The Year of the Rat

by Clare Furniss

  ‘So,’ Dad says for the billionth time, ‘these are all the phone numbers here. If you have to call me at work and they say I’m in a meeting, just tell them it’s you and that it’s urgent.’

  He’s pacing up and down the kitchen, waving lists and schedules at me in a slightly unhinged way, while I sit at the table, pretending to read a magazine.

  ‘That’s the number for the GP’s surgery. Call them if you think she’s got a temperature or if anything doesn’t seem quite right. And obviously if it’s an emergency—’

  ‘Call 999,’ I say, not looking up from my magazine. ‘Yes, I know, Dad. I’m not a total idiot.’

  ‘And Dulcie says you can go round any time.’

  ‘Great.’ Dad’s too busy imagining scenes of doom and disaster to notice my sarcasm.

  ‘So, like I said, Rose’s routine is on this piece of paper here,’ he picks one out of the sheaf and puts it next to me on the table, ‘so you know roughly when she might want a feed or a nap. But we’ve been through all of that already anyway, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes, two minutes ago. And two minutes before that.’

  ‘And each of the bottles is on the side labelled with the time to give it to her with the powder already measured out. And—’

  Christ. ‘Dad, just go, will you?’

  ‘OK, OK.’ He pulls on his jacket. ‘But remember about checking the milk’s not too hot before you give it to her in case she scalds her mouth. And don’t let her get hold of anything small in case she puts it in her mouth and chokes. I’ve put all these things on another piece of paper here, just in case.’

  The piece of paper is headed Miscellaneous Dangers.

  I roll my eyes. ‘Dad. You’re doing my head in.’ All his fussing is just making me more jittery; not that I’m going to let him see I’m nervous.

  ‘Right. Sorry.’ But he hovers, not wanting to leave. ‘You remember what I said about making sure Rose is on her back when she has a nap. And making sure she’s not too hot. That’s really important.’

  ‘Dad. Honestly. Loads of sixteen-year-olds have babies of their own to look after.’ I’m telling myself as well as him. ‘Why are you so convinced I won’t be able to manage? I mean, how hard can it be?’

  I look down to where The Rat is sitting in her bouncy chair, dribbling. Dad looks at her too and I can tell he’s still imagining every possible disaster and probably some impossible ones too.

  ‘She doesn’t even do anything yet,’ I add.

  Everything I say just seems to make him more worried.

  ‘Perhaps this is a bad idea,’ he says to himself, absently twisting his wedding ring round and round.

  ‘It’s a very bad idea,’ I say, flicking through the pages of the magazine without really seeing them. ‘I could still be in bed instead of listening to you blithering on about nap times and feeds. But it’s better than being homeless.’

  He sighs. ‘You know I wouldn’t ask unless I had to.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘And you might even find you enjoy it. Might be a chance to – well, you know. Bond.’

  And, you never know, hell might freeze over. It could happen.

  ‘Anyway, it won’t be for long. Just this week and maybe next. I might even be able to swing working from home for a couple of days.’

  ‘And you’ve definitely sorted out something else after that? A nursery place or something?’

  ‘I’ll talk to you about it later,’ he says. ‘Got to dash now or I’ll miss my train.’ He kisses the top of my head and I pretend not to notice. ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’

  ‘I’ll have to be, won’t I?’ I say.

  He crouches down to say goodbye to The Rat. I can see how much he doesn’t want to leave her.

  ‘Your train,’ I say.

  He dashes out, still calling back over his shoulder. ‘Any problem, just call me straight away. And remember what I said about not putting her chair near anything she can pull down on top of her—’

  And then the door slams.

  I stare at The Rat and The Rat stares back at me and a cold, heavy feeling settles in my stomach. The room seems to shrink around her somehow. The Rat seems bigger than she did when Dad was here.

  Can babies smell fear, like they say dogs can? Still she stares at me with big solemn eyes.

  ‘You needn’t look at me like that,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to be stuck here with you either.’

  It’s a strange, claustrophobic feeling, knowing there’s just the two of us in the house. I wonder for a moment if Mum will come and help me out; but the weird thing is I realize I don’t want her to. She’d know, if she saw me with The Rat, I know she would. She’d know how I feel about her, however hard I tried to disguise it. I’ve got enough to worry about without her giving me a hard time too.

  I put the radio on, which helps. It makes me less lonely and The Rat seems to like the music. After a while, I realize that perhaps if there are voices talking The Rat will be quite happy to be left in a room on her own. I twiddle the dial and leave her listening to a discussion about sex and relationships after the menopause while I go and have a shower.

  When I come back downstairs, I check Dad’s minute-by-minute schedule, which tells me I need to feed her. I find I can give her a bottle without even getting her out of her chair. I don’t even have to look at her while I’m doing it.

  The phone rings from the hall. I check the handset and see it’s Dad’s work number so I answer because I know otherwise he’ll probably call the police.or something. Probably the fire brigade and the bomb squad too.

  ‘You’ve only been gone an hour,’ I say. Although to be fair it feels like a very long hour. ‘Are you even at the office yet?’

  The Rat listens to the radio for quite a long time while I try to pretend she’s not there. She gets restless after while, but I turn her chair round so she can see out of the window and put some music on instead and she calms down.

  Dad calls again on his mobile after a couple of hours. The Rat is on her play mat now.

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ I sigh. ‘Everything’s fine. Apart from the earthquake. And the herd of stampeding elephants.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m kidding. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Pearl, honestly. This is no time for jokes.’ He actually sounds relieved, as though he’d genuinely been imagining a herd of elephants stampeding through south London on a Monday morning. ‘Have you done her feed?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Has she gone down for her nap yet?’

  ‘Sorry, Dad, you’re breaking up,’ I lie. ‘Better go.’

  The Rat is watching me, wide-eyed. She doesn’t look like she has any intention of sleeping, but she seems happy enough. Well, not happy exactly. Her face is solemn and watchful, like it always is, as if she’s a very old person trapped in the body of a baby. But she’s not crying and I want it to stay that way. I’m not going to risk putting her in her cot. Dad’s left a whole page on how to get her to go to sleep with the subheadings Rocking, Music Box, Nightlight and Reassuring Hand on Back. What’s the point? So I just leave her where she is.

  After a while, she starts to fuss. I can see she’s working herself up into a frenzy so I try putting her back in her chair in the sitting room and finding a cartoon channel on the TV. This works brilliantly. The Rat is totally transfixed. I smile, thinking about Dad fussing around with all his advice books and routines and instructions. Why do people make such a big deal about looking after babies? It’s easy.

  I’m in the kitchen making a coffee when I hear her start to cry. It starts as a snuffle, then a sort of bleat. By the time I get into the sitting room, she’s yelling.

  At first I think I’ll just leave her. She’ll probably stop or fall asleep. I go back into the kitchen. But I can still hear her, even when I’ve put the radio on really loud. I go back into the sitting room. She’s bright red and angry now, and her screams go right through my head. What can I do to make her stop? I get anot
her bottle and try to give it to her even though Dad’s instructions say she mustn’t have it for another couple of hours. She gulps half of it down, but then she won’t have any more and, as soon as she stops drinking, she starts screaming again. I start to panic. What if she goes on like this for the rest of the day? I’ll go mad.

  After ten more minutes, I am going mad. It’s like torture. I know I ought to pick her up, cuddle her, try to calm her down. I don’t even want to touch her, but it’s not long before I’m desperate enough to give anything a go. I lift her awkwardly and hold her to my shoulder, trying to remember what Dad does, shushing her, rocking to and fro. But her little body is tense with anger and the crying just gets louder. I wonder suddenly if she knows how I feel about her. Perhaps the feeling’s mutual.

  That’s it. That’s why she’s doing this. She hates me.

  I’m just thinking this when The Rat’s sick: all the milk she’s just drunk, warm and sour, all down my back and in my hair and dripping down the inside of my top. And she’s still screaming. And I know she’s doing it just to spite me. I hold her out in front of me, her skinny legs dangling.

  ‘Stop it!’ I scream at her. ‘Just stop it!’

  But even as I’m doing it I think of Mum and what she’d think if she could see me, and I start to cry. I just stand there in the middle of the room, holding The Rat out in front of me, tears and snot running down my face.

  I’ve got to get away from her. If I don’t – I don’t want to think about what might happen. I just have to get out. I put her down on her play mat, still red and screaming, her sleepsuit wet with sick. And I run out of the room and out of the front door, slamming it hard behind me. And I keep on running: down the garden path, down the road, as far away as I can get. I have to get away.

  Just as I’m passing the bus stop, a bus pulls up and opens its doors and without thinking what I’m doing I jump on. I haven’t got my purse or my oyster card, but there’s some money in my jeans pocket, some loose change and a couple of notes. I pay the driver and sit down at the back as far away from anyone else as I can, partly because my hair and clothes smell of baby sick and partly because I don’t want anyone to notice me. If they look at me too closely, they might guess what I’ve done. The sound of The Rat’s screaming is still ringing in my ears and I can’t help feeling that if anyone gets too close they might hear it too. I shut my eyes as the bus drives off and I try not to think about anything at all.

  When I open my eyes, we’ve gone further than I thought. We’re down by the shops already, a couple of stops away from home. Everything seems far away as though I’m looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope. A girl not that much older than me gets on the bus with a buggy. The baby is crying. I can feel myself tense. As the bus moves off, the girl leans over to pick her baby up and starts to rock him. He’s tiny, only a few days old perhaps. The girl’s hair is scraped back tight and she has a hard, sharp face, but when she looks at the baby it changes; softens.

  Suddenly I can’t breathe.

  What have I done?

  I picture The Rat at home all alone, lying on the floor, her little legs kicking, her cries unheard. I ring the bell and as I push my way clumsily to the front of the bus the memory flashes through my mind of the time I was going to meet Molly and thought I saw Mum through the bus window. I was wrong that time. But what if she’s here now? What if I get off the bus and Mum’s standing there waiting for me and she knows what I’ve done?

  ‘Oi, watch it,’ says the girl with the baby.

  Outside, the air is hot and heavy and full of traffic fumes, but I’m cold with fear.

  There’s no sign of Mum, but still the panic is almost blinding. I’ve got to get back.

  I run across the road, back up towards the bus stop going the other way. But of course now there’s not a bus in sight.

  ‘Nice to see the sun at last,’ says an old man in a pork-pie hat who’s also waiting, leaning on his walking stick. ‘I thought that rain wasn’t never going to stop. Thought I was going to have to build me an ark.’ And he laughs like crazy at his joke.

  But all I can think of is The Rat. How long has she been on her own? I check my watch. I don’t know when I left, but it must be nearly an hour now. What if Dulcie from next door finds her all alone and calls the police? Would I go to prison? I screw my eyes up, staring down the road into the sun to look for the dot of a bus on the horizon. Nothing. What if Dad decides to come home from work early? I turn and start to run.

  After a while, the stitch in my side is so painful I have to slow down and walk. But my mind is racing on ahead of me to what I’ll find when I get back. What if The Rat’s been sick again and choked? She could have been screaming because she was ill. I think of Dad’s warnings about temperatures and how to check for meningitis . . . What if I get back and she’s not breathing? Or there’s been a fire? What if I get back and she’s just not there? Everyone thinks these things can’t happen, that they only happen to someone else. But I know better. I force my heavy legs to start running again.

  I feel sick with the heat and the smell of the baby puke in my hair and the air so thick with traffic fumes that it feels as though it’s sticking to my lungs. But most of all I feel sick at the thought of The Rat, alone. I push myself on along the main road till at last I’m close to our house.

  There are no blue flashing lights outside which has to be a good thing. But what will I find when I get inside?

  I’m almost crying with fear and exhaustion as I turn in through the gap in the overgrown hedge to our garden. Then I stop dead and the panic rises in my throat.

  Someone’s there, peering in through the window of the sitting room. And even though I can only see his back I recognize him straight away. It’s Finn, Dulcie’s grandson. Christ. He already thinks I’m mad. What am I going to do?

  He’s banging on the front door. I dodge back behind the hedge so he won’t see me and watch him through the leaves. He stands there for a few seconds then rings the doorbell several times. He’s obviously been trying for a while. He looks around then walks over to the window to look in. He’ll see The Rat. I know he will. My mind whirls, trying to think what to do. But I don’t have time because now he turns round, his face concerned, and starts walking back up the path. Once he turns out of our garden, he’ll see me standing on the pavement. There’s nowhere to hide; I’ll just have to bluff my way out of it. What would Mum do?

  I stroll through the gate, almost bumping into Finn, who stares at me, shocked.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he says.

  ‘I live here,’ I say. ‘Obviously. What are you doing here?’

  ‘But the baby,’ he says. ‘She’s in there.’

  ‘Is she OK?’ The words are out before I can stop them.

  ‘She’s just lying there asleep,’ he says, frowning. I’m so relieved I could almost hug him. ‘I could see her through the window.’

  ‘Do you often go round spying through people’s windows?’

  ‘My nan sent me round. Dulcie next door. I’m staying with her. My name’s Finn.’ He hesitates. ‘We met before.’

  I stare at the pavement. ‘I know who you are,’ I mutter.

  ‘Nan said you’d definitely be in, looking after the baby.’

  ‘I had to pop out,’ I say.

  ‘When you didn’t answer the door, I thought something must have happened to you.’

  ‘Like what? I’d been abducted by aliens?’

  ‘I don’t know. You could have had an accident or something.’

  ‘Well, you can stop worrying. Look.’ I hold my arms out wide. ‘I’m fine. No little green men. No severed arteries. Everything’s just fine.’

  Finn’s watching me closely. ‘But you left her on her own.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say breezily. ‘Just for a couple of minutes. I had to run down to the corner shop to get some nappies. We’d run out and she was fast asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her so I just let her sleep. After all,’ – I take a deep bre
ath, hoping he won’t notice I’m shaking – ‘what could possibly happen to her?’

  But the frown deepens. I know he thinks I’m lying and he’s trying to work out why.

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘what are you doing here?’

  But he’s not listening. ‘Where are they?’ he asks.

  ‘Where are what?’

  ‘The nappies?’

  ‘What nappies?’ As I say it, I realize what I’ve done.

  ‘The ones you went to buy.’ He looks me in the eye. It’s a challenge.

  ‘They didn’t have the right ones,’ I say. I even manage a smile. Maybe I did inherit some of Mum’s talent for deception after all.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Anyway, I can’t stand out here chatting,’ I say, marching past him up to the front door, reaching into my pocket, my fingers folding gratefully round my keys. ‘She could wake up any minute. You can tell your nan I’m fine, thanks very much.’

  He looks at me. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Course I am,’ I snap.

  ‘Nan said you could come round with the baby if you want,’ he says. ‘If it’s getting a bit much.’

  ‘Well, it’s not.’

  ‘She said it would really cheer her up seeing the baby.’ He blushes as he says it and can’t look me in the eye, and I realize he’s making it up; he’s just trying to find a way of inviting me round there. But why? Because he thinks I’m mad and might be a danger to The Rat? Because he doesn’t want Dulcie to be disappointed? Or because he wants me to go?

  ‘OK,’ I say, desperate to get rid of him and check on The Rat. ‘Tell her maybe I’ll bring her over.’

  He starts to walk down the path. Then he hesitates and turns back.

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘whenever I speak to you I feel like I’m saying the wrong thing. I’m sorry. Honestly, I’m only trying to help. Not that I’m saying you need help or anything,’ he adds hastily.

  His eyes meet mine through his dark curly hair, and I can’t help noticing how very blue they are. I’m aware suddenly of how he must see me: sweaty and flushed from running, in old jeans and a top that are far too big for me, reeking of sour milk.