Stories from Suburban Road [antikvár]

I think she was quite the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Every rich amber feather was flecked at the end with chocolatey-brown, her shining russet hood covered her neck as far as her shoulders and her proud little black tail shimmered peacock-green every time she moved. Half-a-dozen times on the way back from lan's place I stopped and lifted the lid of the shoe-box to stare raptly at my beautiful bantam hen. She had one small defect. Her bright red comb and the little flaps of red skin beneath her beak, and much of her head, were completely covered with a hard, glistening helmet of stickfast-flea. When they got on the dog, as they sometimes did, I had to pull them off one by one wdth the tweezers my mother kept on the mantelpiece in the kitchen for pulHng out splinters. It was slow work, and you had to be careful not to leave the head in, or it might poison the dog. I felt it would take weeks to clean the hen up that way, and if they started breeding while I was doing it, I might be presented with another, never-ending, Saturday-morning job. What was needed was something to finish them off in one fell swoop, forever. I comforted myself that my mother, who knew everything, would know what to do to the fleas. In my memory at least she had never failed to come up with the solution to any of my problems. Under the deep shade of the last street tree before reaching my home I stopped for the last time and lifted the lid of the box. For a moment before I did I pretended to myself that the hen had somehow got away, just to make even more tremendous the wonder of finding her still there when I lifted the lid, sitting so still and so dignified in the pad of dried grass I had provided for her comfort. I said gently: 'Tuck! Tuck!' and without so much as moving her head she turned one bright eye up to me and replied, just as softly: Tuck! Tuck! I thought I would shout aloud for joy. She had messed in the straw, but that didn't matter. When I got home I would put her in the old cage the cocky had lived in until he had died — of the Lewdies, as my father's friend, Mr Bader, had said one night when they were playing cards. I was the only one who hadn't laughed. The cocky had been my friend for most of my lifetime. He had never been much of a talker, but when he was inclined he could whistle Does-your-mother-want-a-rabbit-guts-and-all-for-ninepence, and do a little jig to it on his perch. His old cage would do as a home for the banty until a yard of some sort could be run up for her.