FIVE

Uncle Roland

The rabbit was a large one. It was white in colour and it had very long floppy ears which lay upon the hutch floor at right angles to its head. The effect of those flattened ears combined with a stare from a pair of eyes of the brightest red to give the creature a very strange look.

Madeleine’s little heart thumped madly as she confronted it. She looked around for support and finding none, peeped over the edge of the table. Marcus was still on the ground, obviously extremely nervous by the way he hopped from foot to foot. Indeed it was now broad light and not a good time for mice to be out in a danger-filled garden.

But though the cries of ‘More!’ had ceased to come from the pigsty, their echoes were clear in Madeleine’s ears, and she did not think about her personal safety.

‘Marcus Aurelius!’ she cried sharply. ‘Come up here this instant!’ And she turned to the rabbit.

As she met the unblinking stare of those red eyes various approaches flashed through her mind. She could threaten it. But with what? She could cajole it, plead with it, go down on her haunches and beg. But she was too proud. She could raid the hutch, slip through the wire-netting, grab some grub and run, dodging whatever offensive action the great beast might take. But this would have to be repeated a hundred times to satisfy Magnus’s appetite.

It was the look in the red eyes that finally made her decide upon a straightforward statement of fact. It was a friendly look, she felt sure.

‘Look, mister or missus,’ she said simply and firmly, ‘we’m in trouble.’ At this point Marcus Aurelius arrived beside her. He had bumped his head, not seeing the overhang of the table edge as he had run up the leg and could only stare dazedly into the hutch, out of words for once.

The rabbit hopped to the front of its hutch. At close range both mice could see that it had a kindly face.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ it said in a deep voice. ‘And it’s mister actually. Roland’s the name. Tell me now, what’s biting you?’

Marcus Aurelius gave an uneasy giggle. ‘Nothing, sir,’ he said. ‘At this moment, that is to say. Though if one considers the number of possible enemies all anxious to sink their teeth, claws, beaks or talons into us –’

‘Bide quiet, Markie!’ interrupted Madeleine angrily. ‘For the love of Cheddar, bide quiet, or I’ll be sinking my teeth in you!’ She turned to the rabbit. ‘Look, Mr Roland,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you straight, no messing. Our baby, he’s hungry, we’ve got nothing for him. Can you spare some of your grub? We’d be ever so much obliged.’

‘A hungry baby!’ said Roland softly, his red eyes glistening. ‘Poor mite! Of course I’d be delighted to help, they give me far more than I can eat. Come to that, please do come in, Mrs . . .’

‘Madeleine.’

‘Charming name! Please do come in and have some breakfast. And your husband, of course, Mr . . .?’

‘My name is Marcus Aurelius. May I say, on behalf of my dear wife and myself, how immensely gratified we –’

‘Shut your trap!’ cried Madeleine in a fury.

Not surprisingly, this particular phrase is seldom used in mouse conversation, and it reduced the voluble Marcus to immediate tight-lipped silence.

Roland’s pink nose twitched uncontrollably for a moment, and then he said soothingly, ‘Why not run and fetch the little chap first of all, and then we’ll all eat together, eh?’

Madeleine shot a glance at her husband and saw that he was sulking. For an instant she considered ordering him to fetch Magnus but then common sense prevailed. He would probably debate the matter at great length, he would take ten times as long over the journey as she, he would run blindly into danger. Anyway she already felt bad about having snapped at him in front of a stranger.

‘Pop in through the wire then, Markie,’ she said. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’ She slid down the table leg and bounded away towards the pigsty, her long tail spiralling to keep her balance in the rough grass beneath the plum trees.

‘How fortunate you are to have such a spirited wife,’ said Roland. ‘I myself have never experienced marriage.’

‘It has its ups and downs,’ said Marcus Aurelius.

‘No doubt. But to have children – an infinite blessing, one would imagine.’

‘They can be a great trial,’ said Marcus. ‘Very great.’ He paused. ‘Very great indeed,’ he said.

‘You surprise me. I myself came from a very large litter. I have always supposed that somewhere or other I have by now a host of nephews and nieces. I have often fancied being called Uncle Roland.’

‘I dare say Magnus would oblige.’

‘Magnus?’

‘My son. It should not be beyond him. He can just about string two words together,’ said Marcus sourly.

‘Dear little fellow! I cannot wait to see him,’ said Roland. ‘But do please come in and make a start.’

Marcus was about to explain that ‘little’ was a word which could not be applied to his son when he realized that there was no possible way for Magnus to squeeze through the wire mesh that he himself had slipped so easily between.

But at that moment there was a scrabbling of claws and Madeleine appeared, her black eyes almost bolting out of her head. ‘Oh, Markie, Markie,’ she cried brokenly, ‘he ain’t there!’

‘He isn’t there,’ said Marcus in correction.

‘That’s what I’m telling you. Don’t just repeat it. The pigsty’s empty. Where can he be?’

Marcus Aurelius particularly liked being asked this kind of question, which demanded a variety of precise, carefully thought-out answers. He raised his head consideringly from the rabbit’s feeding pot.

‘Let us see,’ he said, ‘a), he could have gone to the cottage, looking for us. Here, however, his only possible means of entry would appear to be the cat-flap. This might present a problem. Or b), he could have taken that course of action of which I spoke to you last night, and emigrated. To the farm perhaps, or elsewhere. Or c), he could be wandering about the garden, in quest of food. I make no mention of d).’

‘What d’you mean? What’s d)?’

‘You must be brave, Maddie; I would spare your feelings if I were able. But the fourth likelihood is that he could have been carried off.’

‘Carried off?’

‘By some carnivorous beast – d stands for death,’ said Marcus Aurelius in his clipped voice, and he fell once more to eating.

Madeleine looked so woebegone that the softhearted Roland’s eyes began once more to glisten.

‘Come inside, Madeleine,’ he said in his deep growl. ‘Come and have some food, you’ll feel better then. I’m sure nothing has happened to your Magnus. He’s probably quite safe, down a hole.’

‘It would have to be a rabbit hole,’ said Marcus with his mouth full.

‘I don’t understand?’

‘He’s rather . . . big,’ said Madeleine.

‘A baby, I thought you said?’

‘Well, he ain’t very old – only three months – but he growed, you see, he growed ever so fast.’

‘You mean,’ said Roland, ‘he’s bigger than the average mouse?’

‘Yes,’ said Madeleine, ‘much bigger. In fact . . .’

‘Yes?’

Madeleine was silent for a moment. Part of her did not want to finish what she had been going to say, and part of her cried out, Go on! Spit it out! Say it out loud, in front of this stranger, get it over with, say the word, you’ll be the better for it.

She took a deep breath.

‘In fact,’ said Madeleine, ‘Magnus is a giant.’

Afterwards Madeleine never quite knew what reaction she had expected to this statement. Simple disbelief, perhaps? Or pity? Or disgust? What she had not been prepared for was the tremendous stamp of excitement which the rabbit gave with his hind feet upon the floorboards of the hutch, causing Marcus Aurelius to shoot up into the air like a trampolinist.

‘A giant!’ roared Roland. ‘How perfectly splendid!’

‘Splendid?’

‘Why, yes, indeed, giantism, in rabbits, at any rate, is a most honourable condition. Why, one of our oldest and best respected breeds is the Flemish Giant. I myself am the product of a marriage between two of the giant breeds, for my father was a Lop and my mother a New Zealand White. Oh, my dear Madeleine, how proud you must be!’

Even in the midst of her worries Madeleine felt a glow at these words, a glow, she quickly realized, that was indeed of pride. Giants were respectable, then!

‘Oh, how kind of you, Mr Roland, I’m sure!’ she said. ‘Wait till you meet him! And he’s so affectionate, too! You’ll see!’ She paused, and her whiskers twitched with anxiety. ‘I hopes,’ she said softly.

All this time Madeleine had been looking into the hutch and Marcus into the feeding pot. Only Roland was looking out towards the garden, and now he suddenly said, ‘Tell me. Would your Magnus be . . . as big as a rat?’

‘Bigger.’

‘Big as a guinea-pig?’

‘Never seen one of they.’

‘Well, I don’t want to raise your hopes wrongly, but there is a guinea-pig-sized animal, mouse-coloured, with a tail, somewhere in the Brussels sprouts. I caught a glimpse of it just a moment ago.’

Madeleine whipped round and Marcus left the feeding pot, and into the forest of sprout plants that stood directly between the hutch and the back door of the cottage peered three pairs of eyes, one black and snapping, one red and shining, one myopic and watery. And sure enough, as they watched, out from the vegetable patch came Magnus, and out from Magnus came a mighty voice. ‘Mummy!’ it bellowed. ‘More! More! More!’

There was a moment’s breathless silence and then one other sound, coming clearly to their ears on the still cold air. It was the squeak of the cat-flap!