by Nick Perry
‘Let’s do it, Ros.’
‘We would need to speak to the school.’
‘Yes, of course.’
What was going on with her? It was strange. I had always thought I knew her, but not now, her hand trembling, holding the glass of Blue Nun.
‘What have we done?’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what we’re doing.’
She looked fragile, as if she was shutting herself down. In the morning she didn’t leave Dyffryn. Over breakfast, before going back to bed, she said, ‘This wouldn’t have happened if Pa was still alive.’
Sam and Lysta could tell something was wrong with their mother and tried to cheer her up, telling her about Mrs Davies, their schoolteacher, who had slipped over playing rounders, ‘showing her knickers to everyone’.
‘Have you got a hangover, Mum?’ asked Sam.
‘Not from Blue Nun,’ I said.
Then Harry knocked on the door. ‘Hey! Come on, we’ve got some trouble out here.’
I hugged Ros and whispered, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.’
Now we had our first sow showing symptoms of the disease. She stood in her pen, holding her head at an angle, her mouth open. When she tried to walk her gait was weak and stiff. So this mysterious illness affected pigs of any age. She had seemed in good health the night before; such was its virulence, it took hold so quickly.
‘Wow, man, this could go through the whole herd,’ said Harry.
‘We’re going to be keeping Cluttons busy.’ Cluttons was the company that took away dead stock not fit for human consumption.
We’d never watched the pigs so closely, and now as we moved from pen to pen we disinfected our wellingtons, the least precaution we could take. Not that we thought it would make any difference. How could a remote farm be carrying such a virus? I thought it had to be airborne. We couldn’t have brought it in with new stock; we hadn’t had any for over a year. And besides, our gilts had come from just one source, Josh Hummel. We weren’t insured, and were facing considerable financial loss.
As Ros withdrew into herself, my anxiety, which I usually keep well hidden, increased twofold, and not just for Ros. At eight thirty in the morning Barry Evans arrived at Dyffryn. He carried a large envelope that contained several pages of lab results. He had marked certain sentences in yellow felt-tip pen. He delivered the findings of the report as might a pathologist, clinically and unemotionally, reading to Harry and me word for word what had come upon the pig herd at Dyffryn. When he actually named it – Chicago Vomiting and Wasting Disease – I thought I was the victim of a bizarre joke. But Harry was next to me and at the same moment squeezed my arm so tightly I knew it was for real, that there was no escaping it. Barry went on to tell us there had never been a recorded case before in North Wales and that it originated in the pig herds of North America, in Chicago where there was a large population of factory farmed pigs.
‘I’ve never been to Chicago,’ I said, ‘and I don’t know anyone who has.’
‘Who knows how it got here.’ He kept on reading, reaching the damning conclusion ‘There is no treatment for the disease’.
The symptoms were horrible. As the virus took hold the victims would lose the ability to suck or swallow. They would become thirsty and stand with their heads over water, unable to drink. They would then become severely emaciated and rapidly waste away. There was no vaccine. The only hope was that some sows would have a natural immunity and pass this on to their piglets. The virus could affect susceptible pigs at any age. Well, we already knew that. As the disease progressed there would be a partial paralysis of the legs and the abdomen would become bloated. They would tremble as if they were shivering from extreme cold and then lie down, go into convulsions, roll their eyes and die within two to four days of onset.
‘So there is absolutely nothing we can do,’ I said.
‘It won’t affect them all. Some will resist it,’ said Barry, handing me the report.
‘Man, it’s all in the lap of the gods,’ said Harry, looking to the heavens.
Barry said it was not a notifiable disease, but obviously there was no point in buying replacement stock until we were free of it. ‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of such bad news.’
‘How long will it take to pass through?’ I asked. ‘And when will we know for certain we are rid of it?’
‘I can’t say for sure, but two, three months and then no cases for a month should see you clear.’
I imagined Dyffryn over the coming weeks as a horror show. Now, in these summer weeks, when the weather was easy, and the pigs liked to siesta in the lazy afternoons, they were going to face the invisible onslaught of an evil microbe that would decimate them. Bloody Chicago Vomiting and Wasting Disease. I would have preferred it to have come from Mars, to be something extraterrestrial, but Chicago!
‘I’ll keep dropping by,’ said Barry. ‘You’re not alone; I want to monitor the situation closely.’
‘How much is it all going to cost?’ I asked. ‘Besides, there’s nothing you can do.’
‘There’ll be no charge,’ he said. ‘If you’ve got it here it will spring up somewhere else soon. I want to study it.’
After he had gone, the first thing I said to Harry was, ‘No one must know, absolutely no one. OK?’
‘Yes boss.’
‘These next few weeks are going to be the hardest we’ve ever faced.’
‘We’ll get through it.’
‘You’ve always been an optimist, Harry, no matter what.’
There was something else I had to tell him, without too much drama: that Ros and I weren’t seeing eye to eye about a few things at the moment. It was all a bit delicate. ‘It will only make matters worse if she knows what we’re facing on the farm. So play it down, Harry.’
‘I won’t say a word.’
‘Just keep smiling like you always do.’
Of course I told Jack as soon as I saw him. No matter what came down upon Jack, he met it with equanimity, that shrug of the shoulders. I can’t remember when I first noticed it in him, I’m sure not in London. He must have picked it up out here amongst the shepherds. So much of farming is in the hands of fate; it’s a mannerism that says whatever will be, will be.
Ros hadn’t left the house for three days. She didn’t come down to breakfast, so I rang Eryl and told her how worried I was. As far as I knew we didn’t have a GP; Gwyn had always been our doctor. But Ros needed to see someone. She was depressed, had lost interest in everything. Eryl came over within the hour and took Ros and Seth back with her to Caernarfon. That evening she telephoned to say Ros was staying the night at Trefanai. She was abrupt, and when I asked her how Ros was she said ‘You’ve got a lot to answer for’ and put the phone down.
The following day we found another three pigs, all of them sows, quivering in their pens. Bloated, they hung their heads close to the ground, their tongues hanging from the sides of their mouths. They stood dejected, lifting their trotters up and down on the same spot. We wouldn’t have felt so bad if we could have helped, but just to watch them suffering, unable to ease the pain, tore into the heart. All we could do was try to offer some comfort, get them to lie down on some clean straw. We brought them water, holding a bucket, trying to get them to drink, but they weren’t interested. That afternoon the first gilt aborted her litter; the hopelessness of the situation dug ever deeper into us.
When Dewi came by, bringing a letter from Winford Hook reminding me I was a month late with my year-end accounts, I kept up the pretence that everything was fine. Harry’s inexhaustible energy kept the charade going and he invited Dewi in for his usual cup of tea.
‘Duw, good idea, don’t mind if I do.’
Over the wide plain of the sea a heat haze shimmered. We sat outside, Frieda with her head over the gate. Dewi rambled on about the next election, the possibility of the Plaid Cymru candidate, Dafydd Wigley, winning a large majority. But my mind was elsewhere and I was paying no heed to the conversation going on around me. I didn’t hear the te
lephone ringing.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’
But before I had raised myself it had rung off.
‘Are you all right, boy?’ said Dewi. ‘You seem out of it.’
‘He didn’t sleep well last night,’ said Harry.
‘You should try this ginseng stuff. I take it every morning. Makes you buzz,’ he said.
‘Where do you get it?’ asked Harry. ‘I might try some of that.’
‘Owen Bethel flogs it . . . expensive mind.’
‘It can’t be that good if it’s legal.’
‘It’s highly recommended by Mrs Hughes. Try it, she said, you’ll get the post delivered in half the time.’
‘Has it worked?’
‘Well, I’m half an hour early, aren’t I?’
The telephone rang again. It was Vida Koeffman, whom I hadn’t spoken to for some time. She told me I’d come into her thoughts. She asked if I was well; she had sensed I was in trouble. Did I need any help? She was somebody I could trust, so I told her what was going on, and listened to her reassuring voice. I had often asked myself, knowing her struggles, why life had never hardened her. It was as if she lived within the very centre of herself; she understood life’s great enigmas.
‘Sometimes it is necessary to bring about change through crisis, although you might not know why until many years later.’
Just listening to her lifted my spirits. ‘An old woman in her eighties has seen a few things, you know.’ She laughed. ‘It’s getting harder to remember them, though. I only rang to make sure you are coping with what’s ahead of you. Anyway, we might not speak again. Thank you for looking after Frieda.’
‘Why won’t we speak again?’
‘An old lady running out of time, that’s all.’
How had she known I was in trouble?
Dewi was still talking politics with Harry when Sam and Lysta came running down the drive, satchels swinging, gym shoes round their necks.
‘Dad!’ they shouted.
‘What’s the hurry?’
‘Nain’s coming. We’re racing her back.’
My first thought was here comes trouble, and with Dewi tucking into another slice of bara brith he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
‘Mum, Mum, you’re back!’
Harry stamped out his roll-up. ‘I’ve got work to do.’ Grabbing a bucket, he walked past Eryl with a quick ‘Afternoon’.
Dewi got to his feet. ‘Mrs Griffiths, how nice to see you. Thank you so much for the donation.’
‘It was my pleasure.’
‘Your mother-in-law,’ said Dewi, ‘has supported the eisteddfod for many years.’
Ros got out of the car, passing Seth to me. Our eyes didn’t meet as I leant forward to kiss her. At least she didn’t pull away, but after acknowledging Dewi she went into the house with Eryl.
‘Dewi, I’ve got to go.’
‘Go, boy. I’m on my way. Try that ginseng.’
I wanted to follow Ros in and talk to her, but I stopped at the front door as I knew it would be impossible while Eryl was in the house.
After Harry and I finished feeding, we painted red crosses on the pens where pigs were dying. We dragged out the carcasses, laid them in the lean-to and covered them with hessian sacks. Tomorrow Cluttons would take them away, and probably more.
We had a roll-up, sitting on the steps of the stile that bordered Cae Uchaf.
If Harry was feeling the strain he was showing none of it. As we smoked I looked down into the running stream. I could never name the water weeds that grew below the surface or along the banks. I knew the reeds and stiff grasses, but not those that flowered in clusters, no more than a finger high. Water flowing over flinty stones has a calming effect, as does a dragonfly that holds the eye as it hovers, its wings distilling the light of a fading sun, shimmering and transparent. It gave me respite while Harry and I, our shoulders touching, remained silent. I thought of Vida, her words having worked their way into my heart.
I made my way back to the house. Eryl’s car was still parked outside. I sensed that a volcano was about to erupt. But when I walked into the sitting room Mozart’s piano concerto in C minor was playing, my mother-in-law humming along as if she knew every note. Ros was spooning mashed banana into Seth’s hungry mouth. Everyone seemed preoccupied, and I was politely ignored. Sam and Lysta were drawing at the table. Moss of course jumped straight onto the sofa. I waited for her to be shooed off, but Eryl seemed to be floating in a melodic world.
Supper was eaten with innocuous small talk, like strangers meeting for the first time. After the children had gone to bed, rather than endure an uncomfortable silence I asked Ros how she was feeling, but Eryl, bringing in a tray of tea, answered for her.
‘You might well ask. She is on antidepressants.’
‘Are you, Ros? Are things that bad?’
‘Oh, my God! Only a man could say that, an insensitive man who has no idea how his wife is feeling.’
‘Ma, don’t make things worse.’
‘Eryl, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you left us alone?’
Her face showed so much anger at the suggestion that Moss growled, and instead of disappearing stood between us barking at her. ‘The cheek of it!’ she said. ‘It would be better for us all if you were to go.’
And from Eryl’s point of view, sitting on her matriarchal throne, it would have been. Let’s get rid of the dreaded Englishman; she saw her chance now, with Ros and me divided.
After I’d calmed Moss, I picked up her handbag and offered it to her, saying, ‘Please go.’
‘Ma, go. It’s for the best.’ At last Ros had spoken.
‘You are not well, and I have no intention of standing by while you get pulled in all directions.’
‘Tell her again, Ros. Tell her to go.’
‘Ma, please, Nick and I have to talk. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’
She left, but not until she’d expressed what she’d always felt, her disappointment that Ros had married me in the first place. ‘Why haven’t you got a proper job? You’re not even a qualified farmer, playing at this and that.’ And, as she gathered her things together, she said, ‘You were never right for this family of ours.’
I watched her get into the car and, rather than driving off immediately, putting on her headscarf and checking her face in the rear-view mirror, her appearance always kept up, the good doctor’s widow.
If all that wasn’t enough, before I could sit down to talk to Ros a pig wandered past the window. Lysta shouted from her room, ‘Pig out, Dad.’
How many times had I heard that cry, and run from the house grabbing a bucket? Frieda was still on duty, leaning over the gate. Did it amuse her watching me chasing yet another pig?
When I got back to the house I went upstairs to make sure the children were asleep. There they lay, in amongst their toys, books still in their hands, felt-tip pens and half-finished drawings strewn over their eiderdowns. Children seem to fall asleep in an instant, as quickly as a camera shutter.
Now at last I was alone with Ros, with the calamity of our lives, the shipwreck, call it what you will. Two survivors looking for a raft, for that’s what we were, lost at sea.
‘Don’t let’s blame one another for anything,’ I said. ‘That would be a good starting point.’
‘Well, be honest with me. What’s gone wrong?’
‘We have lost our way and need to find a way back.’
So we sat there, picking through the emotional mess, Ros admitting that since Gwyn had died she had not mourned her loss and instead had poured herself into the community adventure. Because I had not gone along with the idea, resentment towards me had been gradually growing. ‘I miss him terribly. I think about him every day.’ But now she realised that it was too soon to be getting so involved with Tom and Agnetta. ‘Maybe you are right. It would be better in a year from now, when they are established. It was a distraction after Pa’s death.’ She had run herself ragged, feeling depleted. ‘I’v
e no energy left.’
Should I tell her what was happening on the farm? I did in a way, to a lesser degree than the whole truth. What purpose would it have served? I said a few of the pigs were dying of a mysterious illness called Chicago Vomiting and Wasting Disease. She smiled ironically. ‘You haven’t made that up, have you?’
I was glad she didn’t take it seriously, that I’d said it anyway. The significance of it she would find out all too soon.
‘Put on some music,’ she said. ‘That JJ Cale album.’
I asked about the antidepressants she was taking.
‘I’ll throw them away. They make me so lethargic.’
‘Why did you ever start on them?’
‘Ma said I was depressed, and I was. Maybe I still am; I don’t know how I feel. Do you know, what I’d really like is a holiday. We have never taken a break ever since we’ve been here. But I know it’s not possible.’
‘But it is,’ I said. ‘We can sell the farm, take the Magic Bus from Victoria to Athens, get on a boat from Piraeus, find a remote island. I’ll work if I have to.’
The two of us lay on the sofa and I told Ros, ‘This cycle in our lives is coming to an end. We should move on. What have we got to lose?’
‘I’ll have to talk to Tom and Agnetta.’
‘Of course. I’ll ring Ivan, tell him we want to put the farm on the market.’
‘And speak to Mr Parry, organise things with the school.’
As the music stopped all we could hear was that repetitive click of the needle stuck in the groove after the last track.
‘Let’s do it,’ Ros said.
I knew then we were back together.
‘By the way, thank you for the Valentine’s card.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I must say, the handwriting intrigued me. Who wrote it?’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Say what you meant, then, those words you wrote in the card?’
I didn’t. Instead I went and fetched the letter Gwyn had written, that I was to read after his death. Now was the right time, and maybe, although it was sad for her to hear, it might ease the pain. I was sure Gwyn had written it because he would have found it too difficult to say. For not only did he entrust me with the care of his books, which were his real friends, but said it pleased him to have me as a son-in-law. At the end of the letter he said, You are no Welshman, here is not your home, soon you will be gone. Don’t stay for the sake of others, continue your journey and be strong. It made Ros weep, but I felt that night the healing had begun.