The Constant Rabbit

‘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.’