The Constant Rabbit Page 26

  ‘Maybe a small puff in the right moral direction is the best that could be hoped for,’ added Finkle thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that’s what satire does – not change things wholesale but nudge the collective consciousness in a direction that favours justice and equality. Is there any more walnut cake?’

  ‘I’m afraid I had the last slice,’ I said, ‘but I did ask if anyone else wanted it.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Finkle, looking at his watch. ‘I think we should be making a move anyway. Tell me, Peter, do you like owls?’

  ‘Owls?’

  ‘Yes, the bird, y’know, large eyes, fond of mice, not that smart?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s an abiding passion of mine and I need someone to look after Ollie until the Rehoming is over.’

  ‘I don’t have an aviary.’

  ‘I have a portable one on a trailer. I’ll send it round. Well, goodbye, Mr Knox – very pleased to have met you. And Constance? Send my very best to Doc and tell him that he still owes me a rematch for that ping-pong trouncing he gave me.’

  Connie said she would and we all clasped hands again. The Venerable Bunty said a few words in Rabbity and after a blessing in which we all stood on one foot for a half-minute, we parted in opposite directions: the Venerable Bunty and Patrick towards Clagdangle-on-Arrow and Connie and I back to where I’d parked the car.

  ‘What was that all about?’ I asked once we were back at the Austin-Healey.

  ‘Finkle and the Venerable Bunty said they wanted to meet you. Get your … measure.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said, suddenly animated, ‘I’ll race you back home on the Slipton Flipflop road. Ready?’

  I jumped in the car and yelled ‘ready’, and we were off with a screech of tyres and a grunt of effort from Connie. The trip home took ten minutes, and while the Austin-Healey was faster then her, she had the height-and-sight advantage around corners where I had to slow down. I made some headway on the road to Flipflop but had to slow down through the village. Connie didn’t. She went straight through the small hamlet in a series of increasingly reckless bounds, once bouncing into the open top-storey window of Mr Gumley’s house before emerging from the French windows on the other side and intercepting the road back to Much Hemlock. I caught up with her about halfway there but she pulled ahead when I had to slow down for some cyclists and a pony.

  The door to my house was open when I got home and I found Connie in the utility room with her ears draped inside the chest freezer.

  ‘Overheated,’ she explained. ‘That sweating thing you do is super-useful. If I was a member of a species eager for world domination, it would be first on my list, along with sensible footwear, literacy and double-entry bookkeeping.’

  ‘Connie, can I tell you something?’

  ‘You disagree about the importance of double-entry bookkeeping?’

  ‘No, I think that’s irrefutable,’ I replied, taking a deep breath and suddenly feeling the urge to stare at my feet. ‘It’s about your … second husband.’

  ‘Dylan?’

  ‘Yes. I was … there the night he was mistakenly identified.’

  She stopped and gazed at me intently, her head cocked on one side.

  ‘I was wondering when you were going to tell me.’

  ‘Wait, what – you knew?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We knew you were a Spotter, and knew what you’d done. But I said I knew you, and you weren’t all bad. That you were weak, that’s all – and easily led.’

  ‘Then all this friendship stuff is a sham? You really are a bunnytrap?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, ‘it’s not a sham. Everyone is capable of reform. It’s quite possible to do bad things and find some kind of restorative justice – personally, and for those you’ve wronged. I knew you before you made poor choices, when you could have done anything you wanted. I’d like to think that there are parts of that Peter Knox still around.’

  I stared back at her, unable to think of anything to say.

  ‘Really, I’m totally OK with it,’ she said, as I must have looked unconvinced. ‘We know you pleaded with Mr Ffoxe that it wasn’t Dylan, we know that you were overruled. You could have done more and think you still might. You can help us, and by the same measure, we can help you. This isn’t a bunnytrap, or an exploitation – it’s an intervention. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?’

  ‘That I’m repairable?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, laying a paw on my arm, ‘you’re repairable.’

  ‘So,’ I said after a pause, ‘you were close to killing Mr Ffoxe at All Saints simply for revenge?’

  ‘Nope,’ she said, ‘not with the risk of reprisals. Killing such a prominent fox would be ten times the usual penalty for rabbit-murder. No, that was just to get him interested.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘How did you know all that?’ I asked. ‘About me and Dylan and stuff?’

  She smiled.

  ‘You’d be surprised how many people are friendly to rabbits. And you see these?’

  She pointed at her long and very elegant ears, which were covered with the faintest wisp of downy fur.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’re not just for decoration.’

  Bugged Bunny

  Rabbity glossary: Hiffniff. The direct translation is an ‘edict’ but ‘a suggestion to undertake a unified act of benefit to the warren’ would be closer, albeit more verbose. An emphasis on the last ‘f’ would, however, change the meaning to ‘any item of apparel worn by women on a hen night’.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but Pippa – with Bobby’s help – made it into Colony One at about the same time as I was talking to Finkle and the Venerable Bunty. She met up with Harvey but I didn’t see them again until I too was inside the colony, the same day as the Battle of May Hill. I’d see Pippa and Harvey leave me as I stood beside Connie and the Venerable Bunty, the artillery shells falling, the sharp barks, yelps and cries of excited foxes mixing with the frightened cries of rabbits. But all of this was in the future, and unknowable. Or at least, unknowable to me.

  I slept unusually well the night after the meeting with Finkle and Bunty, and the following morning my eye, which the day before had been bloodshot and sore and gave only hazy vision, was almost healed. I had breakfast feeling oddly quite good about myself, took delivery of Finkle’s owl and the portable aviary and then called the Taskforce HR department to say that I would be doing half-days until further notice for ‘personal reasons’. I then spent the next week pretending that Connie and I had a thing going. It was her idea in order that Mr Ffoxe waste valuable resources which would otherwise have been spent preparing for the Rehoming, and I happily went along with it, as spending time with her was always pleasant.

  On the first day we met in the lobby of the Green Dragon Hotel and went to a shared room, stayed for an hour to play Scrabble, then unsubtly departed, ten minutes apart. We met at All Saints for lunch on more than one occasion, took the train to Birmingham to see a Vilhelm Hammershoi retrospective, and on the day after that, I called in sick and hid in my spare room while Connie sent our mobiles in a RabCab all the way to Liverpool’s Tarbuck International Airport. She didn’t say why, but I guessed to give the impression we were doing a recce for a possible escape to the Isle of Man. I even asked her to shadow Stanley Baldwin during that Tuesday Buchblitz, where she showed considerable flair for reshelving.

  Whenever I got into the office, usually afternoons, I spent the time in Interview Room One, reading a copy of Madame Bovary that Connie had lent me.

  ‘Anything?’ asked Adrian Whizelle on the afternoon of the sixth day. It was always Whizelle.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ I said.

  ‘The Senior Group Leader is becoming impatient,’ said Whizelle. ‘The Grand Council has announced that the colonies won’t be moved, and that witch Bunty has issued a hiffniff telling all and sundry to hold fast, not be moved and to of
fer passive and polite resistance to anyone who tries to rehome them.’

  ‘I heard,’ I said, ‘it was on the news.’

  ‘Mr Ffoxe and Smethwick have taken advice from the Attorney General, and since the removal is legal owing to the Rehoming Act, the rabbit’s frontal incisors have been designated offensive weapons. “Being cornered in possession of teeth” is now the legal equivalent of “attack with a deadly weapon”, and we are permitted to counter that threat with any force deemed necessary – even pre-emptively. So tell your little bun-chums that.’

  The statement was so manifestly unjust I wasn’t going to validate it with a comment.

  ‘I don’t have any sway with the Venerable Bunty, the Council of Coneys or any of the on-colony rabbits,’ I said. ‘If Connie asks me for information or tells me anything, I’ll repeat it back to you. That was the deal.’

  ‘The deal was you’d help us,’ said Whizelle, ‘and I haven’t seen—’

  He stopped talking as the door to the interview room opened and my heart sank as Senior Group Leader Ffoxe walked in. I suppose I should have guessed he’d be listening in to the conversation, but up to now I’d not really appreciated how I was not just one strand of enquiry – but the main one.

  ‘Hello, Peter,’ said the fox.

  ‘Look, I’m doing what you asked me,’ I said, perhaps a little bit too defensively.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Mr Ffoxe in a semi-soothing manner. ‘I’m not here to make threats. No one’s eye is coming out.’

  And he then sat down and stared at me for a long time without blinking, while I sat there fidgeting. I’d told him all about my meeting with Finkle and the Venerable Bunty four hours after I’d met them, which gave me credibility for at least a couple of days.

  ‘It’s been almost a week,’ he said finally, ‘and you’ve been making the job of my boys really difficult.’

  ‘I’m doing the best I can. If Connie doesn’t tell me anything, I can’t repeat it.’

  Despite my outwardly timid manner, which I was exaggerating at Connie’s suggestion, I was actually feeling a little braver, probably because I sensed the fox still needed me. Mr Ffoxe opened his mouth, removed a piece of gristle from between his teeth, stared at it for a moment, then said:

  ‘Whose idea was it to send your mobile phones in a cab all the way up to Tarbuck International?’

  ‘Connie’s.’

  ‘Have the Rabbits asked you to do anything for them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you heard anything that you feel might be useful?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to up our game. Will you be seeing the Rabbits later today?’

  ‘Almost certainly. It’s Doc’s first Parish Council meeting and they’ve invited me to supper afterwards.’

  ‘Perfect. I want you to wear a listening device. Ask them about Bunty, the Rehoming, Finkle, RabSAg – anything you can. I want to hear them talk, get an idea of their mood. Quiz them, but I also want to hear you make some sort of effort on our behalf, because I really don’t think you’re trying hard enough.’

  ‘I’ll … want something in return,’ I said, scratching my nose nervously. ‘If they find out I’m wearing a wire, they could do what they did to Toby but without the “returning safely” part.’

  ‘We’re listening,’ said Whizelle.

  ‘My daughter is in Colony One, which is currently encircled by TwoLegsGood and Taskforce personnel. I want her and an unnamed rabbit to be given safe passage to the Isle of Man.’

  Mr Ffoxe smiled.

  ‘OK,’ said Mr Ffoxe, ‘you got yourself a deal. Pippa Knox plus one rabbit. Make a note, Weasel.’

  ‘It’s Whi-zelle for the hundredth time,’ I heard Whizelle mutter under his breath.

  There was no doubt in my mind Mr Ffoxe would not lift a paw to help Pippa or her significant rabbit. To him, my daughter had already crossed the species divide and would be treated accordingly. The only reason I asked was to make him think I would not wear a wire lightly. Mr Ffoxe walked around the table and made to shake my hand, but instead grabbed my head and thumped it painfully on the interview-room desk. Then, after a pause, he did it again, harder, then once more, harder still. I felt a tooth break in my jaw.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, ‘that really hurt.’

  ‘The first was to make the point,’ he said, ‘that if you double-cross me I will find you, wherever you are, and make good on the whole eye-coming-out-and-eating-it scenario. The second was for betraying your own species.’

  ‘And the third?’ I asked.

  ‘That one,’ he said, leaning closer to whisper in my ear, ‘was simply for pleasure.’

  Dinner & Deity

  Thumping the hind leg upon the ground was a good method of non-verbal communication with a range of about four hundred yards, sort of like rabbit WiFi. Using Morse code, entire books could be transmitted to a large group of rabbits while occupied on assembly-line work. It is the origin of the phrase ‘a thumping good tale’.

  I drove straight home, my head still throbbing. The bugging device that Whizelle had given me was a plain Parker ballpoint that required me only to click it once to switch on, once to switch off. The battery, he’d said, would last for six hours and transmit up to a mile away.

  The thing was, I was under no illusion that I was fooling Mr Ffoxe. He’d know I’d tell them I was wired, so he’d also know they’d only give up intel that they wanted him to hear. Was I a bunnytrap-trap trap, or a bunnytrap-trap-trap trap? It was impossible to know. I gave up on trying to figure it all out and instead went and fed Finkle’s owl, who stared back at me blankly.

  The clock was indicating six when there was a knock on the door. It was Doc. He was returning the Henry vacuum cleaner with an apologetic ‘sorry, don’t know why she keeps pinching them when I’m the one that does the cleaning’ and also wanting to know whether I fancied watching him make a fool of himself at the Parish Council. I told him I wouldn’t miss it for anything as council meetings were often closer to live cabaret than the first tier of democracy. We walked the short distance to the village hall, talking about how all of his security consultancy contracts had been withdrawn or cancelled without explanation.

  ‘The Rehoming is putting a spanner in the works for legal off-colony rabbits,’ he said. ‘I have a feeling we won’t be off-colony for long.’

  Doc’s initiation into the Parish Council all seemed to go fairly well. Victor had been the chairman for decades, and although Norman was not on the council he was there with the public, sitting next to me, and I saw him nod imperceptibly while listening to Doc’s robust arguments regarding the best strategy to improve traffic calming, and how the local playground could be upgraded with minimum outlay. There was an embarrassing moment when Article 15 on the agenda was read out, which related to the council contributing to the ‘leaving payment’ the village had been gathering to buy the Rabbits out. With true professionalism Doc recused himself from the argument and went to smoke his pipe outside until recalled to discuss allocating more funds to tidying up the churchyard for when the Spick & Span judges returned – something Councillor Wainwright thought would be next Tuesday at three, although when pressed he gave no answer as to why he should think that. When the meeting finished and the usual post-meeting talks were going on, Victor had a call on his mobile and rapidly departed, along with his brother.

  I would find out why later.

  ‘I think that all went fairly well, don’t you?’ said Doc as we walked back from the village hall an hour later.

  ‘They’re being pleasant because they’ve been told to,’ I said; ‘it won’t last.’

  ‘True,’ said Doc, ‘but let’s enjoy it while we can, eh?’

  I’d had a brief call earlier from Pippa saying she was fine and that Bobby and Harvey had been looking after her at Colony One, and not to worry about her as she had found the place and the person she wanted to be, and the rabbit who she wanted to share that with.

  I as
ked Doc whether Bobby had been in touch with her or Connie, and he said she hadn’t.

  ‘Constance always remarked that Bobby was a little headstrong,’ he said, ‘and watched a lot of ’Allo ’Allo when she was young, so I suppose it was inevitable she’d end up doing all the cloak-and-dagger stuff. Her Underground name is Bridgette, apparently.’

  ‘Do you think she’s in any danger at Colony One?’ I asked, more out of concern for Pippa.

  ‘Who knows? It’s really down to whether Smethwick and Mr Ffoxe order the enforced clearance of the colonies and exercise all their powers to do so. I know the citizens of the UK are not wildly pro-rabbit, but oddly, they can become very interested – albeit for a short period of time – if there is any cruelty to animals involved. It’s always been their soft spot.’

  He stopped walking at the bus stop, turned and looked at me.

  ‘Look here, Peter, old chap,’ he said, ‘I think we need to talk. Cards on the table and all that. I think you and Constance are having an affair, and unless you can give me a solemn promise to keep your grubby paws off my wife, I’m going to have to challenge you to a duel.’

  ‘I can assure you we are not,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what she says, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt during that incident with the bedsheet, but, well, I asked Kent to put a tracker on her phone and she’s been to the Green Dragon Hotel a couple of times, and I saw you both in All Saints.’

  ‘We just met up for coffee,’ I said.

  ‘That’s how it always begins. Coffee, dinner, going out for a bounce, basket of scrubbed carrots, Scrabble. What were you two doing in that dilapidated barn? I was watching for an hour and you didn’t come out – I would have stayed for longer, but I had to get home to watch the cricket.’

  ‘We were meeting with Patrick Finkle and the Venerable Bunty,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Doc, ‘and I suppose Victor Lewis-Smith and the Pope were there too? If you want to be together, Pete, then do the decent thing, stop inventing silly stories and make a challenge – waiting for me to challenge you is really the coward’s way, how weasels would do it.’