Cold Enough to Freeze Cows

by Lorraine Jenkin

  Menna pointed to a door with two cauliflowers painted on the front of it, as opposed to the one with a bunch of wilting carrots, and Sima left her alone with her thoughts. Menna looked around the café and picked at the last of the coleslaw on her plate. She realised now what Sima had done, but she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to open the floodgates right now.

  It wasn’t difficult for Menna to guess when her defining moment was; in fact it had a large label on it in her memory bank saying just that…

  It had been a Tuesday afternoon and Menna had been clearing out the stock shed. She had dredged most of the muck up with the tractor, but was now clearing round the edges with a spade and a wheelbarrow. With her pregnancy at around nine weeks, she was feeling sick and fed up. She retched as she uncovered a knot of rancid faeces. She shuddered as she disturbed a nest of rats and one ran over her foot. She felt a tiredness that was alien to one usually so fit and strong and Paul’s unwillingness to discuss her pregnancy didn’t help, he didn’t even permit her to tell anyone about it. She felt that she couldn’t enjoy the experience properly, let alone look forward to the baby due at the end of it. Even thinking about making plans was impossible, as the person that so much relied upon was carrying on as if it didn’t exist.

  Oh, this is ridiculous, she seethed to herself. Anyone else in the same position would be being mollycoddled – or at least looked out for. Weren’t office workers entitled to a lie down in the afternoon if they were tired? Surely someone should be making her a cup of tea? Or rubbing her back – or was that later?

  She knew that her hormones would be raging and that it would be acceptable to feel highly emotional, but her feelings weren’t being brought on by oestrogen or progesterone changes, what she was suffering from was plain useless boyfriend-ness.

  Her spade caught on a lump on the floor and the jar swung her arm around and she scraped her knuckles on the concrete wall. Although the pain was an irritant rather than an agony, it was the final straw for Menna. After a moment’s hesitation, she decided against bursting into tears and lying down on a pile of straw to cry herself to sleep and instead she threw her spade at a scuttling rat and stormed off to her truck. Her mother would go mad if she knew that Menna were leaving a job unfinished, but no one should be treated like this, Paul the Neuadd, or no effin’ Neuadd.

  She reached the farm in fifteen minutes, rather than the usual twenty-five and this included a slow down to allow her to undo the button on her jeans which were pressing heavily against her blossoming belly.

  She found him in the barn, doing much the same job that she had been doing, but on a grander scale.

  “Paul!” she called from the huge doorway. “We have to talk.”

  Paul looked as if he’d been expecting this. The tractor was duly silenced and he climbed slowly down. His pursed mouth suggested that he would give her five minutes tops.

  She was amazed that he stood and listened to her ranting – no, took it – for so long. She told him how they needed to live together, and sooner rather than later, so that they could be settled when the baby came, how they were going to be a family whether it was planned or not, how she had to see a midwife. How they just needed to get moving on whatever plans they were going to make.

  He listened patiently to her tirade, standing with his arms and legs crossed, staring at her wellies, his face hardening into a black stare. He waited until she was spent, holding on to his reply a couple of times while she flushed out another sentence. Eventually she was quiet and she nodded at his raised eyebrows: OK, you can speak now; your turn.

  “Menna. This – er – situation, is difficult for me. You see, I don’t intend to be a farmer. Well, I know that I am one at the moment, but I really don’t want to be. I’m just helping my parents out for a while. What I really want to be is an estate agent. I’ve been planning to go to college, to do estate management, and I’ve just been accepted. I applied to Newcastle University as a mature student and I start in September.” He tailed off and shrugged, as if he’d finished now and that was all she really needed to know. It was as if he’d told her that he preferred red to blue and that he was sorry that she’d bought him a blue shirt for Christmas but it just wouldn’t do…

  Menna realised with a jolt that she knew the Paul the Neuadd that joshed with his friends, worked with his animals and she was familiar with his public persona, but that she’d had no inkling as to what went on inside Paul Morgan’s head when he wasn’t out and about or what he really wanted from life.

  Menna exploded, “But, but Paul!” she said, thinking that she couldn’t have heard him correctly. “Everything you do, everything you talk about is farming, farming, farming!”

  “Now maybe, but what it means in practical terms, is that I won’t be living at the farm from, well, September. I’ll be in college digs – halls I suppose.”

  Menna turned around, her world falling down around her. She’d never wanted the big farm. Her mother may have wanted her rechristened Menna the Neuadd, but that had never been her master plan. Nothing at all had been her master plan. But being a single parent wouldn’t have been her wish either if she had had one. She’d never really thought about having children – she’d assumed that she would one day when she met the man she wanted to be with, but – and this came as a bit of a surprise, too – it wasn’t necessarily Paul Morgan.

  She’d been going out with Paul the Neuadd without a great deal of thought as to why or for how long. She knew that she was still young and a bit inexperienced in the ways of love and it just seemed to be an acceptable way of passing the time. Because everyone else had been so happy at their pairing, she’d not given the quality of the relationship as much consideration as she should have, absorbing everyone else’s opinion (i.e. that she got quite a catch, and to everyone’s surprise and congratulations) rather than analysing her own feelings on the matter.

  She looked around at the farm: all the land she could see belonged to the Neuadd. The three tractors, the three 4x4s, the two trailers, the five barns – all aspirational in the eyes of her parents, but they meant nothing to Menna – and now it was apparent that they meant nothing to Paul either.

  “Anyway, Menna, I’ve got to crack on, I’ve got to get this cleared as Dad’s bringing some sheep in for their jabs.” He climbed back on the tractor and pulled his hat back on.

  “But, but the baby – it’ll be born sometime around then – October probably?”

  At which point, Paul brought the conversation to a close, the same way that he did with his friends when they’d had their ten minutes at the roadside. The tractor engine kicked into life and Paul started revving, cocking his head as if he were concentrating on the engine noise. In the Landy on a lane, Paul would then draw away so that his interlocutor could no longer be heard, even if they did still have something to say, and they would be left at the side of the road seeing a hand raise in their rear-view mirror to bid them farewell.

  However, this time, it wasn’t an acquaintance who wanted to chat for too long about the weather, it was his pregnant girlfriend. The wave was an It’s OK, we’ll sort the nitty gritty out later, don’t panic, it’s all in hand kind of a wave.

  “See you Thursday? Pick you up at 7.30?” he shouted, and then slammed the door of the cab and crashed the gears into reverse. He looked over his shoulder to check how far he had to go back and nodded to Menna as if she’d popped by to borrow some sheep nuts. He slammed the tractor back and then took a run up at a great pile of shite.

  Menna had walked away feeling numb and confused. Had she really just heard all that? Had she really just heard that Paul the Neuadd wanted to be an estate agent? Was she the only one who had never guessed? It was no problem that he didn’t want to farm, but if he’d just said so at some point, any point, well, she might have thought a little harder about what she really wanted to do. She’d drifted into farming because it had always been her way of life. She’d never actually made the decision, she’d just taken on more at the farm as her scho
oling had slowed into revision sessions and then stopped after her first set of exams.

  She’d never questioned it until now and she was kicking herself that she’d let herself slip into this situation. Twenty-two years old, farming, in a relationship with Paul the Neuadd, pregnant and now her baby’s father wanted to change everything and go and be an estate agent. How had she allowed this to happen? What a mess.

  In addition, what had that conversation actually meant in relationship to her and their future? Had he meant, “What a shame, I’ll have to give up my dream of estate agency and we’ll stay here and make a life together,” or “Come with me! It’ll be fine!” or was it more of a “Sorry, darling, but you’re on your own.” Her head was spinning and she didn’t know which direction the spin was going in…

  She had climbed into her truck and started the engine, wincing at the cramps in her stomach – stretching pains they’d be, she’d read about them, her body stretching in readiness to accommodate the baby’s growth.

  Sima came back from the Ladies’ looking fresh and rejuvenated with newly-brushed hair and some re-applied lipstick. Menna felt emotional, as well as a scruffy mess. She was suddenly aware of the dried animal feed ingrained on the thighs of her jeans and the dirt in the stitching of her trainers. She just wanted to go.

  “I’ve asked for the bill, Sima. I’m sorry, but I really need to get going now. Thanks for all that you’ve done, you’ve given me some real food for thought.”

  “You’re very welcome, Menna, I’ve really enjoyed our lunch! We’ll have to do it again sometime. Actually I did promise I wouldn’t be late back either, Tomos says that the weather is coming in; there’ll be feet of snow by the morning he tells me!”

  The waitress came, and Menna took the bill and rummaged in her coat pocket for her purse. “Oh, hang on,” said Sima, producing hers from her bag, “this one is on Joe – keep the change – it is apparently for something you did to help his dad out that Joe is very appreciative of, so – his treat!”

  “There’s no need—” started Menna.

  “Maybe, but Joe doesn’t know that!” smiled Sima, “and, if it makes him feel better to know that he’s thanked you for doing something that perhaps he should have done when he was down – rather than spending his time sleeping off Isla’s scones –then everyone’s a winner. Come on, I’ll walk back with you – Joe’s truck is almost next to yours.”

  She popped the magazine pages into a plastic sleeve and then put them in a plain brown envelope, as if she understood Menna’s need to keep the process quiet for the time being, and they walked out, Sima now chatting about Joe’s plans to try and hang a few gates with Iestyn later: “Although I am pretty much expecting to find him lying sleeping on the sofa in front of Star Wars, and Iestyn out in the rain working…”

  As they stood beside Joe’s Cherokee, Sima gave Menna a hug. “Don’t be surprised if you feel a little emotional after we’ve spoken, OK? Sometimes these things are quite difficult to think about and acknowledge, but once you have, you’ll feel much more positive about, well, everything, if my other clients are anything to go by! So, give yourself an easy time for the next few days and then get stuck into it all, OK? If you really dive in, get a few things out of your system and make some changes, it tends to all be a lot easier than dragging it out for longer; it dilutes the effort.”

  Menna nodded, feeling close to tears. Then she quickly hugged Sima back, and felt bad as she’d left feed dust on Sima’s jacket, then she dived into her truck. She just wanted to be on her own, get back before the snow hit and get a little clarity about what she really thought about all the Paul the Neuadd stuff.

  CHAPTER 22

  Cadno o ddiwrnod – a fox-like day (a day when weather is unsettled and changes suddenly)

  Nain opened the oven door of the Rayburn and propped it open with her slippered foot. She pulled out a pie with her patchwork oven gloves and set it on the side to cool. She returned and retrieved two trays of fairy cakes and a small tin pot with some kidneys in.

  She dabbed her fingers on the cakes to check that they were cooked and then moved a chair to prop open the oven door to let the rest of the hot air out to help heat the giant kitchen.

  She turned as the door banged open and a figure huddled up in two coats and waterproof trousers swept in amongst a swirl of snow and a blast of freezing cold air. Nain scuttled over and took the door from the figure and slammed it against the blizzard. “All right, bach?” she said, taking one of his coats from him and pushing his slippers towards him from the rack in the corner.

  “Phew, it’s wild out there; freezing cold and blowing a gale. The snow’s all piled up against the barn door; I could hardly get it open! We’ll be digging our way out tomorrow!”

  “Well,” replied Nain, whipping a mop across the tiled floor to soak up the melting snow from her grandson’s wellies, “you sit down by the fire and I’ll fetch you a brew to warm you through.”

  “Thanks, Nain,” said Johnny, rubbing his hands together to try and get some feeling back into them.

  Suddenly, everything went black and the television that had been chattering away quietly in the corner flicked off. Both Johnny and Nain groaned. “Oh, not again,” said Nain. “Hang on, let me get the matches.” Soon there was a little glow on the mantelpiece and then another two on the table. “Hope it comes on again soon, I’ve still got half that pig in the freezer. Oh well, I’m off to bed. Your taid’s up there already, best not keep him waiting! Blow them out when you’re done, OK?”

  “OK, sleep well.”

  “And you, bach. Cakes are on the side. Nos da, goodnight,” and the small figure carrying a candle and a hot water bottle went out of the door.

  Johnny sat back in the chair and stretched his feet out and rested his socks on the front of the Rayburn. There was something about a power cut – they’d had loads up at the farm when he was a lad and his grandparents had always made them fun. They had played cards at the kitchen table, by candlelight, and toasted muffins over the fire (even though they usually used the Rayburn to cook and that chugged away power cuts or not).

  Johnny hummed to himself as he wolfed a couple of fairy cakes and washed them down with a slug of tea from the massive mug that his nain always kept washed and ready for his next brew. He checked his mobile, but no reception. What could he do with the rest of his evening? He couldn’t go to the pub – even in a four-by-four it would be madness. He had walked to the pub in a snowstorm once before and had been amazed to find all his neighbours had done the same and they’d all sat in the candlelight with their boots drying around the roaring fire and it had been one of the best nights ever. But tonight, he couldn’t be bothered to take the risk: he was too knackered to chance walking five miles in a blizzard, just to find that Ed had shut up shop and gone to bed with a torch and a magazine for an early night.

  He drummed his fingers.

  He ate another cake.

  He drained the teapot into his mug and grimaced at its stewed lukewarmness.

  He managed another cake. And half of a fifth.

  He was about to get up and head for bed when he heard the dogs barking over the howling wind. He turned his head to hear better and willed them to stop. He listened for a while; if it were a fox or a badger, the noise would usually die down pretty quickly. Yet this time it didn’t, in fact it was getting louder and more frantic. Who the hell could be round the yard at this time? A cold January night – even Iestyn Bevan wasn’t that desperate for company, surely?

  A second bout of yelping drove him from his chair – much more and Taid would be out there wandering around the sheds in his pyjamas checking to see what was upsetting them.

  He cursed and wrestled himself back into his waterproofs, which were now damp and cold. After hearing one more tirade, he grabbed the torch off the hook and plunged back into the darkness.

  The wind and the cold hit him and the horizontal snow slapped him in the face. “Shutupyoustupidfuckindogs!” he yelled, but the noi
se continued. Head down he crossed the yard – perhaps he hadn’t managed to fasten that barn door properly because of the snow and it was banging: that would make the dogs bark.

  He trudged to the barn, but found it closed and just as it should be. “F’fuck’s sake,” he mumbled – he could wander round all night like this and only to find that a mouse had been blowing raspberries through the mesh of the kennels.

  The dogs quietened slightly at his presence and after a token prod round the smaller barn, he waded back through the snow to the house, his previous footsteps already partially muffled by the downfall.

  Feeling fed up, he leant against the door and fumbled for the doorknob with his massive gloves. Sod it, he thought, they’d just have to bark if they thought they heard something. He was about to push the door open when the dogs set off again, just after Johnny thought he’d heard a feeble little voice calling, “Is someone there? Help me! Please, help me!”

  Esther wouldn’t have noticed, dozing as she was, but when the power went off in Anweledig, both David and Louisa looked to her indignantly for action. Where were the candles? Surely they should be lit pretty quickly? How were they going to manage for nine p.m. cuppas? Who was going to sort out recording Silent Witness for them; they had to find out the killer’s identity?

  “I think,” said Esther, “that there are some candles under the sink? In that plastic tub?”

  “Oh.”

  “Right.”

  There was silence in the darkness.

  “OK: I’ll get them then, shall I?”