by Alex Shearer
‘I want to do it, Peggy!’ Martin was all but hopping up and down. ‘Let me do it. I want to do it. I’ve never been rat bait before. How much will you give me?’
‘Well … I’ll give you fifty ICUs, kid. How’s that?’
‘A hundred!’ Martin said.
‘Seventy.’
‘Now, just hold on, Martin.’
‘But, Peggy, you said yourself we don’t have much money and you don’t know how we’ll ever manage when we get to City Island, and I can give it to you for when you go back home, to buy some things for your island, or you can even stay too and not need to go back and –’
‘We don’t need a hundred ICUs, Martin –’
‘But you had to spend your savings on fixing the solar panels, and that was my fault because of the sky-shark and the leftovers. Oh, let me, I want to do it. I’ve never been a piece of cheese before!’
Martin might have been my brother but I could never quite figure out if he was brave or stupid. Maybe it was a bit of both.
‘I’ll wait with him, if you want –’ Alain spoke up.
The Ratter looked at him and at the crossbow in his hand.
‘You good with that?’
‘I can use it.’
‘If you hit it before I do, I’ll give you fifty.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘See, Peggy. It’ll be all right. I’ll be the mouse-trap cheese –’
‘Rat-trap cheese, strictly speaking,’ the Ratter said.
‘And lure it in, and then Alain and the man’ll get it.’
‘No problem, lady. No danger. No dramas.’
‘Please!’
Well, Peggy was never one to play it too safe.
‘We all have to grow up, I guess. If you really want to –’
‘I do!’
‘And it’s safe?’
‘Safe as houses. I’ve caught more rats than you’d believe, lady. Only been bit the once.’
He held up his left hand. I saw he had two fingers missing.
‘Oh, now wait, now –’
‘It’s all right, Peggy,’ Martin said. ‘It was only a couple of fingers.’
‘I like this boy,’ the Ratter said. ‘Like his spirit. Only a couple of fingers, see. You looking for an apprenticeship there, my boy? Rat-skinning, it’s a fine life. No two days the same. Fresh air, your own boss –’
‘He’s not looking for a career in any rat-skinning,’ Peggy said coldly. ‘He’s on his way to City Island, like his sister here, and our guest.’
The Ratter looked impressed and thoughtful.
‘Is he? Are you now? That so? You’re travelling to City Island? Well now. Is that a fact?’
‘So can I do it, Peggy?’
‘Well … keep your hands out of the way.’
‘We do it now?’
‘No time like it. You all follow me.’
And the rat-skinner turned and set off at a good pace towards the other side of the island, and he led us across some rocks and to a high crag, which stuck out into the sky. It was bare and exposed and you could feel the wind blowing.
‘OK, young fella,’ he said. ‘You just stand on the ledge there and think good thoughts and let the breeze carry the smell of you out into the sky.’
‘I don’t smell!’
‘Nothing personal, just like natural odours – just you stand there and let that big old sky-rat get the message. Me and the other young fella here will step down behind the rocks so he won’t be smelling us. Then when he comes in and starts circling, we’ll have him. Young fella’s got his crossbow there, and I’ve got the old harpoon. Can’t go wrong, son. Not a worry. This way, if you would, ladies, all got to keep out of the wind. Don’t want that old rat there smelling all of us. He’ll get his nostrils all jumbled up and won’t know what to do with himself. So, if you would –’
So we climbed back down and hid among the rocks, and there Martin was, up on the crag, looked all pleased and proud of himself, like he was the greatest thing since the last greatest thing – whatever that was.
‘Do you think that rat-skinner knows what he’s doing?’ I asked Peggy.
‘He knows,’ Peggy said. ‘But I’m not so sure Martin does. But then there’s more to an education than sitting in a classroom.’
The wind was blowing Martin’s hair around his eyes.
‘Better get that cut when we get to the island,’ Peggy said absently. ‘Or maybe I can do it later …’
The breeze blew; the sky stayed empty. We sat behind the rocks and stayed quiet. My leg started to ache. Then it went to sleep. Then I got cramp.
I was massaging my calf muscle when I heard the sound.
‘Here he comes …’
I peered out from behind the rock.
Martin wasn’t smiling any more. He was looking like someone who needed two things – to change his mind in a hurry and to go to the toilet in an even bigger hurry than that.
‘Oh, my –’
It was massive. It looked more like a bat than a rat. Huge, cloth-like wings, a long head with a protruding muzzle, clawed limbs and a rodent’s teeth, and two black, bulbous eyes that seemed on the verge of popping out.
The creature fluttered to a halt and stopped on the ledge, a few metres away from where Martin stood.
‘Aren’t you going to shoot it?’ Peggy hissed.
‘Not yet,’ the Ratter said. ‘Only going to get one shot. Miss and he won’t be coming back. Let him get in a little closer.’
Alain raised his crossbow and took aim.
‘No firing till I say, young fella,’ the Ratter said. Alain nodded slightly, but didn’t reply.
The Ratter loaded his harpoon into the gun.
Martin was looking very white. The huge sky-rat was making peculiar clucking noises, and then it began to sniff, long, deep inhalations. And then it hopped, like some great, black rabbit, and it was only about two metres away now.
‘Hadn’t you better –?’ Peggy whispered.
‘It’s OK, ma’am,’ the Ratter said. ‘Years of experience. Know what I’m doing.’ And he raised the harpoon gun. But the missing two fingers of his left hand did not exactly inspire confidence in you.
There was a whimpering sound. I thought it was the sky-rat at first. But it was Martin. He was standing there with his eyes shut in complete and abject terror.
‘Brave young fella there,’ the Ratter said admiringly. ‘Don’t often get bait brave as that.’
‘Shoot the –’
The sky-rat leaned forward and sniffed at Martin’s neck. It seemed to approve. It tilted its head sideways, opened its jaws, bared its massive, protruding teeth and –
And then it just fell, sprawled to the ground, with a harpoon in its chest and a crossbow bolt in its head.
‘Hope I didn’t spoil the skin with that ’poon there,’ the Ratter said, getting to his feet. ‘Nice shooting, young fella,’ he said to Alain.
‘I’ll just get that bolt back,’ Alain said.
‘Waste not want not,’ the Ratter said. ‘Better get my harpoon.’
We walked to where the sky-rat had fallen. Martin was lying next to it. He’d passed out. Peggy went to him.
‘Martin …’
He opened his eyes.
‘Did we do it?’
‘Hundred ICUs coming your way, young fella. And fifty for the sharpshooter.’
A smile lit up Martin’s face.
‘I wasn’t scared,’ he said. ‘Not at all.’
‘Martin,’ I said. ‘You were terrified.’
‘A bit,’ he said. ‘But I still did it.’
The Ratter slapped him on the back and nearly sent him flying off the crag.
‘That’s the spirit, young fella,’ he said. ‘That’s the real rat-skinning spirit you’ve got there. Want to watch me gut him?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Martin said. ‘Can I?’
I left them to it. I’d had enough. I decided to go for a walk.
When I came back, it was all done, and the
huge skin was pinioned out with the rest, drying in the sun.
‘Come to the house and get refreshed,’ the Ratter said. ‘And I’ll pay you what I owe. And there’s someone I want you to meet.’
So we followed him back to his house, which was the only one on the island. Rat-skinning was plainly a solitary kind of occupation and not to everyone’s taste.
‘Come in and get out of the sun,’ he said. ‘We’ve got water, we’ve got ice – I make my own, worked out how to do it. Come on in.’
We went inside. The house was small but tidy, and the rooms were shady and cool. He got us drinks and offered us a taste of rat meat, but nobody took him up on it. And then we discovered who he wanted us to meet.
‘Angelica! Come down and say hello. There’s some folks here.’
There was silence, then the opening of a door and the sound of steps on a staircase, and then into the room came a girl, about Martin’s age. She was extraordinarily pretty behind a pair of big, round glasses, and in her hand she carried a book – one that looked very old and dog-eared, as if it had been read many times.
‘This is my daughter, Angelica. Angelica, say hello to the folks.’
She looked at us, a little shy.
‘Hello …’
‘We don’t see much by way of folks, especially not her age.’
She stared at us with open and even affectionate curiosity, as if children were a strange novelty that it would take her a while to get used to. I noticed too that Martin was staring back at her, as if he even preferred her to the one hundred International Currency Units that he was holding in his hand.
‘You like books, young lady?’ Peggy asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’
‘But we don’t have but two or three and she’s read them over and over. So I was wondering,’ the Ratter said, ‘if you might do me a favour. That is, seeing as you’re going there anyway. And I’m happy to pay, happy to pay, whatever you ask, whatever it needs …’
Peggy sighed. I think she could see it coming. She knew what it was going to be long before he said it.
‘Would you take her with you, to City Island? She’s starved for learning, poor thing, isn’t that right, Angelica? And you wouldn’t believe the brains on her, and me just a rat-skinner and all. It must be her mother she got them from, certainly wasn’t me. But would you? I’ll give you all I have. Would you take her? Please, ma’am, would you take her? She’ll be safe with you, I know it. Take her with you, please.’
Peggy looked at her and said, ‘Is that what you want, Angelica? You want to leave your dad?’
The girl shook her head.
‘But you want to go to school too?’
And she nodded.
‘Then that’s a hard one, isn’t it now?’
‘I’ll come and see you, Angelica. Next turning. I’ll fix the boat and save up money and you can show me City Island and tell me all you’ve learned. You can’t stay here rat-skinning – it’ll do for me, but you’ve got the brains –’
She went over to her slightly smelly rat-skinning dad and put her arms around him.
‘I know, darling,’ he said. ‘I know. And I’ll miss you terrible. But it’s what your mother would have wanted too. It’s for the best.’
And I knew we’d have to budge up and make a little more room on the deck. Because we now had another passenger to take with us.
One thing did puzzle me though – why didn’t the rat-skinner use his own daughter as rat bait? She was the same age as Martin. There were two explanations for that, as far as I could reason. The first was that she didn’t smell right for the sky-rats; the second was that he loved her too much and didn’t want to risk losing her. But he was quite happy for us to risk losing Martin. And even I thought Martin was worth a little more than one hundred International Currency Units. In some ways, he was quite irreplaceable.
12
angelica
MARTIN BACK HERE SPEAKING AGAIN:
Well, Gemma can go and do whatever she likes, whenever she chooses, as far as I care. It makes no difference to me. But I have to say that all this mooning about she started doing got quite nauseating.
I hadn’t noticed straight away. But after a while I realised that she was always telling me about what Alain thought, and what his opinions were, and what the Cloud Hunting views were on this, that and the other. And when it came to her turn to do the cooking, it was all, ‘Oh, Alain, would you like to help me down in the galley?’ – like he couldn’t just have taken a turn cooking on his own. And when it was her turn for the washing-up, it was, ‘Oh, Alain, shall we do the washing-up together? It’ll be so much quicker with two of us.’
But it never was quicker, not with the two of them gassing away down there – though I guessed it was Gemma who did most of the gassing while Alain got saddled with the listening.
It was quite obvious to me what was going on and pretty pathetic as far as I was concerned. But Peggy just sat there grinning to herself, like she’d not had her funny bone so tickled in a long time, but she never said a word. But I thought, well, there you go: Gemma sees the first boy she’s come across in eight years (except me, of course, but as anyone will tell you, brothers don’t count) and she thinks he’s something special just because he’s got a couple of scars on his face and a crossbow. But, anyway, if she wanted to go round acting stupid that was her business and not my problem.
But that’s not the point. It’s Angelica I want to tell you about. I mean, the only girl I’d ever seen since I was four was Gemma, so my idea of girls was bossy, moody, grumpy, argumentative, prone to cheating at card games, bossy again and occasionally given to kicking you when you weren’t looking.
Angelica, though – she was nothing like that. She was really quite an eye-opener. She never told you what to do at all, not a gram of bossiness in her, and she never kicked you up the backside on the sly, not once. And as for pretty, well, I mean, she was pretty enough with the glasses on, but when she took them off and blinked at you with those big blue eyes of hers, well, I’d never even imagined anyone could be that pretty. Not that I’m saying Gemma’s ugly or anything. She’s presentable enough and scrubs up nice and clean, as Peggy would put it, but that’s not the same as film star looks. Not that I’d ever seen a film back then, but I’d heard about them. And Angelica definitely had those film star looks with her glasses off.
But I wouldn’t want you to go thinking that I’m a soft touch for a pretty face, as I’m not – that kind of thing doesn’t count with me at all. No, it was all the things she’d read about and done that interested me. Angelica could remember whole chapters from books by heart, and she had so many rat-skinning stories that you could never have enough of them. She hadn’t just sat at home turning pages and looking out of the window, she’d gone with her dad on no end of rat-skinning trips, and what Angelica couldn’t tell you about rat-skinning wasn’t worth knowing.
I just used to sprawl there on the deck and listen to her, as we tried to pass those long, weary travelling hours. She told me about the time her dad had his two fingers bitten off by a sky-rat, but how they had killed the sky-rat anyway and then gone and cut it open to get the fingers out and see if they couldn’t be reattached.
But get this. When they cut the sky-rat open, they didn’t just find two fingers in there, they found four – and still in good condition. Which meant the other two had to have been bitten off recently, or they’d have been digested.
So, anyway, then, Angelica said, they set off for the nearest hospital ship to try to see if her dad could get his fingers stitched back on. He knew which ones were his as the other two were a very dark brown, and he was more on the pale-skinned side, so that part wasn’t a problem – not identifying the fingers anyway. Her dad could put the finger on his fingers and no trouble. But they never did find the guy who belonged to the other fingers anywhere, which was a pity, as maybe he was looking for them and hoping to be reunited.
But by the time they got to the ho
spital ship though, it was no good. The fingers were drying out and the skin was shrivelling up like parchment, Angelica said. And the surgeons couldn’t do anything, though they offered him a couple of plastic ones. But her dad said it was real fingers or no fingers at all; he wasn’t having plastic, as what use were plastic fingers to a rat-skinner? So he’d been two fingers short ever since. And she had plenty of stories like that, lots of them.
So this is why I thought she was someone special and still do. As I have met other girls since, but they never have any rat-skinning stories or have been on any rat-skinning adventures like Angelica had. She really was someone special. And as we sailed along, filling those long empty hours just talking and imagining about things, I used to think how great it would be if me and Angelica could go rat-skinning together one day. In fact, I even asked her.
‘Would you take me rat-skinning with you one day, Angelica?’
‘I’d love to, Martin,’ she said. ‘I think that would be great.’
And I’d picture us sailing off rat-skinning together and hunting us down some big ones and maybe even getting our photos taken, with the two of us standing side by side, and some big felled sky-rat lying on the deck. I even thought that one day we could get married and get our own island and set up our own rat-skinning business. But when I hinted at it, she said she was sorry but no, as she was hoping to become a doctor one day. And when she said that I did wonder if it was so as to stitch people’s fingers back on when they got them bitten off and other bad experiences.
She said her dad didn’t want her going in for rat-skinning, as although it was a good living, it was looked down on, and was on a level with collecting the garbage. Though I don’t see what is wrong with either of those things. Rubbish has to be collected and rats have to be skinned and people ought to be grateful that somebody’s doing it. She said her dad wanted her to do better for herself, like surgery and being a doctor and so on. But while I could see that being a medical woman was certainly different from rat-skinning, I didn’t see how it was necessarily better. But what did I know? And maybe once you got to City Island they taught you why rat-skinning was inferior, and I was looking forward to hearing the arguments and being persuaded against my views.