Country Loving

by Cathy Woodman

  ‘That’s your opinion.’ I move the blanket away from Baby’s face. ‘She looks like a Holly.’

  ‘How can you say that? What does a Holly look like?’

  ‘Look, Nick.’

  He peers at the baby and shakes his head. ‘I can’t see it, Stevie.’

  ‘Say cheese.’ The sound of India’s voice announces her return. I look up to the flash of a camera. ‘Ah, that’s beautiful. Mummy, Daddy and …’

  ‘Holly,’ I say.

  ‘Holly?’ Nick murmurs. ‘Holly Dunsford. HD, High Definition.’

  ‘HRD for Holly Rosemary Dunsford,’ I suggest, determined to have my way.

  ‘That has a nice ring to it. Yes, I think I can go with that.’ Nick repeats the name several times.

  ‘Make sure you get it right when you register the birth,’ I say, smiling.

  ‘She’ll need her own Facebook page,’ India says. ‘I want to upload this piccie to her timeline.’

  ‘No, India,’ I say protectively. ‘She’s far too young for that.’

  Much as I appreciate Nick’s presence, and his willingness to run out for more nappies and a bottle of champagne to wet the baby’s head, I can’t wait to spend some time alone with Holly … and sleep … and contact Leo to tell him my news and show him the new addition to my family on Skype. For all my father’s determination to keep Nettlebed Farm in the dark ages, his granddaughter is going to be a twenty-first-century girl.

  When I take the baby home a couple of days later, the first thing I do is rush up to my bedroom – with Holly, of course – to Skype Leo.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ he says. ‘I thought you’d forgotten about me.’

  ‘How could I forget you?’ I say, cheerful now I’ve seen him and spoken to him again. I show him the baby in my arms, moving her close to the camera to show him her face. ‘Meet Holly.’

  ‘Hello, Holly,’ he says, gradually moving closer to the camera at his end. ‘She’s very cute,’ he says eventually, ‘like you, Stevie.’

  ‘I love her to bits,’ I say. ‘I can’t believe how she’s taken over my life in such a very short time.’

  ‘That’s what babies do,’ Leo says, his voice catching. I glance from Holly to Leo’s face on the laptop.

  ‘You’re upset,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I feel as if I’ve forced her upon you when you probably would have preferred me not to.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I know what I said about feeling uncomfortable around babies and kids, but Holly’s your baby. It’s different.’ He changes the subject. ‘Motherhood suits you. You look more beautiful than ever.’

  ‘Oh, Leo.’ I’m blushing, touched by his compliment. ‘I wish you were here,’ I say, my heart aching for his touch.

  ‘I wish I was there with you too,’ he says gruffly. ‘I miss you.’

  Holly starts to cry. ‘I’ll have to go for now.’

  ‘Keep in touch, Stevie,’ Leo says.

  ‘I will.’ I recall what Jennie advised me in the ambulance, to break contact and move on, but I know, deep in my heart, that I can’t.

  I cut the call and head back downstairs to join my father, Cecil and Mary for a small party with champagne and cake to celebrate the baby’s arrival at Nettlebed Farm. I invited Ray and his family but, although he sent a card, chocolates and some personalised bibs with Holly’s name on them, he doesn’t come. I don’t blame him – it was a long shot, considering his relationship with Dad.

  My dad is completely smitten with his new granddaughter.

  ‘She looks just like you when you were a baby, Stephanie.’ As I’m slipping into my overalls in the hallway the following morning, he holds her in his arms while I hover, afraid she’ll open her eyes and cry at the sight of his grey whiskers and razor cuts.

  ‘I expect you wish she was a boy.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve learned my lesson on that one,’ he confesses; a small victory, I think with a smile. ‘I regret not spending more time with you and Ray when you were babies. I let your mother do it all while I worked on the farm. I wish we’d been more like the modern kids, and shared the load.’ Soon my father is crying, not the baby.

  He’s very emotional and I don’t like it because it isn’t like him. He needs something to keep him occupied, so I encourage him to look things up and contribute to decisions about the farm. I suggest he starts pottering about in the yard, sorting through the rusting farm implements to decide which ones he can bear to throw away. His face lights up.

  ‘I can store some of it in the shed behind the cottage,’ he says brightly.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, that it will give you an excuse to start driving again, so the answer to that idea is no. Promise me you won’t get behind the wheel. Promise?’ I repeat.

  ‘Here’s Jennie come to see you,’ is my father’s response, before he makes a rapid escape to the living room where he puts the television on.

  Jennie brings Reuben with her.

  ‘Excuse me, but where do you think you’re going?’ she asks as I stand up.

  ‘Out to feed the calves and scrape the yard for Cecil. I can’t sit around here all day.’

  ‘Oh no you don’t. Adam’s offered to help him out.’

  ‘That’s very kind of him.’

  ‘I did give his arm a little twist. We haven’t forgotten about his minor accident with the tractor.’ Jennie smiles. ‘How are you today? And how’s baby Holly?’

  ‘She’s all right, I think. Actually, Jennie, I’m worried she isn’t getting enough milk. To be honest, I feel rubbish.’

  ‘That’s all the more reason for you to stay indoors.’

  ‘I’d rather be up and about. You know, I envy you having Guy around.’

  ‘He’s a great dad. He’s been a wonderful stepdad to my three older ones and he adores Reuben.’

  ‘How do you manage to keep baking?’

  ‘I have Jane working in the bakery. Adam and the girls babysit when I’m creating wedding cakes.’ Jennie pauses. ‘If you’re going to stay well and sane, you need to learn to accept all the help you’re offered, so you can start practising now. Stevie, I’m here to help. What can I do? Have you given Holly a bath yet?’

  ‘Kelly showed me yesterday, but I haven’t done it on my own. I’ve topped and tailed her.’ I smile at the reference to topping and tailing because it reminds me of my mother preparing blackcurrants and gooseberries for preserving.

  ‘Reuben can sit in his car seat and watch. I’ll tell him to keep his eyes averted when you’re taking Holly’s clothes off.’

  ‘Is it warm enough?’ I really don’t feel confident in what I’m doing; my nipples are cracked, my breasts are throbbing and I wonder if I’m coming out in sympathy with some of the cows. ‘Shall I put her in the big bath, or what?’

  ‘You can bath them in a bucket at this age. Mind you, Reuben never was a tiny baby like Holly.’

  I fill the baby bath, find a towel and some bubbles, and sit splashing water over Holly’s tummy. I don’t think she’s going to be a water baby the way she screams in the bath, I muse when I’m drying her. Jennie and I drink coffee and eat cake while I talk about making a start on building the Shed, looking for suitable staff and animals and selecting some of Jennie’s bakery products to sell in the tearoom. Someone from Petals, the florist in Talyton, delivers what I can only describe as a mahussive bouquet of flowers. Jennie assumes they are from Nick and I leave it that way – in fact they’re from Leo.

  Chapter Twenty

  Little Donkeys

  February passes in a blur as I look after Holly and supervise the building work on the farm. I do what I can with the milking, although Holly – more often than not – demands to be fed just as I’m dressed and ready to go out and join Cecil in the parlour. She has perfect timing.

  In the middle of the day, I give her a bottle before I get ready to go into Talyton. My father hovers, worrying about whether she’s having enough milk and if she’s growing properly, and demanding to kno
w when I last took her in to the doctor’s surgery to have her weighed.

  ‘Dad, stop it. Holly’s fine. In fact she’d put on half a kilo last time.’ I pause. ‘Would you mind looking after her for me until I get back? She shouldn’t need anything while I’m out.’

  ‘Of course, I’ll look after her.’ He looks down at his granddaughter in my arms. ‘We’ll have a lovely time, won’t we?’

  ‘You won’t disturb her if she falls asleep, will you? I’d rather she slept now. Please don’t poke her or pull funny faces again or you’ll wind her up. She needs her sleep – she was awake at two, three and four in the morning, and so was I.’ I wipe a dribble of milk from the corner of Holly’s mouth before placing her in the Moses basket where she lies gazing up at the donkey on the mobile. I wind up the music. The repetitive tune of ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’ – Jennie’s idea of a joke, drives me to distraction, but Holly finds it soothing, and within a couple of verses she’s fast asleep. I bend down and touch my lips to her forehead. She looks so delicious with her soft brown hair and peachy complexion, I could eat her.

  ‘Mummy will be back soon,’ I whisper. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Stevie, will you or Cecil have time to take the tractor to the top of Steep Acres before it gets dark?’ My father prods at the fire in the grate with a poker, making a burning log collapse into itself with a soft, shimmering sound. An orange fragment of ash lands on the floor. My father treads on it, leaving a blackened scar in the carpet and the smell of singed wool in the air.

  ‘I don’t know. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Guy phoned to say there’s a tree come down across the fence.’

  ‘Well, there’s no hurry to fix it,’ I say. ‘All the cows are indoors.’

  ‘But his sheep are at pasture in the field next door. I don’t want them rampaging across our grass.’

  ‘Dad, since when do sheep rampage?’ I say, trying not to laugh because my father is being serious.

  ‘They’ll be everywhere,’ he insists. ‘And Guy’s threatening to cut up the tree for firewood. Well, that’s our tree – it’s our boundary so it belongs to us.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll sort it out tomorrow.’ A thought occurs to me. ‘Perhaps we should let Guy have the firewood – he can chop it up and take it away for us.’

  ‘We’ll need that firewood to get through the rest of the winter if it carries on as cold as this. Waste not, want not.’

  ‘Leave it with me. I’ll do it, but not today. The ground was frozen solid earlier and now the rain’s fallen on top of it – it’s too risky to take the tractor up there. If necessary, I’ll walk up there with Bear in the morning. At this rate it’ll be dark anyway by the time I get back from town.’

  ‘It seems ridiculous to me. You haven’t got time while I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  ‘If you let young Holly sleep all day, she’ll be awake all night,’ my father says, changing the subject.

  ‘You won’t forget she’s here, will you?’ I say, hovering anxiously.

  ‘I won’t let him forget.’ I overhear Mary coming into the room, wearing her scarf wrapped around her head and carrying a basket of brown eggs she’s collected from the hens.

  ‘Thank you. I won’t be long.’

  ‘You know you must make time for yourself, my lover,’ Mary says. ‘All this dashing around so soon after you’ve had a baby isn’t good for you. You must look after your health. You’ve had a hard time of it, remember.’

  It’s strange, but I’ve almost forgotten the pain and fear of being in labour. I suppose if nature didn’t wipe out the bad memories, no one would ever have a second child, let alone a third or fourth like Jennie.

  ‘You’re as bad as your father,’ Mary scolds. ‘I can see you aren’t going to take a blind bit of notice of me.’

  I smile to myself because she’s right.

  Waving to James, who’s clearing the topsoil from the ground that will become the new car park as I leave, I drive into Talyton to pick up nappies and a few groceries, and pop into Overdown Farmers to buy food for Bear. I choose a new jumper for my dad – it’s his birthday in a couple of days and – belatedly – I need to replace the one I used for Pearl the calf. I take my time, relishing the chance to be me, not just Holly’s mum, until – within about half an hour – I’m overwhelmed by a wave of maternal guilt and can’t stay away from her a moment longer. I drive back along the lane under a dark sky with a wintry shower slamming against the windscreen, so hard the Land Rover’s rather sluggish wipers can’t keep it clear.

  I park in the farmyard. As I walk across to the house with my bags, I notice the tractor is missing, and there’s no sign of the dog, which is odd, because Bear always comes running to greet me. I let myself in to the front of the house where the sound of Holly bawling sends a dart of guilt right through me for taking too long in town. I find Mary walking up and down the kitchen, rocking Holly in her arms with rather more vigour than I can cope with.

  ‘I’ll take her,’ I say quickly.

  ‘She’s been looking for her mummy,’ Mary says, her expression one of relief. ‘She wants feeding.’

  ‘And changing, I expect.’ I cradle Holly in my arms. She’s a feisty bundle, all arms, legs and lungs.

  ‘I’ll get a bottle out of the fridge,’ Mary offers. ‘You go on inside and make yourself comfortable. I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea and some cake.’

  ‘Thanks, Mary.’ I’m about to sit down on the end of the sofa when, in my befuddled, post-baby state, I remember the tractor. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He’s gone out.’

  ‘He was supposed to be minding Holly for me.’

  ‘I said I’d take over. He said he wouldn’t be long, but it was a while ago.’ She checks her watch. ‘I don’t know where he was going – he didn’t say.’

  ‘Where’s Cecil?’

  ‘There was a problem with the milking machine, so he’s a bit behind. I imagine he’s in the parlour if you want him.’

  I don’t know what to do first, feed a screaming baby or find my father. I try his mobile. It rings from inside the house, from right beside me in fact, having fallen between the cushions of the sofa.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell the old boys to keep their mobiles with them? Oh, never mind.’

  ‘He’s probably with Cecil.’

  ‘Someone’s taken the tractor out. He isn’t supposed to be driving. He can hardly control his crutches let alone a vehicle. I asked him to stay with the baby. I bet he’s taken that tractor and the dog up to the top of Steep Acres – I told him not to.’

  ‘Yes, and we all know how unreliable Bertha is. She’ll have broken down halfway up the hill.’

  ‘I’d better go and look for him. Mary?’ I look up. She nods and takes Holly and the bottle from me.

  ‘Take James with you, Stevie. I’m sure he won’t mind.’

  I don’t hesitate because I’m thinking of the possible consequences of a man who’s recovering from a stroke taking a dodgy tractor out on the steepest slope on the farm in the ice and rain. I run outside with a torch, calling for James who’s packing up for the day as darkness falls.

  ‘James,’ I yell across the drive. ‘Have you seen my dad?’

  ‘Stevie? I noticed the tractor go out a while back, but I assumed it was you or Cecil driving.’

  My heart is pounding with apprehension.

  ‘James, would you come and help me find him?’

  ‘Anything for you,’ he says lightly. ‘You’re worried about him?’

  ‘Yes, he isn’t supposed to be anywhere near it. What am I going to do with him?’

  ‘Let’s go. I’ll drive.’

  I don’t argue when James takes over and drives the Land Rover to the bottom of Steep Acres where the lower part of the field glistens wet under a cold silver moon.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ James asks.

  I lean out of the window because the inside o
f the Land Rover is steaming up. The light from the headlamps catches a glint of metal partway across the field. ‘Just over there,’ I say urgently.

  James drives further in and there’s Bertha lying on her side at the bottom of the steepest part of the slope with evidence of her having skidded a long distance down the hill, leaving the scars of her tyre marks in the ground behind her.

  ‘Oh my God.’ I touch my throat, stifling panic at the sight of a dark hump of a body lying with its face upturned some distance away from the stricken tractor, and with the dog standing over it. ‘Dad!’

  ‘Stay there,’ James warns, but I’m already out of the vehicle and running to my father’s side, falling to my knees.

  ‘Dad, wake up. James, call an ambulance.’ I check my father’s pulse and breathing. He’s breathing, but his heartbeat is very slow and faint, and there’s blood coming from somewhere at the back of his head. He’s freezing, his hands grey in the light of my torch.

  ‘Stevie, let me take over.’ James gives me his phone. ‘I’ve done a first-aid course. I want you to talk to the ambulance control centre to explain exactly where we are.’

  There is talk of sending the air ambulance, but the weather conditions aren’t great and there’s nowhere suitable to land close by. My instinct is to scoop my father up and put him in the Land Rover, but James says it’s a bad idea and to wait for the land ambulance to turn up.

  I run and grab one of Bear’s old blankets out of the back of the Land Rover, and wrap it gently over the casualty. Kneeling down, almost oblivious to the cold and mud, I apply pressure to the wound on his head, and wait. Bear lies down alongside my father’s legs, as if he’s trying to keep him warm.

  ‘How long are they going to be?’ I mutter. Time is still, as if the world has stopped turning. ‘Come on …’

  ‘They’ll be here,’ James says.

  ‘What if they can’t find us?’

  ‘They will.’

  ‘You stupid man, I told you not to go out.’ What happened? Did my father have another stroke, which made him lose control of the tractor? Or did it simply slide down the slope where the ice was partially thawed? He couldn’t have checked the ground conditions before he came out. He must have slid forty or fifty metres out of control, the tractor then bounced and overturned, throwing him out where he hit his head against a loose stone. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, which is typical of him. I can hear his voice in my head, saying, ‘We never had seatbelts in my day.’