Cow Girl

by Kirsty Eyre

  Her dad peeled off his rubber gloves to take the call. No sooner was he out of sight, than Andy Pickering, my dad’s farm hand, appeared from the barn with this smirk on his face. He always had a glint in his eye, but it was clear he was up to something. At first, he just started dicking around with this joint that he’d rolled and asking if, like humans, cows can get stoned. Lorna laughed along with him – she had a bit of a thing for Andy and used to follow him around like a lost puppy, God knows why, because he was a grade-A moron. Then he made his way over to the straws of bull sperm.

  ‘Here, Billie, fancy some spunk?’ he said, peering into the canister.

  I looked away, repulsed. The sight, smell and texture of semen has to be the singularly most revolting thing in the world.

  He picked up the box of disposable gloves and pulled on a pair.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘Cum again?’ He laughed, reaching for the thawed straw of semen.

  ‘Leave that alone,’ I said, looking around for Dad.

  Lorna giggled. She always giggled when he was being a dick.

  ‘Make me!’ Andy said, lifting the straw out and waggling it at me.

  Again, I looked around for Dad, but then remembered that he’d driven off to get fencing supplies. ‘Andy, put it back! It’s not funny. Do you know how much that stuff costs?’

  He held it up to study its form. ‘What is it, golden jizz?’

  ‘Just put it back!’

  ‘Royal jizz? Here, has anyone given you a pearl necklace before?’ He held the straw above my head. ‘Maybe a pearl crown?’

  I ran away with a yelp, but only as far as the barn door.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Lorna shouted. ‘It won’t come out unless you cut the end off.’

  Andy turned back to her. ‘Scissors?’

  Lorna’s eyes travelled to a large pair of secateurs on the hay bale in front of her. She looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  He snatched them up. ‘Wanna bet?’

  ‘Honestly, Andy. You can’t.’ I was getting really worried. ‘My dad’ll go mental. Lorna’s dad’ll go mental and one of the cows won’t calve if you waste it.’

  I tried to grapple them off him, but he spun his body around like a shield, twisting this way and that. I grabbed at his arm but it was the wrong one and, within a split second, he’d managed to snip the straw. Before I could react, he’d flicked it at me, and there I was with warm, gloopy bull sperm sliding down my face.

  ‘Bull’s eye!’ he shouted, laughing at me as semen slid through my hair, its rancid pulp clinging to my eyelashes and spattering my lips.

  ‘You fucking idiot!’ I screamed, then turned tail and ran into the house, repulsed and humiliated.

  That moment, right there, when I was dripping with seed and standing in the shower fully clothed, should be ‘the bull sperm’ incident, but it didn’t end here. Instead, news travelled to the school gates and got twisted and contorted along the grapevine until it became public knowledge that Billie Oliver let a boy from Gosforth Comprehensive spunk all over her at her farm for a tenner. If you didn’t believe it, you only had to ask Lorna Parsons.

  It was no use trying to explain what really happened. Nobody was interested in the truth. They just wanted pornographic gore, and the more spunk the better; animal, human, who cared? I wish I hadn’t. Puberty is hard enough without abhorrent nicknames. ‘Spunk girl’, ‘Jizabell’ and, worst of all, ‘Cum stain Belinda’.

  Lorna peers at me now, clearly unbothered by memories of our past. ‘Any news on your dad?’

  ‘No.’ I look at my shoes as hot tears surface out of nowhere and I’m unsure whether it’s the mortification of the past or the hopelessness of the present that is getting to me the most. And then I feel guilty for allowing myself to obsess over a ridiculous incident that happened years ago whilst there are hugely more important things at stake. ‘Sorry, I’m fine until I have to talk about it. And then I’m not.’

  She sucks her top lip in contemplation. ‘Why don’t you take twenty minutes out?’

  That’s the thing about Lorna, she’s pathologically unempathetic. She can’t just sling her arm around you and give you a hug. I remember when I was nineteen and had come back from university for Christmas, she and her friend, Jessica, were mucking about on the tractor and I cut my hands on this hoof-trimming equipment her dad had left out. I can still feel the pain now. There was blood everywhere and I felt so faint I had to sit down and put my head between my legs. When I came around, Jessica had my hand wrapped in a towel whilst Lorna just stood there staring.

  I miss Joely. I miss my friends. I miss human contact. I miss waking up in my own bed, in the shoebox Maria and I call home, and trudging to work in wet socks. I miss my life.

  I leave Lorna to it and head indoors.

  To: Joely (future wife) Chevalier

  Are you still coming up next weekend? xxx

  Three little bubbles appear on my phone screen beneath her forthcoming message, which vanish without materializing into a text. A few seconds later, they reappear and then vanish again. Five minutes later my phone bleeps.

  From: Joely (future wife) Chevalier

  I’m trying to make it happen, ma petite Anglaise. Christophe wants me to go to Belgium with him on Sunday, but I’ve told him I cannot travel until Monday morning xxx

  The thought of Joely gallivanting around a foreign country accompanied by a man with the looks of James Bond and the pay packet of James Goldsmith makes me shudder. I want to ask her if she’s still attracted to him and enjoys his company. Whether they hang out in the evenings when they’re away on business. Whether they order each other’s drinks and share breakfast in hotel restaurants. Whether he would tuck in her label or tell her she has lipstick on her teeth. I want to ask all these things, but I don’t want the answers.

  To: Joely (future wife) Chevalier

  Thanks. Miss you xxx

  From: Joely (future wife) Chevalier

  Miss you more xxx

  No sooner than her text appears, a black van with swirly italic silver lettering appears in the yard and a lady with a severe fringe gets out holding a large bouquet of pink peonies. I feel all warm inside knowing Joely has remembered my favourite flowers. She hands me the bouquet, through the window. The soft petals tickle my nose as I inhale their fragrance. I open the small, pink card wedged between the stems.

  Hang in there, buddy! Call us if you need us. Don’t forget you’re brilliant.

  Love Maria, Kat and Bear xxx

  Peonies. Friends. Love. Kisses. I dissolve into tears at the kitchen sink. A friend-set is like a toolset. You need different tools for different occasions: Maria for entertainment, Kat for career advice, Bev for loyalty and Joely for love.

  Stuck up here on my own, I don’t have the right tools for the job.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  JELLY BABIES AND PYJAMAS

  From: Maria

  Lesbian hen party conundrum #17. Most of the hens are couples so it’s hardly going to be ‘girls let off the leash having unbridled fun’, is it? Should I invite guys? Also, what’s the deal with vagina earrings?

  Dad lies in one of the eight hundred and fifty beds at Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital. He’s been transferred here for brain surgery. I wander through the west wing with his freshly washed pyjamas and a bag of Jelly Babies, wondering what he’ll be like this time. Bloated or haggard? Alert or subdued? Asleep or awake? The hospital is a monolithic twenty-one storey maze of corridors, makeshift waiting rooms and wards you can’t quite get to. I find ‘Neurosurgery’ colour-coded green on the map and head up in the lift.

  When I eventually identify N1, he’s not there, and I panic that he’s gone into theatre, anaesthetized and alone.

  ‘John Oliver?’ The nurse repeats, squeezing a Hello Kitty toy under her chin, which squeaks each time she releases its furry pink stomach.

  She leans over the monitor of her computer and informs me that he’s been moved to Magnolia
on N2. My lungs expand with relief.

  I follow the smell of detergent down the corridor, the soles of my trainers sticking to the freshly mopped floor. Left through the double doors, past a waiting room of sombre grey faces. Left again at the next set of doors, and sharp right. I see him before he sees me. He’s sandwiched between a heavy-breathing lady surrounded by visitors and a tiny woman who’s fast asleep. His head is shaved in preparation for surgery, and a circle has been drawn onto his scalp with black marker. I try to conceal my shock, but it’s difficult – Dad doesn’t look like Dad without his mop of honey-blonde and grey curls. The twinkle in his eyes has gone and his skin is white-grey. I tell myself it’s just temporary and that he’ll be back to normal soon. Still, my stomach feels queasy looking at him.

  ‘How are you?’ I say, giving him a gentle hug and sitting down in the asylum-green plastic chair at his bedside. ‘How was the journey over? Did they put you in an ambulance?’

  ‘Ambulance car.’ He puts his hand on mine. ‘What are you doing coming to visit me again? I keep telling you, you’ve a farm to run!’

  ‘And I keep telling you, you can’t get rid of me that easily.’ I pluck the larger of the two greetings cards off his bedside table. It features an orange robot spewing a speech bubble that says: ‘Since laughter is the best medicine, you should tell yourself some jokes,’ and is signed ‘with love from Pete and June’.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ he says, ‘but promise me one thing …’

  ‘Go on.’ I put the card back.

  ‘Put the cows before me. Don’t come rushing to my bedside if the ladies need you. I’ve got onsite medical staff, they haven’t. They’re more in need than I am. Have you got a pen?’

  I tap at my pockets and shake my head.

  ‘Maybe you could make notes on your phone then. Daisy needs to cut down on TMR, she’s getting a bit hefty and the extra weight plays havoc with her arthritis. Julia’s been lame on and off all winter, so you need to keep an eye on her. Nadia must be due any day, and Louise and Allie can’t be that far behind.’

  Is there a bovine organization chart I’m unaware of? ‘Which one is Julia?’

  ‘Large, bossy, always first to the milking shed. Hangs out with Mildred. You know, the one with what looks like a black maple leaf on her neck.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Hates Pandora. God knows why.’

  ‘Here,’ I say, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a squashed Ginsters pork pie.

  ‘I take that back.’ Dad chuckles. ‘You can visit whenever you want.’ He fingers the wrapper. ‘You won’t tell your grandma?’

  ‘I’m sure your cholesterol can take a back seat just this once.’

  His eyelids start to droop but he presses on regardless. ‘There’s a kink in one of the hosepipes, which could probably do with being straightened out.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Not the blue one, the yellow one.’

  ‘Dad?’

  His eyes shift to mine and he nods for me to speak.

  ‘I love you.’

  He inhales deeply. ‘I love you too.’

  The ward is stripped of colour. Starched white sheets. Watery blue blankets. Pale green vertical blinds. Cream flooring. Even the daffodils on the neighbouring bedside table have lost their yellow to the garishly bright ceiling lights. Everything is rinsed of its vibrancy.

  ‘How’s little Carlie getting on?’ Dad says.

  ‘She’s fine. Loves her milk. Won’t be too long until she’s on solids.’

  ‘There you go! Sounding like a pro already.’

  I pick at the blister at the base of my inner middle finger. ‘The accounts are a bit worrying.’

  Dad looks at his feet.

  I open the packet of Jelly Babies I’ve bought him. ‘I knew business was bad but …’

  He rummages for a red one. ‘We were doing all right until …’ The expression of frustration on his face evaporates and a curtain of uncertainty closes over him. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We’re at Sheffield Hallamshire.’

  ‘The hospital?’ he whispers.

  I reach for his hand. The cannula in his forearm is bandaged tightly, a neat plastic valve protruding from one end. ‘It’s OK.’

  He stares ahead and then with complete clarity says, ‘Nobody cares, Bilberry. It all went belly up when milk prices dropped another sixty-two pence per litre. All of the big supermarkets, all wanting to be the cheapest, no matter the consequences. As long as milk’s affordable, everyone will pour it over their cereal. It doesn’t matter that dairy farmers can’t make a profit any more.’ He takes a slug of water. ‘Truth be told, we’d be better off selling the herd, selling the equipment and renting the farm out as a B&B.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ I plunge my hand into the bag of Jelly Babies and pull out a green one, yanking its head away from its body, until its gelatine neck spews out emerald gunk.

  He laughs. ‘Run a bed and breakfast? I’d be bloody useless!’

  I want to ask him about selling up, but no matter how I shape the question in my head, it feels wrong. The farm is part of his life and I don’t want him to think I’ve written him off. It’s bad, though. No matter which way you spin it, we’re in financial shit; cow feed, labour, vet fees and depreciation are killing us each month.

  I form the words clearly in my head. Would you consider selling up? But each time I twist my tongue around them, the words get jumbled in my throat. Second-guessing Dad’s reaction reminds me of gearing myself up to coming out to Grandma. The memory is so vivid, it could be yesterday.

  I was seventeen and sitting on the kitchen worktop, raiding the first-aid box for a plaster as I’d cut my knee falling over on the way back from a run. Grandma came in cradling a huge bread bowl covered with a gingham tea towel. She asked me if I’d like to show Beatrice’s grandson around Sheffield. ‘Take him to see a film or something,’ she said.

  ‘As long as this isn’t a set-up.’ I pressed the only plaster I could find, a Star Wars one featuring a wide-eyed Yoda flashing a green light sabre, against my kneecap. ‘I’m not interested in anything romantic.’

  I remember bread dough plopping against the floured surface of the kitchen table as Grandma’s knuckles pounded the yeasty putty, her sapphire engagement ring swivelled around her finger into the palm of her hand. ‘You’ll have to get romantic at some point, Billie Goat. Happens to everyone.’

  My knee stung, but not as much as the words on my tongue. I had rehearsed this moment for ever. I’d role-played it in my head hundreds of times; out loud in my bedroom, in the cowshed, in the fields, in God knows how many public toilets, so I knew how it would play out my end, but was still unsure how she would react, despite thinking through every possible connotation of a reaction. I’d role-played against her scooping me up in her arms and telling me she always had her suspicions and loves me just the way I am. Unconditionally. I’d role-played another version where she was too shocked to speak and had to go for a walk over the fields to digest what I’d said, returning tight-lipped and unsure. In another, she called my dad in and asked him to have a word with me until I ‘see sense’. There was even one incarnation where anger frothed at her mouth and she wanted nothing to do with me. Though, in this version, I could never fully create the image in my mind’s eye so I knew it would never happen. It was time to roll the dice.

  ‘Romance may overcome everyone at some point,’ I said. ‘But it might happen in a slightly different way for me.’

  Grandma dolloped the dough into a bread tin, pressing it firmly into each corner. ‘How do you mean?’

  I lowered myself down from the worktop and leaned on the back of the nearest kitchen chair. ‘Grandma, you might want to sit down.’

  She opened the oven door, a rush of heat invading the room. ‘Are you going to tell me you’re attracted to women?’ Her eyes remained faithful to the bread tins.

  My words caught in my throat. ‘Yes.’

  The oven door clinked shut and he
r wet dishcloth swished backwards and forwards over the table until every last trace of flour disappeared.

  ‘You’re choosing a difficult path, Billie Goat,’ she said eventually. ‘It’d be a hell of a lot easier if you found yourself a man.’

  ‘For who?’ I squeezed the back of the chair. ‘For you?’

  She moved to the sink and ran the hot tap. ‘For you.’

  I hovered at her side. ‘I don’t have a choice, Grandma. I can’t help it. I’m genetically gay.’

  ‘That’s a thing, is it?’ She wrung out the dishcloth under hot water.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since for ever. It’s just not always been acknowledged.’

  ‘Well, Billie Goat, your dad and I love you, no matter what you decide.’

  We didn’t hug. We didn’t retreat to our corners. We didn’t do anything other than carry on as normal, and I couldn’t for the life of me work out whether it had gone seamlessly well or dreadfully badly. It was as if I’d chosen a profession she didn’t value; something random I’d arrived at in a moment of madness. It didn’t feel conclusive, or like it was a weight off my shoulders. If anything, I felt more confused than ever. And it was at this moment I realized that there is no monumental coming-out moment, moreover a succession of coming-out moments, which last a lifetime: coming out to your grandmother, your father, your friends at school, your team-mates at football, your dad’s farm staff, the ladies at Grandma’s bridge club, your sixth-form mates, your colleagues, your professor. What is it they say? It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

  ‘Your grandma will come round,’ I remember Dad saying that evening.

  I’m not sure there ever was a turning point where Grandma did ‘come round’, more of a gradual, unspoken acceptance. It wasn’t until my auntie June took her and Beatrice to see La Cage aux Folles at the Sheffield Lyceum that Grandma had full-blown gay pride for me and made a point of triumphantly humming ‘I Am What I Am’ whilst doing the washing up.