The Constant Rabbit

It was Pippa, the billiard-smooth grass of the hill no impediment to her movement.

I gave her a hug and she said she was with Harvey, who waved to me from the communications table set up under an oak tree. He had a dozen or so field telephones in front of him which rang occasionally and were answered by a clerk, who then wrote down a report on a piece of paper and presented it to the Venerable Bunty’s aide-de-camp.

‘They can’t win,’ I said to Pippa.

‘I think they know that, Dad – but then much depends on your definition of winning.’

‘But you’re OK?’

She looked across at Harvey, then back to me, and smiled the most radiant of smiles.

‘I have never been happier.’

I was about to tell her that I’d wanted to hear that for a long, long, time, but I was interrupted by a large explosion as one half of the entranceway collapsed into a pile of rubble. The attack had begun. There was a loud rasp of coordinated artillery fire as a volley of shells flew into the colony and exploded amongst the cucumber frames and runner-bean poles. I heard the revving of tank engines as they advanced through the damaged gateway behind the bulldozers. More chilling than all this, however, were the whoops, cries, yelps and barks of the excited foxes, and the screams of terrified rabbits.

As we watched and listened, the smoke now drifting up and across the hill, there was a second explosion at the northern gateway, and another volley of artillery fire that tore up the gardens, revealing the lights in the tunnels beneath.

I could see Connie staring out across the swirling smoke at the rich fertile land of Gloucestershire. Soft earth, and abundant grass. The summer was not yet over, and there were still long evenings for rabbits to gambol. On the horizon the rim of the rising full moon was just beginning to show. Connie turned to the Venerable Bunty and they both nodded in agreement.

‘I’m going to complete the circle before we have too much suffering,’ said Bunty. ‘I thought our presence would at the very least give humans pause for reflection, but it seems not, or at least, not yet. It may happen, we live in hope. Best say your goodbyes.’

Connie turned to me.

‘It’s not working out for us, Pete. Driving cars and talking and having TV was kind of fun, and clothes and eating out totally rock. But the hate, the fear, the greed. It just doesn’t make any sense. You’re trying to run a twenty-first-century world on Palaeolithic thoughts and sentiments.’

‘I think it’s in our nature.’

‘I disagree,’ she replied. ‘Humans have a very clear idea about how to behave, and on many occasions actually do. But it’s sometimes disheartening that correct action is drowned out by endless chitter-chatter, designed not to find a way forward but to justify petty jealousies and illogically held prejudices. If you’re going to talk, try to make it relevant, useful and progressive rather than simply distracting and time-wasting nonsense, intended only to justify the untenable and postpone the real dialogue that needs to happen.’

Sometimes it takes a non-human to say what it is to be a good human. In the ultimate hypocrisy, Smethwick and UKARP and 2LG and all the others that accused the rabbits of unsustainable overpopulation should have turned the accusation on themselves. The rabbits weren’t the rabbits – we were.

‘So what circle are you completing?’ I asked as the meeting house suffered a direct hit and erupted in a ball of fire.

‘We’re going home,’ she said simply. ‘We’ve done about all we can for the moment.’

I looked at Pippa, who had her arms wrapped tightly around Harvey, and I knew then what their play was. Whatever had given them their humanness could just as easily remove it. The anthropomorphised rabbits were indeed going home, back to the way they were.

They’d seen enough. They were going to revert.

Connie clasped my hand tightly in her paws.

‘Why don’t you come with me?’ she said. ‘I can’t guarantee that it’ll be intellectually challenging and there certainly won’t be any scones and raspberry jam and Panorama and Coen brothers movies, but there will be gambolling in the meadows, lots of it, which is kind of special – and you and I will be together.’

I looked around. The rabbit were retreating from the forward positions as they sensed the circle was about to close, and I saw the first of the tanks come into view. It paused for a second then fired, and a shell whistled above our heads and ripped through the treetops.

‘I’m not sure I’d make a very good rabbit,’ I said. ‘Besides, I’ve not done enough to earn it. I didn’t kill Mr Ffoxe; all I did was take the rap – and there’s nothing brave, noble or exceptional in doing the right thing. I could have done more earlier, and of my own free will. But I didn’t.’

‘You did something,’ said Connie. ‘Incremental change comes from incremental action.’

‘Incremental is enough?’