Vince scrape the drunk man’s money off the bar and without another word he slink back to wherever it is he go behind that little door and the woman go back to pulling cards out her hand.
But I don’t care cos that soup in the pail steaming hot and smell like the most delicious thing I ever smelled I been so hungry. Mary already busy spooning hers into her mouth, and I do the same. Good big lumps of cabbage and potato at the bottom gonna fill you up good and I aint looking up got my mouth so close to the pail and I don’t notice that old drunk man slide along the bench and sit up real close now.
“Hungry little children, aren’t we?” he say. Sound like Geraint.
It make me jump. He’s so close I can see the dirt under his fingernails. His dark knobbly hands clutching at the mug.
“Want to see a rat, boyo?”
I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and stare at him.
Mary kick me under the table.
“Do you want to see a rat, look you?”
“I seen plenty of rats,” I say.
“Bet you won’t have seen one like Ruby though?”
The man reach down into his pocket and pull out a big black and white rat that sit all quiet on his hand as he stroke it—
“Out of the houses, the rats came tumbling, great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats—” The man’s lips get all wet as he speak.
Then he put the rat back in his pocket, looking like he gonna say something more but forget what. He take a deep gulp from his mug.
“I aint never seen a rat like that,” I say.
Looking up, he twitch his mouth into a brief smile—laugh to himself. The laugh break into a cough, his head shaking on his neck.
The rat start climbing up the sleeve of his coat. Mary and me just sitting quiet. This drunk man aint gonna stop. I can see it. Just gonna swivel his watery brown eyes on us again any minute.
“Shall I tell you about trapping the rats?”
His arms slide forward on the table. He aint holding his mug too steady, just staring at nothing behind our heads.
“When you’re trapping you never, never, never put bait on the traps. Always put traps in their runs … . You’ll find rats are cunning after a few have been caught—oh, aye, they’ll jump over the traps, so you’ve got to try another night—”
The man’s elbow slip off the table, and he cough, and I can see his spit spray in little bloody spots on the table. But he aint finished.
He hold up the rat in front of him. “More precious than rubies is wisdom … and she’s got riches and honor in her hands.” His voice get all quiet and sticky-sounding. “Her ways are ways of pleasantness. Don’t forget that, children.” His drunken face got real close now. “Yes, children, her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”
His eyes close. The rat drop down onto the bench.
The old man slump forward against the table, his head slowly falling til his forehead’s resting on the scarred planks. Snores flapping out from his hairy old mouth right in front of us.
With a gust of cold air, the door open. Two men come in from outside, snow on their shoulders, big coats pulled so high can’t see their faces in the candlelight. One of them got a short thick dog pulling on a rope, but those men don’t look at us, they just bash on the door behind the bar shouting, Vince!
But the dog look over. I watch him give a quick turn of the snout.
The rat man snoring on the table and his rat still sniffing about on the bench. That rat aint got too much sense what with that stocky dog straining on its leash so close, cos the rat hang down by her back legs and plop onto the floor, and now she been sniffing along toward the door.
I seen it. And the dog seen it.
Dog start whimpering and barking and scrabbling against its leash.
“Oy, Billy! Get back, will ya!” shout the man, rough.
But the man’s too late cos the dog aint stopping.
The dog break free.
There been a great big commotion then: The dog shoot under the table, the rat catcher wake up from his dark sleep like a bolt of lightning cracking open a tree.
But it been too late cos the dog quick as a dart got the rat by the neck. The rat scream. Eeeeek. But with a flick of that dog’s neck the rat been got and tossed against the wall.
The old rat catcher crash against the table and fumble drunk across the room, fall down on his knees. But he been too late. His rat all dead and broken. It take him a few seconds to see it.
“Ruby!” he moan.
And he’s holding that rat in his hands like it been a baby or something and he got tears in his eyes running down his old cheeks and he’s looking up at the men in their coats, and they just been laughing at him blubbing on the dirty cold floor of this room in his raggy coat—almost look as broken as that limp rat he been holding in his hands.
Vince come out at all the noise. And he see what happen—putting the bits together like a puzzle. Vince put this sorry story together quick, and he start shouting at those men with big hands reaching out and getting their dog under control. The men soon stop laughing pretty quick, cos Vince got something inside him make him seem stronger when he been shouting, even though he’s beaky and got small little eyes and dirty long fingernails. Can’t you see that’s all he’s got? That rat? It aint funny, he shout.
The big men look at each other like kids.
“Sorry, Piper,” says one to the blubbering old man. “You’ll get another one.”
But he don’t mean sorry, you can tell.
The rat man aint listening though, just sobbing and blubbering with his cheek right close to the dead rat. The men with the dog shrug their shoulders a bit. Vince help the old man up.
“Come on, Piper, they’re right, you’ll get another one.”
“Not like Ruby. Not like Ruby.”
He keep repeating that even after Vince pour him out another drink.
“Not like Ruby.”
The rat lying dead in front of him on the table.
“Not like Ruby,” he blub like a little girl.
The whole thing make me feel proper sad inside I tell you, seeing him crying like a baby over his black and white rat, even though he been a big old-time graybeard and drunk too.
He look up from his mug.
“Yes. Yes, it’s time to leave, Ruby. Got to go now.”
“We’ll help you get home,” say Mary.
I look at her hard.
“Yes, yes, little girl.” The old man pick up the dead rat, pull on a large shapeless hat and make for the door.
“We’ve got to follow him,” say Mary.
“You really want to go with him?”
“You’ve got a better idea, have you? We’ll freeze out on the street. Vince’ll kick us out soon, and the curfew’s coming down. Don’t want to be wandering about then. He’s so drunk he won’t do us any harm. Trust me.”
The woman’s still dealing her cards out in the corner. Staring down at them. She don’t say a word.
21
Outside a fearsome wind blowing up. That old rat man stagger away from the beerhouse along the path by the canal. He stop and piss in the snow. Swaying. Mary and me stand back.
“Why do you want to follow him?” I say.
“We got to sleep somewhere. And he’s not going to hurt us. Look.”
The old man got the dead rat out his pocket, and he’s blubbing on to it quietly, his coat flapping up around him in the wind.
Mary come up soft behind him. “Come on, Piper, got to get home before the storm, before the curfew.”
The old man look at Mary. Then back along the snowy path.
“Got to get home, Ruby. That’s right.”
He put the rat back in his coat and stagger forward in the snow.
After a while he lurch toward the empty canal. I reckon he’s gonna fall in it and break his neck, but there’s a ladder. The old man lower his leg unsteady over the edge and pull his coat around
in the wind. Clinging on and grunting, he disappear over the edge, down into the darkness below.
“Come on, Willo, we got to follow him.”
“Down there?”
“Yes.”
Mary already getting down the ladder, so I got to follow.
The ladder go down and down. Got to be tall as a house, the walls seem to fall in over me. Towering up in the night. The light from the beerhouse far behind us up on the path, the stony walls of the canal glint here and there with water, frozen in icy riverlets seeping from the brickwork, with just the night sky reflecting off the piles of rubbish and snow far down below.
At the bottom, the old man steady himself against the wall. He breathe heavy and rest his hands on his knees. Then he move off, his feet following an icy trail along the side of the drifts.
A group of scrubby trees sprout out from the wall. The bare branches just dark shadows against the snow. He push his way into the trees, following a well-worn path, fighting the twigs that catch at his coat.
Far off above us a loud siren blast out across the dark settlement, echoing in the night air.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Curfew.”
We push in among the bare branches. The old man coughing in front of us. Behind the trees, built into the wall of the canal, been an archway covered in boards. A doorway. He struggle to get it open.
“You want help wi’ it?” say Mary.
The rat man turn and look at Mary then like he seen her for the first time. He gasp, scared. His wet lips moving soundlessly in the tangle of his beard.
“It’s all right, we’re not going to rob you, just need somewhere to sleep,” she say.
The man cower against the door. Hands over his head.
“Baba’s children. Are you come to rob me?”
“No, we aren’t going to rob you. You said we could sleep here.”
“Ruby’s dead.”
“I know, but we’ll stay wi’ you tonight. All right?”
Mary look at me with raised eyebrows.
“Just tonight,” I say. “We’re only gonna help you, old man. You can get up. We aint gonna hurt you.”
I help him up. I aint scared no more, just thinking I been pleased I got that soup down my neck. Best thing about the city so far that soup. I don’t care no more where we going or who he is we been with cos my eyes so tired I just want to sleep.
The old man seem happy that we aint gonna rob him. He mumble to himself and heave the door open. We step inside. Pulling the door shut behind us, he shuffle forward, his steps echoing in the dampness.
I hear something strike and his bearded face been lit up as he bend over a stubby candle trying to push his wobbling match onto the wick.
We been in some kind of tunnel arching up over us back into the dark. The tunnel pretty low and that old man got to stoop at the side where he been standing. It smell of damp and smoke and earth. Hanging off nails in the walls been wire cages and traps.
Stumbling, he take the candle to a small stove made from a metal drum, the crooked chimney pipe stuck in the wall. He kneel down and fiddle about with sticks and a match but he done this before I reckon or he gonna be dead from the cold. That fire soon been spitting into life and he lay a couple of sticks on it.
“Nice warm fire for the hungry children, Ruby.”
He take the dead rat from his coat and lay it in a small cage sitting on a shelf.
“You can use that—” he say, pointing to a pan by his bed. “But otherwise”—he gesture to the door—“outside.”
He grab a dirty bottle off the shelf and stagger to a great pile of blankets heaped up on a bed against the wall. Without another word, he pull off his boots and fall down onto it. His head aint hit the pillow before he’s snoring again.
Mary go over to the bed, she pull one of the blankets over the old man’s chest. Girls always thinking of things like that. I see her hands in the candlelight, little finger just a bit crooked but the others long and delicate, tugging on the heavy blanket. She take her hood down, and her hair been in a proper mess, kind of hiding her face—it’s the color of hay. I wonder if it smell good like hay too. She turn and look at me.
“What?” she say.
I look away.
“We can sleep here safe.” She unpick a couple of rugs from the bed and carry them over. I drag some old planks to the fire and make up somewhere dry to lie down. We been so tired we just get down on the floor in front of the fire and pull the rugs over us.
“You really reckon we been safe here?” I say.
“Yes,” say Mary. “No one’s going to bother wi’ us down here. Rat catcher’s going to sleep til the morning. Curfew now anyway. Everyone’s got to stay inside.”
“Curfew?”
“Yes, you can’t go out after curfew.”
“What happens if you do?”
“If you get caught, you mean?”
“Yes. If you get caught.”
“I don’t know. Got to show your papers? Maybe they take you away?”
“Who takes you away?”
“Soldiers, police—whoever catches you. Worse if it’s some gang.”
“Then what?” I ask.
Mary wriggling close under the blankets. “I don’t know, Willo. I’ve never been out after the curfew. Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know where my dad is. Where he’s been taken. And the others. Magda. The little ones …”
“Your da got papers?” she say, turning her head over her shoulder.
“Course not. We’re stragglers. We aint got papers.”
“No, ’spose not. So why did they take your da away?”
“I don’t know. Geraint rat us out. But I’m gonna get him.”
“Who’s Geraint?”
“Just a farmer. He rat us out I reckon, cos he come back to our house after the government trucks been and taken everyone away. But I’m gonna go back to the mountains, to his farm, and get him. Find out where they take my dad.”
She turn back to the fading fire.
“How are you going to get to Geraint now?” She yawn.
“I’m thinking on it,” I say.
We been quiet for a bit. “What was all that about ‘moths on the wing’?” I ask her. “Vince say it in the beerhouse. Sound like the poem my dad always telling me.”
“I don’t know. Vince is always giving me da messages like that.”
I hope she aint gonna start blubbing, thinking on her dead dad.
But she don’t.
“Really. How are you going to get back to the mountains now, Willo?”
She’s right. It aint gonna be easy. Feel like this one day stretched on for a week already. All those thousand people in the city. Stink and dirt and trucks and everyone cold and hungry.
“You think it’s gonna be hard, Mary?”
There aint no answer.
“Mary?”
But Mary fall asleep. I can feel her little stick-thin body rising and falling. I aint gonna blow out the candle; I’m just gonna lie here looking at the side of her face a bit. Reckon if she got a bit of fat on her bones she’s gonna be quite pretty.
“Whaa—!”
The old man sit up in his bed with a shout. But he fall back down again straight off.
Mary don’t wake up. Just breathe on deep and heavy. Trusting. She shift in her sleep and I move the blanket back over her shoulder.
Outside I hear the loudness of men and women high up on the path. But the sound move along. Mary’s right. I reckon we been safe down here tonight.
It aint gonna be easy.
I got to do it before morning.
Cos she’s gonna make a fuss big and loud if I try and tell her. She’s gonna want to come.
But I got to leave her. She’s gonna slow me down.
She’s gonna be all right here though. Got this place for a start. Got the old man. He aint gonna hurt no one. And Mary knows people. Knows how to get by I reckon.
I got things to do.
I got to get back where I belong.
I been thinking on those horses with their heads hanging over the gate. Horse gonna be what you need to get along quick.
Mary move again, making little noises in her sleep. Her arm fall against my face. Her cold hand resting on my cheek. I move it away real gentle.
I’m gonna leave her the gloves I make her. She’s gonna need them. It don’t seem the city people got much idea bout keeping warm.
Something sweet as honey about her hand somehow, just falling on my face like that. And she been proper smart and clever getting us the soup and finding this place to sleep. She aint the stupid little girl I think she been. Not when she been here in the city.
But really, I aint got room for no one else. Got to get Geraint, find out where my dad been. See Alice. Aint seen Alice for a year. Not since she went to Geraint’s farm.
I got a tight knot in my guts thinking about that snake Geraint with his dirty fingers poking about my dad’s stuff and ratting us out. Thinking about where my dad been, if I’m gonna see him again. I got a bad feeling about it.
Maybe I got a bit of a tight knot thinking about leaving Mary too.
She stir in her sleep.
“Willo?” she say all sleepy.
“I been here, Mary. Go back to sleep.”
“You won’t leave me, Willo. Will you?”
“You got to sleep, Mary.”
The candle gutter, and it’s out. Just smell its last breath of smoke in the dark. And Mary’s hair. Smell that too. She reach out under the blanket.
“You won’t, will you?”
I aint gonna say nothing. Just hold her still under my arm til her breath get deep again.
I wish we been up on the Farngod right now.
Up on the Farngod, quiet in the snow.
22
That old rat catcher snore in his bed.
Mary breathing deep.
Good and quiet I get up. A slip of light slide in through a crack in the door. I take the stubby candle and put it in my pouch. Take the gloves and lay them on the floor next to Mary. She’s gonna know I left them for her cos I lay them down nice and neat. I reckon she’s gonna understand.
After the Snow Page 11
