
There is a line from J.B Priestley, from the novel The Image Men, which I’ve just started again. It’s a line spoken by an almost supernaturally clever character and goes something like ‘Relationships, on the cocktail-party level, are tedious. Parties are such a bore.’ And since I got married, I’ve found this audacious summary of these precious social gatherings to be disappointing but largely true.
My wife turned 40 last week. ‘You know,’ I said to her, ‘a good rule of thumb for birthday parties is only to invite people who you know well enough to.’ Well, actually I think ‘fart in front of’ was how I put it to her. ‘Take intimacy over extravagance,’ I implored. ‘You’ll have a much nicer time.’ But it was, as she pointed out, her birthday, not mine, and she wanted to raise the roof. So we threw open all the doors and made merry on a large scale. And I really, really enjoyed it. It was fantastic.
The piano player fell through. Possibly I undercooked the venison. During the fireworks I noticed a sozzled and grinning billionaire swaying like a peculiar sunflower in a bed of miniature ferns that I’ve been carefully nurturing for a year or more, but none of that seemed to matter. There were greater forces at work. As I lit the bonfire early on, the smoke rose away perpendicular: not a breath of wind anywhere. It was an extraordinarily calm and clear evening, perhaps the last one of the summer, a little pause. The house was full of life, all the lights were on, all the fires were roaring as the night drew on and music and laughter ached from every corner. Perhaps parties are only that good once in a lifetime.
I was wandering round the house and garden alone at about 4 a.m., still glowing with the glamour of it all, quietly singing Roy Orbison’s ‘Dream Baby’ to myself as I turned out lights, and blew out candles — there was definitely at least one of those that would have started a fire if I hadn’t spotted it. I was just congratulating myself on that when I heard the noise.
It was an impossible sound to ignore: insistent, vulnerable and utterly charming. ‘Peep, peep, peep, peep,’ it went. ‘Peeeep. Peeeeeeep!’ It was a chicken. A newborn chicken. We keep chickens and about a month ago we bought an incubator on the internet. It’s just a little one that holds three eggs, and as soon as it arrived the next three eggs that were laid went straight in there. The thing has been a source of fascination to all ever since. Alyssa, the au pair, is the undisputed authority on eggs and chicks. She hatched duck eggs, goose eggs, all sorts, in a domestic incubator back home in Canada. ‘What will happen?’ the children have been asking her every day for a month now, always keen to hear it all over again, their fascination insatiable.
Well, whatever was going to happen had certainly happened and there was no question that the thing could stay where it was. The egg phase of its life was in the past now and it was ready to move on right away. It was making that very clear. I took the cover off the incubator and pulled the thing out of the remains of its shell. ‘Peep. Peep. Peep.’ Wriggle. ‘Peep.’ Wriggle. Steps needed to be taken, immediately, that was for sure.
I couldn’t wake Alyssa. Out of the question. I would have to deal with it. I wish I’d listened more carefully to what she’d been telling the children. I went to the chicken coup and put it in a little nest of hay with its fellow creatures while I tried to work out a plan. It was obviously too cold in there but I didn’t want the thing thinking I was its mummy. I’m sure Alyssa said something about that. It was peeping its little head off and the big chickens weren’t doing anything so I took it back in my hand and woke my wife. ‘Peep,’ it said. ‘There’s a little box on the shelf with hay in it. Put it in there.’ She said. In it went with a little saucer of water with some bread and I set the whole thing next to the Aga. Panic over. Well, a birthday party was one thing, but this was a greater species of event, a birth. Yes, just a tiny one, but this most humble of creatures, probably the most abused, undervalued, downtrodden animal on the planet, was so alive, alert and cute in my hand that it had been enough to make me gasp and send me into open-mouthed wonder, almost bring a tear to my tired eye. It would have melted the coldest of hearts. Happy birthday, indeed.
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