The Things I Know(6)
‘Morning, girls! Hello, lovely ladies, how are we all this morning?’ She spoke softly, cooing to them, as she always did, and paused as if waiting for their response. From their quiet acceptance of her presence she assumed that Daisy Duke IV, Mrs Cluck VI, Daphne II, Helga III and Little Darling II were all pleased to see her. They didn’t seem too aggrieved that she arrived each day to reach into one of two nesting boxes at the sides of the coop to collect their eggs. She, however, still felt a tiny flash of guilt that after all their hard work, twenty-six hours of making an egg, here she was, ready to snaffle it away with her cold hand and into her straw-lined basket.
‘Clever, clever Mrs Cluck!’ she would call if the old girl had managed to produce. She’d gone down from four eggs a week to two – not that Hitch would pass this information on to her mum. She remembered the last time she had tittle-tattled on a hen whose egg production had all but halted. Within days, Marion, as she was called, had disappeared, and Marion II had taken her spot quicker than you could say, ‘Scrambled or boiled?’ Sadly, Marion II had died of natural causes only a month later.
Hitch believed that the more grateful she was for the eggs, the more inclined the gang would be to lay for her. ‘Good morning, Helga – no egg today? Don’t you worry, my lovely. I’m sure you’ll make up for it tomorrow or the day after that. No rush.’
She felt her way around the bedding layer, a mixture of white wood shavings with the sawdust removed and a thin topping of straw. Daphne liked to lay in the small hours, and so Hitch always approached with caution, using her flashlight to scan the ground for the bird before taking a step. It was this kind of attention to detail that the girls really appreciated – respecting them and showing them love. Reaching in, she felt a warm egg and gathered it into her palm.
‘Oh, look at this lovely egg – thank you, ladies! That’s a beauty. Thank you so much. You have all done so well and I’m grateful. I hope you have a wonderful day and I shall see you all later.’
She winked at Daphne. She knew it was wrong to have favourites, but Daphne, with her fine speckled plume and soft-feathered neck, was so pretty it was hard not to love her a little bit more than the others.
With her usual care, Hitch walked backwards out of the coop and placed the eggs in the straw pannier before going back and securing the double fence. She stood by the enclosed run and gazed down the paddock towards the horizon as the sun began to peep over the curve of the hill. At this moment every day, if conditions were right and she was in time to see it, the wide sweep of the River Severn that formed the natural boundary to their farm lit up like fire, reflecting the early rays of the sun. It was like magic, the very best part of her day.
Hitch took a deep breath and stared out over the horizon. ‘I wish . . . I wish . . .’
‘What are you standing gawping at?’ Emery interrupted from behind.
Hitch closed her eyes. ‘I wish that Emery would fall down a deep bloody hole and never come out,’ she whispered, opening her eyes in time to see the fire on the water disappear as quickly as it had flared. It was his knack to destroy any moment of joy she could find. She wished he would shove off for good. She was on to him, not as easily fooled as her mum and Pops. Emery wanted the farm, and with Jonathan out of the way he thought it possible.
‘Because if it’s the case you’ve got nothing to do, just let me know – there’s plenty wants doing in the lower field today and grain wants humping from the storeroom. We could use a spare pair of hands, even bloody useless ones like yours!’ he said, chuckling.
‘I don’t work for you!’
‘Not yet,’ he said, and winked.
Hitch ignored him and made her way back towards Big Barn to retrieve Buddy and head to the kitchen. Emery’s words cut to the quick, but she was confident in her own ability to carry out farm work. She’d learned from the very best – her parents.
Spying a crop of burnt-orange marigolds, a welcome flash of colour in the brown landscape at this time of year, she scooted past and ran her fingers over the soft, puff-headed flowers. She picked one and laid it atop her clutch of eggs. There were two paying bed-and-breakfast guests who had stayed last night. Mr and Mrs Silvioni from New York City.
Noo Yoyk was how the woman had said it. Hitch very much liked Mrs Silvioni’s pencilled-in eyebrows, her fancy hair and her gravelly voice. She made Hitch think of faraway places and the movies, and just talking to her was enough in some small way to satisfy her dream of travel.
Buddy settled into his soft bed behind the back door while Hitch took up her favourite spot in front of the range. She heated up the blackened skillet, popping in a nub of bacon fat before putting it on the hottest plate of the range, waiting until it sizzled before carefully laying six fat slices of home-cured bacon in its depths and watching them slowly change colour. At the same time, she cut thick slices of her mum’s crusty white cobbler and laid some on the worn round breadboard, along with four pats of Waycott Farm butter and two white ramekins: one filled with raspberry jam and the other with bitter orange marmalade. When the bacon was crisp, the fat rendered and turned golden, she took two more thick slices of bread and laid them in the fat, watching as they soaked up the flavoured grease and they too turned a happy shade of honey-brown. With the bacon and fried bread kept warm in the bottom oven, she now fried two rounds of home-made black pudding and four skinny sausages while heating a tin of baked beans in the saucepan. Once the coffee was brewed, the teapot warmed and milk poured into a daintily painted pottery jug – by all accounts, older than herself – she set one end of the dark mahogany table in the dining room. A fire blazed in the grate, Pops’s handiwork, transforming the wood-panelled room into a space that was warm and homely, with long flames licking the fireplace as logs hissed, cracked and popped their morning greeting.