Switchers (8 page)

‘Many street, huh?’ said Tess. ‘Boy, girl walking, riding on a bus. Owls, pigeons flying. Us rats going slowly. Us rats very tired. Us rats sleeping.’

‘Boy, girl scratching their heads,’ said Kevin. ‘Looking at maps, shrugging their shoulders.’

‘Us rats swimming in sewers, us rats in slimy black drainpipes.’

‘Girl going into her house, huh?’ Kevin’s black eyes were cold and mistrustful and Tess knew her own must have looked the same. But he was right. There was no turning back now, and no way of knowing where to go without the guidance of the city rats. She showed Kevin her teeth for spite, but a few minutes later they were back on the rat highways with their new guides.

F
OR THREE MORE NIGHTS
Tess and Kevin travelled through the rats’ city underground, changing guides twice more along the way. They ate from rubbish bins knocked over by dogs, from shop store-rooms and from the shelves of poorly guarded kitchens. When they reached the outskirts of the city they began to travel above the ground, and they stopped many times along the way in urban gardens to feed on fresh vegetables and tasty scraps from compost heaps. Rats, it seemed, were never short of food.

On the fourth day, dawn found them in one of the most affluent areas of the country. Green fields and trees surrounded impressive houses, both old and new, owned by those people who could afford the luxury of having the best of both worlds. Tess was aware that her parents had checked out areas like this before they settled on the house beside the park. The air was so fresh and the country smells so sweet that she found herself regretting their choice. What was puzzling her, though, was that the sort of area they were in didn’t fit at all with the picture the rats had given her of the little old lady who was waiting beside the fire.

‘Little old lady, huh?’ she said to their latest guide. Her name was Nose Broken by a Mousetrap, and it was easy to see why.

‘Yep, yep, little old lady,’ she said, and darted through a hedge into a field of lush grass.

It was not snowing now, but there had been several light snowfalls over the last few days, and because of the relentless cold, whatever snow had settled had remained. It stuck to the rats now as they dislodged it from the grass, and melted in dark patches on their glossy coats. They stayed close in to the hedge to avoid the eyes of dogs or hawks or passersby, and soon they crossed into a second meadow, and then a third. A road ran parallel to their route, between the meadows and the widely spaced houses on the opposite side, and the occasional car passed along it, driving slowly because of the icy conditions. After a while, Tess realised by the change in sound that the hedge they were following was no longer beside the road but running away from it and out into the open country.

‘Road, huh?’ she said. ‘Little old lady house, huh?’

‘Yep, yep,’ said Nose Broken by a Mousetrap, and she led the way through the twisted roots of the hedge. They stopped on the other side. They were on the edge of a green track with high brambly hedges on each side. Blackthorn and ash trees grew overhead so as to make it almost a tunnel. It was a track for people and animals only, far too narrow for a car.

‘House,’ said Nose Broken by a Mousetrap, twitching her nose along the path.

‘House, huh?’ said Kevin.

‘House, yep. Little old lady. Yep, yep. Careful. Cats. Many cats. Follow soak-away pipe. Passage through hollow walls, comes out above the fireplace. Cats can’t reach.’ She touched noses with each of them and said: ‘Nose Broken by a Mousetrap visiting her grandchildren. No hair yet. Many streets.’ And with that she was gone, back through the hedge and out of their lives.

‘House,’ said Kevin, and started running down the track. But this time Tess didn’t follow.

‘Freeze!’ she said.

He did, instantly. Tess looked up and down the track. She sniffed the air and listened carefully for a while. They were well hidden from the road by a bend in the track, and the hedges were high on either side. With a sigh of relief, she Switched into human form, and after a moment or two, Kevin did the same.

Tess hollowed her back, stretched her arms above her head, and then swung them around like a windmill, all those things that a rat can’t do. Then she sighed again and sat down against the base of a tree where the ground was free from snow.

‘Shove up,’ said Kevin.

Tess moved over, turning away from him, and he squeezed in beside her with his back against hers. ‘What did you do that for?’ he said.

‘Do what?’

‘Change.’

‘We’re going to see a little old lady, aren’t we?’

‘Yes. But she obviously speaks Rat, doesn’t she? How else could she have sent the others looking for us, huh?’

‘Don’t “huh?” me,’ snapped Tess. ‘I’m fed up with being a rat. That wasn’t part of the deal as far as I’m concerned. It’s all right for you. You’re used to it. Maybe too used to it.’

‘Oh,’ said Kevin, ‘like that, is it? Well, maybe you’re too used to being a rotten human. We didn’t make the stinking sewers and slimy drainpipes, you know? You did. We don’t leave rubbish thrown around all over the place. It’s your lot who does that. You’re lucky you’ve got us to clean up after you!’

Tess was staring at him, open-mouthed.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

‘What do you mean, “us”?’

Kevin looked at the ground and gathered a small lump of snow in his hand.

‘What do you mean, Kevin?’ Tess went on. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’m not good at being a boy. With rats you know where you stand even if it isn’t always pleasant. But I don’t understand people properly. They say one thing and they mean another. I don’t know how to look at them and I don’t understand the way they look at me.’

Tess looked around her. A weak morning sun was pouring yellow light through the branches and picking out specks of brilliance in the thin snow. Above their heads the birds were chatting quietly, not too concerned by their presence but aware of it all the same.

‘I don’t either, Kevin,’ she said, gently. ‘I’m not sure anybody does. That’s just the way people are.’

‘That’s fair enough I suppose,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t give me a good reason to bother with them.’

‘You keep saying “them”, or “you”, as if you don’t belong. But you do. You’re the same as any of us when it comes down to it.’

‘Am I, Tess?’

‘Of course you are! We’re all the same underneath.’

Kevin sighed deeply and tilted back his head so that it rested, just for an instant, against hers.

They walked together down the path until the house came into view. It was a tiny place and quite ancient, completely at odds with the surrounding wealth and grandeur. A few hens picked at the grass around the front door, and a troop of ducks that were puddling around in the mud beside an outside tap took offence at the presence of strangers and waddled away in a line, quacking contemptuously.

The little old lady heard them and came to the door.

‘At last,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d never get here, so I did.’

‘Pardon?’ said Tess.

‘I been waiting ages,’ said the little old lady. ‘You took your time, didn’t you?’ She threw a suspicious glance at Kevin and said: ‘I thought you was a rat.’

‘Huh?’ thought Kevin instinctively. He looked crestfallen and hung behind Tess as they followed the old woman into the house.

‘Never mind,’ she said, pushing cats off chairs beside the fire to make room for them to sit down. ‘I suppose you is a rat and you isn’t. It’s all the same in the end. All the same to me at any rate. Sit yourselves down, and don’t take any notice of them cats. A knee is a knee to a cat and a lap is a lap, and whether it’s a knee or a lap it’s warmer than the floor. If you doesn’t like cats,’ she looked pointedly at Kevin, ‘you can tell them where to get off, but politely, mind, because we doesn’t tolerate rudeness in this house, does we, pussums, eh?’

She closed the hall door behind them and they settled, a little self-consciously, into the newly vacated chairs. The fire was crackling brightly, and a large black kettle on a hook above it was wheezing in a way that made Tess hopeful of tea. It seemed like a year since she had tasted it.

The cats didn’t turn out to be a problem because as soon as the old woman sat down they began to gather on her lap, and before long there were four of them there, manoeuvring for position.

‘Tell us your names,’ said the old woman. ‘Come on, don’t be shy. No rules in this house except that you minds your manners and doesn’t be anything nasty to scare the cats. And you needn’t think you’re so special, either, sitting there like that. We was all young once, you know. You isn’t the only ones who was able to Switch yourselves.’

‘We know that,’ said Tess.

‘You knows everything, that’s your trouble. Teenagers always does. There’s nothing anyone can tell them. Teenagers is arrogant, that’s what they is. Isn’t that true, pussums, eh?’

The four cats had settled comfortably now and sat gazing out at Tess and Kevin with narrow, malevolent eyes. Kevin was looking pointedly at the floor, and Tess knew that he wasn’t going to be any help at all.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘He’s Kevin and I’m Tess.’

‘Oh,’ said the old woman. ‘Kevin, is he? That’s a good, solid name, now, Kevin is. You can’t argue with that, can you?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Tess.

‘But Tess,’ the old woman went on, without pausing for breath, ‘isn’t a name at all. It’s one of those ridiculous new inventions like a sticky label. They might as well have given you a number, miss, as a name like that.’

‘But that’s not true!’ said Tess, beginning to get annoyed. ‘It’s a very old name.’

‘A very old name? How can it be a very old name when you’s only a little nipper, eh? I’ll tell you a very old name. Lizzie is a very old name, and I isn’t telling you how old it is, and as every young gentleman knows,’ she leant forward and poked Kevin on the knee so that he jumped, ‘it isn’t polite to ask. But you can take it from me, it’s a very old name. It’s very nearly about as old a name as you can get.’

There was an awkward silence, during which the kettle’s voice moved up a semitone. Tess glanced around the room, surreptitiously. Beside the fireplace was an old black oven, and above it Tess noticed a hole in the stonework of the chimney front which she recognised from Nose Broken by a Mousetrap’s description. She could well imagine Lizzie sitting there in the evenings, having conversations with little twitching noses poking out, while the cats prowled below in impotent fury.

Behind them was a small table, and beyond that an old-fashioned square sink between cupboards with broken doors. There was a litter of bits and pieces everywhere, but Tess had the impression that, on the whole, the place was clean. Light streamed in from a large window behind the sink. Tess took a second look, unable to trust what she had seen. Hanging on a line above the window, like an eccentric pelmet, were a half dozen pairs of Lizzie’s drawers.

Tess tried not to laugh. She looked at Kevin, but he was rubbing imaginary dirt off the palm of his hand, and she realised that he was inwardly fuming.

‘Is Lizzie your name, then?’ she said, still battling with the giggles that were threatening to erupt.

‘It isn’t what I’d have chosen if I was given the choice,’ said the old woman, ‘but we never is, is we? There it is, as soon as we’s big enough to know it, and then we’s stuck with it, isn’t we? We can’t shake it off, can we pussums, eh? Born Lizzie I was, and Lizzie I’ll be to the end of my days if there ever is an end to them.’

Tess realised that Kevin was swearing silently, in Rat.

‘You has a very lazy tongue, young man,’ said Lizzie, ‘but a nasty, busy little mind. And you’s very stupid if you thinks I can’t know what you’s saying.’

Kevin looked up, shocked. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot.’

‘You forgot, so you did. Teenagers always forgets. Teenagers thinks they’s the only ones with eyes and the only ones with brains. I was a rat, young Kevin, before your father had an eye to have a gleam in. I was a rat in the days when those things wasn’t done, and many other things besides. I was a rat in days when teenagers wasn’t allowed. What do you think of that, eh?’

Kevin looked daggers at Tess and she glared back at him. It hadn’t been her idea to come here. It was becoming clear to her that the old woman was mad as a hatter. Her parents would be at home, out of their minds with worry, and she had spent four nights in the sewers of Dublin to come and listen to total nonsense.

Lizzie put the cats down off her knee, one by one, and got up. She reached out and gave the kettle a prod so that it swayed on its hook and hissed angrily.

‘Get a move on,’ she said to it. ‘You’s always slow when I’s in a hurry. You does it on purpose.’

The hissing died down and a few weak puffs of steam escaped from the spout. ‘These days,’ Lizzie went on, ‘anything goes, doesn’t it, eh pussums? Anyone who wants to can be a teenager. You sees them everywhere with their hair all painted and their raggedy clothes and every one of them knows better than the next one. Oh, it’s an awful thing. Dreadful. It’s catching, too. It’s an epidemic. And some people is never cured, never. Some people is teenagers all their lives. Isn’t that right, pussums?’

Kevin stood up and turned to Tess. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ said Lizzie, putting her hands on her hips. ‘Had enough, has you? You hasn’t had anything yet, so how is it you’s had enough? If you’s had enough, why did you come at all?’

‘Come on, Tess,’ said Kevin. Tess stood up a little uncertainly, looking from one to the other.

‘That’s teenagers for you,’ Lizzie went on, her voice rising in tone to near hysteria. ‘They hasn’t even started and they’s had enough. They only wants to sit in front of the TV or have a good time for their-selves being jackdaws and puppies and toads. They hasn’t time to sit and chat. They always has to go. They’s always had enough, even before they’s had what they come for!’

Kevin wheeled on her, and the cats, which had occupied her vacated chair, scattered in all directions. ‘And what about stupid old women? Who invites … who invite people to visit them and drag them right across Dublin and then tell them to mind their manners so they can stand there and abuse them?’