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Coronation Chicken
By Nigel Barley
Coronation Chicken
by Nigel Barley
Copyright 2014 Nigel Barley
All rights reserved
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
Cover design by Cover Kitchen
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2197-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
To: Din yang jodohku
Chapter One
There would be two Christmases for Jack that year. The second would be the usual arrangement of one child and three kings, the first a quite different encounter involving a slip of a girl and half the rulers of the earth. Coronation year in Britain - 1953 - was a time of pride hedged with the slight embarrassment of public falsehood. It was as if, in one of those medieval paintings of the Adoration, the king holding up the Christ child said, red-faced and foot-shuffling, ‘Er...actually ...It's a girl!’ Everyone pretended not to notice.
In the south of the Kingdom - not Queendom - of Britain, in a little village called Weylands, there lived a small boy called Jack. He was a quick, slight boy, dark-haired, light of frame with big earnest eyes that consumed the force of the rest of his body. He was not a pretty child but endearing, rather as terriers are endearing for their scruffy, self-absorbed determination in just being themselves. He was considered shy but that was simply because he seldom spoke unless he felt he had something important to say, so that his life would be fought against an encroaching ocean of silence that threatened to swallow him up in its depths and make him invisible. He did not feel himself at home in the world and sometimes was so puzzled by the ways of the people about him that he suspected he must be a cuckoo-child and whenever he thought he had understood the pattern of things, it would all suddenly unravel again, like the knots around a dropped stitch in knitting. He lived with his older sister Susan, younger brother Tom, mother, father and granny in what would later become a desirable cottage or artisan's dwelling suitable-for-conversion-to... It was currently a house of mean, yellowish bricks with a crumbly slate roof and a mainly dirt yard that had yet to recover from Jack's last attempt to dig through to Australia, looking for diamonds on the way. It was a house devoid of any charm or comfort. But at least it was a house.
***
‘Thud!’ The rock hit the roof of the railway carriage with a gratifyingly solid noise, denting the felt and resonating the rotting wood underneath before flip-flopping down the incline and toppling, swishing, into the long grass. In the silence, Jack looked at Tom and grinned wickedly. Anyone who didn't live in a proper house deserved all they got. The important thing in Weylands was not to understand the world but to know what parts of it you disapproved of and, more than anything, to have someone to look down on as others looked down on you. Both boys were poised to run, fists clenched, but no sound came from the faded, old carriage becalmed in the hollow. A last, fat-bummed bumble bee buzzed tiredly round the foxgloves on the bank of the old siding, fitting in a final shift before clocking off for the day.
Tom drew back his arm and let fly with a nice round stone. For one terrible moment they thought it would hit and shatter a sunset-soaked window but it cracked nicely into one of the doors and ricocheted off, taking a sliver of thick, cream paint with it. Still no response. But he must be there. His bike was leaning against the other side near the one door that wasn't locked, the pushchair filled with yellowing newspapers beside it. A tatty sheet was hung to dry on a clothesline and gathered up the lengthening shadows in its clammy folds.
The slope on the other side of the railway track was too steep and gravelly for reliable climbing and a rusty fence at the top only allowed egress through patches of sleek stinging nettles that would penalise anyone in short trousers. Their only escape, they knew, would be to flee up the path and back into the woods, ducking easily under the low, thorned branches that would slow an adult down. Still, the whole thing had to be finely timed.
Emboldened by the silence, Jack went closer and picked up a long iron handle lying on the ground that had once worked the points when this was a functioning siding. He stepped onto the crunching hardcore and crept softly round to the blind side of the carriage, brought the bar back over his head, like the Rank gong-basher in the pictures, and down against the wheel with all the weight of his body behind it. There was the clang of a great bell, followed by a cry of rage and the shaky thump of socked feet down the wooden ladder on the far side. It was a nasty, furry sound. He had been waiting at the top of the steps, then, an ambush, not fair. Dropping the bar, Jack squealed with delighted fear and fled up the track, overtaking Tom wild-eyed and gasping as Dick Moore reached the ground, half fell and scrabbled after them. He risked a look over one shoulder and uttered a long wail as Dick Moore closed down on Tom, drool flicking from his mouth, hands reaching out to grab.
‘Come 'ere!’
Tom danced sideways like a gazelle and Dick lost his footing, leaned desperately forward and felt his unshod feet slide out from under him on the loose surface. ‘Aagh!’
He crashed full-length and stayed down, whimpering softly. Tom dodged round him and both boys raced another twenty yards with lungs burning, then slowed at a safe distance and began a little dance of spite and triumph.
‘Dick, Dick. Thick as shit. Dick, Dick...’
The strong wine of adrenalin coursed exhilaratingly through their veins. They felt power, delight, the bursting vigour of their own hearts pounding in their ears. Dick stayed down, did not move. There was blood on his head. A dark chill swept over the boys and they stopped dancing. Suddenly, what they had done was shocking. They looked at each other for confirmation that this was still all right, that it was still a joke.
‘He's not really hurt is he?’ Jack whispered.
Two hands came from nowhere and grabbed their ears, crashing their heads sharply together with a sound of funfair balls on coconuts. Their heads were drawn apart and crashed together a second time with a duller thud not unlike that of the rock on the carriage roof.
‘You little sods!’ snarled PC Puddephat, finger-sucking. He had caught it between their skulls. That was their fault too and made him angrier.
Dick looked up but, instead of receiving comfort, an expression of terror crossed his thin face and he clambered blind and flailing to his feet and ran in the low slouch of a wounded man back to the carriage. The door was slammed. There was silence again in the dell. The bee was still grumpily charring round the purple flowers.
PC Puddephat gave their ears another hard yank and twist that made their vision swim and pulled them round in a great teetering arc to face him. He was sweaty and flushed in his blue serge and brought his thick, stubbly chin right up to Jack's face, breathing heavily. His breath smelt of mould and wet dog.
‘And just what do you think you're doing? I’ll tell you what. Breach of the peace. Insulting behaviour. Assault. Criminal damage. That's what. If he’s been really hurt that’s conspiracy to murder. I could send you both straight inside, right now, for years. Give you a record for life. Do you realise that?’
‘But...But... It was only... We thought...’
‘Oh no me lad. That's just what you didn't do, isn't it - think?’ He swung their heads together again. Crack! Jack could see hair sprouting obscenely in his ears. ‘Do you know what a criminal record could do to your lives? Poverty, hunger, death on a park bench with nothing to eat but your own snot.’ He shook them like a dog a rat. ‘Right you two.