大象传媒

DADDY鈥橲 GIRLS

What my Father wanted above all things in his life was complete control over those around him and like so many people with that desire he had little control over himself. My Mother, on the other hand, believed in honesty, decency and fair play, none of which were high on the list of my Father鈥檚 interests. This set the battlefield upon which my parents lived their lives, neither of them ever won the war but occasionally a minor skirmish would go to my Mother, though usually my Father was the victor as he had physical strength and total lack of decency on his side
My Mother鈥檚 trump card was that she stood on moral high ground having the firm conviction that my Father was the devil, not in league with, but Satan himself. When she fought my Father, which she did daily, she was fighting the powers of evil and she held the shining sword of British middle class rectitude in her hand. As you can imagine my mother鈥檚 lot was not a happy one for not only did she have my father to contend with but it was 1940 and the powers of evil were loose in the world, the constant strife in the home became one with the horror that was being perpetrated out side it. My Father and Hitler seemed to be almost the same person, and we in the house shared in the persecution of that time in a very personal way. The crashing of bombs and the thunder of antiaircraft guns became one with the screaming of invective and the breaking of crockery.
Our lives were not made any better when my Father made an air raid shelter in the garden, into which my Mother refused to go. She was convinced that it would collapse of its own volition, owing to the shoddiness of its construction, unaided by enemy bombs. It was built in the garden on the concrete slab where my swing used to be, and was made out of balks of timber and corrugated iron covered with earth. Inside my Father had made bunks for us to sleep on and an area for storing food, 鈥業n case we are entombed鈥� my mother said gloomily. I have to admit that it was rather rickety, and the door never did close but I believe it was the best piece of construction that my Father ever completed. He was not a craftsman and the shelter was never used. It remained there in the garden as an ever present grass covered monument to my Father鈥檚 failure, however later in the war it turned out to be a fine cool place to store our garden apples, Bramleys for cooking, James Grive for eating and of course Cox鈥漵 Orange Pippin to keep for Christmas, my Father grew them all, for although he was no carpenter he was a very good gardener. There all his desire for total control could be given free rein with the consequence that our garden was the envy of the neighborhood and we had wonderful flowers and vegetables throughout the year. Total control in a garden is the key to success whereas in other areas of life it brings nothing but suffering and failure in its wake.
In the garden my father was lord and master and in that frame of mind he decided to become a chicken fancier. Food was scarce at that time of the war and the chickens鈥� eggs would be a very welcome addition to one egg per week per person, which was our ration at that time.
My Father took out a subscription to a magazine called 鈥楾he Smallholder鈥� where the battery system of chicken keeping was extolled, and high egg yield guaranteed. The beauty of this method he told my Mother and me over tea one evening was that the birds would never be free. They would spend their lives in cages very little bigger than themselves and never endanger the garden. There would be six cages to a unit not unlike a row of little cells in a prison camp. The floor of each cage would be made of sloping chicken wire, which would make cleaning and egg collection easy.

The whole concept delighted my father and the next weekend he bought a battery for six hens and set it up on the lower path quite near the unused air raid shelter, he then bought six Rhoad Island Red hens and put them into the cages. Their heads craned out of the bars of their new homes and their yellow feet scratched for comfort on the wire floor; they eyed my father without interest. My mother on the other hand was deeply troubled I think she identified with the caged birds kept in confinement by her bullying husband. She looked at me with her face ashen. 鈥淭hose poor things will never survive, how will they keep warm at night with no straw? I hate those horrible cages,鈥� she said.
My Father however had no such scruples and tucked himself up at night with his electric blanket to look once more at the 鈥楽mall Holder鈥�. Here it was that he first saw the advertisement for 鈥楾ottenham Pudding鈥� a chicken food guaranteed to increase egg yield and build strong birds. The pudding was a truly horrible concoction made from the food scraps from Tottenham, which my Mother told me was a rather low class part of London. The pudding was for sale at our local Gas Works for a small sum, or may be it was free, I am not sure. Whatever it was my Father had a special devotion to it and would go to the Gas works with relish on Saturday to collect it by the slab. For this trip he would wear a special outfit consisting of his World War I flying trousers, a striped shirt with no collar and my Army Surplus duffel coat tied round the waist with a pair of my mother鈥檚 stockings, to top it off he wore my Convent School hat. This might give you the impression that there was something strange about my Father, in these enlightened times someone would be excused if they were heard to say 鈥淭his is kinky.鈥�
However I do not think that there was an element of transvestitism in my Father, it was rather that he saw all things and people in his house as his with which he could do as he wished We had no rights, he was in control of everything and aware of nothing.
This story starts in late winter, when it was unusually cold even for that time of year, the chickens had to be covered up at night and had to have their water thawed out with boiling water in the morning. Because of the extreme cold my father decided to heat up the chickens鈥� pudding in our A.R.P. bucket ( the bucket was given to us by the local council to use with a stirrup pump to put out incendiary bombs, both had A.R.P. printed on them which stood for Air Raid Precautions) the heating took place in the garage on a Primus stove a small brass heater which ran on paraffin. It had to be pumped up to make it burn, then it would whistle and bang and produce a fierce heat .The smell of boiling Tottenham pudding mixed with the fumes from the stove is hard to describe in its foulness and seemed to embody all that I loathed in my Father and in the lower classes, for it should be mentioned here that he like the pudding came from Tottenham.
The winter ground on and several of the chickens had to be killed for us to eat. 鈥� I think I will dispatch Joyce to night鈥� my Father would say with glee. The strange thing was that all the birds had names and he would refer to them as his 鈥済irls鈥� with obvious pride I think that killing them was all part of the joy of ownership. He also liked to pluck them. I can still see him with his latest victim he was hunched up in my school hat in the evil smelling garage looking like one of the witches in Macbeth. To make the feathers easier to pull out he would plunge the bird into boiling water then pull the feathers out by the handful, feathers and chicken scurf flying like a corona round his head caught in the overhead light
The convent where I went to school closed in early June for the summer holidays and I was delighted to hang about at home and do very little. The air raids had abated and we were all enjoying being able to relax a little. One day as I was wondering around the back garden eating a few raspberries I was surprised to see my Mother standing by the battery looking at the birds. 鈥淭omorrow you are going to let these chickens out, he goes at eight and is not back until six they can have a lovely day out. I can鈥檛 stand the sight of them imprisoned any longer鈥�
I was terrified thinking what would happen if my Father found out that my Mother and I done something on our own initiative and against his almighty plan. However the next day which was beautiful, soft and sunny, I went into the garden as soon as I heard my Father鈥檚 car backing down the driveway and turning the corner out of sight. I planned to put the birds in a sunny spot under the Bramley apple tree where there were no plants and the earth was fine and warm.
Picking up a chicken is quite easy as long as you are firm about it I told myself as I put my hands into the cage to pick up Elizabeth, I had no idea how she would react and I was a little tense. Actually, chickens are nearly all show and my hands sank into a bundle of feathers, which formed a meager covering to a bony little body. Elizabeth was weak and hardly protested at all as I gathered her up against my chest and held her legs in my other hand. Her feet were yellow and very cold. As we walked to the Bramley tree she made little worried cooing noises and looked at me with her bright yellow eye tilting her head to do so, she put up no struggle at all and I realized how easy it was for my father to dispatch his 鈥済irls,鈥� they were perfect victims. The sun was warm and I placed Elizabeth very gently on the soft ground and went back to get the others, Helen, Joan and Jocelyn were as docile as Elizabeth and soon I had them all on the soft earth in the sun under the apple tree.
It must be remembered that just as I had never picked up a chicken, the chickens, who had spent their lives in batteries, had never been on the ground. At first they remained very still just blinking and cooing, then very slowly they rolled over and stuck their legs into the sun, they closed their eyes like a group of old ladies enjoying the warmth of spring after a long hard winter. I rushed off to the garage to get them a water bowl and a food tray very pleased with myself and with the unexpected ease of my job. After I had had my lunch I went out to see how they were getting on Elizabeth was beginning to have a dust bath., For those who have never seen a chicken take a bath it consists of the bird fluffing earth or dust by a circular movement of its wings from the ground into its under wing area, I presume that this disorients any mites or fleas that might be there which fall with the dust to the ground leaving the bird clean. It is something that chickens do to give them selves a sense of well being and something that a caged bird can never do. Helen and Joan were lying still and beginning to take an interest in their surroundings, Jocelyn was looking shifty. Bathing was obviously on their list of things to do as soon as they had the energy.
That is how the first few day of the chicken鈥檚 liberation went, the weather stayed warm and my Father seemed quite oblivious of my daily activities with his 鈥済irls鈥� The sun worked its usual miracle of rejuvenation and by the end of the week the birds were standing and, relying heavily on their instincts, were scratching for worms or seeds or whatever chickens scratch for, I sat in the raspberry patch enjoying the dappled light and getting deep satisfaction from watching the slow sleepy movement of the warm birds. These were the last tranquil moments I had with them and looking back it seemed idyllic. The weekend came and of course the birds had to remain their cages, so that my Father would suspect nothing. By Monday they were rearing to go and seemed to have lost none of the strength they had gained from their liberation, if anything the two days of enforced rest seemed to have done them good.
I do not remember my Mother being involved with the chicken鈥檚 holiday, except of course that it was her idea in the first place I presume that she looked out of the kitchen window and saw me tending my flock of contented birds and like me derived some peace from the sight, let us hope so as there was very little peace for us at that time.
One might ask why I continued to let the birds out every day when it was obvious that they were gaining in strength and that my loss of control of the situation and disaster were only round the corner. Looking back I suspect that it was because watching the birds happily relaxed and free even only for a short time eased my own pain, I lived in the center of three rings of oppression, the war, the convent and life with my father, and watching the birds innocent in their contentment soothed me even as I saw them begin to mindlessly destroy my father鈥檚 garden with their yellow feet and intrusive beaks. However worse was to come. Chickens love to roost in trees, this is something I learnt from Elizabeth who loved the Victoria plum tree and was cunning enough to perch just out of my reach. Helen鈥檚 favorite spot was under the rhubarb where my father was forcing the new pink stems by covering the plant with a petrol can, sawn of at both ends and stuffed with straw All the birds seemed to have worked out a way of deceiving me by hiding so that I could not find them at the end of the day when my fathers return was imminent. I was then no longer the birds鈥� liberator but their hunter and I felt that on some level the chickens realized that I was stuck. I had to let them out for my own peace of mind although their freedom was now my daily torment. Another time consuming, and nerve wracking aspect of the situation, was that the free birds could make their own nests in which to lay their eggs wherever they wished, these had to be found and the eggs returned to the battery with the birds in time for when my father back from his work did his nightly rounds and egg count.
My days were consumed with the chickens and I began to long for the summer to be over and for school to begin again so that I would not have to let them out. They grew more and more healthy and in my position as their keeper I became more exhausted. It is hard to imagine that my father noticed nothing, neither the well being of his birds, the scruffy condition of his garden or the demeanor of his daughter. The facts are that nothing was ever said and the summer continued as the chicken鈥檚 holiday.
School started in early September and I had to get my bicycle ready for my daily ride to the convent. My father was very insistent that it should have no rust on it and gave me a rust rubber to work on the spokes, tedious work and very hard on the fingers, it took me hours to get the wheels clean enough for his satisfaction, this had to be done of course at the week ends when my Father was home and I had no chicken duties.
The air raids had started again and my Father was asked to put more time in down at the A.R.P. headquarters. The wardens had nightly duty patrolling the streets to see that there were no lights showing and were expected to be ready to put incendiary bombs out using a stirrup pump and bucket like the one which had become such an integral part of the chickens鈥� food preparation in our garage. In quiet times the wardens spent their time drinking tea and waiting for something to happen, not a rigorous job but one which was taken very seriously by those involved
One evening in early Autumn I was in the kitchen with my Mother, she was probably getting the dinner and I was hanging around, looking in the kitchen draw stirring it up hoping to find something of interest when the back door burst open and my Father crashed in. He was excited and rather disheveled; my duffel coat that he was wearing was covered with feathers. 鈥淚鈥檝e done it鈥� he said 鈥淚鈥檝e dispatched all my 鈥済irls,鈥� they are hanging in the garage by their feet, I鈥檓 going to take them down to the chaps in the A.R.P. hut.鈥� Then he added rather proudly 鈥� I鈥檒l have to tell my friends to give the birds a good boil to make them edible those 鈥済irls鈥� were amazingly strong鈥� He held up his arm to show a long red scar from elbow to wrist inflicted no doubt by a girl fighting vainly for her life. 鈥淟ook what Elizabeth did to me, it must have been all that Tottenham pudding that made her so strong. She was all muscle.鈥� He laughed with pride. 鈥淪he was some girl.鈥�
That was the end of the chickens and the end of my concern. My Father took them with him that night and distributed his largesse to the wardens no doubt hoping to buy some friendship. He was not a popular man he seemed to lack the ability to make friends, he either fawned or bullied neither of which brought him any success with men, however women loved him.

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