The Constant Rabbit

‘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.’

‘Weasels fight duels too?’

‘No, but if they did.’

‘We’re not having an affair, Doc, I promise you.’

He stared at me and blinked.

‘I wish I could believe you,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Why don’t we have a pint after dinner at the Unicorn and thrash it out there?’

‘OK,’ I said, glad to move away from the subject for a couple of hours.

We walked the rest of the way in silence, and inside my pocket I clicked the Parker pen to activate the listening device.

‘Two more in the burrow,’ called out Doc as we walked in the door, using a traditional rabbit greeting.

‘Hello,’ said Connie, popping her head round the kitchen door. ‘How did the council meeting go?’

‘They were eating out of my paw,’ said Doc.

‘Really?’

‘No, not really – it was a charade. They despised me with a vengeance.’

‘Same old same old,’ said Connie.

While Doc went off to lay the table, I went into the kitchen and passed Connie a note I had prepared. It was written in block capitals because their visual cortex was not so attuned to reading as ours, but was absolutely clear:

I AM WEARING A WIRE

She pointed to a message on the fridge constructed out of magnetic letters:

I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT BE

She smiled, winked at me and squeezed my hand.

Once we were all seated and grace had been said – in Rabbity this time, as I think they thought I was a good enough friend not to take offence – Connie ladled out the stew and we ate, the Rabbits making slurpy noises with the occasional clinking of spoons against teeth, as cutlery and their dentition didn’t really work very well together. During dinner we spoke briefly of the latest episode in The Archers, the first time a storyline had featured rabbits, with the Grundys employing a rabbit stockman named Tim who was embroiled in some off-colony politics. Kent said that Rabbit TV was a lot better, even though How Deep Was My Warren had recently been plunged into controversy.

‘A recent shake-up has reduced the ensemble cast to barely six thousand,’ explained Connie, ‘which makes it all a little easy to follow.’

‘Dumbing down for a young rabbit’s short attention span,’ added Doc in a huffy manner. ‘Kids today can barely follow six hundred simultaneous storylines. I blame the fad for board games, personally.’

Connie, in what I realised later was an effort to steer the conversation to where she needed it, mentioned that Fortean Times had reported that a moose shot dead by a hunter was later found to have amassed a considerable library of George Eliot novels, critical appraisals, biographies and poetry, and had been attempting to write a dissertation on how Eliot’s life could be viewed from the viewpoint of even-toed ungulates singled out for their lack of apparent good looks.

‘I think moose are rather handsome,’ said Doc thoughtfully, ladling out seconds. ‘They just need to keep their chins up a little.’

‘It’s the weight of the antlers,’ said Kent, who had taken on the young male human trope of being an expert on absolutely everything.

‘Probably a sense of low self-esteem,’ added Connie. ‘Maybe that’s why they always look so gloomy.’

‘Was it really another Event?’ I asked. ‘One hears stories like this, but it might simply have been another hoax.’

‘Goulburn,’ said Connie and Doc together.