Cow Girl

by Kirsty Eyre

  ‘Dad?’ I shadow him into the hallway.

  He shuffles over to the porch.

  ‘Dad?’

  He navigates the step.

  ‘Can’t we sit down and talk about which cows we take on the march?’ I hold up my list out of desperation.

  ‘Bring it with you.’ He takes a step into the yard, and I know I have no choice but to follow him.

  ‘Hit me up,’ he says, hobbling towards the fir trees that mark the start of the lane and, just when I think he’s going to stop to catch his breath, he speeds up.

  Parsnip’s head swings over the wall. I hold my hand out to her, which she sniffs through wet nostrils and then decides to lick. It feels like being exfoliated with sandpaper. I pat her goodbye.

  ‘I’d take Parsnip if she wasn’t pregnant,’ I say, hurrying after Dad and passing him the list of cows I’ve identified based on three prerequisites. Firstly, they must be healthy. Secondly, they mustn’t be pregnant. Thirdly, they must be easy to handle.

  ‘I think you may have overlooked a few things,’ he says, handing the list back to me and soldiering on.

  ‘Like what?’ I say, trying not to get annoyed.

  ‘Firstly, you can’t take Nigella or Florence because they both get travel-sick.’

  ‘Really? Is that a thing?’

  ‘Of course it’s a thing. Cattle are not designed to stand in moving vehicles. And like humans, cows can get travel-sick too.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Secondly, you can’t take Loretta and Mildred on the same trip as they despise each other.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Mildred’s really jealous of Loretta because she’s really good friends with Betsy. And Betsy, being Betsy, plays them off against each other. You can’t put them in close proximity else it might get physical.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And thirdly, you can’t take Sally without taking Louise. She won’t go anywhere without Louise. They come as a pair.’

  We’re halfway down the lane and I’m sensing that Dad’s getting tired, but he refuses to stop. We walk the rest of the lane in silence, save for the sound of the wind, the rustle of leaves and the pete-pete-peta-peta of a nearby grouse. Sunshine pierces the clouds. Bracken sways back and forth. A partridge treads carefully around a patch of dark peat to shelter between moss-coated rocks. Dad presses on. Past elderberries and field maple, blackthorn and dog rose. Past ripe red rosehips and furry buds of pussy willow. The lane has never felt so long.

  He takes a moment to catch his breath, leaning on the lichen-splotched stone wall and drinking in the view. Cows pepper the luscious green land. A hawk hovers overhead, tilting its wings periodically to maintain balance. Yellow gorse marks the border between pastureland and moorland, the terrain shifting from green to purple, great hulks of glittering granite emerging from a pink haze of heather. On the other side of the lane, a large speckled toad plops from a higgledy-piggledy stone in the wall into roadside grass, his warty skin camouflaged by undergrowth as he crawls into the ditch. My fingers find a snotty hanky and a squashed packet of Opal Fruits in Grandma’s pocket.

  Dad takes an Opal Fruit. ‘I won’t need a wheelchair, Billie.’

  I wrap an arm around his waist. ‘You’ve made your point.’

  He runs his hand over the fuzz of hair growing back on his head. ‘If the march is to be a success, you need to take Louise.’ He stares at the horizon. ‘She’s good natured and consistent. If you’ve only got one pick, you’d pick Louise. Then it goes without saying, Sally will want to go with her.’ He picks a fluff-ball of sheep’s wool off the barbed wire running above the wall. ‘Then there’s Rosie.’

  ‘Too feisty,’ I say.

  ‘She’s spirited, I’ll give you that, but she’s also travelled sixty miles in the back of a lorry and didn’t kick off once.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Beryl, likewise. You’ve got to take Beryl.’ He chews his Opal Fruit. ‘Did you have Patty on the list?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You might want to add her. She’s stubborn but you can bribe her anywhere with an apple.’

  This is insightful, but it’s also like covering someone’s job during their maternity leave, only for them to come back and point out everything you’re doing wrong.

  I decide to let it go. It’s his gig really. ‘OK, that’s five so far.’

  ‘Fizz, Holly and Hazel make eight.’

  ‘What about Buttercup?’ I say.

  ‘Is she still lame?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t take her if she’s lame. Roz?’

  ‘Which one’s Roz again?’

  ‘Introspective, considered. White sock markings.’

  ‘Heather’s sister?’

  ‘That’s the one. Take Heather too. She’s trustworthy. How many are we up to?’

  ‘Ten. We need two more. What about Little Dot?’

  ‘Too anxious.’

  ‘She doesn’t seem that anxious.’

  ‘You haven’t seen her in confined spaces,’ he says. ‘Thea. She’s low maintenance, adapts well to change.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And if you’re going to take Thea, you may as well take Bruschetta.’

  ‘There you go, that’s twelve,’ I say, making a mental note to study the psychology of the herd next time I’m milking.

  Dad’s eyes travel back up the lane to the farm. ‘Any chance of a piggyback?’ He throws his head back and laughs. It feels so good to hear his laugh again. It feels like we’re getting him back.

  By the evening, I’ve gone stir crazy with cabin fever. I’ve got to go out. If I don’t get some sort of social hit soon, I’ll end up a madwoman. Local socializing options consist of ‘Making friends with Jesus’ at St Anne’s Methodist Musical Medley; watching a subtitled, three-hour Iranian art-house film in the village hall; joining a Darts and Knitting club ‘for him and her’ at the crown bowling club; or celebrating living art by singing candlelit ballads around Baslow’s well dressing.

  After an hour of shilly-shallying on the interweb (to appropriate Grandma’s term), I decide to drive into Sheffield for an LGBT Singles Night at the City Hall. I pull on a pair of jeans and a top that hasn’t got mud on it. In all honesty, I don’t really care what I look like – I’m looking for friendship rather than sex. I apply utility eyeliner and mascara in the rear-view mirror of the Land Rover, and get as far as the end of the lane before realizing I’ve only gone and left the bloody house keys in the milking shed. I double back.

  Parsnip’s guttural groans echo around the barn. I peep over the gate. She’s straining, whites of her eyes rolling like a cue ball. Her tail thrashes against the breezeblock wall as she lets out another roar, kicking away straw to grind her hooves against the concrete floor.

  I open the gate and walk towards her, but she buffets my arm away with her wet nose.

  ‘Hey,’ I whisper, holding my hand out to her. Slowly, I edge around her to see two black hooves jutting out of the back of her like stone tulips. ‘Good girl!’ I stroke her neck, wondering whether I’m supposed to intervene. Ordinarily, I’d ask Dad, but he’s asleep and Grandma’s out playing bridge. I can’t leave her like this.

  The birthing assistance instructions on my calving app suggest that the cow will pretty much do it herself and that nature will run its course. It’s only when I’m faced with photos of ‘normal’ and ‘breech’ that I go back for another look and realize the calf’s hooves are pointing upwards as opposed to dangling downwards and therefore belong to its hind legs, bringing about a whole raft of complications. I’ve seen Dad pull out calves with his bare hands, but he knew what he was doing. There’s stuff on the breech birth website about ratchets and all sorts of equipment I’m not sure we own, so I call Lorna, who says she’ll come right away.

  Parsnip stamps and bellows. Allie, her long-legged pregnant neighbour, grunts in solidarity from the next pen. I shove on Dad’s overalls, mentally plotting Lorna’s whereabouts on the road from Totley to
Baslow, and debating whether to wake Dad. My attempts at fluffing the straw with a pitchfork to soften the calf’s landing are fruitless as Parsnip does her best to kick it all out of the way. She stands, back legs slightly astride, and strains to release a further two inches of the calf’s ankles, only for an inch to sink back in again as the contraction passes. Her big dark eyes look up at me pleadingly.

  ‘It’s OK, darling.’ I try to stroke her neck, but she doesn’t want me to touch her. Desperate to help in some way, I fill her water bucket, which she pointedly angles her head at and tips over my feet.

  Lorna arrives in running shorts and a peach-coloured yoga sweatshirt, the damp patch around the neck suggesting she’s freshly aborted a workout. She opens the gate and sets down her vet’s bag, throwing me a pair of latex gloves. ‘How long has she been like this?’

  ‘Forty minutes.’ I have the gloves on within seconds, their rubbery smell and soapy touch reminding me of the lab and the life I’ve left behind. ‘Will she be OK?’

  Lorna walks her hands around Parsnip’s rump, pressing here and there. ‘We don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy yet.’

  ‘I mean Parsnip.’

  Lorna holds her ear against Parsnip’s stomach and listens for a heartbeat, which I’m guessing is inaudible as she cocks her head and repeats the process on the other side, her default expression one of concentration. She steps back, legs astride, hands on hips, leans forward and scrutinizes Parsnip’s rump with the intensity of a Wimbledon line umpire. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  It’s clear that this is not your run-of-the-mill birth, but I’m in the dark as to what sort of birth it actually is. And as I’m trying to work out whether there is cause for concern, I think of my mother lying here, on the floor of this very barn, her swollen ankles splayed, her fate unwritten. She pushes me out. Me. Her. The placenta. A tangled mess of life and death. I think of Parsnip, sniffing her dead mother’s ears. I think of Lady Love and Lady Lovely. And it’s at this moment that I realize how important this birth is for all of us.

  ‘The good news is …’ Lorna grimaces as she pushes her hand inside, ‘… the legs have made it through the birth canal.’ She twists at the waist, frowning at the roof, her hand still inside Parsnip. ‘The bad news is … Damn, I thought I had it then.’ She bites down on her lip.

  Parsnip swings her head violently from side to side, twisting in circles.

  ‘I’m going to have to give her pain relief,’ Lorna says, ripping a sterilized needle out of a clinical packet with her teeth.

  She jabs the needle into Parsnip’s hindquarters and, a few seconds later, Parsnip stands still, straining as a new section of her calf’s legs appear. My instincts tell me that this is a good thing; that more of the calf is out, so we’re one step closer to birth. Lorna’s frown tells me otherwise.

  ‘Should I pull?’ I say.

  She screws up her face with concentration. ‘Can you get a bucket of warm water and a sponge?’

  I locate a plastic bucket easily enough. It just happens to have a crack, though, which leaks a third of its contents by the time I’ve got it back to her. ‘Here you go. I couldn’t find a sponge.’

  Without a second’s thought, Lorna takes off her pastel peach yoga sweatshirt, dunks it in the bucket, wrings it out and uses it to gently pat Parsnip around her vagina. ‘There, there, girl,’ she says gently. Her fitted grey sports top clings to her sculpted frame, tiny droplets of sweat dampening the material between her breasts. ‘I need your help.’ She manoeuvres her hands around Parsnip’s soft belly, checking and double-checking. ‘When I say pull, I want you to gently pull the legs backwards and downwards.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. The calf’s legs feel clammy and warm.

  Parsnip contracts.

  ‘Pull!’ Lorna cries.

  I pull tentatively, not wanting to snap the calf’s fragile legs.

  Lorna looks at me. ‘Not that gently!’

  I’m terrified. ‘OK.’

  Parsnip contracts again.

  ‘Pull!’ Lorna cries. ‘Gentle but firm.’

  I have no benchmark for the kind of ‘gentle but firm’ that’s required of me. No experience of pulling hind legs out of cows’ vaginas. No fucking clue. I pull in the only way I know, but nothing happens.

  Lorna sticks her hand inside Parsnip again. ‘I just need …’ she whispers with muted panic, ‘to make sure the calf’s bottom doesn’t rupture the …’ She twists and frowns. ‘Don’t want to tear the …’ She takes her hand back out and delves into her vet bag, pulling out all sorts of medical equipment until she locates a metal chain, which she affixes to the calf’s hooves.

  I close my eyes. The last time I saw a cow’s hooves being tethered, Parsnip’s mother was being towed away to be incinerated. I can’t let anything else happen to her.

  Lorna holds the end of the chain and pulls. ‘Bloody hell! This one’s stubborn.’ She skids across the concrete on the heels of her trainers. ‘You’re going to have to give me a hand.’

  She takes one chain handle and hands me the other. It’s long. Three metres at the very least. We pad backwards until the chain is taut.

  ‘OK, on the count of three,’ she says. ‘One, two, three!’

  We pull, our hips crashing into each other like tandem water-skiers. As the chain cuts into the palm of my hand, the calf’s knees and thighs appear, covered in blood and slime.

  ‘Keep going,’ Lorna shouts, the calf’s rump now visible. We pull again, colliding into each other once more. ‘And again.’ We grit our teeth, arms straining, stomachs tight, toes rammed up against the ends of our trainers; the pair of us, spattered in blood, mucus and sweat. Finally, a limp, blue body hangs out.

  ‘One last pull!’ Lorna cries.

  We wrap our fingers around the chain, heaving with all our might as a blue-black calf slides to the ground and bounces against the straw like a rubber toy. And that’s when the enormity of the moment hits me; the calf’s glassy eye looking at nothing, its lifeless body distended.

  Parsnip stamps her hooves in torment, nostrils flaring.

  ‘No!’ I smell death but refuse to taste it.

  Lorna kneels by the body, her bare knees matted in straw and cow dung. She squeezes her hand underneath its chest. ‘No heartbeat.’ Her voice trembles.

  I crouch beside her, touching the calf’s torso.

  ‘Fuck!’ Lorna yells, thumping the ground angrily. She grabs a piece of straw, discarding it for a bigger piece and sticks it up the calf’s nostril. ‘Come on!’ she cries, desperately searching for a reaction that doesn’t happen.

  ‘What is it supposed to do?’ I say quietly.

  ‘Fuck!’ she roars.

  Rain tinkles musically against the metal roof. Parsnip circles the calf. She bucks and grunts; a tortured soul. I try to comfort her, but she won’t let me near her. Her friends in the nearby pens grunt anxiously. And as I kneel in blood and slime, staring at the wet blue body in front of me, I realize that this moment isn’t just important, it’s everything. This calf cannot die. For Parsnip, for Dad, for the herd.

  Lorna stands up, puts her hands on her hips and inhales deeply. ‘Right,’ she puffs, trying to regain control. She bends down, levers her hands under the calf and manoeuvres its small, limp body onto one side. Wiping mucus from the calf’s nose with the bottom of her sports top, she slides her hand over its mouth and plugs one of the nostrils with the fingers of her other hand, while blowing gently into the other nostril. The calf’s chest rises.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Pray?’ she says, between puffs.

  Parsnip looks on in horror, nuzzling the limp body of her young as Lorna repeats the process again and again, blowing air into one nostril, rotating her head to listen for a breath, blowing and listening again. Her mousy-blonde hair is matted with mucus. Her freckled face is mud-spattered and bloody. Her grey sports top is soiled with slime. She doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t speak. She remains totally focused.

  I dab the sticky coating f
rom the calf’s unconscious body with Lorna’s sweatshirt, but it’s totally unresponsive.

  After five long minutes, Lorna sits back in the straw, hugs her legs to her chest and buries her face in her knees. Her face is blotchy and tear-stained. ‘I’m sorry, Billie.’

  I kick the bucket, startling Parsnip, who throws back her head and bellows.

  ‘Let me try,’ I say.

  The calf’s head feels heavy and damp in the palms of my hands, its fur sticky and warm. I dip my mouth to her nostril. Her nose is cold, wet and smells of congealed blood. I blow, unsure as to how much air I’m supposed to impart in one go, then listen. Nothing. I try again and again. Still nothing.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Lorna says, running her hands over the calf’s bedraggled coat.

  Parsnip turns her back on us and the world. She’ll kick if I try to go near.

  We lean against each other in the straw and sob, Lorna and I, lost and guilty. To be that close and then have life ripped away from you. Mother Nature is a cunt at times. I figure we should name her anyway. She was going to be Jupiter II, but that doesn’t feel like a particularly noble idea any more. Maybe something poetic like Hero. Dying before she even knew life. Dying for a cause I’m not yet aware of. I’m not sure what we’re to do with the body. Whether we bury her or whether she’s considered fallen stock. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Dad.

  ‘This is the shit part of the job,’ Lorna says.

  We sit and watch as Parsnip licks her stillborn calf, her tongue methodically making its way around her head. A mother’s unconditional love.

  And I tell myself I’m seeing things when the calf’s ears twitch.

  Lorna slams her hand on my knee and leans forward. She opens the calf’s mouth and my heart leaps in my chest as the calf suddenly jerks, splutters and shakes.

  ‘She’s alive?’ I lean forward.

  ‘She’s a-fucking-live!’ Lorna hurriedly unties the chain from the hooves.

  Parsnip buries her head against her calf, her tongue lolloping over its delicate little face until it heaves out a tiny, miraculous grunt. This beautiful little creature. This pure black precious new life. She gets to her feet. Jupiter II. Parsnip drifts over to me and rests her chin on my shoulder. I stroke her damp, furry face.