The Fancy Read Free

foreman, who had already had his tea in peace in his office.
    There was a lot to be said for Thursdays. Even if it did bring his family-in-law, it also brought
Backyard Breeding, The Weekly Journal for Fanciers.
Whether your fancy were rabbits, cats, chickens, guinea pigs or chocolate-coloured mice,
Backyard Breeding
was your bible, and probably your chief medium for buying and selling. The four middle pages were devoted to rabbits and a section of this to Edward’s own breed, the Flemish Giant. “Flemish Footnotes” was compiled by a genius called “Giganta”, better-known to the Fancy as Allan Colley, the well-known judge, who knew every known thing about Flemishes, and a few things that no one else knew. Edward thought that if he could ever meet Allan Colley his life would be fulfilled.
    He was so absorbed in “Let Selective Breeding be Your Motto”, that his mouth was often open for seconds at a time with the bread and sausage poised in front of it. Then he read the Show Reports and Club News ; he and Dick Bennett from the Final Assembly Shop thought of starting a Domestic Club in Collis Park. Finishing the pickled cucumber by itself, he had an idea. He would put a notice up about it in the Lipmanns’ glass case,
    The cucumber was very salty and he got up to fill the teapot with hot water. The potatoes would be done by the time he’d had his second cup. He had already looked at the Readers’ Letters : “The Fancy’s Forum”, in case they had put in his note about Snuffles. One day they might print something of his. He would write another letter next week about damp-proof hutches. That advertisement was still in, for the dark steel doe he wanted : “In kindle, square as a brick. Inspection a a pleasure to Flemishites, No obligation.” Shocking pries they wanted, but now that he had got this new job, perhaps he might.
    He lit a cigarette and put his tea things in the sink, then taking the Lipmanns’ sack tomorrow night.”wdr and the potatoes in a bowl, he went out into the cooling evening.
    Most people who lived in Church Avenue grew vegetables in the rectangle of back garden that ran down to “the Ponds”, the flooded gravel pits where children played in daily peril of drowning. But in the Ledwards’ back garden there was no room for vegetables. All round the fence stood an uneven collection of dwellings, hardly any of which had started life as hutches. Edward had made them out of packing cases and odd bits of wood and wire netting. Queenie rested tired but confident in one of the hencoops given to Edward by the Time Clerk at the factory when all his chickens had died of Coccidiosis and he had neither the heart nor the capital to start again. On the trodden earth in the
middle
of the garden, two families of adolescents crowded and bounced in low wire netting runs. Edward was going to sell the eldest family next week. He had had a very good offer through
Backyard Breeding.
Now that the rabbits were beginning to pay, Connie didn’t talk so much about the price of vegetables in the shops, nor about “that ignorant Dick Bennett” who had originally roused Edward’s enthusiasm and had given him his first doe.
    Humming tunelessly, Edward went down the hutches. When they saw him coming, all the rabbits except Queenie stood on their hind legs with their soft pale bellies against the wire. The adolescent families kicked and plunged and piled themselves up at the end of the runs. Edward felt like a God; his sack was Cornucopia. Putting the potatoes down to cool, he went from hutch to hutch, squatting down for a word with each rabbit as he pushed the cabbage through the wire. When he was a boy, he had read a book about a man who discovered how to speak the language of animals, and for years it was his dream that this would happen to him. He would growl at strange dogs and make snuffling and whinnying noises at horses in the street when no one was looking, in the hope of hitting on the secret. Half ashamed of