Cold Enough to Freeze Cows

by Lorraine Jenkin

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Course you can,” she said, reaching into the shower cubicle and setting the water running. “Just test the water! Remember, she has no idea who you are really, so take a risk! Did Johnny Brechdan get where he gets without sticking his neck out occasionally?”

  “It’s not his neck that he sticks out, unfortunately. Anyway, did I tell you that he shagged a cousin last week? Yeah, they got chatting afterwards and started tracing back and… Uh Oh! Little baby two-heads could be on its way…”

  Sima laughed, “OK, I’ve got to go now; I need to have a shower. I’ll tell Joe that you called, but we’ll be seeing you soon anyway. Good luck though and I’ll look forward to hearing how it went!”

  Iestyn heard the phone click off and he groaned. Sima – been for a run – needing a shower. Having a shower. Oh, wonderful! Joe was such a lucky bastard.

  He put the phone back down into its cradle, sat amongst a pile of papers in the “office”, and got to his feet. Good God, he thought as he caught a glimpse of himself in the dusty oval mirror, hanging from a rusting chain on the wall. He’d managed to find another acrylic jumper from somewhere and had teamed it with an out-of-shape red polo shirt with one half of its collar pointing out the top. Joe had been right; he hadn’t been able to bring himself to wear his “new” clothes to work in for long. There was really no point in ruining them for the sake of admiring glances from a miserable old sheepdog.

  He ruffled his hair and it stood up in tufts where it was put. Sima had said that she needed a shower, but he really needed a shower. She’d probably be quietly glowing after her beautiful body had gracefully loped through a park: if Joe had any idea of how lucky he was, he should be licking her clean. The difference was that he, Iestyn, hadn’t had a proper wash for days. He’d been sitting in a fusty old Land Rover, stood, knelt and sat in muck and generally been a bit of a bloke. Thank God they didn’t have a video phone, he thought as he pressed the computer’s On button – perhaps he really needed to add a kiss to his messages to the virtual female. Even if it were Brechdan’s earlier benefactor: he desperately required a reason to get himself back on track a little. At least he still changed his underpants each day – even his standards had a baseline – well, most days they did…

  As the computer ground away, he imagined Sima in her power shower; everything white or chrome and the whole thing gleaming. When Iestyn had gone to stay with Joe, he’d had a shower at Sima’s flat and loved the fact that at arm’s reach there were shelves full of shower products so fruity and luxurious that Iestyn had felt that he could eat them. Joe had said that he smelt like a smoothie when he’d finally come out of the bathroom, but Sima swore by her natural ingredients-only products, all with a hint of something in them that justified costing an absolute fortune.

  The last one to use the Pencwmhir shower had been Mabel the sheepdog, as Mother had insisted that she should be washed before being taken to the vet. Therefore the tray was strewn with mud, grit and dog hair. Then Father had hung his coat up in it and thrown in his wellies after the river had washed over their tops when he wasn’t concentrating.

  That was the trouble in the Bevan household; nothing was straightforward. If Iestyn wanted a shower, he first had to hang the coat somewhere else, find a place to stand the wellies upside down to dry, rinse away the mud and dog hair, unblock the plughole of the resulting yuck, only to get in and find that there was no shampoo left, the soap covered in hair – animal and human, public and private – and there would be no dry towel to hand, either.

  Alternatively, there was the bathroom upstairs. The water would be boiling in the tank from the Rayburn, but it would trickle out of the ancient tap at a dribble meaning that the bath would be lukewarm at best by the time it was filled. One would then lie in it, with a wind whistling through the rattling window so fiercely that it would make waves on the surface of the water and threaten his manhood should it be so foolish as to surface.

  Sima’s towels were huge, luxurious and sat, folded on a heated chrome shelf in reach of the shower. Bevan towels were small, ragged and God knows where…

  Iestyn knew that both of his parents worked their fingers to the bone. He knew that they really couldn’t fit anything else into their days, or stretch their tight budget, but sometimes he felt it would be wonderful to come in one cold night and have a hot bath next to a heated chrome towel rail and afterwards stand on a rag rug that didn’t make your feet dirty again. Sima would somehow prioritise it and make it all happen. It was no wonder that he continued to wear decades-old acrylic.

  It was the same with women, really. He wasn’t a snob, but he knew that to bring a woman back to Pencwmhir would dissolve any sense of romance clocked up at a party or in a pub. First the lucky lady would have to open five badly-maintained gates in the pitch black, on a muddy lane. Then she’d have to share a bed with not just Iestyn but four scratchy blankets and a draught, and in the morning she’d have to listen to Mr Bevan clearing his throat in the bathroom eight unsoundproofed inches from Iestyn’s headboard. Any shower to wash away the hopefully sticky activity of the night before would have to be taken in the company of a pair of size eleven wellie boots and a bar of household soap. It was never going to be the precursor for a second date.

  Iestyn felt it was a chicken and egg thing. If he had a girlfriend, then he’d try a bit harder and make more of an effort to scrub up a bit more often and to get his own place. Yet, without a girlfriend, there seemed little point. He got on well with his parents, he didn’t have to commute to work and there was no need to do any different than wear what was warm and available.

  In fact, the only woman who ever really came to the house to see him was Menna – and that was only occasionally and purely on business. After his recent debacles, he was still keen to get things moving. He cringed when he thought of the “lunch” at her house and groaned when he thought of her dragging him away from the hen night like a stunned pig. Perhaps it was fate’s way of telling him that they, too, were actually distant cousins and that they shouldn’t procreate.

  Maybe he’d just do as Sima seemed to be advising and take a punt on Lulu? Maybe it would be better to have a fresh start; someone who didn’t have it in the back of their mind that Iestyn Bevan forgot to wear pants on his second day of school.

  So, as Iestyn clicked onto Lulu’s blog, he did so with trepidation and a little spark of excitement at a potential new beginning.

  And so, for a range of convoluted reasons, Iestyn wrote, “Don’t worry about it! All you need is a cupboard for your tomato sauce, a saucepan for your beans, and a toaster and you will be fine ☺,” in response to Lulu’s lengthy ramble about not realising that there were so many things that one needed when one was establishing one’s first home.

  CHAPTER 14

  Cic i’r post i’r fuwch gael clywed – kicking the post for the cow to feel it (broad hint)

  Menna was on the top of the hill. The rain flailed horizontally into the side of her truck. Whereas Iestyn’s vehicle would have been flooded out by now, hers was perfectly sealed and the heaters were keeping her warm. She took a sip from the flask that she’d grabbed from the counter as she’d left her parents’ house that morning. There were always two ready-prepared each day, alongside two little parcels of food.

  Menna unwrapped today’s second parcel and found a slab of fruitcake – great fruitcake and hot sweet tea! Perfect after wading around in the mud for half an hour, in and out of the truck, opening gates and unloading bags of feed for the stock. Her coat lay steaming on the seat next to her as she dabbed up the stray currants with a wet finger. She’d been thinking about what Sima might have planned for her, but what had seemed both sensible and possible when talking to a woman wearing a white trouser suit in a warm office, suddenly seemed a ridiculous waste of effort.

  She wiped her nose on her cuff, rather than rummage through wet pockets for a damp hanky, and in doing so dislodged a pool of water that must have settled on the collar of
her jumper. She shuddered as it ran down her neck.

  Cursing, she leant forward and wiped the steam off the inside of the window with her sleeve and muttered at the snot now smeared across the glass in its place. She peered out into the gloom and then looked harder at something wriggling in the distance. Damn, it looked like a sheep caught in the fence. She groaned as the rain turned to hail. She stuffed the last of the cake into her mouth and sluiced it down with the remaining tea. She wiped her hands on her waterproof trousers, wrestled herself into her coat and battled back out into the weather.

  Menna jogged down the steep slope towards the fence, skidding the last few yards and landing in a pile near the sheep. The sheep’s eyes rolled in fright and pain as it battled to free itself from the wire and escape this new threat of a muddy human being. Menna could see from the markings on its back that it was one of the Bevans’ – why were Iestyn’s sheep always the thickest ones doing the stupidest things? This one seemed to have its head and a leg stuck in the mesh; a section had been patched and so had smaller holes than the rest.

  Menna wrestled with the beast, trying to set it free. She swore at it as it scraped a sharp foot down her hand and arm. She soon got the ewe out, but could see that it was hurt, as it lay on the ground struggling to stand and then falling over again.

  A quick check made Menna think that it had probably damaged a leg – possibly a dislocation. She saw her truck twenty-five yards away, at the top of a slippery slope and cursed again. Then she dragged the sheep onto her thighs and then as gently as she could, she bumped herself and it up the hill. At least the sheep wasn’t struggling anymore – perhaps even Iestyn’s sheep had the sense to know that it would hurt more if it struggled.

  Somehow, she got it to her truck and, then, with a disc-slipping effort, hauled it and the five gallons of water in its laden fleece into the back and shut the door.

  She stood for a couple of seconds to catch her breath and then noticed that blood was running off her hand, diluted by the pouring rain. Suddenly she felt the pain and dabbed at it with her other hand – it didn’t seem too bad, but would need some kind of dressing. Better get rid of Iestyn’s stupid sheep first and then get it sorted.

  Menna started the truck, turned the heaters up full and pulled away, testing the terrain slowly as she made sure that she wasn’t going to slide sideways down the slaked grass. She got back onto the track and then bounced back over the tops to Iestyn’s side of the hill – damn, their gates were always knackered. Dropped hinges and lots of sodden knotted ropes: the gates leading down to Glascwm were hung perfectly and the catches and hinges were greased every year. Her mum’s calendars of jobs were irritating at times, but she had to admit that they had a purpose.

  By the time Menna had lurched down the steep track, she had been spotted and Tomos shouldered the final gate open for her. She showed him the sheep in the back of her truck and he was just shouldering it off to the barn for a proper look, when Iestyn appeared.

  “Sort her hand out will you, boy? Nasty cut,” grunted Tomos as he slipped and slid off across the yard.

  “Hi-ya, Menna, you OK?” called Iestyn, a little sheepishly, still shamefaced about the night of the rabbit ears.

  “Yeah, OK, just cut my hand and arm here a bit. Found your sheep stuck in a fence – funny how they all keep trying to top themselves rather than live under your care…”

  “Ah, they love me really – know I’m just trying to toughen them up; it’s for their own good. Nothing wrong with being stuck in a fence for a few days when— Hey, that’s nasty – come on in, let’s have a look at it.”

  Iestyn led her quickly to the house and took her coat. They kicked their wellies off in the porch in a way that would never have been allowed at Glascwm and padded into the warm kitchen, each with socks flapping at the front of their feet. Menna’s thick and warm; Iestyn’s unmatched and full of holes.

  Iestyn grimaced. “Come on, that’s a nasty gash you have there. Here, let’s wash it.” Iestyn ran the hot tap and carefully rinsed the grit and mud from the wound. “There, once the shite is off it, we can have a good look.”

  Menna smiled as he turned her hand this way and that, as if he were a brain surgeon, rather than a sausage-fingered farmer whose only usual medical aids were a dose of Terramycin and a slap on the rump.

  He seemed to be quite enjoying holding her strong but slender forearm, as if he hadn’t noticed before that it was peppered in freckles. Menna found herself wishing that it was a bigger wound so that this could go on for longer. She didn’t have much physical affection in her life, what with a mother who was a cold island of agricultural efficiency and a father who was always working. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had spent time with her like this, and it was lovely. Like a massage with fragrant oils, like stepping from a soft towel and slipping into a hot bath… Iestyn turned suddenly and it was as if he’d caught her gazing with a soppy smile at his dark hair, and the spell was broken.

  “Look, Menna,” he started, “about the other night…”

  “Oh, Iestyn, don’t worry about it! What are mates for if not to carry their pissed friends home!”

  “Well, it’s more about what was going on in the bar. I, well, Johnny made me go out and, we just bumped into those women, and—”

  “Iestyn! I said don’t worry about it! Everyone is entitled to have a bit of fun! You don’t have to sit in the Bull and talk about crankshafts, you know. I know that I certainly don’t!”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, it’s nice to go out somewhere different sometimes, yeah? You know, meet a few new people, have a laugh? It’s not all Bwlch y Garreg, Bwlch y Garreg?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I s’pose. But…”

  “That’s much better, thanks,” Menna found herself saying, looking at her arm. “You’d make a lovely nurse!”

  Iestyn looked like he was going to say something else, but instead turned off the tap and patted her arm dry with a dirty towel.

  “Let me get a bandage – Mother has a stash somewhere. Yep, in this old biscuit tin up here.” Iestyn reached up high to the top of the cupboard to fetch the dusty old Quality Street tin and Menna managed a quick peep at the strong waist that was revealed in the gap between his trouser waistband and his shirt. She felt herself tingle inside and she had an urge to reach out and touch it, to fold her arms around it and nestle her face into his back.

  But she didn’t. Menna didn’t do things like that.

  Instead, she laughed as he blew the dust off the lid and pulled it open. Inside were a selection of ripped-up strips of bed sheet, each folded neatly and popped into a plastic bag.

  “Ah,” said Iestyn, “this is about the limit of our first aid kit. All apparently sterile – boiled to buggery and sealed for your convenience back in 1975. I’m hoping that they’re not Joe’s old sheets, but I have a horrible feeling that they might just be…”

  “Never mind,” said Menna, “what doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.”

  “Maybe, but let’s just hope that this isn’t the start of septicaemia, otherwise you might regret saying that!”

  The gentleness flowed back as Menna submitted to being wrapped up very slowly in three different strips of bed sheet, one being a little more discoloured than the others and Iestyn surmised that that was probably the bit in the middle of the bed and the others from nearer the hems.

  By the time he’d wrapped and unwrapped and then secured the bandage with a series of massive knots, Menna felt quite light-headed. She’d never seen this side of Iestyn before – a gentle, tender side that seemed to be enjoying looking after her. Surely he wouldn’t bandage Johnny Brechdan up in this manner? So, it must be because she was female and thus he had recognised she was female and therefore…

  “Come on, sit down now, I’ll make you a nice cuppa – if you’ve lost a lot of blood in the quest to save one of our delightful pedigree sheep, the least I can do is make you a drink.”

  He pottered a bit more and then passed
her a large mug and one of Isla’s scones and just as Menna was about to say, “Christ, she doesn’t still make those bloody things does she?” there was the sound of a gunshot from outside. They both winced.

  “Oh well,” said Iestyn, as he took back her scone and drink, “I’ll have that back then if you didn’t manage to save the damn thing after all. See – if you’d been a bit more careful, you’d have earned this!”

  Menna smiled up at him as she received her goodies back and Iestyn sat down in the seat opposite her. Then he got up and fiddled with the fire. Then he sat down and looked at her again. Menna felt the silence was companionable, but Iestyn broke it first each time, fiddling with logs, topping up her tea, and then topping up his.

  He wriggled, making some small talk about borrowing her trailer and then shut up again.

  Iestyn looked different somehow. It wasn’t just the trendier clothes that made him suddenly seem taller and with a perfect V physique – he’d always looked good to Menna, even if his acrylic had sparked a little too much with static in the past. It was something about his face: it just looked different. More alive somehow. His eyes were nearly black as they looked into hers, as if he was mulling something over. Something important.

  The door burst open and Iestyn jumped to his feet. It was Tomos wrestling with his oilskin. “All right, boy? Bloody thing had had it. Sorry Menna, love, thank you for trying, but, well, bloody thing had a broken thigh – must have fallen or got caught in a bloody rabbit hole, then got caught in the fence afterwards. Would have cost a bloody fortune with the vet, so, well, I shot it.

  “Isla’s just wrapping you up the other leg now – take it home with you as thanks for your efforts. Pointless burying the bloody thing – not being ill or anything like that. The Ministry will just have to call it ‘lost’. A run off to the coast, perhaps! Anyway, sorted your arm has he? Good boy. Nasty cut that – have you had your tetanus jab?”