Cold Enough to Freeze Cows

by Lorraine Jenkin

  Tomos’s chatter muffled Iestyn’s awkward shuffling and Menna was soon busy with TB, badgers and rabbit holes, as if the past half hour had never happened.

  But as she left the warmth of the kitchen, her bandaged arm clutching a leg of lamb wrapped in a council recycling bag, her eyes caught Iestyn’s stare, deep from the corner of the room and although she still couldn’t quite comprehend its origin, it renewed the pre-Tomos glow in her loins and she closed the door behind her with a step that would have had a spring in it had it not been encumbered by a heavy lump of raw meat…

  Esther sat on the torn seat of the dirty blue bus as it revved itself up to climb the hill. The gears crunched and the driver ground his foot to the floor, the concentration of his face in the mirror reflecting how well he knew the bus and how carefully he was listening to the engine before he went for broke. He timed it perfectly and the gearbox crashed and the bus shot forward, causing Esther to make a grab for the handrail on the back of the seat in front of her. She pulled her hand away in disgust as she felt the not-yet-hardened slime of chewing gum that some unpleasant so-and-so had stuck to the underside.

  For goodness’ sake she cursed to herself, this bus just gets worse! The smell of disturbed spearmint mingled with the exhaust fumes that had been pumped through the draughty windows: Daphne Rogers’ Buses had obviously not taken their letter to heart…

  She’d wondered about the tone of her note and it had actually been the first that she’d rewritten – her assumption being that Daphne Rogers would probably get so many letters of complaint that a gentle one in her usual style would be water off a duck’s back.

  She’d mentioned cleanliness – or the lack of it – torn seats, jammed windows and the state of the driver’s fingernails. She hated the fact that he would occasionally stop in a quiet lay-by and duck into the woods, coming out twenty seconds later whistling and wiping his hands on his uniform trousers. That is why she never got on the bus unless she had exactly the right money – everyone knew that coins were dirty, but there was no need to experience the dirtying process in action.

  As the bus glided to a halt outside Tŷ Bryn, a large house perched on the top of a bleak section of hill, Esther broke into a grin of satisfaction. Whilst two women climbed onto the bus, wheezing with the effort, Esther noted the net curtains hanging in all four windows of the house facing the road. The job had obviously been hastily done as the curtains dipped in the middle and rose on each corner, as if someone had just tacked them up as quickly as they could.

  But that was so much better than the previous situation – she was sick of seeing that man in his underpants, particularly when he’d had his hand down the front for warmth, which was often. The woman was as bad: on her weekly bus journeys into town, Esther had witnessed her plucking her bikini line, doing yoga in her nightie and cupping and smelling a fart.

  Her letter to Tŷ Bryn had been succinct, brief and on an “it might be helpful for you to know” basis. She had mentioned that she didn’t go on the bus herself, but had overheard a woman in a shop talking about it. She was careful not to narrow her identity down to one of the forty or so people who regularly used this particular bus route – only five of which at most were likely to be computer literate.

  The two old women dragged themselves to the rear of the bus and, as the driver got bored with waiting for them to settle and revved away, they lurched into the seat in front of Esther. She nodded to them and they grunted in reply; the three women recognised each other due to travelling regularly together, but did not know each others’ names.

  Esther yawned inwardly as they waffled their way through grocery prices, Doctor Mathis being marvellous and the more whiskery one’s Ken being such a miserable old goat recently that she didn’t know what to do with him. Leave that coat on the bus and wash your hair occasionally, Esther muttered to herself. She considered a letter, but decided that the case wasn’t worthy enough.

  Then a new track of conversation caught her attention. Geography teacher? Tan-y-Bryn High School?

  “Well, our Sian is really fed up – it’s her A level year and the damn woman has gone off on the sick! Probably stress or something.” This was said and received in a way that suggested that the two women didn’t believe in stress: it was an ailment invented by shysters, by those who simply weren’t up to the job.

  “Good God, the woman has been teaching for twenty-five years – why does she suddenly find it stressful?”

  Esther leant forward, desperate to hear what was being said, but finding it difficult what with the constant revving.

  Could that really be Mrs Hardy? Mrs Taught-Louisa-Geography Hardy? Esther’s heart fluttered and she could feel her face flush once more. She’d only meant to give the woman a bit of a friendly nudge; she’d never meant to make her sick.

  It had always been unfinished business as far as Esther had been concerned. Mrs Hardy had been Louisa’s sixth form geography teacher and under her, Louisa had turned from a grade A student to one that had scraped a D. Mrs Hardy had been lazy and inconsistent. She apparently never planned lessons, just waffled through a chapter in a textbook, getting her pupils to take it in turns to read a page. Louisa’s favourite subject under Mr Jeffers had turned into something she struggled with and no longer enjoyed. Esther had wanted to complain at the time, but Louisa, then Louisa and David, hadn’t allowed it.

  She had taken the opportunity of her new found computer composition skills to rectify things: a few home truths, but perhaps a couple too many digs. Esther bit her lip and leant forward again, the bus now cruising sedately along a flat section.

  “So, poor Sian has a mixture of supply and non-specialist teachers to take her through the most important part of her course! I ask you! She was really enjoying it before this. I’d like to shake that bloody woman – I’d show her what stress really is!”

  Whiskers agreed and rambled off about her Ken’s stress, with which they were both hypocritically sympathetic.

  Esther leant back into the dusty seat, washed over with the now familiar feeling of nausea coupled with exhilaration. Her hands gripped the arm until the crusted velour made her flesh creep. Was it a victory or a failure? Had it achieved its aim and been of benefit to the community, or had it been a spiteful, cowardly act that did no good to anyone but had made her feel slightly less impotent?

  What if Mrs Hardy had changed her ways say, five years ago? What if she were now a fantastic teacher? What if she, Esther, had just ruined another woman’s health? Getting the guy at Tŷ Bryn to scratch his bollocks behind opaque curtains was a benefit to mankind, but this?

  Esther got out at her stop, bid everyone on the bus goodbye and thanked the driver. He grunted at her in return, revolving his false teeth around his mouth. Miserable man, she thought. Someone should teach him not to be so rude…

  CHAPTER 15

  Yn bigog fel draenog – prickly like a hedgehog (a cross person)

  Menna walked back along the track to her bungalow. The wind was whipping the sleet sideways and she had to hold the side of her hood to stop it stinging her face. She had just ploughed through a roast lamb dinner, made with the leg that Tomos had cut for her and that Jean had made Bill check thoroughly to make sure it wouldn’t poison them all due to former neglect.

  “For goodness’ sake, Jean, just because their gates aren’t swinging perfectly, doesn’t mean that their animals are bad; you can’t get a better hill stockman than Tomos Bevan,” Bill mumbled as he checked over the pink meat.

  “Maybe, but I bet his slaughter knife is as dirty as his truck,” she’d snapped in return. However, they’d all sat down to a wonderful plate of roast potatoes, swede, and sweet, succulent lamb rubbed with rosemary. Mum was a fantastic cook, you had to give her that. But Menna, her mood darkening, also recognised that her mum had to ruin every pleasant experience with a dig or a jibe to make someone else feel that they had failed – probably with the good intention of spurring them on to doing something that would correct that failure,
but a dig no less. And tonight, it had been Menna’s turn.

  They had been sitting at the table and had just finished eating the tasty meal. Bill had leant back in his chair, thanked his wife and said that he couldn’t remember when they had a roast as good as that one. The obvious thing would have been to say, “No, you are right; that was delicious.”

  Instead, her mother had said, “It would have been when Paul used to come round for Sunday lunches. Oh, now they were good roasts! It was such a shame that you let him slip away, Menna, a really nice man and such a good farm. It could all have been so different if you’d managed to keep hold of him. Look at you now, single and stuck in that soulless little bungalow, when you could have been living in the Neuadd by now! What a waste…”

  Menna had looked at her mother in amazement. “Thank you, Mother,” she had said, “but I didn’t let him slip away, I didn’t want to be with him. And I am not going to base my life’s decisions on how you like to spend your Sunday lunchtimes…”

  “Calm down, I was only saying that I used to enjoy the roasts,” said Jean, getting up and clearing the dishes away. Then she did what she always did when she had offended someone, which was get on with the next chore, humming happily as if nothing had happened, leaving the other person fuming with rage.

  Bill had tutted and shaken his head and muttered, “Take no notice,” to Menna, but it had left Menna angry and upset and it had been a while since she had felt like that. A while since she’d felt like much at all concerning Paul Morgan…

  Paul the Neuadd. Big family within the farming community. Big farm, big reputation. Big kudos in dating Paul the Neuadd. Iestyn and Johnny Brechdan used to tease her that they’d heard that Paul the Neuadd had an enormous tractor, but they’d been in their late teens and so that kind of thing was thought to be hilariously funny.

  To Menna and her friends, Paul the Neuadd was a legend. He would turn up late at functions, dark and imposing, from his big farm, and people would gravitate to him, and he would know everyone in the room, be distantly related to half of them and would give them a few minutes each. He would then retreat, off in his big truck to – no one knew where…

  The boys all wanted to be like him, to be him. The girls all wanted to go out with him. Menna wanted to go out with him too, but she didn’t know why. Then, one day, after a day at the local trotting races, he had walked up to Menna who had been laughing with a few mates in the beer tent and he had asked her out. Surprised and very flattered she had said yes.

  “I’ll pick you up at 7.30, Thursday?” he’d asked.

  “OK,” she’d replied. No courtship, no chatting up, no nothing. And so it was that she had a date with Paul the Neuadd, quite an accomplishment for one from Bwlch y Garreg.

  Jean had been beside herself with excitement. “Paul the Neuadd! Menna, just think, you’ll be going for Sunday lunch at the Neuadd!”

  “Mum, I’m going for a drink on a Thursday, not lunch on a Sunday.”

  “But, you will do, Menna, you will do! Just think, Sunday lunch at the Neuadd!” Menna had tutted and walked away, muttering at her mother to calm down.

  However, in time, she did indeed go to Sunday lunch at the Neuadd, and eventually one Saturday night leading on to, ultimately, Sunday tea.

  Theirs was a strange courtship, built mainly on being with other people or going about on fanning business, but doing it together. They would duck in to see Harry Begwyn about some clippers or chat through open car windows with other neighbours until someone pulled up behind them in the lane.

  It was as if the community was glad that they were together and that was enough in itself. Paul was pleasant enough company, but was never a chatterer. Menna came to learn that the reason he would have ten-minute conversations with people was because that was all he had in him – for anyone, including her.

  Sunday lunches had seemed desperately important to Jean, and for some reason to Paul’s mother, Anwen, too. Paul liked roasts, so he went along with them and Menna knew no different, so she did too. That’s what couples did, wasn’t it? Go for Sunday roasts at each other’s parents’ houses?

  Their sex life was reasonable considering Menna’s lack of years and Paul’s alleged, but unconfirmed, experience, him being twelve years her senior, and it became a Thursday and Saturday night thing. On Thursday they went out for a curry and on Saturday they went out to the local pub or a Young Farmers’ dance or some other function on the farming calendar – and always on to somewhere else, even if it were just home to bed. (So, that’s where he used to go! she’d realised.)

  Menna had known that she should feel excited and flattered and proud, but she hadn’t really known why she didn’t. She did enjoy Paul’s company and she enjoyed the things that they did together, even if it were mending a tractor, as she learned a lot from him and it was a companionable pairing even if it was lacking in a few fireworks.

  Jean had had it all worked out: “You’ll probably run the Neuadd, as Paul’s parents would really want to build a bungalow and live in that at their age. Perhaps we can swap ground – use a bit of their low ground and maybe borrow their bull – he’s a good ’un, but expensive to hire, see Menna. Have a chat with Paul and see if he can let us borrow him will you?”

  Menna would tut and mutter “Mother,” every now and then, but she almost believed it too…

  Then one day, it had all changed. She’d realised that her period was late. Bang: pregnant. Menna felt that she should feel excitement – they’d been together for about three years now and this is what couples that had been together for three years did.

  She told him over their Thursday night chicken tikka masala, pilau rice and vegetable naan at the local curry house and she waited for his reaction; although a man of few words, she’d expected a bit of joy, a bit of emotion. He would have given other people in her position lots of congratulations on hearing their good news.

  “Oh. Oh dear. Pregnant, eh?”

  “I think I’m about two weeks late. I did a test yesterday.”

  “Oh. Pregnant. How’s this going to work then?”

  “Well,” said Menna, more than a little taken aback, “I have been thinking, although it’s still a bit of a shock. Perhaps we could, well, move in together somewhere? You know, as we are going to be a, well, a family?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.” Paul nodded. Then he blew out and took a swig of Tiger beer. “No, I hadn’t expected that.”

  “Hey! George mate! How’s it going? Yeah, good thanks!”

  And that had been that.

  Menna had sat in silence chewing on her naan bread. She’d nodded at George, who they’d often met on their Thursday curry nights, and that was all she’d needed to do in acknowledgement of him monopolising the rest of their night’s conversation. George had no concept that he might be interrupting, but then as far as Paul was concerned, he obviously wasn’t.

  In the truck on the way home, the silence weighed heavily. Instead of taking the broad track up to the Neuadd, Paul had driven on towards Bwlch y Garreg.

  “Oh,” said Menna in surprise, “are we staying at mine tonight?”

  “Well,” said Paul with his eyes fixed onto the road ahead, his hairy knuckles gripping the wheel, “we can’t, well, you know…with a baby in there, can we? So, I might as well drop you back at yours. Then I can make an early start in the morning. Got to be at market by eight at the latest.”

  “Paul – I’ve just found out that I’m pregnant, not HIV positive. People all over the world are having sex whilst pregnant. And, for God’s sake – your cock’s not that big you know!” Trying to make light of it didn’t work. “And anyway, Paul, we don’t have to, you know, have sex – we could just sleep together. Maybe even chat?”

  Paul muttered again about having to be up early and Menna, thinking that maybe he needed a little time to come to terms with impending fatherhood, allowed him to drive her home. The kiss goodnight had been hygienic to say the least…

  Jean had been equally surprised t
o see Menna home on a Thursday night, the first since six weeks into seeing Paul the Neuadd. “You haven’t argued have you?”

  “No, Mum.”

  “Well, you need to be careful there, Menna. The Morgans are a big family, you know. Paul’s a good catch. Neuadd’s a good farm. You treat him well, my girl, you hear?”

  “Mum, we haven’t argued all right? And anyway, even if we had, I’m not a prostitute.”

  Jean hadn’t been convinced – about the argument or the prostitution – as Menna looked as if she was about to burst into tears as she walked out of the door.

  “That bloody girl,” Menna had heard her mother say to her father, “being so fickle. Well, I hope she’s not gone and upset the Neuadd.”

  As the freezing rain slashed against her face, Menna’s torch flickered and then sputtered out. Bloody thing, was the charger not working, or what? Now she had to walk the rest of the way home in the pitch black. With no moon and no street lights for two miles, Menna couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, literally. She couldn’t walk quickly and keep warm, she had to shuffle otherwise she would fall headlong. She stumbled along, splashing through puddles and tripping over rocks jutting out of the track. It did nothing to improve her mood. By the time she reached her bungalow, she was cold, wet, fed up and miserable. Not even the promise of Mrs Miniver could revive her mood, so Menna dumped her clothes in the hall, dried her hair with a towel and stomped off to bed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Cyw gwaelod y nyth – the chick at the bottom of the nest (the last chick to leave the nest)

  Louisa stood at the doorway of number 40 Market Street and smiled again at the estate agent who was rocking back and forth on his shiny shoes. “I really am sorry,” she said again. “He’s never usually late and I did say 12.20 sharp.”