Beneath the heavy quilt Jon stared into the darkness of the small bedroom. Within the house only the ticking of the marble clock on the mantelpiece punctured the silence. Outside the night was alive with disembodied sounds ‑ an owl screeched in the orchard; wind moved through the branches of the big elm; a distant locomotive whistled a falling note. Jon half closed his eyes and superimposed a fox's white and russet mask on the misty darkness, the nose quivering, the canines bared. It snarled, a throaty gurgle, somehow jagged and mechanical. Like the throttling engine of a tank, he thought. He sought the source of the image and found it in a memory of a Pathe newsreel sequence of Panzer tanks in the desert. Was his father there now? Or was he in France, following the Americans and the Free French on the trail of fleeing Nazis? Or was he lying in broken in a ditch, arms and legs askew? The fox‑mask dissolved; there was his father's face, barely remembered, unmarked, the eyes veiled like the stone cataracts on the war memorial statues in town. Jon sat up in bed, his throat dry. He reached for his glass of water and took a sip. The familiar fluted sides of the glass brought him back to a tactile world of known objects. He fingered the quilt, locating with his thumb the worn patch from which you could pull goose down. Breathing deeply, he lay back and thought of the rabbits. He wondered if , even now, they were grazing on the bank, safe from the slow, gliding fox.
Sitting at the kitchen table Jon watched his Granny making jam. He breathed in the sticky fragrance, mixed with the lingering scent of a fried breakfast. If he leaned back in his chair, he could smell the engine oil on his Granddad's overalls hanging by the door waiting to be washed. Directly above, a huge bluebottle buzzed and banged inside the glass‑bead fringes of the kitchen lightshade. Life was all sensation; cradled in the cage of the old smoker's bow chair, Jon felt perfectly attuned to the slow, resonant tide of house, garden, fields and woodland. Dream and reality merged once more; he was master of his familiar domain once more.
There was a sharp rap at the door and Granny peered through the kitchen window. She smiled and nodded the visitor in. It was George Sargent, the gangling seventeen‑year‑old from next door. He clumped in after knocking the mud from the soles of his studded hoots. With one hand he pulled off his cap and with the other he lifted a basket of brown eggs onto the kitchen table.
"Mum thought you might like these, Mrs Randall", he said, winking at Jon.
"That's kind of her,” Granny said. “I've done your mending; you'll find it in the basket, George". George leaned around the sitting; room door and pulled a pair of old moleskin trousers from Granny's wickerwork sewing basket. He tested the expertly sewn patch on the seat.
"'Them Gyppoes is comin' round, Mrs Randall", he said, holding the trousers before him as if considering a purchase. "They're up at Mrs Walls' right now. It's two fellers with a big bag. I reckon they been at McNair's birds again".
Granny smiled as she put the eggs away.
"I shouldn't worry, George", she said softly. "I'm sure they've left plenty in the woods for you".
George grinned delightedly and ducked his head. He tucked the trousers under his arm ands made for the door.
"Now, Mrs Randall!", he chortled, his gawky frame wrapped around the doorjamb. "Thanks for the mending. My mum says she doesn't know what she'd do without your old Singer".
Jon sat upright in the old chair, awaiting the arrival of the Gypsies. He gripped the arms, strangely tense, as if ready to he called to account in some way. Granny tipped some coins out of a broken milk jug and stacked them of the windowsill.
"It'll be the Eastwood boys", she said. She turned to face Jon, folding her arms and leaning against the sink. "I've known the Eastwoods since I was a young married and just moved here. Old Mother Eastwood used to call when my Mum and Dad were alive. She's still going strong at 99, they do say".
"Did you actually know them, Granny?" asked Jon eagerly. "I mean, did you play with them? Or go to see them in the woods?"
"Lord, no. They kept to their ways and we kept to ours. They used to live in tents in them days, like Redskins. I liked old Mother Eastwood, though I couldn't abide them gels and the boys were little savages".
Two heavy knocks on the door made Jon start. He gripped the arms of the chair and drew his legs beneath it, feeling for the crossbar with his heels. Granny opened the door to two Gypsies, a tall youth with a battered hat jammed on the back of his head and Jon's companion of the previous clay. Jon smiled nervously and half raised a hand in greeting. The boy stared through him, his face impassive. The young man raised a greasy bag and shook it.
"Got something here for your dinners", he grinned brilliantly. "And I'm only asking you half a crown. Five bob in the butchers, Missus''. He jiggled the bag again.
"What've you got, then?" Granny asked, motioning him to deposit the contents on the table.
“Four fresh shooshies, killed yesterday”, he announced. He held the neck of the bag open and four grey rabbits tumbled onto the table, their limbs entwined. Jon recoiled and slid back in the chair. He gaped at the boy standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets. Granny prodded the dead animals. She lifted one up by the ears and turned it round. The legs hung down, absurdly long and graceful. She examined it for shotgun damage, raising it to the light, fingering a small bloody patch behind its ear. Without a word she dumped the rabbit on the table, gathered up the coins from the windowsill and, adding a florin from her purse, she handed them to the young man. He shook them in his closed fist as if valuing them by weight alone, touched his hat brim ironically, nodded to the boy and stepped out through the doorway.
When Jon came back into the kitchen from the sitting room. Through whose window he had gazed over the hillside cornfield for a long hour, Granny was hanging the rabbits up by their trussed feet in the larder.
“One thing your Granddad likes is rabbit pie”, she wheezed, reaching up high. “And one thing he hates is rationing, so we’ve done all right by those Eastwood boys”.
The rabbits hung motionless, free of bloodstains. Silver tipped the luxuriant fur on their flanks and backs. The inside of each ear was pink and white. Jon stared at their eyes, a pulse eating in his head. They were glazed, covered by the thin grey cataracts of recent death.
