The Constant Rabbit

Speed Librarying

Somebody once said that the library is actually the dominant life form on the planet. Humans simply exist as the reproductive means to achieve more libraries.

‘Still on the Westerns, Baroness Thatcher?’ I asked, moving slowly down the line of volunteers who were standing at readiness outside our library, a smallish mock-mock-Tudor building in the middle of Much Hemlock, itself more or less in the middle of the county of Hereford, which in turn was pretty much in the middle of the UK.

Much Hemlock was, in pretty much every meaning of the word, middling.

‘Westerns are the best when they’re not really Westerns at all,’ said Baroness Thatcher, ‘like when more akin to the Greek Epics. True Grit, for example.’

‘Shane is more my kind of thing,’ said Stanley Baldwin, who I think fancied himself as a softly spoken man of understated power and influence. Winston Churchill opined they were both wrong and that The Ox-Bow Incident was far better with its generally positive themes of extrajudicial violence. Neville Chamberlain tried to keep the peace and find some middle ground on the issue while David Lloyd George simply sat there in quiet repose, mentally preparing for the adrenaline-fuelled six minutes of Speed Librarying that lay before us.

Perhaps I should explain. The UKARP Government’s much-vaunted Rural Library Strategic Group Vision Action Group had kept libraries open as per their election manifesto, but reduced the librarian staffing levels in Herefordshire to a single, solitary example working on greatly reduced hours – which meant that each of the county’s twelve libraries could be open for precisely six minutes every two weeks.

And this is where my hand-picked team of faux politicians entered the picture. Using a mixture of careful planning, swiftness of foot, a robust understanding of the Dewey Decimal Book Categorisation System and with strict adherence to procedure, we could facilitate a fortnight’s worth of returns, loans, reserves and extensions in the three hundred and sixty seconds available to us. It was known to all and sundry as a Buchblitz.

My name is Peter Knox, but for the next six minutes I’ll be your John Major.

‘Ready, Stanley?’ I asked Mr Baldwin, who oversaw returns and reservations but was actually retired Wing Commander Slocombe, a former RAF officer who famously lost an ear while ejecting out of a Hawker Hunter over Aden. Remarkably, a solitary ear was retrieved from the wreckage of the aircraft and reattached. Even more remarkably, it wasn’t his.

‘Three times ready, Team Leader.’

‘Mr Major?’ asked Mrs Griswold, who usually ran the Much Hemlock village shop, post office, gossip exchange and pub combined. ‘I can’t remember if I’m Winston Churchill or David Lloyd George.’

‘You’re David Lloyd George,’ I said. ‘You select the books from the shelves to be given to Mr Chamberlain, who takes them to the counter and to Mrs Thatcher, who offers them up to the Sole Librarian to be stamped. It’s really very simple.’

‘Right,’ said Mrs Griswold, ‘David Lloyd George. Got it.’

I had devised an Emergency Code system for Speed Librarying, and Mrs Griswold was definitely a Code 3-20: ‘Someone who village diplomacy dictated should be on the Blitzer team, but was, nonetheless, useless’. Sadly, no one but myself knew what a 3-20 was, as the system hadn’t reached the levels of awareness I thought it deserved – a state of affairs that had its own code, a 5-12: ‘Lack of enthusiasm over correct procedures’.

The church clock signalled 10.45 and the chatter gave way to an expectant hush. We had seen the Sole Librarian rummaging around prior to the opening, and while she would permit us to reshelf, log reservations and even use the card index, her stamps were sacrosanct: hers and hers alone. Because of this it was Mrs Thatcher’s responsibility to ensure that books and library cards were placed before the Sole Librarian so that her stamping time was most effectively spent. The steady rhythm of rubber on paper was the litmus test of an efficient Blitz.

Speed Librarying was also fast becoming a spectator sport – no TV rights offers yet, sadly, but there was usually a group of local onlookers at every Blitz, eager to offer us moral support and ensure that tea and seedcake and a rub-down with a towel would be forthcoming once the Blitz was over. Not all onlookers were so helpful. Norman and Victor Mallett were the de facto elders of the village, and dominated every committee from Parish Council to Steeple Fund to coordinating Much Hemlock’s entry in the All Herefordshire Spick & Span Village Awards. They were not themselves huge fans of libraries, regarding them as ‘just one more pointless drain on the nation’s resources’.

They had turned up ostensibly to support the current Neville Chamberlain, who happened also to be Victor Mallett’s wife, to complain bitterly about anything that contravened their narrow worldview – and for Norman to take possession of his reserved copy of The Glory and Triumph of the British Colonial System Illustrated.

At two minutes to opening Mr Churchill – in charge of extensions, audiobooks and swapping tired periodicals for slightly less tired periodicals – indicated she needed a toilet break and would be unlikely to return within fifteen minutes. This was unfortunate but not a fatal blow, as Mr Beeton, a long-standing friend and next-door neighbour, was my all-parts understudy.

‘Can you do Churchill?’ I asked.

‘We shall never surrender,’ said Mr Beeton with a grin before coughing a deep, rattly cough.

‘Are you sure?’ said Stanley Baldwin to me in a low voice. ‘He doesn’t look very well to me.’

‘Mr Beeton is the picture of good health,’ I said in a hopeful manner with little basis in reality: Mr Beeton had so many ailments that he was less of an elderly resident and more of a walking medical conundrum, the only two ailments which he had not suffered in his long life being tennis elbow and death.

So Mr Beeton-now-Winston Churchill dutifully took his place behind a wheelbarrow containing forty-six neatly stacked books all carefully sorted by shelf order for ease of return. I nodded to David Lloyd George to acknowledge the last-minute change in the team and she nodded in return as we saw the Sole Librarian approach the front door of the library and then check her watch to make sure she didn’t open a second too early.

This was, in fact, crucial. There were two Herefordshire Library Opening Times Compliance Officers in attendance armed with clipboards and stopwatches, the pair funded at great expense by the Rural Library Strategic Group Vision Action Group, which now employed just under four thousand people, coincidentally the exact same number as the librarians whose continued employment had been deemed incompatible with UKARP’s manifesto pledge.

I checked my watch.

‘Little hand says it’s time to rock and roll.’

The Sole Librarian threw the lock and the door swung open. We moved in with military-style precision, Winston Churchill pushing before him the wheelbarrow of books to be returned while Maggie Thatcher started the stopwatch.

‘Good morning,’ I said to the Sole Librarian.

‘Good morning, Mr Major,’ she returned in a sing-song tone. ‘Will we hit our target today?’

‘As easy as negotiating Maastricht,’ I replied, trying to exude confidence when secretly I felt we would manage returns and loans, but fall short of our renewal and reserves target. The team swiftly moved to their allotted places: Mr Churchill, Mrs Thatcher and Stanley Baldwin went straight to the front desk and presented the books to the Sole Librarian. Within a few seconds a steady thump-thump-thump filled the air, demonstrating that work was very much in progress.

At the same time, David Lloyd George and Neville Chamberlain went rapidly down the aisles transferring the pre-ordered picks to a trolley ready to be brought to the front desk once the returns, extensions and reservations were completed – and once that was done, Mr Baldwin could reshelve the returned books, assisted by Neville Chamberlain.

‘Time check,’ I called.

‘Ninety seconds gone, Mr Major,’ replied Mrs Thatcher.

All seemed to be going well until the Sole Librarian’s stamping abruptly ceased, suggesting a clog in the system, and Neville Chamberlain simultaneously announced that she couldn’t find a copy of Wind, Sand and Stars.

‘Try Aviation, three-eight-seven,’ said the Sole Librarian, her deep knowledge of Dewey classification coming to the fore.

While Neville was dealing with the potential mis-shelving of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, I went to see what the logjam was with returns. The problem was a Code 2-76: Mrs Dibley had kept her copy of Henry Ford and Other Positive Role Models for Disaffected Youth for eighteen weeks longer than the permitted time, and the Sole Librarian was filling out a form for an overdue fine.

‘This lady was clearly not for returning,’ said Mrs Thatcher, indicating the overdue book. I grimaced. The Blitz would be tight, but so far the situation was not irredeemable.

‘How is it going with Wind, Sand and Stars, Mr Chamberlain?’ I called towards the shelves as David Lloyd George pushed the trolley full of picked loans towards the front desk.

‘I have in my hand this piece of paper,’ replied Neville Chamberlain triumphantly, holding aloft the book.

The Sole Librarian shifted from returns to loans, and moved on to the rhythmic thump-thump, thump-thump of the ‘double tap’, one on the library card, one on the date return slip pasted in the front of the book. The next step was reshelving, and by the time Mrs Thatcher called out ‘two minutes remaining’ we were well ahead of ourselves and a sense of ease descended on the small group: we would clear this Blitz with time to spare. I was just placing a copy of the worryingly popular Cecil Rhode’s Greatest Speeches as Spoken by Oswald Mosley in the Talking Book section when I heard a voice from behind me.

‘May I ask a question?’

I stopped dead, for I recognised the voice. It was one I had not heard for a long time, nor had ever thought I would again. A soft yet very distinctive West Country accent, tinged with questioning allure. I turned slowly, unsure of quite what to say or do, and there was Connie, staring at me with the same intensity I remembered from our shared late-night coffees during freshman year at the University of Barnstaple.

‘Sure,’ I said, not knowing whether she recognised me or not.

‘It’s a book question,’ she replied brightly, and seemingly without a flicker of recognition. Oddly, I felt relieved. I’d been very fond of her, although unwilling to show it, and I think she might have felt the same. But after a few dates – she never called them that although I did, secretly to myself – she was asked to leave the college following a judicial review of the legal status of her attendance, and that was that. I’d always wanted to see her again, and I would see much of her over the coming weeks. I’d be at her side three months from now during the Battle of May Hill, the smell of burned rubber and cordite drifting across the land, the crack of artillery fire in the distance. I had no idea of that, of course, and neither, I imagine, did she.

‘Well, it is a library,’ I said, hoping my sudden consternation didn’t show. ‘What do you want to know?’

By rights, she shouldn’t have been there at all, and not because she was a rabbit. The public, although technically allowed to enter the library during opening hours, never did. We were, after all, simply doing our civic duty by way of the community, and the community, in turn, stayed away and allowed us to carry on the work on their behalf. I deemed Connie not just an old acquaintance, but a Code 4-51: ‘Unidentified public in the Librarying area’.

‘I’m after Rabbit and Rabbitability,’ she said. ‘Like Austen’s classic but more warren-based and with a greater emphasis on ears, sex, carrots, burrowing and sex.’

‘You said sex twice.’

‘Yes,’ said Connie, blinking twice, ‘I know.’

Rabbits aged better than humans so long as they got a chance to age at all, and she was pretty much unchanged in the thirty-odd years since I’d seen her last: smaller and slimmer than the norm, but Wildstock, the generic brown-furred variety. She wore a short spotted summer dress under a pale blue buttoned cardigan and her ears, long and elegant, carried four small silver ear-studs halfway up her right and three near the base of her left. Her most striking feature, then as now, was her eyes: both large and expressive, but while one was the brown of a fresh hazelnut, the other was pale bluey-violet, the colour of harebells.

‘Are you OK?’ she said, as I think I might have been staring.

Luckily, Neville Chamberlain chose that moment to interrupt.

‘Rabbit and Rabbitability would be under six-three-two point six-six,’ she said, referring to the Dewey categorisation number that related to: ‘Technology/Agriculture/Pests/Disposal’. It was a predictably insulting response. She was, after all, married to Victor Mallett and the entire Mallett family’s antagonism towards any social or species group not their own was well known. It was said Mallett children were encouraged to feed the ducks solely ‘to see them fight’.

‘Actually, Mr Chamberlain,’ put in Stanley Baldwin, ‘it’s probably a six-three-six point nine-three.’ This was a little less insulting as it referred to ‘Technology/Agriculture/Domestic Animals/Rabbits’, but was equally of little use. Connie wasn’t after books about rabbits, but the range of British classics retold for rabbits, published when funding was more secure after the Spontaneous Anthropomorphic Event, when integration into society was still seen as guiding policy rather than the pipe-dream of idealistic liberals.

‘Eight-nine-nine point nine-nine, Mr Major,’ added the Sole Librarian, who didn’t much care for rabbits either but hated misuse of the Dewey Decimal System a great deal more. ‘Literature/Other Languages. Shelf nine.’

‘Let me show you,’ I said, handing the returned books to Neville, who hurried off to shelve them quickly so she could return, presumably, to air her anti-rabbit sentiments more fully. For my part I led Connie quickly towards the foreign language section.

‘Hey,’ she said with a giggle, ‘isn’t naming the team after former prime ministers a direct lift from that Kathryn Bigelow heist-gone-wrong movie?’

‘I … don’t know what you mean.’

‘Sure you do,’ she said. ‘The one with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. What’s its name again?’

‘Point Break,’ I said, suddenly remembering that I’d seen it first with her at the Student Union cinema. We’d sat in the back row, a place usually reserved for lovers, but we weren’t there for that reason. Rabbit cinema-goers, acutely conscious of how their often expressive ear movements can ruin a movie for anyone sitting behind, politely migrated to the back. Our upper arms had touched as we sat, which I remembered I quite liked; it was the sum total of any physical contact.

‘And,’ I concluded, ‘it’s more a homage, really.’

‘That’s the one,’ she said with a smile, ‘Point Break. You could have disguised everyone in rubber masks, again, like in the movie.’

‘Not very practical and we don’t actually need to be disguised,’ I said, ‘and besides, while Mrs Thatcher and John Major masks are still obtainable, those of Neville Chamberlain and David Lloyd George are almost impossible to come by.’

‘I heard you could paint William Shatner masks to represent almost anyone.’

I’d heard that too, but didn’t say so.

‘There’s issues of being able to see out clearly enough,’ I said.

‘Ninety seconds!’ called out Mrs Thatcher.

‘You’re in luck,’ I said, picking a couple of dusty volumes from the shelves. ‘Are either of these the ones you wanted?’

I showed her the covers, which were written in Rabbity script,1 and unintelligible to me, or indeed any humans. Even after fifty-five years, no human had ever mastered anything but the most basic tenets of their language, verbal or written. Attempts by humans to converse in their mother tongue were usually met with peals of hysterical laughter, and remain one of the mainstays of rabbit comedy stand-up, along with jokes about ears, litter sizes, the broader etymological impact of ‘cuniculus’ and the hilarity that ensues when entering the wrong burrow by accident, at night, slightly drunk, during the mating season.

‘Oooh!’ said Connie, grasping one of the books tightly. ‘Planet of the Lagomorphs. That’s a find.’

I wasn’t an expert on the whole Rabbit Literature Retelling Project of the early eighties, but I did know that out of the hundred or so titles, only one was ever banned. When you retold Planet of the Apes the dominant life form was the rabbit. It became something of a political hot potato, but not, crucially, amongst rabbits. The fledgling United Kingdom Anti-Rabbit Party declared the novel’s central theme to be ‘not conducive to good human/rabbit relations’ – and lobbied successfully to have it withdrawn and pulped.

‘Must have missed the dragnet,’ I said.

‘I’ll give it a read to the family,’ said Connie with a smile, ‘might give us some ideas.’

Rabbits rarely read to themselves as they saw books more as a performance than a solitary occupation. Why, they asked, do anything by yourself that could be shared with others?

‘Banned book?’ said Neville Chamberlain, her shelving complete and now back on the scene. She clasped hold of the volume and tried to take it away, but Connie didn’t relinquish her grip, and they both stood there, each with their hands/paws on the book, tugging backwards and forwards.

‘It was on the shelf,’ said Connie Rabbit, ‘so free to be loaned. That’s how libraries work.’

‘Don’t tell me how libraries work,’ said Neville Chamberlain, who was now talking less like someone eager to appease, and more like the Mrs Mallett reactionary she was, ‘I’ve been a library volunteer since before you munched your first carrot.’

It was a dumb insult, and they both knew it.

‘Wow,’ said Connie, ‘you got me.’

‘Forty-five seconds!’ called out Mrs Thatcher, and I was now in a quandary. If Connie now was anything like the Connie I knew then, she wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and if we overran it would be a Code 4-22: ‘Opening Time Deficit’, which meant anything over the six minutes would be docked on the next library opening. I glanced towards where the two Library Opening Times Compliance Officers were staring at us from the door, in the same manner vultures might regard an unwell zebra.

‘Mr Major?’ said Neville Chamberlain, using her Seventeenth-Century-School-Ma’am-That-Must-Be-Obeyed voice. ‘Our library is a special place and not to be disrespected.’

‘How is it being disrespected?’ asked Connie in an even tone. ‘Really, I’d like to know.’

‘You have a serious attitude problem,’ said Mrs Mallett, taking instant umbrage at being questioned directly by a lower animal.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Connie, ‘how is the library being disrespected – ma’am?’

There was a sudden unpleasant hush. Shock, anticipation of violence, confusion – maybe all three. I took a deep breath. Upset one Mallett and you upset them all. Mind you, the Malletts were always upset about something. Politics, local government, socialists, the price of onions. When How to Cook a Wild Potato went from the BBC to Channel Four they couldn’t talk about anything else for months. Irrespective, I took my Librarying seriously and I’d never been a huge fan of the Malletts – and a chance to piss them off with the added bonus of plausible deniability should never be missed. I paused for a moment, then turned to Connie.

‘Do you have a library card?’

‘I do,’ she said.

‘Then the loan goes ahead.’

‘Terrific,’ said Mrs Mallett, shedding all vestiges of Neville Chamberlain completely, ‘so we’re just going to start handing out books to every bunny that walks in the door?’

‘It’s a library, Isadora,’ I said, ‘we loan out books. And “bunny” isn’t really an acceptable term any more.’

She laughed in a mocking fashion.

‘C’mon, Peter, it’s only a name, a word, a label – like a hat or a car or an avocado or something. It means nothing.’

‘What about “leporiphobic”?’ I asked. ‘I suppose that’s just a word too?’

I felt Isadora rankle at the riposte. I shouldn’t really have said it, but oddly, I think I might have been grandstanding in Connie’s presence. But I was, in fact, correct. They were very hot on acceptable rabbit terminology down at the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce, and while RabCoT’s relationship with the rabbit community was strained, we had to appear even-handed and without bias. Even referring to rabbits collectively as ‘The Rabbit’ was a little iffy these days.

‘Twenty-five seconds!’ said Mrs Thatcher with increased agitation. ‘We have to be out of here, Mr Major.’

Before Mrs Mallett had time to argue, I beckoned Connie to the front desk. The Sole Librarian stared at her library card, then at Connie.

‘Your name’s Clifford Rabbit?’

‘It’s my husband’s.’

‘That’s a Code 4-20 infraction right there,’ said Mrs Mallett in a triumphant tone – it turned out she had been studying my codes after all – ‘“Misuse of library property”.’

‘The book’s for my husband,’ said Connie. ‘Customers may collect books on others’ behalf. True?’

She directed the last word at the Sole Librarian, who confirmed her agreement by stamping the library card and the book and handing them back.2

‘Ten seconds!’ yelled Mrs Thatcher, and we all hurried towards the door. The other members of the team had already made their way out, and as the door closed and the lock clunked, Mrs Thatcher and the Compliance Officers compared stopwatches. We had made it with only three seconds to spare.

‘Well done, everyone,’ I said, trying to inject a sense of cheeriness into the proceedings, but only Stanley Baldwin and Mrs Thatcher were standing beside me. The others had instead congregated around the observers outside, and in particular Norman and Victor Mallett, presumably to question them on how they let a rabbit slip past them and into the library in the first place, and then figuring out the next move. Already I could see Norman’s neck turning a nasty shade of purple, and several of the villagers directed frosty glances in my direction.

I looked around to see whether Connie was still about and caught sight of her as she leapt in a series of energetic bounds down the street towards the Leominster road, her library book in one hand and a mobile phone clamped to her ear in the other.

She hadn’t recognised me at all.

‘Why was there a rabbit in the village?’ asked Mrs Thatcher, following my gaze.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, it was a good Blitz, Peter,’ she said, then hurriedly moved away as she saw Victor and Norman Mallett approach.

‘Now then,’ said Norman in the lofty tones of someone who believes, despite bountiful evidence to the contrary, that they have the moral high ground, ‘let’s have a little chat about whether bunnies are welcome in the library, shall we?’

But he didn’t get to vent his anger. At that precise moment Mr Beeton gave out a quiet moan and collapsed in a heap. We called an ambulance while Lloyd George and Mrs Thatcher took turns in giving him CPR, but to no avail. We found out later he suffered a heart attack, which was the first and last time I’d had a Code 2-22: ‘Unavoidable death while Librarying’.

‘I told you he looked unwell,’ said Stanley Baldwin.