The Twyning (12 page)

Once more, I climb into the pit. A silence has descended on the room. Making my way carefully between the bodies, I pick up the rat by the tail. It screams, its eyes wide with fear, and there is a murmur of concern from those who have backed Bermondsey Bob.

Molly, followed by Jem Dashwood and Charlie Buckingham, makes her way back to the judge’s table and takes a lump of chalk from a drawer. Then, on one knee, she draws a circle the size of a dinner plate on the timber floor.

She looks up at Dashwood and Buckingham. They both nod their agreement.

Holding the rat in front of me, I climb out of the pit and walk through the anxious punters who have gathered around the chalk circle. As I lay the beast on its side within the circle, the rat twitches energetically.

“Waste of time,” Jem Dashwood mutters.

Molly reaches for a gnarled hazel clout, two feet long, that is lying beside the gaming table, and passes it to Bill. He kneels before the rat, raises the stick, then brings it down hard across the beast’s tail.

With a scream of pain, the rat makes a desperate galloping movement, edging its way slowly out of the circle. After a few seconds, it rests short of the line, but, as if suddenly remembering the pain, it starts to move again until, beyond any doubt, its body is outside the circle. It may be dying, but as far as the contest is concerned, it has moved enough to be judged as alive.

“No!” With a bellow of rage, Dashwood picks the rat up and hurls it with all his force back into the pit.

“The bout was uncompleted.” There is a tremble in Molly’s voice. “So I declare Charlie Buckingham’s bitch Drum the winner of the contest.”

Dashwood’s face darkens as if all the unspoken words within him are massing like cavalry beneath the pores of his skin.

“You know the rule, Jem.” Molly points to the clout. “The rat left the circle.”

She touches Jem Dashwood’s arm.

“We’ll give you a return bout next month, Jem.” Her tone of voice is husky, caressing. “You can choose your opponent, eh?”

Dashwood’s eyes remain fixed on Charlie Buckingham. “Today,” he says. “Now.”

“Your dog’s not fit for another bout.” Molly speaks quietly. “You know that.”

“I’ve got a second dog. A young Yorkshire. I’ll set him against your Kentish Lad, Mr. Buckingham. If you’re game for it.”

Buckingham waits, enjoying the moment. Then he gives the slightest of nods.

“Same purse as last time?” Dashwood asks.

Buckingham’s reply is lost in the cheers.

. . . Malaika felt her prison move.

There was light above her, the giant face of a human looking down.

Second by second, the wall of flesh that protected her was being removed as, with screams of terror, rats were lifted upward and out of sight.

Malaika felt a tightness around her own tail. Before she could shrink away from it, she was swinging facedown through the air, the dancing lights and smoke and the faces of the enemy swirling before her eyes. Her journey seemed to last forever. Then, suddenly, her tail was released and she was falling.

For the briefest of moments, she felt the welcome earth beneath her feet and looked around for the nearest way of escape. Then she smelled the blood, the terror, and death.

She began to run.

. . . Bill Grubstaff likes to say. Each one of them has a story to tell.

Today the memories are not going to be good.

I stand beside Bill, looking down on the pit.

“I think there might be a little bit of bother tonight,” he mutters with an unhappy smile.

It is true. The good humor of a few minutes ago has gone as if it were never there. Instead, there is an edginess, an anger, in the smoky air of the bar.

Dashwood is inspecting his dog Scrapper’s teeth. Now he straightens up, wiping the saliva off his hands.

He walks to the pit and watches the beasts scuttling desperately around the metal wall.

He points to a rat cowering in the corner. “It looks sick. Out.”

I climb into the pit with a sack, grab the rat, and drop it out of sight.

“The lame one over there.” Dashwood points to another. “Where did Bill get these beasts? They’re half dead already.”

“They’re good fighting rats, Jem,” Bill growls.

“And that’s not a beast — it’s a bloomin’ mouse.” Dashwood jabs his finger in the direction of a small gray-and-white rat.

As I reach for it, I feel that strange lurch within my head once more. Lifting it, I see that it is the fancy rat I had noticed. She’s quaking with terror as I lift her.

“The rest will have to do.” Dashwood turns away from the pit.

I climb the ladder, the sack in my hand. The first two rats I return to the cage, but when I hold the gray-and-white doe in my hand, she is still — almost trusting — as she looks at me.

Glancing around me to check that no one is watching, I slip her inside my shirt. As I reach into the cage for three new rats for the pit, I feel her scrabbling frantically against my skin, and for a moment, I wonder if she is going to bite me.

She reaches my armpit. I feel the small body trembling.

One rat, at least, will survive tonight.

. . . for a rat, but, quelling her shame and her helpless terror, Malaika surrendered to warmth and closeness.

. . . I walk over to where Jem Dashwood is preparing his young dog Scrapper.

The dog, I can see, has the right breeding in him. But when I look into his eyes, another story is being told. The sounds of other dogs, the smell of rats and blood, have not excited him as they should. He looks up at me, as if sensing that only I can understand his fear, and whines softly.

When Dashwood’s son, Eddie, approaches, Scrapper actually wags his tail.

Jem is gazing toward the pit. “The Buckingham dog’s tiring,” he says.

“Old dog, see.” Dashwood nods in the direction of the pit. “Old dogs get bored of the game. They kill sixty or so beasts and lose interest.” He winks at his son as he runs a hand down Scrapper’s flank. “Stick with youth, son. That’s the secret.”

It is still a while before Buckingham’s dog is taken from the ring. The time announced by Molly, thirteen minutes and forty-five seconds, gets jeers and boos from the discontented crowd.

And now Jem Dashwood advances, the young dog Scrapper in his arms. There is a cheer from his supporters.

“Good old Jem,” someone shouts. It is as if his dog has already won. The animal glances at me, terrified.

I notice that Bill looks worried. Too many men want this dog to win. Too many men will be disappointed if he does not.

“Set him ready, Jem.”

Dashwood releases his right hand. He strokes Scrapper’s pelt, down his spine, then his muscular haunch until he reaches between the dog’s hind legs. With a wink at Eddie, he squeezes.

The dog yelps with pain, then whimpers, looking not at the rats below him but over his shoulder toward his owner.

“You’ve got a lady’s lapdog there, Jem,” someone shouts.

“Go!” shouts Molly.

Dashwood hesitates slightly longer than usual before releasing his charge. The rats have gathered at one end of the pit and are watching, motionless.

“Trouble.”

I say the word out loud. The rats, I can see, are not as afraid as they should be.

Dashwood moves around the edge of the pit to the right-hand wall, giving Scrapper a run at the beasts with his left side protected.

He drops him. There is a cheer from the crowd around the pit.

“Go on, my son,” one of the punters shouts. “Finish ’em off. ”

Then, quite quickly, the noise dies down. Something is going wrong. Scrapper is looking up at his master, wagging his tail uncertainly, as if asking what to do next. The dog moves away from the protecting wall, then glances, fearfully, toward the far corner, where a hundred pairs of dark, glittering eyes are staring at him.

Scrapper sniffs the air, then lifts a paw, like a pointer who has seen pheasant. There is nervous laughter around the pit.

And it is in that instant, when the dog looks up, surprised by the noise of the spectators, that the unexpected happens.

As if at a given signal, the rats move forward, no longer fearful.

Then the reality becomes clear. The rats are not retreating at all. They are attacking.

The first beast to reach Scrapper leaps upward, seizes the soft base of his ear, and holds on, swinging against it. The dog yelps in pain, but by the time it starts to shake its head, a writhing hairpiece of rats hangs from it.

Jem Dashwood bellows encouragement at his dog but it is too late. Scrapper’s long legs and thick fur provide an easy target for the rats. The dog screams as every part of his body seems now to be covered by attacking beasts.

He staggers forward, unable to see for the creatures that swarm over his face and eyes. He falls against a wall, but the rats’ teeth are too firmly sunk in his skin for them to be shaken off.

Nothing of what was once Scrapper can now be seen under the writhing cloak of rats. Like a giant rat himself, he totters forward, across the pit toward where Jem and Eddie Dashwood are standing. In the center of the pit, he stumbles and falls under the weight of the beasts he is carrying.

Jem Dashwood gazes in disbelief at what had once been Scrapper. He takes out his timepiece and glances at it as if at any moment his dog will come to life and complete the bout.

One minute fifty seconds. Scrapper’s career in the pit has lasted under two minutes.

A mighty bellow cuts through the room. Dashwood walks quickly to the edge of the pit and vaults into it. Grabbing the bloodied corpse of his dog, he lifts it over his head and hurls it in the direction of the rats that are now trapped in the far corner.

Growling like a dog himself, Dashwood kicks out at a passing rat, catching it with a heavy boot. A cheer echoes around the room.

Something about the crunch of small bones, the sight of the big man taking revenge for his dog, brings the room to life. One of the punters, a man in his fifties, shouts, “Let’s ’ave ’em, then, Jem!” and clambers into the ring himself. Laughing, he brings down the heel of his foot on a nearby beast.

Soon others are clambering into the pit.

There are more men there, whooping and laughing and killing, than there are looking on.