The Constant Rabbit

Searching in vain & Shopping in town

The United Kingdom Anti-Rabbit Party began as a one-issue pressure group in 1967 and morphed into a political party as their anti-rabbit message spread. Although it was dismissed as a joke in the early years, Nigel Smethwick’s populist rhetoric, a polarised nation and a divided parliament led him to unexpected victory in the controversial 2012 snap election.

Lugless was in before Toby and me that morning, which was unusual. Rabbits, for the most part, were not early risers. When we walked in he was carefully tidying his desk, even though it wasn’t cluttered. There was his nameplate, several hammers of varying sizes, a paw-compliant keyboard, his own dip pen and ink-pot, a citation of merit awarded him by Nigel Smethwick himself, and a single gourmet carrot in a terracotta plant pot. Behind him on the wall was a somewhat racy rabbit calendar displaying a Daisy Duke-wearing Miss April, even though it was well into July.

As soon as I walked in Lugless stopped what he was doing, sat back in his chair and crunched on a stick of romaine he had standing by in a jug of iced water.

He said nothing, so I logged in and began work, sifting through all the Labstocks on the database that were male, had no duelling scars and were six foot or taller.27 I’d been quite close to the white rabbit in the church, and even though I was five foot ten, I barely came up to his shoulder. I’d made a rough sketch of the squashed Tudor rose pattern I’d seen in his ears and we’d dutifully shared it with other departments, but even the two probables they sent me were way off the mark.

Today I would be going through Labstocks who had died in case he’d faked his own death in order to avoid detection. There were several hundred of these, and since rabbits die frequently, on-colony deaths are not usually corroborated by sight, or pictures taken. After that, I’d have to start on the Labstocks based at the other colonies, which might, I estimated, take the best part of a month. And if he was unregistered – as would be likely – all my work would be for nothing. To be honest, if I were running the Rabbit Underground, I’d use unregistered Labstock rabbit as couriers for precisely this reason: a low to nil chance of identification.

‘Any luck on the Flopsy?’ asked Lugless, the ‘7770’ suffix now redundant as he was all I’d been looking for these past weeks.

‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘but there are plenty more bunshots for me to go through.’

‘We really need a name, Knox.’

‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I go the speed I can go.’

The day wound tediously around until lunch when I wandered off towards the Old Market precinct to buy some socks from TK-Maxx.

The air was warm but not sultry, the shoppers in a good temper, the town quiet as befits a Monday. As I walked past the car park outside the Odeon I noticed the Rabbits’ Dodge Monaco. I knew it was theirs as, firstly, Monacos are not a frequent sight in Hereford, and secondly, there was a Playboy Bunny sticker on the back, something which was both iconic and ironic: iconic as the logo was the unofficial emblem of Rabbit Equality, and ironic because the Playboy Club had never permitted any real rabbits to ever be bunny girls.28 I didn’t know whether it meant Clifford was in town or Connie, but as I looked around I saw Connie hurrying into Waitrose, and Clifford nowhere in sight. All thoughts of birthday presents vanished from my head as I trotted into the store, grabbed a basket, hastily chucked five or six random objects inside for plausibility, then went to find her while wondering which ‘accidental meeting’ strategy would work best: to just bump into her, or amble past until she noticed me?

I found her in the magazine section, deep in conversation on her mobile. I nipped back into the next aisle and paused for thought, my heart thumping. I’d not seen her for over thirty years, and even way back then nothing had happened between us, nothing could have happened between us. What was I doing? I began to walk away but my quick exit was abruptly thwarted.

‘So how did it go during dinner?’ came a voice behind me, and I jumped. It was Victor Mallett. He always did his shopping in Waitrose, as it was ‘a positive British experience generally unsullied by the presence of foreigners’.

‘That’s not until tonight,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said Victor, ‘jolly good. The leaving fund is now up to twenty grand, but start low and haggle hard, yes? Make them think seven is our limit. Look,’ he added, having another thought, ‘we’d rather not spend the cash if we don’t have to. The church roof isn’t going to repair itself, and a financial hit of this size could impact on the next Royal Baby street party – so is there anyone at the Taskforce you could ask to pressure them into moving on?’

‘That’s not how it works.’

‘Really? I thought that was precisely how it works. You’re at RabCoT, for Christ’s sake – hardly the bunny’s best friend.’

‘I’m only an accountant.’

It was the first time I think I realised how much of a massive lie it was. Victor Mallett, annoyingly, was right. If I’d been honest with myself, I could have easily seen that the Ministry of Rabbit Affairs – who oversaw the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce – were anything but congenial to rabbits. They had, up until we left the EU, been cited seven hundred and twenty-eight times by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. They’d ruled that since we were treating rabbits like humans – that they paid taxes, held employment, demonstrated free will, understood mortality and their place within society and the world – they were ipso facto human enough to be classed as such, with all the rights and privileges that went with it.

The UK government didn’t see it in quite the same way, and legally defined rabbits on strict taxonomic grounds, which unequivocally had them classed as Oryctolagus cuniculus: rabbits. Emphatically not human. It was a decision that was roundly embraced by RabToil, as it meant that annoyingly restrictive employment laws could be usefully circumvented. Additionally, the government argued, giving rabbits equal rights was a dangerous precedence as it then made no legal sense not to give the same to chickens, cows and pigs. Accepting food as pay for being a dog or a horse could very well be defined as paid employment and require sick leave and other benefits, but it was the whole ‘being murdered and eaten’ issue that was so deeply problematic. The Actual Truth headlined the case as: ‘Europe wants to take away your bacon rolls.’

I sighed, and a little bit more of myself crumbled inside. The really questionable work that RabCoT undertook was done on the floor below me, but even so, I enabled it. Even if I wasn’t part of the problem, I was certainly not part of the solution.

Pippa’s mum Helena had thought so too, and it was why she left me after a series of increasingly acrimonious arguments. I needed to provide for us and maintain the house, but she didn’t think that keeping the family home in Much Hemlock was worth the price tag. She was the first and last person I told. No one else knew what I did. Not family, not friends, definitely not Pippa.

‘I think you’ve got Major Rabbit and Connie all wrong,’ I said in a quiet voice, hoping to smooth this over.

‘Oh, “Connie” is it now?’

‘She asked me to call her that,’ I said, feeling hot and annoyed and wanting to be away from here. ‘I thought you wanted me to get all friendly?’

‘I did,’ said Victor, ‘but not familiar. And my point about criminality has been borne out: their son has a tag on his ankle – for burrowing, I heard.’

I’d seen the tag too.

‘You see what I mean?’ added Victor. ‘Not content with decimating the countryside and taking away all the poorly paid jobs that no one wants to do, they’ve started undermining our towns and villages. Can’t you see the metaphor? Their agenda is as clear as the nose on your face: Undermine and Overpopulate. Do you know how many buildings have been seriously damaged by Vandaburrolism?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying hard to remember even a single case.

‘I don’t know either,’ said Victor, ‘but it’s dozens at least, perhaps more. The TwoLegsGood website is packed full of examples.’

‘If you want to know about Kent, all you need do is ask.’

It was Connie. She stared at us both in turn, then blinked those large odd-coloured eyes of hers. I had no idea how much of our conversation she’d heard, but I hoped not the bit about how I worked in Rabbit Compliance.

‘Have you met?’ I said, swiftly defaulting to introductions. ‘Mrs Rabbit, this is Mr Victor Mallett, chair of the Parish Council and long-time resident of Much Hemlock. Mr Mallett, this is Mrs Constance Rabbit, newly resident at Hemlock Towers.’

Mr Mallett faltered slightly, but then succumbed to Default Standard British.

‘My pleasure,’ he said politely, shaking her paw awkwardly, and with imperfectly disguised reluctance. ‘Welcome to the village. The choir is always looking for new members, the knitting circle are a friendly bunch, and you’ll find Peter and Pippa very generous neighbours.’

‘We have found Mr Knox to be the perfect neighbour,’ she said, smiling, ‘but I’m not convinced of your sincerity. Is this pamphlet something to do with you?’

She produced one of the leaflets I had seen Mr Mallett distributing, warning all and sundry about the ‘pernicious carrot-munching vermin in our midst’. Mr Mallett looked at it, then at me, then at Mrs Rabbit, who cocked her head on one side and stared at him impassively.

‘Oh,’ he said, looking like someone caught in headlights, ‘I think perhaps our message might have been … taken out of context.’

‘I see,’ said Connie, ‘and in what context would “pernicious carrot-munching vermin” be anything but grossly offensive and leporiphobic?’

‘Well,’ he said, suddenly recovering, ‘now you’re being offensive in calling me leporiphobic, which is a vicious and unwarranted slur of which you should be horribly ashamed – and which makes us all even. Goodness, is that the time? I am most hideously late for a meeting. So good to have made your acquaintance, Mrs Rabbit. Good day.’

And he walked away, wiping the hand that he used to shake Mrs Rabbit’s paw on his trouser leg.

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Connie, placing a paw to her mouth as she gave out a couple of chirpy giggles. ‘I am so wicked. I really shouldn’t have put him on the spot like that.’

‘I tend to agree with you,’ I said, ‘as one of the few acquaintances you have in the village, I must tell you that Mr Mallett is the last person you should annoy.’

‘If you stay acquainted with us, Mr Knox,’ she said with dazzling directness, ‘the only acquaintance you may have in the village is us.’

‘I’ll … take my chances,’ I said.

She was now standing quite close, and I could sense her rich, loamy scent once more. It was the scent she’d worn all those years ago, something cooked up by the noted rabbit parfumier Gaston Rabbît. Whenever I’d smelled unwashed spuds it had put me in mind of her.

‘Jersey Royal Pour Femme,’ I said, suddenly recalling what it was called.

She looked at me and smiled.

‘You remembered.’

‘I remember a lot of things.’

We stared at one another for a moment, until she suddenly switched her attention to the randomly gathered items in my basket. ‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘incontinence pads, a tin of mushroom soup, Sun-Pat peanut butter and cocktail sticks?’

‘It’s for Mrs Ponsonby,’ I said quickly. ‘She’s my aunt. I do her shopping.’

‘The one who was ill the weekend I was expelled from uni?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘that was another one. I have three.’

‘I have sixty-eight aunts,’ she said cheerfully, ‘and forty-nine uncles, one of which was also my grandfather.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ she said reflectively, ‘it always made things a little awkward at family get-togethers. Will you accompany me to fruit and veg?’

I could feel us being watched as we moved down the aisle. Shoppers suddenly needed to be somewhere else when we approached, and once, when Connie paused at the fussy-eaters section, the three shoppers already there hurriedly moved away while making clucking noises of disapproval.

‘Someone said you had a small scene in Pulp Fiction,’ I said by way of conversation.

‘The high point of my lacklustre career,’ she replied with a smile, ‘was being edited out of a classic. The segment was originally called “The bunny incident”. Quentin was pretty cool over the whole rabbit issue, but there was pressure from the studios and my small part was reshot with a human. They changed the “good carrot juice” dialogue to “good coffee”. But if you run it again, it makes much more sense with Jimmy’s wife being a rabbit. We could travel to the States in those days,’ she added with a sigh. ‘You had to carry a non-pregnancy certificate and any stay was limited to half a gestation period, but even so – happier times.’

‘Missing out on the success of that movie must have been quite annoying.’

‘All part of the fun and joy of being an actor,’ said Connie philosophically. ‘My work was mostly commercials, a guest spot in Emmerdale, The Bill and one hundred and eighty-three episodes of How Deep Was My Warren as midwife Rachel Rabbit. Have you ever watched it?’

‘No,’ I said, truthfully enough, as the multiple and intertwining plot threads were of such labyrinthine complexity that a single twenty-minute episode contained the same amount of drama as an entire season of West Wing. A few humans claimed to be able to follow it, but they were very likely lying.

‘Not many humans have,’ replied Connie, ‘but here’s a part of mine you might remember: do you recall the animated rabbit in the Cadbury’s Caramel adverts?’

Oddly – or not so oddly at all, really – I had always thought of Connie when watching the adverts, even though the cartoon rabbit, while possessed of Connie’s curves as much as my imagination allowed, didn’t actually sound like her, despite sharing a similar West Country accent.

‘That was you?’

Connie waved a paw dismissively.

‘I was filmed so the animators could copy the movements, so yes, as a body and movement reference – long before the days of motion capture.’

‘But not your voice, was it?’ I said.

She smiled.

‘Very perceptive of you. I didn’t have an Equity card back then so Miriam Margolyes performed in my stead – but I was there in the recording studio to coach her. Lovely woman; her Nurse in Romeo + Juliet was the best ever.’

‘Ever done any Shakespeare?’ I asked.

‘A two-week run playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream but I think I only got the part on account of my ears. Actually, do you know what?’ she said as we reached the fruit and veg section. ‘I don’t really need to do any shopping.’

‘No?’

‘No. I’m having an affair and I wanted to make a call without Clifford overhearing. It’s with Rupert Rabbit. He’s a cousin on my father’s sister’s daughter’s husband’s mother’s side.’

‘I’m … I’m not sure you should be telling me this.’

‘If you’re a rabbit,’ she said with a sigh, ‘it’s sometimes difficult to find someone who isn’t your cousin.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean I’m not sure you should be telling me about your marital infidelities.’

She picked up a stick of celery and sniffed at it expertly.

‘You were always someone I could trust, Pete. I told you stuff, things you might have repeated but didn’t. Are you going to tell my husband?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘So that’s why I’m sharing. Mind you, I’m not so sure about Rupert. Not quite rubbish enough.’

‘Not rubbish enough?’ I asked, taking an interest after all.

‘Clifford is a wonderful husband. Upright, tall, intelligent, ambitious and driven – but if I’m having another litter, they probably shouldn’t be his.’

I asked her why not, and she said it was ‘a rabbit thing’. She lingered over the iceberg lettuce, then sniffed at some romaine before picking up a twin-pack of Little Gem lettuces.

‘Technically they’re actually miniature cos,’ she said, something of an expert, ‘and have a good resistance to root aphid. Did you know the ancient Egyptians considered lettuce a symbol of sexual prowess and fertility?’

‘I know it now.’

‘Is anyone watching?’ she asked in a mischievous tone.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Is there?’

I looked around.

‘No.’

She took one of the Little Gem lettuces out of its cellophane.

‘My second husband and I used to pop a Little Gem during … y’know. It increases the chance of ovulation.29’

Then, without pausing, she downed the Little Gem in a single gulp.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, then shivered until her light brown fur stood out in a low ridge down her back. She held her breath, then exhaled a lungful of salady breath with a low sigh.

‘Zowzer,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘The Soil Association lettuces give the biggest hit. Look, you’d better have this.’

She handed me the remaining lettuce.

‘If I come home with a Little Gem missing out of a two-pack, Clifford will be insanely suspicious. Oh-oh. Trouble.’

I turned to look behind me and could see the security guard deep in conversation with two of the disapproving shoppers, who were looking our way and pointing. I turned back to say something to Connie but she’d slipped away.

‘Was that rabbit anything to do with you?’ asked the store guard as he strode up.

‘Which one?’

‘The one who handed you the half-opened Little Gem – because it would make her husband jealous if she didn’t.’

‘That happens a lot, does it?’

‘More than you might think. So: was that rabbit anything to do with you?’

‘Well, no, not really – we’d just met.’

He grunted and moved away. I walked up and down the aisles trying to find Connie and eventually spotted her outside, walking briskly through the parking lot towards her car. I watched her climb into the Dodge, then reverse out of the car park and away. When at uni I’d liked her off-kilter character mixed with her utter directness, and I liked it now, too. I also knew that sooner or later, by accident or design, she’d find out about my role in the death of her second husband, Dylan Rabbit – and I wasn’t looking forward to it.