A Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  1. Still beautiful.

  2. He loved her once so could fall for her again.

  3. More likely to now he’s in such close proximity.

  4. Light years ahead of you socially (charm, savoir faire, confidence, etc.).

  Under “Shouldn’t Worry” I’d written:

  1. All over years ago.

  2. People don’t go backwards.

  3. No one shits on their own doorstep.

  4. He’s your husband, for crying out loud!

  I stared at the second list. At number four. Yes. Of course. Hannah was right. I was being ridiculous. Quite, ridiculous. Suddenly I felt stupid for making such a scene in front of her. Well, thank God it was only Hannah, I thought, tearing the paper off the pad and scrunching it up. Only my sister. Thank God I hadn’t got it all off my chest while Eleanor was still here, before she’d swung a leg over Cracker. I imagined her astonished face as I let rip, saw her hazel eyes widen. Then I imagined her telling Piers about it later over supper—“You know, darling, I’m really rather worried about her.” I got up quickly from the table and threw the ball of paper in the bin. Then I took it out, tore it into shreds, and threw it back again. I stared at the bits of paper lying there on the lettuce, the act of someone who had something to hide. Hurriedly, I fished the bits out, scrunched them into a tiny ball and glanced around the kitchen for a match. No matches. On an impulse, I put the ball in my mouth. And then, through the open doorway, I caught sight of myself in the hall mirror, trying to swallow. Slowly, I took the ball of paper from my mouth and dropped it in the bin. I bowed my head and stood for a moment, in silent contemplation.

  After a few moments, I made myself walk calmly to the cupboard under the stairs. As I crouched down and drew out my comfort blanket, I noticed my hand was shaking. I stared at it. Made a fist. What was happening to me? Why was I behaving like this? And what about that leaf I was going to turn over, the one that would make me all confident and classy, all shiny and new? As I straightened up, my duffel bag of paints over my shoulder, I couldn’t help feeling it was offering some fairly weighty resistance.

  ***

  Later, as I stood at my easel in the orchard, knowing I had barely an hour before I collected Rufus, which wasn’t nearly long enough, but knowing too that this was the only way to clear my head and banish the demons, I calmed down a bit. It wasn’t hard, actually. Although I was loath to admit it, there really was something about this place; something about capturing the movement of nature—those beech trees, for example, their delicate lime-green leaves casting lacy patterns on the grass, or the chestnuts with their heavy swirling skirts and secret depths—about responding immediately to light and colour that was so exhilarating, so exciting, it almost took my breath away. It left no space in my head for gnawing doubts.

  I worked quickly, my brush moving in swift, confident strokes across the board, until I reached the point—and it came quicker outdoors—when my strokes were less measured, more impulsive, and I entered that heavenly phase where I almost lost consciousness and painted from instinct, the paint seeming to fly by itself on to the canvas, giving depth to clouds, trees, hillsides, in a way that later, as I came up for air and blinked at what I’d done, made me giddy with pleasure.

  Occasionally, during one of these moments of oblivion, the inevitable happened: a splash would fall on my nose, then another, then finally one on my canvas, and by the time I’d come to my senses and unscrewed the board from the easel, hurrying across the meadow with it face down, desperate to get it back to the cottage, the skies were opening.

  Today, it was the wind that was against me. I hunched my back against a strong north-westerly and impatiently brushed hair from my eyes as it whipped around my face. Occasionally a leaf stuck to the canvas, sometimes even a feather. A feather? I picked it off and carried on, but then another one landed on my palette, and another. I frowned as I removed them with my nails from the swirl of Prussian Blue, and surfaced sufficiently from my creative reverie to wonder where they were coming from. I glanced around. Stared. A horrific scene met my eyes. A large hen—Cynthia, one of my precious Silkies—lay about twenty feet away, decapitated.

  I froze, paintbrush poised, transfixed. Then, hastily chucking my palette on the grass, I fled across, both hands clutching my mouth. Omigod, omigod! I glanced around in terror. I wondered if there were more. Had he killed them all—for he, I was sure, was the fox—and had he left them all in the same sorry state as my lovely lady Cynthia? Heart pounding, I tore round to the compost heap where I knew they liked to hang out, gossiping and jostling, and saw, to my intense relief, that a fair-sized squad was perched on top, pecking at the grubs and worms as usual. Most of them were there, surely? I counted feverishly. Ten, eleven, twelve…no. There should be fourteen. Cynthia was one, but another was missing. The big brown hen, Mother Theresa, and—oh sweet Jesus—the chicks!

  I rushed to the barn where Theresa often retreated, preferring its dark cavernous shade and shelter for her babies, and as I adjusted my eyes to the gloom I saw her, at the foot of the hay bales, keeping watch over a dead chick, all the others missing. Oh Christ, had they all been…? I looked at her. Her dark, button eyes communed silently with mine. Oh dear God, they’d all been taken, eaten, except this one little scrap, this chick, which…yes. I crouched. It was still moving. It was still alive! To the hen’s consternation, I picked it up, took one last tortured look around—no, all gone, all of them—and ran, with it cupped in my hands, to the house. What would Rufus say? Oh, what would he say? I had to save one. I had to!

  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 i
t 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 Go
d’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.”