The Rats (7 page)

Harris backed up against the wall as he saw the creatures fleeing in his direction. They scurried past him, one actually running over his shoe, causing him to shudder involuntarily.

Another stopped before him, eyed him coolly for a fraction of a second, and then sped on its way. Harris almost collapsed with relief as the last horrifying shape disappeared beneath the fence of the waste ground. It looked as though two of the workmen were about to climb the fence to follow them, but Harris managed to find his voice in time to stop them.

As they walked back the teacher was able to turn his gaze back towards the carnage the rats had caused. The old lady was on the ground, her chest heaving in sharp, uneven movements, covered in blood, still feebly holding on to the broom.

It was only then that Harris saw the shredded, blood-stained overalls of little Ferris. It was only the now barely recognisable uniform with its ‘Ratkill’ logo emblazoned on the chest that made him realise it was the little rat exterminator, for the crumpled body no longer had a face.

‘Get an ambulance, quickly,’ Harris said weakly to one of the workmen, knowing already it was too late for the old woman.

‘There’s one on the way,’ one of her neighbours came forward. The others now began to slowly emerge from their homes and tentatively walked towards the bodies, keeping a wary eye on the fence.

‘What were they?’ someone asked.

‘Rats,weren’t they,’ another replied.

‘What–that size?’ the first person again.

‘Big as dogs.’

‘Come on, let’s go after them,’ the workman who had been prepared to climb the fence growled. ‘We can’t have things like them running around.’

‘No,’ said Harris. He couldn’t tell them about the fatal disease the vermin carried, but he had to stop them from trying to do battle with them. ‘The police are on their way, and the people from Ratkill too, better let them deal with them.’

‘Time we wait for the law, the bleeders’ll have disappeared. I’m going now. Who else is coming?’

Harris caught him by the arm as he began to march towards the fence. As he angrily swung around, two police cars roared into the estate and came to a screeching halt beside the group of stricken people.

Foskins emerged from the second car and strode directly towards Harris, his eyes never leaving the two figures on the ground.

As a Ratkill van arrived, he pulled the teacher to one side so the gathering crowd would be unable to hear their conversation.

‘Well, Mr Harris, what happened?’

The teacher briefly told him of the events just past. He felt full of pity for the little rat-faced Ferris whose sense of duty towards his job had led to his untimely death. It could have been Harris, himself, lying there if Ferris hadn’t insisted on following the rats himself.

‘We’ll get a search party down there immediately,’ Foskins told him. ‘They’ll go through the fence and down the canal.

We’ll send out patrols along the canal and cordon the area off.’

’Look, these canals run for miles. How can you possibly cordon them off?’ Harris was slightly irritated by Foskins’ calm, authoritatively calm, voice. ‘And in any case, how are you going to cordon off all the sewers that run beneath this area?

‘That, Mr Harris,’ said Foskins coldly, ‘is our problem.’

Chapter Seven

Harris was in no mood to go back to the school that after-noon. He walked for a while through the streets of his child-hood, coming upon long-forgotten alleys; a tobacconist where he bought his first packet of ‘Domino’ cigarettes;

Linda Crossley’s house, a girl who had one night, when they were teenagers, let he and six of his mates have it off with her at the back of their local youth club–and was forever after known as ‘7-up’; bomb-sites, still untouched by building developments; stunted posts, once used to tie horses to, in his day to play leap-frog and today–well, not many horses around any more–and when was the last time he’d seen kids playing leap-frog? Finally, he caught a bus and returned to the flat. He made himself some tea and sat in his only armchair, still depressed by the morning’s events.

Keogh, the woman and her baby, those poor old down-and-outs, Ferris and the old lady.

Civilised London. Swinging London. Dirty bloody London!

For all its modernity, its ‘high standard of living, it could still breed obnoxious, disease-carrying vermin of the like he’d seen today. And their size! What had caused this mutation?

And their cunning. Twice that day, one of the big, black rats had just stood and stared at him (had it been the same one each time? Christ!)not cowering, nor preparing to attack, but just surveying him, seemingly studying him, inscrutable.

How many more people would they kill before they were put down? And where had they come from?

What made them so much more intelligent than their smaller counter- parts? Well, why should he worry?

It was the problem of the bloody authorities. But what disgusted him more? The vermin themselves–or the fact that it could only happen inEast London? Not Hampstead or Kensington, but Poplar.

Was it the old prejudices against the middle and upper classes, the councils that took the working-class from their slums and put them into tall, remote concrete towers, telling them they’d never been better off, but never realising that forty homes in a block of flats became forty separate cells for people, communication between them confined to conversations in the lift, was it this that really angered him?

That these same councils could allow the filth that could produce vermin such as the black rats. He remembered the anger he’d felt at the time a new ‘ultra-modem’ flat had collapsed when by some miracle only nine people had been killed. His resentment had been directed not only at the architects who had designed the ‘block’ construction, but at the council who had approved its design. He remembered the rumours that had spread afterwards, the favourite being the one about the safe-breaker who had kept gelignite in his flat, and it had been this that had exploded and forced out one of the concrete slabs, causing the walls down one side to topple like a pack of cards. Then it had been the gas leak, which had, in fact, been proved as the cause. But the point was it was the construction itself that had made a minor disaster into a major one. And the construction had been a cheaper means of building–a cheaper way of cramming thirty or forty families into the smallest square footage possible. This is what embittered Harris.

The incompetence of ‘authority’.

Then he had to smile at himself. He was still a student at heart, a rebel against the powers that be. As a teacher, he was directly under the control of a government body and was often exasperated by

‘committee’ decisions, but he knew there were fair-minded men and women who really did care amongst the committee members, who fought hard to get the right decisions. He’d heard many stories of individuals who had fought the government ban on free milk for kids, for instance. Of men and women, including teachers, who had all but lost thin: jobs because of their opposition.

No, it was no good becoming over-wrought with authority, for he knew too well that apathy existed on all levels. The gasman who neglected to fix a leaky pipe. The mechanic who failed to tighten a screw. The driver who drove at fifty miles an hour in the fog. The milkman who left one pint instead of two. It was a matter of degree. Wasn’t that what Original Sin was supposed to be all about? We’re all to blame. He fell asleep.

At a quarter-past-six, he was awakened by the front door being slammed and footsteps racing up the stairs.

‘Hello, Jude,’ he said as she bustled in, red-faced and breathless.

‘Hello, lazy.’ She kissed his nose. ‘Have you seen the paper yet?’ She unfolded a Standard and showed him the headlines proclaiming more killings by rats.

‘Yes, I know. I was there.’ He told her of the day’s events, his voice hard, emotionless.

‘Oh, love, it’s horrible. Those poor people. And you. It must have been terrible for you.’ She touched his cheek, knowing his anger covered up deeper feelings.

‘I’m just sick of it, Jude. For people to die senselessly like that in this day and age. It’s crazy.’

‘All right, darling. They’ll soon put a stop to it. It’s not like the old days, when things like this got out of hand.’

‘That’s not the point though. It should never have happened in the first place.’

Suddenly Harris relaxed, his natural defence when ,events became too much to take. He reached a certain point, and knowing there was nothing he could do about the situation, his mind walked away from it.

He smiled at Judy. ‘Let’s get away from it at the weekend, eh? Let’s go and see your silly old aunt at Walton. The fresh air will do us both good.’

‘Okay,’ Judy’s arms encircled his neck and she squeezed it hard.

‘What’s for dinner?’ he asked.

The rest of the week, as far as the rats were concerned, was quiet. There had been a public outcry, the usual campaigns from the press to clean up London. Angry debates on television by politicians and councillors, and even a statement from the Prime Minister. Large areas of dockland were sealed off and rat-exterminators sent in. The dockers themselves came out on strike for two days until they had been convinced that no trace of rats could be found. Canals leading to the docks were searched by police and soldiers, but nothing larger than the usual rodents were found, and not many of these either. Reports of large, black rats being seen came in regularly, but on investigation it usually turned out to be a dog or cat.

Children were escorted to and from schools by parents if any quiet street were on the journey.

Bomb-sites and playgrounds became unusually still. Pet shops all over London did a booming trade in cats and dogs. Poisons were laid by the experts, but the victims were always mice or the usual smaller rat.

Not one large, black rat was found.

People soon began to lose interest, as other news hit the headlines. Stories of rape, robbery, and arson, political and non-political, took over as conversation points. Although the search still went on, chemicals laid to poison the rats, and still nothing was found, no deaths occurred, the matter was considered to have been dealt with. Foskins was still uneasy, and made sure his department was following the matter right through to the end; the end being the extinction of any vermin likely to cause damage to persons or property. It soon became apparent, however, that it would be a virtually impossible task unless more government aid was given, but as the outcry dwindled, so did talk of money from the exchequer’s purse.

Chapter Eight

On Friday evening, Harris and Judy drove down to Walton in their battered old Hillman Minx. Judy’s aunt made a great fuss of them when they arrived and proved herself to be not as silly as Harris believed by showing them into a quaint, but comfortable room with a double bed. She left them as they unpacked their one case, all three of them smiling inanely at each other.

‘Well, well, good old Aunt Hazel,’ grinned Harris as Judy flopped on to the ancient quilt, whooping with glee.

‘She always was my favourite aunt,’ she giggled, as Harris stretched beside her.

She smacked his exploring hands. ‘Come on, let’s unpack and go down before she regrets giving us a room together because of lack of company.’

When they went downstairs, Judy’s aunt had opened a bottle of sherry. She poured them a drink and bade them sit down on a soft, flower-patterned sofa, seating herself in an armchair opposite them. As she chattered on, questioning them about their jobs, gossiping about her neighbours, reliving the times she’d had with Judy’s mother, Harris felt him-self relaxing.

His arm found its way around Judy’s shoulders, her ringers found his. He laughed at the silliest topics of Aunt Hazel, losing himself in the charm and the enclosed world of village life. He found himself deeply interested in the vicar’s jumble sale tomorrow morning; the widow next door’s fancy-man; the donkey-derby held last week. He found himself laughing not at the old aunt, but with her, envying the uncomplicated life she led.

At half-past ten, she suggested that the young couple should go for a brief stroll before going to bed, the exercise would make them sleep better. They walled arm in’ arm through the quiet village, both sensing the feeling of peace within each other.

‘Deep breaths,’ said Harris, taking in a huge lungful of air.

They both took several more exaggerated deep breaths, faces raised towards the million visible stars, finally bursting into laughter at their own earnest efforts. They walked on, the stillness around them mellowing their already soft mood.

‘Maybe I could get a position in a school outside London,’ mused Harris. ‘In a village like this. Or maybe even open a post office. What do you think?’

Judy smiled back at him, knowing how he loved to dream like this. He was a city person basically, although often he told her how he disliked it. ‘All right, and I’ll open a little dress shop, you know, all tweeds and woollies. But I don’t know what the vicar would say about us living together.

He’d probably think I was a scarlet woman.’

‘Well, we could humour him and get married.’

They stopped walking and Judy turned round to face him,

‘You make any more offers like that, Harris, and I’ll make you stick to them.’

When they returned to Aunt Hazel’s, they found hot toast and drinking chocolate waiting for them. The old aunt fluttered around in a long dressing gown, still chattering on about anything that came into her head, then bade them goodnight and disappeared up the stairs.

‘She’s lovely,’ grinned Harris, sipping his hot chocolate.

‘She’d drive me mad, but she’s lovely.’

When they finally went upstairs, they discovered a hot-water bottle tucked into the bed and a fire alight in the hearth. Harris couldn’t stop smiling as they undressed. It was a long time since either of them had been spoilt and it was nice now that they were being spoilt together.

He climbed in beside Judy and drew her warm body towards him. ‘I wish we could stay longer. I’m going to hate going back.’

‘Let’s enjoy what we’ve got, darling. We’ve got the whole weekend.’ Judy’s sensitive fingers glided down his back causing him to shiver. They crept, round to his thigh and then up.

‘Judy, Judy, Judy,’ Cary Grant voice. ‘What would the vicar say?’

The next day they were awakened by a careful tap on the door. Aunt Hazel entered with a tray of tea and biscuits and the morning paper for Harris. They thanked her trying to keep themselves covered up as she bustled about the room, drawing the curtains, retrieving the cast-out hot-water bottle.

As she rambled on with her inexhaustible comments on the weather, the neighbours and the state of Mrs Green’s cabbage patch, Judy began pinching Harris’ naked bottom beneath the blankets. Trying hard not to yelp, he grabbed her wrist and sat on her hand. Then he began plucking at the small mound of hair between her thighs.

When Judy could no longer refrain from crying out loud,

She had to explain to her surprised aunt, between fits of laughter, that she had cramp in her foot. Aunt Hazel’s hand shot beneath the bedclothes, grabbed Judy’s foot and began rubbing vigorously. By this tune, Harris was choking with glee and had to hide behind his trembling newspaper.

At ten, they dressed and went down to breakfast. The aunt asked them what they were going to do with themselves all day, suggesting they might like to come along to the jumble-sale. They excused themselves by saying they wanted to drive into Stratford to have a look around, and would probably stay there for lunch. After warning them to be careful of the roads, she perched a jaunty straw hat on her head, grabbed her shopping basket and waved her goodbyes, turning at the garden gate to wave at them again.

They washed the dishes and while Judy remade their bed, Harris cleared the grate downstairs and a new fire was laid. Although he couldn’t imagine why the old girl would want a fire in this weather, he had to admit it made a welcoming sight in the evening.

Eventually, they climbed into their car and drove towards

Stratford, singing at the top of their voices as they made their way along the country lanes.

As soon as Harris had trouble in finding a parking space he began to regret their visit to the old town of Stratford.

It was flooded with people, cars and coaches. He’d never been there before and had expected to find quaint, olde-worlde, oak-beamed houses in cobbled streets. Angry with himself for his naiveté , for not realising a tourist-attraction centre like this must surely be spoiled by commercialism he finally found a back street to park in. Walking towards the Royal Shakespeare Theatre he saw that many of the streets had managed to retain their old charm, after all, but it was the throngs of people, multi-racial accents, that destroyed any hope of atmosphere. And the nearer the theatre they got, so the noisier the streets became.

A thin, sallow-looking round-shouldered man in an open- necked, short-sleeved, floppy shirt, camera hanging on his flat chest: ‘Are you coomin’,’Ilda?’

The droning reply, from a plump, bespectacled woman emerging from a shop doorway, clutching a dozen Stratford-on-Avon postcards. ‘Wait, oop,wait oop.’

An obvious Yank, short-cropped hair, checked jacket, inevitable camera: ‘Will ya look at that, Immogene. Quick, while I take a shot.’

Immogene posing self-consciously before an oaked beamed shop with a thatched roof, licking an ice cream, magnified eyes peering through blue-tinted butterfly glasses:

’Wilya’ hurry up, Mervyn, I feel stupid.’

They arrived at the Theatre, a heavy depressing building, and found it closed.

‘Let’s take a boat down the river,’ Judy suggested tentatively sensing Harris’ disappointment. But the river itself was swarming with punts, canoes and row-boats.

‘Let’s have a drink.’ Harris turned towards the nearest pub, passing windows full of people devouring meatpies and sausage, egg and chips. They entered a dark bar, all wood and stone floors. The barmaids were wearing period costumes and smiling cheerfully as they coped with the crowds.

This is more like it, he thought, ordering a pint of Brown, a red wine and two ham and tomato sandwiches, and took the wine over to Judy who was sitting on a bench seat at an old round oak table and returned for the beer. Sitting next to her, he squeezed her hand to show her his mood was no reflection on her.

‘This isn’t so bad, is it?’ He turned to study a large square timber coming from the floor and supporting the low ceiling.

He reached out to let his fingers run along the deep grain.

Plastic. ‘Shit?

As they left the pub, it began to drizzle with rain. Although it was a fairly light shower, shop doorways became crowded with people. Plastic macs appeared and were draped over heads and shoulders, Harris and Judy were bumped by tourists running for cover.

‘Let’s go, Jude,’ said Harris, taking her arm firmly and leading her into the road. They quickly walked back to the car, both fighting the feeling of claustrophobia. They sat in the car and caught their breath.

Harris was halfway through a cigarette when the sun came out and the rain stopped.

People emerged from their shelters, laughing and calling to one another. A coach pulled up on the opposite side of the road and unloaded a stream of sightseers, all stretching and yawning, and looking for the toilets.

‘Look at those women,’ the teacher said in amazement.

‘They all look the same. They’re all fat, and they’re all wearing glasses. I don’t believe it!’

Judy burst into laughter. He was right. They did all look alike. For some reason, he felt better. At least he saw the joke of his shattered illusion of Shakespeare’s birth-place.

He drove out of the crowded town, heading into the country.

As they left the town behind he felt a deep sense of relief.

He could breathe again. He didn’t fully understand why the crowds had affected him so much. He’d had a feeling of revulsion towards the people, not as individuals, but en-masse. Strangely enough, it had been slightly akin to the revulsion he’d felt towards the rats. As though they were a threat.

‘Jude, I’m not becoming a head-case am I?’

‘No, darling. You just came into contact with too many people at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

The point of coming here was to get away from it all and we ran slam-bang right into the middle of it again.’

The quieter the roads became, the freer he felt. Ahead they spotted a high-curving hill the top crowned with trees and cultivated fields below, its shades ranging from the brightest yellow to the deepest green.

Sheep grazed on the wilder middle slopes.

‘Fancy a climb? Harris’ asked Judy.

‘Okay.’

He pulled over on to a grassy verge and locked the car.

They climbed a fence and skirted around the edges of the field, Judy explaining the difference between wheat, corn and barley, Harris enjoying his ignorance.

Watched by the sheep they climbed over a gate, the hill now becoming much steeper. As they got nearer the top, the exertion began to tell and they laughingly clung to each other, occasionally pulling the other down. Finally they reached the trees and found a path leading through them to the summit. Here was a plateau of still more fields, stretching across to the downward slopes and shading into woods again.

Lying back on the grassy slope, they rested, taking in the surrounding hills, the tiny houses, the grey lines that were roads. A slight breeze stirred the otherwise warm air.

‘Better now?’ Judy asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Deep breaths.’

He reached for her. ‘It’s so quiet. No people. It somehow puts everything into its right perspective.’

A sheep, lost from its flock scampered past them. Once past, it turned and bleated at them, then ran off.

‘And you,’ shouted Harris. He turned to Judy and kissed her, first softly, small tender kisses, just touching her lips–then hard, urgent. His hand crept to her small, round breast beneath the jumper.

‘Harris, someone might come,’ she warned.

‘Up here,’ he scoffed. ‘You’re joking. Who’d be silly enough to climb all the way up here?’

He pulled at the zipper of her trousers. She kissed his face, his neck, her love for him stirring her desire, pushing her body towards him in rhythmic motion. He tugged at the trousers, her body lifting to help him, then ran his fingers lightly over her smooth thighs. He bowed down to kiss them, his tongue creating thin moist trails along each limb. His hand began to stroke the fine material of her panties – then between her thighs.

She moaned with pleasure and reached for him, loosening his clothes, setting him free. His hand crept slowly between her flimsy panties and soft skin, finding her private silky hair, then down, between her thighs, his fingers becoming wet from her. He pulled the panties gently down her long legs and lay them to one side with her now discarded trousers. He half-sat, gazing down at her, taking pleasure from the sight of her naked thighs against the rich green grass.

She pulled him down to her. ‘Darling,’ she whispered, not really caring, ‘someone might see us.’

‘Not up here. Nobody can see us up here.’

He moved into her, very gently, and very slowly. Then they clung to each other, her legs slightly bent, feet flat against the slope. He began to move back and forth inside her, their passion, as so often, equally matched. She thrust up at him, both now losing themselves in the sweetness of physical love.

But as then’ motions became more frantic, so his toes and knees began to lose their grip on the grassy slope. He began to slip down. He wriggled forward again grabbing tufts of grass to pull himself up. But as soon as they resumed he began to slip down again, this time losing her. He wasn’t amused as she was.

‘We’ll have to turn around,’ he said, struggling back inside her. They carefully inched their way round, anticlockwise, desperately trying to keep together, now both laughing at the ridiculous spectacle they must have made.

‘I can feel the blood rushing to my head,’ she giggled.

‘I won’t tell you where it’s rushing to in me,’ he groaned, trying hard not to topple forward over her body. He held on to the grass, pushing against it now, the strain on his arms becoming more intense as their bodies sped towards their crescendos. She writhed under him, a couple of times nearly sending him over her and rolling down the hill. They reached their climax, Harris almost with relief, and, still together, let themselves slide languidly down a few feet, bodies turning.

They rested for a few minutes, their bodies relishing the warm sun, enjoying the light breeze on their nakedness.