Ken McClure: Deception

‘You’re a big soft sausage, aren’t you?’ laughed the neighbour, making a fuss of him. ‘They’re lovely at that age, aren’t they?’

‘Daft as a brush,’ smiled Moira. ‘All energy and no brains.’

‘Are you taking him up by the canal?’

‘Moira said that she was.’

‘You must have heard about the three kids along in Blackbridge?’

‘I certainly did, Weil’s disease; can be quite nasty apparently. Damages the liver. I was speaking to one of their mothers, coming back on the bus yesterday. She’d been in at the hospital. She was saying that they’ve all been through a bit of a bad time but at least, her boy was getting better. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the laddie who’d been bitten.’

‘I heard about that. Which one of them got bitten?’

‘Mrs Ferguson’s son. He had to have an operation on his foot: it was torn quite badly apparently. I hear he’s still very ill; some complicating factors to do with the bite becoming infected, I think.’

‘Dirty things, rats, makes me shiver, just thinking about them. Mind you, who in their right mind would want to swim in the canal? It’s all green slime apart from anything else.’

‘What were we saying about all energy and no brains? I think it applies to young boys as well as young dogs.’

The neighbour laughed and conceded the point. Moira continued her walk. She joined the canal towpath and took off Sam’s lead. He was off like a rocket but a rocket with little or no sense of direction. He gave every indication of wanting to run in all directions at the same time. Moira introduced some purpose to it all by picking up a small stick and throwing it along the towpath. As she continued with the game it occurred to her that she was enjoying herself as much as Sam. The sun was low but still warm and the wind had dwindled away to nothing. The air was full of the smells of late summer, only marred a little by the smell of the algal bloom on the surface of the canal.

Sam paused in the game to do his business and Moira took the chance to look up at the sky, thinking to herself how much nicer it would be if Scotland had more of this kind of weather. There were so few occasions when proper clothing was not a major consideration. She was very glad that she had not bothered with a jacket. The cool of the evening on her bare arms was very pleasant. The insects hovering above the surface of the still water and the drifting ‘wishes’ from the willow herb made her think of Peter Pan and fairies.

Sam looked up at her expectantly and she launched the stick again. ‘Go on, then, you daft mutt,’ she encouraged. She tried to throw the stick further this time and lost direction a little. It landed in the water. Sam bounded along to the spot but Moira did not want him plunging into the stagnant water so she called out to him to stop. Sam paused unsurely at the edge, his basic instinct being challenged by his partial training.

‘Good boy,’ Moira called out as Sam settled with his rear end in the air and his nose pointing down at the water.

‘There’s a good boy. Just you wait there,’ said Moira as she walked towards him.

Suddenly Sam let out a yelp of pain and Moira saw him start to throw his head feverishly from side to side. She thought at first that he had something in his mouth — her first thought was that he had tried to pick up a hedgehog and was learning the lesson but as she got closer she could see that this was not the case at all. A small animal had attached itself to Sam’s face by sinking its teeth into Sam’s snout. Her blood ran cold when she saw that it was a rat.

Moira desperately wanted to help Sam — wanted to free him of the vile vermin that was causing him such pain, but she found herself unable to through her fear and loathing of rats. Her arms moved like the sails of an uncertain windmill as she tried to approach but was forced to draw back through sheer revulsion. The nightmare moved up a gear when a second rat scampered up on to the bank and attached itself to one of Sam’s front paws. Moira screamed but the sound that came out sounded totally alien, a mixture of terror and anger that she’d seldom — if ever, felt before.

She could see that Sam was starting to lose the battle. It looked as if he was beginning to tire and might fall over at any moment. When a third rat appeared on the path, Moira’s concern for the puppy overcame her dread of rats. She moved in, swinging her feet at them and screaming abuse at the top of her voice as a way of neutralising her fear. When her foot connected with the third rat and sent it flying, she yelled out in pleasure and tried stamping on the one attached to Sam’s paw. Frustration started to play a role when she found that just wasn’t quick enough to keep up with Sam’s twists and turns. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ she screamed. ‘Get off him, you filth! Leave him alone!’

Help appeared in the form of a cyclist coming along the towpath. He’d seen the woman ahead of him with what appeared to be a dog scampering round her feet and had rung his bell as an early warning of his approach.

‘Help me!’ screamed Moira. ‘Please help me! Get them off him!’

The cyclist, a tall man wearing dungarees and working boots got off his bike and snatched the tyre pump from the frame. He lashed out at the rat on Sam’s paw and made good enough contact to make it release its grip. To deal with the other one he had to wrestle Sam to the ground and hold him still while he beat at the rat on his snout with the barrel of the pump. Sam was finally freed of his tormentors and whimpered pitifully as Moira examined his wounds. He was bleeding profusely. ‘My poor baby,’ she cooed, cradling him in her arms.

‘What the hell happened?’ asked the cyclist.

Moira shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she gasped. ‘He was looking down at the water. The next thing I knew one of these vile things was on his face.’

‘He must have stumbled on their nest,’ said the man. ‘They can be bloody vicious when they feel threatened.’ He walked over to the edge of the bank and examined the area. ‘No sign of any rat holes, mind you.’ He pushed down the reeds around the area with the pump he still held in his hand but without finding anything. ‘Strange,’ he muttered. ‘A laddie got bitten along in Blackbridge by the buggers the other week there: mind you, he was swimming in the bloody canal. Talk about shit for brains.'

Moira wasn’t really interested in why it had happened. She felt weak and cold and anxious. The front of her blouse was covered in Sam’s blood and she was becoming increasingly angry with this man who seemed to be ignoring her and Sam in favour of conducting some kind of forensic investigation. She had to remind herself that he had also been the one to come to their rescue and if he hadn’t come along, at that particular time, God alone knew what might have happened. ‘Could you possibly give me a hand?’ she asked, trying to get to her feet, still cradling Sam in her arms.

‘Nae hassle,’ said the man. He took Sam from her and asked, ‘Where are we going?’

‘My house is about half a mile away.’

‘If you wheel ma bike for me, I’ll take care o’ the dug. He needs help. What are you going to do about him?’

‘There’s a vet over in Blackbridge. My husband will drive us over.’

The man looked at his watch. ‘It’s after nine,’ he said. ‘If he’s no there, there’s a vet wi’ a twenty-four hour call out in Edinburgh. You’ll find it in Yellow Pages.’

‘Thanks, we’ll try Blackbridge first,’ said Moira.

The pair of them attracted quite a bit of attention when they left the towpath and started to walk down the road to Moira’s house, the man beginning to weave a bit under Sam’s weight and Moira, shocked, dejected, the front of her blouse covered in Sam’s blood. Several neighbours came out to ask what was wrong but Moira couldn’t face telling them the story. She had to look past them. She was close to mental exhaustion. She propped up the man’s bicycle on the garden wall and opened her front door to call out, ‘Andrew!’