John Harding - The Girl Who Couldn’t Read

I heard the clock strike midnight as I struggled through the second half of the book, yawning all the while. It was no wonder I was tired. There was the business of the wreck and the injuries I had suffered. Besides the blow to the head, I had sore ribs and an ache in my back that made it hard for me to sit comfortably, no matter how I tried to arrange myself. Then there had been all the stress to my nerves of arriving here, the pressure of being a new, untried employee, the battle within myself to keep in line, to overcome my obstreperous nature and not speak against the hard treatment of the poor wretches who were my fellow inhabitants of this place, separated from me by that most fragile of borders, chance. The wine at dinner had not helped either, so that at some point, notwithstanding my determination to plough through to the end of the book and prepare my arguments for the morrow, I must have fallen asleep.

I had the dream again, the one that always seems to return in times of trouble. I was back on my uncle’s chicken farm, where I’d arrived the day before following the death of my mother. I’d never had a father; he’d run off before I was even born. I was eleven years old and my uncle had just strapped me because he’d told me I had to earn my keep and I’d refused to kill a chicken.

I stood before him, my pants around my ankles, my bare backside sore from the blows. I put a tentative hand behind me and felt something wet. When I inspected it, I saw it was stained with blood. My uncle watched me, breathing heavily, his belt swinging from his right hand. ‘Well, boy, what’s it to be,’ he said, ‘you or the chicken?’

‘Does it have to be one or the other, sir?’ I said. ‘Is there not something else I may do to earn my keep?’

‘There are plenty of other things you will be doing. None of them can be instead of this. You have to learn the business. You know Martha can’t bear children. You can be like a son to us and then one day this farm will be yours. You have to be able to run it.’

I tried to look grateful. It was the first time I ever put on an act. I pretended to be a boy who wanted to spend his whole life on a chicken farm, with the scent of chicken shit clogging up his nostrils.

‘Come on now, let’s give it another try.’ He began threading the belt through the loops on his pants.

I pulled up my pants, which hurt as they slid over the wounds on my backside. I tried not to cry. I could tell my uncle was not someone who would approve of a boy crying.

He went inside the big barn where the chickens were and came out holding a bird in each hand. He held them by their feet and they dangled helplessly, flapping their wings and clucking their heads off. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to shut out the noise but I knew it would be a mistake.

‘Here, take this one.’ He held out one of the birds. Gingerly I put both my hands around its legs. This made the bird even more agitated and the movement of its wings more frenzied and instantly I let go, but my uncle still had it so it couldn’t get away. ‘Get hold of it!’ He was mad again now.

I bit my lip and took the bird, my head recoiling from it, but this time I had it firmly by the legs. I held it at arm’s length. I didn’t want it flapping against me.

‘Now pay attention. It don’t take but a second, so you need to watch nice and close, OK?’

I nodded. What I really wanted to do was close my eyes. This was the second demonstration. I had no wish to see another bird slaughtered.

He put his free hand around the hen’s neck and released the other from its feet. Then he put that around the neck too. The bird’s body was swinging, a crazy pendulum. ‘Now all you have to do is twist, like so.’ There was a soft crack and after a few seconds the bird stopped moving and hung lifeless from his hand. ‘See, ain’t nothing to it, son.’

I stared back at him. My chicken was going berserk, squawking its head off, and I felt sure it had seen the other’s fate and knew what was coming. I wondered idly whether a chicken was really smart enough to figure all that out.

‘Now you.’

I gritted my teeth. Bile rose up in my throat and I thought for a moment I was going to vomit over my feet but I managed to hold it down. I put one hand around the chicken’s neck, got a good hold of it and let the feet drop.

‘That’s it, perfect,’ said my uncle.

I put my other hand around the hen’s neck. The feathers felt soft and warm, so warm. I could feel the bird’s blood beating fast through my fingertips. I swear its eyes widened in terror, although I later discovered that a chicken’s eyes couldn’t do that. I shut my own eyes and twisted exactly as my uncle had shown me. The bird’s wings were banging against me. I imagined my hands were huge and they were around my uncle’s neck and that I was about to snap the life out of him so I wouldn’t ever have to do this again. There was a click and after a last frantic flurry the bird stopped moving. Slowly I opened my eyes and saw its head was flopped over my wrist.

‘That’s my boy!’ cried my uncle. I looked up at him and smiled.

‘Come on, son,’ he said, turning back toward the barn. ‘We have another fifty to do today.’

As it always did, the dream jerked me awake. My fists were clenched around something soft and I opened my eyes and in the guttering light of my near burnt-out candle discovered my hands were squeezed around the pillow on which I’d fallen asleep. I was in a dreadful sweat. And then I heard the slightest sound and looked up from my fingers and saw a figure in the room, a woman in a white nightshift standing at the desk, her back to me.

I shot bolt upright. ‘What in God’s name—’ I began and at that very moment the candle went out and the room turned black. I leapt from the bed and lunged for the figure but she was too fast for me and I grabbed only air. I heard the slam of the door and the patter of feet fading away along the corridor outside.

I stumbled to the door and out into the corridor. Everything was dark. I looked this way and that, up and down the passage, but couldn’t see a thing, no glimpse of a person, no flicker of a light. I had no idea which direction the woman had taken. I stood still and held my breath and by some primitive animal instinct knew the intruder was there too and also holding her breath and immobile. And then, I guess when she knew she would have to breathe out and so give herself away, she was off, and the scamper of bare feet told me the way. I tried to follow but, unable to see even an inch in front of me, I was overwhelmed by the sensation that I was about to collide with something, even though as far as I could remember the corridor was clear of any furniture or other obstruction. My heart was beating fast and I had the constant fear of some harpy about to leap out at me and put her claws into my throat. I shuffled along, hands stretched in front of me to prevent collision with any unseen objects. I could hear nothing because of my own noise, so I paused, and there were a couple of footfalls ahead of me and then silence again. It was a cat-and-mouse game, with my prey waiting until I should move and the sound I made conceal her own movement. I felt my way along the corridor wall and eventually my hands met thin air as I came to a side passage.

I did not know which way to go and stood there shivering in the dark for what seemed like an age. If I chose wrong, she would escape me easily. I had the sense again that she was nearby, although she could surely have gotten far away by now while I had been fumbling around. I suddenly felt a fool because I realised she was playing with me, finding a macabre humour in the chase, letting me think I could catch her when she knew I could not. I strained my ears but everything was silent and then, just as I was about to decide at random and hope to pick the right direction, I heard the merest hint of another’s breath, not far away. Instantly I took off, shuffling along to avoid tripping on anything, because I’d never explored this side passage. I heard the soft touch of feet gliding over bare floorboards only a few yards ahead of me and tried to speed up, but somehow my body would not let me, its fear of a collision with my prey too great. The hair on my neck bristled against my collar. My forehead was clammy from the terror of it all. Then, of a sudden, how or why I could not explain, I sensed she was just in front of me, a stretch of the hand – hers or mine – away. I steeled myself, took another step and made a grab, expecting to grasp warm flesh, and met instead something solid and cold that I realised was a wall.