by David Nobbs
‘Ah. Yes. Sorry. Ha ha. Yes. No. Quite. So … let me show you wound.’
The happy fields were drenched with ecstatic dew, and studded with jolly apple trees amongst which large numbers of cheerful chickens clucked and fed. A gaggle of gladsome guinea fowl ran away from them, their heads bent, their little legs scurrying in awkward small steps, like diminutive nuns who were late for matins. The sheds where the birds spent the night were spacious and clean. There was a smell of healthy rot and warm straw.
Perversely, Henry felt rather depressed. Even in these ideal circumstances, it wasn’t much of a life, being a chicken.
Jonathan Cromarty led him into a pleasant farmhouse kitchen, its table cheerfully over-run with newspapers and magazines. He offered him a coffee, then had some trouble finding the jar.
‘Sowwy. What a give-away. My wife always does the honours. I’m no host,’ he said. ‘My wife makes wonderful coffee. Such a shame.’
Over Jonathan Cromarty’s rather less than wonderful coffee, Henry agreed to do the adverts. A date was fixed. Jonathan Cromarty handed him a contract.
‘I’m not twying to wush you,’ he said. ‘No need to sign it now. Better get your agent to have a look at it.’
‘I don’t have an agent,’ said Henry.
He flicked through the contract. Everything seemed in order. The fee was as agreed. He liked the place. A man who was so kind to his chickens wasn’t going to cheat him. He signed.
The filming was done in a small studio in Limehouse. Henry hadn’t realised how dotted London was with small studios.
He also hadn’t realised that he would have to wear a yellow chicken costume.
‘You didn’t mention anything about dressing as a chicken,’ he said. ‘I’m sure there wasn’t anything in the contract about it.’
‘There wasn’t anything excluding it either,’ said Jonathan Cromarty. ‘There’s a clause stating that you agwee to accept editowial decisions within weason. If you think this is unweasonable, fair enough, but I had you down as a man with a sense of fun, a man who doesn’t take himself too sewiously, a man who put animal welfare above his own dignity.’
‘Well, that’s true, of course.’
‘I actually think Henwietta will be a huge success.’
‘Henwietta?’
‘Henwietta the Happy Hen. That’s you.’
‘Oh.’
‘I mean fwankly my scwipts won’t work vewy well without the costume,’ said Jonathan Cromarty.
‘You wrote the scripts?’
‘Tom Stoppard wasn’t available. Ha ha. No, we’re a family business, keep it in the family. And I have to admit I’ve always wanted to be a witer. I mean, if you do wefuse, we’ll have wasted Paul’s day. Paul’s our diwector.’ Paul was a young man who looked about twenty. ‘And we’ll have wasted Vince’s day. He’s our camewaman.’ Vince was aged about fifty, and had a straggly beard with egg stains on it. ‘But, if we have to, so be it. I want you to be happy.’
Henry knew that he had to agree. Vince and Paul were listening. He couldn’t stand on his dignity and waste their day. He was New Henry now. New Henry couldn’t stand on his dignity. He didn’t have any dignity to stand on. He had to agree, but he wasn’t going to make it too easy.
‘I think I’d better look at the scripts,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ said Jonathan Cromarty. ‘I only wote them. You have to say them, so you outwank me.’
Henry decided, before he began looking at the scripts, that he would read them without a flicker of amusement. There was something about Jonathan Cromarty that encouraged him to do this.
There were five scripts for five different adverts. The first was quite straightforward. ‘Hi, I’m Henrietta the Happy Hen. Why am I happy? Because I live at Happy Fields. How happy I am in the happy fields of Happy Fields. It’s a clucking good life for a hen. That’s why I lay such gorgeous eggs.’
In the second advert, Henrietta laid an egg. This required just a bit of acting from Henry. ‘Oh, isn’t it eggciting. I think I’m going to lay an egg. O’ooh! O’ooh! Aaaargh! That was painful. It’s such a big egg. An egg-strordinarily big egg. That’s because I’m fed so well at Happy Fields. That’s why all our eggs taste so clucking good.’ The script required Henry to bend down and pick up a huge egg. ‘Oh, what a whopper.’
In the third advert, a stern voice spoke to Henrietta out of vision. ‘Henrietta Hen, aged one, of Hut Three, Happy Fields, England, you are up before the beak because you told the manager of your farm to cluck off. How do you plead?’ ‘Not guilty,’ said Henrietta. ‘I’d been dreaming. I’d dreamt I was in a great big shed with thousands of other chickens all in the dark with our beaks cut off and unable to move and the smell was horrible and I thought I was still there when I said, ‘Cluck off.’ Oh, please, Mr Beak, let me go back to Happy Fields, where we are not like those chickens, our sad sad battery brothers.’
The fourth advert required Henry to attempt an American accent. ‘Hi-dee yokes, I mean folks. Here on the range life is clucking good because this is the free-range range. Hey, you guys, do you have a range in your kitchen? If you do, get our chickens, because, like me, they’re free range, and we’re fed on corn, and I don’t mean no BBC sitcoms, so we taste clucking good.’
The fifth and final advert required Henry to make mechanical movements and clucking noises which gradually slowed down and stopped – quite a challenge to his acting ability. A man rushed in with two huge batteries. ‘What are those?’ asked Henrietta. ‘Your new batteries.’ ‘Where are you going to put them?’ ‘Up your …’ ‘No! I don’t need batteries. There are no battery chickens at Happy Fields.’
Henry put the scripts down very slowly. He could have wished that it had not been quite so easy for him to read them without showing a flicker of amusement. He looked Jonathan Cromarty full in the face.
‘Well Tom Stoppard it isn’t,’ he said.
‘No, no. Quite. Ha! But … will you do it?’
What could he say? What could he do? He’d agreed. He’d signed the contract. He would have to go through with it, and if the scripts lacked the cutting edge of a Waugh or a Wodehouse, at least their heart was in the right place. What did it matter if he made a complete arse of himself in a good cause? It was all just a bit of fun, wasn’t it? New Henry didn’t mind being mocked.
He did feel, though, that he must insist on one or two changes, so as not to look like a complete wimp in front of these people – and there was one thing to which he genuinely objected.
‘I don’t swear,’ he said, ‘and I won’t say “cluck off”. I’ll accept “clucking”, that’s comparatively harmless, but “cluck off” is too blatant.’
‘Fair enough. It’s the main gag in the piece, and nothing else will have the same wing to it, but never mind. Your second point?’ said Jonathan Cromarty with bad grace.
‘I don’t think an American chicken would make a crack about BBC sitcoms. It wouldn’t have heard of the BBC. Could we say TV sitcoms?’
‘It’s only a bit of nonsense and if we’re being pedantically logical I have to say I don’t think a chicken would have heard of TV at all, but if it makes you happy, that’s the main point,’ said Jonathan Cromarty with more bad grace.
It was a long day. Jonathan Cromarty, stung by Henry’s criticisms, didn’t always agree with his interpretations.
‘Watch your motivation,’ he would say. ‘Focus on the motivation.’
Henry focused on the motivation for nine long, hot hours.
15 Unhappy Fields
ALTHOUGH HE HAD accepted that he would seem ridiculous, and although he had decided that in the strength of his belief he would not mind seeming ridiculous, Henry felt terrible during the days that followed the first transmissions of his chicken ads.
He imagined that everybody was laughing at him.
He imagined the scorn of his former colleagues on the Thurmarsh Evening Argus and the Cucumber Marketing Board. He imagined them phoning each other: ‘Did you see Henry?
What was he playing at?’
He imagined Sally Atkinson thinking, ‘My God, and I almost fancied him.’
He imagined all sorts of people whom he admired – Helen Mirren, Steve Davis, Michael Vaughan, Harold Pinter, Paula Radcliffe, David Hockney – saying, ‘Good God. What a wanker.’
He imagined Lampo Davey and Tosser Pilkington-Brick saying, ‘Once a silly little fatty-faggy-chops, always a silly little fatty-faggy-chops. We must have been out of our minds to take jobs under him.’
He imagined Celia Hargreaves watching with open mouth, her astonishment leading her into the first really graceless expression she had ever shown.
He imagined – and this was the worst image of all – Bradley Tompkins jumping up and down with glee, or, if he was being Mrs Scatchard at the time, lying back and kicking his legs with childlike delight, quite happy to reveal his scarlet knickers to his bisexual bicycle repairer from Bicester.
Nobody made any direct comment to him about the quality of the adverts. He fancied, though, several times, that he heard clucking noises from behind him on the pavement, and his local postmistress, while handing him his pension, said, ‘What a clucking nice day,’ and looked as if she thought herself recklessly bold.
‘What an eggs-hilarating morning,’ commented the local traffic warden, full of good humour on a day of thirty-seven bookings. ‘It’s egg-citing just to be alive.’
Henry returned to a silent house. Hilary was doing a book signing in Guildford.
‘Cluck off, the lot of you,’ he shouted in the emptiness of the kitchen.
He didn’t dare go to the Café for three days, which wasn’t unusual, due to all the pressure of his other work.
He didn’t even dare show his face at the supermarket.
It seemed that at last he had freed himself from Cousin Hilda’s sniff. Perversely, during those three days, he found that he was missing it. He would have liked it to have come back once at least, so that he could reassure himself that it hadn’t been too offended by his swearing.
On Wednesday, 28 August, 2002, Jaguar announced a four-day week due to slow sales of the new ‘Baby Jag’ X-type; Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith announced that he would go on the Countryside March with his family, stating, ‘This is all about freedom’; it was revealed that British commandos, sent secretly to Afghanistan by Tony Blair, were threatened with being shot by local forces because the Foreign Office had failed to get clearance for their arrival; and Henry Pratt decided that he was being absolutely pathetic.
He’d had ongoing reservations about his fame, but on the whole he had revelled in it. How could he let himself be defeated so easily by his first real setback? He would go to work at the Café Henry as if it was an absolutely normal day.
Usually, he liked mornings in the Café, when the atmosphere was quiet and warm, there was a smell of good coffee, and he still had time to talk to the customers. That day, however, he simply didn’t seem able to get out of the house. He wasn’t aware that he was inventing excuses for delay, he felt that he was hurrying, but he was fooling himself.
By the time he left it was already eleven forty-three. It was a pleasant summer’s day, and suddenly he felt that he had been worrying over nothing. The ads weren’t that bad, and probably very few people had seen them. When his friends watched ITV, most of them recorded the programmes so that they could fast-forward through the adverts. No, there was no problem.
He no longer drove to work. Even before the congestion charge he had decided that it was socially irresponsible to add to London’s congestion. He soon found a taxi.
‘Clucking good morning,’ said the taxi driver.
Henry’s good mood dissolved in an instant.
The driver was fast, even reckless.
‘Not scaring you, am I, guv?’ he asked. ‘Hope you aren’t … chicken!!’
He roared with laughter at his wit.
‘Please don’t lay no eggs in my cab,’ he said. ‘I’m not licensed for it.’
He roared again.
It seemed to take hours to get to Frith Street, despite the driver’s recklessness.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been cooped up so long,’ said the taxi driver on arrival. He was having a wonderful time.
It was a test of post-Seychelles Henry’s tolerance. He was very aware of it, and he passed with flying colours, smiling at the driver and tipping him generously.
‘Thank you very much. Cheep cheep at the price,’ said the taxi driver.
Henry almost asked for the tip back.
As he entered the Café, Greg was in full flow.
‘Good morning, sir. I see the West Coast main line is to be closed for forty miles for repairs. Forty miles!’ he was saying. ‘And how about the underwater cameras the Carmarthen Fishermen’s Federation has installed, eh? Anglers can check on their website for reports on the number, size and swimming direction of the fish. Poor old fish, eh? Don’t stand a chance. Nice turbot today, sir, in beurre blanc sauce, or what else can I get you?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said the customer.
I must talk to Greg about his links, thought Henry.
As he was serving the customer with his drinks, Greg said ‘Hello, stranger’ to Henry.
Leave it out, Greg, thought Henry, but he didn’t say so. He smiled benevolently.
Another customer came in and greeted Greg warmly.
‘Morning, Greg.’
Henry realised with a sinking heart that, in his absence, his beloved establishment had become the Café Greg.
He went into the kitchen, and chatted to the chef, Karen. All was peace. All was calm. There were no temperaments on show, no eruptions.
It was a well-oiled machine, and there was nothing for him to do. This should have pleased him, and it did to an extent, but it also made him uneasy. He felt like a spare prick in his own genitalia.
None of the staff mentioned the adverts. Not once. It was inconceivable that none of them had seen them. Clearly an instruction had gone out, from Michelle probably (who was now larger than ever, and very happily married to the one non-lesbian who had written to her after her TV appearance, so that Greg now referred to her as ‘ecstatic of Edmonton’), ‘Don’t mention the adverts, whatever you do.’
How humiliating.
But none of the customers mentioned them either. Henry was convinced that customers and staff had conferred, had decided that the adverts were so awful that the subject must be avoided at all costs.
It was terrible. It would have been better if somebody had said, ‘Henry, what on earth were you doing agreeing to that crap?’ and he’d have said, ‘Well, it’s in a good cause and who cares?’ and they could all have had a laugh about it.
Henry realised that he had become the sort of restaurant proprietor that he despised – all smiles and no product. Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam. Lovely day. Is everything all right? Excellent. How was Minorca? Oh good. Just occasionally get a chance to serve a customer, from time to time manage to carry a plate so as not to look too idle.
Some of the regular customers had cottoned on to Greg’s hopelessness with acronyms, and deliberately made fun of him, fun of which he was totally oblivious. Just as Peter Stackpool entered, Henry heard a loss adjustor say, ‘What do you think of PVC, Greg?’ and Greg’s reply of ‘I dunno. I haven’t never been on French trains. Can’t afford it on my pay.’
This was Henry’s chance to serve somebody and look busy.
‘Peter!’ he said. ‘What’s it to be today? Let me guess. I know. Ham salad.’
‘Do you know,’ said Peter Stackpool roguishly, ‘I think I’ve been a bit of a stick in the mud. I think that today …’ Henry could see him plucking up his courage. ‘I think that today …’ He spoke with just a touch of devil may care brio. ‘… I just might go for the beef salad.’
This little incident filled Henry with a sense of the joyous absurdity of life. What did it matter if he had made himself look ridiculous? It had been in a good cause. That was what ma
ttered. He felt happy, and at ease with the world. He wanted to laugh out loud at what Peter Stackpool believed to be his courage, but the phone rang and he answered it instead.
‘Good afternoon,’ he enthused. ‘What can I do for you this lovely day?’
‘Henry Pratt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fergus Horncastle, Daily Smear.’
‘What can I do for you, Mr Horncastle?’ He handed the chitty ordering PS’s salad to a passing waitress.
‘Your adverts for Happy Fields chickens, Mr Pratt …’
The man was enjoying himself. Why was he enjoying himself?
‘What about them?’
‘We have it on good authority that the chickens at Happy Fields are battery hens kept in conditions of extreme cruelty.’
‘What???’
‘As an ex-journalist yourself you’ll be able to imagine the headlines. “Top Chef’s Goose is Cooked”, “Not So Clucking Happy After All, says Henrietta”, “Henry the Hypocrite in Henhouse Horror”, “Free Range Henry Faces Battery of Criticism”.’
Henry’s head began to swim. What was all this? Why did he believe immediately that it was true?
Because, he now had to admit to himself, something about Jonathan Cromarty had been nagging him.
The fact that he hadn’t known where the coffee was had been nagging him. He could see the man now, searching for it.
It hadn’t been his kitchen!
He looked round the Café, amazed that lunch was still proceeding so happily, so normally.
‘Are you still there, Henry?’
What makes you think you can call me Henry?
‘Yes. I’m still here, Magnus.’
‘Fergus. We have photographs, Henry.’
‘There must be two chicken farms called “Happy Fields”.’
‘We’ve thought of that. We’ve made exhaustive checks. We can find no trace of another one.’
‘How have you found out about this?’
‘A phone call.’
‘Who from?’
‘Anonymous. We rang 1471. The caller didn’t wish to leave his number.’
‘I bet he didn’t. My “Happy Fields” is in Sussex, near Battle.’