Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  Theresa followed anxiously, legs planted wide apart as she put her head down and charged, feathery skirts billowing around her, hot on my heels as I barged through the back door and lunged across the table for the phone.

  “Marshbank Veterinary Practice?” said a familiar voice as Theresa skidded round the table after me on the lino floor.

  “I need the vet,” I whispered. “Fast.”

  “He’s on a call at the moment. Can I give him a message?”

  “Yes, tell him it’s an emergency. Tell him to get over to Shepherd’s Cottage on the Latimer estate right away, please.”

  I put down the phone. The chick was getting weaker, I could tell, its little yellow body going limp in my hand, eyes half shut. It needed warmth and it needed it quickly. With Mother Theresa still at my feet, nervously shadowing my every move, I hastened to the old solid-fuel Rayburn. I’d cursed it when we’d first arrived, wondering who on earth, in this day and age, was prepared to shovel coke into their cooker, but now I blessed it for its constant heat. I opened the oven door and tentatively put my hands in, cupping my precious bundle. Too hot? Roast chick? I glanced at the mother. Yes, perhaps it was too hot. Maybe I should have left it in the stable where she’d been keeping an eye on it? It had certainly had more movement then.

  “Sorry—sorry,” I whispered, scuttling back outside again.

  Across the yard we hastened, Theresa and I, and into the barn where I lay the chick down on the same patch of hay. Maybe she would sit on it; cover it with her feathery warmth. She didn’t seem inclined to, and after nudging it with her beak in a desultory manner, wandered off to peck in the dirt. I watched her go in horror. No! No, come back! She was sauntering towards the door. Towards the others on the dung heap. Screwing up all my nerve and holding my breath, I lunged—and picked her up. A nasty bundle of brittle bones and feathers squirmed and flapped horribly in my hands, but I held on tight and, at arm’s length, deposited her on her offspring. She gave an indignant squawk and bustled straight off again. I watched her go, impotently.

  “You’ve got to keep it warm,” I begged, brokenly. “It’ll die!”

  She shot me a sharp look and went back to her mates.

  Desperate now, I kneeled over the chick in the hay. I breathed hard on its little yellow body, as if I were misting up a windowpane. I couldn’t actually bring myself to give it the kiss of life, couldn’t—you know, go beak to beak—and it smelled ghastly, like a bad chicken nugget, but I was convinced I was getting somewhere. I was just getting into a rhythm, bending forward on my knees as if at some religious devotion, breathing out with a loud “HUH,” ruffling the feathers, when I became aware of footsteps behind me.

  Pat Flaherty, backlit dramatically by a shaft of sunlight, was marching through the open barn door, a tall silhouette in faded jeans and a white T-shirt, carrying his leather bag.

  “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “Oh, thank God!” I swung round and nearly squashed the chick with my knee. “Ooops—Christ…” I hastily rearranged it in the hay. “Thank goodness you’ve come!”

  “What’s happened?”

  I stumbled to my feet and pointed a quivering finger at the body in the straw. “The chick!”

  He stared. “What?”

  “It’s dying, you must save it!”

  He stooped, picked the chick up, gave it a cursory glance and tossed it in the straw. “It’s dead. What’s the emergency?”

  “Dead?”

  “It’s stone cold, for God’s sake. What’s been going on here?”

  “Oh!” I crouched down and picked it up tenderly. “Then we must bury it. Rufus will want to. Oh, how ghastly!” I sank down on my knees and started to cry.

  “Mrs. Cameron, what exactly did you call me out for?”

  “The chicks,” I sobbed, “they’re all dead. And Cynthia.”

  “Cynthia?”

  “The Silkie. That bloody fox, he’s killed the lot of them!”

  “Well, that’s bad luck,” he said impatiently, “but what d’you want me to do about it?”

  I turned my wet face up. “Well, I thought you could save this one! That’s what you do, isn’t it? Save lives?”

  He looked at me aghast. “You called me out for a chick? I was told something terrible had happened here; assumed, at the very least, a rabid dog had got amongst the sheep and was tearing them limb from limb!”

  “What’ll I tell Rufus?” I trembled.

  “That it’s country life!” he snapped. “Mrs. Cameron, when I got your urgent message I was delivering breeched calf twins, one of which has still yet to be born, but hopefully will be born, no thanks to you!”

  “Oh, so my chickens aren’t as important as someone else’s cow, is that it?” I flared.

  “Of course they’re bloody not!”

  “Why, because they’re not as big?”

  He leaned over me, his dark eyes blazing into mine. “Yes, as it happens. In this instance, size matters.”

  “Well I—”

  “And value, Mrs. Cameron. Ted Parker’s prize heifers are worth a damn sight more than your Easter chicks, I can assure you. This is the second time you’ve called me out on a wild-goose chase. Don’t let it happen again. Good day to you.” He turned on his heel.

  I got up and hastened after him. “Aren’t you even going to look at Cynthia? She’s been decapitated, for God’s sake!”

  “Well then, there’s not much I can do for her, is there? Now instead of running around like a headless chicken yourself, I suggest you shut them up a little earlier. The fox is around at about five o’clock these days.”

  “Shut them up?”

  “Yes, when you put them in for the night.” He threw his bag in the back of his open-topped Land Rover.

  “Oh!” I stopped.

  He turned. “What?”

  “N-no. Nothing.”

  He fixed me with a steely gaze. Took a step towards me. “You don’t shut them up?”

  “Well, I…” I licked my lips, “I sort of assumed they put themselves to bed.”

  He gazed at me in wonder. “Where?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” I looked around desperately. “In the trees?”

  “In the trees?” he echoed. “What, like robins and blackbirds? In cosy little nests, perhaps?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I—”

  “Have you ever seen chickens flying around your garden, Mrs. Cameron? Soaring up into the stratosphere in close formation? Doing loop the loop?”

  “No, but—”

  “Oh, perhaps they climb into the trees, hmm? To get to their nests? Haul themselves up the branches with their spindly little legs?”

  “Well, I’ve seen them roost!” I spluttered. “In the barn, on a high pole!”

  “Yes, in extremis, they will flutter up to roost, but their wings have been clipped so they certainly don’t fly into trees. Where’s your chicken house?”

  I stared at him. “I…don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Well, where do they lay their eggs?”

  I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips. Eggs. Yes, I had wondered about that. I cleared my throat. “I had noticed they didn’t lay, actually, but I assumed it was—well—wrong time of the month, or something.”

  “Wrong time of the month?” He boggled. “Wrong time of the month? These are laying pullets, Mrs. Cameron, not a load of whingeing females with headaches!”

  And with that he turned sharply on his heel and made off round the back of the cottage. I hurried after him. He was heading off down the little dirt track, past the gorse bushes and the muddy paddock, along the long cinder path that led to the Wendy…oh.

  “What the hell d’you think this is?” he said, lifting the little wooden door.

  I swallowed. “Yes, well, I can see now that it is probably a…It’s just that Rufus and I…”

  No. No, don’t tell him what you thought. That they’d stupidly made the door too small for even children to get in, and that we’d
even tried to shove Rufus through one afternoon. “It’s for Lilliputians, like in Gulliver’s Travels!” he’d declared as we’d collapsed, giggling on the grass.

  “Jesus wept.” Pat lifted a flap at the back of the house. A little flap I hadn’t noticed. In a row of small, strawlined boxes, dozens, literally dozens, of eggs twinkled up at us.

  “Oh Lord.” I crept across and stared. “Will they all be stale?”

  “They’ll be a darn sight fresher than any you’d buy at the supermarket. Just make sure they don’t float.”

  “Float?”

  “Yes,” he said impatiently. “Put them in a pan of water. Any stale ones will float to the surface, the rest you can eat.” He lifted another lid. “Ah yes, I thought as much. You’ve got a broody one here. She’s sitting, so if you don’t disturb her, these eggs could hatch.”

  “Oh! You mean, more chicks?”

  “That tends to be the usual pattern,” he said drily. “The cycle of life.”

  “Oh, and this is the hen that went missing ages ago. And she looks just like Cynthia, identical! I could tell Rufus it was her, he’d never know!”

  “Could do,” he eyed me. “Or you could tell him the truth.” He let the lid go with a bang and started off back up the cinder path. I seemed to be forever running after this man.

  “And what time should I put them to bed?”

  He stopped in his tracks, a few feet short of his Land Rover. Turned. I saw his mouth twitch.

  “What time? Well, the moment they’ve had their cocoa and you’ve read them a story, of course.”

  I flushed. “No, I just meant—”

  “Jesus, when it gets dark. But if you’re worried about the fox, a bit earlier for the next couple of days, OK?”

  I nodded. He got in his Land Rover, leaping over the door. I screwed up my eyes and my nerve.

  “One more question,” I breathed.

  He shook his head wearily as he started the engine. “Don’t tell me. No, please, let me guess. How do I get them to have an early night? When I can’t turn off the telly and shoo them upstairs?”

  I nodded mutely, eyes still shut.

  “You herd them in, for God’s sake, with a stick, like wild animals, which brings me to another tiny point.” He twisted round in his seat to face me, crooking a brown forearm over the door, engine still running. “If you anthropomorphise your animals and give them all names, it’s very hard when they die. Particularly for children. If it’s just “the brown one,” or “the white one,” and not—I don’t know,” he waved a despairing hand at a solitary cockerel strolling past—“Cocky Locky?” he hazarded.

  “Nobby,” I muttered.

  “Nobby?”

  “Always on his own. No mates.”

  “Right,” he said faintly. “Well, hopefully that’s one funeral I won’t be called out for. Presumably no one will mind when he bites the dust. All I’m saying is there’s a great temptation to sentimentalise farm animals and it makes it that much harder when they snuff it.”

  “Thank you,” I nodded stiffly. His dark eyes on mine were softer than they were wont to be. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  “Do.” He revved the engine hard and reversed a smart circle in the yard. “And now if you’ll excuse me I’ll get back to Ted Parker’s place and attend to another hormonal female. Stick my hand up that cow’s arse.”

  And with that he sped off up the zigzag track, a cloud of dust shimmering in his wake.

  He had to go and ruin it, didn’t he? I thought, watching him go. Had to—hurl an insult, paint a picture. For a moment there, as he’d been telling me how to make death more bearable for Rufus, I’d almost detected a glimmer of compassion, but then he’d reverted to his usual warts-and-all style of vetting. He should learn, I thought, going back into the cottage and slamming the door behind me, that he was in a service industry, and patients came first. If he wanted to get on in his private practice he should cultivate a few manners!

  Chapter Sixteen

  The following day, I rang Kate and told her the whole sorry tale.

  “Oh dear, poor you. But you know, he’s right, I’m afraid,” she said to my surprise. “You don’t call a vet out for chickens, certainly not baby chicks. My father used to just wring their necks if they were looking a bit dodgy.”

  “No!”

  “They’re not pets, Imogen. You can’t get too attached to farm animals. Where d’you think your M&S Chicken Kiev comes from?”

  “I suppose,” I agreed humbly.

  I couldn’t help thinking she sounded a bit sharp today. It occurred to me that I’d forgotten to return a call she’d left on my answer machine last week and I wondered, guiltily, if she was feeling peeved. “When you’ve got a moment,” the message had said mournfully, and the awful thing was, I hadn’t. Recently, I’d either been painting furiously or running round after the animals. I just hadn’t had time.

  “Rufus must have been upset, though,” she went on in a gentler tone, perhaps regretting her no-nonsense approach.

  “Yes, he was, but actually he was more furious than anything else. He spent the whole of last night setting traps for the fox.”

  Nevertheless, when he’d come home from school, his face had gone white.

  “What, all of them? He killed them all, and Cynthia too?”

  “I’m afraid so, darling,” I’d said anxiously, twisting my hands. “But the vet says it was all terribly quick, they wouldn’t have known anything about it.”

  I didn’t go into the last, dying moments of one particular chick, whose life had been needlessly protracted by a crazy woman shoving it in hot ovens and suffocating it with halitosis.

  “Bastard,” he’d said, changing colour again.

  “Rufus!”

  “Well, he is. I want to kill him.” And taking his frog in a jam jar, he’d stormed out of the kitchen, tears stinging his eyes, to see the rest of the hens.

  Luckily I’d had the presence of mind—and the courage, I felt—to dispose of Cynthia’s headless body. With the protection of a pair of Marigold gloves I’d put her first in a dustbin, then, panicking that she’d honk and the fox would come back, had plucked her from the potato peelings and taken her, arms outstretched, appalled face screwed up and averted, to the cow’s field, where, much to the interest of the cows who clustered round, I’d dug a hole, panting and sweating and wielding a pickaxe, the ground was so hard (and this a woman who was more used to wielding a handbag as she sauntered down Putney High Street), thereby disposing of the evidence. Thus it was that now, when Rufus went out to the yard, he found the remaining chickens pecking away quite happily, callously unconcerned that their numbers were reduced.

  He was gone for about half an hour, I think for a cry, and then ran back inside to use the phone. Ten minutes later, I looked out of the kitchen window to see Tanya, in a yellow T-shirt and blue leggings, running down the hill and leaping across the stream in the pit of the valley, with what looked like a length of rope in her hands. When I popped out a bit later, I found the pair of them in the barn, right on top of the huge haystack: Tanya was on Rufus’s shoulders, swaying precariously as she slung one end of the rope over a rafter, the other end tied in a noose, which draped on the floor. Through this, apparently, the fox would put his head in order to get to one very dead, maggoty magpie that one of Tanya’s brothers had caught and which was lying in state in a shoe box, whereupon the noose would tighten, and the fox strangle. I had my doubts and wondered nervously what Health and Safety would have to say about it all, but Tanya claimed huge success with the contraption, as I now told Kate.

  “Sounds like Rufus has really landed on his feet,” she observed. “Found a new best friend already.”

  “Oh, no, he really misses Orlando,” I said quickly. “He said so the other day. It’s just that, well, you know, a new boy on the block is always a novelty. Tanya will probably go back to her old friends next week.”

  “And he’s in all the teams?” Kate probed. “At school?”
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  “They don’t exactly have teams, Kate. Dan—Mr. Hunter thinks nine is terribly young to have organised cricket and football. He thinks ten is a much better age, and favours balls skills at this stage, which Rufus loves because he’s not always last, or left out, and actually he’s getting much better. He plays football all the time now, whereas before he didn’t because he thought he was hopeless at it. Mr. Hunter thinks there’s plenty of time for competitive sport.”

  “Mr. Hunter will be sprouting wings and a halo soon. You haven’t got a thing about him, have you?”

  “Certainly not!” I blushed furiously, fervently wishing I hadn’t rung Kate at what was clearly a prickly moment. “He’s Rufus’s headmaster, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Didn’t stop Ursula Moncrief, did it?” she retorted. “Remember poor Mr. Pritchard at the school ball?”

  I giggled, recalling Ursula Moncrief at the Carrington House school ball, pissed as a fart in an off-the-shoulder dress that was more like off-the-elbow, nuzzling into Mr. Pritchard’s neck and taking little nips at it as he manoeuvred her nervously round the floor to “Lady in Red,” his eyes huge with fear.

  “Yes, well, there’s no danger of that. A ball is the last thing this little backwater of a school is likely to hold.”

  “Damn. That’s the doorbell. Can you hang on?”

  “’Course,” I agreed, relieved she’d been deflected, particularly since she had, rather annoyingly, scored a bit of a bull’s-eye. I was aware that I did have a very tiny crush on Mr. Hunter, and that in my duller moments, while I was cleaning my brushes, or rubbing down my palette, had found my mind turning to him. Not in any nasty lustful way, of course, more—well, more in a maternal way, if anything. I was pretty sure he was younger than me and he had such gentle eyes and soft springy hair, and that tatty old corduroy jacket that even I, who didn’t have a domestic bone in my body, was itching to patch at the elbows. A couple of those leather ones would suit him, I thought; give him an academic air. They sold them in the local department store in town, and the other day, I’d found myself lingering in haberdashery, fondling them. It was only because he’d been so kind to Rufus I’d reasoned as I’d left the shop—happily minus the elbow patches—given us such marvellous advice about the bullying, for which I was so grateful. So grateful that I did, actually, make what I regarded to be an entirely legitimate gesture—albeit an impulsive one—and gathered a huge bunch of bluebells from the woods behind the cottage, dropping them off at school one morning when I knew everyone was in assembly, on his desk, with a note of thanks. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten his assembly notes and popped back in the room just as I was going.