server is down.’

  ‘I got my birthday right,’ said Harvey/Lugless in a sniffy tone, ‘it’s your records that are wrong.’

  ‘Regulations,’ said the second officer, who seemed more bored than officious.

  ‘I’m a Spotter from RabCoT in Hereford,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Just don’t yell it out. Lugless here works out of our office.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said the second officer, who then made a phone call to check out my credentials, and once this was done he let us both in.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ said Harvey once we were out of earshot. ‘Our faith in you was justified.’

  And we parted, Harvey walking off towards one of the factory units, and me to where everyone was congregated around Mr Ffoxe, Pandora Pandora and, in an unexpected personal appearance, Prime Minister Nigel Smethwick himself.

  I entered the back of the crowd, where Pandora Pandora was giving an address.