‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘I just want to caution you against any extreme behaviour that might not reflect well upon the village.’
‘But the good news,’ said Norman, also not listening, ‘is that MegaWarren is on schedule, and will give rabbits what they need most of alclass="underline" a place of their own. With a bit of luck all the legals will want to go there too – rabbit nirvana, I heard someone call it. Freedom to burrow and grow lettuce and … do whatever it is rabbits like to do. I think you’ll find that Rehoming them all in Wales is the best and most lasting solution to the rabbit issue. Besides, it was all agreed by referendum, then properly debated in the House. The nation has spoken.’
MegaWarren had always been controversial, but after the referendum never in doubt, even though the ‘Rehoming rabbits in Wales’ policy was won on a slender majority and with half the country not voting at all. But Norman was right. The ten-thousand-acre site located just to the west of Rhayader was nearing completion, although moving the regional colonies to one centralised home was decidedly not something the rabbits much liked the sound of, especially those with a grounding in human history, which generally presented a ‘low to extremely low’ expectation of anything turning out well where enforced removals were concerned.
‘But,’ said Victor, returning to the question of Hemlock Towers, ‘we have one thing in our favour: the old Beeton place is only to be rented. If they move in, they can just as easily move out. Can I rely on your support to not support them? You’ll be living next door, after all.’
‘I’ll take a leaflet,’ I said diplomatically, ‘but I have to remain neutral due to my work at RabCoT.’
‘Stout fellow. Give my very best to Pip, won’t you?’
‘I shall.’
Pippa was at the kitchen table when I got home and had her nose in a book while at the same time eating yoghurt, texting someone – probably Sally – and keeping a watchful eye on a Netflix series on her iPad. When I was twenty I had trouble doing one thing at a time. I still do.
‘Hey, Dad,’ she said.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked.
‘I’m learning HR jargon and can’t decide which phrase I dislike more: Game changer, Onboarding or Going forward.’
‘Blue sky thinking was always the one I disliked most.’
‘That became too clichéd even for management-speak,’ she replied, ‘along with Thinking out of the box and We need a paradigm shift. They were all officially retired last year. How was your day?’
‘Usual fun and games. But more importantly: rabbits are moving in next door.’
‘I heard something about that,’ said Pippa, ‘but if I was a rabbit family moving anywhere, it wouldn’t be to the sort of village that sent troops to fight in the Spanish Civil War – on General Franco’s side.’
‘The village is not that bad,’ I said, ‘and I think mostly it’s just bluster. How many residents do you suppose have even spoken to a rabbit who wasn’t a barista, room cleaner or shelf-stacker?’
‘Prejudice is best lubricated with ignorance,’ said Pippa. ‘What do you think the bigot-in-chief is going to say about it?’
I placed Mr Mallett’s leaflet in front of her, then stared out of the window at Hemlock Towers opposite. ‘I think he’s going to whip up some anti-rabbit feeling and make life so unbearable they’ll move out.’
‘I dislike his politics but can’t fault him on his use of the semi-colon,’ said Pippa, scanning the pamphlet. ‘It’s a good job he rarely travels farther than Hereford. Containment is the best policy for people like him.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It also works wonders with Ebola. Did you hear anything else about the rabbits? Mrs Griswold’s intel was pretty sketchy.’
‘Mr Rabbit is a retired army major and Mrs Rabbit an actress,’ said Pippa.
‘Really? Was she in anything I might have seen?’
‘I don’t know – commercials, someone said, a small part in Pulp Fiction but she didn’t make it to the final cut.’
‘That’s interesting,’ I said, as I knew Connie had been keen on drama. She’d done a cracking audition as Shelley Levene in Barnstaple Uni’s production of Glengarry Glen Ross, but was rejected as the director wanted someone ‘more male and less furry’.
‘And Major Rabbit, is it?’ I added.
‘Yup. Almost served in Afghanistan, they say.’
Next Sunday, Next Door
DNA testing revealed that the rabbits were not some weird human/rabbit hybrid but were, in fact, rabbits – genetically indistinguishable from their dim field-cousins. Whatever gives the humanlike rabbits their humanness, it isn’t in their DNA.
The Rabbits arrived the following Sunday amidst the buzz of motor mowers and the snip-snap-snip of garden shears. Everyone was eager to have the village neat and tidy, shipshape and perfectly just-so on the off chance that the Spick & Span judges might drop by, as they had been seen mooching around Pembridge on Wednesday.
I was in the garage tinkering with my Austin-Healey when a 1974 Dodge Monaco22 pulled up in front of Hemlock Towers. Rabbits liked large American cars as they were better suited to their physique and limited levels of dexterity. Bench seats, auto transmission, feather-light power steering and large pedals. They also took great care of the cars, as rabbits viewed obsolescence as the arrogant cousin of waste and thus incompatible with the fourth tenet of their faith: sustainability. There was a rabbit saying: ‘Nfifnfinnfiifnnfifnfn’, which roughly translates as: ‘Only a fool buys twice’.
I hurried upstairs to see more easily over the dividing hedge. The kids got out first and, I noted, were traditionally dressed yet with modern trappings: the boy-rabbit was in a blue sailor-suit and Nikes, and listening to a cassette Walkman. He moved languidly as though either deep in thought or consumed by idleness, and was also wearing an ankle monitor of the type used by the probation services. The girl-rabbit was more animated, wore a flowery summer dress and bounced into the house with one or two excited hops while her father climbed out the driver’s side. He was dressed in a green Harris tweed over a matching waistcoat, shirt and tie. Rabbits rarely wore any clothes from the waist down as it restricted movement and the ability to hop. This was of little consequence to the females, who routinely wore skirts, dresses and, if no bouncing was planned, culottes, but to the males, who in one very notable respect were extremely humanlike indeed, had to disguise their trouserless modesty beneath a series of discreet items of apparel whose ingenious complexity is not within the scope of this book.23
Major Rabbit consulted a fob watch that he kept in his waistcoat pocket and then moved to take the cases from the boot of the car. At the same time the front passenger door opened and Connie Rabbit climbed out, took a sniff of the air and looked around. She was wearing a leather jacket over a spotted summer dress and her ears were tied loosely at the base with a red bandana. Unusually, a small part of her tail peaked out from beneath her dress, the rabbit equivalent of a plunging neckline. Shocking in polite rabbit circles a decade ago, but mostly acceptable today.