Cow Girl

by Kirsty Eyre

  The agenda comprises a morning of presentations by PhD alumni, lunch, and then the post-grad fair itself. I take a seat and leaf through a ‘Happy Pharma’ pamphlet, and there he is, hogging the centre spread: Professor Williams, Ambassador of Eclampsia Research and holder of the PhD purse-strings. My throat tightens and my skin prickles. I need to nail my pitch today. His headshot suggests he’s grown a beard since I last cyber-stalked him. As I reassess the audience for facial hair, the room falls silent for KSG’s first speaker and PhD alumna, one Joely Chevalier.

  It isn’t the rhythmic tap of stiletto heels on parquet flooring as she strides to the lectern, or the caramel-sweet scent of jasmine and vanilla that lingers as she passes. It isn’t her gentle hum, her aloof swagger, or the way she confidently leaves one hand in the pocket of her tailored navy curved-hem trousers. And it certainly isn’t the intoxicatingly sexy French accent, as she hasn’t yet spoken, but there’s something about Joely Chevalier that robs me of my ability to swallow and has me hanging on her every movement.

  She rolls back the cuffs of her crisp white shirt at the lectern, her eyes slowly skimming the room, before dipping her chin towards the microphone and huskily bidding everyone, ‘Bonjour.’

  A surge of panic swells in my gut at the thought of having to be as good as her to bag a post-grad. She has no notes whatsoever, and is casually freestyling her way through slide after slide of ovarian statistics by geography, her hands gliding effortlessly over colour-coded maps like a seasoned weather girl. Her French lilt serves only to accentuate her command of the English language, referring to ‘phenotypes’, ‘epidemiology’ and ‘complex pathophysiology’ with ease. The pocket lining of my trousers feels really itchy, and my shirt feels too tight as Joely Chevalier singles me out and directs her speech at me. Our eyes lock. I daren’t inhale, exhale, blink or swallow, lest it ruin the moment, which abruptly halts when I realize that she’s actually looking at a distinguished, muscular guy behind me, who’s encouraging her with nods, smiles and no doubt a raging hard-on.

  She slips through the stage exit to rapturous applause and I feel my insides go all mushy in the same way they did when Beyoncé wore ‘that leotard’.

  By lunchtime, snow is whirling outside the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the KSG restaurant, flakes falling thicker and faster. I wonder whether Dad and Grandma are snowed in at the farm. Snow rarely settles here, children making snowmen out of roadside slush, but back at the farm five-foot snowdrifts are commonplace and, as the nearest shop is two miles away, you can be cut off for days. Weeks even.

  Around me, salads are being shunned for soups and attendees are starting to worry about their return journeys, several travel websites announcing cancelled trains. It takes half an hour of loitering next to the drinks machine before I spot my goddess over at the cold buffet table. She frowns at a salmon amuse-bouche, tilting it this way and that, as you might assess the authenticity of a diamond. I rearrange my fringe, grab a tray and meander over.

  ‘Not a fan?’ I say, in a way that hopefully suggests our paths have inadvertently crossed, as opposed to the choreography I have manufactured to reach her side.

  She looks at me with dark chocolate eyes, her piano fingers sliding a silver bumblebee across a delicate chain under her chin.

  ‘Du café, Joelle?’ Christophe Concordel (according to his name badge, which could mean he is not Christophe Concordel at all), the handsome, sculpted guy from earlier, muscles in. He’s taller and more chiselled than I remember; the sort that bench-presses his body weight before breakfast and owns a range of men’s fragrances.

  She takes the cup and saucer from him, their eyes meeting.

  ‘Great presentation.’ I cling to the role-play I’ve rehearsed, but Christophe has edged his way into our conversation and now the three of us are making small talk about food: French food in China, Chinese food in Britain, and British food in Iceland (the supermarket).

  He reads my name badge. ‘Billie Ollvot, Queen’s Research.’

  ‘It’s actually “Oliver”. Billie Oliver. Typo,’ I say.

  He rolls up the sleeves of his navy cashmere jumper to reveal monogrammed shirt cuffs, and spears a gherkin with a cocktail stick. ‘You know, we could triple your salary at KSG?’

  I glance at Joely before looking him in the eye and countering his gherkin by stabbing at a dried-up cheese croquette. ‘That’s not what motivates me,’ I say, dropping the croquette into my mouth with paralleled nonchalance, but it’s so freaking hot it’s all I can do not to choke the whole fucking thing out into my serviette.

  Joely’s face becomes a frown as tears stream down my cheeks and Christophe’s eyebrows rise, although whether as a result of my killer assertiveness or my laissez-faire attitude to food hotter than lava, I couldn’t say.

  ‘Let me show you the bathroom,’ Joely says when it becomes clear I won’t be speaking again any time soon.

  Christophe turns away with a very Gallic shrug, and I try not to trip over my coat, which keeps slipping off my bag as she leads me through the crowd towards the expansive reception lobby.

  ‘That was amazing!’ Her dark chocolate eyes drink me in. ‘The way you spoke to Christophe. Nobody ever speaks to him like that! He’s the COO of Europe, so everyone just tells him what he wants to hear.’

  Part of me wants to curl up and die. Have I just committed career suicide?

  She adjusts her shirt collar, unleashing an exotic musk that messes with my pheromones, and I decide not to tell her I was oblivious to his rank. ‘Are you here for PhD sponsorship?’

  ‘Yes. Eclampsia Research.’

  Her eyes shine. ‘Hit me up with your pitch!’

  The thought of having to pitch to this goddess is like being asked to take a dump in front of someone. I just can’t. My nose crinkles with mortification.

  ‘Go on!’ she says.

  ‘OK, I’m Billie Oliver.’

  ‘Nice to meet you Billie Oliver.’ She sparkles.

  ‘And I’d like to …’ Her eyes undress me. At least I think they do, though she could just be genuinely interested in biochemistry. ‘I’d like to pitch for a place on your Eclampsia Research PhD course, Professor Williams.’

  ‘Professor Williams?’ Her brow puckers.

  ‘I was just role-playing—’

  ‘Professor Williams has cancelled because of the snow! He’s leaving now, to drive north before the trains are cancelled and everyone wants a lift.’

  ‘He …’ High-pitched ringing inhabits my ears. I’ve waited too long for this moment.

  ‘If you’re quick, you might catch him.’ She gestures out of the window to a figure in a long coat, battling the elements with a shovel in the far corner of the car park.

  I drag on my coat, wondering what sort of person drives into central London on one of the snowiest days of the year and pays the congestion charge for the privilege. ‘It’s really nice to meet you, but I need to talk to him!’ I say, hurrying towards the rotating door.

  ‘In the snow?’ she calls after me.

  It hurts to leave her, but it’ll hurt more if I let this opportunity go. ‘I’ll be back!’

  Wind howls across the car park. Snow turns to sleet. The sky is an apocalyptic charcoal grey. I hold down my swirling tornado of hair as flecks of ice whip around my ears. My cheeks sting. My shirt cuffs freeze. Squinting into the blizzard, I slip and slide towards the Citroën Berlingo that revs triumphantly next to a pile of discarded Christmas trees.

  ‘Hello!’ I shout pointlessly.

  Professor Williams, the embodiment of a friendly wizard, clambers out of the driver’s seat, his beard snow-dusted in patches. He holds a can of anti-freeze and a Eurythmics CD case featuring Annie Lennox sporting very short, very red hair.

  ‘Sorry to bother you.’ I extend my hand with rehearsed self-assurance. ‘I’m Billie Oliver, from Queen’s Eclampsia Research team.’

  He shuns my handshake to squirt anti-freeze over the windscreen, electric-blue gullies trickling through
snow like old veins. As he reaches for the middle of the windscreen, his metal-framed spectacles make their way off his nose, clinking on wet glass.

  ‘As you can see, I’m a little preoccupied.’ His voice is gentle, and he enunciates every consonant with care, clearing the snow off his glasses.

  ‘Here.’ I hand them to him with numbing fingers, and he finishes scraping the window clear of snow.

  He smiles, sleet stuck to his eyelashes, and climbs into the driver’s seat. ‘I’m heading past the tube station, if you need a lift.’

  I don’t need a lift. Hell, I don’t even need the tube, but there’s no way I’m turning down an opportunity to talk to him. His car smells of sweaty feet and fast food. The passenger footwell is littered with empty crisp packets and trampled polystyrene burger boxes, a dried gherkin stuck to his laptop case.

  He turns on the lights and starts the engine, hot air blasting out of every ventilator. ‘You wanted to talk?’

  ‘Yes.’ I squeeze my hands under my thighs. ‘I’d love to do your Eclampsia Research PhD. I’ve been working in this field since my Bachelor’s, and it’s something I feel passionately about.’

  ‘OK,’ he says slowly, as we crawl across the car park.

  ‘I’ve spent the last two years testing minerals and antihypertensive medication, which will eventually get packaged as a KSG drug, but without a PhD, I can only go so far.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ He keeps his eyes on the road.

  I puff out my chest. ‘I want to find a cure for eclampsia.’

  He chuckles beneath his beard. ‘Would you like to boil the ocean too?’

  My chest compresses. ‘I mean, I’d like to play a part in finding a cure for eclampsia.’

  ‘Why is curing eclampsia important to you?’ He negotiates his way out of a bus lane.

  I pinch at my neck until it hurts. ‘Because my mum died of eclampsia.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Giving birth to me,’ I blurt.

  He flinches and I’m not sure whether it’s the profound impact I’ve had on him or whether it’s in response to the double-decker that has just sprayed us with slush.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to make it personal.’

  ‘No need to apologize. People sit up and listen when it comes from the heart.’ As we pull up to some traffic lights, he engages the handbrake and tries to peel off his coat without undoing his seat belt, contorting into all sorts of shapes a human shouldn’t be. ‘Tell us what you lost. What your father lost. What your siblings lost, if you have any. Tell us how it happened and what we need to do to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody else.’

  I contemplate this. ‘I did write it up as a use-case. I’ve got all the stats. All the timings. All the—’

  ‘It’s not a use-case, Billie. It’s a story. Your story.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, aware that we’re already pulling into the bus stop outside Oval tube station and our conversation is about to draw to a close.

  Professor Williams turns to face me, his intelligent eyes twinkling. ‘Billie.’ He takes off his glasses and swabs each lens with his tie. ‘Your research is strong. I like your spirit. I like your passion. I like the way you tracked me down in a blizzard. I like you. The one niggling doubt I have is more around depth of field.’

  I nod, having no idea what he’s talking about.

  ‘In fact, you’ve got the depth, but maybe need to focus a little more on the breadth.’

  ‘Ooookay,’ I say slowly. Surely this would baffle Alan Turing.

  He swivels round, encumbered by his waistcoat. ‘We know how many women are reported to have had pre-eclampsia. We know a lot aren’t diagnosed. You don’t need to bombard us with statistics, you need to think outside the box. Bridge the gap between academia and real life. Get out of the lab and live your research. Make it stand out. You don’t want to be another candidate dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, you want to be the one everyone remembers.’

  I nod, unsure whether he has just revealed unto me the meaning of life, or handed me a shit sandwich. Just how exactly is one supposed to live eclampsia without getting it?

  ‘Come back to me when you’re ready,’ he says, reaching for the handbrake.

  My bones go brittle and my legs start to cramp. Can’t he see that I’m ready now? I’ve been ready for ten fucking years! And yet he does this all so eloquently, with a serenity impossible to argue with, and in spite of myself and the fury that builds within me, I like him. I just hate the words coming out of his mouth.

  ‘I feel like I’m ready now.’ I force a smile.

  His eyes remain faithful to the rear-view mirror. ‘They all do.’

  Reluctantly, I get out of his car; a run-of-the mill person, with run-of-the-mill dreams, and a run-of-the-mill chance of achieving them. I chew the inside of my cheek until it bleeds run-of-the-mill blood.

  After a painfully cold trip back to KSG via my favourite boulangerie for melt-in-the-mouth brioche, the post-grad fair is cancelled. I check the canteen in the hope that Joely Goddess Chevalier is lingering, but the place is deserted. Pots chink and kitchen staff chatter behind closed metal shutters. I sit with my head in my hands and desperately will the reversal of time. There is only one person who can make me feel better, and that’s Dad.

  It’s 2.30 p.m., which means he’ll have finished all his chores after morning milking and will now be sitting in his paisley print armchair with his feet in a washing-up bowl of warm water. I picture him leafing through the Dairy Farmer, running his fingers through his mop of greying honey-blonde curls as Hallam FM broadcasts the weather forecast. He never misses the weather forecast. A rivulet of sweat will be trickling down his wind-chapped face, despite the house being deathly cold – he always overheats when he soaks his feet. In the hallway, next to that bloody awful stuffed partridge he and Grandma refuse to chuck away, there’ll be an unopened bill with a list of chores scribbled on the back of the envelope. Somewhere on the list will be ‘Phone Bilberry’, but he appreciates it when it’s me who calls him.

  My sticky brioche fingers find ‘Home’ sandwiched between ‘Bev’ and ‘Kat’ among my phone Favourites.

  ‘Brioche?’ Dad says, having run me through a list of which cows are lame, which cows are pregnant, and how one of the cows has adopted her cousin’s calf, as its mother has a bad case of mastitis. ‘Very cosmopolitan.’ I guess everything is cosmopolitan when you live on a five-hundred-acre dairy farm. ‘Hang on, your grandma’s saying something. Oh, she says she knows she’s a bit late, but “Happy Queer Year!” Says she learned it from a lady at church.’

  Bless Grandma: for someone who thinks pasta is exotic and motorway driving is for adrenaline junkies, raising a dyke granddaughter must be strange at times. Dad, on the other hand, always overcompensates, his enthusiasm effervescent. ‘Met any nice girls of late?’

  If only I liked nice girls. ‘No.’

  ‘It’ll happen.’ Speedo barks in the background. ‘How old are you now, thirty-three?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘I guess people don’t get married until a lot older these days,’ he says, insinuating that all is not lost, and that one day I will achieve my life potential – to be half of a couple. I could bite, but what’s the point? He has my best interests at heart and is trying to fulfil the role of both mother and father. He clears his throat. ‘Lorna left a rather eye-opening newspaper article for you about the perils of London being the gay capital of Europe.’ He lowers his voice. ‘Billie, you don’t go to gay saunas, do you?’

  I spend the next ten minutes reassuring him that he is worrying unnecessarily, and that I have never, and will never, have the urge for orgy in a Vauxhall dungeon. Bloody Lorna; she makes the Daily Mail look liberal. For a twenty-nine-year-old vet whose life revolves around the bovine ailments of one small village in Derbyshire, she’s outlandishly opinionated and terribly homophobic.

  ‘Any more migraines since last week?’ I change the subject.
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  ‘No, it was just a one-off. It’s very echoey. Where are you?’

  ‘In an empty canteen. I just pitched to a professor from Sheffield University and—’

  ‘Billie, that’s amazing!’

  ‘I kind of bombed.’ I replay the journey of solid gold cringe in my mind’s eye.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Dad says warmly. ‘I’m sure you were great.’

  ‘I really needed to impress him, and it all went pear-shaped.’

  ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Bilberry. If you were only half as good as your best, you’ll have outstripped everyone there.’

  ‘That’s the thing, there was no one else there.’

  ‘There you go then. You’ve won already.’

  That’s the thing about Dad. He always knows what to say and how to say it. Bolstering me in times of need. Guiding me over life’s hurdles. He’s been like it for ever: encouraging me from the poolside when I swam my first length, reassuring me that my teenage acne would disappear, setting my mind at rest that the odd failed spelling test really doesn’t matter. Nothing’s unsurmountable with Dad. He just has that natural ease about him.

  ‘How’s the milk situ?’ I say, the restaurant staff now filing through to eat their lunch.

  He lets out a cough. ‘The Sheldons have gone bust. Third dairy farm in Derbyshire to go under this year. Fifty-three, no pension, no qualifications, nothing.’

  My skin starts to itch. I’ve come to dread these conversations as there’s nothing I can say or do to help. ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’