The Weight of Numbers (30 page)

Abortive nests hung from the corners of each room as the wasps, confused and desperate, sought sanctuary from the strange poisons which even now were liquefying them.

Come winter, Dick subjected the trees to a thorough and savage pruning.

The following year, the plums hardly grew at all. They shrivelled to a sort of leathery pouch, lobed like a walnut. Inside, the plum stone was ordinary enough except for its colour, which was white. This year the infection attacked the leaves, too. The leaves grew galls, and the air around the trees that autumn was thick with big hairless flies with pendulous brown bellies. They blundered carelessly about, indifferent to heat or cold or time of day. One could only suppose they were a kind of horsefly, because where they bit a boil would rise, much like a horsefly bite. They were something between a cockroach and a wasp
and they never slept. Until well into November Nick spent sleepless nights trying to calculate, from their flatulent buzzing, how many flies had managed to penetrate his bedcovers.

Once its first exuberance was past, the curse grew less inventive. Consistently, the plums would shrivel; every year, piles of the abnormal flies built up in the corners of each bedroom window sill. Every spring for eight years, hardly a day went by when little Nicky did not hear, from the desolate depths of the covered yard, a deep, satisfying rumble of the grinding wheel, followed, now and again, by the abrasive swish as a metal edge came into contact with the spinning stone. He knew, or guessed, from the sheer volume of bright hard sounds, that this was no mere knife his dad was grinding. Dick's pale silence, whenever Nick asked him what he was up to, added to his son's conviction that a special blade was being readied for a primal act.

When his father's fear of him began to escalate, around his eleventh birthday, Nick had nightmares that this axe was being made ready for him.

The Act, whatever it was to be, seemed forever delayed. The axe, which surely had an edge to cut a single hair by now, never saw daylight. Until one day in early summer, Nick, then in his twelfth year, woke early and heard the sizzing of the stone.

He cannot now recall in what way the sound was different that day. What it was about the air, or the light. He got out of bed and went to his window. With fresh eyes, he saw the knobbly branches, amputated by so many prunings, their ends, clubbed like fists, sporting twigs like insect hairs, and from the tip of every hair a leaf, or what he took to be a leaf, but which, to his freshened eye, revealed more gall than leaf, each leaf a greyish sac.

He put on his clothes and left the house by the back door. At ground level the trees looked even stranger, more bone than bark. It came to him that the trees were no longer trees; that something new was growing in their place, which, while it was young, had used the
coloration and form of trees to conceal itself. It was older now, and strong. It was shedding its camouflage.

Nick met his dad coming the other way along the path that skirted the old house. Dick was carrying an axe. The sight of it made Nick feel sick, because it seemed to have suffered much the same fate as the trees. It was, after so many years against the wheel, hardly an axe at all any more. The metal head was ground down to a sort of truncated sickle blade. With sightless eyes, Dick strode past his son and in among the trees.

Blindly, stiff-legged, he swung.

The axe blade sank without effort into the flesh of the first tree. Dick paused, his glued back a little bent, the axe still buried in the tree. Uneasy, afraid of frightening his father, Nick stepped forward. He wanted to help. His father was struggling to release the blade. ‘Dad?'

Dick, startled, stood upright, yanking at the axe. The tree-trunk crumbled. Man and boy stood by, dumbfounded, as the tree fell and shattered. Two big branches shivered free of the trunk, puffing sawdust as they fell. There was no moisture in the thing, no strength. Silently, Dick dropped his axe and walked up to the next tree. He pushed. The trunk snapped with a soft crack, like a biscuit. The tree toppled. Nick came forward and studied the stump. The wood was pale and crumbly. There did not appear to be anything living in the wood, but Nick was afraid to touch it. Dick must have felt a similar revulsion, because he went and fetched two pairs of work gloves. Then, together – and with the axe quite forgotten, lying there in the long grass – father and son went around the orchard, pushing over trees.

Their victory over the curse seemed suspicious. They waited for a plague of flies. It never came. They watched the trees. The galls, in time, dropped off their little twigs and vanished into the lank grass. The grass grew around the trees. The grass was green.

They did not burn the wood. They were afraid of what it would release. Come winter it simply crumbled and blew away, leaving only
the shapes of trees in reddish dust. Rains drove the dust into the earth. The grass fed on the earth. The grass was green, and it grew.

Afraid of what might grow there if they planted something new, Dick let the lot go. He did his best to keep the garage business alive. The work was hard. He was not an old man, exactly, but his back was growing stiffer and more painful as he aged. Though Nick was willing enough to help, Dick's fear of him kept him at bay.

So, inevitably, the space where the orchard had been filled with the waste products of the garage trade. Old tyres. The sagging panels of defunct caravans. Wheel-less farm machinery. Empty cans. Things Dick had not the strength to deal with on his own.

When the rats came, Dick and Nick had no one to blame but themselves. What did they imagine would happen, once they had made the old orchard into such a weather-proof warren of abandoned tarpaulin and machinery? After all, the rats were only rats. Bigger than your average rat, perhaps, but only rats. If they were exactly the colour of the galls which had vanished into the long grass two years before, the coincidence was hardly remarkable: what colour should rats be, if not a pewter grey?

Dick, enfeebled, unable any longer to fight his own battles, was forced to turn to Nick for help. For the boy's fourteenth birthday, he dusted off the ancient farmer's shotgun that had belonged to his wife and passed it over, tight-lipped and trembling. Nick also received a puppy, which Dick had rescued from a nearby ditch: a sly, dead-eyed mongrel Nick never named, thinking of her, always and only, as the Rat Catcher. Nick felt that with the gifts of gun and dog, a bond was now established between him and his father, a circuitous trust that dared not speak its name, or look itself in the eye, but which was tangible enough. It was, for Nick, a happy time. He had acquired a purpose: to defend hearth and home.

Nick turns from the window to his father's bed. He has raised the sheet to cover his father's face, and in so doing he has uncovered his father's feet.

Three toes on the left foot are missing.

There is no blood: the rats waited until he was dead.

Nick's little mouth puckers, and he squints through close-set eyes. This, in Nick's ill-favoured face, is what passes for fury. ‘Girl!' he cries.

The Rat Catcher hurls herself up the stairs and lands bodily against the door. She never barks. Nick opens the door. The dog, having made her presence known, is already heading down the stairs. There is no time to waste. She knows what this is. Battle is joined.

Nick goes into the cellar, fetching gun and ammunition. He stuffs his pockets, and wipes the last tears from his eyes.

There will be no such display from the Rat Catcher. No keening or scratching at the door as she pines for her old master. Already she is worrying at the edges of the rubbish heap. There is nothing hang-dog about this dog.

The Rat Catcher is a professional.

Harry Conroy watches with amused pride as Deborah leads the children into the big white marquee.

After a little while – no more than ten minutes by Harry's watch – the children come out again. Whatever went on in the Big House, it has contented, rather than transfigured them. They are quiet, with an inner glow. They are smiling, as though they have each been given a small piece of good-quality milk chocolate.

Harry waits patiently by the mouth of the tent. He recognizes some of the children. One or two say hello to him. Deborah's best friend walks straight past him and does not notice him, even when he waves. Then, when they have all come out, and Deborah has still not emerged, Harry walks around the tent, thinking there may be two exits.

There aren't.

He enters the tent. There is no cross. Bunting decks the fabric walls of the marquee. In the middle of the marquee is a folding table covered in a white tablecloth. The table is bare. The marquee is empty.

*

George Bridgeman's preparations have been meticulous, circumspect and expensive. His plans have been written down, then memorized, and all documentation carefully destroyed. The old concrete air-raid shelter, abandoned since the last war, and swamped long since beneath a cloud of savagely spiked blackthorn – a barrier only George knows how to circumvent – has been damp-proofed and sound-proofed, tamper-proofed and child-proofed throughout.

The moment he brings the padded hammer neatly down upon the little girl's head, George expects everything to go to hell. When it doesn't is when George's problems start.

He drops the hammer, catches the little girl up in his arms as she crumples, and checks the pulse in her neck. Alive enough. Who would have thought it would be so easy? The little kitten walking past him, all alone, oblivious to everything, drunk on everything, ‘off with the fairies'…

Life isn't like that. It is very important to him that over the next few days, or weeks, or however long it takes, he shows this little lamb what life is really like. That he rubs her face in it. That he reams her clean of all personality, and shows to her the beast she really is. Because people are so stupid. People pretend so much when really they are no better than beasts. Someone has to show them what they really are. Someone, damn it, has to stand up for the truth.

Among the trees, hidden from the tents, his hands moisten against her thin white dress. He picks her up and bears her to his Ford Consul. A peach. So why is he shaking?

The truth of it is, George Bridgeman does not know how to win. His life to this point has been a series of small, spiteful victories secured in the teeth of universal indifference. If the little moppet had struggled, screamed, kicked him in the balls and run away, or if, after his twenty-odd years in an abattoir, George had failed to judge his blow correctly, and splattered her brains over his shoes – then he could have found a comfort in the way the world had turned reliably against him yet again.

As it is, things have gone swimmingly. He slips her into the boot of his car. She fits the space perfectly. Not too big. Not too small. Pale and pretty. He wonders what she looks like naked. He'll know soon enough. He checks her over. Both shoes still on her feet. Hair clip still in place. He glances back the way he has come. No dropped hanky. No trail of bloody spots. Perfection. He gets in the car, turns the key in the ignition, and–

The car rumbles into life.

He jounces down the rough track, out of the copse and into the little lane which runs so near, yet does not meet, the main road. Any second now a hummock in the track will ground the Ford's chassis, or twist a wheel out of true…

It does not happen.

The world absolutely refuses to slap him down. The only way things can go wrong now is if he messes them up himself. George feels a childish need to pee, and a spot of unusual tenderness at the tip of his penis. His palms upon the steering wheel are wet. It's up to him now. It's up to him.

I must have missed her, Harry Conroy says to himself. He goes in search of Deborah. He bumps into the parents of Sarah, Deborah's best friend. They reassure him, and speak to their daughter. Dumb, wide-eyed, Sarah shakes her head; she has not seen her friend all day. So they lead Harry to another, smaller tent, where the organizers are gathered. Father Peter, Father Neil and Father Gerry sit Harry down. One by one, they join in the search for his daughter. Harry is alone.

Harry waits in the small tent…

… for about half a minute. Then he gets up, goes out, joins the search. There are no parents now, no children. The people running around are people he has never seen before. The sun is brighter than ever, but in the opposite corner of the sky, there is a black line on the horizon – a heavy charcoal smudge.

It is about now that Harry starts shouting. It's an incoherent sound – there aren't even any words. Something is working his mouth with strings. Even if Deborah hears him – even if his daughter is near enough to hear – Harry doubts very much whether she will recognize his cry.

The act of reloading the heavy gun is a balletic blur. After two years of practice Nick no longer has to aim the barrel to score a bloody hit, and his arms and shoulders are strong enough to dampen the gun's most awkward recoil. The Rat Catcher has grown into a machine for covering distance, her jaws scissor unstoppably and her spittle, whipped away like foam from a wave, scorches whatever it lands upon. Where her mouth cannot penetrate, the Rat Catcher reaches into cover with powerful forelimbs, killing rats with single blows, like a cat.

Their revenge for Old Father Jinks's mutilation is swift and thorough. Whole rat families have perished this morning, whole gobshite dynasties. The rats, completely demoralized, are pushing their young out in front of them now, a kind of rattish shield. Nick Jinks and the Rat Catcher will not be blackmailed; blind, mewling infants, dismembered by shot, their innards liquefied by hydrostatic shock, plaster their coward parents' pelts with bright, unmissable blood. Deep within the warren, meanwhile, the old and the infirm, the ones with cracked teeth and lame forepaws, gather in bunkers of rusted wire and perished rubber. One, driven mad with despair, sinks her teeth into the belly of her mate, filling her mouth with foamy yellow fat. A third, infuriated by the squeals of the victim, garrottes himself with a transmission wire. All through the nest, young, lithe, healthy rats lie trembling, shell-shocked, beneath blankets of cardboard, while their doughty mothers, deafened long since to the gun's monotonous and terrible blast, hurl themselves out of the nest and through the lank grass towards the house – a suicidal tactic of diversion.