Read by Paul Clarke
It was after six months that I noticed the change.
It wasn’t anything in particular; but now that the excitement of the wedding was over I found things irritated me that hadn’t before. The way she licked her fingers before turning a page, for example, or the little sigh she gave when sitting down. And, increasingly, her clothes. She had once made an effort; now, she hulked on the sofa at night in baggy grey tracksuit bottoms, the label of her underwear creeping up her back. The television flickered soundlessly in the background as she leaved through Grazia, clucking occasionally in disapproval at the fashion pages.
I’d go outside, where apart from the distant sound of the motorway the village was quiet. This was unsurprising: the yokels, apart from a few kids in hooded tops from the council houses, would be curled up with their oven chips. There were no shops, except at the petrol station outside the village, and no pub – nothing, actually, to make any noise. And we knew nobody, except each other.
Apart from the chickens, of course. They had been her idea. I hadn’t been sure but she’d insisted and now here they were, pecking at the ground in a cooped-off area in the garden. I hadn’t wanted the birds but it had become my job to feed them, and although I complained I had actually come to enjoy it. I liked the feeling of responsibility and power. I was the King of the Chickens and I think I sensed their gratitude, however low-key they were about it. I gave them names, too. There was Scratcher and Licken and Bisto, and a pretty little hen named Olivia.
One night, as we lay in bed, I mentioned Olivia to my wife.
“She stares at me”, I said.
She was lying on top of the quilt in some black lacy underwear.
“Does she?”, she said.
“Yes”, I said. “It’s as if she’s trying to communicate something”
She began to stroke my chest.
“She’s a very peculiar bird”, I said. “She’s definitely more intelligent than the others”
She moved her hand down towards my stomach.
“I wonder what she wants?”, I asked.
My wife kissed me. Her hand moved ever lower.
“Never mind Olivia”, she said, and propped herself up on one elbow, a slight smile on her lips. “Never mind her. I was thinking that perhaps…”, she said, and kissed me again, “perhaps we could…”
She trailed off.
“What?”, I asked.
“Perhaps we could – you know?”, she said.
“Do you mean sex?”, I said. Her hand moved lower still until I stopped it with mine.
“It’s a bit late”, I said. “Why didn’t you think of this earlier?”
She quickly slipped under the cover.
“I’ll make an appointment next time, shall I?”, she said.
“I’m just saying”, I said.
“We haven’t had sex in months”, she said, and turned her back on me.
I continued to read my book: A Guide to Keeping Chickens.
As summer came, naturally enough I wanted to spend more time outside. On Saturday mornings, as light seeped into our bedroom, my wife would roll towards me and say she loved me.
I’d say. “Hang on, I need to use the toilet”.
When I returned she would have wiped the sleep from her eyes and the whiteness from her lips. Sometimes, to my surprise, I would find that she had removed her pyjamas, so that she was naked underneath the sheet.
“Aren’t you cold?”, I’d say.
“I’ve got you to keep me warm, haven’t I?”, she’d reply.
“We should get up”, I’d say, “and sit in the garden”.
“Or we could stay here for a bit”, she’d say.
But more often I preferred to go outside, where the chickens needed to be fed. It was an important job with which sometimes, to her credit, my wife would help.
“Is that one Scratcher?”, she’d ask and throw a handful of grain at them.
“That’s Bisto”, I’d reply.
“And the ugly one’s Olivia?”, she’d say.
“I don’t think she’s ugly”, I’d say.
“I think she’s ugly”, she’d say.
There was a growing rift between us. One night in August, we were sitting on the patio when my wife complained to me again about sex.
“We never do it anymore”, she said. “We used to do it all the time but now you can’t be bothered”.
I put down my glass of wine.
“It’s not that I can’t be bothered”, I said. “It’s just that I’m tired”.
“You’ve been tired for months”, she said.
I looked at her icily. “You’re not being very understanding”, I said. “I’m doing my best”.
She looked guilty.
“I’m sorry”, she said. “I don’t want to put you under any pressure”
“That’s alright”, I said.
We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the clucking of the chickens.
“Perhaps”, she said, looking hopefully at me, “perhaps we could have an early night once in a while”.
“OK”, I said.
“I could – you know – make a special effort”, she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I could wear some sexy underwear or something. Whatever you like”, she said.
“That would be nice”, I said.
So on Thursday nights, while I was watching TV, she would slip out of the living room and, a few minutes later, call for me down the stairs. The first time, she was lying on the bed wearing a nurse’s uniform.
“I’ve come to give you your injection”, she said.
“Actually”, I said, “I’ve got an injection for you”.
I meant my penis, of course, but despite my attempts to play along my heart simply wasn’t in it. She was disappointed, of course, but persevered. The next night, she explained that she had a problem with her boiler, which needed servicing, and that perhaps a horny young plumber like me would like to help her out. Frankly, I found this bizarre, and told her so. She started crying.
“Don’t you like me anymore?”, she said.
“It’s not that”, I said. But it was exactly that.
“You spend more time with the chickens than you do with me”, she said.
“That isn’t true”, I said. “But at least the chickens shut up once in a while”.
I got up and left the room. My wife slammed the bedroom door. I could hear the sound of her muffled crying as I went downstairs. I went to the kitchen, unlocked the back door and walked through the back garden towards the chicken coop, where the birds were asleep on their perch.
I opened the door and climbed inside. There was just enough room for me if I stooped. I heard a cluck and a stirring of feathers.
“I’m sorry to wake you, Olivia”, I said. “But I don’t know who else to talk to”
She said something to me, I don’t know what, but she moved her head to show she was listening. I picked her up, felt the strange softness of her feathers, the scrabble of her claws against my body, the quick beating of her heart.
“You’re a good girl”, I soothed her. “You’re a good girl, Olivia, you are”.
She looked at me with her trusting yellow eye.
“I don’t love her anymore, Olivia”, I said. “Isn’t that terrible?”
She seemed to understand but before I could say any more I heard something move in the garden. Olivia and I looked at one another.
“Is there someone there?”, I called.
Just then the door to the coop was flung open. It was my wife, looking angry, her nose wrinkled up against the smell of the birds.
“What the fuck is going on here?”, she said.
“It’s not how it looks”, I said.
The next evening, when I opened the door there was a cooking smell, which was unusual, because my wife never cooked. I called up the stairs.
“Hello?”
No answer. I shrugged, poured a glass of wine and went outside. It was a beautiful evening and very quiet. Unusually quiet, in fact. A stray feather floated from the lawn to the patio.
I began to feel uneasy.
I picked up the grain and went to the coop.
“Olivia”, I called. “Olivia!”
But Olivia said nothing. And when I looked into the coop, she wasn’t there.
I ran back into the house. I shouted to my wife.
“Where is she?”, I shouted.
My wife was preparing roast potatoes in the kitchen.
“Where is she?”, I shouted again. She didn’t reply. She took a basting syringe from the top drawer.
And then I had a horrible sinking feeling. I looked into the oven. I could see the white casserole dish. I opened the oven door. I put on some oven gloves. My wife watched me as she peeled the carrots. I opened the casserole dish.
Olivia had been stuffed with an onion and seasoned. The holocaust was complete.
That night, we lay next to one another in bed.
“I can’t believe you did it”, I said.
“I had to”, said my wife. She was naked under the cover.
“Things will never be the same again”, I said.
“Perhaps they’ll be better”, she said, and began rubbing my foot with hers.
“I doubt it”, I said.
But then I thought, for all her failings, she was still my wife and I wouldn’t really know what to do without her.
“But we should try”, I added. Because, after all, there has to be give and take in every relationship.
And that night, as I pushed behind my wife, on the bed, I thought that she resembled a oven ready bird, in a way. I admired her pale, goosepimpled flesh. I thought of the little moaning sounds she made. I imagined her with a beak, pecking away at some grain. I imagined her trussed and wrapped with cellophane and sitting on a supermarket shelf. I thought of her roasted, broiled, crumbed and nuggeted; I thought of her being eaten on the back of a bus by schoolchildren.
“You’re a sexy chick”, I said to her, and came.
Foul by Jack Fox was read by Paul Clarke at the Liars' League Flesh & Fowl event at The Phoenix, Cavendish Sq., London on Tuesday 8 June 2010
Jack Fox was born in 1978 and works as a secondary school teacher. He attended the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers’ Programme and has subsequently had short plays performed at the Warehouse Theatre in Croydon and in various fringe theatre venues including the King’s Head Theatre in Islington. Bunbury Banter has also produced several of his short radio plays.
Paul Clarke trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, after sacrificing his degree on the altar of Theatre. He has a fondness for grotesques, villains and all-round bad guys – theatre credits include Berkoff’s Decadence (with Sally Phillips), Moon in The Real Inspector Hound, and title roles in Vlad the Impaler, Macbeth, and Pericles – a rare outing as a good guy.
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