After we’d given back the suit that we borrowed for my confirmation, we examined the present that Miss Flanagan had given me. “An old hen with four scrawny chicks is hardly a fitting gift for someone who lives in a street,” Ma said, peering into the chest which housed the chirping brood. “Ah, they’ll be all right,” volunteered Grandpa as he stroked one of the yellow chicks with his gnarled finger. “Sure won’t they give us eggs later on. There’s nothing as nice as eggs from hens that you’re friendly with. Hens that see the sunlight and scratch the earth, not like those unfortunate creatures that are kept in cages and lay eggs on to conveyor belts. Zombies they are, that produce miserable eggs with no taste or colour.” Ma snorted and put the lid back on the tea chest. “With our luck they’ll probably all turn out to be cocks. If we sell them now we’ll get a few bob for them.” “No!” I protested. “They’re mine. Miss Flanagan gave them to me.” “Well, you look after them,” said Ma. “And if there’s a hint of hen shit gets into the house, they’re gone.” “We will,” enthused Grandpa. “We’ll look after them, Jim and me. Come on, lad.” He lifted the chest and its protesting contents out into the yard. Our tiny back yard consisted of a small cobbled square with a turf shed, and outdoor lavatory and an ash-pit. With a few yards of wire we rigged up a makeshift hen-run between the ash-pit and the shed and, by turning the tea-chest on its side and nailing some sacking over it, made an admirable hen house. We carved ‘1956’ on to one of the wooden posts to remind us that our chicken farm started in my confirmation year. With great pride Grandpa and I tended our livestock. We went to the library and borrowed books on the care and feeding of poultry. We dreamed of building up our stock and eventually having a huge poultry farm in the country with loads of people working for us. “You’re filling the lad’s head with nonsense,” muttered Ma. “Just wait,” Grandpa said patiently. "Just you wait until we’re eating scrambled eggs fit for a king. And what harm is there in having dreams anyway? Isn’t life drab enough? Now,” he turned to me, “we’ll need scraps. Plenty of scraps.” Thus, each day after school, I called on the neighbours who willingly scraped their leftovers into my new bucket. We watched our flock thrive, though I was sorry when the chicks lost their yellow fluff. One evening Ma came home in a fury. We knew we were in trouble when we heard the door slam. “Begging!” she stormed. Grandpa was frying sausages on the stove and I was setting the table. We looked up, startled. Ma threw her headscarf on the sofa. “Begging,” she said again and dealt me a stinging blow on the ear. “Mrs Quinn asked me today if the hens were doing well on her scraps. I was never so embarrassed.” “Leave the chap alone,” put in Grandpa, standing in front of me. “There’s no harm in what he did. And, anyway, I put him up to it.” “Of course it was you,” shouted Ma, shifting her venom to Grandpa. “What else do you put him up to when my back is turned?” Ma’s back was always turned. She worked long hours for little money in a pottery factory and came home in the evenings tired and irritable. To preserve her sanity, as she put it, she had what she called her ‘hope jug’ on the dresser. Into this went any spare cash which might be left over at the end of the week. When a decent sum had accumulated, we’d take a trip on the train or a night at the pictures. But mostly the money would be used to pay some bill and we’d have to start over again. I often wished that the jug would suddenly get full and Ma would laugh and wear a nice dress. One morning a letter came for Ma. Grandpa examined it closely, his bald head bent over it as he stood at the window. “What class of a stamp is that?” he asked me. “I can’t make it out.” “It’s American,” I said. I knew that because a friend had once let me see his stamp album in exchange for a dead frog. “American, begob!” exclaimed Grandpa. “Who’d be writing to your mother from America?” He shook the letter and held it to the light and, when neither action revealed the contents, he stuck it behind the clock on the mantelpiece. All day he kept glancing at the envelope, wondering aloud about it. “There’s a letter for you,” he shouted eagerly to Ma before she’d even closed the door. “From America.” She noted his childish curiosity and, trying to conceal her own excitement, said, “I’ll read it later.” Grandpa was defeated. “Come on, lad,” he poked me in the chest. “We’ll feed our livestock.” Since I’d been banned from ‘begging’, Grandpa picked up a bucket of scraps each day from the pub. They sometimes smelled of stale beer, but our fowl were fat and happy. Three of the chickens had grown into sturdy hens, but it was the cock that was our pride and joy. His tail rose in a graceful arc of blues and greens. His russet plumage glistened like polished mahogany brightening the drab little yard. Grandpa and I would spend ages leaning against the wire watching ‘Alfred the Great’, as we called him, strutting with majestic superiority. “Lord, but he’s a beauty,” Grandpa sighed with awe. “Look at the dignity of the fellow. He’d make a great fighter, given a pair of spurs and a good opponent.” He laughed at my horrified face and ruffled my hair. The whole street had got to hear about Alfred and there was often a group of Grandpa’s cronies gathered in admiration at the hen-house when I’d come in from school. My own pals bribed me with sweets and comics for glimpses of the famous fowl. “This place is like a bloody zoo,” said Ma. “Throw in a monkey and we could charge people.” On the day of the letter, she teased Grandpa’s curiosity until after tea. “We’re having a visitor,” she said finally, folding the damp tea-towel on a rail over the range. “Who?” asked Grandpa. “Uncle Joe,” she replied, taking the letter from her pocket. “Oh him,” scoffed Grandpa. “Is it him who wrote that letter? God, and there was me thinking it was from someone important.” Ma let the insult pass. She always spoke of Uncle Joe with the same tone of voice she used when speaking of our betters – people with full ‘hope jugs. Uncle Joe was actually my grandmother’s brother who’d gone to America years and years ago – I don’t think my mother had ever even met him, but he was always held up by both herself and her mother as an example of someone who’d ‘got on’. ‘Getting on’ was an important phrase in Ma’s vocabulary. She constantly hoped that, some day, she would rise above her present station – that there was something around the corner that would release us into a world of plenty. “Old rip,” Grandpa snorted between puffs on his pipe. “He didn’t even come to your mother’s funeral. What does he want coming back now?” “He wants to see the old home in Cork and to look up relatives.” “Humpf,” said Grandpa. “The only relatives he’ll find fly about on dark nights.” The next couple of weeks were spent in a flurry of preparation for the visiting uncle. Grandpa was scathing of the fuss. “He’s only an ordinary mortal like ourselves,” he muttered, as he was made to clear out the old magazines and newspapers he’d accumulated under the cushions of his chair. “He is not,” snapped Ma. “He’s got money and a big house. Not like certain members of the family.” But Grandpa just laughed. “And for heaven’s sake, put in your teeth,” Ma hissed. It was around this time that Alfred began to crow his full raucous cry in the mornings. Some of the neighbours complained. “You’ll get used to it,” Grandpa told them. “Can you not think of anything nicer than being wakened by such a noble creature?” The people on our street were early risers anyway since they mostly worked in Ma’s factory or else in the furniture plant on the far side of town, so the complaints faded after a day or so. “Listen to that,” Grandpa would say. “Just listen to the music of that great bird. Close your eyes, lad, and imagine yourself in the heart of the country.” I’d close my eyes, but I could never imagine the countryside. I suppose because I’d never been there. I painted a picture of Alfred one night. I mixed red with the brown to get the body colour right, then I painted swirls of blue and green running into each other for the tail. “That’s tremendous,” said Grandpa. “You’ve even got the proud tilt of his head. We must hang this up.” “Not on my clean wall, you won’t,” said Ma, looking up from mending curtains. “Hang it in your room.” On the Saturday before our visitor was due Ma surprised me by giving me money to go to the matinee in the Odeon. I didn’t ask why, I just ran to round up some pals before she changed her mind. I had sixpence and, by going to the fourpenny seats, I had enough left over to buy sweets. It was a John Wayne film with plenty of action and only a couple of love bits, during which we flicked sweet papers up into the beam of light from the projectionists box. Ma was polishing the brass on the front door when I got home. She was wearing a red scarf tied turban-style around her head. “Well, Jimmy,” she said, pushing my fringe off my forehead with a hand that smelled of Brasso. “Was it a good film?” “It was great,” I enthused. I liked it when she was in a soft mood. I began to tell her about the film but a neighbour stopped to talk. “Getting ready for the big visit?” she asked Ma. “I’ll tell you about the pictures later, Ma,” I said, moving by her to go indoors. “Jimmy,” began Ma as I stepped into the hall. I half turned and saw a sort of helpless look on her face as the neighbour leaned against the wall, settling in for a long conversation. Probably wanted to tell me to wipe my feet. I looked at the soles of my boots, but they were clean. I ran out the back door to the hen run. The four hens were clucking peacefully and scratching through the straw Grandpa had put down. There was no sign of Alfred. “Here Alf. Chuck chuck,” I called. Lazy beggar was probably asleep in the hut. We’d had to build a bigger hut since the tea-chest had got too small for the five of them. “Come out, you silly creature. I have a bun for you.” I climbed over the wire and looked into the hut, but he wasn’t there. I glanced anxiously around, trying not to panic. He couldn’t have flown over the wire; Grandpa had got advice on the right height to have it before he put it up. Perhaps Grandpa had taken him to show him off somewhere. He was always bragging to his mates about Alfred the Great. He probably had him down at the pub this minute, stuffing him with tit-bits and causing no end of a stir. “Dear Lord, let Grandpa have him,” I breathed as I ran up the stairs to make sure. Grandpa was sitting on the chair beside his bed. There was a smell of drink. He looked up, startled as I burst in the door. “Grandpa, where’s Alfred? I can’t find him. I thought you might have him. He must have got out. Come on, we must find him.” Grandpa rose from the chair and reached towards me. He looked old and strange. I backed away, trying to keep my panic at bay. “She had it done by the time I got back,” he said shakily, as though he’d rehearsed the lines. “Told me to go for a pint for myself, that she had a lot to do and that I’d be under her feet.” “Had what done? What are you talking about, Grandpa? Where’s Alfred?” The implications of what he was saying hit me like a blow. I ran down the stairs. “Wait, Jimmy,” Grandpa called, but I ignored him and ran out to the yard. I pulled open the shed door and found Alfred. He was hanging by his feet from a hook on the wall, his eyes closed and blood dripping from his beak on to newspaper which was spread on the floor. “Oh no! Oh Christ no!” I cried and snatched him from his gallows. His body was still warm and I cradled him in my arms, willing him back to life. “Leave it, lad,” Grandpa touched my shoulder and I jerked away, causing the cock’s broken neck to flop across my arm. Alfred was well and truly dead. By now Ma had joined us. Her face registered the horror of what she had done. “Jimmy,” she began. “Why did you do this?” I sobbed, still cradling the lifeless bird. “Why did you have to kill him?” Because I could see that she was sorry I became fearlessly assertive. “You were jealous because I loved him more than I love you. Well, I did and I always will. I hate you,” I snarled. “You spoil everything. I really hate you.” I buried my face in the cock’s plumage and wished that I could die too. “Easy, lad,” Grandpa took the dead bird from me and helped me to my feet. Ma was in tears now. She stretched a hand towards me, but I pushed her away. “I did it for the best,” she said weakly. “I meant well.” “You meant well!” I exploded. “You killed the thing that I loved – that Grandpa and me loved, and you meant well!” “Take it easy, Jimmy,” Grandpa said soothingly, and he put his arm around Ma’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said to her. “You’re siding with her!” I cried angrily. “She killed our Alfred and you’re siding with her. You’re as bad as she is.” I wanted to wring both their necks and leave them hanging by their feet, to lock the shed door and go away and never see them again. I ran up to my room and wiped my eyes and nose on the bed-cover. It wasn’t really my room. Grandpa and I shared the larger of the two bedrooms, but Ma had made a curtain which effectively divided the room in two. I knelt on my bed and looked out the window at the backyards and labyrinth of lanes which stretched in higgeldy-piggeldy patterns of grey. Somewhere out there was a world where people didn’t have to kill the things they loved. The dreams we had dreamt through Alfred disappeared like spit on candyfloss. I tore down the painting I’d done and crumpled it into a ball. I pretended not to hear Grandpa’s wheezing entry; he always got like that when he moved any faster than his usual shuffle. “She really did mean well,” he said, and I felt the weight shift as he sat on my bed. “She wants to impress this uncle with a fine meal. She thinks ... she thinks he’ll be able to help you to get on later, when you’re older. That he’ll be able to take you away from all this and give you a chance to make something of yourself.” I didn’t answer. I licked away a tear that had reached the corner of my mouth. “That’s why she wants to give him a day to remember. You can’t do that with half a pound of mince or a fatty stew. Try to understand, Jimmy. It’s for you she did it.” We sat in silence for a few minutes. Then Grandpa sighed and shuffled out, closing the door softly. It broke my heart to see Alfred stuffed and buttered, ready for the oven. “I won’t eat a scrap of it,” I said to Grandpa. “Me neither,” he said, washing the anti-woodwormed cupboard smell off the good china. The kitchen table had been brought into the front room, a neighbour’s white table-cloth spread over it. The hope jug had been emptied to buy fiddly little extras. There were paper napkins neatly folded in each set place and a rose in a small vase graced the centre. The room looked foreign and unfamiliar. Grandpa paced uncomfortably in his Sunday suit and white shirt with the stiff collar. “Why can’t I meet him as I normally am?” he pleaded. “I don’t want this fellow to think that I go around like this all the time.” “You must look your best,” insisted Ma. “First impressions matter. And please,” she added, “please keep your teeth in.” Grandpa pursed his lips to accommodate the hated dentures. Alfred sizzled, the potatoes simmered, the clock ticked and Ma fussed. She had been up since all hours giving the place a final cleaning. “Comb your hair,” she said to me. “I’ve done it twice already,” I protested. “Well, do it again. He’ll be here any moment.” “Here he comes,” said Grandpa, standing at the window. “Come away from the window,” whispered Ma. “We don’t want him to think that we’ve been looking out for him.” “And what have we been doing for the past three hours?” Grandpa rolled his eyes heavenward and followed her to the door. The car which pulled up outside was not the big, pretentious car we’d expected, but a hired Morris Eight. Nevertheless, it was a car and, in the fifties in our street, that was a rarity. Ma glanced proudly along the street where she knew the neighbours would be watching the arrival of our important visitor. The driver’s door opened and a small, thin man got out. His pale grey suit was creased. He wore thick, round glasses that made his eyes look owlish. From where we stood at the door, Grandpa and I watched him embrace Ma. “So, that’s the big, important Yank,” snorted Grandpa, who’d never met him before, even though he was his brother-in-law. “Did I have to dress up for that little runt?” He gave a suppressed guffaw and nudged me in the back. Uncle Joe sat in the best armchair, nursing a sherry in a borrowed glass and gazed at us myopically. Talk was forced and I knew Grandpa was disappointed he hadn’t been offered a big cigar, something which we’d associated with rich Americans. This one didn’t even smoke a cigarette. “You’ll excuse me now, Uncle Joe,” Ma said. “I’ll see to dinner.” When we were all seated at the table, she came in bearing the golden brown Alfred on a serving dish. She looked at me as she placed it on the table. A look of apology. Grandpa caught my eye and nodded to reassure me. I won’t cry, I thought. I very definitely will not cry. “Will you carve, Father?” she looked intently at Grandpa. Father! I’d never heard her call him that before. Grandpa hesitantly took the carving knife and gazed for a moment at Alfred. Then, touched by Ma’s sense of ceremony, he turned to our guest. “Are you a leg or a breast man?” he asked. Uncle Joe spread a bony hand over his plate and looked up over his glasses at Grandpa. “Not for me, thank you,” he said. “No meat. I’m a vegetarian.” “Huh?” Grandpa’s mouth dropped open. He looked at our guest and then looked at Alfred, the carving knife and fork poised. A look of anger crossed his face. “This bird,” he began. “If you knew ... “ He stopped, sat down and smiled. “Me too,” he said. “I’m a vegetarian too. Me and Jim here.” I didn’t know what a vegetarian was, but if Grandpa said I was one then it must be OK. “What about yourself?” he asked Ma. I could see that Ma was perplexed. I wanted to shout at her that she’d killed Alfred for nothing and that I hated her even more. Her face softened as she looked at me again, and I understood. With her shabby green dress which had been ironed so much that it shone, and the borrowed crockery and table-cloth and the impressive meal, this was her practical way of trying to fulfil a different set of dreams for me. She touched my hand and smiled. “I think I’ll stick with the vegetables too,” she said. Alfred lay untouched on the table all during the dinner. Like an extra guest. We saw Uncle Joe off later that evening. Grandpa put his teeth in his pocket as the car disappeared down the street, and looked at the box of chocolates Ma was holding. She’d brought them into the street so that the neighbours would see that our guest had not come empty-handed. “A miserable box of chocolates,” Grandpa grunted. Ma chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind but he ate most of them himself.” Grandpa and I buried Alfred, stuffing and all, in the soft bit of ground beside the ash-pit. Ma gave us a daffodil to plant over him.
© 2008 Mary Arrigan. Design: Kaelleon Design Ltd.