Cow Girl

by Kirsty Eyre

  ‘I hereby declare the meeting open,’ the Wolf says. ‘With me I have our secretary, my wife, Mrs Penelope Huxley-Lipyeat and our treasurer, Mr Andrew Lane. Tonight, you’ll notice that we have an increased attendance, which I can only assume is on account of the interest in our proposed thoroughfare, facilitating transportation of livestock and agricultural equipment from Baslow to Curbar and vice versa.’

  He runs through a list of action items. Square footage of a proposed disabled loo for the Agricultural Society hall. A donated second-hand carpet that might fit the play barn. Do we have any volunteers for selling tickets to the Agricultural Society Campfire Christmas Carol Concert? A footpath closure on Manor Farm’s Ringinglow estate. ‘Which brings me on to our next follow-on action item: the somewhat naive notion of a #SaveOurDairy march, campaigning for a fair price for milk. Is John Oliver’s daughter here with an update?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, stepping forward.

  His eyes dart around the room.

  ‘Over here!’ I wave.

  ‘No,’ he concludes. ‘In which case we’ll move on to—’ His wife nudges him and points me out with her tortoiseshell glasses.

  ‘I’ve got a date!’ I shout.

  His piggy eyes single me out. ‘What’s he like? Tall, dark, handsome?’

  A ripple of laughter.

  ‘Saturday the thirtieth of October. #SaveOurDairy farmers march through Sheffield,’ I say, thinking less and feeling more until I become conscious that I’m thinking less, which only makes me think more. ‘It’s been approved by Sheffield City Council, South Yorkshire Police, the mayor of Sheffield, the syndicate of agricul—’

  ‘The farmer’s daughter’s been busy,’ the Wolf remarks, folding his arms over his chest and tucking his sausage fingers under his armpits. ‘But without the support … Wasn’t the plan to have a hundred dairy cows on parade?’

  ‘That was the plan, but—’

  ‘Let me guess, too difficult?’ he says.

  ‘I—’

  ‘The cows were the selling point in all of this. You needed to make an impact. You needed to turn heads.’

  ‘There’ll be cows,’ I say. ‘Only it won’t be a hundred. It’ll be more like three hundred.’

  The room murmurs.

  A lady in a linen jacket and long skirt raises her hand. ‘We’d like to join.’

  A twenty-something lad in a T-shirt declaring ‘Jesus is coming, look busy!’ stands up. ‘We would too.’ He gestures to the band of brothers he has brought along.

  ‘Where do we sign up?’ an elderly man with a Yorkshire terrier trapped under his arm bellows from the back.

  Within five minutes, fifty or so people have registered their interest, sending Wolfgang Huxley-Lipyeat into a flap as they migrate across the room towards me, pushing past chairs and tripping over bags. ‘Order!’ he shouts. ‘May I suggest those wanting to sign up for the march make their way to the foyer so that we keep disruption to a minimum.’

  I fight my way through the crowd to the back of the room, but there are too many of us to fit in the foyer. Glancing back into the hall, there look to be only a dozen or so people left, including the Wolf and his wife, who are both slowly turning a shade of purple. Even ‘what a waste’ Graham is folding up his camping chair and heading for the door. I stumble out into the car park, soothed by fresh air.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, my voice lost in the hubbub. ‘Hello, everyone!’

  ‘Why did you let Nathan go?’ a lady in a denim skirt and silver eyeliner shouts. His wife? His sister? ‘You know he lost his job at the agency because of you!’

  ‘He was aggressively homophobic,’ I mutter under my breath as I clamber up onto the gatepost. Project from the stomach. Two mirrored hands. Think less, feel more. ‘Hi, everyone. The #SaveOurDairy march will be on Saturday the thirtieth of October!’ I shout but my voice goes high and raspy.

  ‘Nobody can hear you,’ the same lady heckles. ‘Let one of the men do it!’

  ‘No.’ A tall man in black lends me his support. ‘It needs to come from Billie.’ It takes me a few seconds to realize it’s Charlie from the co-operative. He looks totally different without his boiler suit on. ‘I’m sorry I was a dick. I don’t take rejection well.’

  ‘It’s OK.’ I pull myself up straight.

  ‘Now, go for gold!’ he says.

  I fill my lungs with cold, Derbyshire air, stick my fingers in my mouth and wolf-whistle with all my might. ‘Saturday the thirtieth of October!’ I project from the pit of my stomach, gesturing with mirrored hands. ‘Dairy farmers’ march in Sheffield. We’ll be meeting at the bottom of The Moor at ten thirty a.m. Bring your friends, bring your family, bring anyone and everyone you can think of.’ The hand thing is somehow working. ‘And if you really want to make a difference, bring your cows!’

  ‘Is there a petition that we’re supposed to sign?’ somebody yells.

  ‘Yes!’ I shout. ‘Save our dairy dot com.’

  ‘What are we actually asking for?’ someone else shouts.

  ‘We’re asking Premier Milk to stop dropping “A” milk prices. We’re asking supermarkets to sell our Milk for Farmers brand, and we’re asking consumers to buy it.’

  ‘What about the press?’ someone shouts.

  ‘The local and national press have been contacted and there will be a Sheffield town hall press photoshoot at noon.’ I can’t get the words out fast enough. People are actually listening to me. My voice is getting heard. I feel high on adrenaline. ‘More details at Save our dairy dot com.’

  Phones come out of pockets.

  ‘How do we get one of those?’ A teenager in motorbike leathers points at my T-shirt.

  ‘Save our dairy dot com!’

  The car park spins. Bodies swirl beneath me. My hearing goes all funny and everyone sounds distant. I’m no natural public speaker and now a sea of people are listening to my every word and the moment starts to feel too big for me. The gatepost starts to feel quite high and the jump down to the ground a considerable drop. I can see Charlie mouthing something at me and reaching for me with his hand.

  ‘You OK?’ He helps me down.

  ‘Yes.’ I take a sip from my water bottle, my senses returning.

  I hand out the leaflets we’ve had made up and spend the next hour fielding questions.

  Charlie hovers as I pick up my belongings. ‘Look, I know I was a complete tool the other day, but I’d love to help.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Seriously, I’ll bring a shovel and a wheelbarrow.’ He practically walks on top of me.

  ‘Great.’

  He grins. ‘Like I say, I’ll be there with cowbells and thistles.’

  I do worry for Charlie, though I guess there’s someone for everyone.

  As soon as I’ve driven out of view, I pull the car into a layby, open the driver’s door and throw up onto the tarmac. I don’t think I’ve ever been under this amount of pressure. Not where hundreds of people are relying on me. I guess there was the time I got cast as Mary in my Year Three Nativity, but that was over within an hour and didn’t require having to manage anyone other than a Tiny Tears doll. It’s pretty overwhelming, but I’ve started something now and it’s time to put my money where my mouth is.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE CALF

  From: Lorna Parsons

  Might be an idea to move Parsnip into the barn for her to calf this week. She was carrying breach last time I checked.

  Dad’s radiotherapy appointments are at Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield. Three hospitals in ten weeks; a hat-trick none of us was prepared for. Weston Park itself is well kept and grassy, alive with chrysanthemums, herbaceous borders and university students playing tennis. The hospital, however, is a decaying seven-storey concrete block on the A57 with a nicotine-infused ambulance bay taking delivery of people who have seen better days.

  The waiting room hums with grunts, groans and the ticking brains of the stoically silent. Dad and I make our way into the radiology wait
ing area – a windowless corridor stinking of industrial-strength detergent, where eight plastic chairs sit against a wall. As we take a seat, it feels a little like joining Death Row. The ‘Radiation On’ sign light ups and everything goes quiet.

  ‘Bilberry?’ Dad says softly. ‘If anything goes wrong, promise you’ll do the march without me.’

  My heart gallops. ‘Dad, there isn’t a without you. Even if you have to sit it out at home, you’ll be there in spirit.’ I stare at the hospital notice board, holding back tears. I know he doesn’t mean ‘without him’ in terms of sitting it out at home, but I can’t face the alternative. I stare at an advert for kitchen porters. A polite notice requesting that wheelchairs are not to be removed from the hospital site. A ‘Learn languages while you recover’ flyer.

  He turns to look at me. ‘You look bloody knackered!’

  I grin. ‘You may be ill, but that doesn’t mean I can’t punch you.’

  The ‘Radiation On’ sign extinguishes and a small lady in a large wheelchair comes out, everyone in the waiting area silently grading their health against hers.

  ‘John Oliver?’ the nurse calls.

  The radiation room is about the same size as our bathroom and is shrouded in darkness. Illuminated red and green buttons light up a dashboard of dials, levers and switches, like something from a spaceship. A cockpit of doom. I don’t want to let him go.

  He’s in there for fifteen minutes. It should be two. I pace up and down the corridor, the ‘Radiation On’ light eventually extinguishing and Dad reappearing on the arm of a nurse.

  ‘How was it?’ I say.

  His face looks ashen. ‘Could you get a wheelchair?’

  Everything inside me sinks. He thinks he’s going to be marching through Sheffield in six weeks, yet he can’t make it a few metres to the car. His fragility rattles my foundations. He’s been unshakeable all his life – getting up at 5 a.m. every day for the last forty years. Lifting, shifting, moving machinery, cropping, milking, digging himself out of snowdrifts, herding hundreds of cattle, working the land. And now here he is, reduced to a wheelchair, asleep within seconds of getting in the car.

  The drive back from hospital always stimulates thought. Today is no exception. I daydream about what I’d be working on now, were I in the laboratory kicking PhD-ass. I miss the lab. I miss the smell of latex gloves when you pull them out of the box. I miss the clink of metal instruments on glass beakers. I miss that feeling when you press a coverslip onto a cell sample and it magically glides across the glass slide if it’s too fluid. I miss the inky smudge of iodine. Hell, I even miss gagging on beta-mercaptoethanol. But it’s not so much the ‘missing the lab’ thing, it’s missing the thrill of decoding the mysteries of Mother Nature. The satisfaction of feeling like you’ve cracked something, the exhilaration of sitting in the driving seat on a journey to find a cure; a journey that scientists around the world are on right now to help out people like Dad.

  I glance at his moonlit face and wonder if he’ll ever be strong enough to run the farm again.

  A week later, Dad’s physiotherapist, Derek Taylor, a small man with a shaven head, arrives on his moped. He takes off his helmet and balances it on the wall. His tracksuit has a cheap feel about it and looks as if it might go up in flames on a sunny day. He follows me in, recoiling at the stuffed partridge in the hallway. As we make our way upstairs, he complains of a bad back and tight hamstrings. The irony is not lost on Grandma, who takes me to one side while his lavender-infused beanbags heat in the microwave and loudly compares it to a barber with a bad mullet.

  Before he goes into Dad’s room, I corner him on the landing. ‘Once you’ve done your stuff, will you let me know if you think Dad will be strong enough to attend a march in five weeks’ time?’

  ‘What sort of a march?’

  ‘A dairy farming protest.’ I hand him a leaflet.

  Dad lies in bed like an injured wildebeest picked off from the herd, the three of us flapping around him like mother hens, propping his neck up with cushions and muttering clichéd phrases of encouragement. ‘Onwards and upwards.’ ‘Patience is a virtue.’ ‘One step at a time.’ Derek sits on the edge of the bed and rolls the left leg of Dad’s pyjamas up to his knee. Dad’s calves look shrivelled and pathetic; his previously strong, muscular legs replaced by dry, emaciated ones, after two months in nightwear.

  Dad looks at Derek. ‘Could you give us a second?’

  Derek glances at Grandma and then at me before absenting himself.

  Dad waits until the bedroom door has clicked shut. His eyes flicker from me to Grandma. ‘I will be doing the march come what may. Whether I’m up to it or not has nothing to do with it. I will be doing the march.’

  ‘Not if it kills you, you won’t,’ Grandma says.

  ‘I damned well will,’ Dad says, his hands balling into fists.

  Grandma pulls hair out of the dog brush. ‘I’d rather have your ego wounded than you drop dead from overdoing it.’

  ‘And,’ Dad continues, ‘there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, so there’s no point whispering behind my back about whether I’m up to it or not!’

  ‘OK,’ I say slowly.

  ‘I know it’s your march, Billie, and I can’t thank you enough for getting it off the ground, but it’s my march too and it’s important to me that I play a role in it. I want to put my voice to it, see my cows at it and contribute towards getting heard. I’ve been a dairy farmer for over forty years. It’s my battle and nobody’s going to take that away from me.’

  I know not to say anything. This illness means the very essence of who he is has been pierced. This march is to Dad what the EPE drug launch was to me: the birth of something he has gestated. All that work behind the scenes leading to one final moment of truth: the launch of a drug; the marching of cows. Years of blood, sweat and toil, be it in fields, milking sheds, meeting rooms or laboratories. I just hope he doesn’t think I’m trying to steal his glory just as Christophe stole mine. This is Dad’s march. He doesn’t want to be cut into the deal or cut out of it. The deal is his.

  Grandma fiddles with the brooch on her collar. ‘That may be so, John, but—’

  Dad’s chest rises. ‘If I drop dead on the march, it’ll be for a worthy cause.’

  Her fingers work faster, like galloping centipede legs. ‘I just worry about you.’

  ‘Trust me, you’ll need to worry more if I’m kept away from it. I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t go.’

  Dad looks to me for affirmation and it feels all wrong. Like our roles have reversed and that I’m the parent and he’s the child. Somehow, I hold the power and he awaits permission. I feel all discombobulated, my limbs disconnected from the rest of my body, my thoughts disjointed.

  ‘Of course, Dad,’ I say, wanting everything to go back to normal and for him to tell me off for bringing mud into the house.

  ‘You can come in now, Derek!’ Dad shouts.

  A few seconds later, Derek reappears. ‘Wonderful view you’ve got here.’ He looks up at the mouldy patch in the corner of the ceiling.

  ‘Hardly the Sistine Chapel, but it works for us,’ Grandma says.

  ‘I meant outside.’

  ‘Outside it’s bleak as buggery.’ Grandma gives the windowsill a wipe with her sleeve.

  ‘The moors, they’re—’

  ‘Where people get murdered?’ she says.

  His eyes widen as he rummages in his rucksack.

  ‘Sorry.’ Grandma clears her throat. ‘But if you could just get on with it, we’d be very grateful.’

  Derek slathers bergamot oil over the palms of his hands and presses them against Dad’s leg. ‘Thumbs to the centre.’ He demonstrates his massage technique. ‘Move in a circular motion and it’ll get more oxygen to the muscles and really get the circulation going.’

  ‘You want to put a bit of elbow grease into it,’ Grandma says. ‘He’ll not feel a thing if you pansy around like that!’

  Derek grabs hold of the bottle o
f oil before Grandma can get involved. ‘The idea is to invigorate rather than flood the bloodstream with toxins.’

  ‘Take it from a woman who’s made bread all her life, you need to give it some welly,’ Grandma says.

  Dad has a faraway look in his eyes. ‘How many days until the march, Bilberry?’

  ‘Five weeks,’ I say, glancing at Derek’s face for a reaction.

  ‘I don’t recommend pushing yourself too hard,’ Derek says. ‘You don’t want to set yourself back.’

  ‘I’ll be going.’ Dad grimaces. ‘Whether it’s in a wheelchair or on a flaming cow.’

  Derek steps back. ‘Very well.’ He rummages in his North Face rucksack and brings out a leaflet showing a matchstick man doing various exercises. ‘Build up to some of these in your first week, and I’ll come back to assess you next week.’

  Dad evaluates the exercises. ‘Two days,’ he says.

  ‘Sorry?’ Derek says, packing up his stuff.

  ‘I’ll be ready for assessment in two days.’ Dad looks to me and then to Grandma. ‘Cinderella is going to the ball.’

  By the afternoon, Dad is dressed, downstairs, and listening to the weather forecast.

  ‘Will you do me a favour?’ I say.

  ‘What’s that?’ he says.

  ‘Stop putting pressure on yourself. If you can’t walk it, we can always take the wheelchair.’

  He looks at me like I’ve killed a small animal. ‘There’ll be no wheelchair, Bilberry.’

  Shifting his weight to the edge of his armchair, he leans forward and hauls himself up with his NHS aluminium walking stick. He straightens his back, holds onto the bookcase and edges his way around the room. Then, leaning the walking stick against the wall, he takes a few paces without it.

  ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to be doing that yet,’ I say, hovering behind him.

  ‘What?’ he says, full of annoyance.

  ‘Walking without a stick. You’re not supposed to be doing that until week four.’

  ‘Come on!’ he says. ‘We’re going for a walk!’