The Household Guide to Dying

Lists were not essential to my life. Nothing would change now if I never wrote another and I suspected that without them I might still have got things done. But this particular morning’s list was not for me, and I’d written it late the night before.

Put on washing

Feed scraps to chickens

Feed fish/mice (pond & tank)

Get girls up

Make lunches (not peanut butter for E)

Feed girls (don’t let D have chocolate milk on cereal again)

Remind E re homework sheet

Check D has reader, library bag

Hang out washing

Empty/fill dishwasher

Girls to school half hr early (choir practice)

And also:

Have shower (if poss!)

Make coffee, drink while hot (ha!)

I had only been writing this sort of list for the last year or so, since it became clear that certain tasks would need to be delegated. Until things were sorted out. That was the term we adopted to describe the future that yawned like crocodile jaws, deep and daunting. Compiling it was hard because it represented things I had been doing intuitively for years. What to put in and leave out? I’d placed it strategically under the pepper grinder late in the night. When the girls came in to kiss me goodbye the next morning, I was too groggy to tell if their hair was properly tied up, teeth cleaned. I murmured goodbye and raised my head to brush their cheeks with my lips. When I woke later there was a feather on the sheet, a dark brown one. I presumed they didn’t take their chickens to school.

As I reread the list I considered how Archie must have felt earlier that morning: was he insulted or bemused, offended or grateful? I wondered if I should have stipulated the girls be dressed in their school uniforms, or reminded him about their hats. Then I wondered why I felt all that was so important. I got out of bed and threw it into the wastepaper bin. Archie probably hadn’t even noticed it.

I generally wake early, before the light has fully hatched. Just the day before, I had made a small pot of tea and taken a cup out into the garden. Some of the chickens were already quietly burbling to themselves. I went and sat in the cane chair under the umbrella tree nursing my tea and listening. I’d always found the sounds of chickens to be immensely pleasurable. The five of them fussed and bickered on their way out of the shed as the light grew. Lizzie – Elizabeth – the smallest and most beautiful, was the first out, leading the foray into the sun. She was a Light Sussex, wearing black feathers over her white plumage like a lacy shawl, and she was bossy, instructing the others on the order they should leave the shed. The last to emerge was Kitty, dark brown to almost black on the tips of her wings. As far as I knew, every morning Kitty greeted the day the same way: a pause at the shed door, scratching the earth, a quick dart out a foot or two, a retreat to the door, another few feet, another retreat, before finally making a line for the feed tray on the other side of the run. Halfway there, Lizzie would always turn and peck her back, whereupon the ritual began again until something distracted either of them. Kitty was the last I acquired, though not the youngest, and poultry protocol insisted that, no matter what, this chain of authority remained.

I decided that if I had another life I could just study chickens. Only that morning sitting there, and throwing the dregs of my tea over the fence (they all rushed to investigate: they were incorrigibly curious) I realised despite having chickens for several years, I knew very little about them. The problem was that they were so easy, so compliant, required minimal care. I had, I saw, taken them completely for granted. There were aspects of them I would never understand. Why, for instance, did Jane, an Australorp with magnificent black plumage, glossy and iridescent green in the sunlight, lay white eggs? Why, when I had reared most of them from chicks, did they still hesitate or even protest at being caught? Kitty would once cuddle contentedly in bed with Daisy, but then after five minutes struggle to be free. Realising that the hen preferred to roost at night, I finally had to coax Daisy into returning her to the rest of the flock, after which Kitty became pathologically timid. (And, as was the way with children, Daisy’s fierce desire to sleep with the hen every night evaporated. Some other animal obsession materialised. First the goldfish, and then, when she finally accepted that they weren’t amenable to cuddling, the mice: India, Africa and China. A few months back, Daisy was insisting that if she didn’t take China, her favourite, to school in her pocket every day, she or it would die.)

I tasted the smallest atoms of life in those few quiet minutes. Drinking tea and waiting by chickens before the rest of the world raised its head. I tossed them a handful of layer pellets. Kitty approached the fence and ate from my hand. The gentle prod of her beak in my palm. The contented cackling. Lizzie darted across and shoved her aside. I was gripped by a sudden urge to protect the smallest of my flock. I entered the shed. Despite the dust, the earthy pungency of the chicken manure, the remains of bones and shells and everything else they unearthed in their endless, restless scratching for vermicular treats, the shed and the run was a pleasant place. It offered tender moments that couldn’t be found anywhere else. The angled poles of light capturing swirls of golden dust. The feathers rising and settling on the ground. The clucking that sounded equally contented and distressed. Above all, the air of expectancy that emanated from every hen, no matter how silly. The pure optimism that kept her laying an egg day after day, when day after day that egg was taken away. Some might regard that as stupid, but I thought it almost unbearably generous. A laying hen was so full of integrity, with all that devotion and focus in her life. And then, the egg itself, sitting sometimes in dirt, sometimes crusted with chicken shit, sometimes as clean and unblemished as a new cake of soap. But inside, more than complete; stuffed, entirely, with possibilities.

It struck me that morning how I should have taken the opportunity more often to regard and wonder fully at this corner of the garden, this ordinary aspect of backyard life. Too late now.

In fact, it was too early, but I went in to Estelle and Daisy anyway. In sleep their forms assumed a softness and delicacy that would dissipate once they woke. For a minute or two I drank in their innocence and purity. Then I placed the chickens carefully beside each of them. Estelle’s hands curled automatically around Lizzie, Daisy sat up with a start when she felt the tickling warmth of Kitty on her cheek.

What’s up? she said.

It wasn’t much past six o’clock, but I figured my daughters would have to cope with a lot worse than being dragged early from their beds.

I need to show you something very important, I said.

Cuddling their chickens, they followed me into the kitchen where I made them a chocolate milk each and sat them on their stools at the opposite side of the bench. The chickens settled into each lap with a few muted chirps. Switching the kettle on again and taking down the tea canister, I began.

Making the perfect cup of tea is not something you’re necessarily going to learn by accident, I said. Although, as Mrs Beeton says, there is very little art in making good tea. If the water is boiling and there is no sparing of the fragrant leaf, the beverage will almost invariably be good.

Who’s Mrs Beeton? Daisy said.

Never mind, said Estelle, sensing the importance of the occasion.

I made the tea while talking them through the entire process, streamlined for the twenty-first century, and taking into account local conditions. I used the small brown pot which was perfect for two cups, Irish Breakfast tea, and one of the white cups. I explained they would hear of things like warming the pot and the milk-first-versus-milk-later debate, and the metal-versus-ceramic-pot argument, which divided purists into polarised camps of Swiftian proportions.

Swiftian? What’s that mean? Estelle asked.

Jonathan Swift. Wrote Gulliver’s Travels, remember?

She nodded. We’d read a children’s version of it together a couple of years back, when she was nine.

He wrote about people called Big-Endians and Little-Endians, I said. All about which end you sliced your boiled egg open. Or something like that. Don’t worry about that now. We’ll do eggs later.

They would only need to heat the pot on the coldest of days, I went on. Not much of a problem here, especially with global warming. Nor, I explained, did they need to worry about the one-for-each-person-and-one-for-the pot rule. It would all depend on how strong you liked your tea, and, as they knew, I happened to like mine quite weak (they nodded, yes, they knew this), whereas others, especially those who took their tea with milk (Jean, their grandmother) might like it strong.

When the tea was made and poured, I placed it under their noses and told them to inhale deeply. I knew they wouldn’t want to take a sip. They sniffed and nodded when I asked them if they could detect the malty aroma.

In my opinion, I added, Irish Breakfast is still the best tea to start the day. Failing that, a brand containing an Assam leaf. And you can forget about Billy Tea, these days it’s nothing like it used to be.

Then I poured it all away and started again, to be sure they’d got it. They drank the last of their chocolate milks and watched until their attention span expired and they wandered back to bed still holding their chickens.

Nowadays, I focused on small but significant things. These days, my daughters indulged me quite a lot. A year ago they would have resisted, whingeing. Refused to see the point of cups of tea, which only ancient people drank. Now they were more tolerant of my eccentric demands. Sometimes they looked at me quizzically, assessing if it was really me. I have, I thought, at least taught my daughters to make a perfect cup of tea. They might otherwise go through life thinking it was always done with teabags. Though I couldn’t explain to myself, really, why I felt this would be a bad thing.

Alone in the kitchen, I raised the cup to my mouth but the perfect cup of tea now tasted bitter and my throat tightened in resistance. I went back to bed, where Archie was just stirring awake.

Three (#ulink_a3177e75-255c-5a64-8aa2-4d5fed4e9a44)

Dear Delia

My kids won’t eat vegetables apart from potato chips. And my husband hates salad. Do you have any hints to get them eating greens and other vegetables? I get sick of cooking meals they hardly eat.

Fed Up.

Dear Fed Up

Mrs Beeton declared, ‘As with the COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house. Her spirit will be seen through the whole establishment.’ Assert yourself, Fed Up. You’re the cook, so take command and cook what you think they should eat. In fact, you should cook what you want to eat, even if your favourite dish is sardines on toast or tripe curry. Take your meals alone if you have to. Let them sort it out. Remember, you’re the boss.

What are the cockles of the heart anyway?

The oddest thoughts come to you when you’re standing at a graveside. And at a graveside a dictionary is probably the last thing you have to hand. I knew all about the heart, but when I got home I would have to look up the cockles.

Meanwhile, it was a chilly but clear late winter day, and I was roaming through Rookwood cemetery searching for a grave. The one I was standing before, in that silent city, had a leaning tombstone that said:

Arthur Edward Proudfoot