I have been reading James Herbert’s riveting rat trilogy this week

Reading note

I have been reading James Herbert’s riveting rat trilogy this week. The self-contained vignettes that give us the situation and fate of a character not part of the main action – but enriching the whole story “canvas” – are sometimes more poignant than chapters following the main characters, which often feel restricted to the necessities of horror melodrama plotting.

Chapter 20 of Domain provides vignettes from several London locations after the nuclear war. It's well handled, almost as strong as the “No great loss” chapter of The Stand.

          The cold water trickled to a halt and the woman clucked her tongue. She twisted the tap off and placed the meagrely filled kettle on the electric stove. She left it to boil on the stone-cold ring. 

  Walking through to the hallway, the woman picked up the telephone receiver and flicked open the book lying beside it on the narrow hall stand. She found a number and dialled. 

  ‘I’ve already complained twice,’ she said into the mouthpiece. ‘Now the water’s gone off completely. Why should I pay my water rates when I can’t have bloody water?’ 

  She flushed, angry with herself and the noiseless receiver. ‘You’ve made me swear now, that’s how angry I am,’ she said. ‘Don’t give me any more excuses, I want someone round today to sort it out, otherwise I shall have to speak to your supervisor.’ 

  Silence. 

  ‘What’s that you say? You’ll have to speak up.’ 

  The phone remained dead. 

  ‘Yes, well that’s more like it. And I’ll have you remember that civility costs nothing. I’ll expect your man later this morning, then?’ 

  The earpiece could have been a sea-shell for all the noise it made. 

  ‘Right, thank you, and I hope it isn’t necessary to call again.’ 

  The woman allowed herself a humph of satisfaction as she replaced the receiver. 

  ‘I don’t know what this country’s coming to,’ she said, pulling her unkempt cardigan tight around her as a breeze – a warm breeze – flowed down from the stairway. She went back into the kitchen. 

  As she rinsed the teapot with water from the cold kettle, the woman complained to her husband seated at the pine kitchen table, newspaper propped up against the empty milk bottle before him. A fly, its body thick and black and as big as a bee, landed on the man’s cheek and trekked across the pallid landscape. The man ignored it. 

  ‘. . . not even as though water’s cheap nowadays,’ his wife droned. ‘We have to pay the rates even when it’s off. Should never have been allowed to split from normal rates – it was just their way of bumping up prices. Like everything else, I suppose. Money, money, it rules everything. I dread doing the monthly shop. God knows how much everything’s gone up since last time. Afraid you’ll have to give me more housekeeping soon, Barry. Yes, I know, but I’m sorry. If you want to eat the way you’re used to, you’ll have to give me more.’ 

  She stirred the tea and quickly sucked her finger when cold water splashed and burned it. Putting the lid on the teapot, she took it over to the kitchen table and sat opposite her husband. 

  ‘Tina, are you going to eat those cornflakes or just sit and stare at them all day?’ 

  Her daughter did not even shrug. 

  ‘You’ll be late for playschool again if you don’t get a move on. And how many times have I told you Cindy isn’t allowed at the table. You spend more time speaking to that doll than you do eating.’ 

  She scooped up the dolly that she herself had placed in her daughter’s lap only minutes before, and propped it up on the floor against a table leg. Tina began to slide off her chair. 

  The mother jumped up and pulled the child erect again, tutting as she did so. Tina’s small chin rested against her chest and the woman tried vainly to lift it. 

  ‘All right, you go ahead and sulk, see where it gets you.’ 

  A small creature with many eyelash legs stirred from its nest in the little girl’s ear. It crawled out and scuttled into the dry white hair of the child’s scalp. 

  The woman poured the tea, the water almost colourless, black specks that were the unbrewed tea leaves collecting in the strainer to form a soggy mould. Silverfish scattered from beneath the milk jug as she lifted it and unsuccessfully tried to pour the dots of sour cream into the cups. 

  ‘Sammy, you stop that clattering and finish your toast. And will you put your school tie on straight; how many more times do I have to tell you? At ten years of age you think you’d be old enough to dress yourself properly.’ 

  Her son silently gazed at the green bread beside his bowl of cornflakes, the cereal stirring gently as small creatures fed beneath. He was grinning, a ventriloquist’s dummy, cheek muscles tightened by shrinkage. A misty film clouded his eyes, a spoon balanced ungripped in his clawed hand. A length of string around his chest tied him to the chair. 

  The woman suddenly heaved forward, twisting her chair so that the ejected vomit did not splatter the stale food. She retched, the pain seeming to gut her insides, her stomach jerking in violent spasms as if attempting to evict its own internal organs. 

  The excruciating pain was in her head too, and for a brief second it forced a flash of lucidity. The moment of boundless thunder, the quietness after. The creeping sickness. 

  It was gone, the clearness vanquished, muddy clouds spoiling her mind’s fleeting perspicuity. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sat upright. The hurt was easing, but she knew it would linger in the background, never far away, waiting to pounce like Inspector Clouseau’s Chinese manservant. She almost managed to smile at the memory of old, better times, but the present – her own vision of the present – closed in on her. 

  She sipped the tasteless tea and flicked with an impatient hand at the flies buzzing around Tina’s head. Her husband’s pupil-less stare from the other side of the table irritated her, too, the whites of his eyes showing between half-closed lids a silly affectation he assumed to annoy her. A joke could be taken too far. 

  ‘What shall we do this morning, everyone?’ she asked, forgetting it was both a work- and school-day. ‘A walk to the park? The rain’s finally stopped, you know. My goodness, I thought it never would, didn’t you, Barry? Must do some shopping later, but I think we could manage a little walk first, take advantage of the weather, hmm? What do you say, Sammy? You could take your roller skates. Yes, you too, Tina, I wasn’t forgetting you. Perhaps the cinema later. No, don’t get excited – I want you to finish your breakfast first.’ 

  She leaned across and patted her daughter’s little clenched fist. 

  ‘It’ll be just like old times, won’t it?’ Her voice became a whisper, and the words were slow. ‘Just like old times.’ 

  Tina slid down in her chair once more and this time disappeared beneath the table. 

  ‘That’s right, dear, you look for Cindy, she can come to the park, too. Anything interesting in the news today, Barry? Really, oh good gracious, people are funny, aren’t they? Makes you wonder what the world’s coming to, just what on earth you’ll read next. Manners, Samuel, hand before mouth.’ 

  She scraped away surface mould from a drooping slice of bread and bit into it. ‘Don’t let your tea get cold, pet,’ she lightly scolded her husband, Barry. ‘You’ve got all day to read the newspaper. I think I’ll have a lie down in a little while; I’m not feeling too well today. Think I’ve got flu coming on.’ 

  The woman glanced towards the shattered window, a warm breeze ruffling the thin hair straggling over her forehead. She saw but did not perceive the nuclear-wasted city outside. 

  Her attention drifted back to her family once more and she watched the black fly, which had fully explored the surface of her husband’s face by now, disappearing into the gaping hole of his mouth. 

  She frowned, and then she sighed. ‘Oh, Barry,’ she said, ‘you’re not just going to sit there all day again, are you?’ 

  Tiny, glittering tear beads formed in the corners of each eye, one brimming over leaving a jerky silver trail down to her chin. Her family didn’t even notice.