Saul backed up a little and the rats followed, keeping their distance. One of them squeaked loudly and the others joined in, a discordant cacophony which was taken up throughout the tunnels nearby. Small feet scampered from all directions towards him. The squealing reverberated around Saul’s head.
More rats began to froth around him, out of the side tunnels and the surrounding dark. They came in twos and threes and tens, and although he did not fear them the sheer number was overwhelming. There was no light to glint off the hundreds of eyes which ringed him; they remained only little points of blackness in the general gloom, foci in the simmering mass of bodies which had filled the tunnel around him.
The squealing continued. It filled his head.
Suddenly, through his trepidation Saul felt a burst of excitement. He was confused by the sensation, it felt alien and out of place. And he realized that it was not his excitement at all, but that of the rats, that he understood their shrill communication, that he could feel what they felt.
He was awash with vicarious emotions.
Saul trembled and turned. There was nothing to distinguish what was before him from what was behind, everywhere was filled with the tiny eyes and bodies of the rats. The rats voices were tremulous, cosseting, pleading.
Saul fled the pressure of the sound, flooded by panic. He turned and leapt over the mass of bodies, which parted under him, little islands of clear sewer appearing under his feet as he landed, tails being whisked out of the way. The voices were suddenly plaintive. They followed him.
Saul ran through the tunnels and the rats scampered after him. Ahead of him he saw a wall-mounted ladder. He leapt up, caught it. The rats jumped, scratching at the bottom rail. Saul felt a surge of relief as he looked down into their inscrutable faces.
He climbed and forced open the metal cover, peeping out through the crack. The exit was fringed with high grass. Saul climbed out of the depths and emerged in a hollow between shadowy bushes. He was in a deserted park. Above the distant hum of traffic there were closer sounds of birds. Saul saw water before him, a twisted lake with islands.
Trees framed his field of vision. He saw a shape over the arboreal boundary: a huge gilded dome surmounted with a shaving of crescent moon. London’s central mosque, burnished by the streetlamps. To the south he saw the thin stiletto of Telecom Tower. He was in Regent’s Park.
Saul circled the boating lake and slipped silently through the hedgerows and trees and railings.
Saul clambered out into the dark city.
He walked south to Baker Street. Lights waved wildly over the faces of the buildings as cars swung by. Headlights pinned him in their glare as a battered van swept towards him and past. Saul’s heart raced for a long time after it had gone.
He turned onto Marylebone Road.
People bore down on him from all directions. It took him a moment to realize that they also moved away on past him, that they were simply walking along the street. Saul’s breath shook a little as he exhaled. He pushed his hands into his pockets and set off west.
The first man to pass him was dressed in a blazer and jeans, his rugby shirt tucked in, cuddling his distended belly. He glanced momentarily at Saul before his eyes flickered back ahead of him.
Look at me! Saul shouted in his head. I’m a rat! Can you tell? Can you smell? The man must have detected the stench which hung around Saul’s clothes, but was it so much worse than that which coloured the passing of a drunk? The man did not turn to investigate Saul, who stopped and stared after him. He turned and gazed at the next person approaching him, a young Asian woman in a short tight dress. She smoked as she passed him. She did not spare him a glance.
Saul laughed, giddy. He was passed from behind by a short black man, from in front by a group of singing teenagers, and then a very tall man with glasses, from behind by a man in a suit who walked, then jogged, then walked to his destination.
No one minded Saul.
Ahead of him the broken stream of night traffic rose, cut across Edgware Road. It returned briefly to earth then rebounded, flying again. This was the Westway, the vast raised road which swept above London. A thousand tons of impossibly suspended asphalt, it soared off over Paddington and Westbourne Grove, with the city spattered out forever on all sides. In the west, over Latimer Road, it twisted into an intricate mess of raised ramps and exits. It extricated itself from this tangle and continued, finally returning to earth outside Wormwood Scrubs prison.
Saul stared at the Westway. It passed Ladbroke Grove station, where Natasha lived. The rules of the city no longer concerned him. The prohibition against pedestrians on the Westway did not apply to rats.
He ducked between the sparse cars and scampered onto the central reservation, racing up the incline, skirting the barrier with vehicles buzzing past him on both sides.
Below him he heard faint shouts from the mustard coloured estates. Dirty winking lights swept away from him. The drivers could not see him. He was a dark figure, utterly inured to the cold, his back bent, his arms grasping the barriers, pulling himself along. He moved like a cartoon villain on speed, a fast, exaggerated skulking.
Four great squat blocks reached up like stubby fingers around the Westway: brown tower blocks overlooking him with uneven points of light. The sound of traffic was a rhythmic, constant crescendo, flows without ebbs, never dying away.
Isolated in the centre of this wide road, Saul could not see the streets below him. He could not gaze into windows or over the edge of the Westway at late-night walkers. He was alone with the anonymous cars and the horizon. The whole city had become horizon punctuated by fat towers.
To his left, the raised tracks of the Hammersmith and City tube line shadowed the Westway, only a few feet away. A train rattled past. With a rush of adrenaline, Saul pictured himself racing across the road and leaping out, catching it as it went by and straddling it like a rodeo rider, but he felt a sudden, certain intimation that he could not make that jump, not yet, and he stood still as the train headed on to Ladbroke Grove.
He followed its passage on the Westway until he could see Ladbroke Grove station hovering in the air to his left. It was so close that he could probably leap across onto the platform itself. Saul peered into the headlights to his right, and bundled himself across the road, passing like a discarded coat in wind before the windscreens of startled drivers. He flattened himself against the barrier and leaned over.
Just beyond the station, Ladbroke Grove still throbbed with the beats of ghetto-blasters. A group of youth leaned, studiously cool, outside the closed Quasar building. They did their best to intimidate the passers-by. Late-night grocers leaned out of their doors and chatted to each other, to customers, to the mini-cab drivers. The streets did not throng, but they were hardly empty. From his precarious hide, Saul watched.
Unnoticed he clambered over the barrier and held it behind his back, leaning out over the streets. He enjoyed his own insouciance.
It was an easy jump to the drainpipe opposite, barely four feet, and he accomplished it without a sound. He descended to the wedge of low roofing between the station and the raised road, and slid into the Westway’s looming shadow. He clambered over mildewed eaves. Three days ago, he thought as he jumped to the ground, I was heavy and human. And now, he thought as he moved out of the graffitied darkness towards Ladbroke Grove itself, I’m rat and I can travel how I like. I woke up so fast.
He made no effort to hide himself, even swaggering a little, and the groups of young men who clotted the pavement eyed him but let him pass, their noses wrinkling in his wake. He walked through conversations in accented English, in Arabic and in Portuguese.