A Dead Duck.

"That smells like shit."



The duck has been out of the fridge for about an hour and it does whiff a bit, no two ways about it.

"Its not too bad," I say, "its a dead animal. Its going to pong a bit." Susan looks unimpressed. We'd bought it three days before and it was still within its best before date, but there was no denying that it hummed. And seemed to be slightly green at one end. And purple at the other.

"It's probably fine." I said. Again the doubtful look. I start to prepare the bird, removing the giblets - a noxious bag of unidentifiable offal, like an over subscribed scrotum - and fling them in the bin. I then dry the inside and outside of the bird with kitchen roll. I salt it. I zest an orange and add more salt and Chinese Five Spice. I take a knife and score the skin. The skin seems slack and slimy, hard to cut. Alarm bells ring, quietly.

"Its fine." I think.

I massage the orange zest mixture into the duck's skin, pushing down sharply to break the bones. The duck farts. That hasn't happened before. I continue to smear the concoction on the duck. It continues to fart. Alarm bells jingle all the way. I stick the remainder of the orange up its hole and stare at it. It is hump-backed and misshapen, its arsehole prolapsed, spilling out over the grill-pan.

"I'm not sure." I say, finally. "What should we do?"

"I'm not sure I can smell it anymore." says Susan. Its about half four and we have other things to attend to: some honey glazed veg, duck fat roasted potatoes, a jus. Sprouts, obviously. We busy ourselves but all the while that sprawled corpse is still there, an ill-advised centre-piece like a cow's skull made of melting chewing gum. It is undeniably repulsive.

Susan has had enough. "I'm looking it up." She gets on the internet and looks up "How to tell if your duck has gone off". Of course, every symptom is there: the discoloration, the sliminess, the odour. But we're still not sure: its like self diagnosing from Google: you immediately find out you have Bell's Palsy, scarlet fever and gout. We look at it. It seems to be decaying in front of our eyes, shivering and shrinking, like Dracula in the last scenes of a Hammer film. Of course its off. Its powerfully and disgustingly rotten. What were we thinking? Christmas dinner is ruined.

We bag it and bin it. We disinfect everything. I wash my hands in scouring hot water again and again. Susan drives off into the night. Its five in the evening on Christmas Eve and we need a replacement Christmas dinner. While she's gone I clean everything again, including myself. I can still smell it, its rotten slaughter-house tang. I am convinced that I have smeared contagion over every surface in the house. The stench remains, possibly only in my nostrils, as the diseased duck is long off the premises.

Susan returns: she has bought a duck crown and legs as separates. We can build a duck as though from a kit. I unwrap it: the flesh is is taut and moist. It smells of nothing at all. What the hell were we thinking about? Even entertaining the notion of eating that fetid cadaver was sheer folly. She has bought an orange and a new grill pan. We set about afresh recreating the Christmas dinner. There had been a bit of tension between us before: an unsettled note emanating from the fact we were preparing to cook, at some length, something obviously inedible. Now we were joyous, working together slickly and comfortably. We open a bottle of fizz.

Dinner is absolutely delicious. We listen to The Swingle Singers' Christmastime album. We drink a smokey red. Cheers.

Later that night neither of us dies of food poisoning. Cheers again.



   

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