Don't Feed the Rat! Page 2

  ‘Stop, you dirty little fuzz balls! Hold ’em. Come back here!’ He stopped halfway up the hill, wheezing as he watched the rats move further and further away from him.

  The young rats neared us. Each of them was carrying a seed potato in their mouths. The two-legged half-heartedly shook his fist in their direction, then turned around to slowly walk back down the hill.

  Cecil, the ringleader of the group of young rats, stopped in front of us. He spat out the potato, a triumphant grin on his face.

  ‘It’s always so much fun to steal from the stupid two-leggeds.’ The young rats cheered at this.

  I sighed. ‘Don’t you realise that the two-leggeds only tolerate us up to a point?’ I indicated at the young rats. ‘You’re older than them. You should know by now that the two-leggeds can hurt us.’

  Cecil laughed. ‘I don’t care. We’re just having some fun, aren’t we, kids?’ The young rats cheered again.

  ‘At least we know how to have fun,’ Cecil said. ‘Unlike you old guys, who just sit on the wall and gossip all day.’

  I stared at Cecil’s defiant face. What was wrong with the young’uns today? It was all about fun and disrespect. Unlike when I was young when the little’uns were kept in check by the elders who scared them with their ratlore stories. I wouldn’t have dreamt talking to an elder like that.

  ‘Can I have a potato?’ Pete asked, seemingly oblivious to the tension between Cecil and me. ‘They look very yummy.’

  Vinnie gave Pete a kick. ‘Don’t encourage him.’

  Cecil looked down his nose at Pete.

  ‘You don’t need any more food, old guy. You’re already too fat.’ The young rats giggled and pointed. I felt hot and cold at the same time, as anger rose up inside me.

  Pete shrugged, undeterred by Cecil’s harsh words.

  ‘Well, it was worth a try,’ he said and walked off to look for something else to eat.

  Cecil stared at me some more. ‘One of these days, old guy, you’ll see who’s the boss around here now.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Everyone, please be quiet and listen.’ Jacob raised his voice just a tad and looked around the classroom. Good, most of his students were paying attention. They looked bored, but at least they were looking at him.

  He opened the drawer of his desk and pulled out a giant brightly coloured toy gun. There was a bit of a gasp from his audience.

  ‘Are you going to soak us, sir?’ one of his students said with big round eyes. Jacob wanted to smile, but managed to keep his face straight. Always nice to see them scared.

  ‘This is not a squirt gun,’ he said. He aimed for the back wall and pulled the trigger. A foam dart shot out across the room. A girl squealed. Marlee, who had been staring into space up till then, not noticing anything around her, now focussed her attention on him as well.

  ‘With this gun we are going to test Newton’s Third Law of Motion,’ Jacob said. There were some groans. ‘I need three volunteers to help me.’ Bernie, a spindly boy with glasses stood up immediately.

  ‘Of course the nerd volunteers first...’ Some students giggled.

  Jacob looked at the corner where the remark had come from. Jason Mulberry looked at him, a smart-arse smirk playing across his handsome face. There was always one.

  ‘To prove Newton’s Third Law, we will shoot the gun several times at different angles and see how far the dart travels. Those of you not actively involved in this experiment will take notes.’ Jacob looked around the classroom and caught Jason’s eye. ‘Mind you, this foam gun can just as easily be used to shoot someone’s grandmother’s giant knickers off a washing line.’

  Jason’s smirk faded and he turned bright red. Then he looked down at his notebook.

  Jacob inwardly smiled. ‘Right, I need two more volunteers for this experiment.’ He noticed that Marlee was staring into space again. What was the matter with that girl?

  Emily stalked around the backstreets of Milbury. Paint peeled off the windowsills and doors of the rundown Victorian terraced houses. Cars were parked randomly, one of them standing on piles of bricks. A wheelie bin blocked the already narrow pavement.

  Emily gave it a shove. ‘Out of my way.’ The bin wobbled, then fell over spilling part of its contents on to the narrow street. Emily shrugged and walked on. Whatever. This place was a dump anyway. A curtain twitched across the road, but stopped moving abruptly when Emily looked their way and stared. That’ll teach them.

  She walked on and looked at her hands. She sighed. Why did Aunt Peggy force her to go out during her shift to buy nail polish remover? Wearing black nail polish didn’t hinder her ability to cut off a piece of cheese for a customer. Now her hands totally looked naked.

  She was too old for such a stupid job, anyhow. At twenty-three she shouldn’t be an assistant at a delicatessen shop. She should be a manager somewhere and earn a decent amount of money, like her father when he was young.

  Two older women shuffled towards her on the pavement. One of them spotted Emily and grabbed the other one by the arm. As quick as they could they crossed the street, throwing nervous glances over their shoulders at her. Stupid old biddies.

  Emily walked on, entering the area behind the Fox & Glove pub. No more terraced houses here, but some ugly 1960s blocks of flats. These were even more rundown. Some teenagers hung about under the concrete stairs, silently watching her walk by. From the corner of her eye she saw them swap some small plastic bags for money with an older guy.

  The back of the pub was a messy landscape of overflowing wheelie bins, stacks of crates, a bicycle carcass thrown into a corner and Fred the landlord’s rusty car parked at an awkward angle.

  Another teenager was hovering at the Fox & Glove’s back door, looking over his shoulder to see if anyone was coming. Emily stayed across the street to see what his plan was. Breaking into the pub in the middle of the afternoon was a stupid thing to do.

  The boy pulled a spray can out from beneath his jacket and quickly sprayed a squiggle on the wooden door. It didn’t look like anything to Emily. Then a car came driving up slowly from the other side of the pub. The youth startled and scampered off.

  Emily watched as the car slowed to a crawl, then came to a halt next to Fred’s car, parked half on the pavement, half on the street. Two men got out. They were wearing beige trench coats, totally unsuited for their over-muscular arms and shoulders, which made the fabric bulge and strain at the seams.

  The driver of the car had a scruffy three-day-old beard and dark beady eyes. He looked about him and wrinkled his nose. ‘Nice neighbourhood.’

  ‘Nothing we’re not used to,’ the other man said. His face was dominated by a set of enormous bushy black eyebrows. He vaguely pointed over the back of the pub. ‘Milbury Road should be that way.’ They walked off.

  Emily crossed the street and for a moment studied the car. It was a dirty dark green Mercedes that had seen better days.

  Another car came driving up. This one she recognised. It was a police patrol car; its yellow and blue stripes on the side clearly marking it out. Emily didn’t want to be seen by its occupants, so she ducked behind a pile of boxes, peering over the top to see what the car was doing.

  It had come to a halt and Constable Abe Monday clambered out. He glanced at the Mercedes, then noticed the spray-paint mark on the door. He sighed and walked up to it. With a careful finger he tested the paint. Suddenly the door opened. Monday jumped backwards, but couldn’t avoid having the sleeve of his uniform jacket smeared with white paint. Emily smiled.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Abe. I didn’t see you there,’ Fred the landlord said. He carried a crate full of empty Coke bottles and deposited it on the stack. Then he spotted Emily hiding.

  ‘Hey! What are you doing there?’

  Emily jumped and walked off.

  ‘Did you spray this mark?’ she heard Monday calling after her. She ignored him. As if she would ever do something so silly. Stupid cop.

  ‘I’ll have a word with your uncle about this!’ Monda
y said. Emily sighed deeply and threw an angry glance over her shoulder at him.

  ‘I’m not some stupid teenager, you know,’ she yelled at him, then continued walking. She didn’t care if he talked to Uncle Dave. She wasn’t scared of the police. Hadn’t been in the past and wasn’t now.

  Emily loved wandering about the allotments at any time of the day, but the early evening was her favourite. Especially now that the days were getting longer and warmer. She’d managed to evade Abe Monday the rest of the afternoon and Uncle Dave hadn’t mentioned anything about spray-paint when she got home. Seems Abe had been bluffing.

  Emily looked forward to an evening hanging about the allotment of her new friend Liz. Situated at the top of the hill it had nice views over Milbury and the skyline of York a mile away, where York Minster took centre stage.

  At the bottom of the hill several tenants were rummaging around on their allotments. Having been in York three months now, Emily knew some of them by name.

  Georgie Wilcrick, local middle-aged flirt, was pruning her raspberries, dressed in a low-cut blouse with flowers. She gave Emily a quick glance and then looked away. Emily smiled. Georgie was scared of her.

  On the allotment across from Georgie’s, Ian Fraser was pulling weeds from between his carrots and onions. He lived down the road from Uncle Dave and according to him, Ian was a champion vegetable grower. A man watched Ian from a lawn chair as he dropped some more weeds on a growing pile. They talked in low voices.

  Then there was Godric Ainsworth’s allotment. He was the chairman of the Hoes & Rakes Allotment Society and very proud of his neat and tidy allotment. There was no sign of Godric, however. Instead, Jacob Hicks was poking around on the allotment, notebook in hand, no doubt doing one of his weird experiments. Why on earth people allowed him to just walk on to their property and into their sheds, she would like to know. In any case it was no wonder that his inquisitive ways and the fact that he always wore a lab coat had earned him the nickname ‘the professor’.

  Emily watched Jacob for a while. He was hunched over, staring at something behind Godric’s allotment shed, scribbling in his notebook. Liz had told her that Jacob did science experiments in the shed on his own allotment.

  Emily had asked Aunt Peggy what sort of experiments he did, but Peggy said she didn’t know much about it. This seemed a bit strange as Aunt Peggy, Uncle Dave and Jacob had been friends since they were little. Uncle Dave had even let slip that Peggy had a bit of a thing for Jacob. So why didn’t she know about his experiments?

  But as weird as people found Jacob, he seemed harmless. Emily had overheard people say he was clueless, but she didn’t agree. He was far too clever for that. In any case, she had scared him good this morning and smiled at the memory.

  Jacob was deep in thought and didn’t notice Godric Ainsworth coming around the corner. Emily ducked behind a bramble bush. She didn’t like him as he once accused her of being a lazy good-for-nothing. Clearly he had based this on her appearance, as they had never had a proper conversation. Emily knew that her black clothes and combat boots made people fearful of her, but she didn’t mind. However, Godric had just assumed something, and that wasn’t right.

  She pulled one of her pet rats out of the pocket of her hoodie and held him up to her face.

  ‘We don’t like prejudiced people, do we?’ She petted the rat, then noticed the faces of Mr and Mrs Jefferson staring at her. As usual they had craned their necks over their fence to see what was going on.

  ‘Good evening,’ Emily said, but they had already ducked down again. Nosy wrinkled old bats...

  A commotion drew her attention back to Godric’s allotment.

  ‘I told you before, I don’t want you poking about on my allotment!’ Godric’s face was redder than Emily had ever seen it, his body ridged, hands balled to fists.

  Jacob drew himself upright. He was taller than Godric.

  ‘I’ve discovered a new species of rat behind your shed,’ Jacob said. His face lit up. ‘I’ve never seen a rat like that here on Milbury Hill and I’d love to have a chance to study it.’

  ‘What? Rats?’ Godric’s eyes bulged.

  Jacob pointed at Godric’s shed. ‘Yes, it has a nest right there.’ He walked past the shed, oblivious to Godric’s distress. ‘Come and have a look. This rat has darker fur than the common brown rats on this hill. I wonder if it is some kind of sub-species.’

  ‘I’m not going to look at a rat behind my shed,’ Godric said, fuming. ‘There are no rats on my allotment! It’s far too clean and tidy for that. Unlike yours!’

  Jacob threw a last quick glance at the rats’ nest, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ll come back some other time to study it.’

  ‘No you won’t!’ Godric gave Jacob a little push as he walked past. ‘You stay away from my allotment, or I will call the police!’

  Emily watched as Jacob left Godric’s allotment, stuffing his notebook into the pocket of his lab coat. He looked back once more at Godric, then disappeared around the corner. The Jeffersons, who never could resist watching any kind of commotion, ducked back behind their fence when they saw that Emily had noticed them.

  Emily sighed and made her way up the hill, leaving the bottom dwellers behind. If she was lucky she might bump into Wilbur Stapleton and have a bit of a chat with the handsome and strong biologist. Perhaps he would even let her help with his vole project. Her skin tingled at the thought and she walked a bit faster.

  Jacob crossed Milbury Road and walked towards the Fox & Glove. He shook his head. The nerve of Godric to stop him studying that interesting rat. Some people simply didn’t understand the important things in life.

  Just as Jacob opened the door of the pub, Ian Fraser and another man came around the corner. He held the door open for them.

  ‘Thanks, Jacob,’ Ian said, as they walked past. The other man looked Jacob up and down and smirked.

  ‘Did he escape out of the loony bin?’ the man said to Ian just loud enough for Jacob to hear. ‘Why wear a white coat to a pub?’

  For a split second Jacob felt hurt. He’d been wearing a lab coat for twenty years! The two men walked up to the bar. Jacob followed them.

  ‘Seems like you didn’t want to get your hands dirty on the allotment.’ The man’s face became very red at Jacob’s words. He turned away.

  Feeling somewhat better, Jacob walked towards the corner of the bar, where Dave had been watching everything. Then to his horror Jacob discovered that Dave’s sister Peggy had also seen it all. She was sitting at a table with a friend and looked at him. A vague smile played across her lips.

  It was Jacob’s turn to turn red. His legs wobbly, he walked past Peggy, trying not to look at her. Why did she have to be here? Now she’d heard what the man said and was laughing at him as well. He quickly slipped on to his barstool and hid himself behind Dave’s broad back.

  Dave grinned. ‘Nice comeback.’

  ‘Shall we not mention it?’

  Fred walked up to Jacob. ‘You want your usual?’

  Jacob nodded. He was ready for his one and only pint of the week.

  ‘How was your week?’ Dave said, taking a swig of his lager. He was still wearing his work clothes. The words ‘Neighbourhood Warden’ shone out on the back of his jacket in the reflective letters.

  ‘Well, other than being humiliated in front of Peggy, fine. You?’

  ‘Nice and quiet. I like it when the citizens of Milbury behave themselves and don’t bother me.’

  ‘Even that weird niece of yours? She is stalking me, you know.’

  Dave smiled. ‘Emily seems to be fine. Perhaps a bit bored, as she doesn’t know many people here yet.’ He sighed. ‘But I do hope she doesn’t get into trouble again.’ They sat in silence as Fred handed Jacob his pint.

  ‘Does she enjoy working at Posh Nosh?’ Jacob said. Dave shook his head.

  ‘No, not at all. She’s very annoyed she’s not allowed to take her rats to the shop. But Peggy’s got her respecting the rules more now. Did you
notice her new hair colour?’

  ‘Yes, I did. Why the change?’

  ‘Peggy said the black hair and attire were scaring off the customers, so she made her change it. But Emily wouldn’t be Emily if she hadn’t rebelled. She’s much like a teenager in many ways, even though she’s twenty-three.’ Dave sighed. ‘We have her parents to blame for that.’

  Jacob nodded. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, but now that you mention it, she does seem a little emotionally immature.’

  Both men took a gulp of their drinks and watched the football on the TV that hung above the bar. Jacob glanced round to see if Peggy was still watching him, but she’d gone. Part of him was disappointed she’d left.

  Near the window Jacob then spotted Marlee sitting at a table with a man. They were drinking coffee. Was that her father? He couldn’t remember ever seeing him at a parent-teacher night.

  ‘Have you heard from the mug people yet?’ Dave asked. Jacob shook his head.

  ‘No, not yet. It’s annoying as I am coming to a point in the project that I need to expand my computer output. And without the money from the mug contract, I wouldn’t be able to.’ He scrubbed his hand across his face. ‘If I don’t hear from them soon, I won’t be able to continue. And this just now as the computer has finished a string of calculation it started nine days ago.’

  Dave shifted on his barstool and cleared his throat. Jacob knew Dave didn’t like talking about his project. He’d always been sceptical about the success of it. They sat in silence.

  The entrance of Abe Monday broke the tension between the two friends. Although he was only thirty-two, they had all become friends.

  Abe took a seat near them and smiled. ‘Why so gloomy? You would almost say you two had had a dreadful week.’

  ‘Well, now that you mention it,’ Jacob said. ‘Priscilla told me today that Godric doesn’t like the clutter on my allotment. Pffft, as if there is clutter on my allotment. I know exactly where everything is.’