A Parliament of Show-Off Rooks

Bernard first spoke to me of the spectacle of roosting birds when he was still quite a small boy, perhaps five or six years old. He had been observed by an elderly neighbour sitting on the front doorstep as quiet and still as was possible in order to best monitor the comings and goings of sparrows and starlings and pigeons. He liked the starlings best of all with their brash certainty and their glossy and sometimes iridescent plumage, each struggling to be noticed as perhaps he longed to be himself. He wondered why they sometimes developed speckles of white about their feathers and why their bills were black in winter and yellow in summer but of course I couldn’t tell him and neither could the neighbour. He enjoyed their noisy squabbling and told me that somewhere he had heard that they could learn to speak which was something I had never heard myself so I told him that was unlikely. What he liked most about them was their determination to be gregarious and their habit of flocking together as they headed for their communal roost. Before he totally changed his mind about egg collecting, one of their pale blue eggs was his first ornithological acquisition. He placed it gently into a fake nest he had made on the table beside his bed.
He learned from a library book called Our Feathered Friends for Young Folk that mid-winter was probably the best time for spotting an undulating flock just before the sun went down. He told me that this was known as a Murmuration and our closest one was probably along the line of poplars down by Gemmel’s Farm adjacent to Springhead. If we were lucky, he said, we might see ten thousand or more at any one time.

My mother had long since decided that he was far too young to what she called Traipse around the countryside after Bloody Birds and so she detailed me to go with him if he was to go at all. So that is how we came to be sitting on the side of a frozen ditch one early December evening on the edge of one of Mr Gemmel’s newly ploughed fields. It was what my grandmother would have termed as cold as charity and although I was aware of every last degree of it, my brother was totally oblivious, hugging his pink knees and whispering that the concentration of birds we were about to see was because that habit served as a defence against falcons and hawks that would slaughter them in a blink of an eye. After a long silence within which I wondered how soon I would be able to persuade him that we needed to go home, he looked at me and asked if I thought it was exciting. I said Yes, I did because to say anything else would have seemed unnecessarily unkind.

And then it began. Slowly at first a tight sphere-like formation in the sky above us, expanding and contracting like an amorphous troupe of dancers then changing shape as if choreographed, each bird following the movement of its closest neighbours. The swarm was creating one complex shape after another, every one silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky and each process of change astonishingly elegant.

Next day Mr Hammond, the shoe-mender of Shepherd Street said when he was a boy some people kept starlings in cages and they could be trained if you caught them young enough not only to do tricks but to talk. One he came across could mimic the human voice so well that folk turned around to see who was speaking. When Bernard went home to acquaint my mother with this piece of information, Old Nan who was on her third cup of Wednesday afternoon tea said she wouldn’t give them house room because they were dirty buggers and inclined to shit all over the place. That seemed a bit odd to Bernard because if they were being kept in a cage there would be a natural limit to the extent of this annoying habit. But in any case he didn’t want to keep one in a cage so he did not think it worthwhile arguing about it.

I felt obliged to discuss with him a few days later that the Roost of starlings had been more interesting than I would have thought possible and following this admission over the next several months we wandered far and wide to witness similar winter evening exhibitions. Bernard even talked about the phenomena at school one morning at one of the inaugural Show & Tell demonstrations that were seeing their introduction into English primary schools in the 1950s. St Joseph’s prided itself on being much more progressive than other local schools, particularly those with no religious affinity and therefore considered next to heathen. He was so enthusiastic that it was difficult for Sister Camilla to actually stop him talking which infuriated Anne Murphy who was detailed to follow him and was to talk about her pet rabbit which she had brought with her in a cage.

The following autumn Bernard stopped talking about Murmurations of starlings and began instead to discuss Rooks. He very much wanted to go to Cooling to witness a Roost. He told me that the flock would not be called a Murmuration and would be called a Parliament instead and furthermore although it was easy to confuse the Rook with the Crow the former was distinguished by greyish skin around the base of the bill in front of the eyes and that in any case their feathered legs looked shaggier than those of the Crow. I bore all this in mind and promised never to confuse them.

Rashly I undertook to take him to the Rook Roost at Cooling at the first opportunity and did so only because I recalled the walks I had done with my father whilst he was still alive, walks that seemed interminably long at the time, along the Thames and Medway Canal to the marshes at Cliffe where I was told we trod in the very footsteps of Charles Dickens when he was a boy. When Bernard next went to the library the children’s librarian gave him permission to borrow from the Ornithology section in the adult library where they had seven or eight volumes by various authors that told you all you could possibly want to know about birds, including Rooks. He learned that they were highly gregarious and that males and females bond for life, that to farmers they were a nuisance because of their habit of decimating crops and most exciting of all, their spectacular aerial displays in autumn had to be seen to be believed. So he became intent upon observing this for himself and spoke non- stop about how exciting it was going to be when we finally found ourselves in the village of Cooling with the Roost itself, as our grandmother would say, within spitting distance! In the meantime he offered several times to share his newest information at Show & Tell time at school but was told that the subject matter he suggested wasn’t appropriate. Poor Bernard was only seven years old and therefore extremely hurt.

The journey plan was finally made in the first term of the school year in September when an outbreak of Measles locally ensured that being absent would mean he wasn’t noticed. I was recovering from a rather nasty attack of Chicken Pox and had not been at school for three weeks and our mother was conveniently detailed to be at Old Nan’s place in Crayford by eight am to look after Little Violet while Nan’s feet were attended to at the local hospital. She might be late back and we were therefore to get our own tea of fish and chips with the shiny half-crown left on the kitchen table. She was temporarily feeling flush because of an extra day or two worked the previous week for Mrs Lovell of Darnley Road. In addition she undoubtedly felt a certain amount of working class guilt at not being home to make sure we ate two slices of bread and what was always called Butter followed by a home-made rock cake or two. We took the rock cakes with us, wrapped in newspaper.

Purloining odd coins from the Toby jug above the kitchen stove provided a further cash injection for the bus fare into Gravesend but after that we would have to walk if we wanted to be sure of fish and chips later. In any case it was generally unwise to ask clippies to give change for half-crown pieces because they were almost honour bound to be rude simply because we were children which would only draw the attention of other passengers towards us. I felt a slight unease in any case about being a child because in those days as far as bus fares were concerned you stopped being one at the age of fourteen unless you were on your way to school preferably in school uniform. I had recently celebrated my fourteenth birthday.

As fate would have it, when we got to the bus stop opposite the Catholic church nosy Mrs Newberry was already in the queue poised ready to cross examine us with what passed as a look of polite interest on her face. Mrs Newberry had replaced The Bassants Next Door when they went to live in Burch Road Rosherville with their adopted daughter Ena. She was very keen on hand washing and stayed up late at night making sure that her family had the cleanest shirts, frocks and socks in the neighbourhood. My mother said that it wasn’t natural and to mark her words because her hands would suffer something terrible in the long run. I found myself staring at her hands as she predictably wanted to know where we were off to so early on a Wednesday morning. I said I was taking my brother to the new Ear Clinic at the hospital and wanted to get there before the rush. My mother had discussed over the fence with her as she pegged out endless lines of newly washed garments that my brother suffered dreadfully with his ears which was true because he did. So Nosy Mrs Newberry made sympathetic noises and said she understood bad ears only too well as her hubby, Charlie had been a sufferer in his childhood and had ended up deaf on one side because back in those days there was no new Ear Clinic to attend, no matter how early you got up to go there.

Then, as we boarded the bus and seated ourselves, Bernard couldn’t help himself and announced that we were also going to Cooling for the Rook Roost. I added that we might do but only if time permitted and his ears were not too bad and I kicked his shin violently. In a smaller voice he began to explain to her that rooks were very interesting and had surprisingly powerful beaks and that sometimes they walked around the fields in huge steps and sometimes they hopped just like sparrows but of course she wasn’t listening. When we arrived in the town, however, she was still aware of us enough to prompt us to get off the bus at the stop closest to the hospital which we didn’t really want to do but did anyway and thanked her for the reminder. As we headed south towards the canal, past the shops on the main road, still not open, my brother observed that possibly pretending to be on a hospital visit had not been very good idea. It quite quickly began to seem like a very long walk and we had to ask directions on a number of occasions from people out with their dogs. The men were generally taciturn but when we approached the occasional woman she was invariably helpful though curious and wanted to know where we were heading and why.

The winter sun grew higher in the sky and once we managed, after what seemed a very long time, to get into the marshland environs of Cliffe and Cooling I began to feel more positive. I was again remembering the many walks I had done with my father in previous years before he was so suddenly snatched from life when Bernard was still a pre-schooler. Importantly I said I was completely familiar with the marshland route and why, and Bernard was impressed and even said he wished he’d been old enough to come with us back then. Further enthused I began to recite the history lesson I had been subjected to on one such perambulation and told him that Cooling, where we were now heading, got its name from a Saxon word which meant Cow and that the Romans had once occupied the area which was a fact because in 1922 on a nearby farm a Roman kiln had been found and it contained a great deal of Roman pottery.

We sat by the roadside to eat the rock cakes which were not the best that my mother, who was by no means much of a baker, had ever produced. Bernard did not seem to mind and neither did he object when I pointed out that the construction of Cooling Castle was started in the thirteen hundreds and that the church featured in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. He did ask who Charles Dickens was though but I decided not to subject him to a trip to the churchyard to see the little tombstones that were supposed to be Pip’s brothers and sisters as it was rather depressing.

The walk became interminable and when we came across a shop beside some newly built houses we decided to buy lemonade and Smith’s Crisps to sustain us with some of the money that had been reserved for fish and chips. After all, Bernard said, we could always simply buy chips when we got back to Gravesend because as far as he was concerned, chips were the best part of fish and chips. I agreed because there seemed to be no earthly reason why we needed fish. The woman behind the counter said she thought we looked Done In and Bernard said we were going to the Rook Roost and had walked all the way from Gravesend. She said we should have taken the bus to High Halstow and we should be sure to catch the bus on the way back.

It was becoming late in the afternoon by the time we reached Northward Hill and found the Saxon Shore Way where my brother insisted we needed to be to get the best view. A dog walker told us we were now in a good place to observe the Roost and so we sat exhausted on the edge of a coppice, Bernard complaining that his legs were hurting quite badly. I nodded, wondering where the bus stop was and how I might recognise which was the best bus to catch back to Gravesend. It would not be a very satisfactory end to the day to find ourselves in Rochester or Chatham for instance. And while I was contemplating the possible minor calamities that might yet be in store for us Bernard clutched my arm and whispered that it was about to begin. So in the early winter dusk all thought of bus timetables and routes were forgotten and we sat mesmerised as the red and grey sky that stretched endlessly over the marshland became inky with a myriad of birds wheeling and gliding in groups. As one but in their thousands they played to the gallery, distracting us, demanding our attention and performing a series of spectacular synchronised movements, diving, rolling and tumbling unrestrained against the clouds just as the Springhead Starlings had done only with more abandon, as if taking part in some strange and dazzlingly accomplished avian ballet.

On the way back towards the road through the rapidly descending darkness Bernard said that the Rooks were much better than the Starlings and I asked him why. He thought it was because they were better at letting us see what they could do. Doing what Sister Camilla at school had warned his class against – showing off, because it was her firm opinion that nobody admires a show off.

Somehow or other we found the bus that went to Gravesend and then we only had to walk to Northfleet. We bought chips and doused them liberally with salt and vinegar and Bernard told me that he greatly admired the Show-Off Rooks and that the day had been the very best day of his life.

Little Doris & the Ducks

There was definitely TB in my mother’s family. It was a fact that nobody was inclined to dispute. My grandmother herself was largely hale and hearty apart from an enduring addiction to alcohol which at times ruptured what might have otherwise been cordial relations with her extended family. As for my grandfather, he had wisely abandoned all alcoholic treats after Baby Arthur met an early demise when accidentally suffocated by his inebriated parents at the age of seven weeks. So it was a Bad Heart that eventually shortened Edgar Constant’s life just before the outbreak of war when it was rumoured that the threat of his only live son’s Call Up papers hadn’t made life any easier for him but Old Nan lived stubbornly on until Christmas Eve 1965. At the very moment she eventually succumbed following a late night walk down to The Jolly Farmers at Crayford to buy a half bottle of gin my nephew Merlin was being born twenty miles up-river in St Bartholemew’s Hospital, Smithfield to his excited teenage parents, my brother Bernard and his wife Janice.

When war finally broke out in spite of all the worry and concern about Edgar Constant Junior being called up to serve his country in the event no papers actually arrived because he numbered among the several Constant children whose birth had never been registered in the first place. Old Nan was apt to be forgetful concerning such formalities if seasonal field work was uppermost in her mind and in August 1912 it had been hop-picking which was of course more important than the registration of a child’s birth. This lapse meant that young Edgar was in the fullness of time free to give his entire attention to the wartime Black Market not to mention become of enormous comfort to several local women who missed the company of their serving husbands. Should his presence in the byways and bars of Crayford and Erith cause undue comment his mother and sisters stalwartly maintained that Poor Young Edgar had more than done his bit having been a hero of Dunkirk in 1940 which was of course quite untrue.

The scourge of TB that had plucked several Constant daughters from life in the 1930s continued to plague the family into the next decade taking two more aunts shortly after they gave birth leaving Poor Little Violet and Poor Little Doris motherless. Violet preceded her cousin by several months and being the first grandchild found in such a position was embraced into the maternal breast of my grandmother who said she would take on her upbringing as long as her father chipped in with some readies from time to time. He, only too delighted to rid himself of the burden of a small baby, agreed immediately. Later when fate saw Little Doris in the same position my grandmother was reluctant to again enter into the same arrangement. She wasn’t as young as she used to be and although Little Violet, bless her heart, never gave her a day’s worry, taking on another baby was out of the question. There would have to be a roster. Well, she didn’t quite put it like that but the rest of the family became quite aware of the expectations.

So in 1942 cousin Doris began what was to become a regular passage through the families of her various relatives usually remaining for several weeks before being passed on. Fortunately she was of a calm and placid nature and endured being treated as an unwanted human parcel with fortitude, growing from a small baby who rarely cried to a resilient pre-schooler who seldom required any special attention with what seemed like grim determination just as long as she was occasionally taken to feed ducks. Over time it became clear that of all her cousins she got on with Aunt Mag’s Margaret a great deal better than the rest of us. Margaret was several years older than me and the clutch of Crayford cousins and had been a schoolgirl for a number of years, what’s more she also had the added advantage of child care experience in the form of caring for her own baby sister Ann. She became especially good at amusing Doris, never tiring of ministering to her fondness for ducks by taking her down to the creek to feed them and watching carefully that she did not stumble into the brackish water in her somewhat controlled excitement. Doris came to love her dearly and when she caught sight of her, her large blue eyes would light up which certainly did not happen when she came across me because as my mother was wont to point out, she and I simply did not get on.

My dead aunt had been what my mother called a Good knitter and a Fair Hand at crochet and once she became sick during her pregnancy she took the opportunity of improving these skills. I came to realise that my dislike of Doris was partly because she came equipped with at least half a dozen silk dresses trimmed with angora of which I was very jealous. To add insult to injury she was a rather beautiful child and the aunts were fond of comparing her to Shirley Temple, even wondering if she might grow to develop similar performing skills as the famous child star. Her appearance was constantly commented upon, in particular her astonishingly extravagant and golden curls that framed her face and fell gently around her neck making her resemble a Botticelli angel. The sum total of the attention she generated did nothing to endear her to me and I certainly did not look forward to her visits when for what seemed like an interminable length of time she shared my bedroom and my mother’s attention. Even worse because she was younger than me she also shared my pushchair and I definitely felt that her turns when we walked to Gravesend and back were longer than mine.

Walking around the market on Saturdays with Doris being pushed and me having to hold on to the side of the handle and not get lost resulted in rapid affirmation of my antipathy towards my unfortunate cousin. We could scarcely go a few yards it seemed before women of all ages would comment on the blonde tresses, the sapphire blue eyes, the long lashes and the dimples and the object of all this attention would gaze into each approving face, pink lips slightly apart, cheeks dimple indented and a coy smile upon her face. Some of the admirers would also look me up and down and make comment that for sisters we were not in any way alike were we? One woman enthusing over Doris, briefly glanced at me before saying that I was quite plain wasn’t I? My mother simply laughed and said that Poor Little Doris was her dead sister’s girl and that as for Jean, well you could never get her hair to curl no matter how hard you tried. Later she said she’d been a rude cow. That day, while some shrimps were being bought for tea I took the opportunity of pinching my greatly admired cousin on her plump little left leg and then got annoyed when instead of volubly complaining she simply gazed at me forlornly whilst the doll-like eyes half filled with tears.

All things considered it was true to say that I had no love whatsoever for this particular cousin and the Doris feature that I most abhorred was definitely the Shirley Temple hair and probably that was because during the time I discuss small girls with the look of the American superstar were universally revered. As for Doris herself she seemed largely unaware of how she was regarded which my mother attributed to the fact that her mother, Poor Phyllis, had also been of unblemished character and never was one to blow her own trumpet. In fact Doris was so little trouble to care for that had I been better able to tolerate her presence I think she would have been considered for permanent residence at our place. Her Achilles’ heel was definitely her fondness for ducks and the feeding of them with bits of stale bread and so because she was so good and undemanding, after shopping in the market we would invariably make our way along the riverside until we found a group of eager feeders. Although I was wary of getting too close to their beaks, Doris was never happier than when surrounded by a dozen Mallard or Muscovy distributing sustenance and never seemed to mind them encircling her in what I felt was an ominous fashion. Under normal circumstances all stale bread available was earmarked for the making of bread pudding every second Saturday but when my cousin was with us that routine was cast asunder because Bless Her Little Heart she enjoyed the duck feeding so much. Furthermore, when all was said and done, the Poor Little Mite didn’t have much in life so who could begrudge her that pleasure? Well, I could for one.

I very much begrudged Doris her paltry pleasure, as well as her infant daring as she stood encircled by antagonistic Anseriformes battling for bread without at any stage losing her nerve. The shared life we had to intermittently endure, I felt, would be easier for everyone if Doris was not quite as brave or quite as curly. There was not a lot I could do about her exasperating daring so I gave a great deal of attention to the much admired hair and came to the conclusion that we would have to play a game of hairdressers the very next time she came to stay.

I didn’t have long to wait once Aunt Maud’s Pat came down with Mumps and so withdrew from the care roster. Doris was shunted back to York Road, Northfleet much sooner than anticipated looking more dazzlingly beautiful than ever with pretty pink Bakelite clips, a third birthday gift from her father, pinning her hair back from her ears. Bakelite toys and trinkets had been all the rage prior to the outbreak of war and at some stage I had inherited an unattractive grey swan originally belonging to Margaret that I was allowed to float in the zinc bath with me on Saturday nights in front of the kitchen stove. Doris, not understanding much about swans, believed it to be a duck and we often had disputes over whose turn it was to do the floating. She coveted the swan so much that I had taken to hiding it under my bed just to punish her for her existence. However one Saturday in June 1944 I surprised her with my sudden altruism when I handed it to her to play with and even my mother noted approvingly that I was being very unselfish and she was proud of me. I went further and generously announced that Doris could take it to bed with her because I was a big girl now, having recently had my fourth birthday. Doris warmly thanked me managing to look only a little bit uneasy as she did so.

It was halfway through the following morning when my mother was preoccupied with making the Sunday dinner rice pudding that I suggested the new game which involved removing a pair of nail scissors from the manicure set my mother’s long deceased fiancé Fred had given her then retiring to the end of the yard beside the entrance to the Anderson shelter. Doris followed just a little cautiously, the grey Bakelite swan beneath her right arm. Annoyingly she seemed determined to be more of a paragon of virtue than usual which was possibly because my mother had promised a walk to Springhead to the ducks that afternoon just as long as both of us Behaved. I asked her if she would like to play hairdressers and she shook her head vigorously and held the swan just a little closer so I asked if she would like to keep the Bakelite swan when she left us. Doris nodded twice and turned anxiously towards the back door where she could hear my mother reassuringly banging saucepans and singing Molly Malone. Pulling her towards me I said she could keep the toy and it would be hers for ever just as long as we could now play hairdressers. I added that although we called the swan a swan it was in reality a duck, just a different kind of duck. She looked slightly more interested and as I moved above her with the nail scissors and sliced awkwardly through the uppermost golden ringlet she hugged the swan across her chest and whispered that she wanted very much to keep it because ducks were her favourite things and she loved them more than she loved God. Hissing at her to keep as still as she could I denuded her of what Old Mr Bassant next door had once referred to as her crowning glory as fast as possible. We then both stared at the triangular heap of coiled hair glistening between us in a kind of horrified hypnotised silence. Doris rocked slowly back and forth and although I had expected her to cry I noticed that her eyes were totally dry.

She only began to cry several minutes later when my mother came to investigate why we were being so quiet and good. And then so did I, heaving shuddering sobs as I explained that I had only done what Doris had asked me to do because she wanted to play hairdressers and she was no good with the scissors. Her hair had only suffered I explained because I was the one who was better with the scissors – simply because I was older. The game itself was definitely not my idea. I said nothing about the Bakelite swan and Doris did not argue when later I decided not to let her keep it after all. My mother was so angry that we were not taken to feed the ducks that afternoon after all which of course hurt Doris much more than it hurt me. She had never before known her Dear Little Niece to be so naughty and it was clear she was learning bad ways from somebody. I immediately agreed and suggested that maybe it was Margaret. Doris was still crying and said nothing at all and my mother simply gave me a very strange look.

The Pigeons of Northfleet & Gravesend

Budgies and canaries, linnets and lovebirds were definitely not for all who lived in working class communities such as Gravesend and Northfleet. In fact it would be true to say that they appealed to women rather than men and the male members of linnet owning households were definitely not as conspicuous in their enthusiasm for them as their wives. Old Nan thought that as far as birds were concerned you couldn’t go past a parrot because they were a different matter, spending as much time out of their cages as within and having the gift of speech. But she thought you had to think carefully before becoming an owner because for one thing the cage itself would set you back a bob or two and in any case you never knew with parrots with them prone to being delicate. You might spend a lot only to have the bugger drop dead on you. However, should you be lucky enough to be blessed with one of a sturdy constitution it might even see you out. Her Edgar’s Uncle Snowball had inherited one before the turn of the century that had already seen its previous owner out and lived on for years after Snowball had succumbed to the perils of navigating that steep flight of stairs outside The Empire Tavern one Friday evening. In general when it came to birds you couldn’t beat a pigeon or two for a man she thought.

Aunt Mag later pointed out to my mother that Snowball had been well and truly in his cups at the time of his demise. My mother said anyhow bugger how long they lived because what was more concerning was the language they could come out with and it wasn’t natural. Because I had yet to make the acquaintance of a parrot I thought she meant that they were multi-lingual which to my mind would be an asset in case you happened to come across someone needing help in the High Street who only spoke French or German. You could then take them home for a quick translation and become known locally as extremely helpful to foreigners. It might even be more convenient for all concerned to take your parrot with you when shopping. None of the adults in our community seemed all that kindly disposed towards foreigners of course, my mother and her sisters in particular.

It was to be some time before I would discover that the language of parrots had little to do with translation and anyway by then I had already turned my attention to pigeons, birds that every child in the area was familiar with because Old Nan was right and if there was a household pet that men were keen on it was definitely the pigeon, both homing and racing not that I understood the difference. Mr Bassant next door had built what he said was a Pigeon Cree at the end of his allotment bordering The Old Rec, alongside Northfleet cemetery and he was always very keen to explain that his birds were Racing Homers and they could cover nearly a thousand miles in one sweep if necessary. The Cree looked very much like a garden shed to me and indeed he had reserved a space inside for his gardening tools and the wheelbarrow that he pushed laboriously up Springhead Hill twice a week full of vegetables. There was a big open window like space along one side and above it was a special platform with little holes where the birds took off and landed again to enter their nesting spaces. All his birds had names and when he spoke them he did so softly and lovingly, caressing the birds like babies. His favourites were Donald and Ridley because they could take off vertically rising from the wooden platform with no hesitation and soaring up to meet the currents and eddies above before twirling atop of the whirlpools of air. Then they looked for all the world like miniature aerial fighters, the Spitfires we all recalled so vividly from a few years before, tipping their wings and twisting triumphantly one to another. His girls, Betsy and Bella, Florence and Freda were more hesitant which he told us was female behaviour and sometimes they needed encouragement to follow their brothers and venture into the wide arc of sky above the marshland of the Estuary. Then he held them one after another close to his face and whispered to each and almost seemed to kiss each beak before the bird though initially unwilling, suddenly fluffed up her breast feathers and decided to fly.

Sometimes after school Molly and I, at times accompanied by Pat Turner who lived in a cottage very close to the Old Rec Allotments, visited Old Mr Bassant, taking with us a replacement lemonade bottle of cold tea and instructions from his wife as to when she expected him home for his liver and bacon. Then he told us about how clever his birds were and how when he sometimes took them all the way to Dover to visit another Pigeon Fancier, and released them there, by the time he got back to Northfleet in the evening all of them would have found their way home. We wanted to know how they knew their address and why they didn’t get muddled up and perhaps end up in Swanscombe or Greenhithe and Mr Bassant said they used the position of the sun to determine the proper direction for flight. But he didn’t know how they fared if it was a rainy day not that it deterred them because they never once went to the wrong allotment and he knew for a fact there were allotments in Swanscombe. On the way home Molly said that to a bird Swanscombe must look much the same as Northfleet from the air and she for one was impressed. She was going to ask Mr Will Clarke about it the next day at school.

Mr Clarke said he was pleased we were taking an interest in pigeons because the Romans had used them to carry messages more than two thousand years before and in fact Julius Caesar had found them invaluable during his conquest of Gaul. Then Billy Elliott who always seemed to know more than anyone else in the class added that The Greeks sometimes used them to carry the names of victors of various Olympic events to other cities. Mr Clarke said that yes, indeed, that was absolutely true and well done Billy. We were all impressed then especially when he added that he might speak to Mr Cook the headmaster about considering the idea of us having some school pigeons. We might find them more interesting than the cage full of mice in the corner of the infants’ room and we could have a roster for their care. In fact it never happened but it was a nice idea.
At the library in London Road the children’s librarian revealed that it might sound unbelievable but these astonishing birds had always been much more reliable than the postal service and carrier pigeons could accomplish in a few hours what freight services took more than a day to do. Some of them flew at more than sixty miles an hour and never, ever lost their way. Having learned all of this for a time Molly and I were full of enthusiasm for joining a Pigeon Fancier’s Club but it turned out that to become members you had to be sixteen years old and so then we began to lose interest especially since my mother said in her opinion they were Dirty Smelly Blighters and she wouldn’t want them in the back bedroom like some she wouldn’t name. She was referring to Aunt Elsie’s George from the Tooley Street sweet shop who had several birds living in their tiny attic room that he called his pigeon loft alongside extra cartons of cigarettes and tall bottles of Sherbet Lemons bought whilst the price was low. He wasn’t as friendly as Old Mr Bassant but he did tell us about a famous bird that saved the lives of dozens of French soldiers during The First World War. It was called Cher Ami which was French for Dear Friend and had carried a message across enemy lines during a battle. The bird was shot in the chest and lost most of the leg to which an important message was attached but it did not stop flying, continuing even through poison gas. Later Cher Ami was awarded a medal for heroism called The Croix de Guerre which was French for The Cross of War. I wondered if the injured leg ever healed but Aunt Elsie’s George didn’t know and in any case he was becoming tired of the conversation and I never found out and was never taken into the loft to view the birds. My grandmother said that was because he thought I might be light fingered as far as the stored sherbet lemons were concerned.

Typically, once he became aware of my now waning interest in pigeons my father came up with a great deal of information and this was one of the reasons that prevented me from asking his opinion on some matters. His explanations were generally of the lengthy and elaborate variety. But on this particular Sunday lunchtime, after carving up a piece of rather fatty lamb which I was eyeing suspiciously, he started to tell me about the Dickin Medal which he said was the equivalent of the Victoria Cross but for animals. I was cautiously more interested and so I listened. Apparently the first such award was given to a carrier pigeon. In February 1942 an RAF bomber was forced to ditch into the North Sea following a mission over Norway. The plane had been hit by enemy fire and now the crew of four had to try to survive in freezing waters. Luckily they had a secret weapon, a hen bird called Winkie and so they set her free hoping she could fly home to Dundee which was a place miles away in Scotland, and alert their colleagues at the base. Well Winkie flew a hundred and twenty miles and was found covered in oil and exhausted by her owner who informed the RAF in Fife which wasn’t Dundee but must have been nearby. The position of the downed plane was then able to be calculated using the time difference between it going down and the arrival of the bird in the place called Fife. A rescue mission was then launched and the four men were found within half an hour. They would certainly have died without the help of the pigeon so she became the toast of the base and a dinner was held in her honour. A few months later she became the first animal to receive the Dickin Medal `For valour under extreme circumstances’.

Not too long after this conversation I read of an American bird called GI Joe who saved more than a thousand lives in a village that was about to be bombed and another called Mary of Exeter who was used time and time again to send top secret messages. I learned that there is an inscription on the medals awarded that says `We Also Serve’ which seemed completely appropriate. And a few years ago whilst visiting Bletchley Park with my daughter I found myself paying particular attention to the displays, exhibits and information concerning the valiant feathered fighters of World War Two whose heroic deeds seem so sadly incongruous when placed alongside the myriad of communication choices we now have. Today as long as we have the right connection we can make mobile phone calls, send and receive text messages, send emails and contact all and sundry via Whatsapp and Facebook at the touch of a button. None of these choice options have quite the romantic appeal of the trusty carrier pigeon, however, fifty thousand of which were drafted into service in the 1940s to carry messages, deliver medicines and bring hope to situations that otherwise might have been hopeless.

A Cage Fit For Eagles

Cage birds were once the pet of choice as far as the working classes of London and the South East were concerned. These days you might even call them Estuary Pets. Easy to keep, unlikely to offend the neighbours and certainly cost effective as far as food was concerned. There were even songs written about them such as the once celebrated Music Hall ditty about the couple doing a moonlight flit – My old man said follow the van and don’t dilly dally on the way. The story-teller is the wife who walked behind the cart with the family pet and the popular melody itself would certainly be familiar with all who now qualify for a government pension.

A hundred years ago statistics estimate that every second household kept a cage bird of some kind and the craze began a long time before that if Pliny the Elder is to be believed. He laid the responsibility at the feet of Marcus Laenius Strabo of the Order of the Knighthood at Brindisi who, he wrote, began the practice of `imprisoning within bars wild creatures that Nature had assigned to the open sky’. He then went a step further and outlined the excesses some of his fellow Romans indulged in, citing an actor called Clodius Aesop who favoured his birds roasted, particularly favouring those that whilst alive had spoken in human voices. Pliny was scandalised, seeming to view this culinary treat as some kind of minor though hard to categorise form of cannibalism. Whether or not the vogue for pet birds started with the Romans is of course debatable but the craze was definitely trending in Europe in the early seventeen hundreds when French Huguenot weavers descended en masse upon London bringing their songbirds with them. And when I was a child the fashion was still alive and well in the streets of working class Gravesend and Northfleet and if my mother was to be believed the feathered friend of choice was then the Linnet. This relative of the Finch family was either routinely trapped in the wild or bred specially for sale in local pet shops and highly prized for its singing ability. It is likely that the male bird was especially sought after because of its colourful plumage although for some inexplicable reason the colours were slow to appear when caged. My mother decided that this peculiarity was almost certainly because once caged they pined for their freedom, dreamed of soaring high into the Kentish sky – in other words it was a definite symptom of avian depression. Well she didn’t quite put it like that but nevertheless she could have been right.
Although I know that we were a linnet owning family when my parents first married and moved into York Road it wouldn’t be true to say that I actually remember Bobby, the bird itself. In fact by the time I was aware enough to take any interest in him he had already been given his freedom. This was in the hope that once restored to the wild he would grow a bright plumage and learn to sing rather than huddle on his perch in a woebegone and guilt-inspiring manner whilst conspicuously moulting. The only tangible evidence of Bobby himself was his empty cage, fashioned from slim lengths of bamboo and undeniably attractive. I wasn’t allowed to play with it in case I did it some damage and it was stored in the cupboard under the stairs on a hook above the coal bunker awaiting his replacement.

Years were to pass before birds of any variety were to once more share the kitchen of number 28 with us. Although my brother was to become a firm ornithology enthusiast, birds either as pets or in the wild was not a subject I gave much thought to. However, I found it vaguely interesting when my favourite teacher Mr Will Clarke revealed that local author of some note, Charles Dickens, was said to have at one stage kept a pet Raven and Winston Churchill was a parrot fancier owning a Macaw called Charlie. My young brother, on the other hand was already wont to comment on the bamboo cage above the coal bunker from time to time, wistfully wondering if it would hold an eagle. Well he was only five years old at the time of that query and the only eagle he had actually seen was that which graced the front page of the recently launched boys’ comic book. Still young enough to be easily confused and mostly bereft of reading skills he actually believed for a time that the popular periodical was some kind of Bird Fanciers’ Weekly and even planned to name any future eagle he might own, Dan Dare in honour of the front page hero. Once he graduated from the first raft of Early Readers provided by St Joseph’s Primary School it was with some embarrassment that he hastily tossed aside this particular notion though not the comic in its entirety. The first issue had been released in April 1950 following a huge publicity campaign and for a number of years it was enormously popular with boys between the ages of seven and sixteen providing a range of popular stories together with news and sports items.

Destined as he was to eventually emerge as a Bird of Prey fancier the green and grey budgerigar would not have been Bernard’s first choice when it came to feathered companions and it is more than likely that a compromise was reached with my mother. She only capitulated regarding becoming a bird owner in the first place because the Bennetts of Buckingham Road had recently become the proud owners of Richie who, if their Joan was to be believed, had already learned to say his name. A week or two later our own bird, purchased from the pet shop in Queen Street, Gravesend, would have also been known as Richie if that popular budgie name had not already been bestowed upon the Bennett’s bird. Instead, a further compromise was reached and ours was henceforth known as Ricky.

Without further ceremony the bamboo cage was retrieved from its place under the stairs, carefully wiped of coal dust and Ricky was installed. When Old Nan dropped in for tea and conversation a day or two later she said that we should have got him from the market because everybody knew that’s where the the best talkers were to be found and it was her belief that there was no real alternative. She would not be persuaded that Gravesend market did not go in for cage birds and said if that was the case it was a poxy excuse for a market if ever there was one. The fact that he had set us back the not inconsiderable sum of fifteen shillings and sixpence was further cause for derision because back in her day `them birds was ten a penny down Club Row’ which was nice and handy to her childhood home in Bethnal Green Road. Well all that information was only if she was to be believed and often it turned out that she was not.

Ricky was not an immediate success at once displaying a hostile attitude towards his surroundings when he set about demolishing the bamboo cage that now hung in a corner of the kitchen above the shelf where the wireless lived. My mother was perplexed and said that Bobby the linnet had been a bird of a far less destructive nature and had always been as good as gold in the very cage that Ricky was fast obliterating. Mrs Bennett advised that budgerigars had different beaks to linnets and should always be kept in wire cages and quite apart from that they liked toys. Our Ricky should be provided with a miniature mirror she advised because their Richie had one and these days you couldn’t stop him talking. He said all manner of things and had them all in stitches.

A wire cage was investigated at Rayners in Northfleet High Street because at the pet shop in Gravesend they turned out to be Very Dear. But the Rayners variety were not exactly cheap either and so while the idea was given more consideration a mirror with a pink plastic trim was acquired and handed over to Ricky with a great deal of ceremony. But he was growing more recalcitrant by the day and showed not the slightest interest. Bernard and I took turns sitting beside his cage enunciating sound bites in the hope that he would emulate them but he seemed to be quite averse to `Ricky’s a pretty boy’ and `What a clever budgie’ no matter how often and how slowly these mini-bites were demonstrated to him. Old Nan said we’d definitely been sold a pup and that our bird was a pig in a poke and thus managed to completely confuse Bernard who was still at an age when he was inclined to take things adults said completely literally.

In a final act of desperation and having very recently added School Dinner Lady to her raft of part time jobs my mother announced that she was now feeling flush enough to lash out and treat Ricky to a brand new Rayners wire cage which came equipped with a bell for him to play with. It had not completely escaped her attention that the Bennett bird was a keen bell ringer though the noise at tea-time was enough to drive you to Colney Hatch. What with the new cage, the bell and the very latest in Best Bird Seed with added oil to encourage the acquisition of speech she felt that our Ricky would very soon be making giant strides in every direction. But he continued to make very slow progress, showed no interest in being allowed out of his cage to occasionally fly around the room, refused to learn his name, found the new bird seed unpalatable and demonstrated complete indifference towards campanology. Overall he was not a total success and my mother was overheard to confide to her sister Mag that if there was one thing that gave her the pip, it was being forced to sit and listen to Grace Bennett listing all the new tricks that their Richie had learnt since she last drank tea with her. She just couldn’t stop blowing his trumpet and when all was said and done he was only a bird.

So when poor Ricky was found deceased at the bottom of his new cage one Sunday morning she clearly found it something of a relief and was not keen on replacing him. Once he had been buried with due ceremony beneath the only flowers in our garden, the stolen primroses from Lord Darnley’s woods the wire cage was cleaned and hung in the cupboard under the stairs without undue comment. After a while Bernard divulged that even though there was to be no successor to the wayward Ricky it was certainly a very good idea to keep the cage. When I asked him why he paused for a few seconds before adding that you never knew when it would come in useful and wanted to know if I thought it would be possible to keep an eagle in it – just a small eagle perhaps, one that was well behaved. I said I didn’t know very much about eagles.

Patches Protected

I’d only attended one previous meeting of the Local History Writers’ Group and to be totally honest I felt at the time that those involved were just a little too earnest, taking their various areas of concern ultra-seriously. However I had to agree with Edina when she regaled us all with how much she loathed and detested the dastardly business of the dissemination of information about what she had so recently written. So I was cheered to see she was present once more and this time handing out name tags. It wasn’t only me who had been in agreement with her either because even before the coffee and biscuits had been distributed someone called Mike re-energised that discussion. He said he would much rather rewrite the whole thing (in his case a treatise on the churches of Romney Marsh) than get involved in publicising it. Now that I realised these emotions are common I felt a lot better about my own reactions – well enough to say how wonderful it would be to find oneself in a more secure financial position – one that would support the hiring of a professional publicist.

At times those who write, I ventured to suggest, seem to be inordinately territorial – often so hugely so it is astonishing to behold. There was a silence so I added that each time I stumble across this attitude I am freshly flabbergasted. After all, it’s not actually a competition is it?

Edina said that a couple of years ago she wrote a book about growing up in a corner of rural Essex. She said she enjoyed writing the book and though she said it herself, thought it read quite well. So when she discovered that very same community from whence she came now boasted a Local History Society, meeting on a monthly basis in the Church Hall – yes indeed, that same ancient Church she described on more than one occasion within her very pages – well, naturally enough she was quite sure they would be interested in her book. Their website seemed to imply that they were keen to hear memories from locals, etc., etc.

But even offers of free copies met with a sullen silence. Thinking they must have gone into winter hibernation perhaps she waited until fresh news of local events appeared on their tantalizing and shiny home page. She emailed again, and this time cunningly ordered a couple of the books she had noted had been recently written by their president.

His books arrived – promptly. Edina read them and was suitably impressed. Surely he would now be interested in including her own book of memories in the list of volumes available to members? After all it was one hundred per cent pertinent to the very existence of the organization he seemed to head.
But again her messages met a brick wall of brooding taciturnity. A hostile and deepening reservoir of reserve.

His lack of interest could not have been made more obvious if he had rung her at dawn and advised her to toddle off into the hinterland of the local marshland being sure to take her book with her. It was both discouraging and disappointing she said when the very people she was certain would be happy to spread the good news of her creative labours pertaining to local history seemed to be the least interested. Someone called Josh was saying that it was probably just that they were `protecting their patch’ and that those instrumental in keeping memories of past times alive could turn out to be the most territorial of all when it came to fellow writers.

For me the discussion topic was depressingly familiar, having had a not dissimilar lack of interest from a not dissimilar group of local historians myself. It also brought sharply into focus an incident from thirty years previously when a writer `friend’ hesitated when I asked her to support my membership application for a newly formed local authors’ group. She said that she thought there might be a waiting list. She grudgingly advised she would find out for me. She never did.

Women Scorned - A Further Examination

Several years ago in discussion with Judith my Northern Irish friend, she regaled me with the frightening details of her brutal reaction to the infidelity of the man she had been married to for thirty years, that ordinary run-of-the-mill husband in his late sixties who did not realise that he all but took his life in his hands when he betrayed her with a twenty two year old. Recently I was sharply reminded of the conversation when watching `Mrs Wilson’ on Sunday evening TV. Primarily this was because I was taken aback to find that the writer Alexander Wilson had several bigamous marriages over the years and at the same time worked for MI5 (or was it MI6?) so how on earth did he find the time? Probably he was simply very good at apportioning his time.

Judith had decided that it was the lying about it all that hurt the most but this was only when the dust had settled on the shattered remains of her union with Bruce. It was all those lies she said, followed closely by the unspeakable insult of him actually introducing the girl (well she actually called her `the hussy’) to various among their friends and family and the fact that they were all too gutless to mention it to her. But then her Bruce had not actually entered into a full blown bigamous marriage of course because people don’t these days do they? And you have to ask yourself how and when it was that bigamy fell from fashion – and how many men might still find it attractive if it had remained up there in the marital fashion stakes. I say men but you have to remember that women sometimes went in for it too though how frequently is hard to say. You can’t learn much about it because for obvious reasons nobody ever discussed it very much.

To be completely fair to Judith she had not launched into the story of the unspeakable treachery of Bruce completely out of the blue. It was me who half brought up the topic by revealing a similar betrayal involving a family member and how his wife had reacted in a manner that could only be described as homicidal and that women scorned should not ever be underestimated; hell hath no fury, etc.

Judith said that at least there was no question of a baby in the case of her own betrayal, even if the Taiwanese girl wanted one because he had been what she termed sterilised years ago. She made him sound a bit like a cat as she spat the words out then muttered that she only wished he’d been fully castrated to completely stop his little games. I was idly wondering if all those years ago the constant tears and recriminations of my poor mother might have been even worse had my philandering father favoured bigamy above simple infidelity. And then, with some horror I paused to consider that he might even have done so during his WW2 sojourns in foreign climes. After all, like Alexander Wilson, he was a devout Catholic and always chose doing Right over doing Wrong if at all possible. But how on earth would we ever know after all these years?

Judith said she was quite certain that her Bruce had never been a man who strayed previously. For one thing there was little opportunity because they were hardly ever parted night or day for years because of working together to make that infernal bloody business the success it turned out to be. But then you had to admit that Alexander Wilson had not been completely idle either – MI5 would have kept him reasonably occupied, not to mention writing the spy novels and keeping in touch with all the children he had spawned. Judith still blamed herself for buying him (her Bruce – not Alexander Wilson) the ticket to Wembley Stadium that cost an arm and a leg. It was the boys’ night out that followed that really did for him she confided. And what’s more she knew that there had been from the very beginning a number of his friends and their wives who knew more than they were later prepared to admit. And that only served to add to her vengeful attitude even though so called well-wishers were telling her to put it all in the past and move on.

It was then that she added rather unexpectedly but in a low voice that she would definitely consider planning a nasty sequel for her ex-hubby if she thought for one moment she could get away with it. After all he’d had heart trouble on and off for years and taking Viagra was not at that healthy especially in the quantities he was consuming it. I made sympathetic noises and I couldn’t help wondering if that well brought Mrs Wilson on the Sunday night TV screen might have felt similarly – I know I would. Few of us would be totally forgiving after all and I had it on good authority that the wife of the aforementioned family member had been almost blatant about her own frame of mind. Who can blame her? But did she ever put those late night Google searches on easily-obtained-poisons to practical use? Did the ensuing rumours really have any validity? Difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff because people are always going to gossip after an unexpected death aren't they? To be blunt, speaking for myself, I have never considered divorce for one iota over the decades but I have on a number of occasions seriously deliberated upon the idea of murder so who can possibly say?

Bernard Hendy .... The Death of My Brother Revisited.

On the morning of 3rd April, 2016 while I was mindlessly traversing the aisles of our nearest supermarket at an ungodly hour on account of an adjustment in the summer-winter clock, my only sibling, my beloved younger brother, died whilst on holiday in Africa. He suddenly dropped dead it seems from a heart attack whilst I hovered over frozen peas and spinach, deliberated on their individual merits and compared prices. In the very last seconds of his earthly life I was very possibly queuing at the check-out counter, impatiently behind the corner-dairy owners who always shop at hours unearthly despite summer-winter time variations. The news that his life had ended came an hour or so later by email from his son and left me in total disbelief. How could it possibly be that someone so charming and charismatic should simply vanish into the ether? We were brought up as Roman Catholics he and I so surely his existence couldn’t end just like that? After all, he was once an altar boy; didn’t that still count for something? We had a relationship that was very much based on love-hate and our feelings towards each other were never irrelevant or inconsequential. We could talk for hours and not tire of the fact that a lot of the time our conversation went round in circles.

Bernard and I were brought up in abject poverty, the kind of miserable and wretched neediness that doesn’t exist anymore except in the underclasses of developing countries. We inhabited a world that makes Coronation Street look decidedly middle class. Our father died when we were four and eleven and subsequently the privation and distress went to an entirely new level as our well meaning but ineffectual mother went on to do the best she could for us which was not a great deal. As we grew older my brother was much more forgiving of her than I was, much more able to see the pressures she had been under. We lived in an area of largely industrialised Thameside where we were surrounded by the Decent Poor. We featured at the very bottom of the social heap because of hints of Diddicai or Pikey family roots and the Decent Poor looked down on us. I can’t say I blame them – when the neighours were beginning to think about installing inside toilets with attached shower facilities, we were still hauling in the zinc bath from its place on the outside wall every Saturday night. Bernard was convinced he was unpopular with other boys’ families because he smelled bad.

With our father gone I became my brother’s bullying older sister who had both loved him dearly and wished him harm from his first intrusion into my life. Left in charge of him whilst our mother worked cleaning other people’s houses, I compelled him to eat slugs, chew marbles, beg in the street for pennies for a non-existent charity, and dress up as a girl called Wendy in a pink crepe paper fairy costume I made specifically for the purpose. At the same time if any other child dared to criticize him I was ferocious in my defense and this merciless aggression on his behalf continued into his early teens when I once famously attacked three of his classmates who had unwisely risked upsetting him, sending the horrified trio bolting for cover. If necessary I would have killed for him. Bernard had a checkered and volatile early life, frequent brushes with The Law and a tendency to stray far from the truth. He was a husband and father by the time he was eighteen and there were definitely times when he could have done much better in both these roles.

He and I shared a compulsion. As we grew older neither of us could accept the reality of our vastly underprivileged start in life and so invented one substitute family after another, each more implausible than the last. But eventually, to some degree due to luck but also to exceptional intelligence, hard work and diligence Bernard made a great deal of money and his long obsession with the Scottish Highlands was realized when he bought a Victorian mansion at Cape Wrath and turned it into a family home complete with enough power-showered bathrooms to utterly astound our former neighbours. Money changed his basic personality very little. It was true he could now buy whatever he wished – and he did so, but essentially he remained the same. Without money he had always been unerringly generous and with money he simply became more so. He was naively gratified when family members, alert and conscious of their own place on the social ladder, those who had previously avoided him, now accepted him. He was delighted to be included in social events and when Those Who Had Done Well wanted to holiday with him in exotic locations.

Essentially Bernard remained the captivating and magnetic individual who could entertain with stories, many of which were quite untrue, for hour upon hour. He never stopped being the man that he always had been, and to me he was the best and the worst of brothers. He definitely knew I loved him but he died without knowing how enormously proud of him I was because I never told him that and I now wish so much that I had done so. Essentially life is short and when Death reaches out the separation and the silence seem all embracing. The truth is we can never make too much of the ties and relationships we have with the living.