Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

‘Actually,’ I answered in response to the last question, ‘I think I might. He said we’d meet again, at the time and place where the Venerable Bunty completes the circle.’

For the briefest moment I saw a flicker of consternation pass over the Group Leader’s face. His eyes, I think, although small at the best of times, opened just a little bit wider – but then it was gone, and he was as poker-faced as ever, giving nothing away. He sat and stared at me again for some time, Tamara rubbing his shoulders.

‘OK,’ he said finally, ‘with the Rehoming imminent, the biggest fly in the ointment is the Bunty false prophet and the Underground. I need you to work for me. Be my eyes and ears.’

‘The deal was to tell you everything I know for my pension and fifty K.’

The fox said nothing, pointed at my eye and grinned.

‘Let’s just suppose I agree,’ I said after a pause; ‘what would you have me do?’

Mr Ffoxe outlined his plan. I was to keep office hours but sit them out in an interview room – bring crayons and a colouring book, he told me – and let my relationship with Mrs Rabbit develop; she would be released without charge. If she asked me to access the Taskforce’s databases, I was to report back and hand over the intel that Mr Ffoxe permitted. I was basically to report everything I heard, and especially the time and place I would meet with the Venerable Bunty.

‘I might not meet her,’ I said.

‘If she has foreseen it,’ said the fox, giving more credibility to Bunty’s powers than I thought possible of him, ‘then it will happen. And I want to be there to stop it.’

Within ten minutes I was outside, blinking stupidly in the sunlight. I took a deep breath and made my way into town, gathering my thoughts. I was working out a plan of my own: to never speak to Connie again and avoid her at every opportunity.

But that didn’t happen, of course.

I texted Pippa as soon as they returned my phone and met her in the café at All Saints.

‘Shit, Dad,’ she said, ‘what happened to your eye?’

‘Mr Ffoxe threatened to take it out and eat it.’

She winced and stared at me for a moment.

‘You’re not kidding, are you?’

I told her how I was now acting as a bunnytrap trap for Mr Ffoxe and that both Bobby and Harvey were prominent members of the Rabbit Underground. As I spoke, her demeanour changed from simple concern to the panicky realisation that this was bigger and deeper and more serious than she might possibly have imagined.

I also told Pippa that her relationship with Harvey was something I hadn’t mentioned, but given Mr Ffoxe’s powers of deduction, he either already knew or it wouldn’t be a secret for long – and that it would be a really good idea if she were to lay low for a while.

‘The last time Harvey spoke to me it was about you,’ I added. ‘He said to tell you it was real – and I don’t think he was lying.’

‘Rabbits rarely lie,’ said Pippa. ‘They take their greatest pride in preserving most strongly the parts of them that aren’t us.’

I thought about her words carefully, and also about Connie. If rabbits rarely lied, then it stood to reason they didn’t misrepresent what they felt, either. If Connie was a bunnytrap then she might have been selected precisely because she did like me. One less subterfuge.

Pippa departed within ten minutes after giving me a long hug. I asked her where she would go, and she said ‘she had somewhere safe in mind’, but I didn’t ask her any more questions. Best not, really. Once she was gone I sat there for an hour, then headed home. As I was passing the village of Slipton Flipflop I had a sudden thought that if Connie was a bunnytrap then she’d have probably guessed that I’d tell Mr Ffoxe everything – and I half expected them to be gone by the time I arrived home. Indeed, I was actually hoping they would be gone. It would give me licence to do nothing, and I so wanted to do nothing.

I didn’t get my wish. Their Dodge was in the driveway and Major Rabbit was clipping the privet hedge while smoking his pipe. It was a warm afternoon, so he had draped his jacket over a garden fork and was working in his waistcoat. He gave me a cheery wave as I climbed out of the car, and I noticed that Connie was watering the large vegetable patch that had now replaced most of the lawn. If she was worried about being arrested and questioned all day, she wasn’t showing it. Connie’s apparent normality wasn’t the only surprise in store. Toby Mallett was busy repainting my garage door.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Mr Knox, for daubing obscenities on your garage door the other night,’ he said in an obsequious tone as soon as he saw me, ‘but I was very drunk and wasn’t fully in command of my senses. Papa told me the error of my ways, so I’m here making amends.’

‘Really?’ I said somewhat doubtfully. Apology and contrition really weren’t in the Malletts’ range of character traits. ‘Are you wanting to see Pip again?’

‘No!’ he said, eyes open wide in shock and making one of several nervous glances towards the Rabbits’ house. ‘I mean, no, thank you – that’s all past history. Has she found out about me sleeping with Arabella down at the pony club?’

‘Has she beckoned you down to her level and then thumped you in the eye?’

He shook his head.

‘Then that’ll be a no.’

After discussing what colour to repaint the garage door over the primer he had already applied, he hastily departed with another nervous glance towards Hemlock Towers. Something was going on.

I unlocked the door and went into my house, checked the post in the hall – bills and circulars, mostly – and then jumped in fright when I found Doc waiting for me in the kitchen.

‘I do wish you wouldn’t do that,’ I said, ‘popping up like a jack-in-the-box. It’s very disconcerting.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I need to talk to you about the trouble and strife.’

‘The what?’

‘The ball and chain. She-who-must-be-obeyed. Y’know, the missus.’

‘Look,’ I said, expecting trouble, ‘it was all a huge misunderstanding.’

‘Oh, I know,’ he said with a smile, laying a powerful paw on my shoulder. ‘Connie explained to me what happened and we had a good laugh about it. Can I speak candidly?’

‘Sure.’

He looked down and absently clicked his claws against the linoleum.

‘My aim with a pistol is not as true these days, and sooner or later I’m going to find myself at dawn on a foggy heath somewhere, staring down the barrel of a pistol held by some know-it-all young buck with a steadier hand while my seconds assure me everything will be all right when I know that it won’t.’

He sat down at the kitchen table.

‘I don’t want to end up as one of those sad ex-alphas who live alone, their ears so full of holes you could use them to strain cabbage, each puncture a constant reminder of a love hard fought and eventually lost.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘You and Connie seem to be quite chummy, and I’d like you to keep me in the loop about any affairs she’s having that you think might be truly serious. I know it’s a long time till the spring mating season, but spouse appropriation starts earlier and earlier these days, and if forewarned, I could chase off the competition with some hard-hitting rhetoric, cash or a pantomime display of male aggression – and in that way avoid a challenge.’

‘I get what you’re saying,’ I said, ‘but I’m not totally happy spying on your wife.’

‘It’s not spying when you love someone. I’d ask Bobby but those two are thick as thieves, and Kent, well, that boy is an inveterate burrower. Do you know I have to keep all the shovels hidden when he’s about?’