Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

‘Well,’ I said with a smile, preparing to leave, ‘I hope you don’t find Much Hemlock too much of a hostile environment.’

But they didn’t return my smile.

‘I certainly hope that is the case,’ said Major Rabbit evenly. ‘Shall we say eight o’clock tomorrow, then?’

I had just got back to my own front door when the genuine Carrot-o-gram turned up – four rabbits dressed in stripy blazers and straw boaters. The Rabbity language in song sounded like a series of continuous delicate sneezes, but in four-part harmony.

‘What a load of nonsense,’ said Norman, who had indeed made his way into my house, and was now watching the Carrot-o-gram from behind the safety of the net curtains in the front room. ‘What did you learn, Knoxie?’

‘Not much. I’m going over there for a meal tomorrow evening.’

‘Good man. But don’t get too cosy. Just make friends and then persuade them that twelve thousand would buy an awful lot of carrots.’

‘You said seven thousand earlier.’

‘The vicar came on board – I think he must be raiding the church roof appeal or something. Actually, we could probably run to fifteen but keep that under your hat, yes?’

I told him I would then saw him out the back door.

‘Act like you’re my gardener,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘They clocked you coming into my house, so it’s your cover story.’

‘Hell’s teeth,’ he said, ‘can’t a fella keep a close watch on stuff without nosy neighbours studying his every move?’

I closed the door behind him, not really thinking about the bribe and the task in hand, but about Connie. I knew what I had felt seeing her again, but wasn’t sure whether she had felt the same – either now, or back when we were nineteen. I could recognise rabbits, but I couldn’t read them. There’s a big difference.

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 27. Not counting the ears. Rabbits are measured to the space on the top of the head between their ears. As a curious aside, ears are exactly one third body height, irrespective of age. No one knows why. 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 28. Not that any actually wanted to be bunny girls. It was more the principle of the matter. 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.