She threw the straw and the grass as far towards it as she could and then rapidly picked up the plank with the nails again, her back vibrating with terror. The rat watched her, more uneasily now, as if wondering what she was up to. She lit the match nervously and threw the lighted flame among the dry straw and the grass. The fire ran along it boiling like illuminated rats. The rat backed away into its corner, snarling. Smoke began to rise and billow round it, for there must have been some dampness at the centre of the straw somewhere. She backed towards the door. The rat rushed out through the smoke towards her, its teeth drawn back. Behind the rat she saw the flames rising and the smoke. It seemed to have emerged out of, been generated by, the fire. The rat made for the place where she had stuffed the remains of the broken winged saddle. As it did so she swiped at it with the nailed plank. It squirmed away, half hit. It turned and faced her snarling as if it knew that she was the only obstacle to its escape. Its face looked incredibly fierce and evil as if all the desire for life had been concentrated there. It wished to live at all costs. For a moment she was terrified at what she had done, at the smoking arena she was in. But she knew that the stone floor would prevent the fire from spreading. The rat launched itself at her, knowing that she was the enemy, that there was no going back through the smoke. She swung the nailed plank as its face, snarling and distorted, looked towards her, and she felt it hit the rat, felt the rat’s claws scrabbling against it as if it wanted to get purchase on it, to grip it and climb towards her. She swung the plank against the floor and banged and banged. The rat’s head and body squelched against the stone floor of the barn which had once been filled with sacks of corn. She banged and banged till the shudders left her back and breast and legs. She banged it so that it was a flat grey mess on the floor. Then after a while flushed and panting she opened the door on the wide day. She threw the plank as far away as she could into the undergrowth. There were bits of rat attached to it. No doubt the birds of the air would finish it off. She forced herself to get a spade to detach the smashed body from the floor. She threw the mashed carcass from the spade into the bushes as well and then fetched pail after pail of water which she splashed over the place where the body had been. She cleaned and cleaned till there was not even the shadow of the rat left. When the straw had finally burned itself out she took that away as well, and the remains of the chicken and the hens which had themselves got burnt. She spent a long time cleaning the barn, making it bright as new. When she had finished she went into the house and made herself strong tea. It was too late for church now. Still she could go there in the evening. Meanwhile she could sleep for a while by the window, for she felt empty and victorious. As she passed her mirror she saw that her face looked gaunt and fulfilled, and she hadn’t felt so light for a long time.
The Crater
In the intervals of inaction it had been decided by the invisible powers that minor raids were feasible and therefore to be recommended. In the words of the directive: ‘For reasons known to you we are for the moment acting on the defensive so far as serious operations are concerned but this should not preclude the planning of local attacks on a comparatively small scale . . . ’
Like the rest of his men on that particular night, Lieutenant Robert Mackinnon blackened his face so that in the dugout eyes showed white, as in a Black Minstrel show. He kept thinking how similar it all was to a play in which he had once taken part, and how the jokes before the performance had the same nervous high-pitched quality, as they prepared to go out into the darkness. There was Sergeant Smith who had been directed to write home to the next of kin to relate the heroism of a piece of earth which had been accidentally shattered by shrapnel. His teeth grinned whitely beneath his moustache as he adjusted the equipment of one of the privates and joked, ‘Tomorrow you might get home, lad.’ They all knew what that meant and they all longed for a minor wound – nothing serious – which would allow them to be sent home honourably. And yet Smith himself had been invalided home and come back. ‘I missed your stink, lads,’ he had said when he appeared among them again, large and buoyant and happy. And everyone knew that this was his place where he would stay till he was killed or till the war ended.
‘I remember,’ he used to tell them, ‘we came to this house once. It was among a lot of trees, you understand. I don’t know their names so don’t ask me. Well, the house was rotten with Boche and we’d fired at it all day. And the buggers fired back. Towards evening – it might have been 1800 hours – they stopped firing and it got so quiet you could hear yourself breathing. One of our blokes – a small madman from Wales, I think it was – dashed across and threw a grenade or two in the door and the window. And there wasn’t a sound from inside the house, ’part from the explosion of course, so he kept shouting, “The Boche are off, lads,” in that sing-song Welsh of
