Harriet's Hare Page 4

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will. Trust me, Harriet. I know what is best for you.’

  Harriet sat down on the ground and chewed a piece of grass and watched the hare eating the clover.

  ‘Before long, my holidays will be halfway through,’ she said.

  ‘Mine too,’ said the hare. ‘The waxing moon will before long be full, and then I shall go.’

  ‘I don’t want you to,’ Harriet said. ‘I shall be very unhappy never to see you again.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Wiz, ‘you are going to be very happy. And though you may perhaps not see me again, you will always be reminded of me throughout your life, perhaps as many as a thousand times, if you live to be a very old woman.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By looking at each full moon. You will always see upon it the shape of a hare.’

  ‘Because of you,’ Harriet said, ‘they will always be my favourite animals.’

  ‘Ah, Harriet!’ said Wiz. ‘You will always be my favourite human being.’

  At this point they heard a car coming along the lane towards the farm.

  ‘I must go, Wiz,’ Harriet said. ‘It might be someone wanting eggs.’

  ‘Or someone bringing you a present?’ said the hare.

  It’s not my birthday, thought Harriet as she ran back across the field, so why should anyone be bringing me a present? And how could Wiz possibly know, anyway?

  By the time she reached the bottom of the farm trackway, the car was coming back down again, and she could see that it was Mrs Lambert’s.

  ‘Did you want eggs?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Jessica Lambert, ‘though I saw your posh new notice. No, I came to see you, but your Mrs Wisker said you’d gone out somewhere. She seemed very interested in what’s left of my black eye. You must have told her all about it.’

  ‘Yes. I’m glad it’s better. What did you want to see me for?’

  ‘To give you a present.’

  That Wiz, thought Harriet – he’s magic.

  ‘It’s for both of you really,’ said Jessica Lambert. ‘For you and your father. Just to say thank you for rescuing me the other day,’ and she handed a small flat parcel out of the car window. ‘Good luck with the egg business, Harriet!’ she said, and drove off.

  ‘That Mrs Lambert’s been,’ said Mrs Wisker when Harriet came into the farmhouse. ‘Lookin’ for you, she was.’

  ‘I met her,’ Harriet said.

  Mrs Wisker looked at the parcel.

  ‘Present?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not your birthday, is it, duck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Somethin’ for your dad, is it?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Harriet said.

  Mrs Wisker let out a loud screech.

  ‘What you mean is, “Mind your own business and get on with your cleanin’, Mrs Wisker,” and that’s what I’d better be doin’. Too nosy by half I am, my late lamented hubby used to say.’

  Harriet longed to be nosy too, to open the parcel and see what was in it. But it’s for Dad as well, she said to herself, and she waited until Mrs Wisker had freewheeled off and her father had come in for his lunch.

  ‘Mrs Lambert came again this morning,’ she said.

  ‘More eggs?’

  ‘No. This.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A present for us, she said. Open it, Dad.’

  ‘You open it, Hat.’

  Carefully, Harriet undid the paper wrapping.

  ‘It feels like a framed picture,’ she said, and then, ‘Oh look, Dad!’

  It was a beautifully detailed little portrait of a hare. The artist had caught precisely the slightly shorter head and redder shoulders of the jack-hare, and there was a look of high intelligence in the prominent brown eye.

  In the bottom right-hand corner were two tiny initials, J.L., and opposite, in very small print, the creature’s Latin name.

  ‘How lovely,’ said Harriet’s father. ‘But why should she take so much trouble?’

  ‘Because we helped her when she had her accident,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Look, she’s even put Lepus europaeus ACCIDENTALIS!’

  ‘It’s wonderfully lifelike,’ said her father. ‘Somehow it’s not just any old hare, it’s a very special one.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘It is.’

  Chapter Eight

  Harriet was cantering Breeze across a stretch of downland when she saw a hare behaving in an odd way.

  It was leaping round and round in a circle, kicking up its heels. As she drew near, the hare stopped this strange behaviour and sat awaiting her, so she knew it must be Wiz.

  ‘Whatever were you doing?’ she said.

  ‘Just skipping about,’ said Wiz.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Joie de vivre.’

  ‘Is that French?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘The joy of living. I’m just glad to be alive.’

  I’m glad I shan’t see you dead, standing upright in a bottle, thought Harriet. You wouldn’t look like a hare, of course, you’d look like a Partian, and I’m quite glad I don’t know what Partians look like.

  ‘But you’re not going to die for ages, are you, Wiz?’ she said.

  ‘Hope not,’ said the hare. ‘I want to cram in a lot more happy holidays before I’m bottled.’

  ‘To Earth?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘To Longhanger Farm?’

  ‘Who knows? If I don’t return for some time, you won’t be here any more. You’ll be living somewhere else, married probably, with a pack of kids.’

  ‘Have you got any children, Wiz?’

  ‘On Pars, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t possibly have any children on Earth, could you now?’ said Harriet, but the hare did not reply.

  Harriet sighed.

  ‘It’s a funny thing about holidays,’ she said, ‘but once you get about halfway through them, the rest of the time simply flies. Before you know it, I’ll be back at school and you’ll have gone. The next full moon is on September the first. That’s less than a couple of weeks away now.’

  ‘Time for lots of surprises,’ said Wiz.

  As usual he was right.

  To begin with, on the very next day Harriet had three new egg customers.

  ‘We can’t have anything eggy to eat today, Dad,’ she said to her father. ‘I’ve sold them all.’

  ‘The pullets’ eggs as well?’

  ‘Yes. I charged much less for them, of course, because they’re still rather small.’

  ‘Quite the business woman.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m worried about my first customer. Suppose she wants some?’

  ‘Jessica Lambert, d’you mean?’

  Harriet nodded.

  ‘Well, she’ll just have to buy some from the village shop. I’ll tell her. I’m going down there this evening.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To thank her for the picture of the hare, of course. You coming?’

  ‘Callin’ on Mrs Lambert, were you, duck?’ said Mrs Wisker next morning.

  ‘How did you know?’ said Harriet.

  Mrs Wisker gave one of her screams.

  ‘She don’t drive a Land Rover,’ she said, ‘and there was one parked outside the old turnpike cottage yesterday evenin’. Any road, I seen you comin’ out. Hour and twenty-three minutes you was there. Nice, was it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘She showed me all the books she’s written. She does the pictures too, you know.’

  ‘Like that one of a hare you got in the sittin’-room?’

  ‘You don’t miss much, Mrs Wisker, do you?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Only my late lamented hubby!’ said Mrs Wisker with another screech.

  One thing you don’t know, thought Harriet, is that Dad’s asked Mrs Lambert to supper this coming Saturday
. And he’s going to cook Seven-hour Lamb, and I’m going to make a fresh-fruit salad, and I’m going to be allowed to stay up really late.

  The weather was perfect that Saturday evening, August 21st. They sat out in the warmth of the old walled garden at the back of the farmhouse, and Mrs Lambert and Harriet’s father drank wine, and Harriet drank Coke, and Bran ate Twiglets in the sunshine.

  Almost the first thing that happened was that Mrs Lambert said to Harriet (in the nicest way, with the nicest smile), ‘Harriet, you are to stop calling me Mrs Lambert, d’you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Jessica,’ said Harriet, and they all laughed, comfortably. And the Seven-hour Lamb, with lots of vegetables from the garden, was beautifully tender, and the fresh-fruit salad, with lots of cream, was perfectly delicious, and everybody happily ate too much.

  ‘Time you went to bed, Hat,’ said John Butler at last.

  ‘But Dad,’ said Harriet, ‘you promised I could stay up really late.’

  ‘You already have,’ said her father. ‘It’s gone eleven o’clock.’

  In bed, Harriet lay and thought how strange it was to hear the murmur of voices in the room below, and how nice it was to think that Dad had someone to talk to.

  A little later, she heard the voices outside, below her open window.

  ‘Thank you so much, John, it’s been a perfect evening,’ said one voice.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Jessica,’ said the other voice.

  Then, after a little pause, Harriet heard a car door shut and an engine start. The noise of it fell away as the car went down the hill, and Harriet fell asleep.

  When she woke next morning, there was the hare, sitting beside the bed.

  ‘How did you get here?’ she said.

  ‘Sparrow again,’ said Wiz. ‘I couldn’t be bothered with anything fancy. Just called to see how your supper party went.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Harriet said. ‘You’re worse than Mrs Wisker.’

  ‘I know lots of things that you don’t know I know,’ said Wiz. ‘Like what’s going to happen next Thursday, for example.’

  ‘What is going to happen?’

  ‘A surprise. I told you there’d be surprises.’

  Harriet looked at the calendar hanging on the wall by her bed.

  ‘Next Thursday’s the twenty-sixth,’ she said, but she found she was talking to a sparrow that cheeped at her and flew out of the window.

  Later that morning the phone rang.

  ‘Longhanger Farm,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Oh Harriet, it’s Jessica. Is your father there?’

  ‘No, he’s out in the yard somewhere.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, you can ask him later. The thing is, I’ve got to go up to London to see my publishers this week, and I wondered if you’d like to come with me? We could go and see some of the sights and generally have a day out, if you’d like to.’

  ‘I’d love to, Jessica!’ said Harriet. ‘I’ll ask Dad if I can. What day?’

  ‘Thursday. That’s the twenty-sixth.’

  ‘D’you want to go?’ Harriet’s father said when she asked him.

  ‘Oh yes, please!’

  ‘You like Jessica, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you?’

  John Butler smiled.

  ‘You give her a ring,’ he said, ‘and tell her it’s OK by me. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely day.’

  And they did.

  On the twenty-sixth, Jessica collected Harriet really early in the morning. They drove to the station and got on the train, something Harriet had hardly ever done before. Then, when they reached London, Harriet was taken into the publishers’ offices where they made a fuss of her. And then they saw the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and had a lovely lunch, and went to Madame Tussauds, and, last of all, to the Planetarium where Harriet looked in vain for the planet Pars.

  It’s too far away, she said to herself. They haven’t discovered it yet. I’m the only person who knows about it.

  By the time they arrived back at Longhanger Farm, the afternoon milking was finished and the herd was coming down the trackway, Bluebell at the head, Bran and his master behind.

  They waited until the cows had gone past and then they got out of the car and crossed the lane to join the farmer and lean on the gate, watching the big black-and-white animals fanning out across the sunlit meadow.

  ‘Good day, Hat?’ asked Harriet’s father.

  ‘It was smashing, Daddy,’ said Harriet, and she told him all the things they’d done.

  ‘How about you, Jessica?’ said John Butler. ‘How were things at your publishers?’

  ‘Well, they seem to like my latest story.’

  ‘What’s it about, Jessica?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘A hare. Doing that little picture for you gave me some ideas.’

  ‘Talk of the devil!’ said the farmer, and he pointed out into the field.

  There, they saw, was a hare, leaping round and round in a circle, kicking up its heels.

  ‘I wonder why it’s behaving like that,’ said Jessica.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said John.

  ‘I do,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s joie de vivre.’

  Chapter Nine

  It was the final weekend of Harriet’s summer holidays.

  ‘And of Wiz’s too,’ she said to Breeze as she was mucking out the loose-box, watched by Bran.

  The pony blew through her nostrils and the dog whined softly, as though they knew how Harriet was feeling.

  ‘Life’s never going to be quite the same again without my hare,’ she said. ‘No more magic, no more surprises. He promised to do me a good turn one of these days. I suppose that must have been the trip to London with Jessica. And talk about trips – just think how far he’ll be going on Wednesday night when the moon is full. When I was in the Planetarium, I looked to see which was the furthest away and it was Pluto, but Pars is probably ten times further. I suppose he’ll change into a Partian before he gets into the spacecraft. I wonder where it will land?’

  Later, she walked down the trackway and across the first field to the one beyond where, a mere five weeks ago, she had seen that corn circle in the wheat.

  Now it had been ploughed and worked down and sown with a grass-seed mixture, and already there was a faint tinge of green against the brown earth.

  There was something else brown there too, she could see, just where the corn circle had been, and because it sank as she walked towards it, she knew it was a hare and not just a lump of muck.

  Not until Harriet was almost upon it did the hare spring up and run away, and she bent down and put her hand in the slight hollow of its form, and felt the warmth of it.

  ‘Well, you weren’t Wiz,’ she said, and a voice behind her said, ‘Too true.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harriet to her hare, ‘was that a friend of yours?’

  ‘You could say that,’ replied Wiz.

  ‘I’m afraid I frightened him.’

  ‘Oont,’ said the hare, the only word of the Leporine language that Harriet had ever heard. It meant disapproval, she knew.

  ‘What have I said wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘You didn’t frighten him, you frightened her,’ said Wiz. ‘I’ve tried to tell her that you wouldn’t hurt her, but she has no confidence in humans. Let’s hope her children may grow to be more trusting.’

  ‘Children? She has babies?’

  ‘Her three leverets are in this field. Unlike their mother, they will not move when you approach, for she has told them to keep perfectly still. Each one has been left in a different part of the field and, when you have gone, she will go to each in turn to feed it.’

  ‘Why aren’t they all in a nest together,’ asked Harriet, ‘like baby rabbits would be?’

  ‘Baby rabbits,’ said Wiz, ‘can afford to be born blind and naked and helpless, because they’re safe underground. But hares live above ground, so the leverets stand a better chance of survival if they’re separated. Come, I will show you.�
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  So Harriet followed as Wiz led her in turn to each of the three recently born babies. Like all leverets, they had come into the world with a covering of hair, open-eyed and able to run, but they all lay still as stone as Harriet bent and gently stroked them.

  ‘Three little does,’ said Wiz.

  ‘They’re lovely!’ said Harriet.

  ‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me then?’

  ‘You mean . . .? Oh Wiz! How wonderful! To think that when you’ve gone, your daughters will still be here! Will they be magic?’

  ‘They won’t talk to you, or change into other creatures, if that’s what you mean. But I like to think that maybe they’ll be a little different from the average hare.’

  ‘How shall I know them from other hares, once they’re grown?’

  ‘Because, unlike other hares, they will never run away from you. I am going to teach them that right away, now that they’ve seen you. They will run from any other human being, or from any enemy like a dog or fox. But if, in time to come, you chance upon a hare that remains lying in its form and allows you to stroke it, that will be one of my daughters.’

  ‘That will be brilliant!’ said Harriet. They’ll always remind me of you, Wiz, she thought as she walked home. Not that I could ever forget you.

  Jessica Lambert came that afternoon for eggs, and Harriet said to her suddenly, ‘Do you believe in magic?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ said Jessica. ‘Anyone with any sense does.’

  You sound just like Mrs Wisker, Harriet thought.

  ‘Can animals be magical?’ she said.

  ‘Some can,’ said Jessica. ‘Hares have always been thought to be beasts of magic.’

  That’s exactly what Wiz said, thought Harriet.

  ‘Dad shot one when he was combining,’ she said.

  Jessica sighed.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I wish he wouldn’t shoot them, really.’

  And now, thought Harriet, you sound like me.

  ‘Couldn’t you ask him not to?’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘He’d take more notice of you.’

  ‘Why don’t we both ask him?’

  So they did.

  ‘What’s all this?’ John Butler said. ‘An anti-bloodsports deputation?’