Oh, rats!

The next day was Monday and Uncle Felix didn’t want to play hooky from the festival again and went off into town with Dad, who was going to work. Mum, a little later, left for work as well, and Gray, who was up unaccountably early, went with her, saying he had some things to do in town.

‘Probably has an important appointment at Time-Out with a video game,’ said Martha.

I grinned. I wasn’t unhappy to see the back of Gray. He was in a permanent state of peevishness about Simon and Garfunkel, and the only way he had of easing it was to bop things. Me, mainly, and for me this was a lose-lose situation. If I protested, it was as if I’d given him a reason to aim a second bop at me, and if I ran away it gave him a reason to chase me and bop me again for running away.

A real sweet brother.

The cool easterly of the day before had died away and the sun was shining brightly. Much as I was engrossed with Into Axillaris, it was too nice a day to spend inside, but I readily agreed when my mate George rang up suggesting I come around and watch a DVD. So, go figure: I spent much of the day inside after all watching a movie.

George and I kicked around for a bit after the movie, so it was mid-afternoon before I got home.

‘Is Gray back?’ I asked Martha who was fixing herself a milk drink in the kitchen.

‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got in myself. Why don’t you go and look for him?’

‘Are you crazy?’ I said.

‘Don’t be a wuss, he won’t bite you!’

‘That’s the trouble,’ I said. ‘He probably will. If it comes to that, the way he is right now, he’d probably bite a Doberman pinscher.’

Her chocolate milk looked okay, so I made one myself. I wondered again whether Gray was home, and finally decided that my need to get back to Into Axillaris was great enough to risk a kick or a rabbit-punch. The book was in my bedroom.

‘I’m going to risk it,’ I said.

‘Attaboy!’

‘If I’m not back in ten minutes, ring an ambulance.’

‘Why waste time on the middlemen,’ said Martha. ‘I’ll just ring a hearse.’

‘Thanks, kid,’ I said. ‘Just the confidence-booster I needed.’

I wandered down the hall to my bedroom and opened the door. With a surge of apprehension the first thing I saw was Gray, lying on my bed thumbing through a magazine.

‘You’re back?’ he said.

I fought back a suicidal impulse to say, No, I’m still in town. Instead I said, ‘Just got in.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ Gray asked, looking over the magazine. It was a car magazine I hadn’t seen before. He must have bought it in town.

‘Went to George’s to watch a movie.’

‘What was it?’ Gray asked. ‘Any good?’

What was going on? He was being normal. He was being as close to pleasant as Gray ever got. Rephrase that first observation: He was being abnormal.

‘That prequel to Star Wars, Attack of the Clones.’

‘Seen it,’ said Gray, returning to his magazine.

‘It wasn’t much good,’ I said.

Since he was being conversational, I decided to take a risk. ‘How are Simon and Garfunkel?’

‘Take a look.’

I crossed the room and looked over to the other side of the bed, where Gray was keeping the cage.

There they were, scrabbling about as usual.

And then I did the classic double-take.

‘Hey!’

The rats were white once more, if anything whiter than they’d been in the first place.

The only red, once again, was the red in their eyes.

‘How did that happen?’ I asked.

‘No idea,’ said Gray.

‘When? When did it happen?’

‘No idea either. I checked them when I got back from town and there they were.’

I looked at him. He’d laid the magazine across his chest now and he was staring at the ceiling. Somehow, I got the impression he wasn’t completely overjoyed.

‘You don’t seem all that happy.’

‘I’m happy.’

‘I would be.’

‘At least I won’t catch any flak from bloody PP now.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s that.’

He didn’t reply.

‘Have you told Martha?’ I asked.

‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Didn’t even know she was back.’

Then he closed his eyes.

It was odd how different people are. I mean, something amazing had taken place. There he was, lying on his back with his eyes closed as if nothing had happened at all. It was especially weird given the non-stop over-the-top fuss-potting and blaming he’d been indulging in over the last couple of days. If it’d been me, I’d be racing round the house wanting to tell everybody, I’d be ringing people up. I might even be apologising to people for being such a pathetic pillock over the whole thing.

Then again Gray was Gray. Perhaps the fact that he’d been halfway pleasant to me was his bizarre way of saying sorry.

In the event, I was the one who broke the news to Mum and then later to Dad and Uncle Felix when they came home. Gray had already gone out, again saying he wouldn’t be in for dinner.

‘How very odd,’ said Mum when she saw the transformed rats. She was actually crouching on the floor peering into the cage. ‘There’s absolutely no trace of red at all, not even a smudge.’

The rats ignored her.

‘Well, I hope this clears the air a little between Gray and Uncle Felix,’ she said, standing up. ‘Gray’s been quite bloody for the last two days. I can’t understand it.’

‘I can,’ said Martha. ‘Gray thought Uncle Felix had hexed his rats or something and turned them red.’

‘Oh, I realise that,’ said Mum. ‘I’m not a fool. But I must say I didn’t realise Gray was such a fool.’

‘Oh, I don’t know why not,’ said Martha. ‘You’ve had fifteen years to notice that.’

‘Don’t be clever, Martha,’ said Mum. ‘It doesn’t suit you.’

‘I don’t know that it will clear the air,’ I said.

‘Why not, David?’ asked Mum, turning to me.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Gray doesn’t seem to be that happy about it really. I mean, he was okay with me, which made a real nice change, but he wasn’t jumping up and down about it or anything. He just lay on the bed like a guy in a prison cell, you know?’

‘Odd,’ said Mum. ‘I thought he would have been over the moon.’

‘He was more sort of under the moon,’ I said, ‘or buried in a crater on the moon.’

Mum looked a little troubled. ‘I hope it’s just a stage he’s going through,’ she said. ‘The way he carries on he makes life difficult for everybody, including himself.’

‘Especially himself,’ added Martha.

After dinner, I went back to my bedroom to check out Simon and Garfunkel. They were still — what was the old song? — a whiter shade of pale, or rather they were a paler shade of white. I have to say that whether red or white, though, it made little difference to them. As long as they had food and water and newspaper to do their business on they seemed as happy as rats.

I thought about the family’s reaction to the new transformation. It was funny how everybody’s was slightly different. Dad didn’t seem to care less, Mum thought it peculiar, Martha was a little disappointed, I guess, because she thought the rats being red was neat, Gray seemed flat, and I, perhaps because of what Uncle Felix had let slip, was worried.

And Uncle Felix? That was interesting. Uncle Felix appeared to be puzzled. In fact, he was a little thrown, I think.

After checking on the rats, I found him sitting on the garden bench reading. He gave me a wave when he saw me and laid his book down. I took that as an invitation to join him.

‘What do you reckon?’ I asked him.

‘Reckon? What about?’

‘The rats, of course.’

I was pretty sure he was teasing. I’m sure the rats were uppermost in everybody’s minds except perhaps Dad’s.

‘I’m not sure I know what to think,’ Uncle Felix said after quite a long pause. ‘You know when I was a boy in school, high school that is, we studied Shakespeare, and there’s a part in Hamlet where he says to his friend Horatio — Horatio was a fellow student from his university — There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Or something a little like that. They had just seen a ghost, the ghost of Hamlet’s father, to be precise.’

I thought I knew what he was getting at, but I asked what it meant, anyway.

Uncle Felix paused again. ‘Hamlet was pointing out, I venture, that what we think we know is limited, that there are things going on that are often beyond our understanding.’

‘True, I guess …’

I thought of the stars and the universe and the theory of relativity and the thousands of things I didn’t know about and would probably never know.

As if sensing what I was thinking, Uncle Felix added, ‘And not just beyond our understanding, David, but beyond our wildest dreams.’

‘Like the red rats?’

His answer was surprising.

‘No, not the red rats. I thought I had a handle on the red rats, so to speak. No, what I can’t quite understand is why they’ve become white rats again.’

I was puzzled now. The really astonishing thing, to me, was the rats turning red. Once that happened, I couldn’t quite see how their turning back to white again could be even more surprising.

Uncle Felix frowned. ‘It must be magic,’ he murmured.

Magic. That was Dad’s word.

‘What sort of magic?’ I asked. ‘Real magic, or your kind of magic?’

He smiled at me, eyes twinkling. ‘I do believe you’re becoming something of a sceptic, David. Didn’t you believe in my magic?’

I grinned, remembering the coin trick. ‘It was pretty clever,’ I admitted. ‘But it was just a trick, wasn’t it?’

He laughed. ‘You couldn’t expect me to admit that, my boy, could you? But, perhaps before I go, I might be persuaded to show you how it’s done.’

‘Great!’

‘But to answer your quite perceptive question,’ he added, ‘I rather suspect the magic in this case is my sort of magic.’

I stared at him. What did he mean by that? However, Uncle Felix, was not prepared to explain.

I went to bed a little earlier than usual, so I could read some more of Into Axillaris. I have to confess that I had no idea what Uncle Felix was on about when he hinted that there was a connection between the rats turning red and the book. Unless I’d missed anything, there hadn’t even been a suggestion of a rat in the book so far, and as for red, the only things I’d come across were Bella’s sweatshirt and Bella’s diary. They were both red, but so what? Neither of them had anything to do with rats.

There was something important in the diary though, I knew. I always enjoyed that bit.

Once again, I fell asleep before Gray arrived home. It was probably about half past ten or eleven when he came in. Most people, knowing there was somebody sharing their room and fast asleep, would take some care not to disturb them. But Gray wasn’t most people. It wasn’t his way to quietly undress in the dark and then tiptoe to his bed. Oh, no. He switched the light on, clumped right over me, stamping on my foot, and then he left the light on as he began to undress.

‘Oww!’

I sat up in the dazzling brightness, clutching my toe.

Gray ignored me.

‘You stood on my foot you great hunk of a lunk!’ I cried.

‘It’s your own stupid fault, pea-brain, for sleeping on the footpath,’ he remarked amiably, as he sat on my bed peeling off his socks.

‘Where else can the mattress go?’ I demanded, but Gray ignored me. Logic wasn’t his strong point.

I didn’t want to risk further conversation, so I slid right down under the covers to try and hide from the light, and closed my eyes.

However, any chance of sleep went out the window very quickly.

First of all, there was a cry of anger from Gray.

Then the covers were pulled off me.

Then Gray jerked me to a standing position after grabbing me by the shoulders.

‘Get up!’

‘What?’

‘When did this happen?’

I shook my head, confused. ‘When did what happen?’

‘This!’

Gray had dragged me up and across the bed and shoved me down so that I was forced onto my stomach to peer into the rat cage on the other side.

Simon and Garfunkel, too, were blinking in the bright light.

That wasn’t what was angering Gray, though.

He was angered by the fact that, once again, the rats were a bright tomato red.

Of course, the rats changing colour yet again was topic number one at breakfast. Gray had made such a racket the night before, that within seconds the whole family were squeezed into my bedroom to see what the fuss was about. Even Uncle Felix.

Now, as Dad buttered his toast, he said, ‘Beats me.’

‘We should have taken them to the vet in the first place,’ said Mum. ‘They must have something.’

‘They don’t look sick,’ I said.

They didn’t either. Just like the first time, the rats weren’t fazed a bit by their unusual colour.

‘I don’t think they’re rats at all,’ said Dad cheerfully. ‘More like traffic lights if you ask me.’

I looked at Uncle Felix. What had he said? He’d said the first colour change wasn’t a symptom, it was a signal. Dad had been making a joke, but perhaps he had a point. Uncle Felix didn’t seem so puzzled either. If anything, the second transformation seemed to have reassured him somewhat. Gray, on the other hand, looked more confused than anything. Angry, yes, but bewildered too.

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

‘Who on earth can that be?’ asked Dad. He stood up and went to the back door.

We never got visitors at breakfast time on a working day. I guessed it must have been one of Gray’s mates, although it was probably far too early for any of them.

When he came back, Dad had an odd smile on his face and was scratching his head.

‘This is the most bizarre thing,’ he remarked. ‘It’s Bill from next door. Just come and see what he’s got.’

There was a mild stampede as we all pushed back our chairs and hurried to the back porch. Mr Porterfield, our neighbour, was standing there.

The most bizarre thing was what he was holding by the tail.

It was a dead rat.

A red dead rat.

‘I found it this morning at the back door,’ Mr Porterfield explained. ‘Rusty must have caught it. He often brings donations home. Rats, birds, you know.’

Rusty was the Porterfield family’s big ginger tomcat.

‘But he’s never brought anything like this home before,’ continued Mr Porterfield. ‘It looks like a rat, doesn’t it? But it’s red. I wondered whether it might have been some sort of pet … One of you kids … ?’

I glanced about the family. Astonishment all round.

No, not quite.

Gray was looking sick.

And Uncle Felix was looking at Gray with a faint smile on his face.