can see you,’ I’d say, and then I’d get on with whatever it was I had in hand. Putting off the disgusting business. But sooner or later I’d have to make up my mind to do it. Go and get the stick and stand there looking at the one whose turn it was that night. It wasn’t easy. In fact it gave me the creeps.
And it only got worse when I started discussing the business with them. Little black beady eyes looking up at me. Not so ugly really. Grey feet and that rodent tail. I’ve seen worse looking things. ‘All right, you’ve got another fifteen seconds,’ and I’d start counting slowly. Seeing the rat, intact, healthy, a reasonable rat life ahead probably, except for this situation. ‘Okay, another half minute. But then I’ll really have to do it.’ Time running out. Then slam with the stick. One vicious smash on the head and they’d be dead, give a couple of kicks and I’d pick the limp carcass off the floor and carry it out by the tail. Chuck it on Morris’s neatly maintained heap of pig shit up at the end of the garden. When Morris and I went past on the way to milking in the morning the bodies were always gone. Food for nocturnal owls and foxes . . . And if Morris and his wife were still up, sitting in the kitchen when I went past, dangling my dead rat, we’d nod an acknowledgement at it and say nothing. It put a blight on my evenings, however, wondering every night when the scratching and gnawing and squealing was going to result in a breach in my blockade. Coming in here after washing my feet, all set for an evening’s reading, and finding this nasty job to be done.
I got sick of it. So one evening I pretended there wasn’t a rat there, squatting silently under the chest of drawers, watching me. I got on the bed and started reading. ‘The execution takes place at dawn,’ I said, when it was time to snuff the candle out. And I lay down and had an undisturbed night. But of course when the morning came I was in my usual hurry. Woken by Morris’s careful, knock, knock, knock on the wall. A cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter waiting for me. Just time to gulp it down while I laced my boots before we were off, out into the icy wind and the darkness, hurrying up the garden and across Old Ley to the farm.
I was well into the milking before I remembered the rat. But there was no chance to kill it when we got home for breakfast. It would have meant taking my boots off and disrupting the routine. By the time Morris and I get back for breakfast his wife has got control of the place. We’re only in for a quarter hour; down our food and grab our lunch packs and we’re out again.
So the rat was still in here when I got back that evening. Still in here, or in here again? I didn’t know. It was more or less in the same position, keeping low and still, down there next to the hole. Looking sleepy, but watching.
I didn’t say anything to it that night. I wasn’t voicing any decisions, I mean, about what was going to happen. But I left it there. I did nothing and said nothing.
It would have been a week or so before I started coming up with things like, And what sort of a day have you had? when I got in at night.
My nights were peaceful. No gnawing and squealing going on behind the skirting board! No need to wonder if tonight was the night for rat killing! It was a relief. A new era. And I was beginning to feel grateful to the resident for sitting there quietly guarding that hole. I made one or two concessions. I called this one the Resident, and I gladly ceased to be the exterminating angel.
I believed in our unwritten agreement. He got the floor under the chest of drawers, I got my peace of mind. It was fair. And I like things to be fair. So I stopped worrying about the whole business.
Until tonight.
A situation foreseen by Morris.
Crouching in the straw, trying to keep our feet out of contact with the black ice on the frozen cobbles for a spell, down there in the disused threshing barn last
And it only got worse when I started discussing the business with them. Little black beady eyes looking up at me. Not so ugly really. Grey feet and that rodent tail. I’ve seen worse looking things. ‘All right, you’ve got another fifteen seconds,’ and I’d start counting slowly. Seeing the rat, intact, healthy, a reasonable rat life ahead probably, except for this situation. ‘Okay, another half minute. But then I’ll really have to do it.’ Time running out. Then slam with the stick. One vicious smash on the head and they’d be dead, give a couple of kicks and I’d pick the limp carcass off the floor and carry it out by the tail. Chuck it on Morris’s neatly maintained heap of pig shit up at the end of the garden. When Morris and I went past on the way to milking in the morning the bodies were always gone. Food for nocturnal owls and foxes . . . And if Morris and his wife were still up, sitting in the kitchen when I went past, dangling my dead rat, we’d nod an acknowledgement at it and say nothing. It put a blight on my evenings, however, wondering every night when the scratching and gnawing and squealing was going to result in a breach in my blockade. Coming in here after washing my feet, all set for an evening’s reading, and finding this nasty job to be done.
I got sick of it. So one evening I pretended there wasn’t a rat there, squatting silently under the chest of drawers, watching me. I got on the bed and started reading. ‘The execution takes place at dawn,’ I said, when it was time to snuff the candle out. And I lay down and had an undisturbed night. But of course when the morning came I was in my usual hurry. Woken by Morris’s careful, knock, knock, knock on the wall. A cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter waiting for me. Just time to gulp it down while I laced my boots before we were off, out into the icy wind and the darkness, hurrying up the garden and across Old Ley to the farm.
I was well into the milking before I remembered the rat. But there was no chance to kill it when we got home for breakfast. It would have meant taking my boots off and disrupting the routine. By the time Morris and I get back for breakfast his wife has got control of the place. We’re only in for a quarter hour; down our food and grab our lunch packs and we’re out again.
So the rat was still in here when I got back that evening. Still in here, or in here again? I didn’t know. It was more or less in the same position, keeping low and still, down there next to the hole. Looking sleepy, but watching.
I didn’t say anything to it that night. I wasn’t voicing any decisions, I mean, about what was going to happen. But I left it there. I did nothing and said nothing.
It would have been a week or so before I started coming up with things like, And what sort of a day have you had? when I got in at night.
My nights were peaceful. No gnawing and squealing going on behind the skirting board! No need to wonder if tonight was the night for rat killing! It was a relief. A new era. And I was beginning to feel grateful to the resident for sitting there quietly guarding that hole. I made one or two concessions. I called this one the Resident, and I gladly ceased to be the exterminating angel.
I believed in our unwritten agreement. He got the floor under the chest of drawers, I got my peace of mind. It was fair. And I like things to be fair. So I stopped worrying about the whole business.
Until tonight.
A situation foreseen by Morris.
Crouching in the straw, trying to keep our feet out of contact with the black ice on the frozen cobbles for a spell, down there in the disused threshing barn last
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