Harriet's Hare Read online

  ‘No,’ said Jessica. ‘We’re not trying to stop you potting the rabbits and pigeons that damage your crops. We’re just asking you not to shoot hares again.’

  ‘Ever,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ said Jessica, ‘we both happen to be rather fond of hares.’

  ‘I’m fond of hare too!’

  ‘To eat, he means!’ cried Harriet, close to tears. ‘Please, Dad, say you won’t!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said her father. ‘I hereby solemnly promise that I will never again shoot a hare on Longhanger Farm. Will that do?’

  ‘Yes,’ they said. ‘That will do.’

  ‘And come and have Sunday lunch with me, both of you,’ said Jessica. ‘I’ll do you roast beef and all the trimmings.’

  ‘It seems funny,’ said Harriet to her father when her first customer had driven away, ‘to be still making Jessica pay for her eggs. I mean, you ought to give your friends things, not make them pay.’

  ‘Maybe she won’t be buying them for much longer,’ Harriet’s father said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t know . . . she might be moving house.’

  ‘Oh, I hope not!’ said Harriet.

  And I hope so, said her father, but he said it to himself.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Penny for your thoughts, Harriet,’ said Jessica at the end of Sunday lunch.

  Harriet had been quiet throughout the meal, leaving the grown-ups to do the talking.

  ‘She’s miles away somewhere,’ her father said.

  Soon, thought Harriet, my hare will be millions of miles away. He’s only got three more days of his holidays left.

  ‘Jessica,’ she said. ‘Does your hare story have a happy ending?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jessica. ‘I like happy endings.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Harriet’s father, ‘so let me give you a hand with the washing-up and that’ll be a happy ending to a lovely lunch.’

  ‘Can I help?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Actually,’ said her father quickly, ‘I was just going to ask you to do something for me, Hattie. Could you go on ahead and just check on old Buttercup? She’s due to calve any time now and I forgot to have a look at her as we drove down here. I shan’t be long. I’ll probably catch you up before you reach home.’

  ‘OK,’ said Harriet.

  Funny, she thought as she walked through the village and turned into the lane. He could just as easily have looked at Buttercup himself on the way back.

  She went into the cow pasture and walked around the herd. Several cows were lying down, comfortably cudding, Buttercup amongst them.

  ‘She doesn’t look as though she has any immediate plans for calving,’ said a familiar voice, and there was Wiz, hopping towards her.

  He knows everything about everything, thought Harriet as she squatted down to stroke her hare.

  ‘I named you well,’ she said. ‘You’re a wizard.’

  ‘And you’re a very special girl, Harriet,’ said the hare, ‘and it’s nice to think that I’m going to do you that good turn I promised.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t done it yet? I thought it was the London trip. Or perhaps teaching your daughters to trust me.’

  ‘No. The really big surprise that I have arranged for you is actually beginning to happen at this very minute, as we speak.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Harriet.

  ‘You will,’ said Wiz, ‘when the moon is full.’

  ‘Do you mean that the surprise is that you’re not going yet after all? You’re going to stay longer?’

  ‘No, I’m going all right. By the time you understand what I’m talking about, I’ll be gone.’

  ‘But then I shan’t be able to thank you for whatever it is.’

  ‘I don’t need thanks, Harriet. It is I who am grateful to you for making my holiday on Earth such fun. All I ask you to do is to be kind to my daughters, to all hares, to all animals, for the rest of your long life.’

  ‘I will, I will!’ said Harriet.

  She looked earnestly into the hare’s large brown eyes.

  ‘Are you telling me that I’m going to live to be very old?’ she asked.

  ‘Certainly,’ replied Wiz. ‘You will see a thousand full moons in your time.’

  Harriet smiled happily.

  ‘Oh, Wiz!’ she said. ‘I believe every word you say.’

  She got to her feet and watched the hare lolloping slowly away across the pasture. Then she shouted after him: ‘I suppose you know exactly when old Buttercup here is going to calve?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the hare. ‘Tuesday morning. Ten o’clock. Heifer calf,’ and off he went.

  Harriet was just turning into the trackway when she heard the Land Rover coming along the lane. Her father stopped. What’s he looking so pleased about? she thought.

  ‘Buttercup all right?’ he asked as she got in.

  ‘Oh yes, she’s not doing anything. I should say she’ll calve about the middle of Tuesday morning.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said her father. ‘Perhaps you’d tell me the exact time, Miss Clever Clogs?’

  ‘Ten o’clock. And she’ll have a heifer calf.’

  John Butler laughed.

  ‘Well, I hope she does,’ he said. ‘She’s a good milker, old Buttercup, but she’s always had bull calves. I’d like a daughter of hers.’

  Harriet thought of Wiz’s children, as the Land Rover rattled up the trackway. He seemed pleased to have daughters.

  ‘When I was born,’ she said, ‘were you glad I was a girl, Dad?’

  ‘Very glad,’ said her father. ‘And so was your mother.’

  She didn’t have a very long life, thought Harriet, but it seems that I’m going to. I suppose Wiz could tell me all sorts of things that are going to happen to me if I asked, but I don’t want to know. All I want for now is just to be here on Longhanger Farm with my dad.

  She looked at his strong hand on the steering-wheel and put hers on top of it.

  ‘Are you happy, Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘Very happy, Hat,’ he said. ‘Why do you ask? Don’t tell me you can predict my future as well as Buttercup’s?’

  He laughed again.

  ‘A heifer calf at exactly ten o’clock on Tuesday morning!’ he said. ‘Pigs might fly!’

  The next day – Monday, August 30th – Harriet was clearing up the breakfast things when Mrs Wisker arrived.

  ‘Puffed I am,’ she said, ‘pushin’ that old bike up the hill. But then ’tis lovely freewheelin’ down again. I just hope it don’t come on to rain. We shall get some sure enough, the cows is all lyin’ down and there was a red sky this mornin’ and the swallows is all flyin’ low. Oh, and I tell you what, duck – I seen that old hare again just now as I was comin’ up. Sittin’ up bold as brass it was.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’ said Harriet.

  Mrs Wisker gave her usual ear-splitting shriek of laughter.

  ‘Say anything?’ she cried. ‘Oh you’re a scream, you are, duck!’

  It’s you that’s the scream, thought Harriet.

  ‘Is the hare still there?’ she asked.

  ‘Far as I know,’ said Mrs Wisker. ‘You want to tell your dad to get his gun – he gave me a lovely hare, harvest time.’

  When Harriet walked down the trackway, she found Wiz feeding quietly beside the fence.

  ‘Did you want me?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the hare. ‘Just to give you a weather warning. Were you thinking of going riding today?’

  ‘Yes, I was. I thought I’d ride up to the downs this morning and we could have a race. But don’t be a hedgehog this time.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ said the hare, ‘unless you want to risk being struck by lightning. There’s going to be a humdinger of a thunderstorm in a couple of hours time. Come tomorrow morning instead. I’ll look out for you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Harriet. ‘But not till the afternoon. I want to see
Dad’s face when Buttercup’s calf arrives.’

  Even as the hare loped off, Harriet heard a rumble of thunder in the far distance, and by the time Mrs Wisker had finished her cleaning and was ready to go home, the storm was banging and crashing right overhead, with lightning to match.

  ‘I’m not goin’ in that,’ said Mrs Wisker. ‘The old bike might get struck, and then it wouldn’t only be my hubby as was late lamented, ‘twould be me too,’ and she waited an extra hour, flicking a duster about, until the storm had passed.

  On the following morning, the last day of August, Harriet’s father came in for breakfast after the morning milking and said, ‘I’m beginning to wonder if you’re going to be right.’

  ‘What about, Dad?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Old Buttercup’s thinking about calving. I left her out in the pasture when I brought the rest in.’

  ‘I’ll meet you down there, ten o’clock sharp,’ said Harriet.

  And at ten o’clock sharp, as father and daughter stood and watched, Buttercup dropped a fine heifer calf.

  ‘Dad was really amazed!’ shouted Harriet that afternoon, as Breeze galloped across the downland turf, the hare running easily alongside.

  ‘Your turn next!’ cried Wiz, and he sprinted ahead, to win the race easily.

  ‘What did you mean?’ asked Harriet, when she had slipped off the puffing pony. ‘My turn next?’

  ‘To be amazed,’ said Wiz, and no matter how she questioned him, he would say no more.

  ‘I cannot understand,’ said Harriet’s father when he came to say good-night at the end of the day, ‘how you were so sure about that calving. How did you know?’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Dad,’ said Harriet, and no matter how he questioned her, she would say no more, except that at last she said, ‘Rabbits!’

  It was their custom – something taught to John Butler as a boy and to his father before him – that on the last day of each month, the last word you spoke before going to sleep was ‘Rabbits!’ and that when you woke next morning on the first of the new month, the first word you uttered was ‘Hares!’ To do this was to ensure good luck.

  So Harriet’s father duly replied, ‘Rabbits!’ and kissed her and went downstairs.

  ‘Hares!’ said Harriet loudly, the moment she woke on Wednesday, September 1st, and then her spirits sank like a stone as she remembered.

  Tonight the moon was at the full.

  Tonight she was to lose her hare.

  Chapter Eleven

  Harriet dressed and went to let out her hens and to feed the calves. As usual, she looked in through the door of the milking-parlour and called, ‘Morning, Daddy.’

  ‘Hares!’ said her father. ‘You’re meant to say, Hares!’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right then.’

  No, it’s not all right, said Harriet to herself. It’s supposed to bring good luck but how could it when Wiz was going? Would she even set eyes on him again before he went?

  All morning she wandered about the farm hoping to see her hare, but there was no sign of him. And when in the afternoon she rode over the downs, calling his name, there was no answer except the bleating of sheep, the sad cries of lapwings, and the sigh of the wind.

  But when, in the evening, Harriet went out into the kitchen garden to pick the last of the scarlet runners, she found that someone else had got there first.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ said the hare, standing on his hind legs to pull down a bean pod, ‘but I couldn’t resist a last snack.’

  ‘Don’t you have vegetables on Pars?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Heavens, no! We live on synthetic, additive-free, low-cholesterol pills,’ said Wiz. ‘I shall miss being a hare.’

  ‘I shall miss you,’ said Harriet, ‘dreadfully.’

  Wiz bit through the bean pod with his two large front teeth and began to chew, moving his lower jaw from side to side.

  ‘Very suitable for hares, these beans,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re both runners.’

  Harriet stood watching, without saying anything.

  ‘It was supposed to be a joke,’ said Wiz.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Harriet. ‘I don’t feel like laughing.’

  ‘Oont,’ said the hare. He swallowed his mouthful and looked directly up at her. ‘Listen to me, Harriet,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t feel sad. Look at it from my point of view. I’m an alien on a strange planet, and though I’ve had a lovely time, I’m looking forward to going home, to Pars, to my friends. Of course I shall miss you, but I’m happy to be going and you must be happy for me. By this time tomorrow you will be a very happy girl indeed, let me tell you. You told me that you believed every word I said. Believe me now.’

  ‘All right,’ said Harriet. She bent and stroked his tawny back.

  ‘Stroke my children when you come upon them,’ said the hare, ‘and think of me.’

  ‘I will, Wiz,’ said Harriet. ‘But I don’t want to say goodbye.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ said the hare, and with one easy bound he leaped over the garden wall and was gone.

  At the end of that first day of September, Harriet stood at her bedroom window, looking down into the valley below and hoping perhaps for one last glimpse of her hare, but there was no sign of him.

  Already the full moon was sailing in the darkening sky, and Harriet stared up at it, thinking as she would now always think that that business of the Man in the Moon was rubbish. What was on the great round disc was, without a doubt, the outline of a hare.

  Her father came in to say good-night.

  ‘You haven’t sold out of eggs, have you, Hat?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Might need an extra one for breakfast tomorrow.’

  Greedy old Dad, Harriet thought, he never usually has two.

  The night was a still one, and for some long time Harriet lay awake, straining her ears for any unusual sound. When she did at last fall asleep, she slept lightly, so that a distant noise woke her.

  It was a rushing, tearing, swishing noise – just like the sound a rocket makes on Guy Fawkes Night, but this time it did not come from the valley below but from the opposite direction, far away, right up at the top of Longhanger Farm, up on the downs.

  Harriet looked at her watch. It was midnight, the witching hour.

  ‘Be happy for me,’ he had said, she thought, so I must be, and she lay down again and shut her eyes.

  When she opened them again it was to find that she had slept late. She went to the window and saw that her father had finished the morning milking, that the herd was already out at pasture, and that a car was coming up the trackway.

  Jessica’s car, thought Harriet. She must be out of eggs. And Harriet dressed quickly and ran downstairs.

  Her father was already in the kitchen.

  ‘Lay an extra place, will you, Hattie, please?’ he called. ‘Jessica’s coming to breakfast,’ and with that there was a knock on the front door.

  ‘How d’you like your boiled egg, Jessica?’ Harriet’s father shouted from the kitchen.

  ‘Sort of middling, please, John. Softish yolk, firmish white, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘That’s how we like ours,’ said Harriet.

  What’s Jessica doing here for breakfast? she thought. I mean, I’m glad she’s here, I like her. Come to think of it I like her very much indeed. But why breakfast?

  Not until they had finished eating did Jessica say, ‘You’re wondering why I’m here so early in the day, aren’t you, Harriet? It’s because I’ve got some news to tell you and I couldn’t wait any longer.’

  ‘Oh no!’ cried Harriet. ‘You’re moving! Dad said you might be moving house.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Not for some while yet, but then I shall sell the old turnpike cottage.’

  ‘Where are you going to live then?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘At Longhanger Farm,’ said her fath
er.

  Harriet looked blank. Her mind was still full of thoughts of Wiz, speeding away on his long long journey to Pars, and she could not grasp what was being said.

  ‘Last Sunday,’ said Jessica, ‘after lunch when your father asked you to go and have a look at Buttercup, it was because he wanted to ask me something.’

  ‘Over the washing-up,’ said John Butler. ‘Dead romantic.’

  ‘He asked me to marry him, Harriet,’ said Jessica Lambert, ‘and I said, “Yes, but only if Harriet approves.”’

  Suddenly everything was blindingly clear to Harriet.

  It was all Wiz’s doing!

  This was the good turn he’d promised. This was the really big surprise. He had arranged the whole thing, from the moment when he’d sat in the lane and caused Jessica to go in the ditch, so that Dad could rescue her.

  ‘Tomorrow you will be a very happy girl indeed,’ he had said yesterday. In fact, Harriet was so delighted that at first she could not speak. She jumped up from the table and dashed round to Jessica and gave her an enormous hug, and then she gave her father another one.

  At last she said, ‘It’s like a fairy-tale.’

  Jessica laughed.

  ‘There’s often a wicked stepmother in a fairy-tale,’ she said, ‘but I’ll try very hard to be a good one. And I’ll start by letting you off the washing-up, Harriet. Or can I call you Hattie too, now?’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ said Harriet happily.

  And she sat on by herself at the breakfast table after they had cleared it, and listened to the sounds of talk and laughter coming from the kitchen, and thought how brilliant it was going to be for both of them. For Jessica, after that awful first husband who called her ‘Jess’ like a sheepdog and knocked her about, and for Dad, after almost six long, lonely years.

  She stared up at the portrait hanging on the wall.

  To Jessica, to her father, to Mrs Wisker or anyone else, it was just a very good likeness of a hare.

  But to her and her alone, it was a portrait of a wizard – of a beast of magic who, for a thousand full moons to come, would remain, as he had always been, Harriet’s hare.

  THE END