Out Backward

by Ross Raisin

  When it was done and new year over with, Mum went and fetched the tin back from Deltons’. I could tell from her mood after she got back that Delton had got under her skin–ee, we had a time of it this year, the whole family round, you should’ve seen the goose I cooked, I could’ve fed an army. Anyhow, thank you ever so for the parkin, you have a good one yourself did you, just the three of you, was it? I’d told her I’d go down the new family’s place for the other tin, and I waited until she’d left before I went upstairs to pull it out from under my bed and put it on the kitchen table for her. They enjoy it, did they? she asked me later. They did, yes, they send their best. Aye, well, I’m fain glad someone appreciates it, and she chuntered off to the cupboard with the tins.

  Father’s ailment had shook off, and he was busy about the place seeing to all the jobs he’d been too ill to get done and hadn’t trusted me with. Guttering the yard drains, mainly, and fiddling with the tractor engine, although he had a new occupation took up much of his time the rest the winter–letter writing. After the subsidies had dried out from quarterly, to half-year, to once a year, he’d been waiting on his Single Farm Payment since back-end. It should’ve come September, and after he’d spoke to the authorities asking where it was, just before Christmas, they said it’d arrive first week of the new year, but it hadn’t. So he decided he’d write them and keep on at it until they sent his cheque.

  I’d never seen Father writing before, I didn’t know he had the learning of it, except for signpost writing, but each couple of weeks he sat himself at the kitchen table, fettling all his equipment neat around him–pen, authorities letter, envelope, stamp, a letter pad he’d bought at the store–and he’d write, careful, his forehead furrowing up, one slow word after the other. I didn’t sit close by when he was at the letters. Most times I went to my room, or I sat other side the fire, and I never got to gleg what he’d written, because he stacked it all up and took it upstairs when he’d done, but I could see they weren’t ever more than half a page. He chewed his tongue while he wrote, he didn’t even know he was doing it. It reminded me of the half-brains at the school who sat at the back and when they weren’t throwing rubbers at my head they were hunched over their desks gurning concentration faces at the paper, like project hour at the nuthouse.

  The big livestock farms over at Glaisdale had got their payment already, he was certain, though I didn’t know how he knew that, now he didn’t go down the Grouse any more. It just riled him further, them getting the money, because he didn’t see why they needed it anyhow–they were the ones got all the sales, for all buyers wanted now was constant supply, and they could afford to sell for cheap. One day, when it got to February and he still hadn’t word back from the authorities, he went off spying in his tractor to Glaisdale. They’d had it, no doubting, he told Mum when he got back, they had roller shutters on the barns, and new feed silos, and a humming great Massey Ferguson sat in t’ yard, not even used. All he needed for was cladding sheets for t’ barn roof, but he hadn’t t’ money for half. I just smiled, when he’d gone out the room, imagining him hunkered behind a wall, spying through the cracks. By!–them’s roller shutters, them is, the bastards.

  She never came up. I wouldn’t hardly have known if she was still there or not, except for sometimes the curtain was open and sometimes it was shut–she had it closed some occasions for more than a week at a time, sod knows what she was doing in the dark there. Moping, probably, else she was growing mushrooms.

  I only saw her once. It was afternoon, and I heard the cattle-grid, she must’ve been coming back from school. I wasn’t fussed for looking, but my head was drawn round as I listened to the vehicle coming up the track, I was like a bull tethered by the nose. I followed the car along, watching the dark squares of its windows as it drove on until, quarter of a mile from the house, it stopped. For a couple of minutes nothing happened, it just sat there in the middle of the track, and I started thinking maybe there was a sheep stuck in the next cattle-grid, before I remembered they were all shut up in the barn. Then a back door opened, and the girl got out. I heard the thud of the door closing just as the car started moving off. She stood a moment, it seemed she wasn’t sure what to do, and I got back to unfastening the hay bales, in case she might walk up the hillside toward me.

  When I looked back, though, pulling the cut string off a bale, she’d started down the track for the house. I watched her spidering along avoiding the puddles, glad when she didn’t slow up at the spot where it’d all happened with the Cyclist. She walked slow, down the dip into the trees and through the gate at the entrance to the farmstead, slamming it shut behind her. She didn’t look up at ours anytime, far as I could tell.

  I got on with the bales, cutting the string and gathering up huggings of hay to take for the barn and load up the feeding racks. The sheep watched on, their jaws grinding side to side with cusps of hay sticking out all angles. They were eating double portions now, their bellies swelling with the young that were growing inside. The best part the year was coming up–a barnful of sticky articles stumbling about the place on tidgy twig-legs. That’d be more viewsome for her than showing how the mothers got tupped. One of the ewes was pulling on a mouthful of hay caught on the rack, snagged by a piece of string, so I went up and loosed it off for her, then I sat down on a full bale and looked about the barn. Do you know her? She never mentioned you. Well, she wouldn’t mention me to you, would she, Cyclist? You’re the last she’d be telling, you and Chickenhead.

  I pictured her up–I imagined her there in the barn walking about studying the newborns with their bodyguard mothers, her great wellingtons flapping against the backs her legs.

  The ewe will start to get flowtered first–bleating, pawing at the ground, that’s how you know she’s close. She’ll keep coming back to the same plot of floor and laying down, then she’ll get up again and pace about.

  I stood up, listening to the words echo round the barn, and I went to check outdoors that Father wasn’t about before I latched the doors shut and sat back down again.

  A birth can last three or four hours, if the lamb doesn’t slip out easy first time. She’ll need assisting, if there’s nothing showing. One of us holding her steady while the other slides an arm in to feel for the babby. Not rough, for it’ll hurt her if it’s too fierce, but gentle, nursing your fingers around it to feel if there’s a leg stuck, twisted wrongways, or if the whole body’s turned end on. It doesn’t need much pulling, just until it starts to show, then she’ll do the rest the job herself.

  I thought I heard a noise outside the barn. I stopped and got up for a look, but when I examined out the door there was nothing to be seen, only Mum through the kitchen window other side the yard, so I left it by and closed the door again.

  Normal presentation, the front feet will come out first, then the head, the eyes half-lidded, then next thing there’s a steaming lump on the floor, slipping and tripping over its legs to get at a teat. If the ewe doesn’t fancy licking it, likely if she’s a one-shear and she doesn’t have the knowing what to do, we’ll have to put the lamb under her nose, so as she can clear off the birth fluid, dry its fleece, and get the blood going. Gets them familiar and all.

  That’ll do for now, I thought, and I left the barn and went in the house to my room, thinking it over. It’d need shaping up some, but it was good, it was better than the tupping–but I’d not been ready then, was the problem, she’d come out of nowhere. I’d likely need to change the part about the assisting, though, she might not be too partial on the sight of my arm up a sheep’s back-end.

  Sal was close on full size now. The tan smudges on her cheeks she’d had as a whelp were now grown down her neck, meeting at the throat. She had a fair coat on her and all, soft, thick and glishy, and muscles building around her haunch from all the rabbit chasing and sheepdog training I had her at. She was getting better at working the flock. There was still plenty to learn her, mind, particular when a ewe came loose from the rest–she didn’t have the nous yet h
ow to get it back, she’d more likely square up to it, teasing, shaping to spring toward it then flumping to the ground, until the ewe was all aflunters and it tore off otherways from the pen.

  This part the calendar, I made sure she got a gradely amount of walking, because the dogs usually turned fat round this time, while the sheep were housed up and there wasn’t work for them to do. Most times we went straight up top the Moors, but one morning we followed along the edge of them, valley one side, heathery tangle of vast the other. The direction of the lower ground, the land had started to soften and stir–the brown patches fading from the fields, and yellow spots of primrose scraffling through the hedgerows. Over the next few weeks the thaw would move up the hillside, field by field, warming the air and waking the squirrels, until it reached up the top and met the Moors. It took a fair amount of warming before the Moors took any heed of the season turning, though. They had their own calendar. A month on and you’d still be nithering cold if you came up there without a coat, never mind only a couple of miles down folk were scraping the cack off their barbecues already, shaping up for spring.

  We passed by Deltons’ and kept on, curling round the hillside until Norman’s farm came into sight, considerable lower down than us and Deltons’, spread out flat at the bottom of the hillside. That was part of why Father had never been too warm on Norman, I knew, because he could keep cows on that flat, green land, and there was more money from dairy than from a flock of half-brained sheep. The other part I’d never been right sure–I only knew that sometimes, when Father was oiled or just when he was twined up tighter than normal, he’d gristle on about Norman. Spilt a ton o’ muck over ’ town road, he has, sloppy bastard.

  There was nothing flash about Norman’s cows today, mind. Most the herd weren’t to be seen, just a couple of old girls plodding about by a wall. The fields were in bad fettle, I marked–mud-sumps around the gates, rips of blue plastic sacking hopping about in the wind, and a portion of wall which had sagged over, leaving a mighty hole. He was slipping, certain enough. We walked along a field and through the hole into another field, to say hello to the cows. They didn’t look too happy. Their udders hung huge and swollen under their bellies, mighty sore-looking. He not been milking you, eh, ladies? They just stared at the wall. They were a state, the pair of them, puffy-eyed and their backsides all slathered with shite. I’d seen more viewsome cows, truly.

  After we’d done talking to them, we moved off toward the farmhouse, sod knows why, as I wasn’t mooded for meeting him, not after the last time. There wasn’t danger of that though, I understood soon enough, because when we got near I could see there was no one about. Kitchen light was off and the yard was bare. I couldn’t even spy a tractor anyplace. All that was there was a great signpost stood next the yard gate. It was sideways on to me so I couldn’t see what was wrote on it, and it started spinning through my head–puppies for sale, working or pet–and course that made me think about the night in the tomatoes’ house and that made me think about her. She wasn’t easy to blank out. Soon as I’d closed off the part my brain that was thinking about her, she’d pop up in another part–hello, here I am, there’s some strange things in your head, you know. You still doing the pond skater impressions, are you?

  I walked to the signpost. It was made of half a tree and all shiny in the sunlight, probably the only item about the place that wasn’t band-end condition. WHITELOCK HOMES. Norman must’ve been putting another building up, else he was selling up. Either way, there wasn’t nothing else to see round there, so we clogged off.

  We went direct over the Moors this time, Sal wandering off investigating for rabbits. There was a bird singing somewhere, a peewit, I could hear him close by, pee-wit, pee-wit, but I couldn’t see where he was, bunkered up in the heather. I had a look round, but he was too well hid, and I left off my search and started thinking on something else–the tomatoes’ house, and all them pictures of naked females in flower beds. There was one I was thinking about, particular, she was lying frontways over a settle with her feet propped in the air. She was bare, mainly, the skin white as anything, just a green cloth–a scarf or such like–covering over her backside, draping down in a slump on the floor. All you could see was the slow valley between her shoulders one side, and the rise in the cloth other side. She looked drowsy, but closer in I could see she was awake and I marked it was the girl. Her eyes were closed, but she was crying. The skin on her top lip was damp, and she was chuntering to herself–leave me alone, she was saying. Under a shroud of hair, her chest was shuddering with the force of the sobs. Leave me alone.

  14

  She was sat up against a wall, reading a book. I hadn’t caught on it was her at first, I’d thought it was a rambler, but when she stood up and paced about I knew the uniform and the shape of her. She was a mile away, toward the forest, and it might’ve been a magazine, I couldn’t rightly tell, but she was certain reading. She had a scran with her and all, because she ate something one point, and she stayed there, reading and eating, until early in the afternoon, then she made off to the house.

  It wasn’t long after that, I learnt the proper meaning of the signpost down Norman’s. Father came in the kitchen and sat in his chair, and I knew straight off he was grum for he didn’t fix his look on anything and there was a quiet about him. He was mostly quiet, Father, but there were different sorts. This was a brown study, certain. Mum mashed a pot of tea and I sat at the table listening to the budgerigars chattering bollocks at each other in the next room. After a time, when Mum had set a mug aside us each, he said, I hear tell Norman’s putting t’ farm up.

  Me and Mum just drank us tea in silence.

  Sold the whole plot, he ’as.

  I almost told him about the signpost, but I stopped myself when I looked at his face, all worn and sagged–he’d likely take it as I’d hammered the signpost in myself, if I told him that now.

  Two hundred acre, he said, and took a drink from his Greengrass mug. I’d gave him that mug as a bairn, it was the one he always used, with a big face of Claude Greengrass off Heartbeat, a champion daft grin on him. It looked something queer now, when Father lifted the mug to his lips, seeing them two faces brought next each other–Greengrass grinning, Father grum as a miner’s arse. I didn’t understand what he was so bothered over. I thought he’d be glad to see the back of Norman.

  What’s he done that for? said Mum.

  Father glegged up at her, a look on him that told he’d never heard anything so stupid.

  For t’ brass, he ’as. He’s sold up t’ same as built Amblebrook.

  That capped it all, that, another Amblebrook, at Norman’s. I knew the place well enough–I’d passed it on the valley road, and from a certain spot on the Moors I could see it off in the distance, a development of houses further down the valley toward the coast. That was what they called it–a development–because it was developed up from nothing, just a scratch of ground next the river. Off-comed hole, I called it. Twenty or thirty red houses, all bright and glishy like a piece of flesh with the skin torn off. Probably that was what the town used to look like, way back, before it started to snarl up and scab over.

  Norman’s would likely end up the copy of it, as there wasn’t anything local about Amblebrook. All pebbly drives and great squares of garden, front and back, never mind the Moors were wrapped all round. It looked like it’d been designed in a matchbox, with a looping road and tidgy figures of children playing football, and a fat babby angel pissing in a concrete fountain in the middle of the roundabout.

  Father took another glug of tea. Old Greengrass wasn’t bothered about any of it, the bone-idle nazzart. Certain he’d have some scheme or other to trick these new Amblebrook city folk out of their brass. I imagined a pair of coppers chasing him down the matchbox street, shouting after him–Greengrass! You put that angel back, you hear. Greengrass shuffling along on his gammy leg, losing them in a shrubbery bush. Father had always been fond on old Greengrass, laughing at his calf-headed schemes–guided t
ours for towns of a haunted barn, two pound entry, only the barn was never haunted, course, it was just creaky with subsidence.

  He sat now, churning his thoughts. Norman was a different type of nazzart all over. His family had been working that farm best part of a century at least, but he was happy to sell it fast as a rabbit’s fart, just for a quick pocket. Norman’s father never had much brass, no matter the land was gradely and he could keep dairy, for he was a doylem. And no doubt Norman wouldn’t manage all this brass he had coming, properly enough to pass it on to any son he might get, for Norman was a doylem too. Clogs to clogs in three generations. But that was his own problem. Amblebrooks all over the shop, that was ours. Seemed the whole county was teeming with folk out to steal a pound from the land.

  Not far from us, further into the Moors, some smart tyke was tricking money out the ground–out the air, more like–at Goathland, because that was where they filmed Heartbeat. In summer it was teeming with the pink and green hats, come for a sight of Greengrass. They came in by the coachload. Never mind Greengrass wasn’t there and neither was the southern copper, and there wasn’t a thing to see except for a couple of bare fields and a van selling bacon butties. A coachload of tourists gawping at a field–likely old Greengrass himself had scammed that one up.