by Tom Bullough
“God, what a mess!” said Tara.
“That’s about the size of it.”
Adam climbed the hurdle, shook a few drops of water from his hands and put his arms around her shoulders. Her face was warm and smooth against his neck, her chest moving at the same, weary pace as his own. Despite the stink of wool and blood that hung about him, he could still smell her hair, sweet and clean, and it made him think about bed, the softness of the pillow, the weight of the duvet. Slowly, he let his hand slide down her back, to the curve at the base of her spine, and as their thighs touched beneath the hem of her coat, his mind filled with thoughts of her legs and her breasts.
Tara shifted her weight, allowing a small space to open between them, then she took half a step backwards. On the post beside them the radio surged and crackled.
“He hasn’t got a clue, has he?” she said, eventually.
“None that I’ve noticed,” said Adam. He let his arms drop back to his sides. “I don’t think he’s hurting him or anything, though… Not in that way… Not intentionally, at least.”
Around them, bit by bit, the wind was beginning to die down, its noise sinking from a howl to a moan. Across the shed, a cat jumped from the haystack onto the white-smeared nose of the truck. In a nearby pen, a ewe was turning about herself, bleating with discomfort, treading down the clean straw.
“Are you alright, Adam?” asked Tara, looking at him.
“I’m just tired.” Adam managed a smile. “I haven’t slept for three days, that’s all…”
“How’s it looking for tonight?”
“There’s one about due, but there should be some peace once she’s done.”
“Wake me up then.” Tara put her hand lightly on his elbow. “Okay? I’ll do the rest of the shift. Andrew’s clothes will be dry before all that long. I’ll bring them down here and do a bit of darning.”
* * *
Once Tara had gone, Adam sat on a bale beside a fat ewe in a sheep-shaped nest, her waters dribbling down her pink, swollen udders. From time to time, she would struggle to her feet and circle her pen, letting out cries of alarm, but the contractions were coming faster now and she soon sank back into the straw.
Adam watched her in silence, chewing the stem of his unlit pipe as the ewe rolled onto her side – her eyes turning white as she tried to see behind her, the first black speck of a tiny pair of hooves beginning to appear through the mucus. Even at the end of lambing, when he was so exhausted he could hardly stand upright, Adam was always astonished by the process of birth. He knew these animals almost as well as he knew his own family – their habits, their histories, their faces and fleeces – and the delight he felt when one of them lambed had little to do with economics.
“Good girl,” he murmured, tasting the bitter tar in his pipe, keeping himself awake. “Good girl. That’s the way…”
The hooves emerged slowly, pressed together, slimy and shiny, and Adam had been watching them for some minutes before he realised that there was anything wrong. Above him, the wind continued to mutter in the roof, curling beneath the sheets of corrugated iron and falling away into the darkness. Holding a hurdle, he pulled himself to his feet and a feeling came over him like he had fallen asleep and something terrible was happening to the farm in his absence. He tried to slow his breathing, afraid that he was about to pass out, but then his thoughts cleared and he climbed into the pen, removing his coat and his jumper, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.
It was an unusual operation, but one that Adam had performed several times before. The hooves were facing upwards, so the lamb was almost certainly breech – back-to-front, with its hind legs coming out first – and, with the risk it might drown in the amniotic fluid, it was for once critical to hurry. Mumbling soothingly, he washed his hands in the bowl at the edge of the pen and knelt down behind the ewe, watching the fleshy eruption of her vulva, the hooves beginning to evolve into a pair of little white legs.
With the next contraction, Adam took hold of the legs, braced himself and pulled. He drew the lamb straight out towards him, as gently as he could, feeling for any complications. But it came far faster than he had expected and, suddenly, with a cry from the ewe, he found himself holding a steaming pair of legs: perfectly formed, covered in wool, attached to an umbilical cord and completely independent of any other body parts.
For a moment, Adam thought that he had somehow pulled the lamb in half. Slowly he sank backwards, staring at this aberration in his hands, the ewe kicking herself to her feet, and as he dropped the legs into the straw a sense of failure poured over him, a desperate loneliness, a pressure applying itself to the sides of his head. Every disappointment, every setback that he had ever had as a farmer or a father, came flooding through his mind, and by the time that the ewe had turned and was licking the legs with vigorous strokes of her tongue, Adam was hunched on the floor of the pen, his shoulders shivering, his slime-covered hands pressed to his wet face.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CLAUDE GLASS
Andrew woke at the same time as always, except that, rather than Meg and the puppies, he was presented with a series of coloured shapes hovering above his head, stirring in the faint breeze from an open door, turning in circles about themselves. They were red, yellow, brown, green, purple, every colour that he could think of, and, as he stared at them, he saw that one had the same shape as a sheep – in fact, it had the colours of a sheep, as well. It was a thin little sheep that was performing its twirls above him, and it was surrounded by other animals, none of which he recognised, with unfamiliar teeth, hair, claws and feathers.
Andrew was about to reach up for the sheep, to see if he could touch it, when he felt a pain in his arm and realised that it was covered in some kind of thick white material, and that beneath it his skin was burning, as were his knees and other patches all over his body. In a moment, he made the connection between the material and the pain, and he went to tear it off, but his fingernails too were covered, so he grabbed it with his teeth, uncovering swellings the whole way to his elbow, before – with a start – he noticed the room he was in, and looked around.
The room was light, lit by a big white ball which hung from the ceiling, and a trace of the sunrise crept around the curtains. He was lying in a bed, but the bed was small – not like the huge, stinking object where he sometimes slept between his parents – and there were nothing but blankets to either side of him: warm but lifeless, with scarcely a smell of their own.
Andrew sat up, shuffled forwards along the bed and discovered that, as well as the thick white material, he was wearing a thin striped suit which fitted him precisely. Confused, he moved closer to the window and, not wanting to touch the curtains, he peered through the crack beside the wall, seeing the lovely curves of Offa’s Bank through glass so clear that it might not have been there at all. He saw pools of light, flooding across the valley, shapeless and changing against the lines of the fields. He saw sheep still crammed beneath the trees, the hazy green of the chestnuts, the fat, spiky catkins in the pussy willows. Then the clouds shifted away from him, and the sun was poised above the nose of the hill, round and perfect, forcing him back into the shadows of the room.
Climbing out of bed, Andrew found that the floor was soft, light and colourful as everything seemed to be, here on the other side of the hill. The smells were strange and subtle, so that sometimes he could barely smell them at all. There was a sheepskin on a chair beside the door, a whiff of old tobacco smoke, a heap of clean clothes on the floor, wood, stone and plaster somewhere in the background, dry and redolent.
He crossed the carpet to the bare floorboards and went through the door, his feet white-cushioned, moving softly. Outside, other doors lined a narrow passage where a staircase sank into the floor, and there was the faint, familiar smell of urine. As in the abandoned rooms in Werndunvan, there was a second staircase that went upwards – light was spilling around it – but Andrew thought only about going down, about returning to the ground, and he took the h
andrail, rounded the banisters and descended a stair at a time.
At the bottom, there were still no sounds, except for the faraway calls of the sheep. Andrew stopped and looked around him, inspecting the three doors that it was possible to take, the carpet of fabulous, swirling patterns that lay in the middle of the floor, the tall, heavy piece of furniture that stood against one of the walls, a long flat lip at its front and a threadbare stool tucked beneath it, just like the one that he had seen at Werndunvan.
Among the shadows, Andrew saw the face of a man looking down at him: neat, grey and severe-looking. Around the man was a square of shiny wood, and there were papers and pieces of machinery on the table in front of him. Andrew looked at the man’s face, his long thin nose, his shining green eyes, and in them he saw the yellow-haired woman who had taken his hand when the tractors got stuck, who had washed him and held him, and a feeling of warmth came over him, filling him so entirely that, for a moment, he forgot about everything else.
It was only the frightened, unexpected smell of a lamb that jerked Andrew back into the hall, and his mind turned instantly to lambing time, to minding the tiddlers – one of the few tasks he had ever been given. He sniffed the air eagerly, trying to work out where the smell was coming from, then he looked around at the sun-filled door behind him and headed towards it.
* * *
Robin woke Martin the moment that he woke himself, and, shivering slightly and kicking his damp sheet and pyjama bottoms towards the foot of the bed, he resumed the story that they’d been inventing before they went to sleep. As usual, the story concerned the Sheenah – their villainous enemy – and their voyages through kingdoms full of dragons, gold and castles. But, for once, Robin couldn’t quite lose himself in it. He thought it odd that Tara hadn’t come in to wake them, lambing time or not, and he couldn’t help wondering if anything was wrong.
The boys’ bedroom was small and its curtains showed many horsemen with spears pursuing many tigers through the oriental jungle. It had a crowded bookshelf, several teddy bears and a chest of drawers, which Robin had written his name all over with a red crayon, leaving only the underwear drawer, where he had written Martin’s name instead. He slept in the bed next to the door, because Martin was afraid that a monster might come through it in the night and was pathetically grateful to be able to sleep against the wall. Besides, Robin reasoned, any monster worth the name would obviously not bother with the door, but would come bursting through the wall, if only to prove the point.
“Morning, boys!” said Tara, appearing in the doorway, opening the curtains on a dazzling morning of ripped-apart clouds. “Time to get up!”
Robin handed her the bedclothes, which she tossed into the basket on the landing.
“We’ve got a guest for breakfast,” said Tara.
“Who?” asked Robin.
“Andrew,” said Tara.
“The werewolf!” said Martin, and a range of little ridges appeared across his forehead, his face turning red, as if he was about to cry.
“What?” Tara looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“Andrew’s a werewolf!” exclaimed Martin. “Klaus said! He said he’s going to turn into a wolf and come and eat our brains!”
“Oh, Martin…” Tara sighed. She knelt down and looked at him, his tears making snail-trails on his cheeks. “Listen to me,” she said, gently. “I don’t care what Klaus said, okay? That’s not true, and it’s not a kind thing to say about anyone. Andrew is a normal boy. He’s a normal boy who’s having a lot of trouble right now, and it isn’t fair to be nasty about him… You wouldn’t want people to be nasty about you, would you?”
* * *
Robin and Martin descended the stairs in a different way to their mother. Halfway down, there was a stair which squeaked like an old gate, and ever since Mr Gwynne had taught him about Roundheads and Cavaliers at school Robin had insisted they use the banisters and the skirting board to climb around it. In all great houses, there was always a priest’s hole, a secret tunnel to the nearest church, and a special stair which would make the whole staircase collapse if you so much as touched it. There was no point in taking any chances.
The two of them followed Tara to the door into the kitchen where, in front of the Aga, across the red tile floor, Andrew was sitting in a large cardboard box, dressed in Robin’s spare blue and green pyjamas, cradling a lamb that had been born sometime that morning, feeding it from a wine-bottle with a pink rubber teat on the end.
Neither of them looked up.
“Tara?” Robin whispered. “Andrew’s wearing my pyjamas!”
“That’s okay, isn’t it, Robin?” said Tara, carrying a heap of plates to the table and laying them out, collecting a couple of old ones and depositing them in the sink. “The boys were going to have a bit of breakfast now, Andrew. What do you think? Would you like some breakfast?”
Slowly, Andrew looked up at her, his face round and pink, with surprisingly pale blue eyes. He watched her for a moment or two, then returned his attention to the lamb – so obviously content that Robin wondered if he’d imagined all of the events at the bog the other day. He imagined so many things that sometimes he really wasn’t sure. Andrew was not as hairy as he’d remembered, nor did he have particularly sharp teeth. He looked, in fact, very much like a normal boy.
“Come on, Robbo,” Tara continued. “Come and sit down. And you, Mart.”
Robin hesitated, burning to go and play with the lamb, inspecting Andrew’s lowered head, his mop of black hair, while Martin darted past him, climbed up onto the bench and crawled quickly to the other end. Andrew’s hands, arms and feet were covered in an impressive number of plasters and bandages. He was holding the lamb on his lap just as Adam had taught Robin the previous year and, if you listened carefully, he was making quiet sheep noises, which Robin had never tried himself.
“Robbo…” Tara repeated, pointedly. “I’ve put some wheat flakes out on the table, and… Here, I’ll do you some toast as well.”
Cutting a few slices from one of her wholemeal loaves, she laid them on the Aga to toast, and when Andrew still didn’t move she bent down and whispered to him, taking the lamb from his arms and sitting it beside him on the layers of old newspaper, where it bleated a couple of times and promptly fell asleep. She took his hand and led him to the table, lifting him up onto a cushion-heaped chair and placing a piece of toast and honey in front of him.
Andrew seemed to gawp at the cutlery, at the wheat flakes, the sugar, milk and butter spread across the wide oak table, sniffing at the strands of smoke still rising from his plate. But then he glanced at Tara, who smiled, and he took the toast in both hands and began to eat it as quickly as possible, cramming his mouth and mumbling with pleasure.
Sitting on the bench, Robin watched him with amazement. He longed to stuff his food down like that, without Tara telling him off, and once Andrew had finished – more alert-looking suddenly, checking around him to see if there was any more on its way – he decided that perhaps he ought to talk to him, so as not to be nasty, as Tara had said.
“Nice tractor your dad’s got, Andrew,” he offered.
Andrew looked up, questioningly, and sniffed again at the bread now cooking on the Aga.
“The Mercedes,” said Robin.
Andrew’s face cleared. He nodded, smiled and got to work on another piece of toast as Tara delivered it to his plate – glancing at Robin as she handed him his own piece, smiling herself with her shining green eyes.
* * *
Andrew had various dens about Werndunvan – places where his father couldn’t fit, places forgotten behind haystacks or rotting pieces of machinery where the cats or chickens went to nest and any normal person could pass you daily and never once notice you were there. The only constraint was the seasons, which left the dingle down behind the house miserable and sodden in the wintertime, the scramble of strange trees and shrubs in the garden leafless and exposed. Outside of the summer, the best places were always in the barns, or in
the other parts of the house – behind the door in the sitting-room where Philip hung his coats, never seeming to notice that the house continued, and continued.
Andrew flicked up the catch on the end door, poking it with the stick that he kept against the door jamb, rubbing Meg’s neck for a moment before he left her on the doorstep, curled in the pale sunlight with her teats still swollen and the sounds of a JCB working on the new barn a little way along the hill.
With the door closed, the smells changed abruptly: there was so much dust and dirt everywhere that it was almost like snow, although if you went up the decaying stairs in front of you there were rooms where broken windows left the floors slick with rain, where white mould flowered on the walls and furniture and the wind blew just as furiously as it did outside. But Andrew went forwards, as he always went forwards, into a short passage with a couple of small, musty rooms to his left, past the tall man in tight trousers who lived on the wall, bars of curling black hair on his red cheeks and Werndunvan alone on its hillside behind him, lacking its pines and its barns.
At the end of the passage – behind a large, solid door – was the biggest room that Andrew had found. It looked out at the yard through dirty windows, patched so the dust stayed thick and undisturbed on the floor, coating the boxes and the sheets on the big, shiny chairs. From the ceiling, a fabulous construction – scores of dusty glass-drops – swung faintly, turning the sunlight into colours on the facing wall.
Recently, Andrew had opened the door into this room for the first time, and he had noticed from his foot-prints that the floor was composed of tiny pieces of wood. He had been thinking about Robin, as he did much of the time these days, about Tara and breakfast at Penllan, and, while he thought, he had swept away the dust with his hands – discovering how perfectly each piece of the floor fitted with the last, their little arrangement repeating itself in twists and circles all around him.