Peaks and Troughs

by Nick Perry

  ‘Yeah, if that’s what you call it,’ he yelled back.

  On my return, Harry, looking concerned, told me that in his opinion the stiffness in Dave’s back legs was arthritis, that we should think about retiring him from his stud duties. He’d struggled to mount a sow that afternoon, and although the will was there he kept slipping out of her, his trotters giving way under his weight.

  We had a young replacement boar, Kurt, whom we used to serve Dave’s offspring, the sows who produced good healthy litters that we kept back for breeding. Kurt was from an underused bloodline Josh Hummel had recommended. All of Dave’s descendants carried a blue ear tag, numbered with their date of birth; any inbreeding would have been a disaster.

  Dave had been with us for over five years, boy and beast. I would never send him to the abattoir; he was one of the family. I planned to build him his own retirement home, a pig ark down in the lower fields where he could wander at his leisure and roll around in the mud on warm summer days. I would spend time with him, take down buckets of swill, cold porridge and carrots, pieces of toast, all his favourite treats.

  And so in the first week of May I walked him from his pen, where he had served his time with an enthusiasm that had never waned. It was a poignant moment for me when I closed the gate behind him. He walked slowly, putting his back trotters gingerly on the hard concrete, alive to the aromas in the spring air. Moss didn’t harass him as he took his time, lingering, distracted by the smells of the larch needles and pine cones. His back end swaying gently, he flicked his large floppy ears when flies landed on his pink flesh.

  Down in the lower fields he followed me to the ark, where I had broken up a bale of fresh straw, but he was more interested in a gorse bush, rooting around, throwing up stones, his snout covered in dark mud. I watched him for a while, sitting with Moss as he amused himself, every now and then losing his back legs on the uneven ground. He looked a lonely figure, as if he had been sent into exile, no longer useful or playing a part. I felt sad for him as I remembered the days of walking him to the bus with the children and how much we owed to his incredible sex drive.

  Most of my time now was spent with Harry, and on Fridays, when I was away doing the meat round, which gave us nearly half our income, he would be at Dyffryn on his own. It was on one Friday at the end of May that he ploughed up the vegetable garden. Ros knew, and a part of me hoped she would have second thoughts, suggest we keep it going, reduced in size. But she didn’t, all her time taken up with Tom and Agnetta. When it was done and I told her, she dismissed it, saying, ‘Well, that’s one thing less we need to worry about.’ I thought of all the effort that she had put into that patch of land. Now none of it seemed to matter.

  Every morning Harry and I went about our work in good humour. Not many things got past him, those signs that a keen eye picks up from being with livestock, in amongst them, touching them. Something seen early is much easier to treat. He could sense my attitude had changed, noticed my keenness to get things done had diminished. I didn’t let things slip back, but I didn’t seek to make improvements. We just ticked over, keeping on track, running the farm efficiently. We weren’t going to grow wheat this year, Ros now bringing bread back from the community bakery. We would put aside six acres for hay, grow two acres of spuds for Tom ’Tatoes.

  On the surface we seemed like a happy family, and in lots of ways we were. Sitting round the kitchen table every night eating supper, the children full of stories about their school friends and Ros telling us what she had done in her working day. Everyone thought we were just the same. It was I who felt detached, unable to tell Ros that I was going round in circles.

  There was no antagonism; outwardly we were a picture of a loving couple. But there was no depth and now no passion in our life. I never felt we were living a lie; it was just that we weren’t who we appeared to be. In those quiet moments that precede sleep I was filled with a sense of irony, that the very thing that ought to have brought us together had driven us apart.

  I knew Jack and Corinna must have reached a decision when Jack said ‘Let’s talk this evening. Come with me to Cae Rhys. I’m going to look at a ram.’ This was so definite, so unlike my laconic brother, who would usually have muttered ‘Let’s think about it’, that I knew at once he’d made up his mind. I guessed already what he was going to tell me.

  The drive that evening from Nebo will long remain in my heart. We had been there to check on some late-born lambs, and, as the sun bejewelled the Irish Sea, high up in the breezes blossoms that could have been butterflies drifted in the soft currents of the spring air. Moss and Meg stood on the tailbar, their noses catching the sweet-scented waft of the hawthorn hedges as we took the tight bends down to Pant Glas. It was the time of day when the light is layered by cloud, gilding the cliff tops of Cwm Silyn. We took it all in, and words did not need to be spoken between brothers as we went down into that evening, our lives about to go their separate ways. As Jack put together a couple of roll-ups, we were absorbed by the luminous glow of twilight, listening to the cry of rooks. In the darkening western sky we could see the sharp summits of the Wicklow hills, whilst before us the road to Criccieth was spiked with the shadows of pine trees.

  Jack looked at the ram penned in the rusting Dutch barn at Cae Rhys, a remote farm that overlooked the sea. ‘Not for us,’ he said, after he had checked its mouth and run his hands over it for five minutes.

  In the pub in Llanystumdwy, just off the road between Porthmadog and Pwllheli, we sat with a couple of barley wines, taking small sips of the sickly-tasting black syrup, which we endured for the warm glow that followed. It went straight to the brain, and after you’d finished a glass you would feel pretty good. The dogs were curled up under the table and we were the only people in there, apart from the barman. And a parrot who repeatedly squawked out in Welsh something that Jack translated as ‘Mine’s a pint, shut that door’.

  ‘Tell me then, Jack, what have you decided?’

  Without hesitation he said, ‘We’re going at the end of September.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Gloucestershire . . . that’s the plan, if I get the job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Shepherd in North Cerney.’

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘It’s a village near Cirencester.’

  ‘So what shall we do with the farm?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s for you and Ros to decide.’

  Well, at least I knew where I stood. ‘Why are you looking for a new ram if you’re going?’

  ‘Well, I’m not taking the sheep with me, am I?’

  ‘You’re expecting me and Harry to look after the pigs and a flock of sheep?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know. Who knows. We need to think about that.’

  With our glasses empty we looked at each other, wondering.

  ‘One more for the road?’

  ‘Why not.’

  That second one got me going. I’d never talked to Jack about personal things, but I gave him more than an inkling about the difficulties with Ros. I rambled, talking to a whitewashed wall, letting things spill from me about the chasm that had opened up between us. He didn’t say anything; I didn’t expect him to. It was more an unloading on my part, the release of letting someone know. Jack didn’t need to give an opinion, but I think I conveyed to him my uncertainties; that I had no idea where I was going.

  He shrugged his shoulders, Jack’s reaction to most things. I asked him if he thought he would marry Corinna. ‘That’s a long way off,’ he said.

  ‘By the way, why didn’t you buy that ram?’

  ‘I could only feel one testicle.’

  When I got back to Dyffryn, there was a note on the table. Gone to bed early. Ros.

  The morning rose cloudless over the hills. Frieda bellowed with the exultation animals feel when the spring sun warms their backs and the grass tastes sweeter around their tongues.

  Harry arrived in a T-shirt, a comb in his back pocket; he liked
to run it through his hair after he had leant his bicycle against the kitchen wall. Bryn slouched over, complaining about a row with his father, a cow that had mastitis. He wouldn’t be here unless he wanted something. Could we pick up ten bags of concentrates from Eifionydd Farmers? He handed me the cash.

  ‘But you have an account with Spillers,’ I said.

  ‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow will do.’ He stood looking at me, waiting for an answer, and said, ‘You’ll do it for my father, won’t you?’ knowing full well I wouldn’t for him. I would have hated to be part of that household. How did Myfanwy put up with it all?

  ‘Hey, boss.’ Harry called me over. ‘There’s a couple of porkers that don’t look right. When you’ve got a minute you should come and see for yourself.’

  He was right to be concerned. Amongst the twenty porkers we were fattening in one large area, two looked very thin. As always, we stood leaning over the wall watching them, studying their behaviour, seeing if they were being bullied.

  ‘Maybe they need worming,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not worms,’ Harry said. ‘Besides, they were wormed two weeks ago.’

  We observed them for fifteen minutes, detected nothing, no clue as to what could be wrong.

  ‘Let me run some food along the trough, see if they come to feed with the others,’ suggested Harry. As soon as they heard the rattle of the bucket they all ran squealing, for their appetites were never satisfied. The two skinny pigs were in there with the rest of them, hungry for every nut. It was a mystery.

  ‘Maybe we should separate them, house them somewhere else, keep a close eye on them.’

  So we penned them in an old stone sty, where a sow had been kept years ago, long before we came to Dyffryn.

  When Sam and Lysta came home from school they loved to be outside in the lengthening evenings. What consumed them now was the idea of building a tree house amongst the larches. They showed us drawings, pleading with us that it could be finished in a weekend.

  ‘You can cut the wood with your Husqvarna chainsaw,’ said Sam.

  ‘Harry will help if you ask him,’ said Lysta.

  ‘I think that’s vital,’ said Ros. ‘I know what your father’s like trying to cut things in a straight line.’

  ‘All right, let’s see if we can do it on Saturday afternoon. But we’ll need Harry’s help.’

  After the children had gone to bed, I pulled the cork on a bottle of Mateus Rosé and told Ros that Jack would be leaving in September. It didn’t surprise her.

  ‘They’re going to start a life together.’

  ‘And what about us? Don’t you feel as if things have changed between us?’ I asked.

  ‘We certainly are not how we used to be.’

  ‘It’s not the same, you no longer here with me.’

  ‘Well, that’s true, but that was your choice.’

  ‘Come back, Ros. It’s as though you only live at Dyffryn, aren’t a part of it any more.’

  At least we were talking, but she looked sad as I held her.

  ‘We need to reach one another,’ she whispered. ‘Something has slipped away. I feel alone and I don’t know why.’

  ‘Is it Gwyn?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t it he who has slipped away?’

  And she wept tears of loss, and then I knew. It was not me who was the rock in her life; it had always been her father.

  ‘I miss him,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry, I know I’ve turned away and lost interest in the place.’

  I went to the record player and put on Goats Head Soup by the Rolling Stones. Ros and I had always loved ‘Winter’ and it did feel at the moment that a lot of love was all burned out.

  15

  Death and a Future

  I woke from a worried sleep with a feeling of foreboding and, unusually for me, lay with my head on the pillow listening to birdsong, watching the shadows of a flapping curtain play upon the ceiling. I felt detached from the things around me, curiously removed from the essence of my whole life. I had got to that stage of going through the motions, putting on a brave face. Whatever was going to happen would come upon me whether I smiled or looked glum.

  And I knew, before Harry arrived, what I’d find. Our two sick pigs had succumbed during the night to who knows what, dead on the flagstones of the pen. When I picked one up by its back trotters and held it like a fish it weighed nothing. It had just wasted away.

  That morning we found that a litter that had been thriving the day before had lost their sheen, were showing a hollow look. I knew that some disease was in the herd. I didn’t think it was E. coli, which could be treated with antibiotics. We had seen that through the years, and besides, they were not scouring. This was something else. I knew I would have to call out Barry Evans. He scratched his head too, taking one of the carcasses to carry out tests.

  ‘I’ve not seen anything like this,’ he said, putting it into a black plastic sack. ‘It will take two or three days. I’ll have to send a sample to a laboratory in Liverpool.’

  But nothing dampened Harry’s spirits. Out from his pocket he pulled a scrap of paper with a list of jobs to be done. As we carried bales of straw to the farrowing pens he tried to persuade me to come to the Quarryman’s for a pint and a game of darts.

  ‘I told you, Harry, those days are over. There really is no point in being constantly given a drubbing.’

  With Jack now involved with Corinna and Bronwyn at home with the baby, Harry was beginning to feel housebound. She allowed him one night a week to go out for a drink. But there was no one he hadn’t beaten at darts in the villages of Penygroes and Llanllyfni. He must have been desperate to challenge a serial loser like me.

  I ate lunch down in the lower fields with Dave, having brought him the contents of the swill bucket from the kitchen. I sat eating a sandwich, with Moss happy to be next to me in the warmth of the sun. She watched me eat, and throw the odd morsel to Dave. Moss had never drooled in her life, or, like a Labrador, stared endlessly while food was around. She had a delicate appetite and always ate slowly, enjoying each mouthful, while Dave scoffed everything on offer and belched a lot.

  It was here, while we were eating our lunch, that I dreamt up my escape route. A huge risk, I knew, but it excited me. I could sense that everything was coming to an end. All I had to do was convince Ros, show her there was some reality to it.

  I wanted to sell up, take the children out of school and go and live on a Greek island for a year. Getting Ros to go along with it didn’t seem like a tall order to me. Jack wouldn’t mind; he’d get half the dosh from the sale of the farm. He wouldn’t mind at all, living in Gloucestershire with Corinna. The children would love the adventure, a year out of school. We could take all the necessary books, teach them ourselves. It wasn’t unheard of, parents educating their children. Harry would be the loser; there would be nothing I could offer him. That was something I was going to have to wrestle with. And what if Ros said no, an absolute no? Where would I be then? Was I looking at the end of my marriage?

  When Sam and Lysta came home, Harry gave them the last hour of his working day to finish off the tree house. He hung up a rope ladder and as I watched them climb up through the branches Jack arrived. We sat in the kitchen and I told him my plan. He listened for ten minutes, not saying a word. And still hadn’t said a word after I’d made a pot of tea and put together a roll-up. In the end I said, ‘Well, say something.’

  ‘I’m still reeling.’

  ‘Do you think it’s a ridiculous idea?’

  ‘Extreme,’ he said. ‘Isn’t there anything in between?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, something nearer. Greece seems a bit farfetched. What do you think she’ll say?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  ‘When are you going to tell her?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘Well, good luck.’

  But our conversation didn’t end there. I told him about the death of the pigs, that we had the beginnings of a
disease in the herd. I showed him the ailing litter, whose condition had now deteriorated even further, all of them looking thin, some with deep purple blotches on their snouts. They couldn’t walk, but staggered about, still hungry for the teat. The sow would lie quietly as they suckled, but they had weakened, feeding for just a few seconds before they lost interest.

  ‘We won’t know anything until Barry Evans gets the results.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘They are very sick pigs.’

  ‘I’ve got an ominous feeling about it.’

  When Ros and I were alone that night, I came somewhere close to articulating my feelings, that it was time for a new beginning. I only touched on what was happening to the pigs. I couldn’t tell her now the harsh reality of what we were facing.

  ‘Couldn’t we sell up and get away for a year?’ I said. ‘What have we got to lose? It would be exciting for the children. We can do a good enough job educating them. Tom and Agnetta will still be here a year from now. I might feel differently then.’

  I opened a bottle of Blue Nun, which was all the Co-op sold; well, that and a gruesome Riesling. I poured Ros a glass.

  ‘I’m asking for a year, Ros,’ I said, ‘not your whole life.’

  ‘Where were you thinking of spending this year?’

  ‘On a Greek island.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A remote Greek island.’

  ‘Why not somewhere closer to home?’

  ‘Like, the Isle of Wight?’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic.’

  ‘Ros, I want a foreign land, a different culture, a foreign tongue.’

  ‘Well, you had that here . . . you didn’t do very well with it.’

  ‘Only the Welsh can speak Welsh.’

  ‘Sam and Lysta have picked it up.’

  Unfortunately we didn’t have a Demis Roussos record, otherwise I would have played ‘Forever and Ever’ to create a Greek atmosphere.