The Rats (1974) by James Herbert

"All the lonely people.”

Readers unfamiliar with The Rats may prefer to read these notes only after reading the novel.

The Rats is no "cosy catastrophe." This is not Richard Jeffries, or John Wyndham. This is East End London circa 1974. Our teacher hero Mr. Harris is all man, admiring the fourteen year old female "crumpet" in his art classes, and not afraid to bully to maintain control. This is the neighborhood where he grew up.

The set-pieces in The Rats, even cutaways to one-time characters, are richly imagined, confident, and energizing. They form a vivid collage: daily lives and everyday settings register the expanding scope of the onslaught.

In one of the earliest scenes, a family dog fights to the death to protect the unattended family baby, which also dies. Another takes place on a subway train, where a modern Mr. Pooter gets the chance to prove his mettle. 

Chapter One gives a sympathetic portrait of a middle aged homosexual, drinking himself to death until Rattus rattus arrives to deliver the coup de grâce. A masterpiece in miniature, Chapter Five traces the life of Irish immigrant Mary Kelly, in one of the novel's most poignant and ugly vignettes.

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In one of the novel's strongest set-pieces, Mr. Harris's East End school faces a siege of its own as the black super-rats converge.

  ‘What made you draw a rat, Barney?’ [Mr. Harris] asked.

  ‘Dunno, sir,’ Barney said, sucking the end of his pen, then adding, ‘Saw one the other day. Big one, like Keogh saw . . .’ His voice trailed off as he remembered his classmate who was now dead. The rest of the class became silent at the mention of Keogh’s name.

  ‘Whereabouts?’ asked the teacher.

  ‘By the canal. Tomlins Terrace.’

  ‘Did you see where it went?’

  ‘It jumped over a wall and disappeared into the bushes.’

  ‘What bushes? There isn’t a park down there.’

  ‘Where the lock-keeper used to live. It’s like a jungle now the canal’s been shut down.’

  Harris vaguely remembered the old house that stood well back from the road, where, as a kid, he used to go to watch the barges passing through the lock. The lock-keeper liked the kids to watch him work provided they weren’t cheeky, and used to encourage them to come. Funny, he’d forgotten all about the place. He’d been down Tomlins Terrace a few times recently and hadn’t remembered the house had been there. It must have been because of the ‘jungle’ in front.

  ‘Did you tell the police?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘Nah.’ Barney turned his attention back to his drawing adding a few more strokes to his strikingly evil-looking rat.

  Might have known, Harris thought to himself. Kids around this area don’t get involved with the law through choice.

  At that moment, Carlos burst into the room in a state of extreme agitation.

  ‘Sir, sir, in the playground! There’s one of them things!’ He gesticulated towards the window, his eyes wide, smiling in his excitement.

  The whole class rushed as one towards the windows.

  ‘Back to your seats!’ Harris roared, and strode quickly to a window. He drew in a sharp breath at what he saw.

  There wasn’t ‘one of them things’ but several. As he watched, more joined the first bunch. Huge black rats. The rats. They crouched in the playground, staring at the school building. More, then more.

  ‘Close all windows,’ he ordered, quietly. ‘Johnson, Barney, Smith; go round to all the other classrooms and ask the teachers to close all windows. Scalley, go to the headmaster’s study and ask him to look out of his window – no, I’d better go.’ If a boy went, the headmaster would probably think it was some kind of prank, and valuable seconds would be wasted. ‘I don’t want anybody to move from this room. And no noise. Cutts, you’re in charge.’ The tallest boy in the class stood up. The boys were excited now, the girls becoming more and more nervous.

  He hurried out of the room and made towards the principal’s study. As he walked down the corridor, several of the teachers’ heads popped out of various doors.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he was asked nervously by Ainsley, one of the old-timers of the school.

  He told him quickly and hurried on. There was a strange hush throughout the school, a hush that could be entirely ruined if only one girl became hysterical.

  Barney dashed from one of the classrooms.

  Harris caught his arm and told him: ‘Steady, Barney. Take it slowly and calmly. Don’t frighten the girls. We don’t want panic, do we?’

  ‘No, sir,’ was the breathless reply.

  As Harris approached the stairs leading up to the next floor and the headmaster’s study, he looked down the short flight to the main doors. Naturally, they were open.

  He crept slowly down, his hand on the rail to steady himself. As he reached the bottom, he heard a soft noise on the stone steps outside. Springing quietly to the side of the double doors he glanced out, ready to slam both sides shut instantaneously. On the wider top step he saw a small boy looking back into the playground where about thirty of the rodents had now gathered.

  Jesus Christ, Harris thought in horror. He must have walked right past them!

  He stepped outside and swiftly scooping the small boy up, dashed back into the building. He dumped him on the floor without ceremony and turned back to close the doors. The rats hadn’t stirred. He shut the heavy doors quickly but quietly and bolted them, then breathed out for the first time in nearly two minutes.

  ‘There’s animals in the playground, sir,’ the seven-year-old boy told him with wide eyes, but no trace of fear. ‘What are they? What are they doing there, sir?’

  Ignoring the question because he didn’t know what to tell him, Harris picked the boy up and raced back up the stairs. Putting him down at the top he told him to run along to his classroom. He heard the murmur of voices as teachers began to gather in the corridor. He ran up the next flight of stairs, three at a time and almost collided with the headmaster as he emerged from his office.

  ‘Please phone the police, Mr Norton,’ Harris said urgently. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got trouble.’

  ‘I already have, Mr Harris. Have you seen what’s in the playground?’

  ‘Yes – that’s the trouble I mean. They’re the giant ones, the killers.’

  They went back into the study and looked out of the window. The rats had multiplied it seemed to a couple of hundred.

  ‘The playground’s black with them,’ the young teacher said in disbelief.

  ‘What do they want?’ The headmaster looked at Harris as though he would know.

  ‘The children,’ said Harris….

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For James Herbert the narrative red anger of The Rats is in its depictions of bureaucratic turf wars and government cover-your-ass mentalities that spike attempts to defeat the massing enemy. The rats act as allegorical solvent: dissolving social conventions and capitalist governmental business-as-usual.

The Rats is a great one-sitting horror read. It sometimes tries to be polite, but the energy it expresses quickly erases decorum.

Jay

24 August 2024