Cold Enough to Freeze Cows

by Lorraine Jenkin

  Even under the dim lighting, Sima could see that Paul had gone white. His mouth dropped open as he gazed up at Menna as if trying to comprehend what she was saying and whether she was really saying it to him, or whether it was a bad dream. Menna’s hands were balled at her side, one with her bag and the crumpled envelope in it and the other a balled fist ready for action. Her face looked as if it were about to explode with rage. She seemed absolutely unaware of her surroundings, of the people who were now craning to hear, people who weren’t daring to breathe in case they missed something important.

  “Well, Paul, just to let you know, I didn’t have an abortion…” Paul’s face fell into an oh my God I’m a dad already look of horror. “I lost the baby, that night actually. So you can keep your three grand as I didn’t need to spend it.” And Menna took the wad out of the envelope and threw it in the air and it floated around Paul like confetti.

  Sima looked at Joe; he was also getting to his feet. Damn that bloke behind them who’d pushed his chair back so that he could see better and had blocked them in. Sima could see Jean scrambling from her seat in the opposite corner and hear her calling, “Menna, Menna!” with a look of horror on her face. Menna’s father, Bill, was sitting with his mouth open.

  Paul looked as if he’d been slapped, but he hadn’t: shamed, embarrassed, destroyed maybe, but not slapped – yet. Crack! Now he had been… Right across the cheek and finally some colour was brought back to his face.

  Menna started to turn on her heel, then stopped and turned back, now with a sneer on her face. “And, yours sincerely?” she spat in disgust. “You cock.” And she turned once more and walked smartly away.

  The room echoed in the silence, apart from the whimpering of Paul’s wife who was being comforted by her neighbour. Paul looked like a beaten man. He sat, stunned, with a handprint on his face and a fifty-pound note sitting on his shoulder, staring into space. His helpful companions quietly picked up the rest of the money and thrust it into his hands.

  Finally he looked over to his wife, obviously desperately hoping that she hadn’t seen any of that. But, of course, she had. She jumped to her feet, her whimpering being replaced by rage. She pushed her chair back and there was a crash as it landed on the floor. She grabbed her purse and her shawl and struggled through the tables towards the doors at the opposite end of the hall. Just as she reached them she turned, the whole room watching her with baited breath: this was just getting better and better! “Well,” she shouted at him, her hands planted on her hips and her face screwed up with anger, “now’s probably a good a time as any to tell you! This,” and she pointed to her belly, “is not yours.” She crashed open the bar on the fire exit and stormed out into the night.

  Paul finally seemed to gather his wits and jumped up, “Hazel!” he called to the banging door. “Wait! I can explain…” He ran round the outside of the room and people sucked their stomachs in and leant forward to give him room. He followed his wife through the door with another bang and the last that people heard from him was his breaking voice calling, “Hazel! Hazel, come back!”

  Iestyn drove along the lanes in silence. He couldn’t handle any music; he needed to get his thoughts sorted. The lanes were empty save for his massive truck and he drove slowly, out of choice as much as for the road conditions, which were not good.

  He bit his bottom lip. He’d made a right mess of that, hadn’t he? He’d only left ten minutes ago and he could hardly remember what Lulu looked like or anything she’d said. She’d just become a doughy ball in his mind, a smiling ball of dough with blonde hair, yet he knew that there was probably more to her than that.

  Poor Lulu, he hadn’t really been concentrating all night. His mind had been elsewhere – mainly at the Lamp, in a chair next to Menna Edwards. He’d been wondering since the meal began whether he could skip the main course – but of course he couldn’t – then he thought perhaps the pud. But Lulu had been talking about chocolate pudding since she’d sat down. He’d managed to decline the option of coffee and luckily Lulu had too and he’d asked for the bill instead.

  He thought that she might have muttered something about going on for a drink afterwards, but he was glad of a ready-made excuse about having to get back. “I’m afraid I’m giving a lift to my parents and my dad doesn’t like being out too late.” Lulu had nodded, understandingly – she’d gone on about her parents enough for him to feel that he could drop them into the equation without being ridiculed. However, he knew full well that his father would be busy doing a cross between a moonwalk and the mashed potato as he spoke and by no means ready for his bed.

  Iestyn had insisted on paying; it was the least he could do seeing as he’d enticed her out on such a miserable night and under such false pretences. He noticed that Lulu didn’t argue, instead just mumbled that she’d provide the tip. He’d had a discreet peep as she plonked some money behind a chocolatey bowl and had seen a measly two-pound coin. Two quid tip for a fifty-pound meal? Christ, if they stayed together he’d be like his dad in thirty years time, joking that “Mother” kept a coin on a piece of string for just such occasions…

  There’d been an awkward moment as they’d hovered by the coat stand, her carefully doing up every button and him now itching to be off. He knew that he should really be asking whether she’d like to meet him again sometime, if she wasn’t too busy, maybe next Thursday? However, he was too intent on returning to the Lamp to sort his life out to be bothered about even keeping his options open. Brechdan would keep a toe in the door (or some other available orifice) for a possible future dalliance. Iestyn’s only urge was to bolt any door other than Menna’s well and truly shut.

  “Right,” he’d said as she wound her scarf slowly around her neck. “Thanks for a great night; I’ll see you again, no doubt. Good luck with the course and all that…”

  “Yeah,” she’d replied, looking a bit desperate. “Good luck with your – your farm.”

  “Thanks. OK, bye.” He’d held the door open for her and waved her out into the slush.

  Good luck with my farm? Good God, does she not read the Farmers Weekly? Iestyn walked Lulu to her car, but then she’d changed her mind and said that, actually, she might go and join a few mates in the Dog and Duck across the road. “Oh,” he’d said and walked her there instead and she’d clutched his arm to stop herself slipping and been more animated in that two-minute walk than she had been for the whole evening.

  “Bye!” she’d waved as she skipped in through the door. It would seem she’d spent the evening wishing she was somewhere else as well, which was a relief.

  As he walked back towards Joe’s truck, Iestyn looked through the window of the pub and saw Lulu squeeze into a seat alongside a dozen or so people sat around a table. Actually, that did look like as if it might be more fun than sitting with a bloke talking about how he broke his arm in two places and the personalities of his sheep. He imagined the hilarity that would break out when she told them all about the date and that she’d never spent such a boring night with such a boring bloke. “Iestyn Bevan?” someone would say. “Yeah, he is a right boring bastard. Can only talk about sheep or show you his blackthorn splinters – God, Lulu, how did you put up with an evening of that?”

  Oh well, perhaps in the future he should write-off doing things that other people suggested. Especially if fools like the New Improved Coupled Up Brechdan thought it a lovely idea. One down, one to go, he thought as he took the road towards the Lamp. Let’s just hope that the rest of the night was a little more successful.

  Suddenly headlights flashed, full beam, into his eyes and he realised that he was heading straight for the front of a large truck. He wrenched the wheel of the Jeep into the verge and he bounced over the grass and missed the other vehicle by inches. A horn blasted at him as a dark shadow hurtled by.

  Bloody hell that was close! He looked in his rear-view mirror and saw the tail lights of the truck at a tilted angle – obviously up on another verge twenty yards down the road. Christ, perhaps i
t hadn’t been his fault after all – or, not completely anyway? Maybe it’d just come from the Sheep Breeders’ dinner after having had a few too many? Better be careful, he thought, quite possibly there’d be a few more of those around tonight.

  After driving a little more sensibly around another corner, he saw the lights of the Lamp and he pulled into the car park. Right, take a few breaths, compose himself and – hang on, wasn’t that Sima? Out in her little dress, splashing about in the slush? And now Joe – were they looking for something? Iestyn pulled up next to them and fiddled about with the controls, opening the sunroof and changing the colour of the interior lighting before finally lowering the window.

  “What’s up?”

  “Have you seen Menna?” asked Sima, her voice shaky and higher pitched than usual.

  “Just got here…”

  “Hang on,” called Joe, “her truck’s gone. She said she’d nearly reversed into a tree on coming in and here, there’s a space by this tree. It would be bound to have been filled otherwise – ages ago. She must have gone.”

  “Actually,” Iestyn said, trying to picture the vehicle that had nearly run him off the road, “I think she might have just passed me. Why? What’s up?”

  Joe quickly explained as Sima stood shivering and close to tears. “And then, she just left,” he said. “It’s carnage in there now; God only knows where Paul and Heather—”

  “Hazel.”

  “Hazel – whatever – have gone. Jean’s crying. Bill’s striding around like a mad man threatening to kill Paul or kill the bloke who’d sat next to him or the waiter who took his plate away – anyone really.”

  “But where’s Menna gone?” blurted Sima. “We have to find her. She’ll be in a right old state…”

  “I’ll go,” Iestyn said. “That OK with you?”

  “Yeah, just go. We’ll sort something out for a lift home. Brechdan’s here, so he can take us.”

  Iestyn opened the sunroof, ground the gears, turned the lights off and then found reverse. “Sorry!” he grinned. “See you later!” and there was a splatter of slush onto Joe’s trousers as the Jeep hurtled backwards and then bounced off across the car park.

  “F’fuck’s sake: careful!” groaned Joe, looking down. “Great. Now I’ll be walking back past the Gents looking as if I’ve pissed myself.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Sima, taking his arm, “you won’t be the first one tonight…” They walked back into the turmoil that was the Annual Sheep Breeders’ Ball and it flittered through both their minds that perhaps that would be it for the speeches tonight; maybe every cloud did have a silver lining after all?

  Iestyn sped down the lane heading back in the direction that he’d come only minutes before. He soon passed the bit of road, with gouge marks on the verges on both sides, where they’d nearly crunched into each other. He drove as fast as he could, now, fully concentrating on the road in front of him. Part of him wanted to stop and find some good loud music to fit the atmosphere – something like the opening track to Trainspotting perhaps – but he knew he hadn’t got time to waste.

  After four or five miles, he reached the open hill, bumping over the cattle grid. Right: better slow down here, it wouldn’t help Menna if he shot off the side of the unfenced road and the Jeep didn’t have the tyres for such conditions, even if it looked as if it should have. As he reached the top of a slope, he looked down the dark valley in front of him and saw a couple of stationary red lights about half a mile in front of him. Good – they looked big enough to belong to a truck rather than a car. Perhaps she’d stopped at the side of the road to give herself time to calm down.

  Poor Menna, he thought from what Joe had said, it sounded as if she’d had a really rough time. That Paul the bloody Neuadd, well, what a tosser – and to Menna as well; didn’t he know when he had it good?

  Actually, thought Iestyn, what Joe had just told him finally made sense. God, no wonder she had blown him away that time…

  Iestyn had been racing the old quad bike a little faster than Tomos would have liked and therefore he was doing it on the other side of the open hill. He’d gone up to check the sheep and had been carried away by the simple physical pleasure of flying along with the wind in his hair and the sun warming his face.

  Iestyn’s days rarely allowed time for mucking about; there were always dozens of things that he would be better employed doing. However, although this was certainly the case now, he was still young and energised enough to think sod it occasionally. In his mind he was thinking he could justify it by saying he was looking for the ewe with the mark on her face and the gash on her leg. He’d not yet spotted her and he wanted to be sure that her wound wasn’t becoming infected. It was excuse enough to scatter hill ponies on a beautiful May day!

  As he sped along the ancient tracks that had carried his ancestors on ponies or by foot for centuries, he went over a particularly large bump and the resulting jolt caused the petrol gauge to crash to zero. He saw it out of the corner of his eye and cursed – it had gotten stuck a couple of times recently, once causing his mother to have to walk a couple of miles home in her wellies and two bobble hats, which hadn’t gone down at all well.

  Iestyn groaned. He was miles from home; why had he let himself stray so far for the sake of a pathetic speed buzz? If it conked out now, he’d be a couple of hours walking back and then he’d have to confess to Tomos that he’d gone much further than he needed and therefore wasn’t back where he should have been: at the farm scraping chicken shit off a rutted concrete floor.

  He scanned the horizon for other vehicles – most farmers usually kept a spare can of petrol in their trucks in case of emergencies. Nothing. Then he drove over the brow of the hill and looked down into the valley – great, Menna’s truck was parked up by some woods. Perhaps she was doing some fencing – probably where they used to climb over as kids, until her dad got fed up with them stretching his wire and put a little stile in.

  Iestyn’s good humour had returned at the thought of getting away with it and seeing Menna to boot, and he set off to the gate leading from the open hill down onto Menna’s family farm. Halfway down the track towards the woods, the quad bike sputtered, stalled and ground to a halt. Bollocks, thought Iestyn. He freewheeled a little way, but eventually he gave up and jumped off; it was no distance really as the crow flew.

  Once on foot, he decided against following the track with its giant zig-zags taking out the worst of the steepness. Instead, he dived into the chest-high bracken sending a few hiding sheep scattering. As he gambolled down like a carefree child, going just a little bit faster than he had control over, he’d felt like whooping with joy! The fronds of the bracken, which his grandmother had said could kill a man if enough were ingested in a tea, slapped against him and their leaves stuck to him.

  He vaulted the fence into the wood and carried on through the trees, expecting to jump the stream and then come upon Menna working on the fence on the far side of the woods.

  He hadn’t been in this wood for years; he and Menna used to spend hours in it, trying to find ways of crossing the little stream (that he now hopped across with no effort at all). They’d had tyres hanging from trees, death slides, camps and seats. Their favourite tree was a stumpy old oak, full of places where two little children could find a comfy seat.

  In fact, thought Iestyn as he started to puff, now climbing the steep slope up from the stream, there was their oak – about a third of the size that he remembered it, mind, but the shape was unmistakable; the dip in that one branch which had been his favourite place to sit and whittle out knots, with a penknife that would have had him arrested had he carried it anywhere else but Mid Wales. And there was the other place where Menna used to lie back and pretend to be really comfortable.

  But, hang on, there was someone there now, sat at the bottom of it – surely, surely that was Menna, sat with her head resting on her knees, her long hair loose for a change and flopped over her arms as they cradled round her knees.

 
; Iestyn had stopped: was she OK? It looked like a private moment, but she was by their tree! Perhaps she did feel the same as him? Perhaps she would come over here to sit and remember happy times and think about what might be if only she could dump that arse from the Neuadd!

  Iestyn took a deep breath and scrambled up the rest of the slope towards her. “Menna?” he called, not wanting to startle her. But he had and her face jerked up from her knees. She saw him and then looked away.

  “Menna,” he puffed, arriving beside her hot and breathless from the exertion but also the excitement. “You OK? What are you doing here?”

  She looked up again and stared at him. Her beautiful pale blue eyes were red ringed and swollen from crying. “What’s the matter?” he whispered, dropping down beside her. “Menna – what’s wrong? The family? Are they OK? Has something happened to…Paul?”

  Menna scoffed and turned her face away again. “What are you doing here?” she sniffed, trying to wipe her eyes without him seeing.

  “I ran out of petrol…saw your truck. Look, can I help? Do you want me to fetch someone? Ring your mum or someone else? Paul?”

  “Paul?” she sneered. “You’re bloody joking aren’t you?”

  Iestyn remembered how his heart had leapt at this comment. “Why?” He had to ask. “Are you not – well – together anymore?”

  “He’s a fuckin’ idiot,” she snarled and then buried her head once more.

  At last, Iestyn had thought, at last! She’s dumped him and has come to sit by our old tree! It was him, Iestyn, that she was in love with after all! Now was his chance; it was now or never. Fate had brought him here on this beautiful day, had made him run out of fuel and then had made him find her here, waiting for him.

  He’d missed his chance, that time in the beer tent. An hour and two pints had meant that someone else had stepped in and – bam – three years wasted. It may not be the ideal timing, the first flush of just dumping someone – or even worse, having just been dumped – but, he’d have to take the risk. What if she popped into the shop on her way home and met Brechdan? Bam – another, well, another fortnight wasted, plus the eight months for the STD quarantine to pass. No, he needed to grasp his opportunity and jump in.