The Twyning (11 page)

I nod. There’s no reaching Bill Grubstaff on a day like this.

“Got some good ’uns with you today, Bill?” a voice calls out from the direction of the throng at the bar.

Bill laughs. “Beauties,” he says.

At that moment, from behind the bar, Molly Wall rings a bell. Conversation dies down.

“Come on, boy.” Bill drains his glass. “We’re on.”

Between us, we carry the cages to the center of the room.

“Ah, the merchandise,” says Molly without much enthusiasm.

“There’s more than four hundred,” says Bill. “Mostly streets, but with a few fancies thrown in.”

“We’ll have two contests between now and mid-afternoon.” Molly glances at the cages, then looks away. “First up, it’s Jem Dashwood’s Bermondsey Bob against Drum, the bitch from Edmonton that did so well last time. Then Charlie’s Kentish Lad will be taking on Duke, a young Manchester trained by Wilf Barstow.”

As Molly goes to tell the setters the order of the afternoon, Bill wanders over to the rat-pit. I follow him. Elbows on the ledge surrounding the pit, he gazes downward.

“Some of them were circular,” he says, almost to himself. “I prefer them square, like this one. If there’s no corners, the beasts get confused and the kill’s too easy.”

He turns to watch the setters as they prepare their dogs.

“There was a dog called Billy,” he says suddenly. “You’ll have heard of him . . .”

I hadn’t.

“The most famous ratter of all time. He once killed a hundred beasts in seven minutes and thirty seconds. That was a circular pit. The beasts didn’t have a chance against Billy. Folk don’t like it when dogs are too good at their job. It was a sport they come to see, not a massacre.”

Molly is back at the table. It is time to work.

“Put ’em in, boy,” Bill mutters.

I fetch the cage and lug it to the side of the pit. From the watching crowd on the other side, two men emerge. They are two setters whose dogs will be in the first bout, Jem Dashwood and Charlie Buckingham. According to Bill, Jem and Charlie have been rivals for over ten years, and in all that time not a friendly word has passed between them.

“Gentlemen.” Molly raises her voice above the din. “Our old friend Bill Grubstaff has provided us with some fine sport, as usual. The two setters will scrutinize the filling of the pit.”

Bill lowers a ladder into the pit. I descend and take a cage of rats from him. I open the small trap in the roof of the cage, put my right hand in, and take out a rat, holding it by its tail.

Carefully, I put it on the ground. The first thing Bill told me was to take my time while releasing beasts for a bout. A rat with a broken leg or stunned by a fall can cause disagreements and delays.

With the onlookers staring down at me, I count out the rats until exactly one hundred of them are scurrying around the edge of the pit, falling over one another as they search in vain for an escape.

Dashwood, a former prizefighter who has a hard, bony face and piercing blue eyes, watches the rats with the stare of a hungry hawk. As usual on pit nights, he is wearing a pair of tan-and-white gaiters, made from the skin of his most famous dog, a champion rat killer called Blackjack.

His opponent’s dog has been drawn to fight first. When money and pride are at stake, he knows how important it is that every rat in that pit is a healthy, strong specimen.

In the past, Dashwood has asked Bill to remove a couple of beasts. There was nothing wrong with the animals, Bill says, but Dashwood wanted to show his opponent that he had an eye for the way a rat should be.

Today, though, he is against his old enemy, Charlie Buckingham. The little tricks that have worked on less experienced setters are a waste of time with Charlie.

Hands in pockets, Dashwood walks back to where a boy not much older than me, but a lot bigger and broader, is holding on with both hands to the leash of a snarling, scarred Manchester terrier who is shivering with excitement, his red eyes dilated and lips drawn back over his teeth in a slavering smile of anticipation.

Bermondsey Bob. The dog is tugging so hard in the direction of the pit that there’s danger of him throttling himself before fighting a single rat.

Jem Dashwood lays a strong, long-fingered hand over his dog’s muzzle, resting it there for a moment before beginning to squeeze. Bermondsey Bob whimpers, then snarls angrily, shaking his head free as if already a rat is in his jaws.

“He’s ready.” Dashwood stands up and wipes the dog’s drool from his hand. “It’ll be a good time we’re looking at today.”

Around the pit, the gamblers and drinkers are inspecting the wild-eyed, dazzled rats before laying their bets. Even when a ratter as reliable as Bill Grubstaff has provided them, the punters like to assess the beasts for strength, health, and savagery.

In the past, I have heard it said at the Cock Inn that it is as important to know your rats as to know the dogs who are about to kill them. No two pitfuls of beasts are quite the same, they say.

“How’s your dog, Jem?” an old man standing nearby calls out.

“He’s well enough.” Dashwood glances in the direction of Buckingham. “Honest as the day is long, too.”

“Betting’s even today.” As I step out of the pit, Bill talks to me as if I really cared who was to make money from this game of killing. “Buckingham’s dog Drum is a game bitch — she killed her hundred beasts in under ten minutes a couple of days ago, but Bermondsey Bob’s stronger, fitter, more experienced.”

I had heard that Dashwood was careful with his money. Today he seems to be feeling lucky. He lays a £100 wager on the gaming table.

At that moment, the noise in the room — men shouting encouragement, dogs barking — grows louder. Charlie Buckingham is bringing Drum toward the pit.

Winking to his son, Dashwood ambles forward to see how his opponent will fare. The spectators stand back, allowing him a prime spot near where Bill and I are standing.

With the last bet in, silence descends, broken only by the yapping of dogs and the scratching of rats’ claws and teeth as they try to gnaw their way through the zinc walls that surround them.

“Gentlemen, we have a one-hundred-rat contest between”— Molly pauses, as if she were performing — “all the way from Edmonton, Mr. Charles Buckingham’s fine Staffordshire bull terrier bitch, Drum!”— there are cheers from Drum’s supporters — “and, from the stable of our own Jem Dashwood, one of the finest dogs ever to grace the pit at the Cock Inn, the one and only Bermondsey Bob! ”

“Come on, Bob, my son.” A voice, hoarse with excitement, calls out from the far side of the pit. There are more cheers.

Buckingham, a small man with the shifty look of someone who is never far from trouble, lifts Drum, a strong, white bitch with scars from previous bouts on her face and neck, over the pit. Hanging by the scruff of her neck, she whimpers, pitching and writhing at the sight of the rats below her.

Molly watches carefully. At the pit of the Cock Inn, no setter is allowed to drop his dog into a crowd of rats, giving them an advantage when it came to killing. It will be Molly who holds the watch and decides where each dog can be released.

Molly holds her left hand high, watching as Buckingham holds Drum over the center of the pit. As she brings it down, with a brisk cry of “Go! ” a mighty roar rocks the room.

“Here we go,” says Bill happily.

Drum falls, snarling and snapping, into the pit.

She quickly goes to work.

. . . around Malaika. Screams of rage, terror, defiance.

The sound of rats fighting for their lives, facing their deaths.

In the cage, those that awaited their fate pressed in, clambering over her in fear.

Malaika cowered beneath the weight of the other rats.

Waiting.

. . . on his face as he watches Drum working, but it is largely for show.

After ten minutes and thirty-five seconds, Drum is lifted out of the pit, her white coat now drenched dark red.

“Good bitch.” Bill turns his back and speaks to me out of the side of his mouth. “Brave, strong. But she’s too slow. See the way she shook every rat to kill it? That’s not how champions work.”

When I climb into the pit to clear it of corpses, I find that Bill’s right. I have seen enough contests to know that the best dogs kill their victims cleanly, leaving their bodies so unmarked that by the end of the contest, it would be as if the pit were full of slumbering rats. One nip of the neck or backbone was all it took.

I try not to think of what happens to the beasts. The Cock Inn is a place of warmth and friendship. I feel safe here, with Molly in charge.

“Sport.” I say the word to myself as I open the cage. I have to keep it in my mind. This is sport.

As I begin to count out the next one hundred rats, something odd happens. I feel within my head a sort of jolt. It is as if I am sickening for something, a sudden pulse within me.

Shaking my head, I continue to count out the rats. Jem Dashwood moves forward, his dog Bermondsey Bob tugging and choking on his leash, eager to be about his business.

As man and dog approach the pit, the setter lifts the dog and unhooks the harness from his shoulders in one easy movement. With both hands on the scruff of the dog’s neck, he holds him over the pit. Bermondsey Bob looks down at the rats like some monstrous bird of prey.

Jem takes his right hand from his dog’s neck, and, with a smile in the direction of the punters, he strokes its shiny coat. Then, slowly, he brings his hand down and between its hind legs until he seems to find what he is looking for.

“Give ’em a squeeze,” someone shouts.

As Molly says “Go!” Dashwood clenches his mighty fist tight around the dog’s balls. Bermondsey Bob gives a roar of outraged pain, and in that instant, Jem lets him drop into the pit. Even as he touches the ground, his head is whipping furiously left and right, his death-dealing jaws snapping all the while.

Other ratting dogs like to corner the beasts, then pick them off one by one. Bob is different. Like a hound of hell, he bursts upon the largest group of rats, scattering them left and right, seeming to cast the merest glance in the direction of each as he passes.

But it is not a glance. It is a bite, executed so swiftly that the human eye cannot see it.

Within three minutes of the drop, half of the rats lie dead, some of them twitching their last breaths. There is no danger of rats fighting back now, so Bob moves into his second phase, galloping around the perimeter of the pit like a greyhound on the track, dealing death as he goes.

After six and a half minutes, the dog is drenched with blood, his flanks heaving and flecked with saliva. There are no more than twenty or so beasts still alive, but we can all see that Bob is exhausted now. The rats find it easier to avoid his snapping jaws.

“He’s too honest for his own good, that one,” Bill murmurs beside me. “If he could finish just half as fast as he started, he’d be a champion.”

Even tired, though, Bob is deadly. Moments later, Dashwood steps into the pit. As he lifts his dog, panting and drooling, the setter has a grim, victorious smile on his face.

“The time of Bermondsey Bob”— Molly looks at her timepiece for a few seconds — “was ten minutes and five seconds. I declare the winner to be —”

“The bout ain’t finished yet.” The voice is that of Charlie Buckingham. He stands, arms crossed, on the far side of the pit. Slowly, he leans forward and points to where the bodies of ten or so rats are lying. “The beast down there — he’s no more dead than I am.”

Jem Dashwood passes Bermondsey Bob to his son, then dries the blood from his hands with a large red handkerchief. Punters step back as he walks around the rim of the pit, his face pale and expressionless.

There is no doubting it. We can all see now. The twitchings of a large male rat, its back or pelvis broken, are not the nerves of death. He is still alive.

One of the spectators says what we’re all thinking. “It’s moving. We’ll have to chalk it.”

“What you talkin’ about?” There’s anger in Jem’s voice. “It’s dead — good as, anyway.”

I notice Molly has approached the pit. She knows that when bouts end like this, trouble is never far away. She glances across to me. “Fetch him out, Dogboy,” she says.