‘You mean just for a few rats?’
‘A few! Blimey, it’s swarming!’
‘Never.’
‘Honest it is, Mr Rummins. There’s hundreds of ’em.’ ‘Didn’t the ratcatcher catch ’em?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I reckon they’re too artful.’
Rummins began thoughtfully to explore the inner rim of one nostril with the end of his thumb, holding the nose-flap between thumb and finger as he did so.
‘I wouldn’t give thank you for no ratcatchers,’ he said. ‘Ratcatchers is government men working for the soddin’ government and I wouldn’t give thank you for ’em.’
‘Nor me, Mr Rummins. All ratcatchers is slimy cunning creatures.’
‘Well,’ Rummins said, sliding fingers under his cap to scratch the head, ‘I was coming over soon anyway to fetch in that rick. Reckon I might just as well do it today as any other time. I don’t want no government men nosing around my stuff, thank you very much.’
‘Exactly, Mr Rummins.’
‘We’ll be over later – Bert and me.’ With that he turned and ambled off across the yard.
Around three in the afternoon, Rummins and Bert were seen riding slowly up the road in a cart drawn by a ponderous and magnificent black carthorse. Opposite the filling-station the cart turned off into the field and stopped near the hayrick.
‘This ought to be worth seeing,’ I said. ‘Get the gun.’
Claud fetched the rifle and slipped a cartridge into the breech.
I strolled across the road and leaned against the open gate. Rummins was on the top of the rick now and cutting away at the cord that bound the thatching. Bert remained in the cart, fingering the four-foot-long knife.
Bert had something wrong with one eye. It was pale grey all over, like a boiled fish-eye, and although it was motionless in its socket it appeared always to be looking at you and following you round, the way the eyes of the people in some of those portraits do, in the museums. Wherever you stood and wherever Bert was looking, there was this faulty eye fixing you sideways with a cold stare, boiled and misty pale with a little black dot in the centre, like a fish-eye on a plate.
In his build he was the opposite of his father, who was short and squat like a frog. Bert was a tall, reedy, boneless boy, loose at the joints, even the head loose upon the shoulders, falling sideways as though perhaps it was too heavy for the neck.
‘You only made this rick last June,’ I said to him. ‘Why take it away so soon?’
‘Dad wants it.’
‘Funny time to cut a new rick, November.’
‘Dad wants it,’ Bert repeated, and both his eyes, the sound one and the other, stared down at me with a look of absolute vacuity.
‘Going to all that trouble stacking it and thatching it and then pulling it down five months later.’
‘Dad wants it.’ Bert’s nose was running and he kept wiping it with the back of his hand and wiping the back of the hand on his trousers.
‘Come on, Bert,’ Rummins called, and the boy climbed up on to the rick and stood in the place where the thatch had been removed. He took the knife and began to cut down into the tight-packed hay with an easy-swinging, sawing movement, holding the handle with both hands and rocking his body like a man sawing wood with a big saw. I could hear the crisp cutting noise of the blade against the dry hay and the noise becoming softer as the knife sank deeper into the rick.
‘Claud’s going to take a pot at the rats as they come out.’
The man and the boy stopped abruptly and looked across the road at Claud, who was leaning against the red pump with rifle in hand.
‘Tell him to put that bloody rifle away,’ Rummins said.
‘He’s a good shot. He won’t hit you.’
‘No one’s potting no rats alongside of me, don’t matter how good they are.’
‘You’ll insult him.’
‘Tell him to put it away,’ Rummins said, slow and hostile. ‘I don’t mind dogs nor sticks but I’ll be buggered if I’ll have rifles.’
The two on the hayrick watched while Claud did as he was told, then they resumed their work in silence. Soon Bert came down into the cart, and reaching out with both hands he pulled a slice of solid hay away from the rick so that it dropped neatly into the cart beside him.
A rat, grey-black, with a long tail, came out of the base of the rick and ran into the hedge.
‘A rat,’ I said.
‘Kill it,’ Rummins said. ‘Why don’t you get a stick and kill it?’
The alarm had been given now and the rats were coming out quicker, one or two of them every minute, fat and long-bodied, crouching close to the ground as they ran through the grass into the hedge. Whenever the horse saw one of them it twitched its ears and followed it with uneasy rolling eyes.
Bert had climbed back on top of the rick and was cutting out another bale. Watching him, I saw him suddenly stop, hesitate for perhaps a second, then again begin to cut, but very cautiously this time, and now I could hear a different sound, a muffled rasping noise as the blade of the knife grated against something hard.
Bert pulled out the knife and examined the blade, testing it with his thumb. He put it back, letting it down gingerly into the cut, feeling gently downward until it came again upon the hard object; and once more, when he made another cautious little sawing movement, there came that grating sound.
Rummins turned his head and looked over his shoulder at the boy. He was in the act of lifting an armful of loosened thatch, bending forward with both hands grasping the straw, but he stopped dead in the middle of what he was doing and looked at Bert. Bert remained still, hands holding the handle of the knife, a look of bewilderment on his face. Behind, the sky was a pale clear blue and the two figures up there on the hayrick stood out sharp and
