Henry VIII

By Claudia Collins.

Henry VIII woke us every morning at the crack of dawn. He was a handsome rooster with feathers of reddish brown. My sister Polly had named him after the king she’d learnt about in history class.

‘A fat, red-haired king with many wives,’ said Polly. ‘It suits him.’

We would climb out of bed and begin our morning chores. The twins refilled the wood boxes each side of the kitchen stove and the big one next to the main fireplace. Polly made breakfast. In winter, we had porridge or Weet-Bix with warm milk. In summer, there was cold milk on the Weet-Bix. A chubby and cheerful girl, she made our school lunches, washed the breakfast bowls, and took Mother her morning cup of tea. Polly cooked the evening meal too, when Mother was at work, or drinking. She liked cooking.

‘It’s heaps better than sweeping or mopping the floors,’ she told me.

Milly and Sally’s job was the washing. They would gather it and cart it outside to the laundry. When the electricity bill was paid they used the washing machine. It had a ringer on top. Careful of her fingers, Milly fed the clean washing through this to squeeze the water out, then Sally would hang it.

When there was no power, the old copper boiler was lit. Milly would stir the washing with a paddle, using this to scoop the steaming clothes out and into the concrete wash trough for Sally to rinse. Together they would wring out the clothes, taking an end each and twisting the water out before hanging them on the line. Only ten months apart in age, they bickered and fought constantly while they worked.

The chooks were my job. I didn’t mind feeding them and gathering the eggs, but I did not enjoy shovelling the poo into bags and wheeling the bags down the driveway in my trolley to the front gate where they were left under a sign that read ‘Chook Poo – Ten Cents’.

Henry VIII didn’t like me very much. He resented my intrusion into his hen house. I didn’t like him either but I had a wary respect for him. I had to keep an eye out or he would fly at me in fury – wings flapping, pecking, and clawing. He got me by surprise once. I stepped back in fright and slid in the poo, falling on my bottom. I was covered in the sticky, smelly mess as I rolled away in a futile attempt to avoid beak and claws. As I walked back to the house, Sally appeared in the laundry doorway.

‘You’re really in the shit now, Bobby,’ she laughed.

When a chicken was needed for the pot, I had to separate it from the rest of the flock and get it into a cage. It was not my job to kill the chooks. The twins would do this. Brendan wrung their necks and Brian gutted them. Polly plucked them. The sight of blood made me feel dizzy and I would be sick. On ‘Killing Day’ I hid in the wood shed and split kindling.

When Henry VIII grew too old to ‘do his business’, a new rooster with shiny black feathers was bought. Polly named him Romeo. There is only room for one rooster in any hen house, so Henry VIII had to go. I headed for the wood shed but the twins had arrived before me. The rooster had put up a good fight. Both boys had war wounds on their arms and faces, courtesy of Henry VIII. The twins had decided to execute him in a manner befitting a king. Brendan held the rooster on the chopping block. Brian lifted the tomahawk.

‘Be careful, I want to use the feathers for a hat I’m making.’ Milly called out, not caring about any possible injury to Brendan’s fingers.

Before I had time to back out of the shed, Brian swung the tomahawk, lopping off Henry VIII’s head with one clean blow. Brendan let go of the rooster and its head hit the ground. There was no time for me to be sick. Gushing blood, the headless body ran straight at me. For a moment, I was frozen to the spot, and then I turned and ran, screaming, toward the house. Behind me I could hear the twins laughing.

Henry VIII haunted my dreams for years to come, and no matter how hungry I was, I never ate chicken again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claudia Collins is a Geelong-based singer/songwriter. She has two CDs of her original songs, A Piece Of Glass (2006) and Judge Not (2008), with three more CDs in the pipeline, and she performs regularly in the duo ‘Possums on the Porch’.

Claudia joined Geelong Writers because she loves to write and enjoys being part of a like-minded, supportive group of people. You can find examples of her short stories, poetry, memoir and flash fiction pieces in Geelong Writers anthologies dating from 2016. She is currently working on her first novel.