There was a field with chalky pits in it and ripening blackberries and wastes of gorse and bracken. The curious smell of the bracken rose faint but penetrating, earthy and yet unreal, disturbing.
She was staring in horror at a dead rabbit lying in the path. It was stretched on its side with its tiny frail-boned paws laid out quiet, and the tender secret white fur of its underneath half revealed. One of them—which?—she could never remember—said:
‘Well, I never thought I’d touch it.’
It was like hearing a person speak in a bad dream.
‘How did you do it?’ said Roddy’s voice.
‘Well, it was sitting, and I crept up and chucked a stone to startle it up, not meaning to hurt it. But I must have hit it plumb behind the ear,—I killed it outright anyway. It was an absolute fluke. I couldn’t do it again if I tried all my life.’
‘Hum,’ said Roddy. ‘Funny thing.’
He stood with his hands in his pockets looking down at the corpse, making his face a mask. The sun wavered and darkened. The surface of the bracken shone with a metallic light, the grass was lurid, the trees hissed. Judith struggled in a nightmare.
‘Well, what shall I do with it?’ said someone.
‘I’ll see to it,’ said Roddy.