The Slave
My very educated mother just showed us nine
planets. My very educated mother just showed us nine planets. My,
Mercury. Very, Venus. Educated, Earth. Mother, Mars. Just, Jupiter.
Showed, Saturn. Us, Uranus. Nine, Neptune. Planets, Pluto. All of
them, in the right order. It was brilliant. The only problem was
the two Ms, Mercury and Mars. Mixing them up. Except for that, it
was plain sailing. Simple. That was what I liked about it. All that
complicated business straightened and tidied into one sentence.
Even if the sentence itself was stupid. My very educated mother.
Just showed us nine planets. Mind you, that bit is good. Because
there are nine of them. So it fits and helps you
remember.
And it’s about the only thing I remember learning
in school. I must have learnt more, I’m not saying that. A lot
more, actually. I can read, for fuck sake. I’m a two books a week
man; I eat the fuckin’ things. So, yeah. But I don’t remember
learning how to read. And I do remember my very educated mother.
Like it was now. The first week of secondary school. And the
teacher, God love her. Miss something. O’Keefe, I think it was.
Something like that. Her name was on the timetable, ‘O’Whatever it
was. Miss.’ We were hoping a nice bit of stuff would come walking
in the door. But in marches your woman. Older than our ma’s, as
ugly as our da’s. With a box of chalk. Holding it up in the air,
like a cup or something, a trophy. And she waits till there’s
absolute silence.
—What is this? she says, and she points at some
poor cunt at the front. Me.
—A box of chalk, I say, and wait to be told I’m
wrong. But—Yes, she says.—It is a box of chalk. And what
type of chalk is it?
I look at the box.
—Coloured, I say, and I’m right again. Twice in a
row, for the first time in my life. And the last.
—Yes, she says.—It is coloured chalk. And it is
mine. She goes over to the desk. The teacher’s desk, like, the one
at the front. She opens the drawer and in goes the chalk.
—I am Miss – whatever it is, she says.—And I am
your geography teacher. We will meet three times a week. And three
times a week I will open this drawer and I will find my chalk
exactly as I left it. I have information to impart but I cannot do
this to my satisfaction if I do not have my coloured chalk.
And then she says – you’ve guessed it.—Do I make
myself clear?
—Yes, Miss, say the saps at the front,
mise1 here included.
—A stick of coloured chalk is the geography
teacher’s essential tool, she says.—The box contains ten sticks and
it will contain ten sticks when we meet again on Wednesday.
‘Wed-nesday’, she called it. Some hope, the poor
eejit. The other teachers took it, every fuckin’ stick. It was all
gone by lunchtime.
Anyway, she took a stick of ordinary white off the
tray at the bottom of the blackboard, and then she wrote my very
educated mother, down the board instead of across, and the names of
the planets that the words stood for beside them. And I’ve
remembered it ever since, and nothing else. Precious little. The
only other thing I remember clearly is the Latin teacher. I did
Latin, believe it or not. And I remember none of it. But I
do remember him. He went around the room every morning,
putting his hand down our jumpers to make sure we were wearing
vests. A Christian Brother he was, and I can remember his
name. But I’ll keep it to myself. Yeah, I remember him, alright.
Every morning, right through the winter. Feeling my chest. Leaving
his hand there forever. Freezing. Rough palms – old cuts gone hard,
years of swinging a hurley. That was my only experience of abuse.
His hand. He’s still alive as well. So I’m told. I should report
him, I suppose. Only, (a) I don’t think I could handle the
humiliation, and (b) I’d hate anyone to know that I used to wear a
vest. And it’s harmless enough when you hear about some of the
other things that went on. And he did it to all of us; he wasn’t
just picking on me.
But no, I can’t remember a word of Latin. And I’m
not blaming the Brother, mind. Not at all. I’ve no French either,
barely a word. Maths, history – tiny bits, only. 1916. 1798. Black
’47. Irish? Ah, goodnight. Oíche mhaith.2 I can hardly help the kids with their
homework and the eldest left me behind years ago. No, the only
thing I remember, consciously remember, is that thing, my very
educated mother. But she was a clown, the teacher. We ate the poor
woman after we got the hang of her.
—Is there life on Uranus, Miss?
—No, indeed.
She was fierce enough that first day, with her box
of chalk. Scary. Worthy of a bit of respect. But then, I suppose it
was when she said about the chalk being her essential tool, we
realised then she was just a mad ol’ bitch and we made her life a
misery.
But. It has to be said. She taught me the only
thing I remember. And it’s not just that I remember it now and
again, when I hear one of the words, say, ‘mother’ or ‘very’, or
there’s something on the telly about astronomy. I remember it every
day. It’s not a memory, no more than the names of my children are.
One of your kids comes running up to you with its head split open,
you don’t have to think of its name. The names are always there.
And it’s the same with my very educated mother.
It’s like this. Every day, I walk down to the Dart
station – like I’ll do this morning. I’m on a job in town. Have
been for the last six months, and there’s another year in it, I’d
say. With a bit of luck. So I leave the tools in a strongbox on the
job and I don’t bother with the van. I walk down to the station,
and there’s a bit of a hill just before it and when I get to the
top there’s the Pigeon House chimneys in front of me. God’s socks,
the eldest used to call them. In the days when she used to talk to
us. And every time, every time I hit the top of the hill it
goes through my head, the same thing: my very educated mother.
Don’t ask me why, but it’s like clockwork. I don’t expect it or
anticipate it. It just pops into my head. And it stays lodged in
there until I get to the station. Every morning. Rain, wind or
hail.
And that was what went through my head the morning
I found the rat.
I shut the kitchen door. And I leaned back against
it. I had to force myself to breathe. To remember – to
breathe. In, out. In, out. My heart was pounding, Jesus,
like the worst hangover I’d ever had. It was sore. Really sore, now
– like a heart attack. Huge in my chest. And I leaned against the
kitchen door.
Just out there, out in the hall. In, out. In, out.
My very educated mother. My very educated mother. And when I got
the breathing together, I went back in. I went in and I had another
look, to make sure I’d actually seen what I’d seen. I was half sure
there’d be nothing there. It was a bit of brown paper, a wrapper or
something, one of the baby’s furry toys. Or even nothing at all. A
shadow. It was just about dawn, the blinds were open. Any of the
things on the windowsill could have made a shadow. At that hour of
the morning. I took the long way. Instead of going straight for the
fridge, the direct route. I came around here, to this side of the
counter. I was scared, yeah. I’m not going to not admit
that. But I wanted to see, to be absolutely sure. To see it
from a distance and an angle. To be absolutely positive.
And, yeah, it was there. In under the pull-out
larder. A rat. A dead fuckin’ rat. A huge fucker.
Lying there.
And I still couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t –
comprehend it. I was staring at the fuckin’ thing. There was
nothing else, in my head, in the world, just that thing lying
there, under my pull-out larder, that I installed myself – that was
my own fuckin’ idea – and I couldn’t get to grips with the
situation. I couldn’t just say to myself,—That’s a rat there,
Terry, and you’d want to think about getting rid of it.
No. I couldn’t organise myself. I couldn’t
think. I walked out and shut the door again. I was going to
go back in and go through it all over again.
And then I heard him. The baby. Inside in the
sitting room.
And I kind of cracked up.
It was only a few inches from my feet; did I tell
you that? Yeah. Two, three inches. Making the coffee, I was. Good,
strong coffee. I picked up the habit in America, in Florida, on the
holliers. Orlando. Before the baby. He was conceived there,
actually, now that I think of it. During a storm. Thunder,
lightning. It was something else; you’d never see it here. And good
music on the radio at the same time. Good seventies stuff, you
know. On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair. It all
seemed to fit. The music and the weather. Even though it was
pissing outside and he was singing about the desert. But it was
American. And we were there. Myself and herself, after all
those years. And that kind of explains why we’ve one child that’s
eight years younger than the others. He’s a souvenir, God love him.
Him and the coffee.
Anyway, I’m making the coffee. I’ve done the
plunger bit and I’ve gone to the fridge for the milk. I drop the
spoon, and I’m halfway down to picking it up when I see it. The
fuckin’ spoon was right beside it. It’s probably the first time I
ever dropped a spoon in my life. I don’t drop things.
Anyway, I’m leaning against the kitchen door and I
hear the baby chatting to himself in the sitting room. That’s when
I get really upset. I’m nearly crying, I don’t mind admitting it.
But I’m also thinking, and I’m straight back into the kitchen. I’m
thinking, deciding.
—Terry, I’m saying, out loud for all I know.—Action
stations. Let’s get rid of the cunt. Gloves and bag. Gloves and
bag.
I shut the door behind me, to make sure himself
doesn’t come in and see it on the floor or me with it in my hand. I
go over to the press where she keeps the plastic bags. She’s mad
into the environment, dead keen. We’ve a whole house full of
plastic bags. Anyway, so far, so good. I’m doing something. I’m in
control. The press is over there. The one under the sink. Well away
from your man on the floor. There’s no need for me to go too near
him yet. I’m assuming he was a male. It’s hard to imagine that
there’d be such a thing as a female rat. But that’s just me being
stupid. Let’s just say it was a male; it’s easier for me. I had go
past him, whatever sex he was. But I didn’t have to look at him, to
get to the sink. I go straight over and I have the door open before
it dawns on me that he might have friends in the vicinity. Fuckin’
hell, I nearly shat myself; I nearly fell into the press. But it
was empty; it was grand. No sign of disorder, claws, droppings – it
was grand. I take out four of the bags. There’s hundreds of them in
there. And one of the big black bin ones. I shake out the bags and
put them on the counter, one, and one, and one, and the last one.
Really fast now, no procrastinating. No way. Not with the baby in
the room next door.
That’s the problem, to an extent. He’s not a baby,
really. Not any more. He stood up about a year ago, without
bothering to crawl first. Up he gets, using the couch and my leg to
hoist himself, and he’s been flying around the place ever since,
except when he falls over asleep. We just call him the baby. He’ll
probably be the last, so he’ll be the baby for a while yet. Even
though he’s built like a shithouse and he’ll probably be shaving
before the end of the year, the speed he’s growing. He’ll be the
last, I’d say. She swings a bit but I’m fairly certain.
So, on with the gloves. Yellow Marigolds, way too
small for me. I have to force them on but the only alternative is
picking him up with my bare hands and that possibility doesn’t even
occur to me. So, I’m all set. I turn to face him. But, God, I feel
very exposed. I’m only in my dressing gown. This one here is new,
from herself for the anniversary. Eighteen years. I got her a
brooch. Doesn’t sound like much but it’s very nice.
Anyway, it wasn’t really the dressing gown. It was
the feet. I was in my bare feet. I hadn’t bought these yokes here
yet. The slippers. I know the rat was dead and not particularly
interested in biting my toe or having a look under my dressing
gown. But, still, I didn’t feel ready for battle. Even if the enemy
was dead and stiff. I hated myself then. That was the lowest,
really. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do what I was supposed to do. I
stared down at your man on the floor. In under the pull-out. He was
lying on his side. No teeth showing, no grimace, you know, nothing
like agony or anger. He was just quietly dead. But I couldn’t bend
down and pick him up. I just couldn’t do it. My home, my pull-out,
my family, my little son next door in the sitting room, this
bastard had come into my home – how is another story – and I
couldn’t just bend down, pick the cunt up and throw him in a
bag.
I really let myself down.
Then I did it.
Just like that. I bent down. I put my hand around
him. He was stiff, solid, like wood or metal with a bit of weight
on it. Or one of those Transformers toys, but heavier. And I could
feel him, even with the gloves on. Cold. Cold and hard. I couldn’t
feel the hair, thank God. I dropped him into the first plastic bag.
And I tied it at the top. Into the next bag, and the next one, and
the next, and into the black bag. Then I took him out to the shed.
It was cold out there, and still a bit dark, like now. But I still
did it, in my bare feet. Just to have him properly out of the way.
And I came back in here.
And then – and I’m a bit proud of this – I decided
to go ahead with my coffee. Mission accomplished, the worst was
over. I’d just carried a dead rat from here to there. I’d sorted
out the problem, done what I was supposed to do. I opened the
kitchen door again, and I realised that I was still wearing the
rubber gloves. So I was taking them off and deciding what to do
with them when he came in looking for his breakfast.
And that, I suppose, is what really got me
thinking. Really thinking. Not just reacting to the crisis, getting
rid of the rat. It went beyond the rat. The rat isn’t really
involved.
That’s my arse. Of course the rat’s involved. The
rat’s to blame.
It’s hard to explain.
Look. I never owned a pair of slippers in my life.
Now, I fuckin’ need them. I got these ones in Clery’s. They’re
alright. They’re grand. But I never wanted them. I never fuckin’
wanted them. I never wanted to be a man who wore slippers. I always
liked the feel of the house under my feet. Get into a pair of
slippers and you’re fucked; your life is over. That’s what I’ve
always felt, since I was a teenager and my father got a pair from
our granny and he put them on, sat down in his chair in the corner
and never got up again. I mean, he did get up. He went to work, he
went into the kitchen and up to the jacks. But that was it: he was
old. It got to the point where he wouldn’t say hello when he came
home from work. He wouldn’t acknowledge the family, my mother,
until after his feet were safe inside the slippers. We weren’t
getting on at the time. A bit like me and my eldest now, actually.
And everything I hated about him, about myself, about everything, I
aimed at those slippers. And now here’s me, after buying my own
slippers. I’ve no one to blame but myself. And the rat.
But it’s not just the rat and the slippers. Not
really. Look it, I’m forty-two. I don’t mind. I was forty-one last
year, I’ll be forty-three next year. I’m not the worst-looking man
in the world. There are lads that work with me ten years younger,
and they’re in bits. I’m Leonardo DiCaprio standing beside some of
those cunts.
And I read. I’m interested in the world. I still
get excited about things. I still love watching her brushing her
teeth, for example. I still want to go over and clean her mouth out
with my tongue, just like I wanted to, and did, from day one. And
she still knows it. And other things too.
But I’m forty-two. I’m middle-aged. That’s a
mathematical fact. In fact, more than half my life is over. So my
eldest told me, which was fuckin’ charming. The last time she said
anything to me. Something about statistics they were doing in
school. But, really, it was because I won’t let her watch
Trainspotting. It’s a good film but she’s still too young.
That was what I told her. Next year, probably. Which I thought was
reasonable. It’s a good film, like I said. But there’s too much in
it that’s not – okay, suitable. Unfortunately, that was the word I
used. ‘Suitable.’ Her face, Jesus. It hurt. Maybe I’m just being
stupid; I don’t know. She’s nearly seventeen. Anyway, that was when
she informed me that my life was more than half over.
But that’s not the point. Middle age. The midlife
crisis. Whatever you want to call it. I was forty-two when I saw
the rat. I’d still be forty-two if I’d never seen it. Okay, I’m
after getting myself a pair of slippers but I don’t believe that
they have evil powers. They haven’t made me grow old all of the
sudden.
No.
What has really rattled me, what has changed my
life, to the extent that it’ll probably never be the same again, is
the question that came into my head when the little lad came into
the kitchen wanting his breakfast.
—Cry-babies, he says.
That’s what he calls Rice Krispies. It’d break your
heart. Bright as a button.
—Cry-babies, Dada.
And me trying to take off the rubber gloves.
What if?
That was it.
What if. What if he’d been the first one to come
into the kitchen? What if he’d picked it up? What if it hadn’t been
dead? It goes on and on, backwards and forwards, right through
everything. There’s no end to it. It won’t go away and it’s not
going to go away, and I don’t know if I can cope.
I’ve never been a great sleeper. I don’t know
about when I was a kid. I don’t remember. I suppose I was normal.
But since then, especially in the last few years, I’ve got by on
very little. Even in the days when I drank a bit, I still got up
early, even when my head was hopping. I never liked lying in bed.
I’d go down to the kitchen and stick my mouth under the cold tap
until I could feel the water negotiating with the hangover. That
was as much of a cure as I needed, until a few years ago and I
began to feel it a bit more. I’ve always managed on four or five
hours’ sleep. And I rarely feel the lack.
I don’t drink at all now. I gave up a couple of
years back. I just gave up; nothing dramatic. I’d no real taste for
it any more. Not that I was a big drinker. Just the three or four
pints. That was what I settled down to after I got married and the
kids started arriving. Not every night either; a couple of times a
week. Then once a week. And then I stopped going altogether. I got
lazy. I’d go down to the local and the lads I knew, the ones I
really liked, wouldn’t be there. They’d gotten lazy like me, I
suppose, and there was one of them died. The hangovers, with the
kids and that, they just weren’t worth it any more. Especially when
the lads stopped coming down – after Frankie died, really. Enough
was enough. If we go out for a meal, me and her, I’ll have a glass
of wine but I’m just as happy with a 7-UP.
But back to the sleep thing. The night after I
found the rat, I slept as much and as well as I usually do. I just
slept. I didn’t dream about rats, as far as I know, and I didn’t
wake up screaming. I just woke up. As usual. I felt a bit robbed,
as usual, with the feeling that I could have done with an extra
half-hour. I grabbed the book from beside the bed and got up. I
went through the whole routine, exactly as I’d done the morning
before and every morning before that, going back years.
But it was different. There was the world of
difference. I turned on the lights as I came down, which I usually
wouldn’t have done. But you’d expect that, after the shock I’d had
the day before. I gave the door over there an almighty clatter
before I came in. Again, that’s only to be expected. Even though I
knew there were no more rats. The pest control lads had given the
place a good going-over the day before. I’d had to go to work but
she told me all about it when I got home and when I’d phoned her
earlier during the day.
—They’re up in the attic, looking for droppings,
she says when I phoned her the first time.—Nice enough
fellas.
As calm as anything. It annoyed me a bit. The thing
didn’t get to her the same way it got to me. Mind you, to be fair
to her, she never saw the fuckin’ thing. And, to be fair to me, I
did. Anyway, by the time I got home she was an expert on rats and
mice. The world’s foremost fuckin’ expert. No, that’s not
fair.
Anyway.
—They’re neophobic, she says after I said I’d go up
the attic to see if the poison had been touched yet.—They’re scared
of anything new, she says, even though I could have worked it out
myself.—So there’s no point going up. They won’t touch it for a few
days, until they’re used to it being there.
All I’d wanted to do was prove that I wasn’t too
scared to go up. I just wanted to do something useful, after
running off to work earlier and leaving her flicking through the
Golden Pages.
—Did they take the rat with them? I said.
—What rat? she says.
—The rat, I said.—The fuckin’ rat I found this
morning.
—Oh, she said.—No.
So that’s what I did. I got rid of the rat. I went
for a walk. With the black bag. No bother. I went looking for a
skip. And there was one just up the road. So, into the skip with
the fucker in the black bag. I shoved it down under some of the
rubble, to make sure no kids pulled it out and started messing with
it. I could feel it under the layers of plastic and I didn’t mind a
bit.
But that’s not the point. The point is – I don’t
know, exactly. What I used to take for granted, I can’t take for
granted any more. I used to be able to walk across the floor here
without giving it a moment’s thought. And now I can’t. I have to
think about it. I have to prepare myself. I have to casually search
the floor. I have to get down on my knees and check under the
presses, knowing I’ll find nothing. My mornings are ruined. It’s as
simple as that.
But there’s more to it than that. It’s the ‘what
if’ thing. That’s the real point. What if it had been Sunday
morning, early, and Match of the Day had been on. I’d have
sat down to have a look because I hardly ever watch it on Saturday
nights any more. It’s hard to get worked up about millionaires half
your age. Not that I begrudge them the money. Anyway, I’d have sat
down and the little lad would have strolled on into the kitchen. It
doesn’t bear thinking about. But I’ve thought about nothing else.
And it goes way beyond that. Everything. Fuckin’ everything is
polluted by it.
I wait up every night when the eldest goes out,
till she comes home. And I was just getting used to it. I was
capable of falling asleep before she came home. I’d wake up when
I’d hear her key in the latch, but I’d be back in bed, not an
embarrassment to her, before I’d hear her feet on the stairs. Now,
Jesus. Last Saturday I sat on the stairs, in the dark. I know –
like any normal father. But it isn’t. It’s desperate. I had to nail
myself to the stairs to stop from going out to the street or
driving to the disco, or whatever it’s called – the club she said
she was going to. It’s not that I don’t trust her. I don’t. But I
do, if that makes sense.
It makes perfect sense. I trust her. I’m happy,
was happy to let her out, to have her own key and the rest
of it. And I’m absolutely positive she abuses that trust. She
drinks. I know. She might even be doing the Ecstasy and that. And,
yeah, sex, I suppose. And I really don’t mind because that’s part
of the package as well. Part of the contract, giving her a longer
leash. And as long as she doesn’t stroll into the house with a
smell of drink on her and say, ‘Sorry I’m late, I was riding a chap
with a car and a ponytail,’ I don’t mind. What isn’t said didn’t
happen. She knows; we know. She’s finding her feet. We’re here if
she needs us.
But now, fuck. I’m on the verge of giving
out to her because she looks good. As if she’s to blame for being
an attractive young one, as if it’s anything to blame anyone for. I
was never like that. I was always proud of her, always. But now I’m
terrified. I remember the first time we let her go down to the
shops by herself. It was a real event, that day. She was so proud
of herself, you know. She was just eight. I’ve always loved that,
giving them the opportunity to be proud of themselves. If it was
now though, I wouldn’t let it happen.
Anyway.
She – my wife. Jackie. She’s worried about me.
Which is about the only thing going for me at the moment. It proves
something – I don’t know what. Love, I suppose. I see her looking
at me and I want to shout at her to leave me alone but I’m grateful
for it as well.
I don’t know anything any more. I don’t seem to.
I’m getting pains in my chest. And my arms are stiff when I wake
up. Numb. I remember in a film I saw when I was a kid, The
Birdman of Alcatraz, the warden, your man from The Streets
of San Francisco – not Michael Douglas, the other one. Your man
with the nose. Karl something. He had a pain in his arm – Karl
Malden – and Burt Lancaster, the birdman, knew that he was going to
have a heart attack. I remember being fascinated by that, that a
pain in your arm was a sign that there was something wrong with
your heart. It was great. And my father, of course, he wanted to
know if a pain in your arse meant you were going to have a brain
haemorrhage. This was before he got the slippers. But anyway. What
do two numb arms mean? Two heart attacks?
I don’t give a fuck about anything any more. I
really don’t. I’m reading this one here. Cold Mountain by
Charles Frazier. It’s good, you know. It’s very good. And I
couldn’t care less. I’m reading it because it’s what I do. I’m just
doing it. But I don’t care. She used to like that about me, the
opposite, you know. She always said it. My enthusiasm. She loved
the way I listened to music. I leaned into it. I really listened. I
never noticed, but she did. And it was the same with books, and
everything really. There was once she made me read in bed, out
loud, while she got on top of me, and I read right up to the second
before I came. It wasn’t easy, hanging on to the right page. It
wasn’t a hardback, thank Jesus. The Slave, by Isaac Bashevis
Singer. What a book that was. I’d never read anything like it
before. Or since. It made me regret that I wasn’t a Jew, because of
the way the main lad, Jacob, struggled to hold on to his Jewishness
all through the book. He was the slave in the title. The peasants
were trying to get him to eat pork, to do everything that was
against his beliefs. She noticed how excited I was getting, sitting
up in the bed, and she asked me what was so good about it. So I
read her a bit. About a party up in the mountains. Poland, this
was, four hundred years ago. Jacob was sent up there in the summer
months to look after the cattle, find them grass among the rocks,
and the only other people there with him were the village freaks,
the products of brothers riding the sisters and the rest of it.
Granted, the writer expressed it a bit better than I can, but you
get my drift. So I read her a bit. I can’t quote it exactly but
they were all rolling around in the muck, grunting like pigs,
barking like dogs, howling, pissing on the fire, hugging the trees,
stretched out on the rocks, vomiting, screaming, roaring.
—It’s just like our wedding, she said.—What’s it
about besides that bit?
—Well, it’s a love story, I said.—It’s
fantastic.
—Find us a different bit, she said.
So I did. Where he describes Wanda, this peasant
girl that Jacob loves. And that’s when it happened. I got through a
page and a half, which wasn’t too bad because it was very small
print and long paragraphs. Anyway, I came and she collapsed on
me.
—Ah look it, I said.—I’ve lost me page.
She laughed and cried, you know the way, and kissed
me.
—That’s the one, she said, into my ear.
Meaning, she’d be pregnant. She took the book out
from between us and looked at the cover, at the writer’s
name.
—We’ll call him Isaac, if it’s a boy, she
said.
It wasn’t anything, actually. Not that time. But
that’s how important it was to me, reading, music, even the job. I
loved tiles. Holding them, lining them up. The word ‘grout’.
Everything.
She gave me the job of naming the kids. She knew
I’d give them names that meant something. That had a bit of magic
in them. So the eldest is Sarah. That’s the name Wanda changed her
name to after she ran off with Jacob, in The Slave. She read
the book last year, the eldest did, and I think she was pleased,
even though it’s very sad in places and Sarah has a hard time of
it. She said nothing, but I think she liked it, the link there, you
know. Then there’s Oskar, from The Tin Drum. She wasn’t too
keen on him being named after a dwarf but I persuaded her that if
our lad got up to half the things that Oskar does in the book then
we’d never be bored. Then there’s Mary, from Strumpet City.
She’s a great fighter, Mary in that book. And we thought we’d go
for something a bit more Irish, even though it’s not strictly an
Irish name. But, anyway, she’s Mary. And the little lad is Chili,
after Chili Palmer in Get Shorty. He’s actually named after
me, Terence, because we knew he’d more than likely be the last and
she said we should name him after me and my father. I didn’t mind.
I quite liked it, actually. Even though I’ve been reading books all
my life and I’ve never come across a hero or even a baddie called
Terence. But, anyway, we usually call him Chili. And that’s Chili
in the book, not John Travolta in the film, good and all as he
was.
Anyway, the point is, I haven’t always been the
miserable poor shite you’re looking at. And, really, it wasn’t too
bad until recently. I’m just so tired, you know. And then this
thing.
How it happened was, we got up together one
Saturday morning and found the kitchen flooded. Water all over the
shop. But we couldn’t see where it was coming from. I turned it off
at the mains and we found it, the source of the leak. There’s a
rubber pipe that runs from the cold tap to a tap outside on the
wall. A mouse had eaten into it. The plumber, a pal of mine, showed
it to us when he was replacing it. The teeth marks.
—These things are supposed to be rodent-proof, he
says.
—Tell that to the fuckin’ mouse, she says.
And that was that, really. No real damage done. I
got some poison, the blue stuff – I can’t remember its name – and I
put it up in the attic. And I got a couple of new traps for in
here. No problem, end of story. Then I found your man and we
realised that it was a rat all the time and he’d had the run of the
house for God knows how long.
So. I suppose, on top of everything else, my
tiredness, the rows with the eldest – I suppose I’m just getting
old. The rat was the icing on the cake, so to speak. Not the first
time I’ve seen a rat, of course. I see them all the time on the
job, and when I was a kid we used to hunt them. But before, when I
saw a rat, it was always doing the decent thing, running off in the
opposite direction. This guy, though. Granted, he was dead. But how
long had he been in the house? Mice stick to one little patch of
the house, but not rats. They have the run of the place. He came
into the kitchen here through a hole in the plaster, where it was
drenched by the flooding and fell away from the wall. He died two
feet from the hole. But what about before that? How did he get in
before the plaster fell away? Down the stairs? It’s shattering,
thinking about it.
But.
Here it is. Here’s why I’m here. I’m taking the
house back. I’m repossessing it. I’m staying here like this until
it becomes natural again. Until I’m actually reading, and not
listening out for noise or remembering our dead pal on the floor
every time I go over to the kettle.
I’m not guarding the house. I don’t think that
there are more rats inside. Or mice. And, to be honest with you,
the mice are fuckin’ welcome. I’ll get in some extra cheese for
them. No, I’m getting over that bit. That’s only a matter of time.
The rat’s gone.
But. In a way, I am guarding the house. Not
against a rat or rats or anything else that shouldn’t be in the
house. I’m guarding it against nature. The only reason life can go
on in this house is because we managed to keep nature out. And it’s
the same with every house. And nature isn’t lambs and bunnies and
David Attenborough – that’s only a tiny part of it. It’s a lot
rougher than that. Life is a fight between us – the humans, like –
and nature. We’ve been winning but we haven’t won. And we never
will. The rats, for instance. They’re under us. Three feet, about.
A bit more, a bit less. They’re under there. Fine. But give them a
chance and they’ll be back. They haven’t lost and they never will.
We need the walls and the foundations to keep them out, to let them
know – because they’re not thick – we’re brighter than them and
we’re stronger than them. We have to mark off our space, the same
as the other animals do.
And it’s not just the animals. It’s ourselves. We
used to be cannibals. It’s only natural, when you think about it.
We’re only meat. What could be more natural, for fuck sake? We
probably taste quite good as well, the fitter, younger ones. But we
sorted out the cannibalism years ago. It’s not an issue any more,
it’s not a choice. Take the house away, though, take the farms and
the roads and all the organisation that goes into human life and it
will be a question of choice again. If nature gets the upper hand
again, we’ll soon be eating each other. Or, at the very least,
we’ll be deciding whether or not to. And then there’s sex. We’re
only a couple of generations away from the poor freaks in The
Slave. Brothers with sisters, fathers with daughters. It goes
on anyway, sometimes. We all know that. It’s disgusting, but we
have to admit it. It’s nothing new. I’ve always known it. Only,
I’ve never had to think about it. And that’s what the rat did when
it decided to die on the floor over there.
I recognise what’s going on in my head, what’s been
going on for a while, actually, on and off. It’s middle age. I know
that. It’s getting older, slower, tired, bored, useless. It’s death
becoming something real. The old neighbours from my childhood
dying. And even people my own age. Cancer, mostly.
But you can still hang on. And I’d been doing
alright. There’s little Chili. He’s been like a new battery. Just
picking him up strips the years off me. I feel as young and as
happy as I did when Sarah was born. And there’s Jackie. We get on
great. We have sex, although it always seems to be on Fridays.
Which I don’t like, that kind of routine. Because I’m a bastard for
routines. The slightest excuse, everything becomes a routine, and
I’ve always tried to fight it. But anyway. I love her. Yeah, I
do.
She makes me laugh. She knows I’m struggling, and
she’s sympathetic. She gets a bit impatient with me, but who
wouldn’t be.
I’d been coping okay. Enjoying life. The world was
a straightforward, decent place that could be simplified into a
line of words running down a blackboard. My very educated mother
just showed us nine planets.
And so it is. Only, it has to be protected. If you
find a rat in your kitchen the world stops being a straightforward,
decent place for a while. You have to take it back. And that’s what
I’m doing. Taking it back.
And I’m getting there. I don’t know how long it’s
going to take, and I don’t care. Fuck the rat. And fuck
nature.
It’s a matter of time.