Harriet's Hare Page 3

  ‘But what was it the hare said?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Sounded like “oont”,’ said Mrs Wisker. ‘Hey, where are you goin’, duck?’ but Harriet was already out of the door.

  Down the trackway she ran, pell-mell, and there, calmly cropping the grass of the paddock, was her hare.

  ‘Oh, Wiz!’ she cried. ‘They didn’t come for you then! You’re here for another whole month!’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the hare. ‘Amongst other things, I promised to do you a good turn one of these days, remember? I need a bit of time yet to organize it.’

  ‘Organize what?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘A nice surprise, Harriet.’

  ‘What? Tell me! Please!’

  ‘No, no,’ said Wiz. ‘That might spoil things. You’ll just have to wait and see.’

  Chapter Five

  A little lane ran through the bed of the valley – a lane that led to nowhere except Longhanger Farm – and Harriet now heard a car coming along it and changing down for the sharp turn into the farm trackway.

  At the sound of it, Wiz loped off and Harriet climbed back over the fence. The car stopped by her, and a woman put her head out of the window and said, ‘Excuse me, but do you have any hens?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet said.

  ‘I wonder if you could sell me a dozen eggs?’

  ‘Well, we just keep them for ourselves,’ said Harriet, ‘but I expect I can find you a dozen. They’re laying quite well at the moment.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ said the woman, smiling. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘Harriet Butler.’

  ‘OK, Harriet, you run ahead and I’ll meet you up at the farm.’

  ‘Who was that, Mrs Wisker?’ said Harriet when the woman had paid for the tray of eggs and driven away again.

  ‘New,’ said Mrs Wisker. ‘Bought the old turnpike cottage, t’other side of the village. Married woman, she is.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  ‘Got a big old gold weddin’ ring on, hadn’t she?’

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ Harriet said.

  ‘I did!’ said Mrs Wisker with a shriek. ‘There’s not much I don’t notice, my late lamented hubby used to say. And I’ll tell you another thing I knows about her too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She likes an egg for her breakfast,’ said Mrs Wisker, screaming yet more loudly.

  ‘Here’s one pound fifty, Dad,’ Harriet said when her father came in at lunchtime.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Eggs. I sold a dozen to a lady who came. They’ve bought the old turnpike cottage, Mrs Wisker said.’

  ‘Perhaps we should get a few more birds,’ said her father, ‘and then you could earn yourself a bit of pocket money, selling eggs.’

  ‘But you pay for all the food.’

  ‘But you do all the work. Here, have this money back for a start.’

  ‘Look what I’ve got!’ said Harriet to her hare when she met him as she rode on the downs that afternoon.

  ‘Money!’ said Wiz. ‘The root of all evil.’

  ‘Well, everybody needs some,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Hares don’t.’

  ‘But you must have money on Pars?’

  ‘Oh yes. But we treat it sensibly. Here on Earth some human beings have so much money they don’t know what to do with it, and some are desperately poor. On Pars everyone’s equal. Much fairer.’

  ‘Are you looking forward to going back?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘It’ll be nice to see my friends again,’ said the hare.

  ‘Have you got lots?’

  ‘We’re all friends on Pars. There’s no such word as “enemy” in the language.’

  ‘I’m your friend, aren’t I, Wiz?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the hare, and Breeze whinnied loudly.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘She’s saying, “Why are we standing here while you chatter away to that old hare, when we could be having a good gallop?” Come on – race you!’

  ‘You always win,’ said Harriet. ‘You’re faster than Breeze.’

  ‘All right,’ said Wiz, ‘we’ll make it a handicap. Go on, off you go.’

  Any minute now he’ll pass me, Harriet thought as she urged the pony on, but no hare appeared beside her. When at last she drew rein, she looked round but there was no sign of Wiz. She rode back, puzzled, and after a while she came upon a hedgehog waddling along.

  ‘Whatever are you doing up here on the downs?’ she said, and the hedgehog gave a kind of grunt.

  Harriet rode a little further, looking for Wiz, but then she heard a voice behind her.

  ‘You won,’ said the voice and, wheeling the pony round, Harriet saw not a hedgehog but a hare.

  ‘It was you!’ she said, laughing. ‘A sparrow, a goldfinch, a snail and now a hedgehog. Whatever will you turn into next, I wonder?’

  ‘A Partian, next full moon,’ said the hare.

  ‘I shall miss you,’ said Harriet. ‘I told Dad I wasn’t lonely here on the farm, but I shall be when you’ve gone and it’s just the two of us again.’

  ‘Oont,’ said the hare.

  ‘Why, what have I said wrong?’

  ‘You’ll see, before long, sure as eggs is eggs.’

  ‘That’s what I got that money for,’ said Harriet. ‘I sold some eggs to a lady who came to the farm. Dad says we can get some more hens, and then I can sell lots.’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll come back for more, this lady,’ said Wiz.

  ‘She might.’

  ‘She will.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Hares are witches, aren’t they?’

  By the time the newcomer to the village came again to Longhanger Farm, Mrs Wisker had found out a lot more about her.

  ‘She’s a book-writer,’ she told Harriet. ‘Writes little books for kiddies, they say, though she’s got no children of her own. Mrs Lambert, she’s called, but there ain’t no sign of Mr Lambert yet. I expect she’s gettin’ the old place straight first. Any road, she seems to like your eggs, my duck. Goin’ to come regular, she said, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘She’s my first customer.’

  The next time that Mrs Lambert came to the farm to buy eggs was not on one of Mrs Wisker’s days.

  ‘All alone, Harriet?’ she said when the door was opened.

  ‘Yes. Dad’s ploughing the Ten Acre.’

  ‘I think I must have seen him as I came along the lane. I saw a green tractor. Can I have some more of your big brown eggs, please, Harriet? By the way, I should have said – my name is Lambert, Jessica Lambert.’

  ‘You write stories for children, don’t you?’ asked Harriet as she filled a tray with eggs.

  ‘Yes, for very young children.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Animals, mostly. Possibly your mother read you one or two of my books when you were little?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Harriet said. ‘She died when I was very small.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Harriet.

  Little did she think, as she watched her customer drive away, that she would see her again so soon. For not ten minutes later the door-bell rang again, and there on the step stood Mrs Lambert, a bloodstained handkerchief held to her nose.

  ‘Whatever’s happened?’ cried Harriet.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident,’ Mrs Lambert said. ‘I had to swerve suddenly in the lane, and the car went into the ditch and I banged my face. It’s nothing much, just a nosebleed I think, that’s all, but the car’s stuck and I wondered – d’you think your father would come and pull me out with his tractor?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet, ‘of course he would. I’ll go and fetch him. D’you want to wash your face? Would you like a clean hanky?’

  ‘Yes please, Harriet,’ said Mrs Lambert. ‘Then I’ll go back down to the car and wait for help.’

  A little later, Ha
rriet’s father got down from the cab of the big green tractor and held out a hand.

  ‘John Butler,’ he said. ‘How do you do?’

  ‘Not very well, I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Lambert.

  ‘You haven’t broken your nose?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. And I hope there’s nothing broken in the car. It’s just that I can’t get out of the ditch because the nearside wheels are spinning.’

  ‘We’ll soon have you out of there,’ said Harriet’s father, busy with a rope, and sure enough the big tractor pulled the little car out as easy as winking.

  ‘All’s well that ends well,’ said Harriet’s father as he unhitched the tow rope.

  ‘Not quite,’ said Harriet. ‘There is something broken – in the back of the car.’

  ‘What?’ said Mrs Lambert.

  ‘Every single egg you just bought,’ said Harriet.

  Mrs Lambert smiled ruefully.

  ‘All the fault of that silly animal,’ she said. ‘I had to swerve to avoid running over it. It suddenly came out of the hedge and calmly sat up in the middle of the lane as though all it wanted was for me to go in the ditch.’

  ‘This animal,’ said Harriet’s father. ‘What was it?’

  ‘A hare.’

  Chapter Six

  Was it Wiz? Harriet thought.

  Whatever was he playing at, sitting in the middle of the lane? He could easily have been run over and then he’d never have seen Pars again.

  Was it a hare? her father thought.

  These people who came from the town to live in the country couldn’t tell a hare from a rabbit. Probably it was an old tomcat, anyway.

  ‘You’re sure it was a hare?’ he said.

  He thinks I’m a townie who can’t tell a hare from a rabbit, Mrs Lambert thought.

  ‘I know a Lepus europaeus occidentalis when I see one,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘It’s Latin for the Brown Hare, Dad,’ said Harriet.

  ‘However do you know that?’

  ‘I learned it,’ said Harriet truthfully.

  ‘From a book, I expect,’ said Jessica Lambert. ‘Like me. I illustrate my own little stories, you see, so I have to be careful that I know what a particular animal looks like. I don’t want to make silly mistakes and end up with egg on my face.’

  ‘Talking of which,’ said Harriet’s father, ‘you must let us give you some more eggs in place of the broken ones. And, more importantly, how is your face?’

  ‘My nose is a bit sore.’

  ‘And I’m afraid you’re going to have a shiner,’ Harriet’s father said.

  ‘What’s a shiner, Dad?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘A black eye. Look here, Mrs Lambert, you must be a bit shaken. Why don’t you turn round and come on back up to the farm, and we’ll find you some more eggs and give you a cup of tea?’

  Anyone watching would have seen quite a procession going back up the trackway to Longhanger Farm.

  The little car led the way, the big tractor followed, and close behind it trotted the sheepdog, Bran. A hundred metres or so behind Bran, a hare came loping up the hill.

  Just as he reached the yard, some instinct made the dog turn his head to look back, but all he saw was an old crow hopping about, that cried, ‘Caark!’ at him.

  ‘Do please sit down, Mrs Lambert,’ said the farmer. ‘And put the kettle on, please, Hat.’

  ‘Isn’t it awful,’ said Mrs Lambert, ‘the way we all get our names shortened?’

  ‘You can’t shorten mine much,’ said John Butler.

  ‘No! But what I mean is, for example – my name is Jessica (and please stop calling me Mrs Lambert), which is quite a nice name, I think, as is Harriet. But my husband always called me Jess, which sounds like a sheepdog.’

  ‘It sounds nice enough to me,’ said Harriet’s father.

  ‘I’d rather you called me Jessica.’

  ‘If you call me John.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘What’s a deal?’ asked Harriet, coming back from the kitchen. ‘I hope you’re not making Mrs Lambert pay for some more eggs, Daddy. It’s my fault the first lot got broken.’

  ‘Your fault?’ said Mrs Lambert.

  ‘Well, yes, in a way. It was my hare that caused the accident.’

  ‘Your hare?’ said her father.

  ‘Well . . . I mean . . . our hare. A Longhanger Farm hare.’

  ‘A crazy hare,’ said her father. ‘There must be a story there for you, Jessica – The Mad Hare of Longhanger Farm.’

  As Mrs Lambert drove away again, with half a dozen fresh eggs for which Harriet would take no payment, she suddenly saw a hare (the hare? she thought) squatting by the side of the trackway. She slowed down to an absolute crawl, watching it like a hawk, and out of the window she said, ‘You’re not going to do anything silly, are you?’

  To her surprise, the animal made a soft but distinct noise in reply. It sounded like ‘Oont.’

  ‘She’s nice, isn’t she, Dad?’ Harriet was saying.

  ‘Very,’ said her father.

  Why, he thought, did she say, ‘My husband called me Jess?’

  ‘I suppose Mr Lambert will turn up before long,’ he said in an offhand way. ‘I imagine she’s getting the old cottage straight first.’

  ‘That’s what Mrs Wisker said.’

  ‘There’s not much she doesn’t notice.’

  ‘As her late lamented hubby used to say,’ said Harriet, and they both laughed.

  When Mrs Wisker arrived next day, Harriet told her the whole story of the accident.

  ‘Poor soul!’ said Mrs Wisker. ‘And got a black eye too! Not the first she’d’ve had, from what I hear.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘That husband of hers. Free with his fists, they say, specially when he’d had a drop too much, which was often.’

  ‘How horrible!’ said Harriet.

  ‘He won’t do it no more, duck. She got rid of him, for good and all.’

  ‘Murdered him, d’you mean?’

  Mrs Wisker gave one of her loudest shrieks.

  ‘You been seein’ too much telly,’ she said. ‘No – dee-vorced him. Couple of year ago.’

  Last thing that day, Harriet was leaning out of her bedroom window, scanning the valley below as usual.

  The evening sunshine lay warmly on the fields, and on the cows and sheep that grazed them or lay and chewed their cud, and turned to a purplish colour the furrows of the newly ploughed Ten Acre, where once, not long ago, she had first seen the corn circle.

  A few rabbits hopped about the headlands of the pastures but there was no sign of a hare.

  So still did Harriet keep that a sparrow alighted on the windowsill, but when she said, ‘Wiz?’ it flew hastily away again.

  Her father came in to say good-night.

  ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘You know Mrs Lambert.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Wisker says she’s divorced.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes. Dad, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When are we going to get some more hens?’

  Chapter Seven

  For a few days, Harriet saw no sign of her hare.

  She had plenty to occupy her anyway, because, rather to her surprise, her father had lost no time in buying her a dozen pullets at the point of lay.

  So Harriet was busy admiring them and accustoming them to the rest of the flock and enjoying the excitement of collecting their very first, rather small, eggs. In addition, she had made a signboard and painted on it in large letters:

  FRESH FREE-RANGE

  FARM EGGS FOR SALE

  HARRIET BUTLER

  LONGHANGER FARM

  She put the notice up at the end of the lane where it joined the road, and afterwards she walked down there several times, just to admire it.

  Coming back one morning, she looked over a gate at the herd, which was grazing a lanesid
e field, and saw that there was one beast standing all by itself in a far corner, a long way from the others. Harriet was not a farmer’s daughter for nothing. She knew that if a cow isolates itself in this way, it very often means either that it is going to give birth or that it is ill. She walked across to have a look at it.

  Harriet knew all the herd by name – Bluebell the master cow and her special crony Buttercup, and Dahlia and Rose and Pansy and all the rest. Each had different markings that she knew, but she did not recognize this solitary cow.

  Was it a neighbour’s that had somehow got in with the Longhanger herd? Was it a new one that her father had recently bought? She could not see any numbered sale ticket stuck on its rump.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said as she reached it. ‘And what’s the matter? You seem healthy enough, and you certainly don’t look as if you’re going to calve. Why aren’t you grazing with the rest? Off your food, are you?’

  Since the cow made no reply to any of these questions, Harriet looked about for something to tempt it with. She saw a nice patch of white clover and bent to pull a bunch of it.

  ‘Try this, old girl,’ she said, straightening up again to see not a cow, but the hare.

  ‘Less of the “old girl”, Harriet,’ said Wiz.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Harriet. ‘Why ever did you want to turn yourself into a cow?’

  ‘Just to see if I liked it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Not a lot. I’ve tried being quite a few different animals since we last met, but there’s nothing to touch a hare.’

  ‘Something jolly nearly did touch a hare the other day,’ said Harriet. ‘Whatever were you doing sitting in the middle of the lane like that? It was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Well, to begin with, you could have been killed.’

  ‘To end with, you mean. But I wasn’t.’

  ‘And Mrs Lambert might have been badly hurt.’

  ‘But she wasn’t.’

  ‘Whatever were you playing at, Wiz?’

  ‘Judge not the play before the play be done,’ said the hare.