Guilty One

12

Early dawn and Daniel was in the chicken shed.

The first ground frost of autumn, and his fingers were stiff with the cold. The day opened lazily to him as he inhaled the smell of the shed, chill with frost but warmed by feather and straw. Minnie was asleep. He had heard her snoring above the sound of her alarm as he made his way downstairs. In the living room, a drink had spilled on the piano top. It had dried to a white stain, like a large blister on the wood.

Now he was outside as she lay unconscious, carefully going about his chores. He felt strange: bereft, alone, cruel – like a falcon he had seen on his way to school one day, on a post, intent, dismembering a field mouse.

He didn’t know where his mother was. It felt as if she had been stolen.

Daniel picked up a warm brown egg. He was about to place it in the cardboard tray which she had left out for him, as always, on the kitchen bunker. He felt it hard inside his palm. His palmsensed the vulnerability of the egg. His palm knew the shell-skin and the liquid yolk it contained, the suspended promise of chick.

Without meaning to, almost so that his palm could feel the sharp nip of broken shell and the cloying run of albumen, Daniel squeezed the egg and crushed it. The yolk ran through his fingers like blood.

He felt a flush of heat suddenly: nape of his neck and small of his back. He picked up one egg after another and squeezed. His fingertips dripped clear drops of this small violence into the straw.

As if in protest, the hens ran from him, squawking displeasure. Daniel kicked at one hen but it flew in his face, a mad red flutter. Daniel lunged at the hen, his fingers still slick with the eggs. He pinned it to the ground and smiled as he felt its wing snap under his weight. He sat up on his knees. The bird clucked and stumbled, in a circle, trailing its broken wing. Its beak opened and shut, without voice.

Daniel waited for a moment, breathing hard. The shriek of the chickens behind him made the hairs stand up on his arms. Slowly, methodically, as if he was folding socks, Daniel tried to tear one wing from the chicken. Its open beak and frantic tongue appalled him and so he broke its neck. He leaned on the chicken and pulled its head away from its body.

The chicken was still, blood in its bead eye.

Daniel tripped as he left the run. He fell on his elbows and the chicken blood on his hands touched his face. He got up and walked into the house with the blood on his cheek and the feathers of the bird he had killed still clinging to his trainers and fingers.

She was awake and filling the kettle when he entered. She was standing with her back to him, her dirty dressing gown hanging to her calves. She had the radio on and was humming to a pop song. He first thought to start up the stairs to the bathroom but found himself rooted to the spot. He wanted her to turn and see him, soiled with his violence.

‘What on earth?’ she said, with a smile on her face, when she turned.

Maybe it was the feather that clung to his trainer or the bright yellow of the yolk that was now smeared on his cheek with the chicken’s blood. Minnie’s lips tightened and she pushed past him out into the yard. He watched her from the back door as she stood with one hand over her mouth at the entrance to the shed.

She came back in the house and he watched her face for rage, horror, disappointment. She wouldn’t look at him. She thumped up the stairs and appeared moments later in her grey skirt and her man’s boots and the old sweatshirt that she wore when she was cleaning. He stood right at the bottom of the stairs, the egg and blood drying on his hands, making the skin tight and dry. He stood in her path, expecting punishment, wanting punishment.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at him for the first time.

‘Clean yourself up,’ was all she said.

She pushed past him again and out into the yard.

From the bathroom window, he watched her collecting the broken shells and soiled straw. He scrubbed his hands and face then stood watching her work. He took the feather from his trainer and stood looking out of the window, holding it between finger and thumb. He let the feather fall, dizzy but trusting, into the wind, as he saw her making her way back to the house. She carried the dead chicken by its feet. The neck of the chicken swung loose with every step she took.

He stayed upstairs, under the bedcovers, then in the cupboard as she worked downstairs. His stomach began to rumble as the heat and energy of the morning left him. He felt cold and pulled his cuffs over his hands. He stepped out of the cupboard and stood looking at himself in the mirror he had cracked only a week before.

Evil little bastard, he remembered again. He looked at his face, the fragments of it mismatched. He felt his heart beat harder. He stood at the top of the stairs and then sat down there, listening to the sounds she was making in the kitchen. Blitz made his way upstairs and stood panting, looking at him. Daniel reached up to stroke the dog’s velvet ears. Blitz allowed it for a moment, then turned and made his way back downstairs. Daniel edged forward, on to the middle step, then to the bottom where he stood holding onto the post of the banister. It was ten minutes before he mustered the courage to stand at the door of the kitchen.

‘I don’t even want to look at you,’ she said, still with her back turned to him.

‘Are you angry?’

‘No, Danny,’ she said, turning round to face him. She stood with tight lips and her chest puffed out. ‘But I feel very sad. Very sad indeed.’

Her eyes were a fierce, intense blue and watery and too wide. Her face seemed to loom before him, even though she was standing on the other side of the kitchen. Daniel sighed and hung his head.

She pulled out a chair for him.

‘Sit there. I have a job for you.’

He sat where she asked. She brought a large chopping board with the dead chicken on it and placed it before him.

‘Here’s what you do,’ she said, holding the chicken roughly and ripping the feathers from it. She tore and tore again and soon there was a bare patch of skin, pimpled and white.

‘This murdered bird is our dinner,’ she said. ‘We need it plucked before we can gut it and roast it.’

Minnie stood over him and watched as he took a grasp of the soft feathers, the red of them giving to grey at the root as he pulled them into his fist.

‘Rip,’ she said, ‘rip hard.’

Daniel pulled too hard and the skin came away with the feathers, leaving a scalded mark on the flesh.

‘Like this,’ she said, pushing his hand away and tearing off a clutch of feathers again, leaving the soft white, pimpled skin beneath. ‘Can you do that?’

Daniel was embarrassed to feel his throat tighten and his eyes moisten. He nodded and opened his mouth to speak to her.

‘I don’t want to,’ he said, in a whisper.

‘She didn’t want to die, but you crippled her and then killed her. Do it, do it right now.’

She had her back to him and as she spoke she slammed a glass on to the wooden work surface. Daniel heard the chink, klink of her ice cubes and the weak peeing sound of the Jif lemon, which she added when she didn’t have money or mind for real lemons. The sobering heaviness of the gin bottle being uncapped caused Daniel to shiver and he did as she asked. More gently this time, he gripped the feathers of the bird and ripped. The sudden baldness of the bird was startling.

When the bird was plucked, Daniel sat with feathers sticking to his fingers and the pimpled chicken before him. He wanted to leave, to run outside and across the Dandy and twirl the swings away from the little children. He wanted to return to the wardrobe, to feel its close, dark embrace. The smell of the plucked dead chicken made him feel sick.

Minnie took the bird and cut it from between its thighs. It was a rough, hard slit and Daniel could feel the strength that she put into it. She reached inside and Daniel watched her thick, red hand disappear.

‘You have to reach up inside, as far as you can until you can feel the solid lump – the gizzard. Get a firm grip on that and pull, gently and slowly. Everything should come out together, mind. Here! You try, I don’t want to do it for you.’

‘I don’t want to.’ Daniel heard his own voice as whining.

‘Don’t be a baby.’ She had never scorned him before, but he heard that in her voice now.

Leaning over the sink, the basin trembling beneath him, Daniel inserted his hand into the bloody insides of the chicken.

‘Don’t worry too much about the lungs,’ Minnie said. ‘They tend to stay stuck to the carcass.’

Daniel felt sick but he tried to grab the warm entrails and pull them. With each pull his own stomach tightened and bile rose in his throat. When finally he was able to pull forth the dark red slime, he stepped back as his own guts spewed on to the floor along with the bird’s.

Daniel bent over and vomited on to the kitchen floor. He had not eaten, and so his vomit was thin, yellow liquid that splashed on to the guts of the bird.

‘It’s all right,’ said Minnie. ‘I’ll sort it. You go and clean yourself up.’

*

In the bathroom, Daniel dry-heaved into the bowl, then sat slumped against the wall. The butterfly smiled at him from the shelf. He felt wretched. He felt like a snail cut from its shell. He washed his face in cool water and dried it with a face cloth, then brushed his teeth until the taste of the sick was gone.

He waited a few minutes before going back into the kitchen. He felt strange, as if he didn’t want to leave the bathroom. He felt like he did in the bathroom at home when one of them was hurting his mother. He had the same dark soup of scared in his stomach and the same itch in his muscles.

Carefully, Daniel unlocked the door and stood at the top of the stairs. He went to bed with his clothes on, but didn’t sleep. He listened intently to the sounds of her in the kitchen. The oven opening and closing, her footsteps crossing the floor, her words to Blitz and then the sound of Blitz’s food being poured into his bowl.

‘You were up there for ages,’ Minnie said when she saw him. ‘I was almost coming up after you. It’s after two, and you haven’t had any breakfast. Are you hungry now?’

Daniel shook his head.

‘But you’ll eat. Sit down.’

Daniel sat at the table and looked at the dumb placemat with a pony on it.

She had roasted the chicken and carved it. Slices of breast sat on his plate next to the tinned sweetcorn and boiled potatoes.

‘Eat it.’

‘Don’t want it.’

‘You’ll eat it.’

‘I don’t want it.’ He pushed his plate away.

‘You can murder it, so you’ll take responsibility. You’ll eat it. You’ll know it’s dead and its goodness is inside you.’

‘I won’t eat it.’

‘You’ll sit here and I’ll sit here until you’ve eaten it.’ Minnie placed her drink hard on the table. The ice shuddered in protest.

They sat until her drink finished. He thought she would get up and refill it and that would have been his cue to leave, but she let the glass lie dry before her. She looked at him and blinked slowly. Time started to grow on them, like moss on the stones in the yard. Daniel looked at the cold chicken and vegetables on the plate and wondered if he could swallow them like pills.

‘What if I eat the vegetables, like?’

‘You’re a bright lad, so why do you ask that? You know I don’t care if you touch the vegetables, but I’ll have you eat every morsel of the bird that you killed. Those birds are my living, but that’s not why I’m angry. You know I eat the birds when it’s their time. I care for them and love them and yes, we do eat them, but they are killed in a proper way, not out of violence, not out of hate or anger. This one’s dead and we won’t waste it, but I want you to know it’s dead because of you, because of what you did. If it weren’t we would have its eggs tomorrow. I know that you’ve had a hard time, Danny, and any time you like you can talk to me about it. I know you’re angry and you’ve a right to be. I’ll do my best to help you, but I can’t have you killing my birds every time you feel bad.’

Daniel began to cry. He cried like a child smaller than he was, slumped in the chair and quietly humming his sadness over a wet lip. He put a hand over his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at her.

When he stopped crying, he opened his eyes and took breath after new clean breath. She was still before him with her empty glass and her steel-blue eyes fixed on him.

‘Calm down, that’s it. Get your breath back and eat it up.’

Defeated, Daniel sat up and began to cut the chicken. He cut a very small piece and set it on his fork. He let the meat touch his tongue and then took it into his mouth.