‘When was the last time you puked?’
Saul furrowed his brow at the question. King Rat wiped his wet hand on his trenchcoat, adding to the camouflage-pattern of stains hidden in its dark grey. He poked at the food.
‘You can’t recall,’ he said, without looking at Saul. ‘You can’t recall because you’ve never done it. Never spewed nothing. You’ve been ill, I’ll bet, but not like other Godfers. No colds or sneezing; only some queer sickness making you shiver for days, once or twice. But even then, not a sign of puke.’ He finally met Saul’s eye, and his voice dropped. He hissed at him, something like victory in his voice. ‘Got the notion? Your belly won’t rebel. No sicking up Pig’s, no matter how plastered, no sweet sticky chocolate bile on your pillow the night after Easter, no hurling seafood across the tiles, no matter bow dodgy the take-away. You’ve got rat blood in your veins. There’s nothing you can’t stomach.’
There was a long moment of silence as the two stared at each other.
King Rat continued.
‘And there’s more. There’s no grub you don’t want. Said you were starving. I should coco; it’s been a while. Well here we go. Sitting comfortably? I’m going to teach you what it is to be rat. Look at all this scran your uncle sorted you out with. Said you were starving. Here’s breakfast.’
King Rat picked up the fruitcake without taking his eyes from Saul. He raised it slowly to his mouth. Moist chunks dropped from his hand, sultanas made juicy from their long marinating in black plastic. He bit into it, crumbs bursting out of his mouth as he exhaled in satisfaction.
He was right. Saul could not remember a time when he had thrown up. He had always eaten a lot, even for his frame, and had never been able to sympathize with people put off their food. Stories about maggots told over risotto left him unmoved. He had never suffered after too much sugar or fat or alcohol. This had never occurred to him before; he sympathized with others when they complained that something made them feel sick, never stopping to ask what it meant or if it was true.
Now he was sloughing off those layers of habit. He stood watching King Rat eat. The wiry figure would not take his eyes from him.
It had been hours and hours since Saul had last had food. He investigated his own hunger.
King Rat continued chewing. The stench of slowly collapsing food was overwhelming- Saul gazed at the leftovers and remnants heaped in front of the bags, the flecks of mould, the bite marks, and the dirt.
He began to salivate.
King Rat kept eating.
When he opened his mouth wet chunks of cake were visible. ‘You can eat pigeon-meat scraped off a car-wheel,’ he said. ‘This here’s good scran.’
Saul’s stomach growled. He squatted before the pile of food. Gingerly, he picked out the unfinished burger. He sniffed it. It was long cold. He could see where teeth had torn through the bun. He brushed at it, cleared it of grime as best he could.
It was damp and clammy, still shiny with spit where it had been bitten.
Saul put it near his mouth. He let his mind play over the filth of the dustbin, waited for his stomach to turn. But it did not.
His mind still rang with admonishments heard long ago — don’t touch, it’s dirty, take it out of your mouth but his stomach, his stomach remained firm. The smell of the meat was enticing.
He willed himself to feel ill. He strove for nausea.
He took a bite. He wriggled his tongue into the meat, pushed apart the fibres. He probed, tasting the dirt and decay. Lumps of gristle and fat split open in his mouth, mixed with his saliva.
The burger was delicious.
Saul swallowed and did not feel ill. His hunger, piqued, demanded more. He took another bite, and another, eating faster and faster all the time.
He felt something slipping away from him. He drew his strength from the old cold meat, food that had surrendered to people and decay, and now to him. His world changed.
King Rat nodded and ate on, grabbed handfuls and shoved them into his mouth without looking at them.
Saul reached for a slimy chicken wing.
In the street, only twenty feet away, children were appearing in outsized school uniforms. The bricks and the bags kept Saul and King Rat hidden. They looked up as the children passed, paused briefly in their breakfast.
They were silent while they ate. When they had finished, Saul licked his lips. The taste of filth and carrion was very strong in his mouth, and he investigated it, still wondering that it did not turn his stomach.
King Rat nestled into the bags and pulled his coat about him. ‘Feeling better now?’ he asked.
Saul nodded. For the first time since his sudden release, he felt calm. He could feel the acids of his stomach getting to work inside him, breaking down the old food he had eaten. He felt molecules scurrying out of his gut, carrying strange energy from the ruins of other people’s suppers and breakfasts. He was changing from the inside out.
My mother was like this creature, he said to himself, this skulking thing. My mother was like this thin-faced vagrant with magical powers. My mother was a spirit, it seems, a dirty spirit. My mother was a rat.
‘You can’t go back, you know.’ King Rat looked at Saul from under his eyelids. Saul had long given up trying to make sense of his features. The light would not fall full on King Rat’s face, no matter where he stood or lay. Saul glanced at him again, but his eyes found no purchase.
‘I know it,’ he said.
‘They think you did your pa, and they’ll do you for that. And now you’ve slung your hook from their old Bucket, they’ll have your guts for garters.’
The city had been made unsafe. Saul felt it yawn before him, infinitely vaster than he had imagined, unknowable and furtive.
‘So, so…’ said Saul slowly. So what is London? he thought. If you can be what you are, what’s London? What’s the world? I’ve had it all wrong. Do werewolves and trolls lurk under bridges in the parks? What are the boundaries of the world?
‘So… what do I do now?’
‘Well, you aren’t going back, so you got to bing a waste forward. I’ve to teach you how to be rat. You got a lot going for you, sonny. Hold your breath and squeeze in tight, freeze like a statue… you’re invisible. Move just right, dainty on your toes, you’ll make nary a sound. You can be like me. As far as you’re concerned, up’s no longer out of bounds, and down’s nothing to fear.’
It didn’t matter any more that he didn’t understand. Unbelievably, King Rat’s words took away Saul’s trepidation. He felt himself grow strong. He stretched out his arms. He felt like laughing.
‘I feel like I can do anything,’ he said. He was overwhelmed.
‘You can, my old son. You’re a ratling boy. Just got to learn the tricks. We’ll cut your teeth. You and me together, dynamite. We’ve a kingdom to win back.’
Saul had risen to his feet, was staring out into the street beyond. At King Rat’s words he turned slowly and looked down at the thin figure cocooned in black plastic.
‘Back?’ he said levelly. ‘Back from who?’
King Rat nodded. ‘Time,’ he said, ‘for a word in your shell-like. Much as I hate to piss on your chips, you’re forgetting something. You’re in another country now because your old man did the six-storey swan-dive’ — King Rat blithely ignored Saul’s aghast stare — ‘and he did that, the old codger, in lieu of you. There’s something out there wants your head, chal, and you’d be wise not to forget it.’
Saul wobbled to his knees. ‘Who?’ he whispered.
‘Well now, that’s the biggy, isn’t it? That’s the question. And therein lies a story, a twisting rat-tale.’