Ratface

It had turned out to be a beautiful sunny afternoon, a bit windy but the wind was warmer, coming from the South now, blowing a constant stream of thunderous booms toward us from Salisbury Plain. The military were busy, perhaps preparing for something grim but none of us dwelled upon that.

The visitors began to trickle in, mostly in twos or threes, older couples and lots of ladies together, sisters, mothers and daughters, best friends with a shared interest in beautiful gardens. They were dressed up, not glamorously, rather very thoughtfully put together in leather brogues, FairIsle tank tops and stretchy jeans.

I had a fixed smile on my face. It was a genuine smile though, something I had learned in all the years I’d spent working in retail. I could trick my brain into an instant state of glee. A fake smile tended to exude a sort of sourness which was acceptable to the public but not optimal, they stayed armed, standoffish and ready to pounce on any shortcomings. A genuine smile was priceless, it disarmed them in an instant, melted away all their prejudice and made them feel relaxed and spiritually generous. I stood there sparkling with bon homie. 

I’d had a funny feeling all morning that somebody familiar would turn up, a face from the past and I was hopeful that I’d see an old friend or a horticulture graduate from my uni days. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw her, like a dark cloud approaching from the left with her mother and sister in tow. I saw Ratface.

Oh my god, it’s Ratface, I said to myself. It must have been ten years, maybe more since I’d stood in the school playground waiting for my children to come out. It was rare in those days that Ratface and I didn’t pass each other and it was always the same. She just exuded acrid energy and regularly gave me dirty looks, bad vibes. I’d tried to smile at her but she always looked away just as I broke the corners of my lips, forcing them upwards, she turned haughtily, pushing her huge nose towards the clouds.

.

After the first three or four times of receiving her death stare, I began to refer to her, within the privacy of my thoughts, as Ratface, because that’s what she looked like. A large, triangular nose, dividing two small, black ratty eyes, somewhere underneath was a strong chin, lower still a broad body, made for lifting perhaps. Something was set between us and it was never broken in all the six or seven years of the school run. 

I never liked seeing her. Just passing by or walking behind her gave me a feeling of darkness. It was as if my presence somehow made her angry for no reason other than the way I looked. We’d never spoken, didn’t know anything about each other, not even each other’s names or the names of our children; her eldest was a year younger than my youngest. 

It was pretty much a case of hate at first sight. We were like two dogs who one day spotted each other at the park and some barely detectable body language passed between us and the mood was set. Every time we spotted each other we snarled and growled and if we got too close we would have lunged at each other and engaged in hostile, close range teeth baring, barking and snapping. Except that only happened in the privacy of our thoughts. In real life we passed each other silently as the invisible energy rubbed together caused bitter sparks and tearing up the surrounding air.

We were now thirty miles or more away from that playground and a decade in time but there was no mistaking Ratface. Even her walk was familiar. I noticed her mother and sister were the same, they didn’t crack a smile, there was an arrogance to them. Most of the visitors asked questions, smiled or paid a compliment on the standard of the gardens but not Ratface or her kin. They passed me at close quarters, talking among themselves. She glanced at me a few times and I saw her wince.

She had clocked me as soon as she turned the corner and in turn I recognised her instantly. She’d aged rather badly. Her dark straight hair, streaked grey, her wide but slim frame now rather lumpy, as if her upholstery had become flattened in some places but bulging in others like an old sofa. Her black eyes had shrunk, if that were possible, the whites no longer visible. It occurred to me that we had some traps in the glasshouse, set with peanut butter. 

After hovering for two or three minutes, I never saw her again. They didn’t stay for long, the rat family. Perhaps they had other gardens to visit or maybe my presence caused Ratface to dissuade her family members from loitering too long.

I wondered whether she had a nickname for me and what it was and how much older I had appeared to her. Friends always told me I hadn’t really aged but maybe they were just being nice. I felt confident I hadn’t aged as much as Ratface. It occurred to me that there was a chance her husband had left her because how could it be possible for somebody to wake up every morning next to a conceited, unsmiling rat.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon with Ratface dominating my thoughts. If she only smiled a little and radiated less bitterness, she could be considerably more attractive. She certainly dressed quite well and was rather striking, if only in the ugliness of her face, as some people are. I felt certain she was conventionally intelligent and probably employed in some highly paid industry. Her mother and sister all had a strong aura of the middle-classes, of after school music lessons and riding school, of feeling just slightly better than everyone else. 

Later I diffused the hangover of seeing Ratface by speaking to some lovely people. I loitered with generous people who smiled and chatted, we exchanged information about the plants. I met a lovely older man who loved the city of Liverpool just as much as I did and we shared laughs about our experiences there. 

Unfortunately I am still haemorrhaging some spiritual energy on thoughts of Ratface. There’s a part of me which is wondering if she’s even real or simply a demon who kept appearing during that particular period of my life. And now she’s popped up again, perhaps to teach me something about myself? That I’m a terrible person for giving a stranger such an awful name. I can’t help feeling that Ratface is something of a reflection of myself.

It’s also possible, thinking objectively, that she didn’t recognise me at all and has no idea who I am. Instinctively I feel that this cannot be true. We're connected - somehow. 

There’s a large part of me that wishes we’d spoken and burst the bubble, broken the spell, once and for all. Ratface wouldn’t meet my gaze though despite my lingering look, she only permitted me fleeting glances. True to form, that negative energy dissipating from her like a vapour trail as she left my line of sight.