‘I’ll do it.’ Dad’s shorter than George by several inches, but manages to make a faithful marking on the wall. ‘You’re the tallest of all of us, and I bet you’ve still got some growing to do,’ he muses.
‘Come on,’ I say to George and Theo, nodding towards the door.
‘Can you bring the rabbits in?’ Mum calls after us as we head outside.
‘Okay.’
Theo is more vocal than George was at the sight of our absolutely enormous, white, ball-shaped bunnies. George was struck dumb, but Theo exclaims, ‘What the fuck?’ and stares with disbelief as George steps over the low fence and scoops one off the grass.
‘Who’s this?’ George asks me, tickling her behind her long pink ears.
‘Sooty,’ I reply.
He cocks an eyebrow at me.
‘Jamie was going through an ironic phase,’ I tell him.
‘Can I pick one up?’ Theo asks.
‘Go for it. They’re used to being handled.’
He climbs into the pen and reaches for the nearest. ‘Whoa! It’s heavier than I thought it would be.’
‘She,’ I correct him. ‘That’s Ewok.’
‘Star Wars phase?’ George asks me.
‘No “phase” about it,’ I retort. ‘That one’s Wookie.’ I point out another rabbit.
He narrows his eyes at me. ‘Are you named after Princess Leia?’
I laugh. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. My dad has a thing for her – you can see it on his face when we watch the movies – but my name is pronounced Lee-ah, not Lay-ah.’
‘Why do you have so many?’ Theo asks, and I get the impression he’s only half listening to us.
I give him a brief overview of the fleece farm as we carry the rabbits back inside and secure them in their cages.
Angora rabbits are primarily bred for their wool, which is extremely fine and softer than cashmere. Ours are Giant Angoras – glossy white and round in shape with striking pink ears and eyes. They’re so fluffy that they look like big balls of cotton. It’s hard to believe that they’re real, let alone useful.
But although these rabbits do produce fleece for the farm, the main purpose of our bunnies is less widely known. My parents bought these animals not so much for their fur but for their therapeutic value. It wasn’t until Jamie came to live with us that I realised. We only had two of them then as opposed to the six we have now, but I remember how much they would calm him after he’d had a meltdown. Jamie could go from yelling and screaming to quietly grooming the rabbits in less than twenty minutes.
It’s quite hard to feel angry when you have a surprisingly hefty fluffball sitting on your knee – I know, because grooming them chills me out too.
Every silky strand they shed when being brushed or plucked is kept and put aside, ready to be carded and spun. The spinning itself – whether it’s angora wool or alpaca fleece – is also therapeutic. There’s something about the gentle rhythm of the wheel that seems to quiet busy minds.
It doesn’t always work, though. The only child my parents have ever had to move on was a twelve-year-old boy named Connor who squeezed one of the rabbits so tightly that she had to be put down. Everyone has a threshold, and causing harm to the animals is the one thing that will push my parents over theirs. But I know that their failure to help Connor will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
‘Do they need brushing now?’ Theo asks as we’re making our second and final trip.
‘Always. You want a turn?’
He shrugs. ‘Sure.’
‘Let’s take these two to the Yarn Barn.’
‘Er, I might go and change,’ George says, glancing down at his black blazer.
‘Okay, see you in a bit.’
As George sets off across the courtyard towards the kitchen door, Theo follows me into the adjacent barn. It’s much bigger than the Bunny Barn – a long rectangular space full of tables, drying racks and various equipment, from washing machines to spinning wheels.
Right now, it’s relatively clean and tidy, with white-painted walls and a well-swept light-grey linoleum floor, but in the weeks and months to come, practically every surface will be covered with alpaca fleece.
We send a lot of our fibre away to be processed, and keep some of it here at the farm. It has to be cleaned and carded and spun into yarn before it can be used, and each of these techniques takes time.
We go to an empty table and I pass Theo a brush and an apron, settling Annie – Annie the Angora; no story there – before me on the table while I tie up my apron. Theo drapes his apron over the back of his chair instead of putting it on, an act he will soon come to regret.
‘You can brush or pluck.’ Grabbing a handful of oats from a container on the table, I sprinkle some in front of Annie and Wookie and they tuck in, sitting there quite contentedly.
‘Doesn’t plucking hurt them?’ he asks apprehensively as he watches me tug gently on Annie’s fur. A tuft comes away easily.
‘Not at all. They moult anyway, and if they take in too much hair while grooming themselves, they might get wool block.’ I place the tuft in my left hand and pull out another, laying it with the first in a long strip.
‘What’s wool block?’
‘It’s when they swallow so much hair that it makes a hairball. Rabbits can’t vomit them up like cats can, so it can be fatal. Start at the top, around her neck, so you know where you’ve been.’
Theo falls quiet as he gets to work.
‘This is actually quite relaxing,’ he says after a while.
I smile at him. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘If my masters could see me now…’ he adds darkly.
‘Why did you leave boarding school?’ I finally ask the question that’s been on my mind.
‘I didn’t leave.’ He pauses. ‘I was expelled.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘Because I was naughty.’ He says this in a low voice, exaggerating the last word to make it sound strangely sexy. ‘Disobedience, smoking, vandalism,’ he continues. ‘And there might’ve been drugs involved.’
Ah. Okaaaay… ‘Why didn’t you go to another boarding school?’
He smiles, but the humour doesn’t reach his eyes. ‘That was my third. Dear old Daddy had had enough. He told me I could take my education or leave it, but he wouldn’t pay another penny either way. It’s not like I matter to him. Acton will inherit. I’m just the spare.’
He says all this flippantly, but it clearly bothers him.
‘What do we do with it now?’ He shows me the hair he’s collected.
‘Now it has to be carded.’ I pick up two curved brushes that are covered with small metal tines. Laying the hair across the top of one brush, I drag the other over it repeatedly until all of the hair is collected by the second brush. ‘You’re brushing the hair into fine, straight layers so they can be spun more easily,’ I explain as I repeat the process. ‘These are hand carders, but that machine does the same job.’ I nod at the drum carder on the table next to us, which consists of two round drums, pressed up against each other and covered with tines.
‘Are you guys still at it?’ George asks from the doorway.