MANY PEOPLE have secret hobbies; some are more like habits. Me? writes EILEEN BATTERSBY,I sing, often, always in private, in the bathroom, the laundry room, open fields, the car.
I sing loud, with lots of gestures, slapping the steering wheel and I do the booming laugh of the opera singer. Ha Ha Ha. I often sing with the Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel – when I say "sing with" I mean sing along with. Whether on the radio or on a CD, when Bryn begins to sing, it's me and Bryn; or rather Bryn and I, filling the world with music: his art, my enthusiasm. One typical day, my ancient car was powering along the motorway and on cue – it happens – Bryn came on, singing the Toreador song from Bizet's Carmen. Oh goodie, I thought, and soon I, well, we, were in full flight.
Suddenly I felt we (that is Bryn and I) – were no longer alone. I glanced tentatively to my right. At this point I often see fellow motorists smiling indulgently at me. On occasion, admittedly, the more brutal will laugh, and I slide down into the seat, feeling exposed, embarrassed. It hasn’t stopped me singing; it can’t destroy the furtive pleasure, and singing is better than eating three boxes of chocolates at one go, which I may have done, once or twice – often. Car singers don’t want to be caught, but we risk it in order to perform in the only concert halls we have, our complicit automobiles. But when I glanced to see who was laughing at me this time, there was no one.
I looked to the left, to the inside lane, no one. Still, I felt I was being watched. I looked down to the foot space in the passenger seat. There, peering out of one of my muddy rubber boots, was a rat, a concerned expression in those small black eyes. Was the concern for my singing? Or did the rat see me as his or her future?
As rats go, this was a cute specimen, a bit like the character in Ratatouille. “Hi there,” I said, quelling quite natural feelings of revulsion, in the spirit of “here we are, two of God’s creatures sharing the one car, fancy that”, There is no denying that the least attractive aspect of a rat is the tail, long, naked and uniformly disgusting. The tail remained hidden; somewhere down inside the boot, my boot. The only visible part of my passenger was the head. The small, bright eyes and the sharp, yellow teeth. I became aware of fine confetti strewing the passenger foot space. That would be the remains of the wrappings of the bar of chocolate I had forgotten to eat.
The rat began to edge out of the boot; suddenly its shoulders were free. Was it going to attack, or merely attempt to bond? I decided to resume singing. Not the Toreador song, too strident. Was it that song that had awoken the rat? A change of tone was required. I lowered my voice to a sickly croon, and began Edelweiss, hoping it would soothe my passenger.
So there I was, singing Edelweissto the rat who had settled back down into my boot. Keep the rat quiet, I reasoned, sleeping in fact. Next, try some Leonard Cohen.
It was a strange situation. All my life animals have tended to select me; the most unfriendly dogs, cats, horses, foxes, badgers, rabbits, hares, various birds, an injured swan and now, this rat, the one sitting inches away from me, chose me. I drove on, put upon, yet jauntily singing the theme from The Lion King. A service station appeared.
This was the outskirts of Dublin. I pulled in, feeling guilty. Why was I feeling guilty? What is wrong with me? I got out and went around to the passenger side. “Hey guy, this is the end of the road as they say. It’s goodbye, au revoir, no, not au revoir, it’s just goodbye.” Nothing. No movement.
I gently eased my boot out of the car. Empty. A man watched. “What’s going on, are you thinking the boot might break?” he sniggered. “There’s a rat in it,” I whispered. Why was I whispering?
The man’s response might cause offence in a family newspaper. So I’ll just confirm that he was shocked. I reached for the second boot and tossed it away from me. It was also empty. So was the rat still in the car? Had he or she sneaked away, to start a new life in Dublin, perhaps train as a chef? The service station vacuum was working. I vacuumed under the seats, no rat. Gone.
Well, it’s funny the way things happen. Over the past weeks first one headlight bulb had gone. Then the other. I had fitted new bulbs. No lights. I checked the fuses. No lights. No right indicator either.
Now I began to smell a rat. I thought of rats chewing everything. Including electrical wires. I was driving on fog lights as I waited for my date at the garage. It was very expensive: miles of chewed wires, hours of labour. Throughout the freezing winter when I had watched groups of rats grazing on quality horse feed and reckoned we had the finest yard rats in Western Europe, they were later settling down for the night under the car bonnet, chewing the wiring. Rats are a sophisticated enemy, intelligent, resourceful and relentless. They bore neat holes into the sides of plastic feed bins. They carry off pieces of poison bait with a sense of purpose. Suddenly, they’re gone. But they always come back.
You notice it in the country; every second passing vehicle seems to need a new bulb in a headlight. So many dead lights, how rural, how careless. But farmers and horse owners aren’t lax motorists; we just attract rats content to squat in our cars on cold winter nights and feast on the wires as they wait for the summer.