“I see,” said Harry Martin. “I heard they wanted to sell it. Better off pulling the whole damn place down, if you want my opinion.”
“Well... I’m not sure that I don’t agree with you. But meanwhile I’m supposed to clear it out and decorate it, and the first thing I want to do is get rid of this rat.”
Harry Martin lit his cigarette and puffed out strong, aromatic smoke. “Have you seen it, then, this here rat?”
I shook my head. “Only indistinctly. It looked like quite a big one.”
“It is a big one,” he assured me.
“You know about it already?”
“Of course I do. Everybody round Bonchurch and Old Shanklin Village knows about it. Everybody excepting for newcomers, of course.”
I was amazed. “Everybody knows about it?”
“They know about it, but they don’t talk about it, that’s all.”
“Why won’t they talk about it?”
“Because if you talk about it, you have to think about it, and they don’t like to think about it.”
“How long has it been there?” I asked, in bewilderment.
Harry Martin shrugged. “As long as I can remember.”
“And how long is that?”
“That rat was there when I was a boy. Now I’m sixty-seven. How’s your ’rithmetic?”
I was beginning to suspect that Harry Martin may be pulling my leg. You have to be careful with some of these old country codgers. They take a delight in stringing you along; their stories becoming shaggier and shaggier with each twist, until they look at you bright-eyed and mischievous and you suddenly realize that you’ve been had.
“Rats don’t usually live as long as that, do they? I went down the sewers in London with a friend of mine, and he said they don’t usually live longer than three or four years, if that.”
“Fortyfoot House isn’t the sewers of London, is it?” Harry Martin retorted. “And this rat isn’t like other rats. In fact plenty of people say that it isn’t really a rat at all.”
Somehow the normality of Harry Martin’s furniture-crowded parlor made his words seem particularly disturbing. The sunlight fell on the top of the television and illuminated a ship’s wheel with a pretend aquarium in the middle of it; and bees droned in and out of the open windows. It isn’t really a rat at all? What did he mean by that? He could be joking, yes. But his deeply-lined face looked completely serious, and if this were a joke, I couldn’t see the point of it.
“If it’s not a rat, what is it?”
Harry Martin shook his head. “Don’t know. Never knew. Never cared to find out.”
“Didn’t the Tarrants ever ask you to get rid of it before?”
“Tarrants never lived there long enough. They bought it dirt cheap, because it had been standing empty for so long, and they had all kinds of plans for it. Swimming-pool, extension, you name it. Then they had a few bad nights, and after that they didn’t stay there so often; and then they had a really bad night, and they never stayed there again.”
“What do you mean by ‘a really bad night’?”
Harry Martin blew out a thin stream of smoke. It was difficult to read the expression on his face. “Lights and noises. Bright lights, from what they say; and noises like you’ve never heard; and voices a lot louder than voices ought to be.”
I sat back. “Somebody else told me about that. A woman called Doris, down at the Beach Café.”
“Oh, yes. Poor old Doris. She was a Belcher, you know, before she married into the Randalls.”
“I’m afraid that doesn’t mean very much to me.”
“It would if you were Bonchurch born-and-bred. The Belchers were a funny lot. Mr Belcher, Doris’s father, he was the local schoolmaster; and George Belcher—he was Doris’s brother—he made a pot of money out of some kind of patent boat-varnish, but he was always odd. He said he’d seen that rat out in plain daylight, but nobody believed him, of course.”
“Is he still around?”
“George? No, not George. Pills and whisky, that’s what happened to George. Pills and whisky.”
Mrs Martin came in from the porch and asked us if we wanted a cup of tea. Harry Martin said yes, we would, without even consulting me; and so Mrs Martin brought us a tray with biscuits and Dundee cake and two strong cups of Ty-phoo, with sugar already stirred in.
“So what do you suggest I do about this rat?” I asked Harry Martin. “Always supposing that it is a rat. Or even if it isn’t.”
Harry Martin thoughtfully puffed out his cheeks. “I suppose I could be persuaded to take a look at it for you.”
But almost immediately Mrs Martin came in from the kitchen and snapped, “You’re retired. You do gardening now. I’m fed up with the way the council keeps asking you to go rat-catching.”
Harry Martin gave me a meaningful man-to-man look over the rim of his teacup. “Suppose you’re right,” he replied.
“Of course I’m right,” his wife declared. “You’re sixty-seven. I don’t want you climbing around no attics, looking for rats, and that’s an end to it.”
“Yes, suppose you’re right,” Harry Martin repeated, and the look became even more meaningful and even more man-to-man.
I finished my tea. There was a sludge of sugar in the bottom. “I suppose I’d better be going, in that case,” I said. “Perhaps I can find somebody to come over from Portsmouth to get rid of it for me.”
“You could try Rentokil, in Ryde,” Mrs Martin suggested.
“All right, thanks,” I told her. “And thanks for the cake.”
“Home-made,” she said, ushering me out through the porch. Harry Martin stayed where he was, in his armchair, but he raised his hand and said, “Bye for now.”
Out in the garden, Mrs Martin unexpectedly grasped hold of my sleeve.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want Harry going after that thing, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.”
“All right, all right, understood,” I reassured her.
“That thing wants leaving alone, that’s what that thing wants,” she said. The heat had melted her make-up so that her face had the shiny appearance of a plastic doll. The pupils of her eyes were tiny.
“I have to get rid of it somehow,” I said. “I’m supposed to be repairing and redecorating and getting the house ready for the Tarrants to sell it.”
She tightened her grip on my sleeve. “You can mend a house today but you can’t mend it yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“Well, if you live there long enough, you will. That house isn’t always here and now. That house is was and will be, too. They should never have built it, but once it was built there was nothing that anybody could do; and there’s nothing that you can do; and there’s nothing that Harry can do, neither. He’s got some bee in his bonnet about it, something personal, don’t you dare to ask me what. But don’t you go asking him to look for that thing and don’t you go letting him.”
“All right, I promise. I won’t ask him again.”
From the parlor, Harry called, “What about some more tea, Vera?”
Mrs Martin called back, “Keep your hair on!” And then she said to me, “Cross your heart and hope to drop dead?”
“I promise. I just wish I knew what that thing was.”
“It’s a rat, I expect.”
“A rat that’s lived for sixty years?”
“You get freaks of nature, don’t you? Three-legged dogs, turtles that live for two hundred years.”
“Do you know what it is?” I asked her.
Her eyes flinched. She let go of my sleeve, and wiped the palms of her hands on her floral apron.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” I pressed her.
“Not rightly. I know its name.”
“It has a name?”
She looked embarrassed. “I’ve known about it ever since I was a little girl. My mum used to tell me bedtime stories about it, to frighten me. She used to say that if I pinched thing
s that didn’t belong to me, or told whoppers, then it would come out at night and it would carry me off to a place where even the clock couldn’t catch me; and what it would do to me then was so horrible that it was nobody’s business.”
“Did she tell you its name?”
“Everybody knew its name. Even my granny used to know its name. It was just one of those things that everybody knew; and that’s why none of us played near Fortyfoot House. You ask anybody in Bonchurch, even today.”
“So what was it called?”
She stared at me. “I don’t want to speak it, thanks.”
“Surely you’re not that superstitious?” I chided her.
“Oh, I’m not superstitious. I’ll walk under twenty ladders if you like, and spill all the salt in Siberia, and break mirrors all day, and not care one whit. But I don’t want to speak that thing’s name, if it’s all the same to you.”
At that moment, however, Harry Martin appeared in the porch, lighting up yet another home-rolled cigarette.
“They call it Brown Jenkin, that’s what,” he told me.
Mrs Martin stared at me in what I can only describe as wild desperation. She kept giving her head little shakes, as if she were silently trying to tell me not to listen, not to repeat what her husband had told me, and promise promise promise that you won’t let him go after it.
“Brown Jenkin, that’s what,” Harry Martin repeated, as if he got pleasure out of saying out loud something so forbidden.
Mrs Martin cupped her hand over her mouth. The sun went behind a large cloud, and suddenly the garden turned gray.
5
Night of Lights
Liz cooked her famous chili that evening. danny didn’t like it much, because it was too peppery for him, and he thought that the kidney beans were “gross,” marshalling them all on the side of his plate as if they were plumstones. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, black rat, brown rat, beggarman, thief.
But to me it was one of the best meals I’d had in months, not least because I hadn’t had to cook it myself. We ate it in the sitting-room, our plates balanced on our laps, watching The Bridge On The River Kwai on television.
“What did the rat man say?” asked Liz. She wore a red scarf tied tightly around her head, and a loose cotton dress rather like a kaftan. Her bare toes with painted toenails protruded from beneath the fraying hem.
“He was a bit mysterious, to tell you the truth. He said he knew this particular rat. In fact, everybody in the village knew it. He said it had lived here as long as anybody could remember.”
“Rats don’t live that long, do they?”
I shrugged. “Not as far as I know. Anyway, he said he was retired and he wasn’t interested.” I didn’t say any more because I didn’t want to frighten Danny with talk about bright lights and monstrous voices and things that would take you where even the clock couldn’t catch you.
Liz came over and took my plate. “How about some more wine?” she suggested.
“Certainly.” We went through to the kitchen, leaving Danny watching Alec Guinness hobbling defiantly out of the punishment box in which he had been locked by the Japanese.
Liz scraped the plates into the pedal-bin and I poured us two more glasses of Piat D’Or.
“That was a great meal, thanks.”
“I don’t think Danny thought much of it.”
“Danny is totally and unwaveringly loyal to Heinz Spaghetti.”
“That was strange, about the rat. What are you going to do about it now?”
“I’ve called Rentokil in Ryde. They’re going to send somebody tomorrow afternoon. But it was really weird. The ratcatcher’s wife said the rat was so well known in Bonchurch that it even had a name. But she was definitely frightened of it. I couldn’t persuade her to tell me what its name was for love nor money. In the end the ratcatcher told me.”
Liz washed the plates and I dried them and put them away. “What was it?” she asked.
“What was what?”
“The rat’s name.”
“Oh, Brown Something. Brown Johnson, something like that.”
Liz frowned. “That’s funny. I’m sure I’ve heard a name like that before.”
“Well, I know plenty of people called Johnson. I know plenty of people called Brown, for that matter.”
We sat together and finished the wine and watched William Holden blowing up the bridge over the River Kwai. Danny was so tired that I had to carry him upstairs on my back, and undress him. I watched over him while he brushed his teeth and I could see my face reflected in the blackness of the bathroom window. I looked thinner and graver than I had imagined myself to be.
“Come on, Zacko McWhacko,” I told him, tucking him into bed.
“Tell me the Scottish rhyme,” he begged me.
“No, it’s too late. You’ve got to get to sleep.”
“Please tell me the Scottish rhyme.”
“Come on,” urged Liz, from the doorway. “Tell him the Scottish rhyme. I want to hear it, too.”
“It’s very stupid. I made it up myself.”
She took hold of my arm, and leaned against my shoulder. “Go on. Pretty please?”
“All right,” I relented.
“We love oor cockie-leekie, we love our porridge-skin
And every morning we go oot, tae see if we are in
Aye, oot the door we all do trot, tae see if we are in.
“That’s it,” I said, embarrassed.
“No, it’s not,” Danny insisted. “There’s more.”
“We knock, we shout, we cry ‘who’s there?’—but always we are oot
It goes to show a Scotsman will never give a hoot”
“’Smon,” added Danny, as usual.
“As in ‘hoots mon,”’ I explained to Liz.
We switched off Danny’s light and went downstairs. I opened another bottle of Piat D’Or and we sprawled out on the sagging brown sofa and listened to my scratchy LP of Smetana’s Ma Vlast. It was just what I felt like. Emotional, stirring, a little pompous, and foreign.
Liz told me that she had been born in Burgess Hill, a small unpretty town in mid-Sussex. Her father was the manager of a building society and her mother ran a small china-and-glass shop. Six years ago her mother had fallen for a debonair travel agent with a little clipped mustache whose pride and joy was a new Ford Granada; and her parents had rancorously divorced. Liz had only recently come to terms with the fact that she came from a broken home. “So many of the other students talk about ‘daddy’ and ‘mummy’ and ‘my family.’ It took me two years at Essex before I plucked up the courage to say that my parents had split up. It hurt, I can’t tell you how much. The worst bit was hearing them calling each other such terrible names.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked her.
“I used to. But he was too straight for me. He used to find it embarrassing if I balanced along walls or danced in the street. Anyway, I’ve gone off sex. I’ve decided to be chaste and saintly. Saint Elizabeth the Untouched.”
“What put you off sex?” I smiled.
“I don’t know. Robert, I suppose. That was my boyfriend. He always made it seem so complicated and mechanical, as if he was trying to service somebody else’s car.”
I laughed. “You’re probably better off chaste.”
“You miss being married, don’t you?” she asked me.
“Yes and no. I miss the companionship. I miss having somebody to talk to.”
“What about the car maintenance?”
I raised my wine. I could see Liz’s face in it, distorted by the curves of the glass. “Yes, I miss the car maintenance.”
It was a humid night, scarcely any wind. Behind the trees, the sea sounded like a ghostly woman walking slowly up and down a polished marble corridor, dragging a taffeta dress. I was standing by the window as Ma Vlast ended and I heard an owl cry. I wondered if those seventy children in the cemetery, tucked up in their soil-and-limestone beds, could hear it too. In the very far distance, lightni
ng flickered. A night of electricity. A night of high tension.
Liz said, “I’m going to bed now, if that’s all right.”
I nodded. “Of course it’s all right. I want you to feel at home. Go to bed when you like, get up when you like. When do you start at the Tropical Bird place?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
She came up and laid her hand on my shoulder. “Thanks, David. This is going to be nice.”
I kissed her forehead. “I think so, too.”
*
I sat alone and finished my wine and played the other side of my record, Liszt’s Preludes, but it wasn’t the same, sitting on my own. I went through to the kitchen and found a half-used notepad from E Gibson Family Butchers of High Street, Ventnor, and started writing a letter to Janie, telling her that Danny was well and that I was well and that Liz would be spending the summer with us.
I hesitated for a moment, then scratched out “…girl called Liz will be staying here for the summer.” Then I crumpled up the letter altogether, and tossed it into the coal-hod. There was no point in my burning my boats unless I really had to. After all, I didn’t know for certain that Janie and Raymond were anything closer than good friends.
You wish, I thought.
I was still sitting in the kitchen in front of the empty notepad when the clock in the hallway struck midnight. I had to make an early start in the morning, so I went around locking the doors and switching off the lights. There was a window banging in the sitting-room – not violently, because there was scarcely any breeze – but quite loudly, at measured intervals. I went to close it and saw the lightning break-dancing on the horizon and smelled the ozone in the air.
From the ceiling, I thought I heard a soft scratching noise, like something with claws running fast and light underneath the bedroom floorboards. I don’t want to speak that thing’s name, if it’s all the same to you.
I listened, but I didn’t hear the scratching again. I closed the window and locked it. I didn’t look out at the garden. Although I knew that he wouldn’t be there – although I knew that he couldn’t be there – I didn’t want to see the man in the black stovepipe hat standing on the grass. He didn’t exist. He was nothing more than an optical illusion, the shadow of a passing seagull, a wind-tossed piece of black paper.
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