‘Aren’t there some peaches?’ said Finkle. ‘And I think I’ve got a bar of Fruit & Nut somewhere.’
‘Hang on,’ said the Venerable Bunty, rummaging in her knapsack, ‘there are some banana sandwiches, but they got a bit squashed – and some walnut cake, I think …’
‘Well, Peter,’ said Finkle once we’d had something to eat, ‘tell me about the deal you made with Mr Ffoxe.’
‘I’ve only just told Connie about that,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’
‘It was pretty obvious as soon as Constance was released,’ said Finkle. ‘I can’t see why else they’d be so generous.’
I told them everything I knew, and they both listened quietly, speaking only to ask a question or to clarify a point. The Venerable Bunty asked me to describe the layout of MegaWarren, which I furnished as best as I could, and what sort of security clearance I had on the Taskforce mainframe.
‘One up from the lowest,’ I said, ‘but I won’t be able to access it. Mr Ffoxe and the weasel will simply want to know what you’ll ask me to find out, and use that to figure out your plans.’
‘Hmm,’ said Finkle, ‘we should accept that Mr Ffoxe assumed you would tell us everything, so it’s difficult to see his precise play.’
‘He was very eager to find out your whereabouts,’ I said to the Venerable Bunty, ‘and was very interested in the subject of “completing the circle”.’
‘Ah,’ said the Venerable Bunty, ‘that’s very interesting.’
‘It is?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Finkle, ‘it is.’
I looked at Connie, who was, I think, still musing about the ‘whopping great carrot’ she wanted.
‘Ultimately,’ I said, ‘Mr Ffoxe wants leverage to move you all to MegaWarren without any trouble, and thinks that with the Venerable Bunty in custody it will be a lot easier.’
‘Even with the VB under lock and key, he’ll still have trouble,’ said Finkle. ‘The Grand Council of Coneys have ratified the plans for civil stubbornness, so each rabbit will have to be carried all the way to Wales one by one, which will be prohibitively expensive, not to mention a PR nightmare.’
‘Since Smethwick and Mr Ffoxe have staked their reputations on the Rehoming,’ added the Venerable Bunty, ‘they’ll want to have it completed in whatever way they can – and with over fifteen hundred foxes and ten thousand Compliance Officers at the Taskforce, it might all turn rather unpleasant.’
I knew this too – it wasn’t really news. I think UKARP suspected that when push came to shove, the rabbit’s innate dislike of confrontation and the Taskforce’s innate propensity to confrontation would win the day.
The conversation stopped for a minute or two while the Venerable Bunty cut the hardly-squashed-at-all walnut cake, but soon picked up again as we learned that the Venerable Bunty was brought up in-colony and had been doing miracles since passing her GCSEs, so had been a shoo-in to take over as spiritual leader when the previous Bunty died, herself the fifth since the Event. Our meeting seemed chatty rather than focused, and at one point I asked Finkle whether he wanted me to do anything.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to meet you. Get the measure of Connie’s neighbour, see what he has to offer. Now that I have, I’d like you to play along with Mr Ffoxe. You can tell him about this meeting if you like. There’s been no breach of the law, just a minor employment infraction on your behalf for talking to me.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, disappointed that I wasn’t going to be of more use.
‘We’re sure,’ said Finkle. ‘You can tell him about Bunty, too. Just give us four hours to make ourselves scarce before you do.’
‘That’s it?’ I said.
‘That’s it.’
So while we ate the excellent walnut cake that the Venerable Bunty’s mother’s sister’s daughter’s husband’s son had baked, Venerable Bunty and Connie told us about life inside the colonies, which despite the lack of freedom and limited space were the only areas within the United Kingdom that ran themselves entirely on rabbit socio-egalitarian principles.
‘It’s occasionally aggressive and often uncompromising,’ said Finkle, ‘but from what I’ve seen of both systems, a country run on rabbit principles would be a step forward – although to be honest, I’m not sure we’d be neurologically suited to the regime. While most humans are wired to be reasonably decent, a few are wired to be utter shits – and they do tend to tip the balance.’
‘The decent humans are generally supportive of doing the right thing,’ said the Venerable Bunty, ‘but never take it much farther than that. You’re trashing the ecosystem for no reason other than a deluded sense of anthropocentric manifest destiny, and until you stop talking around the issue and actually feel some genuine guilt, there’ll be no change.’
‘Shame, for want of a better word, is good,’ said Finkle. ‘Shame is right, shame works. Shame is the gateway emotion to increased self-criticism, which leads to realisation, an apology, outrage and eventually meaningful action. We’re not holding our breaths that any appreciable numbers can be arsed to make the journey along that difficult chain of emotional honesty – many good people get past realisation, only to then get horribly stuck at apology – but we live in hope.’
‘I understand,’ I said, having felt that I too had yet to make the jump to apology.
‘It’s further evidence of satire being the engine of the Event,’ said Connie, ‘although if that’s true, we’re not sure for whose benefit.’
‘Certainly not humans’,’ said Finkle, ‘since satire is meant to highlight faults in a humorous way to achieve betterment, and if anything, the presence of rabbits has actually made humans worse.’
‘Maybe it’s the default position of humans when they feel threatened,’ I ventured, ‘although if I’m honest, I know a lot of people who claim to have “nothing against rabbits” but tacitly do nothing against the overt leporiphobia that surrounds them.’
‘Or maybe it’s just satire for comedy’s sake and nothing else,’ added Connie, ‘or even more useless, satire that provokes a few guffaws but only low to middling outrage – but is coupled with more talk and no action. A sort of … empty cleverness.’
‘Maybe a small puff in the right moral direction is the best that could be hoped for,’ added Finkle thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that’s what satire does – not change things wholesale but nudge the collective consciousness in a direction that favours justice and equality. Is there any more walnut cake?’
‘I’m afraid I had the last slice,’ I said, ‘but I did ask if anyone else wanted it.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Finkle, looking at his watch. ‘I think we should be making a move anyway. Tell me, Peter, do you like owls?’
‘Owls?’
‘Yes, the bird, y’know, large eyes, fond of mice, not that smart?’
‘Yes, I suppose.’
‘It’s an abiding passion of mine and I need someone to look after Ollie until the Rehoming is over.’
‘I don’t have an aviary.’
‘I have a portable one on a trailer. I’ll send it round. Well, goodbye, Mr Knox – very pleased to have met you. And Constance? Send my very best to Doc and tell him that he still owes me a rematch for that ping-pong trouncing he gave me.’
Connie said she would and we all clasped hands again. The Venerable Bunty said a few words in Rabbity and after a blessing in which we all stood on one foot for a half-minute, we parted in opposite directions: the Venerable Bunty and Patrick towards Clagdangle-on-Arrow and Connie and I back to where I’d parked the car.