The Constant Rabbit

‘You and Connie seem to be quite chummy, and I’d like you to keep me in the loop about any affairs she’s having that you think might be truly serious. I know it’s a long time till the spring mating season, but spouse appropriation starts earlier and earlier these days, and if forewarned, I could chase off the competition with some hard-hitting rhetoric, cash or a pantomime display of male aggression – and in that way avoid a challenge.’

‘I get what you’re saying,’ I said, ‘but I’m not totally happy spying on your wife.’

‘It’s not spying when you love someone. I’d ask Bobby but those two are thick as thieves, and Kent, well, that boy is an inveterate burrower. Do you know I have to keep all the shovels hidden when he’s about?’

‘Shocking.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Doc, getting ready to leave and seemingly quite chirpy again, ‘shocking. You will tell me about Connie, though, won’t you? I need to keep my marriage together without having to fight any duels.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Stout fellow,’ said Doc. ‘By the by, you haven’t seen Bobby, have you? She packed her bags and left when I was in Hereford picking Connie up from the clink.’

‘No,’ I said, figuring that if she knew Harvey had been identified, she would probably be in for questioning next. It seemed odd that both our daughters were on the run from the Taskforce.

‘Jolly good,’ he said, gave me a smile, bounced clean out of the back door and was back gardening in under ten seconds.

I heard the news of the TwoLegsGood demonstration over at Colony One just as I was making a casserole for supper. About two hundred Hominid Supremacists had converged at the entrance to the colony, angry that ordinary hard-working humans were being denied basic benefits while rabbits were being rehomed in ‘the lap of luxury’. While the demo was aggressively voluble it was not illegal, and the police and Taskforce seemed unwilling to move them on. Given Mr Ffoxe’s connections to TwoLegsGood, I couldn’t help wondering whether this was a lockdown by another name – to keep the Venerable Bunty from moving around the country, spreading, as Smethwick put it, ‘her dangerous message of insurrection’.

I’d just popped the casserole in the oven when the doorbell rang. I thought it might have been Connie – ringing so as not to appear too forward – but it wasn’t. It was Victor and Norman Mallett.

‘Ah,’ I said warily, ‘good afternoon.’

‘Good afternoon, Peter. What happened to your eye?’

‘I caught it on a nail.’

‘Oh. May we come in?’

‘Actually, no. You told me I had forty-eight hours to leave the village and then shopped me to the Taskforce. I’ve still got eight hours until I default on your request, so you can leave me alone until then.’

Victor and Norman looked at one another.

‘I think our comments might have taken been out of context when we gave you forty-eight hours to leave,’ said Victor. ‘I think what we actually meant was that you had forty-eight hours to stay.’

‘That explanation makes no sense.’

‘Yes – we came over to clarify.’

‘OK, so let me ask you something: what was the context when your son daubed “bunnyshagger” on my garage door?’

‘He did apologise and paint over it,’ said Victor. ‘If you look on the plus side you’ve got a repainted garage door.’

‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘I really should be thanking you. Look, I’ve lived in this village for fifty years. I was born here. I know everyone who lives here, and everyone knows me. And while Much Hemlock is a little right-wing, I thought we could all get along irrespective of political affiliation. But add a family of rabbits and everyone goes nuts.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Victor, ‘that’s what we were thinking. Norman and I feel we might have been … in a rush to judgement over you and the Rabbits and we’d like to make amends.’

‘Would that be word-amends or actions-amends?’ I asked suspiciously, as the first was abundantly common, and the second almost vanishingly rare.

‘Action-amends, naturally.’

‘OK, then,’ I said, eager to see how this might pan out as the Mallett brothers were famed throughout the county for their false platitudes. ‘A full apology to the Rabbits, a dropping of all hostilities, if anyone from UKARP or 2LG turns up you tell them to go home – and a position for Major Rabbit on the Much Hemlock Parish Council.’

It was a ridiculous demand, and I fully expected them to laugh in my face. But they didn’t.

‘We can do that,’ said Victor, who’d controlled the council almost since the dawn of time.

‘And,’ I continued, wondering how far I could push this, ‘Mrs Rabbit is to cut the ribbon at the Much Hemlock Village Fete next weekend.’

‘Impossible,’ said Norman. ‘Mrs Griswold and the vicar always do the opening. But while cutting the ribbon is plainly an insane suggestion, I could probably have Mrs Rabbit put in charge of the bottle stall.’