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Rats, Cats and Bananas

Lisa Gray

    “No-one comes in here at night!”
    “Bananas!” yelled the beefy guy in the short-sleeved checked shirt and shorts.
    There was a peal of laughter.
    Smart Alec, Ruth thought, ushering the group out of the plastic tent into the blazing sunshine. There was one on every tour. Big, beefy and bumptious. She zipped up the tent that enclosed the banana plantation, glad to escape from the humidity and hurried across the cobbled yard trying to overtake the group who were straggling in all directions.
    Thank God, this is my last but one trip.
    She reached the large outbuilding that housed crate upon crate of green bananas.
    “Ola!” she called to Manuel who waved less than enthusiastically.
    He’s tired of tourists, thought Ruth.
    She didn’t blame him. Trying to run a banana plantation with troupes of tourists tramping through was enough to turn anyone off.
    She plunged her hand into a crate of bananas lying on the floor of the building, pulled one off the hand and began peeling it from plenty practice.
    “Try one!” she said thrusting her hand out to the first of the group who had entered the shed.
    A young girl with burnt shoulders exposed by her strappy top grabbed the banana gratefully and began to devour it greedily. Within a few minutes Ruth had handed a banana to almost everyone.
    Everyone except the beefy guy and his wife.
    “Would you like to try one?” she said, extending an arm towards the woman.
    “Bananas make you fat!” said her husband.
    Why doesn’t he shut his face? thought Ruth. And let his wife enjoy the banana. She looked like she could do with it. There was nothing of her. Ruth could see that by her hand. A long, skeletal, bony hand, blue veins rippling like a silent river beneath the transparent skin. Attached to threateningly thin arms that reminded Ruth of the poles that had held up her mother’s washing line.
    “I eat a lot of them at home,” whispered an apologetic voice by Ruth’s side.
    Her husband had wandered off to the far side of the building.
    “We don’t do a lot of cooking,” the woman said by way of explanation. “Jim likes to keep the electricity and gas bills low.”
    A mean, controlling asshole, thought Ruth. Did she detect a degree of resentment in the woman’s voice? Why the hell did some women stay with men like that?
    Some women needed help.
    She knew all about men like him. She’d spent her whole life avoiding them. She’d kept the whole bus amused telling them how many times she’d been engaged before breaking it off.
    “I got away just in time!” she’d quipped. “I’m strictly a party animal! I run with the pack!”
    “The Rat Pack?” someone had chipped back.
    “Yes,” she’d replied, laughing. “Frank and I have a lot in common!”
    “Is that why you came on the trip?” said Ruth.
    The woman obviously liked bananas.
    “Yes,” said the woman. “It’s my first trip of the whole holiday. I’ve been ill. Poor Jim’s been left alone the whole holiday.”
    Poor Jim!
    What the hell, lady? Don’t you know your husband’s been living it up? Partying every night on the island while you were in your sick bed.
    Poor Jim.
    That’s what she had thought when she met him at the Hacienda Disco two weeks ago. His head hanging disconsolately over his Cuba Libre at the bar.
    “Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world,” she’d said.
    She’d eased herself on to the bar stool. Glad to escape the drunken bums who’d been offering themselves to dance. She’d always been a sucker for another party pooper.
    “How do you know?” he said, barely glancing her way. “Any moment now a giant tsunami could sweep us all away.”
    “Hell, you’re a bundle of laughs!” she’d quipped. “Too many Cuba Libres?”
    The guy nodded into his glass.
    “And what precisely has made you overindulge in the local speciality?” she said. “It can’t be work. You’re on holiday?”
    He nodded.
    “It can’t be money. You must have plenty to drink those.”
    She pointed at his glass.
    There was no reponse.
    She paused as if deliberating.
    “It must be a woman!”
    The guy took a big swig of the dusky drink in the glass and continued to stare deep down into the glass.
    “You either have one or you don’t.”
    “I have one.”
    His voice was so low she thought she’d imagined it.
    “Don’t sound so happy about it!” she said.
    “She’s ill,” he said to the glass. “She’s always ill.”
    No wonder, thought Ruth looking at the waif-like figure of his wife woofing down the banana she’d handed to her. The woman looks like she could do with a good meal.
    She should have got off the bar stool and disappeared into the dancing crowd at the disco. Leaving one more loser. But that was her weakness. An underdog.
    Instead she’d stayed. Talking. Till the bar had started to close up.
    He’d walked her home and she’d invited him in. Like she always did.
    Nothing serious. She’d string him along for a few days then dump him. It was her way.
    But the few days had lengthened further. Further than ever before. And she’d done what she swore she’d never do. Got involved.
    “You want us to be together, don’t you?” he’d said the end of that first week.
    “You could leave your wife,” she’d said.
    “She’d never give me a divorce. Too dependent on me,” he’d said.
    He saw the look on her face and went on.
     “There is another way.”
    There always was. Another way. If you were a man.
    Goodness knows why she went along with it. But love makes you do funny things.
    And they’d be together in the end.
    She looked at the waif-like woman in front of her and thought back to the banana plantation they had just left. The maze-like rows of banana trees. The mulchy resting place of the dead banana leaves strewing the ground.
    “There are rats as big as cats!” she’d said. “No-one comes in here at night!”
    It would be the ideal place.

—————————————————&

    She dragged the body across the courtyard and opened the zip of the tent enclosing the banana plantation. The sweat from the exertion and humidity dripped from her top lip. She looked around nervously.
    Rats as big as cats. She’d joked about it enough. But she had no desire to meet one. She wouldn’t drag the body far. A couple of rows should be far enough. Then she’d make her getaway.
    And they’d be together.
    She turned up the third row of banana trees to her left and dragged the body halfway up before laying it to rest underneath a heavily laden banana tree. She stood up, broke two off the hand, stuffed one in her trouser pocket and the other in the pocket of the corpse.
    It seemed fitting.
    Rats, you’re in for a party tonight, she thought.
    But I’ll not be joining you. My party days are over.
    She zipped up the tent and stole silently across the courtyard back to the waiting car that was parked some slight distance away.
    She got in.
    “Everything all right?”
    “Perfect,” Ruth replied, squeezing that waif-like hand and planting a kiss on that translucent skin. “Now, we just need to fatten you up.”
    She’d thought that the first time she’d followed Jim home, curious to see the wife so dependent on him. The wife he’d wanted her to kill. From her position outside their window she’d seen how he’d treated that frail, delicate, darling. And it was then she knew why she dumped men.
    Love. It can make you do funny things.
    That’s why she’d waited till Jim had left the house and gone in and told her everything. She’d cried and cried and Ruth had put her arm around her and told her she needed help.
    Her help.
    She’d leant against her and it had felt good. For both of them.
    She’d stayed talking and done what she’d sworn she would never do. Got involved.
    But then it was easy. She’d always been a sucker for the underdog.
    “You want us to be together, don’t you?” Ruth had said after those first few heady days.
    There’d been a nod.
    “You could leave him,” she’d said.
    The head had been shaken. And she’d known why.
    Fear.
    “There is another way,” she’d said.
    She’d learnt a lot off men.
    And she’d told her what.
    “Fatten me up?” she repeated.
    Ruth put her hand in her trouser pocket, pulled out the other banana and handed it to her.
    “Let’s start now!” she said.
    “Bananas make you fat!” she said.
    “Bananas!” yelled Ruth.
    And there was a peal of laughter.

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