3

THE COCK WAS inside the cage of the creel, upturned on the linoleumed floor, its beady eyes winking. Now and then it would turn its head and look down at the floor, then it would raise it and look up stonily. Its body was partly yellow, its comb red and serrated. It was quite old. When it looked down at the floor, it seemed to think that there ought to be something there which it might peck and eat.

“Where have you been?” said his mother. “I was going to send you to the shop.”

“What did you want?” he said, looking at the cock which had begun to withdraw into itself, staring down at the floor without moving, its head on one side as if it were thinking, as if it knew that it was going to die.

“We need a mantle for the Tilley,” said his mother.

His brother Colin was bending down, polishing the toes of a pair of bright black boots. He looked up and smiled suddenly, showing small white perfect teeth. His smile was always disarming.

“I suppose,” he said, glancing at the cock, “we’d better get it over with if I’m going to the dance.”

Malcolm looked at the cock with hatred. “If only I could kill you,” he thought. And he wanted suddenly to pull the creel away, to hold its thin neck in his hands, the throat through which it crowed in the morning to announce the dawn, and squeeze the life out of it, to watch it die in its red and yellow splendour, in its colour and flame. But then he thought of Janet and was weakened again.

“Malcolm won’t be going to any dance,” said his mother to Colin. “He has his bursary to sit.”

It amazed him how she knew about these things. All his life he would never speak to her about the school or exams or teachers, or bring home any gossip.

Sometimes she would say to him: “I heard that one of your teachers collapsed today, but you never thought of telling me. I had to hear it from Mrs Mackenzie and she has no son in that school. I felt so ashamed.”

He didn’t say anything this time either. Still, he knew that come evening he would be sitting there doing his Latin and his geometry.

“Are you going to the dance then?” he said to Colin.

“Yes, all the boys are going.” He didn’t ask Malcolm to come. He often boasted to the boys about how clever Malcolm was, though he would never say anything flattering to his face. Putting a blue handkerchief carefully in the breast pocket of his jacket that was lying on the back of a chair, he said suddenly to Malcolm, with a wicked grin:

“Would you like to kill the cock yourself?” Malcolm didn’t answer. The cock was now crumpled into itself, huddled up like an old woman.

“Ah, well,” said Colin, straightening slowly and walking across the green linoleum floor, his arms bare. He walked over to the creel, looking down at it for a moment. Then he knelt, squatting on his heels, looking in through the bars of the creel and poking his finger between them. The cock turned its head away.

Malcolm said: “What do we need to kill him for anyway? Can’t we have herring?”

His mother, who was pouring hot water into a white basin with a blue line running across the top, said:

“You know very well that we always have meat on a Sunday.” Sunddenly Colin upended the creel. There was frantic fluttering of feathers, a swirling and flapping of wings all yellow and red, the snakelike neck thrusting this way and that in a storm of motion. Malcolm forced himself to look. Colin had seized the neck and was twisting it slowly in his hands, the veins standing out on his arms, his body rocking with the effort, his face as red as the cock’s comb. Slowly the effort eased, the eyes of the cock glazed, the neck seemed to relax, colour seemed to go out of the body and Colin was standing up.

“There you are, mother.” There was blood on his hands, dark red blood. His mother took the cock and began to pluck the feathers, first laying it on a piece of newspaper on the floor. From where he was standing Malcolm tried to read the headline. It said: “RAF hits Germany again.”

Colin washed his hands carefully in the basin of hot water, soaping them lavishly, though soap was scarce. When he had finished he went outside and threw the bloodstained water into the grass, watching it for a moment as it soaked in. Then he filled the basin once more, this time with cold water, and washed his face and neck. Malcolm watched the back of his neck, the head inverted over the bowl.

“Did you hear how Dicky is today?” he asked. There was a gurgle from the basin.

“No,” said Colin, “I didn’t hear.”

“Did you go and see him?”

“No.”

Colin towelled himself with great force and then removed his dungarees and put on his creased navy blue trousers.

He said: “I wish I could play the melodeon. I really wish I could play the melodeon.”

His mother snorted: “What next?”

Already he had tried to learn the Jew’s harp but he wasn’t very successful.

“I wish I could play it, just the same,” said Colin, one leg inside the trousers, the other outside, and leaning against the mantelpiece for support.

“Who’s playing it tonight?” said Malcolm, trying to read more of what the RAF had been doing in Germany.

“Big Dan, I suppose.” Big Dan was exempt from war service because of his limp.

Malcolm was listening to the sound of the sea, which he could hear quite distinctly. He put on the kettle without being asked and set the table. Colin was by now standing in front of the mirror, putting on his blue jersey which his mother had knitted. He was bending, looking at himself in the mirror with great satisfaction and concentration. Then he began to comb his gingery hair, very carefully, finally smoothing it back with his hands.

“Know what I was doing this afternoon?” he asked suddenly.

“No,” said Malcolm, taking saucers and cups out of the press.

“Collecting scrap. Me and Dell. We found an old tin roof and a hammer without a handle and two pails. And we went in to old Maggie and asked her for scrap. And we got an old fender. For the war effort, you know.”

“I’d have gone with you if you’d told me,” said Malcolm, leaning over to read the paper.

Colin said: “I forgot. Anyway, you’ve got your work to do.”

Malcolm suddenly felt a wave of affection for his brother. He thought: “I’ll be in university and he’ll be out on a ship on the sea, or if the worst comes to the worst he’ll be working in a mill. And he doesn’t envy me or anything. He always praises me behind my back. And yet he’s much cleverer than me with his hands.”

His hands shook as he put the butter on the table. The pile of feathers on the newspaper was growing larger. His brother looked very clean and sparkling with health and vigour. The kettle on the fire began to sing.

“The kettle’s boiling,” said his mother, infuriatingly. Malcolm shifted the Wild Western away from where the teapot would go. It showed a picture of Wild Bill Hickok blasting away at a rather badly drawn villain in a black hat. He could see that the top corner of page six was drawn down.

“Don’t get tea all over that,” said Colin.

Malcolm shifted the book over to the dresser. They sat down to their tea. The cock with the twisted neck lay on the paper, on which there was a lot of thick red blood. His brother seemed to have completely forgotten about it, as he cut through a fat scone and spread margarine on it.