Five Boys (20 page)

“You’d better move down the wall a bit,” he said as he picked up the two big tins. “And if you smell almonds you’d better move again.”

This was the first time almonds had been mentioned and since his fate seemed to be inextricably linked with them Hector thought he should establish what an almond actually smelled of.

“Sort of sweet,” said the rat catcher, “and sort of nutty.” Then he turned and set off back across the field.

By the time the Boys had moved down the wall, the rat catchers were pulling out great white handkerchiefs from their pockets, folding them from corner to corner and knotting them so that they covered their faces, which gave them an air of lawlessness that had the Boys wishing they’d had the foresight to bring along handkerchiefs of their own. The rat catcher prized the lid off one of the tins, Mr. Soames flipped back the top of the cylinder and the rat catcher began carefully spooning the tin’s contents in. From a distance it looked like icing sugar, but when a gust of wind threatened to get a hold of it both men averted their faces and as soon as the tops were clamped back down on the cylinder and the tin can the men seemed to go about their business a good deal more easily.

The rat catcher stood over his stirrup pump and started working the handle, while Mr. Soames took up his cricket bat and began his own hesitant dance around the field. The rat catcher pumped his poison into one hole, yanked the pipe out, stamped it shut, then he took up his pike and went divining again. Once or twice the Boys thought they could indeed detect a trace of something sweet and nutty, and Harvey pulled his jumper discreetly up over his nose. But eventually another sound joined the creak of the rat catcher’s pump handle and the subterranean hiss of gas. It was a while before the Boys picked it out, but once they’d
done so there was no ignoring it. It was a high-pitched screech—a sort of screaming—somewhat muted at first but steadily growing as more and more gas was pumped into the ground.

The Boys found the noise increasingly unsettling, but for Mr. Steere the rats’ slaughter could not be painful enough. He would have liked to see every last one of them writhing out in the open. The whole exercise seemed far too clinical and bloodless, and when the rat catcher was feeding his rubber pipe into the ground yet again and treading the earth down around it Aldred heard Steere muttering, “Is he going to pump every hole in the bloody field?”

Fifty yards away the rat catcher straightened his back and pulled his handkerchief aside.

“Mr. Steere,” he called out. “There’s only one thing a gentleman rat likes as much as eating, and that’s the company of a lady rat.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Every rat hole leads to another. You pump enough gas in and you see to them all.”

He pulled his handkerchief back down over his mouth and returned to his pumping. In a matter of seconds he was oblivious. He pumped up and down as if there could be no better way to spend the morning. He pumped as if he’d like to fill the whole world with cyanide.

The day settled into its own steady progress, with Mr. Soames using his cricket bat to see to those few rats who managed to get above ground while his partner gassed the many thousands locked below. In all the time that the Boys sat and watched them they saw only one rat escape both gas and bat. It came out of the ground at quite a lick, very wisely gave Mr. Soames a wide berth, then leaped over the
wall, no more than twenty feet from the Boys and went tearing off across the fields, which left the Five Boys ruing their lack of long trousers and lengths of twine.

Over the next few days the rat catcher baited Steere’s house, then pumped the other meadows while Steere himself plowed up the rats he left behind. It was a gruesome harvest which he heaped at the side of the house. Later in the week Aldred and Lewis made a social call and stood in awe before what they estimated to be at least ten thousand rats—bigger, certainly, than any pile of beets they had come across.

They were still standing there when the rat catcher came around the corner with another barrow load. He had his handkerchief over his face and when he lifted the barrow’s handles turned his head away. The rats slid forward, and as they hit the ground that same sweet smell came up off them.

The rat catcher rested his hands on his hips. “Have you ever seen so many rats?” he asked the two boys.

They shook their heads.

“Me neither,” he said.

Lewis thought there must have been enough rats there to make a jacket for every dog in the country.

“What are you going to do with them all?” he asked the rat catcher.

The rat catcher smiled. “I’m going to set the buggers afire,” he said.

Howard liked to keep an eye on the ladies. Liked to sit up on the hill and watch them doing their errands and slip into the trees behind Far Bank on a Monday morning and watch Lizzie Hathersage peg her sheets on the line. But it was nothing but good fortune that had him taking a nap in one of the fields just below the village when Sylvia Crouch happened to go by.

Maureen Tucker’s pram woke him up. Its wheels had squeaked ever since the pig memorial, but when Howard rolled over and peeped out through the hedgerow he saw Sylvia Crouch’s lovely legs go swishing by rather than Mo Tucker’s great hams, and in no time he was on his feet and cantering after them.

He couldn’t think what Sylvia was doing pushing other people’s babies around the place when, as far as he knew, Mo wasn’t poorly and had nothing better to do with her time. Not that he was complaining. He was just trying to piece the story together. He had the kind of mind, he liked to think, that in different circumstances could have solved complicated crimes.

Having Sylvia Crouch stroll by was an absolute godsend. In an ideal world, he thought as he went after her, she’d be without the baby. His jackpot would be her going all the way down to the river, stripping off and having a dip, but
he’d happily settle for her dropping her drawers to take a pee. That would keep him going right through the year.

Along the way several hedges had to be negotiated and twice Howard had to jump down into the lane, sneak along behind her and find his way back into the field. Sylvia seemed to know exactly where she was going—went down to the bridge, turned left onto what had been the perimeter road and carried along it for half a mile before suddenly stopping. By the time Howard caught her up, the baby was in her arms and she was rooting around under its blankets. The baby looked over her shoulder right at Howard. When it went back into its pram Sylvia was holding a package. She crossed the lane and tucked it in the hedge behind a milestone, turned the pram around and set off home.

As soon as she was out of sight Howard climbed down into the lane and tiptoed over. Picked out the package and pulled the string away. There was a folded workshirt, an old pair of moleskin trousers and some food wrapped up in newspaper. He stood and stared at them for quite a while before the penny dropped, then suddenly felt affronted. Felt a wonderful rage stir in him. And he pulled the string back around the package, put it back in the bushes and went back to his hiding place.

It was a while before anything happened—enough time for him to imagine every degenerate act the deserter and Sylvia Crouch had been getting up to—to imagine Sylvia with her skirt rucked up around her waist and the soldier pounding away on top of her. To feel the humiliation burn right into his soul.

When the stay-behind finally appeared Howard wanted to jump right out on him. There wasn’t much meat on the fellow and Howard wondered what on earth Sylvia could
see in him. He crept along the road as if the slightest sound might scare him away. But Howard sat tight. Watched him pick out the package. Watched him open it up. And when the stay-behind turned and set off back to the gate Howard paused before going after him, telling himself that there was no hurry—no hurry at all.

It was to their lasting regret that the Five Boys hadn’t been around to see the rats being doused in paraffin and set alight. The first they heard about it was Mrs. Heaney saying how she had been out at a cousin’s at Duncannon when so much smoke came billowing down the valley that they had to bring her washing in.

The Boys hiked back out to Steere’s farm the next morning, but there was nothing left but a patch of scorched earth with a fringe of blackened grass, and when they finally managed to track down Steere in one of his sheds and pressed him for some details, he just carried on sawing and hammering and seemed not to want to talk about rats anymore.

The rats’ cremation turned out to be just the first in a season of bonfires. As usual, autumn’s debris had to be disposed of, as well as enough of the unbridled growth in the evacuated area for people to be able to get down the lanes, and for months it seemed as if the smell of wood smoke and burning bracken was always in the air.

But May’s was by far the largest bonfire—the one which drew the biggest audience and kept going deepest into the night—when the war, or at least Europe’s part in it, came to an end. The wood was gathered in a single morning and for a few hours it stood up on the hill like some primitive monument. Fallen timber, rotten fence posts and broken
furniture were ail heaved up to it, as if the bigger the bonfire the quicker the dark days of the war would be erased.

At five o’clock the Reverend Bentley lit a creosote-soaked rag at the end of a stick and, like an arthritic St. George, jabbed it into the straw at the base. Within minutes the wood was alive. It spat and crackled and the hills beyond shimmered in its liquid heat. Around six o’clock some crates of beer arrived. Five minutes later everyone was singing. And as he stood and stared into the raw heat Lewis felt his mother slip her arm around him and pull him toward her, which he couldn’t remember her having done before.

When Howard Kent and Dexter Fadden swung an old armchair onto the fire an hour or so later it let out a tremendous roar and sent up a great rolling ball of amber sparks. The villagers were mesmerized by the fire—could feel its heat gently beat their cheeks. The Boys weren’t sure that ending the war was such a good idea. Howard Kent had no doubt. He saw his little dynasty collapsing around him. In no time at all the village would be overrun with returning soldiers and their tales of heroism. And even the women secretly wondered whether this meant that the world was going to be turned on its head again.

As darkness fell the other bonfires became visible—one over the river at Bovey Tracy, another near Totnes and a couple out toward the moor. The church bells had been ringing all day in all the villages but seemed to grow stronger in the dark—to carry farther. They rolled down the valley as if a dam had finally broken and all the war’s unrung changes had come tumbling out.

J
EM HATHERSAGE
looked as if he’d just taken a bite out of something bitter.

“It doesn’t sound right without the six,” he said.

The bell ringers stood in a circle and steadied the ropes which kinked and buckled above them. They hadn’t been touched since ‘39 and the first round that night had brought down five fine columns of dust. Alec Bream had suggested they grease the stock heads, but no one could face the climb.

“Howard,” said Arthur Noyce. “You’re pushing on too hard.”

Howard shook his head.

“You are,” said Lester Massie. “You work that number five any fucking harder and she’ll pull you up through the belfry fucking floor.”

Howard glared at him but didn’t say anything.

“Are we going again?” said Alec Bream.

“Call it,” said Lester.

“All right,” said Alec. “And Howard, hold off a bit.”

“And quit sulking,” said Lester Massie.

Alec reached up and took a hold. “
Look to
…” he called out.

The other four raised their arms.

“… Treble’s going …”

Alec tugged at his rope, which dipped a couple of inches, then flew back through his fingers, yards at a time.

“… She’s gone,” he called out.

The men heaved on their ropes, one after another. A moment later the bells sounded above.

“Two to three,”
shouted Alec. “Lester, wake up.”

The bells roared—cascaded out into the village—and for a while the men just stood and worked the ropes.

“That’s better,” said Alec.
“Four to five.”

Lester Massie was looking at his neighbor’s feet. “Howard,” he said, and heaved on his rope. “Where’d you get the boots?”

Howard shrugged. “Totnes,” he said.

“Two to five,” said Alec.

Jem Hathersage looked over. “Them aren’t civvy boots,” he said.

“Two,” said Alec Bream, “closer on your backstroke. Follow five.”

“Them’s Army Issue,” said Jem.

“One to three,” said Alec.

“I’m lost,” said Arthur Noyce.

“I told you,” said Jem Hathersage. “We’re missing the six.”

The bells turned on their frame up in the belfry like a medieval engine. The ropes wound the great wheels and the bells emptied their sound on the Boys below. They lay facedown between the joists. They were wearing their balaclavas and had their hands clamped over their ears but could feel every muscle in their bodies being pummeled—could feel their lungs having trouble taking air in.

“This is what it must have been like in the trenches,” thought Lewis.

The Boys had been prepared for the pandemonium. It was the sheer brutality of the bells threshing the air which took them by surprise. They lay on the dusty floor for what felt like an eternity with them slicing around them and their bones jangling, until one of the men below finally barked out some instruction and the bells came to rest.

The ringing stopped, but the sound took its time dispersing. The air was thick with it. Still groggy, the Boys shifted until they could squint between the floorboards at the five men below, rolling cigarettes. One was making some notes on a scrap of paper.

Lewis put his mouth up to Finn’s ear. “Which is which?” he said.

A few days earlier there had been a knock at the door and Finn’s mother had got up to go and answer it. A moment or two later she had let out a terrible scream. Finn ran into the hall. Found some stranger apparently trying to strangle her and he was still trying to work out what to do when she finally managed to wrench herself free.