The Constant Rabbit Read online

‘No. The gun with the bun has the aim that is lame.’

  ‘What does the lark have?’

  She sighed deeply, as if I were an idiot.

  ‘I’ll go through it once again, so listen very, very carefully: the gun with the bun has the aim that is lame, but the shot’ll hit the spot if you’ve a croc on the stock.’

  I repeated it back more or less correct, then said:

  ‘But look, I can’t duel him unless you give our union your permission.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘the Venerable Bunty has foreseen that, too.’

  ‘Does she predict useful things, like the 4.15 at Kempton Park?’

  ‘All the time – but it would be unethical to use that information for material gain. Now: to bouncing. Since you’re a human and thus hobbled with the puniest of leg muscles, you could not possibly hope to keep up – so I suggest you drive alongside me. I’ve drawn a route that’s almost exactly eight miles. If I can do a lap in under twenty minutes, then I’m in with a chance of beating Penelope Rabbit, who’s way too full of herself and really needs to be taken down a hop or two.’

  ‘Is Doc OK with this?’

  ‘If he knew I’m sure he’d be totally fine about it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘OK, then.’

  I opted to take the Austin-Healey as it was a convertible, and once I’d reversed out, Connie laid a map on the bonnet to brief me. There was a long straight road between Much Hemlock and Squiffton Coachbolt that she suggested taking, then a left by the church of St Julius of the Swollen Glands, then following the disused railway along a three-mile stretch of road before arriving in Syon Kapok, where a left past the old tithe barn would return us to Much Hemlock via Slipton Flipflop.

  ‘I’ll give you a head start,’ she said. ‘Keep to a steady twenty-four if you can.’

  I had an accurate speedo on the car, so set off in the direction she had indicated, holding as steady a speed as I could. She soon caught up with me and managed to hold station with the car using a series of powerful leaps in the field next to me, expertly negotiating walls, fences, a small spinney, a sheep and the occasional cow. When she was mid-leap it looked as though she were hanging in the air next to me, then she would land and in a burst of energy and a sharp cry that put me in mind of tennis players during a rally, she would launch herself into the air and was once again momentarily airborne, at which point she had a second or two to speak.

  ‘I’m really sorry for what happened,’ she said, sailing over a dry-stone wall. ‘I didn’t plan for you to get hauled up in front of the Taskforce. You told them nothing happened, right?’

  ‘Nothing did happen,’ I said, having to shout to be heard in the breeze. ‘What did you tell Doc?’

  ‘The same,’ she said, taking another leap. ‘He’s insanely suspicious, gets very stressed in the pre-mating season and has a temper, so I just said that you and I were out of the question because you were, well—’

  ‘Uncharismatic?’

  ‘My word was boring, actually.’

  ‘Thanks. He wants me to spy on you.’

  She landed just before a row of trees, jumped, then expertly tucked herself into a ball and passed through the foliage with a crack of broken twigs and a burst of leaves.

  ‘He’s frightened of losing you to another buck in a duel,’ I said. ‘He told me he doesn’t want the only memento of you to be a hole in his ear.’

  This, I think, was news to Connie.

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘More or less.’

  She landed, gave out a cry and leapt clear across a small herd of Friesians, who looked as though they’d suddenly realised that it was a Tuesday and would have to reconfigure their plans. We took a left by the church in Squiffton Coachbolt, which Connie undertook by a series of bounds around the graveyard, then she disappeared behind the tea rooms and caught up with me, bouncing along the relative flatness of the disused railway. I told her how Flemming and Whizelle had initially tried to make me testify against her but that the Senior Group Leader had intervened.

  ‘It was Mr Ffoxe who made the charges go away.’

  She looked at me, grimaced, then landed, gave another sharp cry and cleared a carelessly abandoned combine harvester with inches to spare. She then slowed her pace and eventually came to stop beside a small clump of trees that bounded a field of ripening wheat.

  ‘How did I do?’ she said, wrapping her ears with a cold towel from a cooler she’d placed in my car.

  ‘Twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds,’ I said, studying my stopwatch.

  ‘It’s a work in progress,’ she said with a shrug as I switched off the engine. She then turned to walk along the edge of a field bounded with silver birches. It was an invitation to join her, and after looking around and seeing no one, I climbed out of the car and followed. She brushed her paw against the wheat that was dry-rustling in the breeze as we walked along, following the footpath that took us towards the distant spire of Clagdangle-on-Arrow by way of Kintley barn, a dilapidated brick-built affair that in days gone by was a favourite hangout for teenagers: just far enough to be away from adults, but not so far away that it couldn’t be easily reached on bicycles. I had my first kiss there – with Isadora Fairfax, now the second Mrs Mallett – and it was also the place where Norman, in a furious rage, hit James Bryant with a length of scaffolding, something that we always believed was behind Jim’s onset of seizures and early death at twenty-two.

  ‘So,’ said Connie, ‘why did Mr Ffoxe make the charges go away?’

  ‘He wanted you and I to carry on exactly as we are. He said you were a …’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A … bunnytrap. That you had moved in opposite to entice and entrap me, probably to gain access to the Taskforce servers via my security clearance.’

  She stopped walking, turned to me and cocked her head on one side, her ears falling forward quizzically.

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. I’ve got clearance, you’re a rabbit, the Rehoming begins in a month—’

  ‘I’ve always thought we might be together, Peter, right from when we first met at university. Don’t know how or why or even whether we can, but always felt it, kind of deep down.’

  I’d felt that too, but didn’t know whether risking death in a duel would be worth it. Doc was military, and I’d spotted several prizes for marksmanship in their front room. I’d shot .22 pistols at school, but duelling with a heavy smoothbore was something else entirely. It wasn’t likely I’d win. Perhaps that was the plan.

  ‘What else did Mr Ffoxe say?’ she asked.

  ‘That I was to let the relationship take its course and see what I could find out about you, the plans for civil disobedience against the Rehoming, and about the Venerable Bunty in particular. He said that if I didn’t play ball he’d take my eye out. I agreed to help him, but I’m telling you now so you know I’m no snitch.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  She stopped at the entrance to the barn. The oak lintel had rotted and was partly collapsed, and several bricks hung precariously above the doorway.

  ‘Come on in,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know what,’ I said with great difficulty, ‘I’m really not sure that’s a good idea.’

  ‘I respect you for it,’ she said, ‘but it’s not for what you think. I want you to meet someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  A human male and a doe rabbit were waiting for us inside, both seated on the remains of a haywain that was now just a partially collapsed chassis, but had been almost intact when I’d played here as a child. As I drew closer I could see the man was Patrick Finkle of the Rabbit Support Agency, and he stood up as we approached, smiled and stepped forward to shake my hand. The rabbit with him was snowy white, wore thick horn-rimmed glasses and was dressed in Potter chic, a light blue flowery dress with a pinafore, and a large matching bow
between her ears. They were both wearing hiking boots, and two knapsacks were on the ground beside them.

  ‘Hello, Mr Knox,’ said Finkle, ‘good to meet you at last. I see you quite often on the way to work at RabCoT.’

  He squeezed my one hand in his two; I could feel the lack of opposability and it sent an odd chill up my back. Finkle had been the first to voluntarily remove his thumbs in order to show oneness with the rabbit cause, and given that one might argue opposability and tool use were as indicative of our species as ears are for a rabbit, there was something more than just a levelling of the dexterous field – it was a comment about our humanness, and the rejection thereof. In an instant my odd sense of revulsion turned to understanding and, in some measure, admiration. I took a deep breath and stood up straighter.

  ‘Call me Peter,’ I said. ‘I face instant dismissal for even talking to you.’

  He gave me a half-smile.

  ‘I won’t tell if you won’t. You want to stare at my absent thumbs, don’t you?’

  ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. Don’t feel bad – everyone wants to.’

  He held up his hands so I could look and get it out of my system. These days the surgery could be done so precisely a lopped human would appear as if they’d never had thumbs, but Finkle had used a bandsaw on himself, so the stumps were ragged and mismatched. There must have been a lot of blood.

  ‘Miss them?’ I asked stupidly, not knowing how to open a conversation with a lopped.

  ‘Every day,’ he said evenly, ‘but sacrificing something you don’t need isn’t a sacrifice.’

  At the last count there were eight hundred others who had lopped themselves, all living in the colonies or in the Isle of Man safe haven, having adopted rabbit ways. It was a controversial move: a few had even been snatched back by the same companies that did cult interventions, but every individual returned to the colonies as soon as they could. Once you were lopped, you’d made your choice and would stick by it.

  ‘And this,’ said Finkle, turning to introduce his female rabbit companion, ‘is the Venerable Bunty Celestine MNU-683, my mentor, spiritual guide and romantic life partner.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said, suddenly taken aback, not just at meeting her, but at the trust in which I must have been held to be allowed to do so. ‘Hello.’

  If I had been expecting some sort of mystical experience upon meeting her – an aura of righteousness or spirituality or something – I was disappointed. She looked just like any other Labstock rabbit, although the spectacles were a giveaway as to her heritage: the test animal known as MNU-683 from the tag on her cage had been used for shampoo eye irritation tests before the Event, and her descendants always had poor eyesight, although I wasn’t sure how this was heritable.

  ‘Hello!’ she said with a bright smile as she held my hand in her paws. ‘Pleased to meet you. Goodness: what happened to your eye?’

  ‘Little bit of foxing,’ I said, ‘nothing serious.’

  ‘Did he threaten to take it out and eat it?’

  ‘He did.’

  She grimaced, then made the circular sign of Lago around my eye and laid her paw upon it for a couple of seconds. I thought this might have been a miracle or something, but it wasn’t. When she lifted her paw, my eye seemed no better than before.

  Once all the introductions were over we perched on the remains of the haywain while the bees buzzed merrily around, the morning beginning to heat up. The Venerable Bunty passed round tin cups56 of Vimto and offered us a cucumber sandwich.

  ‘I could so murder a whopping great carrot right now,’ said Connie, who had just done the equivalent of fifteen one-hundred-metre sprints.

  ‘I’ve taken a vow of abstinence,’ said the Venerable Bunty, ‘so didn’t bring any. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Connie, mildly embarrassed that she’d forgotten rabbit clergy denied themselves ‘the pleasure of the orange’ to detach themselves better from the distracting indulgences of the material world.

  ‘Aren’t there some peaches?’ said Finkle. ‘And I think I’ve got a bar of Fruit & Nut somewhere.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said the Venerable Bunty, rummaging in her knapsack, ‘there are some banana sandwiches, but they got a bit squashed – and some walnut cake, I think …’

  ‘Well, Peter,’ said Finkle once we’d had something to eat, ‘tell me about the deal you made with Mr Ffoxe.’

  ‘I’ve only just told Connie about that,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It was pretty obvious as soon as Constance was released,’ said Finkle. ‘I can’t see why else they’d be so generous.’

  I told them everything I knew, and they both listened quietly, speaking only to ask a question or to clarify a point. The Venerable Bunty asked me to describe the layout of MegaWarren, which I furnished as best as I could, and what sort of security clearance I had on the Taskforce mainframe.

  ‘One up from the lowest,’ I said, ‘but I won’t be able to access it. Mr Ffoxe and the weasel will simply want to know what you’ll ask me to find out, and use that to figure out your plans.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Finkle, ‘we should accept that Mr Ffoxe assumed you would tell us everything, so it’s difficult to see his precise play.’

  ‘He was very eager to find out your whereabouts,’ I said to the Venerable Bunty, ‘and was very interested in the subject of “completing the circle”.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Venerable Bunty, ‘that’s very interesting.’

  ‘It is?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Finkle, ‘it is.’

  I looked at Connie, who was, I think, still musing about the ‘whopping great carrot’ she wanted.

  ‘Ultimately,’ I said, ‘Mr Ffoxe wants leverage to move you all to MegaWarren without any trouble, and thinks that with the Venerable Bunty in custody it will be a lot easier.’

  ‘Even with the VB under lock and key, he’ll still have trouble,’ said Finkle. ‘The Grand Council of Coneys have ratified the plans for civil stubbornness, so each rabbit will have to be carried all the way to Wales one by one, which will be prohibitively expensive, not to mention a PR nightmare.’

  ‘Since Smethwick and Mr Ffoxe have staked their reputations on the Rehoming,’ added the Venerable Bunty, ‘they’ll want to have it completed in whatever way they can – and with over fifteen hundred foxes and ten thousand Compliance Officers at the Taskforce, it might all turn rather unpleasant.’

  I knew this too – it wasn’t really news. I think UKARP suspected that when push came to shove, the rabbit’s innate dislike of confrontation and the Taskforce’s innate propensity to confrontation would win the day.

  The conversation stopped for a minute or two while the Venerable Bunty cut the hardly-squashed-at-all walnut cake, but soon picked up again as we learned that the Venerable Bunty was brought up in-colony and had been doing miracles since passing her GCSEs, so had been a shoo-in to take over as spiritual leader when the previous Bunty died, herself the fifth since the Event. Our meeting seemed chatty rather than focused, and at one point I asked Finkle whether he wanted me to do anything.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to meet you. Get the measure of Connie’s neighbour, see what he has to offer. Now that I have, I’d like you to play along with Mr Ffoxe. You can tell him about this meeting if you like. There’s been no breach of the law, just a minor employment infraction on your behalf for talking to me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked, disappointed that I wasn’t going to be of more use.

  ‘We’re sure,’ said Finkle. ‘You can tell him about Bunty, too. Just give us four hours to make ourselves scarce before you do.’

  ‘That’s it?’ I said.

  ‘That’s it.’

  So while we ate the excellent walnut cake that the Venerable Bunty’s mother’s sister’s daughter’s husband’s son had baked, Venerable Bunty and Connie told us about life inside the colonies, which despite the lack of freedom and limited space were the only areas within
the United Kingdom that ran themselves entirely on rabbit socio-egalitarian principles.

  ‘It’s occasionally aggressive and often uncompromising,’ said Finkle, ‘but from what I’ve seen of both systems, a country run on rabbit principles would be a step forward – although to be honest, I’m not sure we’d be neurologically suited to the regime. While most humans are wired to be reasonably decent, a few are wired to be utter shits – and they do tend to tip the balance.’

  ‘The decent humans are generally supportive of doing the right thing,’ said the Venerable Bunty, ‘but never take it much farther than that. You’re trashing the ecosystem for no reason other than a deluded sense of anthropocentric manifest destiny, and until you stop talking around the issue and actually feel some genuine guilt, there’ll be no change.’

  ‘Shame, for want of a better word, is good,’ said Finkle. ‘Shame is right, shame works. Shame is the gateway emotion to increased self-criticism, which leads to realisation, an apology, outrage and eventually meaningful action. We’re not holding our breaths that any appreciable numbers can be arsed to make the journey along that difficult chain of emotional honesty – many good people get past realisation, only to then get horribly stuck at apology – but we live in hope.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said, having felt that I too had yet to make the jump to apology.

  ‘It’s further evidence of satire being the engine of the Event,’ said Connie, ‘although if that’s true, we’re not sure for whose benefit.’

  ‘Certainly not humans’,’ said Finkle, ‘since satire is meant to highlight faults in a humorous way to achieve betterment, and if anything, the presence of rabbits has actually made humans worse.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the default position of humans when they feel threatened,’ I ventured, ‘although if I’m honest, I know a lot of people who claim to have “nothing against rabbits” but tacitly do nothing against the overt leporiphobia that surrounds them.’

  ‘Or maybe it’s just satire for comedy’s sake and nothing else,’ added Connie, ‘or even more useless, satire that provokes a few guffaws but only low to middling outrage – but is coupled with more talk and no action. A sort of … empty cleverness.’