That evening, I went to find him.
I didn’t know what I was going to say. That he mustn’t think of leaving. That he couldn’t be what his mother said he was. That I loved him. That I couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. What was wrong with me.
I had thought he might not go through with the turkey plucking plan, even though Luke was doing it. I’d told him he didn’t need to go there; I’d get him a job with me at the power station – cleaning the offices at weekends, perhaps. I couldn’t imagine Robert on that farm. He was like me, too neat for dirty work. It wasn’t uncommon, I’d heard, for a bird to be still half-conscious when it was plucked. Like the headless chickens you hear about, still running round the yard. That wasn’t the sort of thing I had the stomach for.
I put on my wellingtons before I went down there, thinking the turkey shed might be mucky. I didn’t consider the fact that all the birds would be dead, and the sawdust would be covered with feathers, soft and light, not mucky at all.
I walked past the church and down the lane towards the pools. There was no wind that night; the sky was clear and scattered with stars. I wore my woollen hat – a present from Mum one Christmas. The fibres scratched the tops of my ears. The ground was frozen, and several times I had to grasp hold of a branch to keep myself from slipping. I began to regret wearing the wellingtons, which didn’t have much of a tread.
It had been years since I’d walked down here, and I remembered the day I’d come with Kathryn to photograph her in her yellow dress. I remembered how the yellow contrasted with the dense, dark green of the yew trees in the churchyard. The only dark thing about Kathryn that day was her eyelashes.
Steam from the cooling towers still pumped high into the sky and over the village. The moon lit the whole scene, and I could see that the trees and bushes were much taller and denser than they had been the last time I was here. Without their leaves, all the branches seemed very straight and solid. They criss-crossed the sky and scored the pool.
I didn’t look over towards the water, even though I could just see it glinting between the branches. I concentrated on my destination: the farm.
As I got closer, a strange sound became more and more insistent. It was like a radio that hadn’t been tuned in properly and was turned up much too loud; there was no release, and no soothing note. There was just the squabbling, squawking noise of turkeys. It seemed to drift one way and then the other, making me feel a little dizzy. I realised that this must be the sound of the remaining birds, the ones who had so far escaped slaughter, as they swept from one side of their pen to the other.
I approached a large shed that was lit up inside. The rusty corrugated iron door was slightly ajar and I could see feathers floating in the air.
I opened the shed door and stepped inside. It was no warmer in there, despite the lights, whose brightness seemed to encourage the mealy smell – an overwhelming mixture of sawdust, blood and turkey flesh. Along each wall, dead, headless birds hung from hooks, in various stages of plucking. Some still had thick plumage on their breasts, others were almost bald, save the odd patch of greasy feathers. Feathers were everywhere, falling to the ground, nestling in the hair and on the coats of the boys who stood in front of the birds. Each boy had a basket for his finished work, and a man with a clipboard stood at the far end, handing out new birds, already attached to hooks so they could be hung from bars on the ceiling.
The strange thing – the thing I hadn’t imagined – was that each turkey’s wings were spread out on either side. As they were plucked, the birds bobbed in the air, and their wings made a flapping motion, as if they might still fly away.
Robert was standing next to Luke. Their hands worked to the same rhythm as they tugged handfuls of feathers away from the turkeys. I noticed the girl from the shop was standing on the other side of Robert. Her bright hair was littered with feathers, and she was turned slightly towards my son, as if she was listening for his next words. Opposite her, on the other side of the shed, stood the large bulk of Derrick Pearce’s son, the boy everyone knew, even then, to be backward. While he ripped the plumage from the headless turkey before him, he stared at the girl.
I took my hat off and felt my forehead prickle in the cold air.
The girl looked over and saw me. She nudged Robert.
Robert looked around. As soon as our eyes met, he flicked his away and turned back to his bird.
The girl nudged Robert again and gestured in my direction, but Robert would not turn around.
Derrick Pearce’s boy unhooked his bird. He had a feather stuck to his big bottom lip. The turkey’s bloody neck hung down by his thigh. He threw the limp naked bird into his basket and walked to the end of the shed to get another. As he did so, he trailed one hand along the edge of the girl’s short skirt. She stepped away from him.
‘Robert,’ I called. The sound of chattering turkeys outside was still loud, even with the shed door closed, and I tried to raise my voice. ‘Robert.’
The girl smiled at me. Her lipstick was so light, her mouth looked like it was covered in frost.
‘Robert,’ I called his name again.
The man with the clipboard approached.
‘Can I help?’ He raised his eyebrows, which were the same colour as his sheepskin coat.
‘I’m here to speak to my son, Robert Hall,’ I said, nodding in Robert’s direction.
The man walked over to Robert and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Rob,’ he shouted, ‘Your dad’s here. Go and see what he wants.’
The other boys near Robert laughed. Derrick Pearce’s boy laughed the loudest.
Robert left his half-plucked turkey swinging from its hook and came over to where I stood in the doorway.
‘What do you want?’
‘Shall we go outside?’ I suggested.
‘No. What do you want?’
‘I think maybe we should talk outside.’
‘I’m fine here,’ he said, crossing his arms.
I tried to push the word gypsy from my mind as I looked at his glinting earring.
‘What do you want, Dad? I’ve got work to do.’
‘I wanted to tell you something.’
He breathed out heavily through his nose, shook his head and gave a little laugh. ‘Go on, then.’
‘Sexy wellingtons, Mr Hall,’ the shop girl called over.
Luke laughed first and Derrick Pearce’s boy followed. His laugh was so loud it drowned out the gobbling turkeys for a moment.
Robert sniggered. Instinctively he covered his mouth with his hand, but then he changed his mind and took it away. His green eyes were clear when he looked at me and let out a loud hoot.
When he’d finished laughing, he said, ‘What did you want to say, Dad?’
‘I just wanted to tell you. I wanted to say… ’ I stopped. I tried to look him in the face, but my eyes kept straying to his hair. It was stuck up on his head; his plumage was straight and strong now, I noticed. He no longer had that cockatoo touch at his crown.
I began again. ‘I wanted to tell you that, that I’m sorry.’ I flexed my hands in my pockets. The ache in them was sharp and deep.
‘I’m sorry.’
Robert blinked; he said nothing.
‘That’s all I came to say.’
Robert looked at me for a long time. Then he nodded, just once.
I walked out of the shed and back into the darkness.