Blessed Are the Cheesemakers

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  Then Shirl scooted closer and put her arm around her friend, pulling her close.

  “Why in God’s name,” she finally said, as gently as an outspoken Australian from good Queensland farming stock could, “are you still with that blithering idiot?”

  Abbey said nothing. She didn’t want to have this conversation. She didn’t want to think about it.

  “I thought he was going to clout you back there, Abbey,” Shirl continued. “And over what? A bit of plastic wrap. The man’s a bloody nightmare. He’s unhinged. Is he always like that, Abbey? Does he try a bit of biffo?”

  Abbey, horrified, pulled away, staring at Shirl aghast. “Of course not, Shirl. God, don’t be ridiculous. You’ve got it all wrong. It’s not that bad. He’s not that bad. We’re actually very happy here. Look at it, it’s paradise!” She threw her arms up to emphasize their surroundings. “You have to give Martin a break. He’s really a lovely, lovely man, he just gets frustrated with the way things work here.” She’d had this conversation with herself many times over and found that out loud it sounded quite convincing. “But hit me? A bit of biffo? Oh no. No, Shirl, honestly! As if I would put up with that. No. He’s never laid a finger on me.” She paused for a fraction too long. “He won’t lay a finger on me actually. That’s more of a problem.”

  Shirl, not one to bite her tongue, didn’t. “So, you’re not getting any, then,” she said.

  Abbey cringed and shook her head. “I can’t talk about it. Oh Shirl, don’t make me talk about it.”

  Shirl rolled her eyes. “Listen, love, I can see that things aren’t cooking in your kitchen and you are not a happy camper. Now, you can tell me to shut up and stuff off, or you can let old Auntie Shirley lend an ear and give some advice. I haven’t given birth to four great fat useless bastards and fended off a horny husband for twenty-seven years without learning a thing or two along the way, you know.”

  Abbey sighed and leaned against the jetty post, watching the moonbeams flitter and flash across the waves. “He went off me when I got back from Queensland,” she said eventually when she was sure she could get the words out without dissolving into the tears she had long since trained herself to keep at bay, “and I told him what the doctor said.”

  Martin had sent her to Brisbane six years earlier, when after five years of marriage and no contraception she had failed to conceive. A laparoscopy had revealed that Abbey only had one Fallopian tube and that the poor lonely thing was even more severely hampered by the existence of a large ovarian cyst. When this was removed, it proved to be the size of an orange. The gynecologist told Abbey that she had just one in a million chance of getting pregnant.

  She had used that one in a million chance, of course, with Jasper Miles.

  Abbey had been devastated, as Shirl had seen while she nursed her through her recuperation. But when Martin found out he had fallen apart completely.

  “He just lost it totally,” Abbey told her friend as they sat on the jetty. “I’ve never seen a man so sad. He just rolled up into a ball and cried for a week, and nothing I could do would bring him out of it. It was awful! Then he disappeared for two days and when he came back it was like he was a different person. He looked the same and he sounded the same, but it was like he wasn’t really there or I wasn’t really there or—oh, I don’t know.” Her voice petered out.

  “He doesn’t blame you, though, does he?” Shirl asked. “For not being able to have babies?”

  Hearing it out loud really hurt, Abbey realized. “Well, it is my fault,” she said. “He should blame me. I had one chance and I wasted it.” She shuddered. “I’ve ruined his life and I’m not going to walk away and leave it in tatters. Besides, I’ve nowhere else to go.”

  Shirl, flabbergasted, sat up and cleared her throat. “For a start, Abbey, it is not your bloody fault and you’re not to bloody blame for bloody anything. Second, Martin’s life is not ruined but yours is—and if you want to enjoy the rest of it you need to bloody do something. Third, you have got somewhere to go. You’ve got our place.”

  Abbey smiled at her friend and tried to imagine living the rest of her days by the side of the pool in the palace in Brisbane. It wasn’t a bad thought, but it wasn’t a helpful one either. No, she had made her bed and would lie in it.

  “Thank you, Shirl,” she said, trying not to notice the pity in her friend’s eyes. She could hear dance music playing in the distance and cursed Frankie’s satellite dish: MTV sure had made a big impact on Ate’ate.

  “It might not be my fault about the babies,” she started softly, “but it is my fault that Martin is so unhappy and I couldn’t leave him here, I really couldn’t. The islanders think he’s a joke. He’s out there all hours of the day and night, irrigating a sandy plot of land that will only ever grow coconut and arrowroot when there is no shortage of either and everything else is readily available anyway. What would happen to him if I wasn’t here?”

  She felt a bleakness she didn’t usually allow herself.

  “But you’re only twenty-eight, Abbey,” Shirl argued. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You shouldn’t be wasting it on someone you don’t even love. Crikey, it’s hard enough wasting your life on someone you do love.”

  “I’m twenty-nine,” Abbey whispered. “I’m twenty-nine now. And I do love him. I really do. I’m all he’s got and he’s all I’ve got, and I do love him.”

  As the words came out Abbey realized, not for the first time, how hard she had to work to make herself believe them. The emptiness of her life rang a bell inside her that echoed and clanged around all the sad, hollow pockets of her body. She couldn’t bear to think about it anymore so rose to her feet and pulled Shirl to hers.

  “Enough of all this,” she said, her voice pleading. “Let me show madam to her boudoir.”

  Keeping Shirl’s hand in hers she led her up the path past the meetinghouse toward Pepa’s place. Shirl, disturbed and saddened but recognizing the difficulties her friend was facing, let herself be led.

  “Oh, look, it’s Geen,” Abbey said, passing Imi’s sister’s house and catching a glimpse of her dancing around the room inside. “I should go and thank her for the salad. Come in and meet her. You’ll love her. Everybody does. She’s the life and soul of the island.”

  She dragged Shirl inside, where Geen proved to be dancing not on her own but with her three youngest children, the not-so-distant club music providing the beat. Without stopping her butt from swinging or her head from shaking, Geen waved to her visitors and nodded in the direction of Bing and his two blond little sisters, who were all standing in a row dancing wildly and vigorously without one of them moving a single foot. They looked like they were glued in place on wobbly springs. Abbey burst out laughing and turned around to Shirl, who was standing behind her, to introduce her. But Shirl was looking as though she had just been socked in the jaw. Her face was completely white and her eyes were huge and black as she stared disbelievingly at the three jiggling children.

  “What’s the matter, Shirl?” Abbey said. Shirl doubled over and gasped for air, all the while still looking at the children, who had by now stopped jiggling and were staring back.

  “Abbey,” said Shirl, clutching at her stomach, her face scrunched up in pain. “Jesus Christ, Abbey.”

  “What is it, Shirl?” Abbey cried, panicked, as Geen started to chatter hysterically at the children.

  Shirl grabbed Abbey by her middle and twisted her around to face the little blond disco babies, thrusting an intervening Geen out of the way. “The kids, Abbey,” said Shirl. “The kids. You can’t be that blind. They’re the spitting image of Martin.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Remember, despite all the rules, there really are no rules. Some of the best cheeses in the world have only been discovered by the cheesemaker making a ballyhays of something else. Now they call it diversifying, but in the old days it was just trying not to get the blame for plain old fecking it up.”

  JOSEPH FEEHAN, from The Cheese Diaries, R
TE Radio Archives

  It was pitch-black and freezing cold when Jesus sat on Lucy’s face. It was her third night in the big feather bed in the dairymaids’ quarters, and so far she had done little since she arrived but lie in her room, sleeping and thinking dark thoughts. Jack had insisted on bringing her food, which she had done her best to eat, but the truth was she felt ill a lot of the time, especially during the first part of the day. Jesus, Mary and All The Saints, the three fat ginger cats she had met during her interview with Corrie and Fee, had seemingly sensed her despair and draped themselves supportively around her, only leaving the room, one at a time, through the window for their ablutions. That it was the sunniest room in the house was probably just a coincidence.

  This morning, though, cracks were showing in Jesus’s supportiveness.

  “Get off me!” Lucy croaked into the cat’s fur, giving her a good shove. Jesus stood on all fours by Lucy’s neck and yowled meanly back at her, prompting Mary and All The Saints to lift their drowsy heads from either side of the bed. Jesus soon stopped her yowling but the cats’ heads stayed up, their ears twitching as they watched the bedroom door. Just as Lucy was pulling herself up to a sitting position to see what the cats were looking at, her door burst open, flooding the room with warm yellow light from the hallway.

  “Awake already?” Avis said, smiling delightedly. “How about that? Talk about meant to be! Ready to start work today then, Lucy? There’s breakfast on the table and cocoa in the pot. Pull on your woolies, we’ll wait for you. Come on, girls!”

  The cats stretched and jumped languidly off the bed, padding lazily in single file toward Avis, who opened the door wider for them to walk out, each one brushing their back against her stout legs as they went past. Only Jesus stopped to look back snootily at Lucy, who was still sitting, speechless, in her bed. Avis shut the door again and Lucy stayed there in the darkness for a minute or two, furious at being bullied into working at such a despicable hour. Although, she supposed, it couldn’t strictly be called bullying, as Avis had asked her if she was ready to come to work and she could have said no—but for some reason, probably the hour, had said absolutely nothing.

  Angry at herself for being awake to listen to the question in the first place, she threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, gritting her teeth against the shock of the cold floorboards and the wave of nausea that washed over her. At the breakfast table Wilhie, Jack and the twins looked most unsurprised to see her; she concentrated on her food and ignored their interested stares. Once the plates and cups were stacked in the dishwasher, the girls assembled themselves at the back door.

  “Blimey,” said Wilhie, catching Lucy’s scowl. “You don’t have to look quite so miserable, you know. It can actually be fun, this job. And you get paid and it’s only for a while, innit?” She winced and rubbed her protruding stomach. “Whatcha put in the porridge? ’Imself is ’aving a right knees up in ’ere this morning.”

  The girls were helping themselves to duffel coats hanging on a rack by the door. Lucy, her cheeks flaming with anger and embarrassment, pulled on the last remaining one and stomped out after them. It was still dark outside and there was a chill in the air but this didn’t seem to deter anyone but Lucy as they chattered happily all the way around the hill to the dairy. They were a funny sight from behind, all walking in various stages of what could only be called a waddle: Wilhie had one hand on the small of her back as she delicately dodged the cowpats and Jack walked from side to side like a very old cowboy.

  Lucy wondered for a moment if she had been sucked in by an evil cult. She doubted, though, that Corrie and Fee had brainwashed her, just made her listen to gobshite music. And they hadn’t asked her for any money. In fact, they were giving her some. When they rounded the corner to the dairy her suspicious thoughts were interrupted as the smell of a hundred cows’ effluent hit her in the face like a game show cream pie. She gagged and tripped at the same time, falling into Jack, who turned around to steady her.

  “Pretty gross, eh?” Jack said cheerfully. “You want to be here when the spring grass kicks in. Talk about shit!”

  “Does it always stink like this?” Lucy asked, trying to get her dry retching under control and still clutching desperately on to Jack as Avis and a tall ginger-haired boy herded the cows toward the milking shed. The cows were diverted at the front into five different walk-through bails, their heads leaning over wooden doors on the other side. Up closer, all Lucy could see was five bony cows’ bums, covered in muck and smelling like shit. She was green with revulsion and fear, and Jack looked at her with sympathy.

  “You are in a bad way, aren’t you, Luce?” she said pityingly. “I have to say yes, it does always stink like this. But,” she said quickly as Lucy made to leave, “you do get used to it. Wilhie’s right, Lucy. It can be fun.”

  Lucy slapped her hands together for warmth inside the too-long sleeves of her duffel coat and looked deeply unconvinced. Jack peered over her shoulder to locate Avis, who was still making her way through the herd to the dairy pit-lanes, and pulled Lucy into a conspiratorial huddle.

  “Look, you get £150 a week and you don’t need to spend a single penny while you’re here. You get a roof over your head, it’s warm and you get good food. All you have to do is sing a few harmless songs, lay off the burgers and do a bit of milking. And nobody hassles you here, Lucy, that’s the beauty of it all. Everybody leaves you alone. And where else are you going to get that? You know, in our condition.”

  Before Lucy could contemplate the matter of her condition any further, Avis arrived at her side with a stool and a pail and directed her to the closest bail, which contained a sad-eyed cow called Maria.

  “Actually,” Avis said sheepishly, “amn’t they all called Maria for the purposes of ease and convenience. Now!” She pulled Lucy around to face her, then sat herself down on the little stool, rested her shoulder on Maria’s undercarriage and reached for her udder. “Oooh, I nearly forgot!” she said, standing up again with surprising haste for someone quite so top-heavy. “Have you got the remote, Tessie?”

  “Yes, Avis,” came the reply from down the shed.

  “Then what are you waiting for, girl?” Avis called good-humoredly. “Hit it, why don’t you!” The gentle sounds of The Sound of Music soundtrack permeated the fetid area. The cowshed, quiet up until then apart from the sound of scraping stools and shuffling hooves, suddenly hummed and reverberated to the swelling strains of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Lucy stared open-mouthed as the four pregnant milkmaids and Avis O’Regan began milking in time to the title track. Avis was beaming and pulling Maria’s teats in accord with the swell of the music. The milk seemed to emphasize the beat as it hit the bottom of the pail, and the whole strange scenario seemed to swim around Lucy like a dream.

  “You try, Lucy,” Avis said over the music as she jumped spryly off the stool again.

  Lucy, for want of any alternative opportunity presenting itself, sat on the stool. Under Avis’s instruction, she leaned her cheek against Maria’s warm side and reached for her udder. Her small size, more often than not a shortcoming, proved otherwise in this instance. Her shoulder fitted neatly under the cow’s belly, her head into the soft curve of Maria’s flank. Reaching the udder was a bit of a stretch, but once she curled her violin-player’s hands around the teats, Lucy felt as though she was just the right size for the job. Slowly she squeezed with one hand. Nothing happened. She squeezed again. Still nothing. Maria shuffled uncomfortably and stamped a hoof in impatience, startling Lucy, who reared back, only just keeping her balance on the stool. She looked at Avis, who was smiling patiently and miming in the air the gentle but firm massage required for milking. Lucy moved in once more, her angry scowl replaced by her concentrating scowl and, within ten minutes, the first eight of them completely exasperating, she was milking Maria for all she was worth. It was hard work but quite satisfying once she got the hang of it. She looked up to share her achievement with Avis, but her supervisor had moved on. Only then did Lucy real
ize she was the only person in the shed who was not singing about the hills and how alive they were. She thanked God she didn’t know the words, and poked her tongue out at the ginger-haired boy who was watching her. He blushed and bobbed down behind another Maria.

  Across in the factory, Corrie and Fee were cranking up the pasteurizing machine. Corrie loved the factory first thing in the morning, when it was just he and Fee. The smell of cheese just made and milk about to arrive seeped out of the factory walls and floorboards like a comfortable old blanket. And the quiet! How he loved the quiet. Once, when the demand for their product had been smaller, they had been the only ones who worked in the building, managing the packing and the orders themselves. As their reputation grew, however, they had been forced to bring in outside help. Fee had wanted Carmelite nuns, whom he thought would work quite hard and not say much. They proved to be a bit thin on the ground, however, so instead they ended up with Marie Lonegan from the village and her sister-in-law Ruby O’Toole. The pair arrived on the dot of 8:30 every morning and neither drew breath until they left again.

  It drove Fee especially to distraction. “Do they never feckin’ shut up?” he had asked after the first couple of years. “Either one of them?”

  Ruby and Marie both had the extraordinary capacity to talk at the same time yet still hear what the other was saying.

  “The poor man, God bless him, left here all on his own—”

  “And so I says to Patrick, ‘Well, it was only 40p last time I looked—’”

  “And the little fat one never likely to—”

  “And there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight either if—”