‘Ah.’
My relationship with the Malletts, always strained, had become immeasurably more complex since Toby Mallett, Victor’s youngest, had been seeing Pippa on a regular basis. Despite his somewhat difficult family, Toby was handsome and generally well mannered, but I’d never entirely warmed to him. He’d professed vaguely liberal views, but I felt that was for Pip’s benefit, as I knew for a fact his opinions were really more in tune with his father’s. When the village put on a production of The Sound of Music, it was Toby who volunteered most enthusiastically to play Rolf. He told everyone it was so he could sing ‘Sixteen Going on Seventeen’ opposite Pippa’s Liesl, but when in a less generous frame of mind I thought it was probably because he got a free pass to dress up as a Nazi.
My own feelings aside, she could do a lot worse. She had done a lot worse. But there was Daughter Rule Number Seven to consider: don’t have opinions over boyfriends unless expressly asked, and then – well, play it safe and sit on the fence.
‘Did you get any feedback over Mr Beeton’s death?’ I asked.
‘No one blamed you,’ she said, as the Malletts would often use Pippa as a conduit of information in my direction. ‘He’d done the Blitz at least fifteen times and understood the risks of high-impact Librarying.’
‘I hope everyone else thinks the same.’
‘Aside from us, Mr Beeton wasn’t particularly well liked,’ observed Pippa. ‘D’you remember when he scandalised the village by publicly announcing: “the poor aren’t so bad”?’
‘I liked him for that,’ I said, chuckling at the memory.
‘So did I. But he’ll be forgotten in a couple of weeks. The village takes its grudges seriously. Remember when old Granny Watkins kicked the bucket? I’ll swear most people in the church were only there to personally confirm she was dead.’
Pippa moved herself to the kitchen table and took a sip of coffee.
‘The Malletts had a few choice words over what they saw as your overly generous treatment of the rabbit,’ she added, ‘and within earshot of me so they wanted it repeated.’
‘Oh yes?’ I said, having expected something like this would happen.
‘Yes. Something along the lines of how they generally tolerated your left-wing views, but if you were going to start being “troublesomely ambivalent” towards undesirables there might be consequences.’
I turned from the window to face her.
‘Would you describe me as left-wing, Pip?’
I considered myself centrist, to be honest. Apolitical, in fact. I had no time for it.
‘Compared to the rest of the village,’ she said with a smile, ‘I’d say you’re almost Marxist.’
Much Hemlock had always been a hotbed of right-wing sentiment, something that had strong historical precedent: the village had the dubious distinction of having convicted and burned more witches than any other English town in history. Thirty-one, all told, right up until a dark night in 1568 when they burned a real one by accident, and all her accusers came out in unsightly black pustules and died hideously painful deaths within forty-eight hours. Zephaniah Mallett had been the magistrate during the trials, but in a dark day for evolution he’d had children before dying so four centuries later Victor and Norman were very much in existence. They liked to keep family traditions alive, even if witch-burning was currently off limits.
‘I’m not troublesome, am I, Pip?’ I asked.
She looked up and smiled, and I recognised her mother. She’d been gone ten years but I’d still not really got used to it.
‘You’re not troublesome, Dad. The Malletts are troublesome. I think Victor thought you’d been unduly accommodating to the rabbit, and that kindness might be misinterpreted as welcoming, and you know what they think about preserving the cultural heart of the village.’
‘Preserving the cultural heart of the village’ was the Malletts’ byline, mission statement, excuse and justification for their strident views all in one. Victor and Norman’s ‘cultural heart’ speech was really more to do with justifying their desire to block undesirables, a definition that was so broad it had to be broken down into numerous sub-categories, each of which attracted their ire in a distinctly unique way. It wasn’t just foreigners or rabbits, either: they had an intense dislike for those whom they described as ‘spongers’ – again, a net that could be cast quite broadly but conveniently excluded those on a government pension, taken early – and other groups that they felt were deeply suspect, such as VW Passat drivers: ‘the car of smug lefties’. Added to that was anyone who was vegetarian, or wore sandals, or men with ‘overly vanitised’ facial hair – or women who wore dungarees, spoke loudly and had the outrageous temerity to suggest that their views might be relevant, or worse, correct.
‘I think I let Connie borrow the book to piss them off,’ I said.
‘And I applaud you for it.’ She paused for a moment, then said: ‘How did you know her name?’
‘It was – um – on her library card.’
I managed to lie quite convincingly, although I wasn’t sure why I was so quick to deny our friendship.
‘Short for Constance, I imagine. They often have Victorian names. Part of the whole Beatrix Potter3 Chic thing.’
Pippa nodded, and there was a double beep from a car horn outside. Sally Lomax had been Pippa’s partner-in-crime since they first met in toddler group, and they were closer than sisters. Sally was at Nursing College too and could give her a lift – but was training in paediatrics, not management. Pippa finished her coffee and gathered up her stuff.
‘I put in a good word for you with the Malletts,’ she said, giving me a peck on the cheek. ‘I told them your offensive level of toleration would have been solely due to Library Rules Applying, and you weren’t a friend to rabbits any more than they were.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘See you this evening.’
And she was gone out of the door.
I tidied up, set the dishwasher, and at precisely nine o’clock gathered together my case, jacket and car keys and walked outside. Toby Mallett was waiting for me by the garage – we worked in the same office in Hereford and I often gave him a lift. Annoyingly – yet unsurprisingly – his father, Victor Mallett, was with him. We all wished each other cordial good mornings.
‘Good morning,’ said Victor.
‘Good morning,’ I said.
‘Good morning,’ said Toby.
Once this complex ritual was over, Victor said:
‘Can I cadge a ride into the big smoke? The Zephyr’s in the garage at the moment. Carbon on the valves.’
I agreed as I couldn’t not agree, while knowing full well this was less about getting a lift into Hereford, and more about me copping a bollocking for the Connie incident. We hadn’t got to the edge of the village before he began.
‘Sorry about getting out of my pram at the library,’ said Victor, ‘what with the memsahib giving you the ugly prawn over that stray member of the public. You were right – the rabbit was allowed to be there.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said, knowing this was usually how it worked. The charm, the flattery, the faux bonhomie – then the attempt to get what he actually wanted. Victor was as transparent as air, but nowhere near as useful. He’d probably ask me whether I knew who ‘that rabbit’ was next.
‘So,’ he said, ‘do you know who that rabbit was?’
‘Which one?’
‘The one in the library.’
I’d been thinking about Connie most of the weekend. Back at uni we’d only met up for coffees and a few movies. Ten occasions, tops – and romance had never been mooted, much less acted upon – but she had made an impression on me, and I think, perhaps, I had a little on her. A demonstration had been planned when a review of university admission rules retrospectively forbade her attendance. The whole thing was precipitated by UKARP, when they were still agitators rather than serious political players. The anti-rabbit group had attempted to enrol eight goats, four earthworms and a pony named Diddy into various university courses, arguing that if rabbits could attend then so, logically, could any animal – even dumb, non-anthropomorphised ones. A High Court ruling agreed with them and Connie, along with all rabbits in higher education, was out. We’d never said goodbye, and had not kept in contact. I’d thought of looking her up on the work database, but never had.