Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

The Reversion created as many questions as the Event, and as the years went by, the possibility of another Event filled the imagination of all those who understood the quiet simplicity of the Rabbit Way. With each full moon, there is hope of another. We watch, and we wait.

– Event Rabbits by Peter Knox, 326 pages, Hodder & Stoughton, first published Oct. 2028

Without rabbits to be the focus of his hatred, Nigel Smethwick directed his ire at ‘anyone different’, and the followers of UKARP followed suit, using a simple word substitution to change their party constitution and mission statement quickly and efficiently. He was defeated at the next general election, his message of Hominid Supremacism diluted by the loss of the rabbits. He retired from politics but remains active as a talk-show pundit. The language of division can always be monetised.

The Rabbit Compliance Taskforce was disbanded, the employees made redundant with generous payouts. Owing to an oversight, the paperwork regarding my firing hadn’t gone through, and I was paid off like the rest. I never went back to Much Hemlock, but I understand it’s much the same. Wing Commander Slocombe took over my Speed Librarying duties and is the new Mr Major. He still uses my system of codes, for which I am grateful. To this day, Much Hemlock have still not won a Spick & Span award.

I took the insurance payout from my burned house, sold the plot and moved to Rhayader, where I purchased a large house with grounds that overlooked the old MegaWarren site. I took to chronicling the fifty-five years of the Event in some considerable detail, and seemed the person best positioned to do so. Of all the humans who were living in the five colonies at the time of the Reversion, seventy-six decided not to go. I interviewed sixty-eight of them for my book. The number of humans who had decided to go with the rabbits was around four thousand, but estimates vary. They were officially declared ‘missing, whereabouts unknown’.

Patrick Finkle and Pippa were amongst them.

When the MegaWarren site was sold I bought the entranceway, admin buildings and forty acres of warren, from which was developed the Event Museum, now in its ninth year, and currently Mid-Wales’ fifth-most popular tourist attraction. The reopened branch line, now a steam heritage railway, is the first.

It took Connie two years to find me and take up residence in my orchard. I could easily identify her by the mismatched eyes – one bluey-violet, the colour of harebells, one as brown as a fresh hazelnut – but if she retained any sense of what she had once been, I didn’t see it. She acted just like a wild field rabbit. Harvey joined her a week later. He was easily identified by the lack of any ears, and with him, always with him, always together , was a smaller rabbit, a female, who would have been indistinguishable from any other rabbit but for a single ear stud on her right ear, a present from me on her eighteenth birthday, and never removed. She moved uncertainly, but well enough to forage amongst the food I left out for them, the muscular strength of her forelegs making up for any shortfall. I missed her terribly, but it was her choice to stay with Harvey and fully embrace the Rabbit Way, and I respected that.

The rabbits were curious, but never really tame, and the colony remains there to this day. The one who I once knew as Constance lived the longest. She used to come on to the patio and stare at me quizzically as I made breakfast, but would run away if I opened the door.

It was to be expected. She was, after all, only a rabbit.

I am indebted first of all to my agent Will Francis and my Editor Carolyn Mays, who interpreted a very troublesome first draft of The Constant Rabbit in a positive manner and were sufficiently bold to see that the core idea was sound, and that something good may come out of it.

The many references to The Court Jester are in deep homage to an iconic movie, but it should be noted that the duelling pistol ditties are an adaptation of Martha Raye and Bob Hope in ‘Never Say Die’, itself a precursor to the ‘Pellet with the poison’ routine. I also borrowed a line from a Spike Milligan short story and a Mel Brooks film – two titans of comedy whom I hope will forgive me.

Rabbit information was supplied via Wikipedia and Lockley’s excellent Private Life of the Rabbit. My apologies to anyone in Herefordshire who have battled tirelessly to attack inequality in this world and feel they might have been in some small measure maligned. I had to set the book somewhere.

My thanks to the team at Hodder for their endless support, especially Lily Cooper, and my thanks go also to the eagle-eyed Sharona Selby and Olivia Davies.

The frontispiece was drawn by Bill Mudron of Portland, Oregon. Other examples of his work can be found at https://www.billmudron.com/and he will gladly discuss commissions.

And lastly, Ozzy, whose mention will be no surprise to my readers. Although slowing up in the stick-fetching department, he still shows enthusiasm for walkies to a dog half his age, and whose companionship I value beyond that of many humans.

Jasper Fforde,

February 2020

1.The script looks like ‘scuffed mud’, the sort of marks you get in the back porch after inclement weather. The Rabbity alphabet, incidentally, has only six letters: N, I, R, H, U and F.

2.As a cost-cutting measure the old card system was reintroduced to Herefordshire libraries. Each user has a cardboard wallet held by the library, into which the card contained in a pocket on each book is placed. The book then has a stamp for its due return date, as has the card held by the library. The user wallets are stored in a large indexing system. It’s a lot more simple than it sounds.

3.The blueprint for the way in which the rabbit had become anthropomorphised was generally agreed to be along Beatrix Potter lines. Why this was so it was impossible to say, but it was a look and a feel and a tone which the rabbit fully embraced.

4.Ross-on-Wye, the third-largest town in Herefordshire.

5.Those with a fear/mistrust/dislike of rabbits, but I figure you guessed that.

6.They often cited Macquarie Island, which is worth a read on Wikipedia, if you’ve got a few minutes.

7.Nothing was ever manufactured with components smaller than a marble. Dexterity could be challenging without opposable thumbs.

8.The algorithm was occasionally tweaked depending on whether arrest and conviction targets were being met.

9.The closest thing to a war amongst rabbits. The high point of the hostilities was Anton Von Hercule’s fourteen-hour ‘less than polite’ rant in July 1987, which was met by a barrage of sarcasm that is still talked about today, usually in hushed tones.

10.Your guess is as good as mine on this one.

11.Rabbits were quite big into Gilbert and Sullivan operas, despite not having good singing voices. Few, if any, would even attempt The Mikado.

12.The most popular (and politically active) daily newspaper for rabbits. There is no online edition, and copies are banned off-colony owing to the ink ‘falling short of industry standards’.

13.‘John Flopsy’ was the generic term to describe an unidentified rabbit, similar to ‘John Doe’ for humans. The female equivalent, logically enough, was ‘Jane Flopsy’. The long-term usage of the word made ‘Flopsy’ slang for a rabbit of a criminal tendency, or often, any rabbit at all.