The Constant Rabbit

‘I was thinking of something more prestigious,’ I replied, as the bottle stall was by long tradition the entry point for volunteers, lunatics or people out of favour in the village. Less well thought of, even, than the shove ha’penny and whack-a-mole. ‘How about if she runs the tombola?’

Victor and Norm laughed – the idea was, we all knew, preposterous. Mrs Fudge-Rigby had overseen the tombola at least since the sixties, and physically attacked the last person to suggest she might want to ‘take a break’.

‘OK, then,’ I said, having a bright idea, ‘what about judging the vegetables in the home produce tent?’

Victor and Norman looked at one another.

‘Deal,’ said Victor.

We shook hands on it and Victor and Norman, a day ago my mortal enemies, were now once again my friends, presumably courtesy of a discreet call from Mr Ffoxe, requesting them to leave us alone so my bunnytrap-trap efforts could continue unimpeded. I shut the door behind them, then watched out of the window as they walked away, patting each other on the back, a job, they thought, well done. They’d been like this from the moment I became aware of them aged eight, and they’d not changed one iota over the years: always trying to play people for their own advantage – and never once any good at it.

Bouncing with Constance

Bouncing was the sport of rabbits, and the mainstay of the Rabbit Games: Long Bounce, Vertical Bounce, Marathon, Sprint and Synchronised. It always looked unusual as rabbits before the Event never really did this – the bouncing they expressed now was more akin to kangaroo motion, and was a quirk of the process that brought them from all rabbit to mostly human.

I rang in sick the following morning as my eye still hurt badly. My sleep was punctuated by nightmares – mostly about Mr Ffoxe clamping his jaws around my throat and squeezing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Once I’d made the coffee and put on the toast, I tuned into the news on the radio to see what had happened in Colony One overnight. The answer, as it turned out, was ‘not much’. TwoLegsGood had stayed outside the gates until 2 a.m., shouting their trademark anthem: ‘Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run, here comes a farmer with a gun gun gun’. While clearly offensive and an incitement to violence, an earlier court hearing had decided the words were from a ‘humorous ditty predating the Event’ so had historical precedent – and was thus allowable. The upshot of all this activity was that Colony One remained closed to all movement and would remain so, a Compliance Taskforce spokesman said, ‘until the safety of the rabbit population can be assured’.

At about nine, the doorbell rang and there was Connie, bright as a button, all smiles and wearing a sports crop top and short skirt, brand new Nikes and a sweatband looped around the base of her ears.

‘Hello!’ she said in a chirpy voice. ‘Fancy a bounce?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘A bounce. I’m in training for the Herefordshire double marathon bounce next month, and I’m a little rusty on pace and rhythm. If you bounce too high on each cycle then you tire too quickly, and if you try to overstretch a bounce, the landing can be awkward. I need a safe twenty-four-mile-per-hour bouncing average to beat my PB, or even to have a hope of finishing in the top five.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘But I need to tell you something first. You remember the duelling pistols I was telling you about?’

‘Yes, but it’s irrelevant – I’m not going to duel with your husband.’

‘The Venerable Bunty thinks you will,’ she said, ‘and she’s rarely wrong.’

‘Why is she suddenly so interested in me?’

‘She’s interested in everybody. So, you remember the rhyme I told you?’

‘The one about how “the shot hits the spot if you’ve a croc on the stock, while the mark of the lark shoots wide of the mark”?’

‘Yes, but here’s the thing: he doesn’t use the pistol with the mark of the lark any more.’

‘He doesn’t?’

‘No – he replaced it with one that has an engraving of a rabbit.’

‘A gun with a bun?’

‘Yes. But you don’t want that.’

‘I don’t?’

‘No. The gun with the bun has the aim that is lame.’

‘What does the lark have?’

She sighed deeply, as if I were an idiot.

‘I’ll go through it once again, so listen very, very carefully: the gun with the bun has the aim that is lame, but the shot’ll hit the spot if you’ve a croc on the stock.’

I repeated it back more or less correct, then said:

‘But look, I can’t duel him unless you give our union your permission.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘the Venerable Bunty has foreseen that, too.’

‘Does she predict useful things, like the 4.15 at Kempton Park?’