COLD ENOUGH TO FREEZE COWS
by
Lorraine Jenkin
HONNO MODERN FICTION
For Huw, for Charlotte, for Maude…and now for baby Billi, too.
With many thanks to all those that helped with the making of Cold Enough to Freeze Cows
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
Epilogue
About Honno
Also by Lorraine Jenkin
Copyright
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CHAPTER 1
Fel bol buwch ddu – like a black cow’s belly
Iestyn Bevan got up from the table and walked towards the back door. He pulled on the jumper and overshirt that were one inside the other on the hook, and ground his feet into the enormous wellies that stood in a puddle of water on the tiles.
He didn’t want to go back out into the weather. His bones had been getting warm, finally, and the aching was subsiding. However, he knew by now that it was like needing the toilet in the night: no matter how much you didn’t want to get up and go, you were far better to just get on with it. The need was never going to go away and ignoring it just prolonged the agony.
“Out to check the barn, boy?” asked his dad from his usual spot in the chair by the Rayburn.
“Yeah,” grunted Iestyn, “just a last look round.” Somehow his dad’s unbelievably flexible neck permitted his eyes to follow Iestyn across the kitchen as he fetched his beanie hat, which sat in a puddle on the work surface.
“Check that old girl in the pen, eh, Iest? She wasn’t looking too good earlier.” Iestyn’s father, Tomos, had a knack of allowing his body to sit perfectly still in the chair with just his head moving, revolving from side to side.
“Yep, no probs.” He would have checked her anyway, having spotted earlier that she was looking none too bright.
“Good boy,” said Tomos and his head returned to look at the small television perched on top of the dresser, once more meeting up with the alignment of his exhausted body and allowing every osteopath in the land to breathe a sigh of relief. Iestyn knew what it was like: when you spent your whole day slogging in the cold, after you’d finally sat down you moved as little of your body as possible.
Iestyn’s mother, Isla, smiled at him and got to her feet, “I’ll have a brew ready for when you get back.” Iestyn smiled in return as she filled the kettle that had nearly steamed away all its contents and returned it to the hotplate of the Rayburn.
Isla sat back down and picked up her knitting. Her chair faced away from the television, so instead of watching it she assumed her usual concentrated frown as she listened to what was happening, knitting for her niece’s children, for Iestyn, for her husband, Tomos, and finally for herself.
Iestyn reached for his coat on the peg in the porch and slung it, still wet, onto his back. The cold damp collar and cuffs touched his skin and he shuddered. Cursing for the thousandth time that no one had replaced that outdoor light, he grabbed the torch from the shelf and followed its feeble beam into the night.
He slopped along the path round the side of the house, the rain driving down his neck. He instinctively knew where the gutters were spilling out, but the duck shit he skidded on was unexpected. He cursed as he grabbed for a handhold and scraped his knuckles on the rusty corrugated iron cladding that protected the farmhouse from the worst of the easterly weather.
He trudged up the steps, knowing exactly where to step, which treads were loose, which were uneven and which were missing and had been for the last few years.
At the top of the slope, Iestyn wrenched open the barn door and felt for the lights. The sweet smell of the hay and the warmth from the sheep soothed him. He hung his wet coat on a nail and threw the torch down into a pile of old feed sacks.
As he moved amongst the pens, he looked over the sheep which were divided into groups or singles by hurdles and other more makeshift barriers. Some jumped to their feet as he approached, darting to the back of their pens, others eyed him warily, but stayed crouched in the warm hay. His father had been moaning about the severity of the winter and had predicted that because the weather had been so bad, the lambs would be born with stunted legs as their mothers had spent so much time crouched low to the ground. However, Iestyn knew that his father predicted such a thing most winters, so he felt a little more optimistic.
Iestyn made his way over to the ewe that Tomos had mentioned. Although to the layman most of the sheep looked the same, Iestyn knew exactly which one his father had meant when he had mentioned the “scraggy old” ewe. She tried to stand up as he approached and then hobbled off to the corner of the pen. He grabbed the rickety hurdle and stepped over it, his six-foot-two frame clearing the top rail easily.
He darted at the sheep and caught her. Her eyes were a little dull and her hooves were a bit smelly but she seemed OK. Certainly not worth doing anything about it anyway – father would rather eat her than get the vet out. Despite the Ministry and its paperwork, plenty of hobbling, crouching, or infertile sheep ended up lying with a handful of herbs shoved up their arse on the Bevans’ table of a Sunday.
Kneeling down with the sheep, Iestyn felt the breeze racing under the wall of the barn. His grandfather had patched an old door opening with a tin sheet as a temporary measure about twenty-five years ago and it still rattled under the slightest breeze. He shivered: he’d been soaked through three times already and by the evening he’d been struggling to get warm. He pulled the collar of his shirt up and shuddered as that was wet too, a puddle of rainwater trickling down his neck.
He checked his watch – he’d been in here for forty minutes: that tea would be stewed to buggery by now. He made his way back to the door and shrugged his coat back on. He flicked the light switch off and the place plunged back into pitch darkness, not a streetlight for three miles. Iestyn cursed that he had not picked up his torch first as he fumbled round amongst the feed sacks and flicked away a mouse as it ran over his hand.
He slipped and slid down the path back to the house, no longer trying to avoid the puddles or the mud, vowing as he did every night to put a bulb in that bloody porch light first thing in the morning…
His mother and father were in exactly the same position as they had been when he left them earlier, his mother just being another couple of inches further on in her knitting. She looked up and his father craned his neck around and peeped over the chair.
“All right, love?”
“All right, boy?”
“Yeah.”
“How was that ewe?”
“Oh, she’ll be OK, bit ropey, but all right I think. I’ve stuck some more straw in her pen, cosy her up a bit.”
Iestyn shook off his wellies and padded across the tiles, hi
s long cream socks flopping out in front of him. He eased himself into his chair and accepted the cup of stewed tea from his mother with a smile. She waited beside him as he drained it and it was refilled without a comment. A thickly buttered scone was put beside his refilled cup.
“Thanks,” he muttered, and picked up his scone. “Blimey, Mam, I think I’ve stopped growing now, you know!”
She smiled back. It was their little joke. Scones had filled him, his father and his brother, Joe, for as long as he could remember and there were always piles of them for when they had come in from outside. The scones had grown larger and larger as the years had gone by and Iestyn and Joe had grown into two large men. But this one was possibly the biggest ever.
“Well,” laughed his mum, “I suppose I wasn’t concentrating.”
“Watching bloody Pobl y Cwm,” quipped a voice from behind the chair wings, “that’s why my sandwich didn’t have any butter in and the chickens didn’t get fed and…” Tomos peered around and winked at Iestyn and Isla laughed.
“Well, maybe one day he’ll learn how to make his own sandwiches?”
“Hey, now, let’s not get silly,” said Tomos, “no need to go that far. Oh, and Iestyn, Joe phoned. He and Sima are coming down Christmas Eve – having Christmas day here and then heading off skiing for New Year. Off for a winter break, flying out with some old friends from Cardiff and then they’ll call back through again on their way back to London.”
“Another winter break? That bloke has so many winter breaks I’m surprised that he has time for a normal week to actually do any work!”
“He’s had another bonus,” said Isla proudly, “so he’s going to treat Sima.”
Joe was the son that was always boasted about in the local shop, the one who topped the Christmas card news and the one whose homecoming was more of an occasion. He would always turn up in a new car, usually one that was so low slung that it could be heard scraping its way up the mile-long track. He would nearly always have a gorgeous woman in the passenger seat and often a different one to the time before – although in fairness, the beautiful Sima would be on her third visit now. Iestyn remembered the first time that the tall, willowy Sima came to the farm. Her exotic looks had taken his father by surprise and Iestyn had chuckled at his slow deliberate English and then shrivelled with embarrassment as she replied, “Is-it-because-you-are-first-language-Welsh-that-you-talk-so-slowly?” in a broad Cockney accent. She’d winked at Iestyn as he giggled, then she’d laughed and patted Tomos on the arm, “I’m only joking,” she laughed. “I know that sometimes people are not quite sure what to do with me! Let’s start again: Sima Arshad born in England to Pakistani parents, I’m very pleased to meet you!”
“Tomos!” Isla had clucked, “Silly arse! Sima, love, pleased to meet you wherever you’re from! Take no notice of Tomos, he’s never been further than Cardiff in his life…” Joe had laughed again when he got a nudge from his mother, “Joe, m’n, you could have told us…”
Iestyn loved Joe. He was good fun and always full of tales of a life that was very different to Iestyn’s. He told stories about the City, the bars, his fifth floor flat – sorry, luxury condominium – the clubs and the women. Iestyn had never sought to follow Joe; he’d always wanted to work on the farm, and that is what he had done, but he sometimes envied Joe his escapades and opportunities. He loved Pencwmhir, but wouldn’t it be nice to sit on a balcony overlooking the Thames with a glass of champagne and someone as beautiful as Sima at his side just occasionally?
Instead, he supped his paned with his mother and father, chatting as they always did about the farm, the animals, any work that had to be done and the latest gossip from the local village, Bwlch y Garreg. Occasionally he would nudge the dog, snoring at his feet, with his toe. Although he presumed that even Sima would fart and twitch in her sleep now and then, lying beside her would surely be a far more pleasant experience than having that Jack Russell snoozing beside his chair.
“That bloody dog,” said Tomos, frowning. “Has he been eating chicken shit again?”
Louisa Harrison settled at her desk and switched on her lamp. She pressed the button on her computer and felt the usual surge of expectation as it whirred into being. As it sorted itself out, she busied herself in her bedroom, shutting her curtains against the foul December weather and removing her work clothes in favour of her pyjamas and dressing gown. As she sorted her outfit into those things that were destined for the wash basket and those that would be acceptable for another day, the door tapped and her mum’s grey bob peeped round.
“Brought your tea up, love.”
“Thanks, Mum,” said Louisa without really looking at her, and she went back to wriggling the mouse in the attempt to get her system to boot up quicker. Her mother put the cup onto the mouse mat and Louisa frowned and picked it up and put it very deliberately onto the coaster.
“Sorry, love,” dithered her mum, “I didn’t realise it was your computer mat.”
“Mouse mat,” stated Louisa, as she stared at her screen.
“Sorry, mouse mat,” said her mother and without thinking took a damp cloth from a loop on the back of her jeans and deftly wiped the surface of the desk, whipping round the keyboard and collecting the three specks of dust that had dared to gather there since she’d dusted earlier.
“Mum! For goodness sake!” snapped Louisa. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“Yes, yes, of course it can. Sorry, love, wasn’t thinking.”
Louisa nodded and carried on staring at the screen. She hated waiting for so long. She could feel her mother standing behind her looking over her shoulder. Eventually she had to turn and look at her and raise her eyebrows and at last her mother took the hint. Wiping the shelf as she went, Esther walked slowly from the room and left her daughter in peace.
Louisa shook her head and returned to the screen and sighed. Right. Let’s get down to it. There was another knock at the door.
“Sorry, love, I forgot to ask about your sandwiches for tomorrow.”
Louisa rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh, anything. Whatever.”
“Cheese and tomato?”
“No, um, tuna, mayo and spring onion will be fine. Bit less pepper this time though, please.”
“OK, love.” And Esther clicked the door shut once more.
Louisa was feeling quite excited. As part of the Advanced Computer Studies course she was taking through her workplace personal advancement programme, the tutor, Herbie, had set the class the task of writing a blog for their Christmas homework.
“I want you to not just use the computer. I want you to get involved with it. Interact with it, yeah?”
Herbie got on her nerves. He was a bit of a hippy turned technohead and it was as if the two didn’t sit well together. Occasionally he would flick the flimsy ponytail that had managed to grow out the back of his neck and say, “Yeah?” as if that might mean that he wasn’t betraying his roots. However, despite this, she was enjoying the course and had received positive feedback about her assignments.
To Louisa’s annoyance, however, her mother had recently started attending a Computers For Beginners evening class, so that they could “help each other”. Louisa knew that she would now no doubt spend much of her free time messing about with paper-jams, showing Esther how to save files, delete files, click on a mouse etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…
At last the Internet was up and ready to go. Louisa typed in the URL of her own blog, which she had set up in class, and then sat back as it flicked to the screen. Bingo! It had worked! The pastel shades made her nod – yes, they looked good. All she now needed to do was write something.
“It doesn’t have to be much, and it doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece,” Herbie had said. “Just a diary about your day, or something like that. I want to feel like I am getting to know you: getting to know what makes you tick, yeah? I want you to use the tag lines, use the titles – you know the score? Let’s get to it!”
Louisa had sat in th
e chair in the side of the class and wracked her brains as to how she could draw him in (yeah?). By the time she was ready to start typing, Herbie had checked the clock and seeing that they could legitimately “rap”, as he called it, he leapt away to mingle with Rachel and Rosie, the two young women who sat next to each other at the front of the class and giggled together as if they were still at school. Louisa had spotted Herbie trying to arrange himself so that he could take quick glimpses down Rosie’s top as he helped her with one of her many technical problems. Pretty pathetic really – shame that he didn’t involve the rest of the class in his “rap” – everyone else had to chat amongst themselves.
“I’m going to write about what I am reading,” said Moira, the woman who had sat next to Louisa.
Louisa had nodded, bored. Why had she ended up sat next to Moira? Rachel and Rosie were now laughing with Tom, the funny guy sat on the row behind them. How come she, Louisa, had Moira, with Barry and Robin behind her? They never really did any more than smile at her. It wasn’t fair really; she’d have a lot more interesting things to say to Tom than Rachel or Rosie would – and she didn’t have such an obvious fake tan. From where she had sat, she could see a tide-line behind Rosie’s ear.
As she sat in her bedroom contemplating her text, Louisa shuffled the items on her desk. Her pen caddy, a photo of dear old Tibby in a frame, a clean pad of paper and a calculator. What on earth was there to write about?
She was twenty-six and worked in the bank in the neighbouring town of Tan-y-Bryn. She had worked there since leaving school and had been promoted twice and was now Chief Cashier with one girl beneath her. She lived at home with her parents in the Welsh hamlet of Anweledig and had been saving for her own house since she’d started her job. The plan had been that she would probably be buying it with a husband and therefore she hadn’t actually started looking for something to spend her deposit on yet. She played badminton (very occasionally) on a Tuesday night, had her computer class on the Thursday and usually accompanied her parents to the golf club on Saturday night for a meal, after her dad had played a round of golf. There really wasn’t a great deal more.
Cold Enough to Freeze Cows Page 1