by Kirsty Eyre
Any ideas how I could help her?
Thanks,
Billie
Two days later, Dad has the operation to remove his brain tumour. Craniotomy. Funny how medical terms can legitimize anything, like bludgeoning your head open and poking at your brains. It certainly puts getting dumped back into perspective. After milking, I try to immerse myself in ‘Fly Genetics: What fruit flies can tell us about our immune system’, but it’s difficult to concentrate knowing that he’ll be gowning up to go into theatre.
When I realize I’m never going to be able to concentrate, I call Grandma, who also doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself, and we meet for lunch at the Derbyshire Craft Centre; a gift shop and café on the edge of Curbar, where middle-aged women in clunky wooden jewellery buy cat ornaments and out-of-season Christmas decorations. The onsite deli smells of fresh coffee and old lady’s perfume. Minestrone soup and broccoli quiche are up on the specials board and the cake counter is bursting with homemade patisserie. Banana bread. Mango meringue. Oreo cheesecake. Victoria sponge. Pineapple turnover. Coffee and Kahlúa chocolate ganache. None of it looks real.
‘Beatrice had her assessment yesterday.’ Grandma skirts around the elephantine lump in the room that is Dad. He should be anaesthetized now, floating in a private bubble of virtual reality, the neurosurgeons hovering with scalpels and medical instruments. Every gleaming metallic blade will have a name. Bone chisels, clamps, retractors, distractors. Anything and everything to get anywhere and everywhere.
I try to focus my attention on the list of hot beverages chalked up on the blackboard, but I can’t take anything in. I should be in the lab now, holding some of those medical instruments. Experimenting with life-changing possibilities. Protecting and future-proofing mankind. Or at least a very small subset. Making sure pregnant women don’t die of eclampsia. At the helm of scientific discovery. The words of the menu bend and blur. Dad would choose tea. English Breakfast with milk. Never without milk. Fucking milk. I should tell her about the storm, but it doesn’t feel like the right moment.
Grandma helps herself to a tray and eyes up the walnut coffee cake. ‘It’ll be three weeks before they decide whether she’s eligible for care, by which time she should be back on her feet. It’s a bloody nonsense.’ She eyeballs the waitress, a large girl in a skimpy top who makes a sloppy job of pouring semi-skimmed milk into a tiny jug.
‘Can we stop talking about Beatrice’s hip?’ I snip.
She shuffles her cup of black coffee into the cradle of its saucer and orders two slices of Bakewell tart.
‘Sorry,’ I add. ‘I’m just stressed.’
The tearoom behind is alive with the clinking of cutlery and chinking of china. We make our way over to a table that looks out onto a small, overgrown garden. Grandma undoes the buttons of her camel coat and moves the vase of synthetic carnations off the table, placing them on the windowsill with a loud tut.
I stare at the slice of Bakewell tart in front of me. It just looks plastic. ‘Joely’s called it off.’
Grandma fiddles with the mole behind her ear. ‘I’m sorry, Billie Goat.’
I stir my tea. ‘I’m not sure she likes me as a farmer.’
‘I’m not sure I like her being so unsupportive.’ She lowers her plate to the table, her slice of Bakewell tart tilting to one side. ‘Her tops were too skimpy anyway. All that midriff hanging out.’
A smile creeps into the corners of my mouth and dissolves almost instantaneously, tears springing to my eyes. I really wanted Joely and me to work. We belong to the same professional world and understand each other’s dreams. We fit together. Her yin to my yang. We could go places. Adventure together, spend summers in our Paris pied-à-terre, romancing on the banks of the river Seine, our over-achieving bilingual children skipping around a gingham picnic blanket of eclectic cheeses and fresh baguette. I’m so much stronger with Joely than without her. Together, we’re indestructible.
‘I was thinking,’ Grandma mumbles through pastry. ‘Once your dad gets better, we should plan a few things.’
I stare at my slab of Bakewell tart. ‘What kind of things? It’s not like Dad will want to go whale-watching in South America or snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef.’
‘He does have an adventurous streak, Billie. He just hasn’t exercised it for a long time.’ She dabs her finger over a line of pastry crumbs.
We brainstorm a bucket list without wanting to call it that. Achievable dreams without needing a passport – taking a flask of tea to the rocks at Robin Hood’s Bay, enjoying a pub lunch in the Lake District and eating fish & chips on Filey beach. Once we’ve exhausted ideas, we stare at our plates and wonder if we’ll do any of the things on the list, both of us silently choking on worry, neither of us daring to voice our fears lest it be a betrayal of Dad and his fighting spirit.
I gather some coins together for a tip while Grandma spends what feels like hours extolling the virtues of Sky TV and Beatrice’s power-shower.
‘Did you know Mary Berry has her own show on Sky Living?’ she enthuses.
I understand she’s not really being a heartless bitch and it’s just her way of blocking out reality, but still. The surgeons should be stitching his head back together now.
Grandma hugs me in the gift shop for longer than is comfortable and I worry that she doesn’t smell of Grandma any more. Gone is the lingering scent of lavender talcum powder and the smell of cooking apples. It’s not that she smells of Beatrice’s flat either; she’s just lost her scent. She could be anyone.
RE: Parsnip
Dear Billie,
Guy once had a session with an animal bereavement counsellor in Sheffield and said it was really useful. Let me know if you want his details and I can bring them over.
Lorna
*
Re: Parsnip
Dear Lorna, Thanks for the animal bereavement contact, though it’s Parsnip I’m more worried about than me. Although she’s eaten a bit more the last couple of days, she won’t leave the oak tree and stands there bellowing for hours. She’s definitely missing her sisters too as she’s taken to following Hazel and Holly around like they’re her surrogate twin sisters. Is this normal cow behaviour?
B
Three hours later and I’m making my way through the corridors of Sheffield Royal Hallamshire Hospital while Grandma drives round the block to find a free parking space. Dad is a lot better than I expected. His head is heavily bandaged, but he wears fresh pyjamas and seems more alert. He pulls out his headphones when he sees me.
‘How’s the English patient?’ I kiss him on his stubbly cheek.
‘Podcasts and steroids are wonderful inventions.’ He smiles. ‘How’s my Bilberry?’
I’ve promised myself I won’t mention Joely. That it’s all about Dad and putting on a brave face. He needs positivity and it’s entirely the wrong moment for me to whine about my misfortunes, which are relatively trivial at the end of the day.
‘Joely’s ended it,’ I blurt. What the fuck is the matter with me?
Dad smooths the crisp white sheet over the top of his blanket. ‘If it’s any consolation, your mother gave me the run-around for a good six months before we started going steady.’ It’s no consolation at all. ‘You’re a good egg, Bilberry. If she can’t see that, then she’s not right for you.’
I’m not sure how I feel about being a ‘good egg’. It wouldn’t bother me so much if it was written by my PE teacher on an end-of-year school report in relation to some sort of sports day episode where I’d volunteered to do the long jump because no one else would, but it’s not exactly something I’d acclaim in a dating profile. People neither aspire to be good eggs nor do they aspire to snare a good egg. Good eggs are those that get left behind. Dad’s normally a lot better at this sort of thing. Then again, he has just had a major brain operation and I should get the fuck over myself.
Grandma appears, all flustered after an altercation with a traffic warden. She slams her handbag down on Dad’s shins and takes out a bundle
of brandy snaps wrapped in clingfilm.
‘How are the girls?’ Dad says.
My throat tightens, slabs of dead cow appearing in my mind’s eye. Their glossy coats. Their glassy eyes.
‘Billie’s doing a great job by the looks of things,’ Grandma says, dividing up the brandy snaps and handing them out like lollipops. ‘Did I tell you Betty at Knit, Natter, Craft and Chatter says we should convert the farm into an Outdoor Survival retreat?’
‘A what?’ Dad says.
‘You’d be surprised what people will pay to sleep in a potato-sack hammock at minus three. Although I’m not sure about having to install a heater in the barn.’
‘The barn? Aren’t they supposed to hand-weave their own wigwams?’ Dad says.
The moment to tell them about the cows has gone.
‘It depends,’ Grandma says.
I should have told Grandma at the Derbyshire Craft Centre.
‘On what?’ Dad picks bits of brandy snap off his blanket.
‘Whether you’ve ticked “deluxe” or not,’ Grandma says. ‘They’ll pay extra for a fry-up.’
I can’t tell them now.
Dad rolls his eyes. ‘Isn’t the whole point of an Outdoor Survival course that they’re supposed to be self-sufficient?’
‘Strictly speaking, but Milli Vanilli didn’t sing their own songs, did they?’ Grandma concludes.
Dad looks at me as I’m typing Milli Vanilli into Google. ‘Any calves yet?’
‘No.’ I almost adopt the brace position you get shown in the event of a plane emergency landing and wait for pain to rain, but it doesn’t come. Dad is on form, Grandma is too, and Milli Vanilli is a disgraced R&B duo from Munich, infamous for miming to somebody else’s vocals in the early 1990s. Charlatans of the pop industry. Faking it as a profession. And I kind of feel for them.
The next day, it’s difficult to concentrate on milk yield knowing that my friends are living la vida loca at Gay Pride. Maria has taken it upon herself to send videos from London with the intention of making me feel part of it, which is both good and bad. I stare at the video thumbnail on my phone. If ever there was a square inch that oozed the spirit of Pride, this is it: three grinning girls, smacked with verve and splashed with colour, standing next to a glittery Polly Darton float. I press play.
London is a sea of feather boas, baby-pink cowboy hats, inflatables, scantily dressed beaux in hot pants, sweaty pleather-clad dykes and swathes of giggling lipstick lesbians, gay for a day. Transvestites strut in bridal gowns, their lace trains held by a fleet of children in rainbow T-shirts. Gay men in rubber, lace, bubble wrap and clingfilm. Gay men in glitter, blusher, wigs and wings. Gay men in mascara, lipstick, tiaras and heels. Pride may be a celebration of freedom of expression for all of us, but it’s a sky’s-the-limit carnival of colour for the extrovert gay man. And man, are they beautiful.
‘Hey, Bill!’ Kat’s rainbow-painted cheeks loom into the camera. ‘Thought we’d share a bit of Pride with you.’
Bev pops up alongside her, waving into the camera. ‘Happy Pride, buddy!’ She wears a T-shirt with two proud peacocks, beak to beak across her chest.
Maria slings her arm around Bev’s neck. ‘Today is about being outrageously G-A-Y and using the word “fabulous” in abundance, whether you’re on a dairy farm or on the parade,’ she says theatrically.
The camera pans along Marylebone’s maze of chintzy teashops and upholstered antiques. A ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ banner hangs at the entrance to Harley Street. I can almost taste the atmosphere from muscle memory – a blend of hot dogs, candyfloss, tobacco and lip gloss.
Maria twirls in circles, showing off her rainbow-striped mini-dress. ‘Stolen from the Lambeth LGBT Josephine and the Technicolour Dreamboat wardrobe.’
The camera lurches as a Trioga Montara motorhome, spray-painted gold with ‘Gay Team’ emblazoned across the bonnet, swings into shot, hooting its novelty horn and farting diesel. I can just about make out Bev’s mothers at the helm, waving ketchup-laced hot dogs.
‘Love, not hate!’ a group of off-screen female voices scream fiercely.
Bev leans into the camera. ‘Mum’s and Mama’s LGBT pastry-making course mates!’ Her eyebrows dance before the camera tracks up to the roof, which has been ripped off to provide a small stage to a group of middle-aged women wearing heart-print aprons embroidered with ‘We’re Here, We’re Queer’. They drum on cake tins with wooden spoons. ‘Love, not hate!’
The camera jiggles and jolts as the girls climb on board, a close-up of Kat’s hand grasping at the thin metal handrail leading upstairs, tiny rainbows painted on her fingernails.
‘Love, not hate!’ the ladies bang and boom.
The camera tilts to show swathes of people lining the streets below, all high on life: street performers, musicians, dancers, singers, old lesbians, young lesbians, tall lesbians, short lesbians, fat lesbians, thin lesbians, butch lesbians, femme lesbians, lesbians of every nationality you can think of; and for every lesbian of every shape and size, there are twice as many gay guys with ten times the amount of invention. A group of oiled muscle men in tiny red Speedos promote ‘Gay Watch’, waving fervently from a silver open-top bus. The next float along hosts an array of sequined drag queens, all tight bottoms in silk gowns.
Maria’s head emerges. ‘Billabong!’ she squeals. ‘Don’t go to bed early as we want to bring you a bit of Soho, live! Stay tuned for part two!’
Bev’s giant thumb looms into shot and the video ends.
I look around the kitchen. The smell of freshly made coffee fills the air. Sun beams through the open window. Birdsong carries on the summer breeze and I have never felt so fucking lonely. I miss Joely. I miss London. I miss my friends.
Durham University’s alumni newsletter drops into my inbox. My chest tightens as page after page of glossy photos capture award-winning graduates on makeshift stages, eco-friendly architectural wonders designed and constructed by ‘our very own’. Year after year of postgraduate success, my classmates namechecked in print for early career achievements, outstanding contributions to international development, humanitarian relief, AIDS awareness, Ebola treatment and every other selfless, heroic cause imaginable. And meanwhile, I’m shovelling shit for a dying industry; an unremarkable cog in the insignificant wheel of an underfunded dairy farm going nowhere.
Even Julia Spears, infamous for plagiarizing my essays and doing more speed than a Formula One driver, has secured government funding to trial her breast cancer breakthrough drug. On the next page I see Andrew Colman, a lad from my biochemistry class, has become Scientist of the Year, his hands wrapped around a gleaming trophy. I couldn’t possibly feel any more cut off from the world of science if I tried.
Grandma appears at the kitchen door holding a can of polish and a yellow duster.
‘Thought I’d better get everything shipshape for his lordship’s return.’ She stops to look at me. ‘What’s the matter with you? You’ve hardly said a word all day.’
‘Nothing.’ I stare at the thumbnail of the girls on their Pride float. ‘Life is peachy. I’ve been dumped by my girlfriend. I’ve taken six months’ unpaid leave from a job that I love. I’ve given up my flat, my life and my friends to run a dairy farm, which is obviously everything I ever wanted because it’s so enriching, so career advancing, so sociable, so culturally diverse. Not to mention profitable!’ I know I’m being a dick and have overstepped the mark, but I can’t stop myself. ‘The highlight was being accused of paedophilia.’
‘You know the agency laid him off?’ Grandma says, duster on hip.
‘Nathan?’
‘Yes, can’t get a job now for love nor money.’
‘And I’m supposed to feel sorry for him?’
‘Not at all. I just mean he got his comeuppance.’
‘And meanwhile, I’m supposed to be living my lab findings to get a PhD, which, of course, is so very easy on a dairy farm in the middle of nowhere. There are literally hundreds of women struggling wi
th eclampsia out in the hills of rural Derbyshire.’
‘Anything else?’ She rubs the duster vigorously over Dad’s silver ‘Dairy Innovator of the Year’ trophy.
‘Yes!’ I smash my fists on the table. ‘It’s Pride!’
‘What is?’ Her arms wobble as she polishes.
‘Today is.’
She stands the trophy on the draining board and admires it. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Gay Pride. The parade in London. All my friends are there, and I’m stuck—’
‘Here with me?’ She sneezes on polish fumes.
‘Grandma, missing Pride is like missing Christmas.’ I drop my head into my hands and sprawl theatrically across the table.
She plucks the dry, curled-up teabag off my saucer and drops it into the compost bin. ‘I wish things were different too, Billie, but they’re not. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that life can wrongfoot you at any moment. It can cut a chunk out of you at the blink of an eye. We are all at the mercy of Mother Nature at the end of the day, and that’s why you’ve got to enjoy life while it’s yours to enjoy.’
‘Which is precisely why I want to be at Pride!’ I interject, but Grandma is on a trajectory all of her own.
‘I understand what it’s like to run the farm, Billie. I ran it for years and it was a lot bigger back then. Not just when your grandpa got sick either. He lost his nerve years before when we lost eighty cattle to tuberculosis. He was never quite the same after that.’
‘Eighty?’ I say. ‘You never told me about that.’
She nods. ‘It’s too upsetting, that’s why. It broke him. Still, it kept me busy.’ She runs her duster over the kitchen tap. ‘If I could still do it now, I would, but my back doesn’t bend in the way it used to.’
Water drips from the tap and everything slows. A rhythmic plip, plip. Dad’s pillowcases hang from the ceiling airer and the pages of a discarded Dairy Farmer flicker in the breeze.
‘Three cows died in the storm,’ I say quietly.
‘Oh, my good God.’ Grandma slams down the polish. ‘Are you OK?’
I nod slowly.