Cold Enough to Freeze Cows

by Lorraine Jenkin

  Johnny and Taid had sneaked over to Cefn Mawr one afternoon and tackled the garage. They had giggled as they ripped labels of the walls, pulled nails and hooks out and then whitewashed the plywood. When Tansy had found out, she had been so touched that she’d given Taid such an enormous bear hug that she picked him off the floor, tears in her eyes. “Christ, m’n, you’ll break my spine!” he’d said, but Iestyn could see that he was moved; he’d developed a real bond with Tansy, a quiet enjoyment of the woman who had made his grandson so happy.

  As for himself, Iestyn couldn’t be happier. He turned to look back down the slope and saw his wonderful family and friends sitting together, chatting and laughing under the full branches of the lime. His beautiful Menna was sitting stroking the belly that cocooned their baby. She was stunning, dressed in a golden-coloured sundress – chosen by Sima of course, but worn with rigger boots as she insisted on helping out.

  “It’s good for her,” Isla had said, “let her carry on as long as she feels comfortable. I was splitting logs the day that you were born.”

  “Too right,” Tomos had muttered, “wasn’t up for doing the bloody ditching though…”

  He and Menna lived in Menna’s bungalow, and he revelled daily in the luxury of Menna’s fixtures and fittings. Together they had added a few things, but Iestyn had said he so loved what Menna had already done that he didn’t want it any different. Together they were learning how to cook and they ate their supper to the sounds of soul music. Iestyn had never really had a taste in anything, so he happily latched onto what Menna liked, simply enjoying the fact that it was already there for him and that it was warm and it worked.

  He would sing as he showered after work each night, indulging himself in strawberry soaps or oatmeal scrubs – still such a happy contrast to showering with Tomos’ wellies, and cleaning himself with a squirt of Isla’s washing-up liquid. Afterwards, he would wrap himself in a luxurious towel and then sit chatting to Menna as she chopped carrots or scrubbed potatoes.

  Menna’s pregnancy was the icing on the cake. They had had a conversation establishing that they both wanted children about a week before Menna realised that she was two weeks late. Iestyn would bring toast and a cup of tea in to Menna each morning as that would keep the sickness at bay and then he would keep out of the way in the afternoon in case she needed to sleep off some of the desperate tiredness. They had already painted the spare room and Tomos was stripping the lead paint off the ancient cot that had been dug out of the old barn. “Bit of lead never stopped ours growing,” he’d grumbled as Isla had sent him back out to make sure all the paint was gone. “Looking at them, the lead probably made them grow more…”

  Everyone said that Menna had also blossomed since the night of the Sheep Breeders’ and Iestyn was pleased that he might have had something to do with it – although he had loved her as she’d always been and wouldn’t have worried if she’d worn tracksuit bottoms every day for the rest of her life. Saying that, however, he did love her new fitted tops and her floaty skirts, and he loved the fact that her feet had freckles on because they’d finally been touched by the sun…

  The plan was that Iestyn would carry on working at Pencwmhir, showing Joe the ropes and then start doing a day or two a week at Menna’s farm, slowly moving over to work it with her in order to be full time there when the baby was born. Menna’s father, Bill, was glad of the extra help and it meant that between him, Bill and Menna they could get the place working like clockwork.

  Menna’s mother, Jean, had been softened by the whole ordeal of the night at the Lamp, the revelation about what had really happened between Menna and Paul the Neuadd and that terrible incident in the river. She would be forever grateful to Iestyn and had found a growing gentleness and indulgence towards her daughter and, as if making up for her years of cool and rather controlling parenting, the occasional bunch of flowers would be dropped off at their kitchen or a little pack of toiletries left on the doorstep.

  Menna had embraced this new maternal relationship, especially with the baby due, as she felt she finally had so much more in common with her mother. For some reason, Menna had said that she never wanted to have Sunday lunches at the farmhouse, but that was fine with Iestyn; he was quite happy practicing his own roast chickens with scones, jam and cream for dessert…

  Iestyn was jolted back to the here and now as the group of men on the scaffold burst into song, accompanying the radio blaring out “Bohemian Rhapsody”: it was bloody awful. He carried on up the slope and shut the kitchen door behind him.

  Esther was sitting at a table full of women drinking afternoon tea and playing cards when a tall woman with cropped black hair came into the room carrying a cake with a candle on the top.

  “Ladies, ladies, could I have your attention please?” The chatter stopped and the women looked up to Lucinda and then across to Esther, all with smiles beaming across their faces.

  “Now,” continued Lucinda, “we all know that this is Esther’s last day today and we’re all very grateful for everything that she has done, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, yes,” they all mumbled, nodding their heads and looking back and fore between Esther and the cake.

  “Now, we all know that people do community service for having committed a crime and that crime isn’t good.” Everyone nodded and Esther looked down, her face red with humiliation. “However, I think we also all know that there are usually reasons why people do those things and Esther isn’t an exception to that rule, isn’t that right, Esther?” Esther shrugged, then thought a little and nodded.

  “Exception, no, no you’re right there, no exception,” mumbled the other women.

  “But the good news is that Esther has more than repaid her debt to society and I think you’ll all agree that she has been brilliant here, helping us and probably learning a few things herself – am I right, Esther?” Esther nodded gratefully at Lucinda. “The other good news is that we won’t be saying goodbye to her as she has agreed to carry on working here, two days a week, in place of Jen who is leaving next Friday. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  The women nodded, beamed and clapped and Esther blushed again, this time out of joy.

  The thought of being assigned the day centre as her community service hadn’t pleased Esther, but the whole experience of the court case and the resulting publicity about her letter writing had been so hideous that she didn’t really care; she just wanted it all over. Her plan had been to keep her head down, do what was required and then move on – move somewhere and start again in a place where she wasn’t known as the Tan-y-Bryn Spiteful Letter Writer.

  Yet, as her old friends had shunned her, not understanding how she could have done something quite so offensive (despite having agreed with the sentiment of the letters’ contents wholeheartedly), the women at the day centre had become her friends and they didn’t seem to judge her. Jules had done time for persistent shoplifting and had lost her kids. Bethan, who had had a breakdown after her husband had left and now couldn’t cope very well with life, knew exactly why people did things that weren’t rational: she had smashed up the wrong car after seeking revenge on her ex-husband’s mistress – collateral damage perhaps, but not really her fault. So who were they to judge anyone else’s mistakes?

  Therefore she’d spent three afternoons a week for the past year organising activities that were intended to help move the women forward in their own lives. She showed them how to cook and to budget and helped them fill in forms. It had become the focus of her week and she regularly arrived early and left later than her hours stipulated.

  In the long term, it had been great for her relationship with Louisa, which had become very cool after the letter writing saga and the revelation of David’s affair – which was somehow also Esther’s fault. At last, Esther wasn’t hanging around, waiting for Louisa to come home every evening. Instead, even when she wasn’t at the day centre, she was planning activities, researching games that had a lesson or two in them. It seemed as if in Louisa’s eye
s she’d became a human being in her own right overnight, albeit one that had done something that wasn’t very nice. She’d changed from being someone whose sole purpose in life was to make her daughter’s day function a little easier to being someone who quite obviously had a mind of her own and better things to do.

  She’d also done some community service of her own volition. She’d gone to the Tasty Bite and humbly apologised. She’d been received suspiciously at first, but then with appreciation. She was glad to hear that the couple were to go and start a fresh life in Spain.

  Her reception at the Crusty Bun had also been received cynically and she had nearly crumbled under the derisive stares of Janet and Sally. However, they had accepted her offer of coming in once a week to help and with a slight sneer, Janet had suggested that perhaps she’d like to clean the place if she thought that she could do a better job.

  Esther had accepted the challenge and early each Tuesday, she would scrub and scrape and polish whilst Janet and Sally cooked in the back kitchen before the shop opened. At first they were cool towards her, but after seeing that she was working very hard – and effectively – they started to mellow, inviting her to join them when they stopped for coffee, then giving her a loaf and a couple of cakes for tea, and finally paying her taxi there and back.

  For the last three months she had been officially part of the team. Sally would collect her on her way to work and she was paid for her hours. Although the work was hard and unglamorous, Esther would bask in any comments that were passed on from customers about the place looking fresher.

  Esther’s divorce from David had made the front page of the local gazette: Affair husband divorced from Tan-y-Bryn’s most spiteful woman the headlines had said and it sent a barb through her whenever she passed an A-board outside a newsagent or saw the papers fluttering on a wire rack outside a shop. She didn’t read the papers anymore; they made her feel sick.

  Their relationship had disintegrated almost immediately, as all she could see when she thought of him were his bouncing buttocks and Diane’s red shoes bobbing in the air. However, as their life together was slowly untangled by the divorce courts, they had managed to get some of their old friendship back. He would come over to collect some things and they would share a pot of tea together and chat about what they had been up to. Sometimes he would ask if he could disappear into the new conservatory for an hour with a paper, “just for a bit of peace” and she would happily let him, sometimes bringing him a glass of elderflower cordial and a piece of shortbread, possibly with slightly disingenuous motives – more to make him enjoy it in a “how stupid was I to throw this away?” way, rather than an “ooh, this is nice” one.

  She never asked about Diane, but would drink in his occasional comments about her not doing anything around the flat or how she just watched daytime television all day. Or how he’d driven her to the beach hoping that they could walk through the waves but instead, they’d sat in the car and drunk a Thermos of tea between them, then driven straight home again.

  In a rather sad, reflective moment, he’d referred to the happenings of the last year or two as a huge mistake and apologised to Esther for taking her for granted for so long. Esther had graciously accepted the apology and said that, well, she’d probably taken him for granted too.

  He hadn’t asked whether he could come back and she was not sure if she would want him to. She felt as if for the first time in many years she was enjoying her life and doing what she wanted and feeling really valued and useful; she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back to making packed lunches with the wrong sandwiches or being grunted at for not guessing that someone fancied mashed rather than boiled potatoes tonight.

  She had done an evening course in art and another in pottery, but had found that not only did she not really have much natural flair, it also was too long-winded for her. Part of the excitement of the course was discovering things about herself. She realised that she liked immediate achievements; perhaps that was why she was so good at housework and had been so effective at her do-gooding all those years ago. Harold needed a cat fed? Harold got his cat fed – tick.

  Waiting for a layer of paint to dry on a pot before being able to paint the next part was not for her – she couldn’t clear everything up and put it all away if a pot had to stand and be left in peace until it had dried. It hadn’t taken much market research to work out that not many people in Tan-y-Bryn would want a plain blue or a plain red pot, even if they wanted a pot at all.

  She was, however, even more pleased to discover a few things out about Diane too. Mainly that Diane wasn’t as exciting as the fur coat and no knickers had first suggested: David had asked if he could pop some of their washing in the tumble drier whilst he cut her hedges, rather than spending the afternoon sitting in the launderette and she’d been happy to see that Diane’s knickers were as high waisted and comfortable as her own…

  Louisa was lying on a lounger in the warm Anweledig sun. She had a plate of sandwiches on one side of her and a can of Diet Coke on the other; it was lovely to have a day off now and then just to enjoy the weather and recharge her batteries a little.

  Her plan had been to go with the conservation volunteers and clear that overgrown bridleway, but she’d woken up late and missed the minibus. She could have driven after them in her car, as the site was only five miles away, but she had recorded something on Sky Plus and now that she was going out a bit more, her television schedule was tighter and it made it difficult to catch up on things she’d missed.

  Perhaps she should have made the effort after all: that Daniel chap in the conservation group seemed quite nice and Carrie and Sarah would probably have managed to make it. So far she’d managed to go to three planning meetings in the evenings, but had not made any of the practical days. She’d sat next to Daniel at the last one and he’d laughed at her when she’d apologised for not making the ditch-digging day as something had come up.

  “Yeah, a duvet,” he’d laughed, but it had not been unkindly and although her blushes had probably shown it was true, she’d managed a giggle in return.

  She still saw Rachel and Rosie occasionally and they always stopped for a chat if they passed in town. They’d turned out to be perhaps a little too wild for her, but through them she’d met Carrie and Sarah and they were a little more her type. They would meet for lunch each week and Louisa would babysit for Carrie’s baby occasionally to allow her to go out with her husband.

  It was the same with the flat. Despite the divorce being such a period of turmoil, it had been a bit of a relief when her father had sheepishly asked if he and Diane might stay there for a few months until they had sorted themselves out. She’d agreed with as much false magnanimity as she could muster, whilst feeling her spirits rise at the thought of not having to bother living there herself. She’d done enough: getting the flat and overseeing its decoration had been a satisfying adventure for her and now that she knew she could do it any time she pleased, the urge to prove anything to herself or others had evaporated.

  She and Diane had not managed to make it to being friends yet, much to the sadness of her father. Louisa had shunned Diane’s first attempt at civility and had then been surprised to find that Diane had not bothered again. It was very trying to maintain the moral high ground when the cuckoo that had ousted her own mother from her nest didn’t seem to give a monkey’s.

  As Louisa took a bite from her sandwich, she frowned at its dryness. Esther always said that a sandwich should have three fillings in it, but she, Louisa, had only put cheese in hers that day. Louisa thought back to the days when her mother would have made her a packed lunch for such a day, plus there would have been a few extra things under cling film for snacks. However, the difference was that now Louisa knew the score – if you want a nice sandwich, make a nice sandwich. If you can’t be bothered, don’t – but don’t moan about it or wish it better. Either get up and go back to the kitchen and chop up a tomato, or just eat it and take a swig of your drink to wash it down. She
deliberated about it, then ate it and then took a swig of her drink to wash it down…

  *

  Iestyn walked back across the yard with a tray laden with scones and Menna’s lemon and ginger tea. ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was reaching a crescendo and the builders had started an octave too high and were beginning to struggle.

  Joe and Johnny Brechdan were walking across the yard, heading back to the barn after their break. “Oh, gis one of those scones,” said Johnny as he grabbed one from Iestyn’s plate, “Pencwmhir wouldn’t be right without having my stomach lining stuck together with one of these.”

  “Yeah and me,” said Joe, trying to find the biggest one, “Sima’s not looking, and she made me drink oat grass or something again for breakfast.”

  “I think that was meant for the cows,” said Iestyn. “I’ll be with you in a moment; I’ll just give Menna her drink.”

  The others grunted at him and went back to the barn to carry on their task of chipping out the old crumbling mortar from between the stones on the far side of the barn, ready for it to be re-pointed by the professionals.

  Iestyn sat down by Menna, passed her her tea and took a swig out of his Bambi cup.

  “Thank God Joe’s gone back to work,” said Sima, politely passing on the plate of scones, “he’d be after the biggest one with the most butter on if he were still here!” Iestyn kept quiet.

  “Actually, while I remember,” said Isla, picking a couple of currants out of hers, “anyone up for going to Cefn Mawr show this weekend?” Menna and Iestyn exchanged glances and sneaked a look at Tansy to see if there was a reaction; there was nothing.

  “Yes, I think it’s on a Saturday this year,” continued Isla. “You ever been, Tansy, when you lived in Cefn Mawr? Little Gwennie would love it!”

  Iestyn and Menna cringed in unison. “How’s the re-pointing going?” said Iestyn to Sima, trying hard to change the subject.