The Rat and Sparrow Club

Jo Field

 

'Sorry mate,' Harry said, barring the doorway with a sinewy arm.  'It's Wednesday.  Private function.'
          He was friendly enough but the look in his eyes, together with the way that arm was braced against the jamb, invited compliance.  I stepped one obedient pace backwards.
          'Wednesday?'
          'Rat and Sparrow club,' he said.  'Come back tomorrow.'
 
          'That was quick.'  Lucy glanced briefly away from the television as I came into the sitting room.
          'They wouldn't let me in.'
          'What d'you mean?'
          'Rat and Sparrow club apparently.'
          'What's that?'
          'How would I know? Something quaintly bucolic no doubt.'
          We indulged in a certain amount of speculation with our pasta.
          'Perhaps it's like Pin the Tail on the Donkey,' Lucy suggested.
          We sniggered into our wine at the mental picture of the likes of Tom Carter and Evan Judd standing solemnly round as a blindfolded Will Scrope carefully placed his drawing pin.
          'I reckon it's more like a Meat Club,' I said, having heard of such a thing at the village shop.
          'Surely even Will Scrope wouldn't eat rat?'
          'Sparrow might not be bad.  Small, but maybe quite tasty.'
          'That would be illegal surely.  Sparrows are scarce now aren't they.'
          Her prim rectitude stopped the game in its tracks.
          Next morning I sat again in front of the computer in my upstairs study, waiting for inspiration.  For some reason that I couldn't now recall, it had been expected to strike more readily out of town.  I gazed through the latticed panes of the window, over the tangled garden, across the lane to the fields and the wood beyond.  Frost was melting, grass sparkling wetly under a chilly sun.  In the far corner of the second field, just out of the shadow of the wood, was a ragged mound which I hadn't noticed before.  It looked like a pile of timber.  Perhaps the local kids were making a bonfire for the Fifth.  Perhaps.  I reached the binoculars from the bookshelf and fiddled with them until the pile came into focus.  It wasn't timber.  It was metal.  A couple of old fridges and half a car, it looked like.
          I gave up at midday.
          'Off to the pub,' I shouted to Lucy in her studio.  She didn't answer.
 
          Harry was welcoming again.
          'How was the meeting?' I said when I was settled with my pint.
          'Meeting?'
          'The Rat and Sparrow club.'
          He exchanged a glance with Will Scrope sitting in his usual place at the end of the bar.
          'Fine,' he said.
          'What is it exactly? This Rat and Sparrow club? Me and Lucy were wondering all evening.'
          'It's nothing of interest,' he said.  'Just a tradition.'
          'What kind of tradition?' I persisted.
          Will turned on his stool.  The ancient tweed jacket twisted awkwardly on his torso, its collar rumpling several empty folds of skin.
          'A tradition from olden days,' he wheezed.  'Time to bring it back.'
          Harry had his back towards us.  He was manhandling glasses, chanking them together.
          'It's not for the likes of you townies,' he said.  'You wouldn't understand.'
          This was a bit rich.  Harry himself hailed from Birmingham originally.  He told me so the first night I came in.
          'Try me.'
          'Back when sparrers were a problem same as rats,' Will said, 'men used to meet up to count how many of the beggars they'd caught, rats and sparrers.  They'd bring the beaks and the tails to the pub once a week for 'em to be tallied up.  End of the year, him with the highest tally'd get ten bob or so.  Went on right to the end of the fifties.  Used to do it meself.'
          'And now you've revived it?'
          'More or less.'
          'How's the work going?' Harry said.
          'Hopeless.  I've sat the whole morning just looking out of the window.'
          'Well, you've got a cracking view to look at from that cottage of yours.'
          'Lovely.  At least it would be lovely if someone hadn't dumped rubbish on it.'
          'That'd be the foreigners' cottage would it?' said Will.
          'Why d'you call it that?'
          'Reckon you're the fifth outsiders in that place in as many years.'
          'Sixth even,' Harry said.
 
          Lucy was appalled.
          'You mean they're killing rats and sparrows?'
          We had something of a rodent problem ourselves.  She could accept the massacre of rats with equanimity.
          'I guess they might be.'
          'I'll ring the RSPCA.  No.  The RSPB.'
          'Don't do that.  We don't want to make ourselves unpopular in the village.  Wait at least till we're sure what it is they're doing.'
          In the night I heard some sort of vehicle turning off the lane along the rough track which led to the woods.  When I peered through the curtains I could see lights and hear the sound of voices thin across the fields.  After I was in bed again, I heard another vehicle and then later, through my dreams, both of them coming back.  Sitting at my desk the next day I saw that the heap of rubbish under the woods had gone.
 
          'Who cleared up the rubbish by the wood there?' I asked Harry that evening.
          'Like to keep the place tidy.'
          'It's fly-tipping, isn't it?' I said.  'How can people do that? In all this beautiful countryside?'
          He shrugged his shoulders.
          'Seems to be an awful lot of it going on,' I said.
          He shrugged again.
 
          Lucy was screaming in the studio.  When I arrived she was standing on a chair.
          'There's another one!' She pointed at the floor.
          It was bigger than a mouse.
          'A rat!' she yelled.  'It's a rat!'
          This time, I managed to corner it and whack it with a heavy block of paper.  It lay still.  Lucy came down from the chair.  When she was quiet, I looked at her latest canvas.  It was more trees.
          'Like it?' she asked.
          'There's something missing though,' I said.  'Where's the burnt-out car? Where's the builders' rubble?'
          I cut off the rat's tail with the kitchen scissors.
          'I'll take it along next Wednesday.  Should gain me entry to any Rat and Sparrow club.'
          Lucy wrapped the corpse in newspaper and thrust it to the bottom of the dustbin, along with her rubber gloves and a perfectly good pair of scissors which, so she claimed, I'd irredeemably tainted.
          'If there are sparrows I'm ringing the police first thing Thursday morning,' she threatened.
 
          The scene in the pub is Dickensian.  Through a haze of smoke, the form of Will Scrope is just visible slumped on his usual stool.  He drags what looks like a handful of worms from the pocket of his tweed jacket.  Evan counts them, lining them up neatly on the pitted wood.
          'Fourteen tails,' he says, and dips his pen into a pot of ink before scrawling the tally into a dusty ledger.
          Bob Peebles produces a black velvet pouch and upends it over the counter.  There's a faint rattling sound as the contents fall out.  Evan's large forefinger gently nudges each item as he tallies it up.
          'Eleven beaks.'  He scratches the figure into another column.
          I step forward with my tail.
          'And there's plenty more where that came from,' I promise as my name is entered.  Everyone shakes me by the hand.
 
          'What you got there?' Harry said, standing obstructively in the doorway.
          'It's a rat's tail.  I've come to join the club.'
          'Oh yeah?'  He grinned a slow grin; looked behind him into the bar.
          'Gentleman here says he's got a tail to be tallied.  What d'you reckon?  Should we let him in?'
          There was the sound of general grumbling, but finally Harry stepped aside and in I went.
          There was no smoke of course.  Everything seemed much as usual.  Will sat on his stool at the far end, whiskers dangling in his beer.  Tom hogged the best table with a couple of cronies.  Evan stood deep in conversation with Bob Peebles by the dartboard.
          'Where do I put it?' I asked.
          'Put what?'
          'My tail.'
          There were hoots of laughter.  I held up the tail in front of Evan.
          'One rat's tail!' I said proudly.
          Will's jacket turned stiffly on his stool.
          'Pretty small rat,' he said.
          Evan took the thing from me and examined it closely.
          'Mouse,' was his verdict.
          'What?'
          'It's a mouse-tail,' he said.
          There was more hooting and derision.
          'No,' I insisted.  'It was too big for a mouse.'
          Bob prodded it.
          'Probably one of them yeller-necks,' he said.
          'Does it matter?' I asked.  'Mice are pests aren't they?'
          'Not the yellow-necks,' Evan said.  'Nice little fellers the yellow-necks.  Live in the woods minding their own business, the yellow-necks, doing no harm to nobody.'
          'But this one was in the house.  I'm sure it was a rat.'
          'Yeller-necks, they'll come indoors just to keep cosy in the autumn,' Will said accusingly.
          Evan called them to order and they all gathered round the table where Tom was sitting.  Will Scrope proved that he wasn't welded to his bar-stool after all, lowering himself and his jacket from it in order to shuffle over.  Harry emerged from behind the bar to join them.  They ignored me, so I went and stood behind Will, not too close because of his distinctive smell.
          'Tally of three this week,' Evan said.  'That right Tom?'
          'That's correct.  One by the Shuttlemead Road, one back of the old chapel, one on the track to Score's Wood.'
          I craned to see what it was they'd put on the table.  Three little packages.  I would have expected more than that.
          'And there's mine, don't forget,' I couldn't resist saying.  I didn't know what Evan had done with my tail.
          There was silence as they all turned to look at me.  It wasn't a friendly look.
          'You keep out of it,' Harry muttered.
          'One truck-load each at Shuttlemead and the chapel, and a van up Score's track.'
          I was puzzled.  They weren't talking about truckloads of rats' tails, or vans full of sparrows' beaks.
          'We'll have to be more vigilant.  That first lot was dumped about three in the morning I reckon.  Wally was up there twice that night.  Must've just missed 'em.'
          It was the fly-tippers.  The Rat and Sparrow club was nothing but a Neighbourhood Watch scheme.  I was disappointed, while at the same time saluting their enterprise.
          'So what's in those packets?' I couldn't keep quiet.
          Another silence.
          'Never you mind,' said Harry.
          'You don't want to know,' Evan said.
          But I did.
          Tom unwrapped the first parcel, delicately.  I leant forward to get a better view.  There seemed to be blood on a bundle of wadding.  My rat hadn't bled like that.
          'One tail, two beaks,' Evan said.  He wrote something on a scrap of paper.
          The second and third packages were opened, Tom's rugged fingers dexterous as a surgeon's.
          'One tail, one beak,' said Evan.  He poked about with his pencil.  'And another one and one.'
          I was too close to Will Scrope for comfort, but my curiosity wouldn't let me pull back.  Laid bare on the table were three separate clutches of something gory.  Sparrows?  No.  There were no feathers that I could see.  These were like small helpings of cannelloni: pale and flaccid, with a Puttanesca sauce.  I felt the blood draining from my face like sand from the top of an egg timer, the hairs on the nape of my neck lifting like the hackles of a spooked dog.
          'Vermin,' said Will with satisfaction.  'They'll not be back in a hurry.'
          'I'm going to throw up,' I said.  'What the hell is that?'
          'Better you don't know,' said Evan.
          'And even better you don't blab about it.  Not to no one,' Tom said.
          'Else,' said Will, 'same thing might just happen to you.'
 
          'Well?' demanded Lucy when I reached home.  'Any sparrows?'
          'No sparrows,' I said.                                                                                                                                       Return to Archive