The Rats (4 page)

When war broke out, he enlisted in the army despite her protests. Although she was really proud of him and his action, she dreaded their being apart, for although she knew no other man could satiate her as he did, and no other man could love her as he did, she wondered if she would be strong enough to resist seeking sexual satisfaction elsewhere. Timothy left and within four days she received a letter from him asking her to marry him as soon as he got leave. Then she knew she could wait.

But Timothy died three weeks later, crushed by a tank one night while out on manoeuvres. Nobody knew how it had happened; they had just found his body the next morning, the whole of his magnificent torso squashed flat in a field half a mile away from his unit. Nobody knew how he got there or why he was there, but he’d gone on record as being one of the army’s first war casualties. Weeks later, one of his friends from basic training had come to see Mary and told her that Timothy had smuggled a flask of whisky out with him to ‘keep out the terrible cold’ and had wandered off on his own that night. The soldier thought the army had found the smashed bottle with the body and had tried to cover up the matter for both Timothy’s sake and the army’s.

It was then that Mary had lost faith in God. To give her so much and then to obliterate it with one cruel stroke was too much for her simple mind to take. She began to hate God almost as much as she had once loved him. They caught her on her third attempt to burn down a Catholic church. She was put into an asylum but released after two months as a model patient. On her second day of freedom she had cost a priest the hearing on his left side when she’d thrust a knife into his ear through the wooden mesh-work of a confessional. She was declared insane and sent back to the asylum. The war was over by the time she was released and she came back into a world that was too busy licking its own wounds to worry about hers.

Her decline was inevitable. She still craved for satisfaction and sought it in the only way possible, but this time she did it as a living. She began to drink heavily and soon the many men began to bore her. None could live up to her Timothy.

She began to mock her clients in their futile attempts to arouse her, and laughed at their pathetic little organs. One night, a burly man, proud of his manhood broke her nose when she derided him. She began losing money, for some men refused to pay her after her demoralising sarcasm, but still she could not refrain from her derisive comments on their performance in bed. She became known to the police as a harasser of priests; she would follow a priest for miles, either cursing him or offering him her body, until the poor man had no alternative but to go into the nearest police station.

She was put away again and again but she always behaved like a model patient and was soon released.

She finally contracted gonorrhoea, and in the early stages, when she knew she had it, she took great delight in passing it on to the men she slept with. She soon found herself out on the street when her landlord fell victim to her ridicule and her disease. Her looks had faded, her appearance was shabby, her mind failed to grasp reality any more. She went to live with a group of Pakistani immigrants in Brick Lane and stayed there for several years, being used by all the men either collectively or singly, but eventually they tired of her and threw her out.

She went back one night, months later, and poured paraffin through the grating into the basement of their dilapidated house, set a whole box of matches alight and threw it in.

One fireman and five of the Pakistanis died in the fire that burnt the house to the ground, but nobody suspected Mary of having caused it.

She was found one day, half-dead, on a bomb-site. It took months of hospital treatment to cure her of all her ailments and where the doctors left off the Salvation Army took over. They found her a place to live, bought her new clothes and got her a job in a laundry- they felt sure they could save her from herself.

And they almost did. She worked hard, her maltreated body began to regain some of its former vigour, her mind closed another door, this time to memories. But as she grew healthier, so her body began to demand gratification. Un- fortunately, the only personal contact she had with men now was the Salvation Army officer who visited her twice a week at her basement flat. When she tried to seduce him he made the mistake of calling her to look to God. Suddenly, she thought of the joy that had been snatched away by Him after all her devotion to His church. When she’d found her reward, her Timothy, He had taken it away, even his servants, the priests, had tried to prevent her from finding this happiness, and now this other man of God, this so-called ‘soldier’ of God was trying to deny her, hiding behind Him, using His name, reminding her of His treachery.

The Salvation Army officer fled when her hysterical ravings grew into physical violence. Mary left the flat and roamed the streets offering her body to every man she came across, abusing and cursing them as they refused, some jeering, most frightened by her lunatic ranting. She finally had to find her solace in a bottle of Johnny Walker, bought with her meagre savings from her job in the laundry.

That night an ambulance was called to a public convenience at the Angel, Islington, where the attendant had found a woman lying unconscious in one of the cubicles.

She had thought the woman was just drunk at first, the smell of alcohol was overpowering, but then she’d noticed the blood seeping from between the woman’s legs. It took a doctor two hours to remove all the fragments of glass from Mary’s vagina. She’d sought consolation from the whisky bottle in more than one way.

Mary Kelly looked around at her five companions. Her ravaged face contorted with contempt for them.

Dirty, dried- up old men. Not one of them a real man. Not one would pass their bottle around. Well, tonight she had her own bottle, and it wasn’t meths. It was good, Scotch. It had only taken three days to get enough money to buy the half-bottle. And it had been easy money to get for she’d gone to the West End, to the cinema and theatre queues and just stood in front of people, staring at their faces, one hand outstretched ready to receive money, the other hand scratching. Scratching her hair, her arm-pits, her breasts–it was when her hand began travelling towards her crotch that they usually coughed up.

So here she was amongst the grave-stones and the rubble of the bombed church. It had taken years of wretchedness, torments to both mind and body to bring her to this point.

But she was amongst her own kind, crushed by life itself.

She unscrewed the top and raised the bottle to her lips with a wavering hand.

‘What’s that you’re drinking, Mary?’ came a voice from the darkness.

‘Fuck off.’ Mary knew this would happen, that the others would see her booze and beg for some, just a little drop, one swig, but she couldn’t resist the impulse to come here tonight and gloat; to make men plead with her. She knew that they’d even make love to her for just a drop then she could mock them even more. The old men would forget her filth and she’d forget theirs, and they’d desperately try to get a hard-on with their ridiculously wasted pricks so they could fuck her and earn their drink. But they’d never managed it, and she would just laugh and enjoy the misery on their loathsome faces.

‘Ah, come on, Mary, what’s that you’re drinking?’ A figure crawled forward towards her.

‘None of your business, scum,’ Mary said, her voice still heavy with Irish, after so many years.

Other heads lifted themselves from their stupor and turned towards her. The figure came nearer. Two rheumy, yellow eyes gazed at the bottle she now held with two hands.

‘Come on, Mary, it’s me–Myer.’ The eyes took on a crafty look as they realised it was nearly a full bottle of Scotch. ‘I know what you like, Mary, gimme a drop, and I’ll do it for you.’

‘You,’ Mary jeered. ‘You, I remember last time. You couldn’t even find it, could you?’ Mary began to giggle, her shoulders jerking with the effort. ‘You!’

The old man began to snigger, too. ‘That’s right, Mary, but it’ll be different this time, you see.’ Grimy fingers began to fumble at his trousers.

Mary laughed now, rocking backwards and forwards, drinking freely from the bottle.

‘Just a minute, Mary, I’ll soon have it.’ Myer was laughing, stopping now and then as a concentrated frown swept over his face. ‘Don’t drink it all, ‘Mary.’ His puzzled look turned into a smile of triumph as he finally produced the object of his search.

Mary’s laughter reached a hysterical pitch as she pointed at his limp penis.

‘You couldn’t fuck a polo mint with that, you daft old sod,’ she cried.

Just then, a hand grabbed at the neck of the bottle.

‘Give us that, bitch,’ a man loomed over her, his face almost hidden behind wild, curly hair and beard.

But the hand had no strength and Mary was invigorated with the Scotch and the laughter. She pulled it back, crouching over it, clutching it between her thighs. The bearded man struck weakly at the back of her neck, but Mary laughed even more.

Old Myer tried to grope between her knees to reach the bottle but she clasped it tightly. ‘Just one, Mary, just one,’ he pleaded.

The other man suddenly kicked her, then grabbed her matted hair, pulling her head back, screaming obscenities.

She struck out with one hand knocking him on to his back, but Myer made a lunge at the bottle. He doubled up in pain as a bony knee hit his groin.

The three other old warders crouched and watched, slowly edging forward, eyes never leaving the bottle.

The bearded man struggled to his feet and came staggering towards her, like a degenerated bull in rage, but she clawed at his eyes, drawing blood, sending him to his knees. She turned to face the other three and they drew back in fear.

‘Bastards!’ she shouted at them. She turned her back on all of them, Myer on all fours, tears streaming from his eyes, still pleading, the bearded man rubbing at his eyes, the three on the ground cringing. She sucked noisily at the bottle, then grabbed at her skirt, missed and grabbed again, hoisted it to her waist, and waved her bare arse at their faces. Then she disappeared into the bushes and all they could hear was her mocking laughter.

She stopped by an old tomb, still giggling and muttering to herself. Men, she thought, all the same. All weak, every one of them. She’d enjoyed herself tonight, she’d made fools of them all. She thought of Myer and his tiny prick, like a little white worm in the moonlight. Pathetic. She’d never known any man who–no, there had been someone. Now who had that been? Years ago... she drank from the bottle and tried to recollect who it was that she’d once loved, who was it that had once given her something? But what? What had she been given? She couldn’t remember.

The rock’ struck her exposed throat as her head tilted far back to drink from the bottle. She fell forward and the bearded tramp pulled it from her grasp. He drank deeply, while the others kicked the moaning form on the ground.

Myer took the bottle next and greedily gulped at the fiery liquid only releasing it to another when the burning in his throat caused him to splutter and choke. The man with the hairy face swayed from side to side and looked at Mary’s writhing body. He knew this bitch, seen her laughing at his friends before, even laughed at him once when he’d tried to do her a favour. He picked up a large brick and brought it down hard on her face.

He grabbed the bottle off a thin little man who’d only just got it into his possession, and drank. They all sat round in a circle, only a few feet from Mary’s still body, finished off the Scotch and then returned to their meths.

Mary Kelly wasn’t quite dead, but she was close to it. Her skull had been fractured by the brick, and was bleeding profusely. Two ribs were broken and her throat had a deep gash in it. She had lain in the dirt for a long while, her life-spirit slowly ebbing away, and in a short while she w6uld be dead. All that moved were her lips which seemed to be saying some soundless prayer, over and over again and her fingers that tried to count to ten endlessly.

Quite nearby lay the slumped bodies of her five companions, huddled together in disturbed slumber.

The first rat approached her cautiously, the smell of blood overcoming any fear, but never blurring its cunning. It was much larger than the other rats that followed it, and darker in colour. When it was a few feet away from Mary it stopped, its hind-quarters bunching up, its whole body tensed and quivering.

Suddenly it leapt at the open wound in her throat, sinking its huge incisors deep and drawing out the blood with violent spasms of its powerful body. Mary tried to stir, but she was too weak from blood already lost, the rat now biting deep into her vocal chords. Her body shook, but suddenly another furry form buried half its head into the matted hair over the wound in her skull. Her back arched as her nerve-ends mutinied and she fell forward again. Another rat pulled at her ear. Suddenly, her whole body was covered, teeming with squealing creatures as more scurried from the darkness, the smell of blood much stronger than it had been before. So Mary Kelly’s unfortunate life ended. The priests had never managed to save her soul, but then it had never really been lost. Only her mind.

The rats drained her body of blood and gnawed her flesh until not much more than bones and pieces of skin remained.

It didn’t take long, for there were many of them. So many, that not all had been fully-gorged. Their hunger for human flesh had been merely inflamed–they wanted more. There were several larger rats amongst them now, and those began to move towards the five human shapes sleeping nearby.

There was no caution now as they swarmed over the bodies. Two men had no chance, for their eyes were torn from their heads as they slept. They crawled blindly around amidst the carnage that was taking place, rats clinging to their bloody flesh.

The bearded man had risen to his feet, pulling a wriggling body from his face and tearing mostly hair from his cheek in the process. But as he stood, one of the larger rats leapt at his groin, pulling away his genitals with one mighty twist of its body. The tramp screamed and fell to his knees, thrusting his hands between his legs as if to stop the flow of blood, but he was immediately engulfed and toppled over by a wave of black, bristling bodies.