by Kirsty Eyre
‘Seven pregnant, three lame and two sick,’ Rachel corroborates. ‘We’ve separated them off.’
‘I’ll look at them after milking,’ I say, wondering when I can have another mug of tea.
Nathan puts down his bucket and raises an eyebrow. ‘So, you’re going to roll your sleeves up and get stuck in, are you?’
I smile awkwardly. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel entirely over-faced by the enormity of what I’ve taken on. In spite of working on the farm during every school holiday, it’s been fifteen years since I last helped out properly, and things have changed a fair bit: the technology, the machinery, nutritional advice; even the way that you identify and report on lameness. The amount of data you can get by implanting a tiny subcutaneous sensor is insane. Information at your fingertips: how much a cow eats, drinks, moves and sleeps. Her body temperature, her stress levels, acidity levels affecting rumination. Her heat cycle and responsiveness to a bull. Early detection of mastitis and disease. Analysis paralysis.
On balance, I can deal with the data, but it’s the physical and medical aspects that I find intimidating. I haven’t got a clue about the onset of lameness, Blackleg or Red Nose. Still, I can’t let it get the better of me. I owe that to Dad.
Rachel opens the gate to the field and stands back as 150 cows buffet their way across the yard to the milking shed, led by Star as always. Follow the star. A cacophony of groans reverberates under the corrugated-iron roof. Machinery hisses. Gates rattle and clank. Monitors bleep. Pipes glug and cows grunt. We plug the cows into the milking machines, seventeen at a time. The vanilla smell of fresh milk mixes with cow dung and you can almost taste it on the back of your throat. What Nathan can do in twenty seconds takes me two minutes, and I’m painfully aware that by the end of morning milking, he has done 80 per cent of the grunt work, even after my days of practice.
‘You want worker’s hands.’ Nathan watches me inspect the blisters that are forming beneath my fingers. ‘Grow thicker skin and you’ll be fine.’
I’m not sure I want thicker skin. I am sure I want a cup of tea and a bath. And a slice of Grandma’s homemade bread. I miss her. I miss the lists she writes on the back of used envelopes and leaves strewn around the house. I miss the mouldy satsumas in the fruit bowl and tinned pears past their sell-by date. What I wouldn’t give for the smell of cooking apples and lavender talcum powder to return and everything to be normal again.
Grandma is suffering. She hasn’t eaten for days and won’t stop making jam. She always makes jam in times of crisis. She was the same when Grandpa died. No wonder she’s shattered, what with stirring huge vats of gooseberry jelly for hours on end and running between me, Beatrice and Dad, like we’re some sort of love triangle. Poor Grandma, she can’t function straight. I heard her whispering on the phone to Beatrice that it’s only right she goes before him. But she won’t talk about it with me. She finds it difficult to look me in the eye. Like I might ask scary questions she hasn’t formulated answers to. She can’t bear being at the farm without Dad, and winds up wandering from room to room looking at his stuff without saying anything. On reflection, it’s actually fortunate that Beatrice needs her because when she is here, there’s a huge tension between us. I can’t put a mug down without her swiping it away a second later. We’re both guilty of snapping at each other because we’re exhausted, worried sick and don’t know what’s happening from one day to the next.
Wikipedia doesn’t help. A benign brain tumour can be as dangerous to remove as a malignant one, depending on where in the brain it is.
‘You do think he’ll be OK, Billie Goat?’ Grandma whispers after each visiting hour, her eyes threatening to overspill with tears.
‘Yes.’ I hug her tightly, trying my hardest to convey rock-steady faith.
It’s strange how family generations have an unspoken emotional hierarchy when it comes round to supporting each other through tough times. Grandma weeps on Dad, Dad weeps on me, I weep on Speedo and Speedo whimpers to himself. Together we are a set of emotionally dependent Russian dolls, one sheltering the next from a breakdown. The Dairy Farmer continues to plop through our letter box and nobody is reading it. As the backlog grows, so do our anxieties.
It takes ten minutes to hose everything down, but a further twenty to disinfect the equipment. The cows swagger out, hips sashaying, udders relieved. I head back to the house to sort the calf bottles and get sidetracked by looking at my phone: several emails from Women’s Health promoting various Benjamin Button-style age-reversing miracle creams. A mail from a Nigerian head barrister, informing me that an inheritance from an unknown relative who moved to Africa in the 1970s is coming my way if I, ‘kindly Mr Billie Oliver’, send over my bank details. And a few mails from friends.
Greetings from The Shard!
Bill,
I’m writing to you from the 72nd floor of The Shard – check out the photos! Everything’s glassy and shiny and you can see all the way out to the Thames estuary. They have these state-of-the-art lifts with retina recognition and mood lighting – maybe you could install this shit in your milking shed!
How’s it going up there? Hopefully you’ll be back soon. Gotta dash else I’ll be late to my next business breakfast.
Kat x
*
Bev’s Hen Party
Hi-di-hi campers,
It’s hen party time for Bev! Well, it will be in November. How are you all fixed for the weekend of 20/21? Bev wants to do something in London, so nobody gets bankrupted. Probably a meal and a shedload of drinks.
RSVP to me!
Maria x
(one half of the maids-of-honour ensemble – bless Billie, she’s up to her neck in cow dung!)
*
Berlin, Baby! Save the date
Doooooods!
Please save the date for 23/24 October for Kat’s hen party! Given that this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, she’d love us to all do something special and hit Berlin. Once I’ve got numbers, I’ll look into flights and accommodation.
RSVP to me!
Maria x
(one half of the maids-of-honour ensemble – bless Billie, she’s up to her neck in cow dung)
*
Confession
Shitbag,
How’s it going? Are you dying on your ass up there in God’s Own country?
Hope you don’t mind but I’ve nicked your locker. I’ve taken up running and need somewhere to stash my gear – your fail for not changing the default number on your combi-lock.
When are you coming back?
Hugs and kisses,
Davo x
The microwave beeps. I don’t know when I’m coming back. It feels like my former life has been frozen in time. I’ve unopened bills on my bed back in London. Clothes laid out for the KSG meeting I never attended. Uneaten food in the cupboards. Neglected PhD application forms. All hopes and dreams temporarily on hold and, meanwhile, my compassionate leave has run out – apparently compassion has an expiry date no matter what – and I’ve been forced to request an unpaid sabbatical.
From: Maria
Lesbian hen party conundrum: We can’t have B&K’s parties on the same date as that excludes their mutual friends, but now I’ve got people dropping out of both because they can’t afford to go on two. And if they pick one, then that’s like a bride v bride popularity contest. FFS!!!!
My face tingles as hot steam rises from each bottle as I fill them with formula.
Nathan pops his head through the window. ‘What’s keeping you?’
‘Just sterilizing the bottles!’ I hold them up as evidence.
‘Why would you do that when they’re licking God-knows-what all day?’ He assesses the bottles. ‘If they’re for Carlie and Mia, they’ll need more than that! Ten per cent of their birth weight per day in milk, they’ll need. I assume you know what you’re doing?’
I clearly don’t know how much the calves weighed when they were born, but I’
m loath to ask him – even though he possesses every bit of information I need, I do have a smattering of pride. Instead, I make a mental note to go through their birth logs.
The calves at least fill me with hope. Carlie and Mia dance around the pen when they see me approach with milk, nuzzling at my waist in anticipation. They judder and twitch, nipping on the bottle teat and pulling as hard as they can, full of innocence and urgency. Carlie’s delicate black legs skate Bambi-like on the concrete as she tugs at the bottle, her hooves slipping and sliding. She has panda-like markings around her eyes, the rest of her face pure white. When she’s finished the bottle, she rubs her milk-stained curly moustache on my leg.
Rachel’s face appears over the wall. Her breath smells of Cherry Coke.
‘How old are they?’ she smiles.
‘Carlie’s four weeks and Mia’s six weeks.’
She lets herself into the pen. ‘Can I help?
‘Sure.’ I hand her the bottle that Mia’s attached herself to, which promptly flies out of her hand, sending an arc of milk spurting onto the straw bedding.
‘It’s easier if you hold it at an angle, like a pen,’ I say, picking up the bottle. ‘Air won’t get trapped that way.’ I repeat the advice Dad gave me as a teenager.
‘They’re really cute.’ She tickles Mia’s chin.
A couple of Orpington chickens strut into the pen, bushy leg feathers blowing in the breeze like baggy pantaloons.
‘How’s the GCSE prep going?’ I say.
She pulls a face. ‘OK. I’ll definitely fail Maths, though – something else for Dad to go mental about!’ Mia’s tongue lollops down her sleeve. ‘That tickles!’ she squeals, dancing round in the straw.
‘Rach?’ Nathan hurries in, knocking over a broom, which clatters to the ground. ‘Out!’
‘But, Dad …?’ she says.
‘Time we got breakfast,’ he says gruffly.
I stroke Carlie’s soft ears. ‘You can grab something here if you want?’
‘No,’ Nathan says sternly. ‘Thank you.’
Rachel reluctantly hands me back the bottle. ‘My dad, the asshole,’ she mutters.
I head back inside to tackle the accounts. The blurry digits of the oven clock suggest it’s only 8.30 a.m. Joely will be on her way to work now, her crisp white shirt scented with passionflower linen spray, a pencil skirt complementing the contours of her hips, her bare legs never-ending.
To: Joely (future wife) Chevalier
Up to my neck in cow dung, thinking of you xxx
The house feels eerily quiet without anyone here. Floorboards creak in places they didn’t a week ago and my eye is drawn to detail I wouldn’t normally notice: cobwebs drifting over the curtain poles, the flutter of moths in the cupboard under the stairs, speckles of mould on the bathroom ceiling. Night-time is worse. It brings out its own score of sound effects – the groan of contracting furniture, the sudden drip of built-up water in the showerhead onto the porcelain bath, foxes rutting, owls hooting. The flicker of bats in the barn. Everything feels colder without Dad and Grandma here.
I sit at the kitchen table, half-heartedly tapping at a hard-boiled egg with a teaspoon while working through spreadsheet upon spreadsheet of accounts. At first, it all just washes over me – cash-flow plans, SWOT analysis, herd health programmes. Dad’s got a plan for everything: nutrient management, waste management, calf care, you name it, there’s a spreadsheet for it. The figures in the columns stare back at me and I can’t make head nor tail of it. It may as well be written in hieroglyphics. It’s only when my eye is drawn to the Grand Totals at the bottom of last month’s profit-and-loss spreadsheet that it becomes glaringly obvious that we are running at a hefty loss. A huge loss. A loss I feel sick to the core about.
Flicking back through the previous months’ accounts, it’s the same story. Loss upon loss. The losses getting greater as time goes on. To think that my dad has been carrying this burden for months, perhaps years, the stress eating at him whilst I was merrily gadding about in London, oblivious. I push away my boiled egg and pick up the phone.
I’m supposed to be discussing the calves’ feed blend with the nutritionist. Instead, I alternate between calling Joely and Grandma. Joely’s voicemail kicks in after seven rings and Grandma’s mobile phone is switched off. It’s probably in a cupboard in this house. I can’t get through on Beatrice’s landline either. Every time I call, it’s permanently engaged – no doubt thanks to Auntie ‘just checking on John but really want to yap about myself for hours’ June.
From: Joely (future wife) Chevalier
In non-stop meetings, thinking of you xxx
I go back into the big barn to reclaim the packet of cherry Bakewells I’ve left in the wheelbarrow when I notice Nadia circling her pen restlessly. A heavy mucus discharge suggests this is the onset of labour. With Nathan having disappeared until later, I call Lorna.
‘Has she expelled the water sac?’ she asks.
My eyes skim the straw for a saggy blob of something. ‘Remind me what a water sac looks like.’
‘You’d know it if you saw it. Is she standing?’
‘Sometimes.’ I heave myself onto the second bar of the cold metal gate. ‘Then she’ll lie down and shuffle about a bit.’
‘She may just be uncomfortable. It’s a heavy load.’
Nadia gives me a filthy look. She doesn’t want me there.
‘So how will I know when she’s about to give birth?’ I say.
‘You’ll see the head and hooves come out,’ Lorna says breezily. ‘I personally think she’s another week away.’
I don’t understand how she can be that sure. I remember Parsnip arriving ten days before her due date when Jupiter gave birth to her under a hawthorn bush in somebody else’s field. We had to walk miles to find her, Jupiter being a private, independent cow with not much time for humans. She’d managed to get over a stone wall that none of the others could jump, knowing that there was more wood sorrel and dandelion on the other side to dine on. Only the best for her girls. She birthed Parsnip’s twin sisters under the very same bush. They came early too, each of them with an almost heart-shaped white blotch on her forehead. Lady Love and Lady Lovely.
Nadia cranes her neck and lets out a deep grunt.
‘I think you might need to come over,’ I say.
‘Any reason to believe it’s going to be a difficult birth?’ Lorna asks me.
I watch Nadia twist and turn in her pen. ‘Aren’t all births difficult?’
‘They shouldn’t be. She’s very healthy.’
‘Are you saying you don’t need to come for a birth?’
‘I’ll be over tomorrow anyway, unless you think you need me now.’
Nadia lets out a haunting groan. ‘I think I need you now.’
Forty minutes later, Lorna stands before me in running gear, cheeks flushed and hair damp. She holds a bottle of livestock wormer in one hand and a Dectomax drench gun in the other. I get a hot flash of the bull sperm incident: the taunts in the school corridors. Cum again? Her superiority. My humiliation.
‘I’ve got Star and Mary down as having eye-worm,’ she says. ‘So, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone.’
‘Right,’ I say, realizing those names correspond with the cows in the pen I have been ignorantly checking for lameness. ‘Nadia’s in the barn.’
We head into the cowshed, where Nadia groans from the second pen.
Lorna assesses her from ten feet away. ‘Nope,’ she says tersely. ‘Not in labour.’
‘She seems in quite a bit of pain,’ I say, feeling inadequate, incompetent and about three years old.
Lorna opens the gate and lets herself into the enclosure. Nadia allows her to run her hands over her neck and withers, down further over her crops, around her brisket and down her leg towards her knee, raising her hoof compliantly. Considering Nadia doesn’t even like me stepping into her pen, this in itself is a triumph.
Lorna studies her claws. ‘That’ll be the culprit!’ she sa
ys, pointing out a red area of Nadia’s cloven hoof. ‘She’s got a sole ulcer.’
I lean over the gate but can’t really see what she’s talking about and don’t want to distress Nadia by coming closer.
‘How’s her diet?’
‘Good,’ I say. ‘I mean, I think she’s eating healthily.’
‘You think?’ She raises an eyebrow and picks up her iPad. ‘Here we go. Alfalfa, haylage, barley and wheat grain. She’s on commercial supplements. Any reason she doesn’t have access to pasture?’
‘I just thought … what with her calf coming and …’
‘Her calf probably won’t be here for at least another week,’ she says. ‘I appreciate you’ve got plenty of straw in here but it’s patchy. The best thing you can do is get her out in the fields. She’ll be missing the social aspect as much as anything. I’ll trim the horn down once I’ve seen to the other two ladies.’
She picks up the bottle of wormer she’s left on the breeze-block wall and we wander over to Star and Mary, who have never been that keen on each other. It’s not that they out-and-out hate each other, and they’re certainly not vicious, but in a natural environment, they would probably choose to ignore each other, a bit like Lorna and I.
Lorna pulls on latex gloves and loads the drench gun, which spews out orange-brown goo. I try not to think about bull sperm – the sticky eyebrows, the humiliation – but it’s too late, I can’t hold it back.
I was fifteen, which means Lorna would have been twelve. It was summer up on the farm and the air was honeysuckle warm. I’d just come back from a run and noticed that Dad had sectioned off around ten cows for insemination, a process I still to this day find traumatic for a number of reasons. Bertha and Hyacinth knew what was coming and were antsy – a lot of tail swishing and hoof grinding was going on. A few moments later, Lorna’s dad arrived with all the gear. He was dressed in khaki shorts – which he wore whatever the weather – and carried a heavy tank of liquid nitrogen, containing bull sperm in individual straws, which he parked next to the cowshed entrance. As soon as he removed the lid, gas smoked out like something out of a sci-fi movie. With a long pair of tweezers, he extracted a single straw of semen and had just plopped it into a pot of warm water when Lorna came running in with his phone. I remember she was wearing denim shorts and a butterfly T-shirt. ‘Mum’s on the line. Says it’s urgent.’