by Tom Bullough
“Andrew?” Someone was wiping at his cheeks. “Andrew, it’s okay… Come on now, don’t cry. Everything’s okay. You’re just in the wrong place, that’s all.”
Andrew peeped out the tiniest amount possible, but his eyes were all bleary from crying and he could see only mixed-up colours, white and blue and yellow. Then he realised that it was Tara speaking, kindly again, although she had shouted at him in the barn with Robin. He opened his eyes a little bit further so that he could see the gateposts, her sun-coloured hair and her eyes smiling down at him.
“It’s okay, Andrew,” she was saying, her voice calm and soothing. “It’s okay. Don’t cry now. You’ll get your smart new clothes all wet… They’re lovely clothes, Andrew! You look really good. Do you know that?”
Tara sat down on the step between the gateposts, smiling and patting the stone beside her, so he sat down as well.
“Come on now…” She wiped his cheek again with her white handkerchief. “That’s it. There’s nothing to be worried about. Nothing at all. Everything’s going to be fine… Now, there’s no hurry, okay? We can sit here just as long as you like… But, if you want to, the other boys and girls are just beginning to get ready for assembly. That’s when everyone sits down together. They all sit down together in a lovely big room. They sing together and Mr Gwynne tells them a story. Robin will be there, and Martin, and Robin says that Mr Gwynne tells some wonderful stories. What do you think, eh? Would you like to come to assembly? You like stories, don’t you?”
Andrew nodded, without thinking, and again he caught the smell of Werndunvan among the smells of the morning. Then Tara took his hand and he began to feel a bit better, and as they stood upright the gateposts were less tall than she was, and he did know some of the people in the crowd, after all – Maggie the Glyn, Mary Cwmithel, Jack from the council houses – and, however painful his feet, Andrew felt proud to be walking with Tara, in his new shoes, across the tangle of colourful lines.
Inside the school there were children everywhere, hurrying around carrying chairs or piles of books, and somewhere a long way above them – in the sky, as it seemed – a metallic clanking began, which reminded Andrew of his father nailing up sheets of corrugated iron. Along the wall in front of him there was a row of hooks, each of them accompanied by a picture: a tractor, an apple, a tree, and many other colourful things that Andrew had never seen before. Under one of these, a girl with blue-framed glasses was changing her shoes, her hair hanging over her face, and she was so grown-up that she had breasts bigger than Tara’s.
“Hello, Andrew!” said a friendly sounding voice. “You are Andrew, aren’t you?”
Andrew looked at the man who had spoken to him, then he looked at Tara to check that he was alright – her face a little redder suddenly, now that they were inside. The man was tall, with a wave of dark hair at the top of his forehead, and fine, precise hands – not like his father‘s at all. He was smiling, exchanging occasional comments with the boys and girls who pressed past them through the doorway into an enormous room flooded with the sunlight that was spilling now from the top of Offa’s Bank.
“I’m very pleased you’re here, Andrew,” the man went on. “Tara’s told me lots about you, and you’re already friends with Robin and Martin, aren’t you?”
“This is Mr Gwynne, Andrew,” Tara explained. “He’s going to be your teacher, so if you need anything you just ask him, okay?”
Andrew nodded and watched as a group of girls hurried past them, giggling and skipping up the stairs.
“Thankyou, Tara,” said Mr Gwynne, quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a first day quite… well, quite like this before.”
“Well,” Tara sighed. “We have had our fair share of experiences with Philip… I’m a bit surprised he brought him here at all, to be honest.”
“I appreciate it, anyway,” said Mr Gwynne. “And you’re sure it’s okay for Robin—?”
“I think so,” said Tara. “We’ll just have to play it by ear, Huw, but let’s try it and see how it goes.”
Andrew was beginning to feel more comfortable now, even excited. Through the doorway he caught a glimpse of white-blond hair and further pictures and colours on the walls. He spotted a square of stars which could have been cut from the sky. He saw swirls of reds and greens, oranges and yellows, paintings of people, houses, trees, dogs and tractors. If Tara said that everything would be alright, then it had to be alright, and even if Tara went away again, then Robin would still be here, wouldn’t he?
“What do you think then, Andrew?” said Mr Gwynne, smiling again. “Do you want to come into assembly now? I’ve saved you a seat next to Robin.”
* * *
There tended to be a calm after lambing. On a good year, the worst of it lasted for about six weeks, after which Adam came staggering out into the sunshine, blinking, with six weeks of beard and sleeplessness and a constant cough from the pipe still hanging out of the left-hand side of his mouth. Robin and Martin would watch this figure from the lawn where the weather had found them, watch it vanish upstairs, hear the pipes clank, the tank in the attic rush and groan, black water gush into the drain outside the kitchen window and – finally – their father would reappear from the back door in a T-shirt instead of his tattered coat and go and position himself on a gate, watching the grass and the lambs growing together.
In truth, of course, Adam did not spend anything like as much of May sitting on a gate as he did mucking out the sheds, fixing fences, shooting moles, vaccinating, detailing, drenching and castrating, cutting firewood to dry ready for winter, and rebuilding the ruined cottage. This was always the way, however much he might have claimed to need a holiday, but if one or other of the boys were able to locate him on a gate at this time of year, then he would invariably come up with something interesting to tell you.
Adam loved to talk about sheep. He would tell the boys how all of them had different characters, just like humans had, and how some of them were clever and some of them were stupid, and some were greedy, and others adventurous, or uptight, or solitary, and if you didn’t believe him, then you should just sit there for a few years and watch them yourself. He’d tell them how everyone in the country would have been surrounded by sheep once upon a time, and how Christians would have seen the whole idea of being a flock quite differently to the way that most people saw it today. Or he’d tell them about the peewits tumbling endlessly over their nests in the bog and the bottom fields, about owls and curlews, badgers and pine martens. Most of which went straight over Robin’s head, so he would simply lean on the gate beside his father, looking towards the red curve of Offa’s Bank, where the first bowed heads of the bracken were just pushing up through the bodies of their forebears, and listen to the sound of his voice.
* * *
Every year, at about this time, Bill Llanoley would find himself with time on his hands and embark on a wholesale massacre of rabbits. For two or three days, he would charge around the hillsides, mostly by night, discharging his shotgun at fleeing white tails until either the mood had passed or he had a sufficient mountain of rabbit bodies to feel that the point had been made.
“Fucking rabbits!”
Once he’d calmed down again, Bill would then set out on a tour of the neighbouring farms, presenting people with rabbits, enjoying the cups of tea and glasses of beer that he was given, and generally spreading gossip until his supply of rabbits had been exhausted, at which point he would return to his mother and their ruined barn for another year of hard labour.
There was an orchard at Penllan, which consisted of a couple of apple trees and a pear tree, where Tara would hang a hammock in the summer if the weather looked like it might hold for more than a day or two. It was surrounded by a loop of the track and the vegetable garden, and it was here that Robin and Martin were sitting, learning how to whistle, when Bill appeared in his green Daihatsu.
“How do, boys?” he said, slowing down beside them, his red face grinning from the open window.
“Look, Bill!” said Robin. He jabbed his finger at his upper jaw. “Look, I’ve got a tooth missing!”
“You have and all!” said Bill, exposing another half-inch of gum and a blackened molar. “You’ll make a farmer yet, I reckon… Either of you two boys fancy a rabbit?”
“Yeah!” said Martin.
Robin said nothing.
“He’s dead, mind.”
“I want a dead rabbit,” said Martin. “I’m going to be a vet, and vets chop dead rabbits open.”
“Oh ar?” said Bill. “Well, if you qualifies in the next day or two, I’ve got a heifer needs a bit of a look. Just if you’ve got a moment…”
Appearing in the gateway to the yard, Adam had the look on his face that he often had at this time of year, when his projects became more about enthusiasm than necessity. In his hands he had a claw hammer, a plastic carton full of nails and a piece of wood about two feet long. When he saw Bill, the only change in his expression was a slight dimpling in either cheek.
“Rabbit time again!” he said, leaning on the bonnet and inspecting the grey-brown body that Martin was now cradling in his arms.
“Rabbit time!” Bill greeted him.
“Got a few this year?” asked Adam.
“How do I chop him open?” Martin demanded.
“Why?” said Adam. “You going to cook him?”
“He’s going to be a vet,” said Bill. “He’s coming round to have a look at my heifer.”
“Mmm,” said Adam. “There is an old dissection kit about the place somewhere. Remind me later on, Mart. You can help me cut him up, if you like.”
“Touch of foul, I ’spect,” said Bill.
“Tell you what,” said Adam. “Let’s say we put up another bar for Meredith, then I’ll go up the kitchen and get Bill a cup of tea. What do you reckon, boys? You coming to see if Meredith’s about?”
Meredith was the only ewe at Penllan with a name, and due to some pact with Adam she had been excused the normal rules of sheepliness and was allowed to do absolutely whatever she pleased. This consisted mainly of wandering around the valley, vaulting fences and communing with distant relatives and tups at the wrong times of year. Aside from her sporadic production of lambs, Meredith’s sole task was to accompany the other ewes to Offa’s Bank each July, where they would all be left to graze for a month or so – except for Meredith, who would race Adam and his tractor back across the valley to Penllan, and invariably beat him.
“The thing is,” said Adam to Bill, as they were crossing the side-field across the track, “Meredith isn’t your average ewe and you can’t go round treating her like she is. She can get in and out of any field in the valley and she knows it, and you’ve kind of got to respect that.”
“I had a ewe like that myself about twenty years back,” said Bill. He looked at Robin and Martin. “You should have seen her, boys, I swear! She was famous in the village, she was! She used to jump out of her field, just like a kangaroo, and off she’d go, out over Offa’s Bank! She’d get as far as the Derw sometimes, but she’d always be back for her tea!”
“A kanga-ewe?” said Adam, raising an eyebrow.
“A kanga-ewe!” echoed Robin, laughing delightedly, and Martin joined in a moment later.
The side-field was long but narrow, and on its far side there was a stile with nail holes all over the posts. When the four of them arrived, Adam put down the plastic carton in the grass and picked out a couple of six-inch nails, one of which he stuck like a pipe in the corner of his mouth. Around him, the grass was deep now, thick with daisies, just at the height when it was beginning to tickle your legs.
“Belief!” he said, and nailed one end of the piece of wood to the stile with a couple of quick strokes. “That’s the thing! You see, Meredith believes that she can get in and out of this field, which she always enters and exits by precisely the same route.” He hammered in the other nail and stood back, turning to the boys for approval. “Believe it or not, no matter how high I raise this bar, she still goes sailing clear over the bloody thing!”
* * *
For much of that afternoon, Tara had been pushing a wheelbarrow backwards and forwards from the big shed to the garden, her radio dangling from one of the handles and her dungarees smeared with manure. Where Adam tended to get overexcited about animals at this time of year, Tara would get equally absorbed in her vegetables – as you might have expected from the only vegan sheep-farmer in the known world. Either she was weeding around the onions or planting out basil and coriander in her home-made cloche, sprinkling slug pellets or erecting a series of great bamboo constructions, which would later vanish beneath runner beans and become some of the best hiding places on the entire farm.
“Ah!” she said, as the four of them arrived back at the track. She was pushing the empty wheelbarrow, and it took her a moment to close the garden gate properly behind her, rearranging the chicken wire with her boot to make sure that it was rabbit-proof. “Still doing good deeds for gardeners, Bill?”
“Bloody slaughter, this year!” said Bill.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Tara.
“Look, Tara,” said Martin. “This is Sir Belvedere!”
He presented her with the dead rabbit, which Tara did her best to admire.
“Oh, Adam,” she said. “Emily Jones rang just now. Apparently there’s an Indian theme at the party tonight. I don’t suppose you remember what happened to that shirt that Owl brought back with him from Manali that time, do you? I couldn’t find it up in the attic, and it’d be perfect for you…”
Adam frowned, tapping his hammer against the carton so the nails jangled.
“You are coming, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Well…” he said. “I did tell Bill that I’d go over and give him a hand with his barn later on. Parts of it are becoming a bit of a death trap…”
“If you’re busy, look—” Bill started.
“Well, I did say,” said Adam. “Look, perhaps it’s best if I just come over and pick you up later… We’re just going to have a quick cup of tea now, okay? Then I’ll go and see if I can’t do anything about those bloody gutters.”
Robin was watching as Adam and Bill continued up the hill – the muscles moving in waves beneath Adam’s T-shirt, stretching his sleeves until they looked like they might burst. Beside him, Tara picked the wheelbarrow up again, but then she seemed to think better of it and put it back down, pulling off her gloves and rubbing her temples with her clean, white fingers, staring across the valley towards the invisible mark of the English border.
“Tara?” asked Robin. “Is it a Red Indians party?”
“No, Robin,” said Tara, distantly. “It’s an Indians from India party.”
“Oh!” said Robin. “We’re learning about Indians from India at school! ‘Namaste!’ That’s what Mr Gwynne says.”
“That’s good,” said Tara.
“Is Mr Gwynne going to be at the party?” said Robin.
“I expect so, yes,” said Tara.
A few feet away, Martin had arranged the rabbit on his lap and was lifting up its ears, apparently trying to see into its brain. Robin had always hated dead animals and he could barely even look at it without thinking about the cold fur, the blackened holes of the shotgun pellets, the eyeballs staring blankly into the grass.
“Tara?” asked Robin. “What does sexy mean?”
“Why do you want to know that?” said Tara, frowning, turning from Offa’s Bank and looking down at him.
“Well,” said Robin, “Nigel told me that Gethin thinks you’re sexy.”
“Ah,” said Tara.
She said nothing else for several seconds, and Robin began to worry that he might have somehow upset her. So he moved a bit closer and put his arms round her hips.
“Are you okay, Tara?” he asked eventually.
“Yes,” said Tara. “Yes, I’m fine… It’s just your father. He can be a bit difficult at times, that�
�s all.”
“Like grampa,” said Robin, helpfully.
“Maybe a bit.” Tara took her gloves from the side of the wheelbarrow and began to pull them back on. “I’d just have liked him to come along to the party, that’s all… Well, Robbo, sexy means… If someone fancies someone else, if they want them to be their boyfriend or their girlfriend, then they think that they’re sexy. But… I’m sure Gethin’s very nice, but I don’t really think that I want to be his girlfriend.”
Robin laughed, but she hardly seemed to notice as she picked up the wheelbarrow and continued on her way to the big shed and its pile of straw and manure.
CHAPTER NINE
A PLACE OF GHOSTS
There was rarely a time at school when Andrew couldn’t smell Werndunvan: the dogs, the bales, the kitchen where his mother clung to the front of the Rayburn. At different times he smelt different things, so one day he might smell Di at his desk beneath the room-wide windows, the mustiness of the bald, scratchy patches on her skin. But then he would smell Meg, and he would think about times when they had been curled up together in the hay, when she had kept him from the cold, licked the dirt from his face, whined to keep him company.
“Right,” said Mr Gwynne across the room, frowning at the picture that he was drawing on the blackboard – the latest in a long line of odd-shaped beasts and birds. “This is an Indian elephant, which is the biggest animal in the entire country. Now, Indian elephants grow to about ten foot tall, so if you can imagine a large four-wheel-drive tractor – a Ford 4100, say – that’s the kind of size that we’re talking about…”
Andrew was hungry, and it was always next to impossible to think properly at this time of day. From the hatch to the canteen he could smell the first, maddening smells of dinner – roast lamb and potatoes, possibly with ice cream for sweet – and his mind was thick with carrots and gravy, chocolate sauce and crispy bits of fat. Mrs Garraway, the school cook, took her job very seriously. She was, as she put it, responsible for the future of the entire village, and as a result she bought only the very finest cuts of meat from the village abattoir – which happened to be run by her son, Jim – while she grew almost all of the vegetables herself, in the enormous garden behind her cottage.