The Opened Cage

by S. C. Howe

  ‘We can get our food from somewhere else,’ he said early one afternoon as they walked back with bags of provisions.

  ‘And why should we inconvenience ourselves for oiks like that?’ Joss retorted, walking on.

  ‘Because I happen to agree with your father: we need to be more discreet.’

  Joss snorted. ‘Any more discreet and we might just as well become invisible.’

  Well, that might be an idea, thought Tom.

  They walked on in silence, Tom wondering whether he was being cowardly or merely realistic. He hurried to catch up with Joss, who was stumping angrily now through the January mist.

  ‘Anyway, when the chickens arrive, we won’t need to use the place so much,’ Joss said.

  ‘The chickens won’t start laying immediately, Joss. They’re not machines.’

  Joss gave him a withering look then added, ‘We need a horse and cart so we can get stuff in from somewhere else then.’

  Tom lessened his pace and shook his head. Joss had somehow worked it so it looked as if he had been the one who actually suggested going elsewhere.

  The next week was busy with deliveries. The coops arrived in two wagons during the earlier part of the week, and on Friday, they stood at the halt as the train clanked to a stop and two men jumped out of the goods van and started unloading several clucking crates. They had barely deposited the last, when one signalled to the linesman that they were ready to go.

  ‘What about returning the crates?’ Tom yelled.

  ‘It’s all in the price, mate!’ one of the men bawled back, giving them a thumbs-up.

  It was one of those late mornings when there is low, chilling cloud and everything looks greyed and washed out. Joss’s nose had a large drop on the end, which he wiped on the back of his sleeve.

  ‘You are a slob at times Joss!’

  Joss looked up from steadying one of the crates he had knocked over. ‘What?’

  ‘If you carry on using your sleeve as a handkerchief, you’ll soon know about it.’

  Joss gave him a wide smile.

  ‘Looks as if we can only get a few crates in the barrow at a time,’ Tom said. ‘So how about if we both go down to the coops, and then I’ll leave you there and I’ll come back up for the others. And you get them settled in. I would say about ten per coop, and keep the cockerels apart from each other.’

  Joss gave a salute.

  ‘Or we can do it the other way round.’

  Joss smiled. ‘No, it’s all right, Sometimes I get a bit unsteady with the left leg, particularly when it’s cold like this.’

  ‘I wasn’t making any observation on–’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Joss said equably. ‘We have to be realistic.’

  They walked down the grassy track to the farm and the wheelbarrow bounced over the smallest ruts from the tyres of Joss’s parents’ car; he leant over the barrow steadying them.

  ‘I’ll take some rope up,’ Tom said.

  They reached the coops, which were in the meadow just behind the large barn, facing the farmhouse. Lifting them out together, Joss momentarily lost his balance and had to catch hold of the end of one of the coops to steady himself. Tom stuffed the chickens into the coop and slammed the door. There was much squawking and flapping of wings.

  ‘You’d think I be used to this by now,’ Joss said.

  ‘It’s going to take time, Joss. For the first 29 years of your life you walked one way, now you’ve got to learn to change it slightly.’

  ‘Slightly? I feel like a bloody cripple. I just hope you don’t think your life revolves around helping me, the disabled one.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Joss sat down heavily on one of the empty crates and rubbed the calf of the affected leg. ‘When we talked about setting this up, we were both able bodied. Now it looks as though you’ve drawn the short straw. You’re going to have to do a lot more.’

  Tom sat by him. ‘If you think I’m going to let you off anything, forget it! You and I are in this together. And just being here is enough.’

  Joss turned to him. ‘Do you really mean that?’

  Tom gave an exasperated face. ‘Yeess.’

  A few evenings later, Joss slouched untidily at the bar of the local public house, an ancient inn called ‘The Fox and Fiddle. It was a timber-framed, dormer-roofed building, cocooned in a hidden angle of low billowing hills with a sandy track twisting up to it. It was sheltered by birch trees, but heath and marshes stretched out beyond it, brooding. Some said it was haunted; most didn’t care.

  It was mid-evening and a few tables were full with agricultural workers who had recently finished work for the day. There was a strange tension in the room. Tom, standing head-close to Joss, felt his skin prickle with some ancient warning of attack. Joss was seemingly oblivious to it all and drank stolidly, talked to Tom in a low voice and passed knowing smirks. From the back Joss looked monumental as he insisted on wearing his old army greatcoat whenever he went out. Tom frowned at him then looked away as a voice cut across from the left.

  ‘Heard you might have some work at that farm of y’orn?’ The voice belonged to a hard-featured, thin-faced young man in his early twenties.

  Joss looked around. ‘No, not at the moment.’

  Hard Face looked at him, appraisingly. ‘Perhaps in the summer, then?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ Joss slurred, staring at him as though he thought he ought to recognise him, but was buggered if he could think who he was.

  Hard Face sniffed in a breath, drew himself up, almost reluctantly. ‘There’s some that says you two are a couple of Nancy boys, but if you give us a job, I’ll make sure talk goes no further.’

  Tom froze, staring ahead at a spot on the back wall.

  Joss merely slouched round, almost falling into the wizened young man.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Couple of Nancy boys, that’s what they say. So you give us a job and I’ll make sure it stops.’

  ‘You can fuck off,’ said Joss languidly and went back to his pint. Realising he had drained it he motioned for the landlord to refill his mug and Tom’s. Tom stood absolutely still, his eyes wide open. Hard Face looked equally dazed. The rest of his group started sniggering. Hard Face sat down.

  ‘I think we’d better go,’ Tom whispered.

  ‘No.’ Joss didn’t move and stared, ox-like, at the back of the bar.

  ‘Come on, Joss, you’re drunk, and this could get nasty.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  There was a terrible silence in the room and the landlord stood back after refilling the glasses, as though anticipating a sudden movement.

  ‘You know who that is, don’t you?’ Hard Face appealed to his group. ‘That’s the brother of that shite Major Deerman.’ A few of them groaned. ‘The Prancing Fairy of B Company’.

  ‘What? ‘im?’ came an incredulous voice.

  ‘Yeah, the one in the coat,’ said another.

  ‘The one built like a brick shithouse?’

  Joss smirked into his beer. Tom prodded him.

  ‘No, we’re staying,’ Joss said. ‘I’m not being run out by a load of oiks like that.’ The look on his face was unusual, threatening. Suddenly his usually well-portioned bulk seemed thicker, even ungainly. Tom raised his hand, carried on drinking.

  ‘Major Deerman, yeah I remember him, used to prance up and down the line prodding you with his stick.’

  ‘As long as it was only that.’

  Dirty laughter.

  ‘There can’t be two Nancy boys in one family, can there?’ came another incredulous voice.

  ‘I dunno. But they’m all toffs, so anything’s possible.’

  ‘Ain’t his old man Squire Deerman?’ The ‘Squire’ part said with derision.

  Tom could sense Joss’s body tensing.

  An older man relit a cigarette; rid his mouth of a few strands of tobacco. ‘His old man’s all right, a good employer they say, fair with his workforce.’

  This seem
ed to depress the group.

  ‘Might be worth your while asking up at Woodham,’ continued the older man.

  ‘Only the stupid bastard’s just blown his chances,’ Incredulous Voice quipped.

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Anyway,’ the older man said in a low voice but not low enough so that Joss couldn’t hear, ‘you want to be careful what you says, the likes of Deerman own most of the properties the likes of us rents. It’s a case of put up and shut up, or be out in the gutter.’

  Joss’s shoulders visibly sagged, and the room carried on drinking with an oddly helpless air.

  Later, as they walked back, when Joss had unaccountably sobered up, Tom turned to him. ‘That was a very risky thing you did back there.’

  ‘And your answer is to run away, is it?’ Joss’s voice was uncharacteristically sarcastic.

  ‘No. Not run away. Be more diplomatic.’

  Joss snorted.

  For a moment, Tom had the picture of an ill-tempered ox, scoring the dust with a hoof.

  ‘You can’t be diplomatic with blackmailers.’

  ‘You don’t have to court trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t. I faced the little oik down, and I tell you we won’t be having more trouble from him, or his cronies again.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I’ve met their type before. Since the Wilde case, they think they can blackmail any homosexual.’

  Tom hesitated, unused to hearing themselves as a category. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Very. Remember I was knocking around London before the war. I saw and heard some very nasty stuff.’

  Tom peered up at the sky, looked again at the closely diamonded stars. The sand on the track crunched on the rocks below. ‘Do you want to go back there?’

  ‘What, The Fox and Fiddle?’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘I think we need to,’ said Joss in more accustomed voice. ‘We need to face them down.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it,’ Tom mused, ‘it’s as though we had more freedom in the war.’

  They made a point of going in the pub the next evening. Joss’s big coat billowed as he walked through and leaned, set-jawed at the bar.

  The landlord gave them a smile. ‘Same as always, gentlemen?’

  Joss grinned. Tom stood with his back against the bar, then wished he hadn’t as he caught the look of one of the group from the previous night. Looking away, he felt in his jacket for his cigarettes and lit one, with a cupped hand.

  ‘And what was you in?’ asked a man from the group.

  ‘Worcestershire regiment.’

  ‘As what?’

  ‘A private,’ Tom answered and turned back to the bar.

  ‘And what about your ‘friend’?’ There was a snigger.

  ‘I was a private, too,’ said Joss, turning to face them and leaning against the bar. ‘What were you?’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘What did you do in the war?’ he repeated, annunciating each word rather slowly.

  ‘Private... Shropshire. Why was you a private?’

  ‘Why were you?

  ‘But your brother’s a major–’

  ‘And my uncle’s a Brigadier–’

  ‘What?’ More incredulity. ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘We cleared up the mess,’ said Joss.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stretcher-bearers.’

  ‘But why did you do that, when–’

  ‘I could have had a cushy number? That’s a decision I made.’ Joss turned back round to face the bar.

  ‘Oh.’

  There were some heated exchanges amongst the group then the attention turned away. Joss caught Tom’s eye and smiled. Tom shook his head slightly but Joss slouched more obviously, knocked back the pint, and ordered another.

  The following evening, they walked into the bar and the landlord greeted them warmly. There were a few courting couples engrossed with each other. But no group. This time, Joss walked to the table and sat down heavily with his coat sprawling around him like an ungainly bird that had crash-landed into enemy territory. Looking up at Tom, he gave a lop-sided grin. Tom was loathe to join in, wasn’t even sure if he was comfortable with what Joss had done.

  ‘Oh sit down and give up on the mild outrage, won’t you!’ said Joss. ‘Sometimes even I can pull rank.’

  It was a few hours later when they walked along the sandy paths glistening with frost, the browned fern leaves sparkling. The stars streamed overhead, white-bright. Tom caught his breath.

  ‘Stupendous, isn’t it,’ Joss said, standing close to him.

  ‘I still don’t think what you did was particularly clever,’ Tom said as they sat on a couple of smooth sandstone boulders.

  Joss looked bored. Grating the small sandstone particles into the rock, he eventually looked up. ‘This is our home. This is what we wanted to come back to, why we carried on hoping, out there, and I am not going to start running. Where do you think it will end?’

  ‘Don’t you think we’ve just fuelled their hatred?’

  ‘You mean ‘I’?’

  ‘We were both there, so it’s ‘we’.’

  Joss shrugged, ‘As long as we’re not caught in the act. ‘

  Tom frowned.

  ‘Caught in the act of having sex – fucking, Tom–’

  ‘There’s no need for that.’

  ‘There’s nothing much they can do.’

  ‘I thought it would be a lot easier back here after the war.’

  ‘You have too much faith in human beings,’ said Joss.

  ‘But they were out there too.’

  ‘You think we’re all going to be suddenly full of goodwill?’ Joss asked.

  ‘I didn’t have you down as such a cynic.’

  ‘I’m a realist. Anyway, if you cave in now, you’ll be running all your life. Even if it doesn’t feel remotely like it, you have to show those types you don’t give a monkey’s arse what they say. They’re bullies, and they’ll never win with me.’

  Tom considered. ‘You’re right,’ he said wearily. ‘That’s my failing, I get alarmed.’

  Joss shook his head. ‘It’s no failing, Tom. You’re a good, decent man, but sometimes you have to go down to their level to beat them.’

  Tom shrugged. ‘You’re clearly better at dealing with people than I am.’

  ‘No I’m not. Perhaps I just know how to play people. That’s just being worldly-wise.’

  They got back to their feet as the frost was starting to work into them, numbing toes and fingers. The immense silence of the heath struck them and they stood, looking up at the sky. The darkness was profound.

  Joss took in a deep breath. ‘I used to dream of this in the trenches,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I couldn’t sleep and I’d just sit there looking overhead, dreaming until it became too painful to hope.’

  ‘I thought you slept when I slept.’

  ‘I did most of the time. It was thanks to you I had any sleep.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘I sleep like a log. Hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘You snore a lot.’

  ‘You fidget.’

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know you weren’t sleeping?’ Tom asked.

  ‘And deprive you of the sleep? That was one of the few comforts we had.’

  Ice had formed silently in the shallow puddles and splintered as Joss and Tom walked on. A dog fox shrieked, an owl hooted loudly, close by. The bold outlines of bare intricately branched and twigged trees traced the start of the fields of their holding in the distance. The thought of the fire in the range, heating the large living room made Tom smiled with content. Joss caught his look and together they hurried on.

  Something yellow caught Tom’s eye as he passed the gate back into the courtyard the next morning. Stooping down, he saw the deep, glistening yellow of a finely-petalled flower but could not remember what it was. Growing up in the country, he had known all the names of the common plants, of which this was one, but try as he m
ight he could not recall it. All he could remember was the poppies of France, those orangey-red petals with the coal-black hearts, wavering; the first pioneers of the blasted landscapes. He looked at the black silhouettes of trees standing out against the light blue sky of evening and realised he could not remember their names either. Perhaps the stink of the battlefield had affected his brain. In fact, what had the exposure to shell fumes, decay and polluted water done to any of them? No-one knew. That was the truth. How long before it started to reveal itself? He picked one of the flower heads and exhaled, then drew in a deep breath to expel any remnants of the foul air that might be lingering in his lungs. This air would heal. If he tried to think like this, things would be all right. Look forward, not backward.

  ‘We’ll have to start doing something,’ he said as he walked into the kitchen. ‘We can’t live on nothing. We should at least sow an oat crop for the horses… do something.’

  Joss listened distractedly, not looking up from the book he was reading in a window seat; he was flicking through the pages, as if looking for something. ‘Found it!’ He smiled up at Tom and held the flora up, showing a page of yellow flowers. ‘It’s celandine. I’d forgotten it too.’

  Tom looked at the yellow flower head in his hand, as though just remembering he was holding it. ‘I’m not joking Joss, if we’re serious about this farm we need to get cracking.’

  ‘All right, we’ll go,’ he said and shrugged on his old greatcoat and opened the door onto the cold world outside. ‘There’s a market later this morning in Kidderminster. We can get the next train.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s due in ten minutes.’

  Tom followed him out. ‘It is what you want, isn’t it?’ he asked, catching him up.

  ‘If it makes you happy.’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘Well, we have to eat,’ Joss said, and seeing the anxious look on Tom’s face. ‘Of course we have to get cracking,’ he added more kindly. ‘I need you to give me a kick up the arse, otherwise, my friend, we’d probably starve.’

  A few hours later, they sat on the deserted yard of Kidderminster market. By them was an old iron plough, horse tack, two rusty bicycles and a rickety cart. An old shire horse was champing away in a nosebag to one side. Joss had been first to bid on lots but after fluffing a couple, Tom had said quietly, ‘Do you want me to take over?’ Joss had nodded, not looking at him.