Willard (Ratman’s Notebooks) Page 10

  For the first time since I made friends with the rats I see clearly what I ought to do. I was like someone with a business—plant, machinery, and so on—but no working capital. Now I have working capital—two hundred pounds. Not very much, but enough, I think, to start me.

  Of course I will have to lay my plans very carefully. I will require to make the best possible use of my assets. My chief assets are my money, my house, and the rats. Previously I let the little money I had fritter away. That was because I didn’t think of becoming a criminal. This time I intend my money to start earning for me almost immediately. I will commit more crimes, crimes designed solely to earn money. I won’t rob any more grocery stores. To keep the rats well fed I would have to rob a food store every day. Very soon we would be found out. Ideally I would like to rob a bank, but so would every criminal. Perhaps I shall rob a bank eventually, but to begin with I must attempt something easier. I think I know what.

  This evening I bought a car. A van would have suited my purpose better, but everyone would ask, “What on earth does he want with a van?” The car itself cost £50, but by the time I have paid tax and insurance there’ll be about £80 down the drain. Never mind. I hope I’ll soon get it back and a lot more with it.

  The story of my raid on the grocery store has broken at last, as the newspapermen say. They are a bit guarded about it, don’t even say where it happened. The grocer obviously doesn’t want anyone to know there were rats in his store. It looks as if he didn’t report what happened till a day or two after the event. Why he did then I don’t know. Perhaps it leaked out. I wonder too where he ran that night. He must have been scared out of his wits. The police anyhow are taking the matter seriously. Members of the public are asked to report immediately to their nearest police station any damage by rats or any sightings of rats, particularly five or more rats moving together as if travelling with a common purpose. I wonder who thought out that one.

  Well, I don’t intend anyone to see my rats. When they travel they shall travel by car. That’s what I got it for.

  Curse! Curse! Curse! I am going to have to take a driving test. I brought the car in to business this morning and parked it in the yard behind the office. I did it because I needed more wheat and meant to get it at lunch-time. Of course I quite liked the idea of the rest of the staff seeing that I had a car. Everyone went out to look at it, particularly the Book-keeper, who of course knows my salary, and incidentally doesn’t run a car himself. “Very nice,” he said, “if you can afford it. I hear these older cars take a lot to keep up.”

  “Oh, I think I’ll be able to manage all right,” I responded nonchalantly. “I’ve got my mother’s affairs pretty well fixed up at last.” That put him in his place, not unkindly. I was what you might call slightly superior in my manner. Perhaps he remembered . . . I mean that Father used to own the business, and that he was just the Book-keeper then, as he is now.

  I didn’t see Jones look at my car, but I knew he would, and that he would speak to me about it. He came into the Cash Office on some pretence or other and then said, as if by chance, “I see you’ve bought yourself a car.”

  “Yes,” I answered. “A car comes in very useful from time to time.”

  “Where’d you get the money?” he asked. Just like that. No preliminaries. No gentle probing round.

  Of course I should have told him to mind his own business. I might even have said something stronger. But I didn’t. I couldn’t help answering in a sort of guilty way, “Oh, I’ve got Mother’s affairs pretty well settled up at last.”

  “I didn’t think she left anything.”

  “Oh, it’s not quite as bad as that” I told him, managing to get back a little of the nonchalant manner I had used so effectively with the Book-keeper. “We’re not quite destitute, you know.”

  That flummoxed him. He didn’t know what to make of me. But the cheek of the man. No boss could speak to a labourer the way some of them speak to their office staff. Either they’d get hit, or there’d be strikes right and left.

  I think Jones is one of those people who always feel that someone is doing them. Probably, if the truth were known, he did Father at some time or other, or else did us after Father died.

  He went out after this little exchange, and I was alternately hot and cold as I thought about it. The cheek of him asking where I’d got the money. I mean what right has he to ask questions about my affairs? And then afterwards, the lightness of touch with which I handled him.

  But he scored in the end, damn him. He came back. “I suppose you’ve a licence to drive that old jalopy of yours,” he said, with a sort of malicious twist about the end of his nose.

  “Licence,” I replied. “Of course I’ve had it taxed and insured.”

  “I’m not talking of that. Did nobody ever tell you that you need a driving licence to drive a car?”

  “Of course I’ve got a licence.” And of course I have, but it hasn’t been renewed since before Father died. How could I forget such a thing? He noticed the uncertainty in my voice.

  ‘You’ll have to take a test,” he told me, “and you’d better not take that car out of the yard till you’ve passed it.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of driving,” I declared. “I’m a very good driver.”

  Jones is right. My driving licence has been out of date so long that I have to take a driving test before I’m allowed a new one. All the same, I took a chance and drove the car home again that night.

  The Consultant (there is only one who actually does anything) is hard at work. The senior members of staff have been out to dinner one at a time. In the relaxing atmosphere of a restaurant, over a bottle of wine, they are supposed to bare their souls to the Consultant. The Consultant tries to discover if they’re progressive, dynamic, and I don’t know what else. The Book-keeper is a teetotaller and wouldn’t have any wine. So the Consultant drank it all. The Book-keeper isn’t sure whether this will count against him or not. He thinks the Consultant is an alcoholic.

  I don’t count as a senior member of staff, though I’ve been in the firm longer than nearly anyone else, except the Book-keeper, Jones, and one of the travellers. So I wasn’t asked out to dinner. Instead the Consultant interviewed me in what we call the “spare office.” It’s the one the auditors use when they come in to do the books.

  First I was told the Consultant wanted me. He has become sort of second boss in the place. If he wants you, you go. When I went in he was bending over his papers, too busy to look up. “Sit down,” he said, still rustling through the bumf.

  I sat down. Of course I knew it was all an act, like a young dentist keeping you waiting though you know jolly well he has no other patients. At last he looked up with a sort of Judas smile. “I want you to relax. Anything you say will be strictly between you and me. You are free to tell me what you like about anyone in the place, Mr. Jones, any of the people who are over you, what you think of the way the place is run, any improvements you would like to suggest. Anything you say I will treat as completely confidential. You needn’t have any fears on that point.” The smile was getting a bit tired looking by this time. However, he kept it up. “First of all, I want you to tell me about yourself.”

  Well, of course I didn’t mean to tell him anything. I was outraged at the nerve of the man. What right has he to come prying into my private affairs? I’m sure my father would never have allowed such a thing. But what could I do? If he told Jones I wouldn’t co-operate, then where’d I be? So he probed and probed and probed and got all my background out of me. Next he wanted to know was I content in my job. I told him I was, which was a lie. Only what could I say? If I said I wasn’t he’d tell Jones (I didn’t have any faith in that cock-and-bull story about it all being confidential). Jones would say, “If you don’t like the job, you needn’t have it. Good-bye.” But what I should have said was that I was content with the job as a step to higher things, because the next question he asked me was, “Have you no fire in your belly?”

  I sa
id I didn’t think so. I didn’t know what he meant. Afterwards I asked the girl. She says it’s something all these executive types are supposed to have nowadays. It’s more or less the same as being dynamic, which is another thing you’re supposed to be, and of course relaxed. She says she’s sure the Consultant thinks he has fire in his own belly, but it’s probably just wind. The girl likes making jokes that aren’t quite proper. I haven’t laughed so much for years as I have since she came to the office. All the same, she agrees that the questions the Consultant asked me are quite ridiculous. I mean there ought to be a law against it. Everyone is entitled to a certain amount of privacy.

  My life of crime is temporarily postponed. Of course I can drive a car perfectly well and there is really no reason why I should have to take a test, but it appears the Highway Code has been altered in the last few years and that I will be expected to answer questions on it. I have therefore enrolled myself as a pupil in a driving school. I find this a little humiliating, but to fail my test would be even more so. My instructor admits that I can drive a car but says that my road sense needs brushing up. He also says that I must study the Highway Code as if it was the Catechism and I a candidate for Confirmation. I’m quite sure that the driving school just wants to make money out of me and that even if I were Stirling Moss they would make some excuse to give me lessons.

  After all I am not losing much time. Though I can’t take the car out on the road, I am getting the rats accustomed to it in the garage. I am training them to go in and out through the trunk. I’ve made a sort of wedge contrivance, partly wood partly wire, which holds the lid of the trunk just wide enough open for the rats to get in and out. And I’ve two boards for them to run up and down. The ends of the boards clip on to the edge of the trunk so that there’s no danger of them slipping off while the rats are using them. I’m not going to be able to make many raids before the police guess what is happening and start to take precautions. I will need to try to get hold of a few fairly big sums of money and then stop for a long time to let people’s suspicions die down.

  At the moment I’m quite well off. Taking my salary into account, I’ve enough to last me six months or a year, living rather more comfortably than I have recently—say more or less up to the same standard as before Mother died.

  I am by nature a cautious, even timid, individual. To undertake any hazardous adventure is foreign to my nature. All I would like is to lead a quiet peaceful life, bothering no one and being bothered by no one. But Destiny, it seems, wills otherwise. In other words, I have not been able to think of any easy way, even making the fullest use of my mastery over the rats, of laying my hands on large sums of money without incurring considerable risks. Whatever I eventually do, I shall take all possible precautions. In any case, there is no need to act precipitately. I have plenty of time to plan.

  I realize now how fortunate I was in my raid on the grocer’s. Where can I find someone like him, someone perhaps even more timid than myself, counting over large sums of money alone, late at night, and ready to run a mile at the sight of a few rats? Yet something like that is what I’ve got to find.

  Yesterday I yielded to a sudden temptation and took the girl out for a run in the car. I don’t quite know why I did it, but now of course I wish I hadn’t. I suppose there were a number of reasons. I’d got my driving test, and she congratulated me. I said it was simply a matter of form. I’d been able to drive perfectly well all along. Then I didn’t want her to think I was just blowing. So I thought I’d better show her. Of course I like her. And I did want to show someone the car. I think I got quite a bargain.

  I only meant to take her quite a short run, but as soon as we got into the car I said (absolutely foolishly), “Where would you like to go?”

  “I’d like to see where you live. Why not drive out there?”

  “There’s nothing to see.” I wanted to put her off gently, but she’s very persistent.

  “I’m sure there’s plenty to see. We were past in the car, with Daddy, the other Sunday and it looked very interesting. Of course you can see nothing from the road, but I’m sure it’s lovely inside.”

  It’s extraordinary how quickly a feeling of tenderness almost can change to absolute hate. “So that’s what you’re after,” I thought to myself. “You’re just like all the rest of them. But if you think you’re going to see inside our house, you’ve made one big mistake.” Funny the way I still think of it as our house, meaning Father, Mother, and me. Aloud of course I didn’t say anything. Not just then. If I’d taken her home, given her a push down the cellar steps, and bolted the door after her, she’d have got a queer surprise. Still without a word I started the engine and drove off.

  “But this isn’t the right way,” she remarked after a minute or two.

  “It’s the way we’re going,” I answered. That kept her quiet for a bit.

  We drove into the country and presently I forgot how angry I was. She began to chat away about the office and the other people who work there. She’s noticed all sorts of things about them that I would never have thought of. In this way the miles and the time went by without my very much realizing. Suddenly she put up her hand and yawned. “Do you know, I could eat a horse,” she said.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that she might expect me to feed her. “My goodness!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t notice the time. Will your people not be wondering what’s happened to you?”

  “Oh, no,” she replied. “I gave them a ring before we left the office. I told them I was coming out with you and wouldn’t be back for tea.”

  This fairly took the wind from my sails. I’d never meant to ask her out for tea. We were coming into a village at the time and the first thing I saw was a big roadhouse with a lot of posh cars parked outside it. Perhaps that was what she’d been thinking of, but I pretended not to notice. I went on till we came to one of these places “Teas with Hovis.” Even so, it was horribly expensive.

  I was upset going home. Never again, I kept telling myself. Never again. You’d have thought she might have had the sense to realize I wasn’t feeling exactly chummy any more, but not a bit of her. She got on about the house again. “Do let me see it,” she begged. “Go on. Be a dear.”

  I managed to keep my manners. Probably it would have been better if I hadn’t. “It’s a fearful mess,” I told her. “I couldn’t possibly show it to you.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Oh, I know what men are like. Mummy and I went away once, just for the week-end, and left Daddy and the boys. You would hardly believe the mess they got the house into. Just in one week-end. Every knife, fork, spoon, and plate in the house was piled in the kitchen sink or round it, and not one single thing had been washed.”

  “Maybe our house is worse than that.”

  “Then I’d love to come in some night and wash-up for you. I really would, and I could make your tea for you as well. I’m sure you never make yourself proper meals. Do you now?”

  “My meals are all right.”

  “But I’d love to. I really would.”

  I’m sure she would—until she saw the rats. And that wouldn’t be very long. I wondered what she’d make of old Socrates. Probably go screaming out of the house like a scalded cat. And then the fat’d be in the fire. The next thing the sanitary people would be out and the vermin destruction squad. No thank you.

  I dumped her at her own house. She never even guessed there was anything wrong. I think she thought I would like to kiss her. Put up her face sort of that way before she got out of the car. I thought if I’d given her nose a good bite that might have cooled her ardour. I didn’t even get out of the car. I just suddenly let in the clutch, whizz, and left her standing in the middle of the road.

  It was quite late and I couldn’t help thinking of poor old Socrates waiting patiently for his supper, wondering, very likely, what had become of me.

  At half past two this afternoon Jones sent for me. He was just in from his lunch, and, by the smell when he spoke, I think he must have had
a drink or two. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted, but naturally I felt nervous. It’s always a little frightening to be told that the Boss wants to see you. Especially when you don’t like the Boss very much and think he doesn’t like you.

  Jones was grinning away, all over himself with gush. I wonder was he nervous. “Sit down,” he said. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”

  I sat down distrustfully. What’s he up to now, I wondered. Is he going to have another go at getting the house or has the Consultant recommended that my salary should be raised. (Ha ha.)

  “Of course you know I always had great respect for your father,” Jones began. “Great respect. A very fine man. The type of man you rarely find nowadays.”

  I nodded my head. I couldn’t think what he was at. Surely he hadn’t called me in just to tell me what a fine man Father was.

  Jones started again. “On account of you being your father’s son, we’ve always tried to give you special consideration.”

  Another long pause. Once more I nodded my head vaguely to show I understood. Who is “we,” I wondered. It’s not surprising royalty get muddled if someone so far down the scale as Jones can call himself “we.”

  “We would have liked to think that there was always room in the firm for a son of your father, but to be frank we’ve been disappointed in you.”

  Suddenly I realized that he was going to sack me. For a moment I felt quite numb with shock. Then I realized that I must argue with him, plead with him to keep me on. “But, but . . .” I mumbled haltingly. “I mean, I didn’t know there’d been anything wrong with my work. I mean, I haven’t been making mistakes or anything, have I?”

  “Tch-tch,” he said crossly. “It’s not your work. It’s your capabilities. We can’t afford to go on paying a man to do a girl’s work, and you’re not fit for any more responsible position.”

  “But how do you know?” I demanded, bold with desperation. “I’ve never been given a chance at anything else.”