by Angela Huth
In the shed – a vast building with corrugated roof and support beams cut from local trees – Saul was already in the aisle among forty young sheep he had brought in from their pasture. The chorus of bleating, in which individual voices were audible, increased as George came in. The sheep sounded like a bad afternoon in the House of Commons, he thought, smiling to himself. There was no return smile from Saul. Buffeted by animals, he held the vaccinating needle high, ready to plunge into the first sheep to hand.
‘You’re here, then,’ he shouted. Tersely, thought George. With a glance at his watch he understood why. He had promised to be here at ten o’clock. He was five minutes late.
‘Sorry’
‘You take the spray’
George picked up the aerosol can of blue spray and pushed his way in among the clumps of shifting wool of Exmoor Horns and Poll Dorsets. He had often done this job before, but not for a good many years. He wanted to watch closely, observe exactly how Saul, with the swiftness and skill of experience, went about it.
Saul grabbed a ewe, which bucked backwards in protest. He jammed it up against the rails of the pen. In a movement so fast it was almost invisible, he parted a clump of the animal’s wool: the dirty white outer wool gave way to the pure cream of the wool near the skin. For a second there was the flash of a small pink star of flesh: Saul’s needle shot in and out of this minuscule target. George sprayed a gash of blue on the ewe’s spine. She was released. She kicked, moved away. The sympathetic bleats from the rest of the flock increased: or was it indignation, or anticipation of their own jab? George could not be sure. He supposed it would take a long time for anyone working with animals to understand their language. Saul moved on to the next sheep.
Grab, inject, spray, release: here was the rhythm old Mr Elkin so often said dominated life. George felt himself become part of a surreal dream. His legs were warmed by fat wool bodies, his hands were freezing cold. He was trapped in a whirl of outraged faces and oyster-coloured eyes – the Poll Dorsets had a particular look of indignation, like strangers on a bus. The Exmoor Horns, ‘stroppy buggers’, according to Saul, bred to withstand hard conditions on the moor, were more appealing with their close-set eyes and low, frizzy fringes. The faces of the two different breeds churned around George – their eyes, cautious, sideways-looking, never met his – they liked to keep their psychological distance. Their bleating became loud music turned up full blast, no light and shade, more of an atonic symphony than an uproarious House of Commons. George was suddenly aware of sweat running down his back. His hands were warm at last. Forty blue-marked spines shuffled: the job was done.
‘Rams, now,’ said Saul.
They climbed into the rams’ pen – three large creatures with camel faces of calm enquiry.
‘Never so frantic as the women,’ said Saul. Quickly injected and sprayed, it was time for their feet. Saul, not a large man but with astonishing strength in his bone-hard flesh, flipped one of the rams ignominiously on to its back, supporting it from behind. It did not protest, merely glanced up at the roof with the kind of bored look an opera singer reserves for the highest, cheapest seats.
‘You come and hold Hidden, I’ll do the clippers,’ Saul commanded.
‘Hidden?’
‘Every time I go down to th’ pasture, he be hidden.’
George had but a brief look at the ram’s indignity: front legs waving, stomach slouched like a beer drinker’s, scrotum lolling to one side. He admired the way the animal seemed to have risen above any embarrassment, stared at by dozens of ewes it had served. At a look from Saul, and scoffing at himself for all this unbidden anthropomorphising, he quickly moved to support the surprisingly heavy animal.
With a skill that made it look easy, Saul cleaned out each cloven hoof in turn. George was aware of a bitter, sickly smell from the matter that was gouged out. Then Saul applied his clippers to the overgrown hooves: semi-circles of indigo rind dropped on to the ground of flattened straw. The whole business quickly over, the three rams, heads cocked back, eyes flaring, dignity restored, stood patiently waiting to be returned to their field. George wondered if he would ever be able to accomplish such everyday, humdrum farm tasks as efficiently as Saul.
Later in the day, having dealt with a pile of tedious paperwork awaiting him in the farm office, George returned to the shed to help with the ewes’ evening feed. On the way there he met Saul returning the flock of ewe lambs that had been vaccinated that morning to their pasture. By now the sky had cleared of clouds: there was a low evening sun. George turned to watch the flock on its short journey. Saul’s two dogs, obeying his quiet commands, kept the flock in absolute control – a feat which always filled George with awe. The sheep shunted along in a close crowd, each animals’ armour of wool outlined in a halo of light. He was aware that this was a sight familiar to shepherds and farmers for thousands of years, and the thought kept him standing absolutely still until they were out of sight.
There was a final moment of private wonder in George’s first full day of work on his own farm. In the shed – where the hungry bleating of the pregnant ewes was in full force – he and Saul heaved down bales of straw from the stack, cut their strings and tossed them into the pens. George copied Saul. He pulled the bales apart, scattered armfuls of the bedding on to the floor of the pens. The ewes, eager for a change of their diet of hay and silage, barged and crashed towards each new pile – greedy, selfish, intent only on their own satisfaction. In bending low to spread the straw evenly, George found himself head to head with four or five ewes: fringes, horns, wary eyes, smiling black muzzles, all within inches of him. He could feel the warmth of their breath. He was aware that their interest in eating straw was quickly sated. For a moment he had a sensation of knowing quite positively what it was like to be a sheep. He was one of them.
‘No point ‘n bending over, you’ll do your back.’ George heard Saul’s voice, stood up quickly. He was embarrassed, confused by his ridiculous imaginings. By now all the sheep were feeding. Some, sated, were already lying down chewing the cud, wrinkled eyelids at half-mast. A sudden quiet washed through the great shed as does silence after music. The ewes, soon to give birth, appeared to be relishing their last few days of peace before maternal responsibility overtook them.
‘Settled down for th’ night, then,’ said Saul. He was drawing the blinds down over the open sides of the shed. And yes, thought George, that’s most probably all they were doing, simply settling down for the night. Once again he scoffed at his own sentimentality: of course pregnant ewes did not think ahead like women. Perhaps they did not think at all, though looking at the intelligent cut of some of their faces that was hard to believe.
The two men walked back together to the farmyard in silence. They would meet again tomorrow morning, soon after seven, in the shed for the morning feed. The pattern of the days, months, years would carry on till they could work no more. Already George was beginning to understand his father’s obsession with rhythm. For a farmer committed to the well-being of his animals, the growing of crops, the tending of the land, there was no escape from it. George was conscious, that morning, that he had finally stepped on to a treadmill that would become his life.
Saul went off to pick up his son who was at work on a job in the cowshed. George lit the kitchen fire, sat beside it. A pie Dusty had left in a chipped enamel dish that had borne pies for as long as George could remember warmed in the oven. Soon, he knew, he would be fit, muscles in trim. But this evening he sensed a frisson of physical fatigue. Beyond the ache in his back – and somehow confused with it – there was a yearning to talk to someone about his first day as a farmer. After he had eaten his supper he drove up to the Prodgers’.
Prodge’s car was not there, and the kitchen was empty. George went to the small room leading off it that was known as the office. The chaos there was even greater than in the kitchen. A vast desk was buried beneath files and papers accumulated over many decades. But it was the warmest room in the house, home to the most
comfortable, battered sofa George had ever slumped upon. For hours of his childhood he and Prodge had used its corduroy seat as a battleground, plundering each other with a mass of half-dead cushions that in quieter times flopped over its back.
Nell was on an upright chair at her spinning wheel. She looked up, pleased and surprised by George’s appearance.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘End of day one as Farmer Elkin. I’m exhilarated, quite tired, though. I made the right decision. I did, Nell. I did.’
‘I can see you did.’
George lowered himself into his favourite corner of the sofa.
‘Where’s Prodge?’
‘Gone down the pub. Meeting some man who wants to help with the fencing. Want a cup of tea, a drink?’
‘No thanks, I’ve just eaten. Dusty looks after me well.’
‘That’s good. You need to eat properly, farming.’
Nell’s foot tapped away. She concentrated on a thread of wool the colour of oatmeal, reminding George of the flash of inner wool he had seen on the ewes this morning. He smiled.
‘I think you must be the only person for miles – maybe in the whole of England – who in the late twentieth century would rather spend an evening spinning than watching television. There can’t be many who even know how to spin these days. You make a very quaint picture.’
‘Tease me all you like. You’ve been teasing me all my life. Makes no difference.’
Nell was wearing a jersey that George recognised was knitted from wool she had spun and dyed. She made her dyes from greater celandine, rhubarb, powdered madder, horsetail hair fern, walnut shells, gorse flowers, lovage and copper sulphate, dyer’s broom … the names she had been mentioning for years came back to him in the quiet of the room. Once she had explained the technique of home dyeing. He remembered thinking the whole process sounded too complicated to understand, and had not paid much attention. But he did always notice the pale hedgerow colours of the jackets and jerseys she wore – thick, unfashionable country garments that would hold little appeal for the urban folk whose sartorial whims occasionally turned to rural life for inspiration.
‘How did it go, your first day?’ she asked.
‘Odd. Extraordinary. I went through strange sensations. Something to do with the proximity to the animals, perhaps. I kept on feeling … I knew what they felt. Ridiculous, I know’
‘We all go through that from time to time. But you’ll learn to detach yourself. Treat the whole thing as routine. You’ll be too busy to do much empathising. Just have to get on with the job, day in day out.’
‘Quite. That realisation, too, hit me hard. I mean, I’ve lived on the farm all my life, helped out quite a bit, but only in a dilettante sort of way. It didn’t matter if I was there or not: there was always Saul and Ben. And my father making the decisions. But now it’s my responsibility. And as for the physical work – well, I’m in poor shape. Office biceps, not that I was there long. Still, I’ll toughen up in a month or so, I daresay’
Nell pushed herself away from the spinning wheel and sat with her back to the fire.
‘You will.’ She held George’s eyes, encouraging.
‘I felt rather foolish,’ he said, ‘to have had such childish thoughts all day’
‘No need to.’
George shifted. With Nell, there had never been any need to be explicit. A few words were always enough for her to understand.
‘Did Prodge tell you he’d finished his shed?’
‘No,’ said George. ‘That’s fantastic. I must go up and see it, but I’m very busy tomorrow. I’ve got to get the slurry on the fields before this cold snap breaks.’
‘He’s the expert there,’ said Nell. ‘It’s all rather exciting, isn’t it?’
‘It is. It is. I love the planning. But it’s a bit unnerving, too. I mean, there’s so much to learn.’
‘And do you think you’ll ever get lonely up there?’ The question was so lacking in both earnestness and guile that George was able to smile.
‘I doubt it. If you set yourself a discipline, and have got plenty to think about that deflects thoughts from yourself, I doubt you can be lonely’
‘Not many would agree with you.’
‘Daresay not.’
‘Goes without saying, if ever … I mean Prodge and I are always here. We don’t like it if more than a few days go by without your coming over.’
‘As always.’
‘As always.’
Nell rose, went to a cupboard. When she opened the door there was a landslide of old magazines and papers. She left them on the floor, picked up a box and returned to her chair. None of this, George could tell by the languor of her movements, was a hint for him to leave. Had she wanted him to go, she would have said so. She was forthright, Nell: always had been. Much more so than her brother.
She began to sort balls of her wool into matching colours. He watched in silence as she picked up each fuzzy globe and chose a place for it in the box. Her hands were small but blemished: farmwork had battered them. But Nell was the least vain woman George knew. It would never occur to her to spend time polishing her nails or pampering her face. Years of West Country wind and rain had burnished her cheeks to an eternal russet. Even on the rare occasions she was ill, or tired, it was hard to tell. This evening, contemplating her at her modest task, George felt a keen anxiety for her future. What would happen to Nell? Where, in her hard-working life spent mostly in this remote area, would she find a husband? He could think of no suitable, available farmer. Nell had often laughed about the shortage of men, but said she didn’t care. Continuation of her present life was all she wanted, she claimed: she could think of nothing better. Though of course, should some perfect man come along then she might consider a change. She had often declared all this to George, looking him straight in the eye. He would nod in agreement, thinking it inappropriate to challenge her further.
‘Found anyone you fancy, Nell?’ George had not planned this question. It came out lightly, jokily.
‘No. Why? Where’d I find anyone?’
‘I don’t know. Out hunting.’
‘Well I haven’t.’ She looked up from her wool. ‘Why are you bothered?’
‘I’m not bothered, exactly. But from time to time I do wonder what’ll happen to us, to you.’
‘I don’t spend much time wondering. I’m just happy with things as they are. You know that. I’ve often said.’ She shuffled the wool again, rearranging balls she had just arranged with great care. Only the agitation in her hands gave the smallest clue to her feelings. ‘Prodge, though. There’s some girl down in Tiverton with an eye for him.’ She smiled. ‘He’s met up with her several times, market days. Bought her a few drinks. He says she’s a good-looker. But I think she’s leading him on.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Nell shrugged. ‘I get that impression, from what he says – and you know Prodge, he doesn’t say much. Anyhow, I said to him, if you’re thinking of bringing some girl here as a wife, upsetting all our arrangements, she’d better be a good ‘un or I’m off.’
They both laughed.
‘Don’t suppose it’ll come to that,’ said George. ‘Prodge has never been the fastest man to make decisions. Any woman he chose for his wife would have to be unusually reliable. He’d have to believe in her potential as a farmer’s wife before he made any move.’
‘I suppose so. But you know his moods. Sometimes he gets fixated on things. You remember how much he wanted to start a second herd, Jerseys? And how down he became when it didn’t work out? Just hope he doesn’t get obsessed with this Janine. Not that I’ve ever met her.’ She bit her lip. ‘And can’t say I’m that keen to do so.’
Nell put her box of wools on the floor – George could see how subtly they were regimented – and turned on him with sudden liveliness.
‘And what about you? All these cheeky questions to me …’
George shrugged, laughed. ‘I’ve got a long way to go bei
ng a farmer. I’m not going to have much time for anything else, drinks on market days with girls.’ He got up. ‘Better get going. Early mornings every day, from now on. Tell Prodge I was sorry to miss him. I’ll be back in a day or two, or you come over.’
‘I’ll ride over soon as I have a moment,’ said Nell. ‘Take my chance before lambing starts.’ She led him to the back door, stood with folded arms as he kissed her lightly on the forehead. Then he strode into the moonless dark of the yard. ‘Bitter night,’ she said.
George drove the mile home slowly. He rounded the corner that would bring the view of the house and the one light in the kitchen which he had left on. But there was more than one light: several windows were amber bricks suspended in the intense darkness. George accelerated into the yard not knowing what to expect, alarmed. A small car was parked: he did not recognise it. He hurried into the house. Had he turned on more lights, misremembered? What had happened? George charged into the kitchen, heart quickening.
Lily sat at the table, a mug of coffee beside her, reading an old copy of Farmers Weekly. Beside her on the floor was a large suitcase. She looked up, smiled.
‘George! Do you always leave the door open?’
Relief and anger clashed within George. He stared at her, unable to find words to express his annoyance. Gone, now, was the plan for instant bed, sleep. This intrusion would have to be explained. He could see he’d have to spend time listening.
