The wife arrived first. She came sailing into the room looking more than ever like the dazzling Queen Semiramis of the Nile, and the first thing I noticed about her was the pale-green chiffon scarf knotted casually round her neck! Casually but carefully! So carefully that no part of the skin of the neck was visible. The woman went straight over to her husband and kissed him on the cheek. 'Good morning, my darling,' she said.
You cunning beautiful bitch, I thought.
'Good morning, Mr Cornelius,' she said gaily, coming over to sit in the chair opposite mine. 'Did you have a good night? I do hope you had everything you wanted.'
Never in my life have I seen such a sparkle in a woman's eyes as I saw in hers that morning, nor such a glow of pleasure in a woman's face.
'I had a very good night indeed, thank you.' I answered, showing her that I knew.
She smiled and lit a cigarette. I glanced over at Mr Aziz, who was still writing away busily at the desk with his back to us. He wasn't paying the slightest attention to his wife or to me. He was, I thought, exactly like all the other poor cuckolds that I had ever created. Not one of them would believe that it could happen to him, not right under his own nose.
'Good morning, everybody!' cried the daughter, sweeping into the room. 'Good morning, Daddy! Good morning, Mummy!' She gave them each a kiss. 'Good morning, Mr Cornelius!' She was wearing a pair of pink slacks and a rust-coloured blouse, and I'll be damned if she didn't also have a scarf tied carelessly but carefully round her neck! A chiffon scarf!
'Did you have a decent night?' she asked, perching herself like a young bride on the arm of my chair, arranging herself in such a way that one of her thighs rested against my forearm. I leaned back and looked at her closely. She looked back at me and winked. She actually winked! Her face was glowing and sparkling every bit as much as her mother's, and if anything, she seemed even more pleased with herself than the older woman.
I felt pretty confused. Only one of them had a bite mark to conceal, yet both of them had covered their necks with scarves. I conceded that this might be a coincidence, but on the face of it, it looked much more like a conspiracy to me. It looked as though they were both working closely together to keep me from discovering the truth. But what an extraordinarily screwy business! And what was the purpose of it all? And in what other peculiar ways, might I ask, did they plot and plan together among themselves? Had they drawn lots or something the night before? Or did they simply take it in turns with visitors? I must come back again, I told myself, for another visit as soon as possible just to see what happens the next time. In fact, I might motor down specially from Jerusalem in a day or two. It would be easy, I reckoned, to get myself invited again.
'Are you ready, Mr Cornelius?' Mr Aziz said, rising from his desk.
'Quite ready,' I answered.
The ladies, sleek and smiling, led the way outside to where the big green Rolls-Royce was waiting. I kissed their hands and murmured a million thanks to each of them. Then I got into the front seat beside my host, and we drove off. The mother and daughter waved. I lowered my window and waved back. Then we were out of the garden and into the desert, following the stony yellow track as it skirted the base of Mount Maghara, with the telegraph poles marching along beside us.
During the journey, my host and I conversed pleasantly about this and that. I was at pains to be as agreeable as possible because my one object now was to get myself invited to stay at the house again. If I didn't succeed in getting him to ask me, then I should have to ask him. I would do it at the last moment. 'Good-bye, my dear friend,' I would say, gripping him warmly by the throat. 'May I have the pleasure of dropping in to see you again if I happen to be passing this way?' And of course he would say yes.
'Did you think I exaggerated when I told you my daughter was beautiful?' he asked me.
'You understated it,' I said. 'She's a raving beauty. I do congratulate you. But your wife is no less lovely. In fact, between the two of them they almost swept me off my feet,' I added, laughing.
'I noticed that,' he said, laughing with me. 'They're a couple of very naughty girls. They do so love to flirt with other men. But why should I mind? There's no harm in flirting.'
'None whatsoever,' I said.
'I think it's gay and fun.'
'It's charming,' I said.
In less than half an hour we had reached the main Ismailia-Jerusalem road. Mr Aziz turned the Rolls on to the black tarmac strip and headed for the filling-station at seventy miles an hour. In a few minutes we would be there. So now I tried moving a little closer to the subject of another visit, fishing gently for an invitation. 'I can't get over your house.' I said. 'I think it's simply wonderful.'
'It is nice, isn't it?'
'I suppose you're bound to get pretty lonely out there, on and off, just the three of you together?'
'It's no worse than anywhere else,' he said. 'People get lonely wherever they are. A desert, or a city - it doesn't make much difference, really. But we do have visitors, you know. You'd be surprised at the number of people who drop in from time to time. Like you, for instance. It was a great pleasure having you with us, my dear fellow.'
'I shall never forget it,' I said. 'It is a rare thing to find kindness and hospitality of that order nowadays.'
I waited for him to tell me that I must come again, but he didn't. A little silence sprang up between us, a slightly uneasy little silence. To bridge it. I said, 'I think yours is the most thoughtful paternal gesture I've ever heard of in my life.'
'Mine?'
'Yes. Building a house right out there in the back of beyond and living in it just for your daughter's sake, to protect her. I think it's remarkable.'
I saw him smile, but he kept his eyes on the road and said nothing. The filling-station and the group of huts were now in sight about a mile ahead of us. The sun was high and it was getting hot inside the car.
'Not many fathers would put themselves out to that extent,' I went on.
Again he smiled, but somewhat bashfully this time, I thought. And then he said, 'I don't deserve quite as much credit as you like to give me, really I don't. To be absolutely honest with you, that pretty daughter of mine isn't the only reason for my living in such splendid isolation.'
'I know that.'
'You do?'
'You told me. You said the other reason was the desert. You loved it, you said, as a sailor loves the sea.'
'So I did. And it's quite true. But there's still a third reason.'
'Oh, and what is that?'
He didn't answer me. He sat quite still with his hands on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I shouldn't have asked the question. It's none of my business.'
'No, no, that's quite all right,' he said. 'Don't apologize.'
I stared out of the window at the desert. 'I think it's hotter than yesterday,' I said. 'It must be well over a hundred already.'
'Yes.'
I saw him shifting a little in his seat, as though trying to get comfortable, and then he said, 'I don't really see why I shouldn't tell you the truth about that house. You don't strike me as being a gossip.'
'Certainly not,' I said.
We were close to the filling-station now, and he had slowed the car down almost to walking-speed to give himself time to say what he had to say. I could see the two Arabs standing beside my Lagonda, watching us.
'That daughter,' he said at length, 'the one you met - she isn't the only daughter I have.'
'Oh, really?'
'I've got another who is five years older than she.'
'And just as beautiful, no doubt,' I said. 'Where does she live? In Beirut?'
'No, she's in the house.'
'In which house? Not the one we've just left?'
'Yes.'
'But I never saw her!'
'Well,' he said, turning suddenly to watch my face, 'maybe not.'
'But why?'
'She has leprosy.'
I jumped.
>
'Yes, I know,' he said, 'it's a terrible thing. She has the worst kind, too, poor girl. It's called anaesthetic leprosy. It is highly resistant, and almost impossible to cure. If only it were the nodular variety, it would be much easier. But it isn't, and there you are. So when a visitor comes to the house, she keeps to her own apartment, on the third floor ...'
The car must have pulled into the filling-station about then because the next thing I can remember was seeing Mr Abdul Aziz sitting there looking at me with those small clever black eyes of his, and he was saying, 'But my dear fellow, you mustn't alarm yourself like this. Calm yourself down, Mr Cornelius, calm yourself down! There's absolutely nothing in the world for you to worry about. It is not a very contagious disease. You have to have the most intimate contact with the person in order to catch it ...'
I got out of the car very slowly and stood in the sunshine. The Arab with the diseased face was grinning at me and saying, 'Fan-belt all fixed now. Everything fine.' I reached into my pocket for cigarettes, but my hand was shaking so violently I dropped the packet on the ground. I bent down and retrieved it. Then I got a cigarette out and managed to light it. When I looked up again, I saw the green Rolls-Royce already half a mile down the road, and going away fast.
Claud's Dog
The Ratcatcher [1953]
In the afternoon the ratcatcher came to the filling-station. He came sidling up the driveway with a stealthy, soft-treading gait, making no noise at all with his feet on the gravel. He had an army knapsack slung over c e shoulder and he was wearing an old-fashioned black jacket with large pockets. His brown corduroy trousers were tied round the knees with pieces of white string.
'Yes?' Claud asked, knowing very well who he was.
'Rodent operative.' His small dark eyes moved swiftly over the premises.
'The ratcatcher?'
'That's me.'
The man was lean and brown with a sharp face and two long sulphur-coloured teeth that protruded from the upper jaw, overlapping the lower lip, pressing it inward. The ears were thin and pointed and set far back on the head, near the nape of the neck. The eyes were almost black but when they looked at you there was a flash of yellow somewhere inside them.
'You've come very quick.'
'Special orders from the Health Officer.'
'And now you're going to catch all the rats?'
'Yep.'
The kind of dark furtive eyes he had were those of an animal that lives its life peering out cautiously and forever from a hole in the ground.
'How are you going to catch em?'
'Ah-h-h.' the ratman said darkly. 'That's all accordin to where they is.'
'Trap em, I suppose.'
'Trap em!' he cried, disgusted. 'You won't catch many rats that way! Rats isn't rabbits you know.'
He held his face up high, sniffing the air with a nose that twitched perceptibly from side to side.
'No,' he said, scornfully. 'Trappin's no way to catch a rat. Rats is clever, let me tell you that. If you want to catch em, you got to know em. You got to know rats on this job.'
I could see Claud staring at him with a certain fascination.
'They're more clever'n dogs, rats is.'
'Get away.'
'You know what they do? They watch you! All the time you're going round preparing to catch em, they're sitting quietly in dark places, watchin you.' The man crouched, stretching his stringy neck far forward.
'So what do you do?' Claud asked, fascinated.
'Ah! That's it you see. That's where you got to know rats.'
'How d'you catch em?'
'There's ways,' the ratman said, leering. 'There's various ways.'
He paused, nodding his repulsive head sagely up and down. 'It's all dependin,' he said, 'on where they is. This ain't a sewer job, is it?'
'No, it's not a sewer job.'
'Tricky things, sewer jobs. Yes,' he said, delicately sniffing the air to the left of him with his mobile nose-end, 'sewer jobs is very tricky things.'
'Not especially, I shouldn't think.'
'Oh-ho. You shouldn't, shouldn't you! Well, I'd like to see you do a sewer job! Just exactly how would you set about it, I'd like to know?'
'Nothing to it. I'd just poison em, that's all.'
'And where exactly would you put the poison, might I ask?'
'Down the sewer. Where the hell you think I put it!'
'There!' the ratman cried, triumphant. 'I knew it! Down the sewer! And you know what'd happen then? Get washed away, that's all. Sewer's like a river, y'know.'
'That's what you say,' Claud answered. 'That's only what you say.'
'It's facts.'
'All right then, all right. So what would you do, Mr Know-all?'
'That's exactly where you got to know rats, on a sewer job.'
'Come on then, let's have it.'
'Now listen. I'll tell you.' The ratman advanced a step closer, his voice became secretive and confidential, the voice of a man divulging fabulous professional secrets. 'You works on the understandin that a rat is a gnawin animal, see. Rats gnaws. Anything you give em, don't matter what it is, anything new they never seen before, and what do they do? They gnaws it. So now! There you are! You got a sewer job on your hands. And what d'you do?'
His voice had the soft throaty sound of a croaking frog and he seemed to speak all his words with an immense wet-lipped relish, as though they tasted good on the tongue. The accent was similar to Claud's, the broad soft accent of the Buckinghamshire countryside, but his voice was more throaty, the words more fruity in his mouth.
'All you do is you go down the sewer and you take along some ordinary paper bags, just ordinary brown paper bags, and these bags is filled with plaster of Paris powder. Nothin else. Then you suspend the bags from the roof of the sewer so they hang down not quite touchin the water. See? Not quite touchin, and just high enough so a rat can reach em.'
Claud was listening, rapt.
'There you are, y'see. Old rat comes swimmin along the sewer and sees the bag. He stops. He takes a sniff at it and it don't smell so bad anyway. So what's he do then?'
'He gnaws it,' Claud cried, delighted.
'There! That's it! That's exackly it! He starts gnawin away at the bag and the bag breaks and the old rat gets a mouthful of powder for his pains.'
'Well?'
'That does him.'
'What? Kills him?'
'Yep. Kills him stony!'
'Plaster of Paris ain't poisonous, you know.'
'Ah! There you are! That's exackly where you're wrong, see. This powder swells. When you wet it, it swells. Gets into the rat's tubes and swells right up and kills him quicker'n anythin in the world.'
'No!'
'That's where you got to know rats.'
The ratman's face glowed with a stealthy pride, and he rubbed his stringy fingers together, holding the hands up close to the face. Claud watched him, fascinated.
'Now - where's them rats?' The word 'rats' came out of his mouth soft and throaty, with a rich fruity relish as though he were gargling with melted butter. 'Let's take a look at them rraats.'
'Over there in the hayrick across the road.'
'Not in the house?' he asked, obviously disappointed.
'No. Only around the hayrick. Nowhere else.'
'I'll wager they're in the house too. Like as not gettin in all your food in the night and spreadin disease and sickness. You got any disease here?' he asked, looking first at me, then at Claud.
'Everyone fine here.'
'Quite sure?'
'Oh yes.'
'You never know, you see. You could be sickenin for it weeks and weeks and not feel it. Then all of a sudden - bang! - and it's got you. That's why Doctor Arbuthnot's so particular. That's why he sent me out so quick, see. To stop the spreadin of disease.'
He had now taken upon himself the mantle of the Health Officer. A most important rat he was now, deeply disappointed that we were not suffering from bubonic plague.
'I feel fi
ne,' Claud said nervously.
The ratman searched his face again, but said nothing.
'And how are you goin to catch em in the hayrick?'
The ratman grinned, a crafty toothy grin. He reached down into his knapsack and withdrew a large tin which he held up level with his face. He peered round one side of it at Claud.
'Poison!' he whispered. But he pronounced it pye-zn, making it into a soft, dark, dangerous word. 'Deadly pye-zn, that's what this is!' He was weighing the tin up and down in his hands as he spoke. 'Enough here to kill a million men!'
'Terrifying,' Claud said.
'Exackly it! They'd put you inside for six months if they caught you with even a spoonful of this,' he said, wetting his lips with his tongue. He had a habit of craning his head forward on his neck as he spoke.
'Want to see?' he asked, taking a penny from his pocket, prising open the lid. 'There now! There it is!' He spoke fondly, almost lovingly of the stuff, and he held it forward for Claud to look.
'Corn? Or barley is it?'
'It's oats. Soaked in deadly pye-zn. You take just one of them grains in your mouth and you'd be a gonner in five minutes!'
'Honest?'
'Yep. Never out of me sight, this tin.'
He caressed it with his hands and gave it a little shake so that the oat grains rustled softly inside.
'But not today. Your rats don't get this today. They wouldn't have it anyway. That they wouldn't. There's where you got to know rats. Rats is suspicious. Terrible suspicious, rats is. So today they gets some nice clean tasty oats as'll do em no harm in the world. Fatten em, that's all it'll do. And tomorrow they gets the same again. And it'll taste so good there'll be all the rats in the districk comin along after a couple of days.'
'Rather clever.'
'You got to be clever on this job. You got to be cleverer'n a rat and that's sayin somethin.'
'You've almost got to be a rat yourself,' I said. It slipped out in error, before I had time to stop myself, and I couldn't really help it because I was looking at the man at the time. But the effect upon him was surprising.
'There!' he cried. 'Now you got it! Now you really said somethin! A good ratter's got to be more like a rat than anythin else in the world! Cleverer even than a rat, and that's not an easy thing to be, let me tell you.'