Dorothy’s empire had taken a long time to build. By the time of George’s trip to the Lake District, however, it was enjoying its heyday. For instance, figures for this period show that Easilay were now supplying the nation with more than 22 million eggs a week, while the annual turnover of Pluckalot was more than 55 million. That’s chickens, of course: not pounds.
∗
One afternoon when I was about twenty, Verity and I had a quarrel at my parents’ house, and when it was over I went out for a walk to calm myself down. She had been having fun, as usual, at the expense of my aspirations as a writer, and I was riddled with righteous self-pity as I stormed off down a lane in the direction of the wood which I used to explore on my Sunday walks as a child. No doubt there was a semi-conscious intention behind this. I wanted to revisit the site of those happy occasions (and, of course, the scene of my first literary endeavours) because I felt that it would somehow restore a sense of myself as a uniquely precious and sentient being, a storehouse of aesthetically charged memories. And so I headed for what used to be Mr Nuttall’s farm, which I hadn’t visited for more than ten years.
At first, when I came to the barbed wire fence and the unfamiliar buildings, I thought that my memory was playing tricks, and had brought me to the wrong place. I seemed to be looking at some sort of factory. All I could see was a row of long, utilitarian wooden sheds, each with a giant metal canister at the end, supported on poles and ranged oppressively against the cloudy afternoon sky. Puzzled, I wriggled my way beneath the fence and went to take a closer look. The sheds had no windows: but by climbing up the side of one of the canisters, I could peer in through a gap between the wooden boards.
For a few seconds my eyes met with nothing but blackness, and I was overwhelmed by an atmosphere of dusty humidity, the air heavy with the smell of ammonia. Then, gradually, some shapes began to emerge from the gloom. But what I saw is difficult to explain, because it made no sense, and continues to make no sense, even now. I felt as though I was looking at a scene in a film, sprung from the fantastic imagination of some surrealist director. I was looking at what I can only describe as a sea of chickens. I was looking down what seemed to be a long, wide, dark tunnel, the floor covered with chickens as far as the eye could see. God knows how many birds were in that shed – thousands, or perhaps even tens of thousands. There was no movement at alclass="underline" they were packed in too tightly to turn or to move around, and I was aware only of a great stillness. This was finally shattered, I don’t know how many minutes later, by the sound of a door opening and the appearance of a little rectangle of light at the far end of the tunnel. Two figures were framed in the doorway, and there was a sudden bustle and flapping of feathers.
‘This is it,’ said one of the men.
‘Blimey,’ said the other. Their voices travelled boomingly.
‘Let’s throw some light on the subject,’ said the first man, and switched on a torch.
‘You certainly pack them in here, don’t you?’
‘We do our best.’ I took this man to be the owner. It was not Mr Nuttall, but I could remember my mother telling me that the farm had changed hands quite recently.
‘Feels warm enough in here to me, I must say.’
‘No, we need to keep it much warmer than this.’
‘When do you reckon it broke down, then?’
‘Some time last night.’
‘And your lighting’s gone as well, has it?’
‘No, no, it’s supposed to be dark. These birds are six weeks old, you see. They’d fight in these conditions if we gave them any light.’
‘Well, all I can do really is to check your circuit. More often than not you’ll find it’s the earthing system that’s at fault.’
‘Yes, but I only had a new one put in last year. Had a whole new system put in, you see, because the old one was completely useless. We had an absolute disaster one night. All the ventilators shut down. I came in in the morning and there were nine thousand dead birds on the floor. Nine bloody thousand. Took four of us all morning to clear them out. We were shovelling them out with a spade.’
‘Well, where can I get at it, anyway?’
‘At the back of the shed, near the big hopper.’
There was a short silence. Then the second man said: ‘Yes, but how do I get there?’
‘You walk it, of course. How do you think?’
‘I can’t get through there. There’s no room. Not with all these birds.’
‘They won’t hurt you.’
‘What about me hurting them?’
‘No, that’s all right. I mean, don’t tread on too many if you can help it. But there’s always a few dead ’uns in there anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it.’
‘You must be bloody joking, mate.’
The second man turned and left the doorway. I could see the farmer pursuing him.
‘Where are you going?’
‘No way am I going to trample through a flock of bloody chickens just to check your circuit.’
‘Look, how else are you going to …’
The voices faded out of earshot. I climbed down from my perch on the canister and dusted off my clothing. As I made my way back to the fence at the edge of the wood I saw a van coming up the driveway and pulling to a halt. On the side of the van was a logo which said PLUCKALOT CHICKENS – A DIVISION OF THE BRUNWIN GROUP. The name at that time was not familiar to me.
∗
Dorothy was a great believer in research and development, and over the years the Brunwin Group built up a reputation for technological innovation, particularly in chicken farming. These were some of the problems she set out to solve: