Home life
The egg and I
Alice Thomas Ellis Ihave a tendency to go on about the extraordinariness of the egg. I think the meaning of the universe is bound up with the egg. In the exact spot I was gazing at the other day while wrestling with this problem, there was discovered a pheasant sitting on 18 of the things. This is called synchronicity. Unfortunately the mode of her discovery led to her precipitate depar- ture. There was a baseball game in pro- gress and the ball landed, wallop, more or less on top of her, whereupon she took herself off, leaving her clutch of orphaned, illegitimate eggs.
Next day we guiltily crept up to see whether she had come back and found that, while most of the eggs were cold, four' of them were cheeping and their occupants were trying to make a break-out. At this we sent for the gamekeeper and asked for advice. He said the prognosis was not good, but helped the daughter and her friend extract the chicks. It is very odd to peel an egg and get not an egg but a damp, gawky baby. The gamekeeper shook his head dubiously but the females of the party — and it seems that even the naughtiest female will move heaven and earth to keep an infant creature alive — rushed them indoors and set about constructing a prem- ature baby unit. The gamekeeper had said they must be kept at 90 degrees, which presented a problem and a conflict of interests. Cadders has sequestered the airing-cupboard, which was the obvious place except that it has no light which apparently is also necessary to the survival of chicks, and Cadders made it clear that not only would he eat them if he got the chance but he wasn't going to relinquish his place in the warmth.
Then I had one of those inspirations which are afforded to the chosen once or twice in a lifetime. Cat baskets are specifi- cally designed not to let the cat out; ergo, by the same token, the cat can't get in. This is called lateral thinking, I think. The girls made up a bed of straw in a shallow casserole, arranged the chicks in it, stuck them in the cat basket and set it on the Aga. We had considered putting them in the Aga, in the plate-warming oven, but I thought it much too risky. Roast pheasant.
Then one of the chicks died. The daugh- ter, whose compassion is balanced by pragmatism, suggested giving it to Cadders since he obviously wanted one but I, who am totally unbalanced, forbade this. The remaining three are cheeping and kicking like anything. One of them presented some worry, refusing to open his beak to allow food in — the gamekeeper gave us some pheasant food which has to be squashed up and moistened with spit and offered on a stalk of grass, a wildly pernickety business — but by dint of perseverance even he is now sitting up and taking nourishment. Their feathers have dried and fluffed out and show their markings and they are awfully beautiful. I never thought I'd get fond of a pheasant because I always found them so thick, scuttling along the road in front of the car, while the whole of wild Wales beckoned, but these have crept into our hearts. It's early days yet and I'm fully prepared for them to die, but if they do it will be yet another sadness. I have tried to block from my mind the fact that if they live their fate is certain. Ghastly great oafs in silly socks will come along and shoot them. There is no skill involved in this. The pheasants round here are so tame and so dumb that a child could walk up to one and wring its neck with no trouble at all. I don't suppose I'll ever eat a pheasant again. It might be one of ours and I should feel like a sort of incestuous cannibal. We shall have to confine ourselves to bread sauce and game chips and redcurrant jelly and gravy made from a stock cube. I have a passionately vengeful fantasy of creeping up on the hunters and shooting them full of pellets.
I am fed up with the meaning of the universe. Everything starts in the egg and ends in death. I think it's called 'the heartbreak at the heart of things'. But then perhaps our very mortality is an egg and at the moment of death our souls will emerge like damp chicks. If this is so then every- thing is all right and I doubt there'll be any need for us to be dried off on top of the Aga. 'All things are well and all things will yet be well.' I think that's called optimism. Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.
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