The Best of Roald Dahl Read online

  'Quite sure it's not.'

  'All right then, let's go. I haven't got all day, you know. There's Lady Leonora Benson asking for me urgent up there at the Manor.'

  'She got rats, too?'

  'Everybody's got rats,' the ratman said, and he ambled off down the driveway, across the road to the hayrick and we watched him go. The way he walked was so like a rat it made you wonder - that slow, almost a delicate ambling walk with a lot of give at the knees and no sound at all from the footsteps on the gravel. He hopped nimbly over the gate into the field, then walked quickly round the hayrick scattering handfuls of oats on to the ground.

  The next day he returned and repeated the procedure.

  The day after that he came again and this time he put down the poisoned oats. But he didn't scatter these; he placed them carefully in little piles at each corner of the rick.

  'You got a dog?' he asked when he came back across the road on the third day after putting down the poison.

  'Yes.'

  'Now if you want to see your dog die an orrible twistin death, all you got to do is let him in that gate sometime.'

  'We'll take care,' Claud told him. 'Don't you worry about that.'

  The next day he returned once more, this time to collect the dead.

  'You got an old sack?' he asked. 'Most likely we goin to need a sack to put em in.'

  He was puffed up and important now, the black eyes gleaming with pride. He was about to display the sensational results of his craft to the audience.

  Claud fetched a sack and the three of us walked across the road, the ratman leading. Claud and I leaned over the gate, watching. The ratman prowled around the hayrick, bending over to inspect his little piles of poison.

  'Somethin wrong here,' he muttered. His voice was soft and angry.

  He ambled over to another pile and got down on his knees to examine it closely.

  'Somethin bloody wrong here.'

  'What's the matter?'

  He didn't answer, but it was clear that the rats hadn't touched his bait.

  'These are very clever rats here,' I said.

  'Exactly what I told him, Gordon. These aren't just no ordinary kind of rats you're dealing with here.'

  The ratman walked over to the gate. He was very annoyed and showed it on his face and around the nose and by the way the two yellow teeth were pressing down into the skin of his lower lip. 'Don't give me that crap,' he said, looking at me. 'There's nothin wrong with these rats except somebody's feedin em. They got somethin juicy to eat somewhere and plenty of it. There's no rats in the world'll turn down oats unless their bellies is full to burstin.'

  'They're clever,' Claud said.

  The man turned away, disgusted. He knelt down again and began to scoop up the poisoned oats with a small shovel, tipping them carefully back into the tin. When he had done, all three of us walked back across the road.

  The ratman stood near the petrol-pumps, a rather sorry, humble ratman now whose face was beginning to take on a brooding aspect. He had withdrawn into himself and was brooding in silence over his failure, the eyes veiled and wicked, the little tongue darting out to one side of the two yellow teeth, keeping the lips moist. It appeared to be essential that the lips should be kept moist. He looked up at me, a quick surreptitious glance, then over at Claud. His nose-end twitched, sniffing the air. He raised himself up and down a few times on his toes, swaying gently, and in a voice soft and secretive, he said: 'Want to see somethin?' He was obviously trying to retrieve his reputation.

  'What?'

  'Want to see somethin amazin?' As he said this he put his right hand into the deep poacher's pocket of his jacket and brought out a large live rat clasped between his fingers.

  'Good God!'

  'Ah! That's it, y'see!' He was crouching slightly now and craning his neck forward and leering at us and holding this enormous brown rat in his hands, one finger and thumb making a tight circle round the creature's neck, clamping its head rigid so it couldn't turn and bite.

  'D'you usually carry rats around in your pockets?'

  'Always got a rat or two about me somewhere.'

  With that he put his free hand into the other pocket and produced a small white ferret.

  'Ferret,' he said, holding it up by the neck.

  The ferret seemed to know him and stayed still in his grasp.

  'There's nothin'll kill a rat quicker'n a ferret. And there's nothin a rat's more frightened of either.'

  He brought his hands close together in front of him so that the ferret's nose was within six inches of the rat's face. The pink beady eyes of the ferret stared at the rat. The rat struggled, trying to edge away from the killer.

  'Now,' he said. 'Watch!'

  His khaki shirt was open at the neck and he lifted the rat and slipped it down inside his shirt, next to his skin. As soon as his hand was free, he unbuttoned his jacket at the front so that the audience could see the bulge the body of the rat made under his shirt. His belt prevented it from going down lower than his waist.

  Then he slipped the ferret in after the rat.

  Immediately there was a great commotion inside the shirt. It appeared that the rat was running round the man's body, being chased by the ferret. Six or seven times they went round, the small bulge chasing the larger one, gaining on it slightly each circuit and drawing closer and closer until at last the two bulges seemed to come together and there was a scuffle and a series of shrill shrieks.

  Throughout this performance the ratman had stood absolutely still with legs apart, arms hanging loosely, the dark eyes resting on Claud's face. Now he reached one hand down into his shirt and pulled out the ferret; with the other he took out the dead rat. There were traces of blood around the white muzzle of the ferret.

  'Not sure I liked that very much.'

  'You never seen anythin like it before, I'll bet you that.'

  'Can't really say I have.'

  'Like as not you'll get yourself a nasty nip in the guts one of these days,' Claud told him. But he was clearly impressed, and the ratman was becoming cocky again.

  'Want to see somethin far more amazin 'n that?' he asked. 'You want to see somethin you'd never even believe unless you seen it with your own eyes?'

  'Well?'

  We were standing in the driveway out in front of the pumps and it was one of those pleasant warm November mornings. Two cars pulled in for petrol, one right after the other, and Claud went over and gave them what they wanted.

  'You want to see?' the ratman asked.

  I glanced at Claud, slightly apprehensive. 'Yes,' Claud said. 'Come on then, let's see.'

  The ratman slipped the dead rat back into one pocket, the ferret into the other. Then he reached down into his knapsack and produced - if you please - a second live rat.

  'Good Christ!' Claud said.

  'Always got one or two about me somewhere,' the man announced calmly. 'You got to know rats on this job and if you want to know em you got to have em round you. This is a sewer rat, this is, An old sewer rat, clever as buggery. See him watchin me all the time, wonderin what I'm going to do? See him?'

  'Very unpleasant.'

  'What are you going to do?' I asked. I had a feeling I was going to like this one even less than the last.

  'Fetch me a piece of string.'

  Claud fetched him a piece of string.

  With his left hand, the man looped the string around one of the rat's hind legs. The rat struggled, trying to turn its head to see what was going on, but he held it tight around the neck with finger and thumb.

  'Now!' he said, looking about him. 'You got a table inside?'

  'We don't want the rat inside the house,' I said.

  'Well - I need a table. Or somethin flat like a table.'

  'What about the bonnet of that car?' Claud said.

  We walked over to the car and the man put the old sewer rat on the bonnet. He attached the string to the windshield wiper so that the rat was now tethered.

  At first it crouched,