Peaks and Troughs

by Nick Perry

  That morning Jack, Rob and Harry joined me in the greenhouse. It was the day of our private little harvest of the marijuana crop. There was an air of nervous expectation as we cut the stems, twelve in all, with their sticky rich green leaves. They had grown to a height of at least five feet. The most potent smoke would come from the highest shoots, lots of little clusters of them. We all leant towards them and breathed in that heavenly aroma. But for now we would have to resist the temptation; they needed to be hung and dried in the milking parlour. Harry suggested we could speed this up by putting in a blow dryer.

  ‘Come on, to be fair to us all, why prolong the agony?’ So we blasted them with Ros’s hair dryer with the heat turned up to its highest level. At eight o’clock that evening we rolled our first home-produced joint, and were soon crying with laughter at every trivial word anybody uttered. We began every sentence with ‘Well to be fair to the man’, and it went downhill from there until we all got hungry and raided the kitchen for bread and honey.

  Winter was upon us. The prevailing winds, gathering strength, whistled under doors and rattled windows; storms brought down trees, leaving us without power from time to time. Luckily we always had the Aga, so we could cook and were never without hot water.

  I’d secured an overdraft facility with the National Provincial bank. The manager, Geoffrey Nicholls, was yet another acquaintance of Gwyn’s. Following the care of his son, who had suffered life-threatening complications after a bout of glandular fever, his admiration for my father-in-law was sincere and heartfelt. Gwyn told me he was a Freemason and wanted him to join this inner sanctum of the favoured few, a small circle of Caernarfon businessmen who lined one another’s pockets. Gwyn declined, being a Quaker, but they still pestered him, refusing to take no for an answer. When Geoffrey Nicholls agreed to a £3,000 buffer, as he called it, to help our cash flow, I hoped it was just an arrangement between me and the bank, and that he would not approach Gwyn again on the strength of it.

  Our Sunday lunches at Trefanai (Gwyn and Eryl’s house in Caernarfon) were tricky affairs. I could never relax or be myself, always aware that Eryl would not accept me, and not just because I was English. She didn’t understand how I could be farming without having been to agricultural college. She thought Ros could have done better for herself, and rather than try to get to know me she said as little as possible to me. Ros assured me that all I had to do was give her time, but I knew I would never come up to her high standards. Our eyes never met, her niceties amounting to no more than asking me if I would like more gravy on my roast. The subject was never touched upon, yet it was obvious to all that she tolerated me because of her grandchildren, whom she fussed over incessantly.

  Yet between Gwyn and me a warm friendship had developed. We sat in his library before those lunches discussing all manner of things, including the struggles modern man was facing. His bookshelves were full of the great philosophers; midway through sentences he would go and pull out a volume and read to me a relevant passage to emphasise the point he was making.

  ‘These books are for you too,’ he said. ‘Take and read them at your leisure, for here are the riches we all need.’

  And so I did, because I was hungry for knowledge. He introduced me to Carl Jung, and last thing at night, tired out by the physical demands of the day, I would fall asleep with a heavy volume in my hands.

  Christmas was nearly upon us and Dinah, my mother, was coming to stay. Sam and Lysta lay by the log fire in the evenings looking at the pile of Christmas presents under the tree with all the attention Meg gave the pigs. They couldn’t take their eyes off them.

  ‘They’re not going to move,’ we told them, ‘and the big day is still a week away.’

  Evan Evans came by and asked if I’d ever tried Boarmate. I told him I didn’t think I’d reached that stage in my life yet.

  ‘Duw, boy, that’s not what I meant. Simply spray the stuff on to the pinky bits of the sows. It will bring them into season quickly enough.’

  I’d never heard of it. But Evan had some and suggested I should use it. He thought the gilts should be in litter by now, and wondered if I had missed their coming into season. So I sprayed on little bursts of the stuff, but it also occurred to me they might be stimulated by Dave paying them a visit. Jack and Rob thought he would run amok, unable to control his male instincts, so all three of us were there the day I put a leather belt round his neck, fastened a rope lead to the buckle and walked him like a dog into their run. It took all my strength to restrain him as the gilts gathered around him, getting excited, shoving their snouts into his underbelly. In an amazing exhibition of what can only be described as role reversal, they rode Dave from behind. I held on to his lead and shouted to Jack and Rob, who were trying not to laugh, to open the gate and get me out of there. It was too soon; we should have waited. It was my mistake. Evan Evans’ comments had reminded me that these animals were being fed every day, eating into my profits, my margins. God, I was beginning to think like Josh Hummel. I regretted the experiment now, hoping I hadn’t psychologically damaged the blameless Dave.

  That night, under the great sparkling sky, with temperatures dropping below zero, I spent some time with him. I took apples in my pockets. I’d done him no favours, probably injured his pride. As he scoffed down his treats I scratched his back and had a word with him, personal stuff, man to pig, so to speak. Then I took myself off across the fields. The night was clear and still; not a leaf trembled. I could hear only the frosted grass crunching underfoot. There was an unearthly silence about the place. I leant against a boundary wall smoking a roll-up, looking back at the lights of the house some hundred yards away. This need for solitude was becoming a habit, my mood dipping like the falling degrees of the night. Self-doubt began to rise. There was so much I didn’t know, but I was in too deep now. Everything I had set in motion would have to run its course.

  In the morning Harry turned up as we were all eating breakfast.

  ‘It’s colder than a quarryman’s arse out there,’ he said. ‘But today’s the day, and the sooner we get started the better.’ He was as enthusiastic about death as he was about life. We were going to slaughter the turkeys, something he had done for years, but for us it was the first time and I was not looking forward to it.

  He had bundles of baler twine hung like a lasso over his shoulder. The turkeys were locked up in the shed and Rob and I were sent in to catch them. Easier said than done; they all rushed into one corner, then scattered, flying into us, that infernal gobbling noise bouncing off the walls. We dived in, grabbing them by the leg, their claws digging into our wrists. We put our arms around their wings to stop them flapping, holding the birds against our chests. Harry had already screwed butcher’s hooks into the beams of the old feed store and there, as they hung from the twine, he cut their throats. Buckets were placed below to catch the blood. As the life drained out of them they quietened down, and became still. It took no more than a minute for each one to give up the struggle, Harry saying, as he sharpened his knife, that they didn’t feel a thing. We slaughtered all two dozen in a couple of hours. Harry began plucking them while they were still warm, sitting on an old wooden stool with the bird lying across his lap. Their feathers fell into a cardboard box, which he emptied into a hessian sack.

  We could have sold far more: Harry was right when he told us there was always a strong demand for fresh free-range turkeys. Nearly all of them went to friends of Eryl, and Harry took the rest. We kept one for our own Christmas dinner. But I found the whole thing unpleasant and made up my mind that we wouldn’t be doing it next year. Harry said we’d made good money, though how much I wasn’t sure.

  Finished with the turkeys, walking to the house to wash the sticky blood from my hands, I suddenly heard Rob shouting for me. It sounded as though there was something wrong and I ran, full of fear of what was about to confront me.

  ‘She’s on heat!’ pointing to one of the gilts. ‘Look at her vulva, how swollen it is.’

  There was
no doubt about it. The others were showing an interest in her too. So we separated her out, coming between them holding two plywood boards, and steered her off towards Dave’s pen.

  Whatever the sensation a pig feels coming into season, it takes over her whole behaviour. She charged ahead of us, her snout to the ground, pushing aside loose stones, tugging at clumps of grass.

  ‘Rob, get in front of her. We’ve got to turn her.’

  I picked up a length of 3x2 timber and whacked her on the rump. Then Harry arrived, looking as if he was wearing a feathered dress, and took the board from me. I ran towards Dave, who was now pacing up and down, producing a thick lather as if he’d covered his face in shaving foam. A long, slippery pink lipstick was showing beneath his flanks. I don’t know who was more excited, him or me. I opened the gate and she joined him. Neither was interested in foreplay. We all three watched, keeping our distance, not wanting to embarrass them. They were both virgins, after all. Then Harry said in a bland, almost indifferent voice, ‘You know, you’re going to have to get in there with them. To steer him in.’

  And sure enough, as she now stood quite still, offering herself, Dave’s long thin penis, with the twirly bit on the end, repeatedly missed its target. So what else could I do? I rolled up my sleeves and entered the pen. Suddenly it had become a threesome.

  ‘Go on, grab it,’ said Harry, while Rob, who had remained silent up to this point, started to shout, ‘Higher. No, lower. A bit to the right. Now straight ahead.’

  I still held him as at last he hit the bull’s-eye. I got out of there as quickly as I could. A strange expression came over Dave’s face as he thrust away, staring skywards. It was more than a look of utter pleasure, it was almost divine. He was doing it. Then, as he dismounted, I swear he winked at me. It was a milestone for all of us. It was without doubt the most satisfying day since we had come to Dyffryn. They both stood there, I suppose in a shared afterglow. Dave, now a spent force, wasn’t interested in her any more than she was in him.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s got a high sperm count,’ was Harry’s only comment.

  It was lunchtime; what a morning. We wouldn’t know whether she was pregnant for a month, until her teats became distended. But it was a day to be entered in my notebook, where I was to record when each pig came on heat and when she had been served. After nearly a year, our first gilt could be four months away from farrowing our first litter.

  Why does everything take so long, require so much patience? Cycles in the farming world move at varying speeds, but all are slow, and some are slower than others. Then there are those that are monotonously slow. I’m talking about livestock, of course. For arable farmers life is simpler: you have four seasons in which to sow your seed, spray your chemicals, wait for the crop to grow, and harvest.

  Dave, having sown his seed, now flopped over in his pen, taking a well-earned siesta in the December sun, dreaming no doubt that he was in Torremolinos. The underlip beneath his snout quivered as he slept with a smirk on his face, while his trotters flicked to and fro as if he were running. I imagined him wearing sunglasses lying by a pool, his picture on the front cover of Pig Farmers Monthly. I was very fond of him. He had personality; he was an individual, more expressive than any sheep could ever be. I’d told Jack that’s why we counted them, we fall asleep because they’re all the same.

  During our lunch of lobscouse, a dish that Ros made at the beginning of the week then left on the warm plate at the back of the Aga, adding vegetables as the days went by, I sat mulling things over.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Rob asked.

  ‘It’s not easy, is it?’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Farming. I mean all the sort of thing we went through this morning.’

  ‘Would you rather work in an office with a collar and tie on?’

  ‘No! Of course not.’

  ‘So what’s the worry?’ asked Jack.

  ‘I just realised what my worst nightmare would be.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That Dave fired blanks.’

  When I put the phone down to Vida Koeffman I thought at last we might have found the cow we were looking for. Vida sounded elderly: not ancient, but going in that direction. There was a gentleness in her voice that purred on the end of each word. Her soft German accent had a delicate rhythm, dying away like musical notes. She hesitated as she completed her sentences as if the meaning were hidden in the silence. Because of arthritis she could no longer milk her cow, but wanted no money for her, just a good home. Through a friend of a friend she had heard that we were looking for a house cow.

  This did not surprise me. The most effective way to advertise any need in a remote community is by word of mouth; let Dewi know, and within twenty-four hours the details would spread like wildfire through the villages and farms. I arranged to go later in the week and take a look at this cow. Her name was Frieda and she was six years old.

  For once, Jack agreed to come with me. He was spending more time at Cae Uchaf than at Dyffryn these days, helping Gethin Hughes douse his sheep for liver fluke. All good experience for Meg, whom Gethin allowed to gather up his flock. She now impressed our neighbours, but Jack, I knew, wanted more than that. He wanted her to be entered in the local trials, to be recognised as a working dog.

  Up-ending ewes, checking for foot rot, clipping and tidying up their feet, is backbreaking work. Gethin was lucky to have my brother at his beck and call, but when I heard he was not paying Jack a penny I was upset that a neighbour should take such advantage of him. I confronted Jack about it, told him he should be paid for the work. We needed an income; every week there was still more going out than coming in. Jack’s defence that we were gaining in the long run, that the goodwill was benefiting us at Dyffryn, did not convince me. That wasn’t how I saw it. Gethin was using my brother as free labour. Jack was reluctant, but I made him promise to talk to our neighbour about a daily rate.

  My suspicions were growing about Gethin. Some days he seemed friendly and helpful, but there was something going on with the man. It was his motives that I didn’t trust. Why couldn’t Daphne Musto have spelled out what she meant in plain English?

  After a cup of tea in the kitchen of Vida’s stone-built house in Penmaenmawr we went out to meet Frieda. She came as soon as she was called. I could tell straight away she would be at home with us, happy to let me run my hands over her. I’d no idea what sort of cross she was, but there might have been a bit of Jersey and Charolais in the mix. Her breeding was not important to me. I wanted her to be part of the family; I wanted Ros and the children to be close to her. Vida told me she was being milked by the local butcher, whom she tolerated, but she was used to being made a fuss of.

  ‘I know your father-in-law. I want you to take her.’ And I did. It was an easy decision; we had found our house cow.

  Hughie rented us his trailer for a fiver, and Rob and I went the next day to bring her back to Dyffryn. We put her in the field opposite the house, but as soon as we left her she stood with her head over the gate bellowing.

  ‘She’s homesick,’ I told Sam and Lysta. ‘We need to give her a lot of attention to make her feel at home.’

  She bawled all night; in the moonlight through the bedroom window I could see her at the gate. At two o’clock in the morning we were wide awake and Ros was pushing me out of bed, so I got dressed and went out to her. I knew full well that there was nothing I could do to ease her unhappiness. It’ll just take a day or two, I said to myself. She was quiet whilst I was with her, but as soon as I was back in bed she started up again. Ros and I slept with pillows over our heads. When I woke and looked out she was still at the gate.

  After Rob and I had done the feeding I brought her in from the field. She followed me to the parlour where I was going to try to milk her. I didn’t tether her, and when I put the bucket under her udder she seemed unconcerned by the new hands beneath her. But not a drop did I get for five minutes. Was it me or her, I wondered? Then Harry, the man always t
here when I needed him, pulled up on his bicycle.

  ‘Like this, man, like this,’ and out it squirted. So Harry squeezed two teats on one side and I squeezed the two on the other.

  ‘Four or five pints, I reckon,’ he said. She had not taken a single step. It was done, and as I carried our first bucket of milk down to Ros, Frieda followed me back to the field.

  I picked my mother up on Christmas Eve at Bangor, our nearest mainline railway station, a forty-five minute car journey. The station at Caernarfon had been closed down by the Beeching cuts. When we got to Dyffryn she was met by Sam and Lysta, who although not yet two years old were in a state of pre-Christmas excitement. Under a twinkling tree, decorated with an assortment of chocolate reindeer and what were no doubt intended to look like three wise men, she placed a pile of presents. The twins spent an hour before supper rearranging the parcels, pretending they could read the names.

  Every evening since Ros put up the tree they had sat beneath it, mesmerised, and every night the paper angel I had made fell off and got stuck in the branches. In the end I sellotaped the thing to the ceiling and stuck a twig up it.

  After my mother had got them to bed and we thought they were at last asleep, they reappeared. All the noise from downstairs and the waiting for Father Christmas was too much for them. It wasn’t until two a.m. that Ros and I crept in and filled their stockings. We fell back to bed and they woke us at six, emptying out everything Santa had brought them. Meg was barking, for Jack had failed to make it up to Rose Tobias’s cottage for the night. My mother appeared in our bedroom; practically the whole house was awake. Rob came in with cups of tea and by seven we were out of the house doing the early morning feed. Jack, as always, slept through it all.

  A wet snow was falling as we fed and mucked out the pigs. The bullocks were sheltering under the larch trees and the wind was strengthening, sweeping large flakes across the fields. Dawn lacked the brightness to break through the heavy gloom; only a faint rim of light on the horizon showed the sun was rising. We scattered hay for the bullocks, while through the darkness I could see the lights of Gethin’s house glowing in the distance. Jack appeared with a bale over his back to feed the sheep in the top fields.