by G. R. Gemin
They were all looking at me as if I’d been the one who’d broken into Roger’s house. Then I spotted Darren coming along the alley.
“That’s the monkey that rang my doorbell!” said Roger, pointing at him.
“Darren!” Gran and me shouted at the same time. “Come ’ere!”
“They made me do it, Gran,” he said, pointing at Ryan and Jamie.
I grabbed him. “You wait till I tell Mam!”
“Oh I see, Gemma,” said Gran. “Changed your tune now it’s your own brother that’s involved.”
I couldn’t win.
“He’s my neighbour, Darren!” said Gran. “Not that it makes it right if he wasn’t. What d’you think they were doing round the back while you rang the bell?”
“It was just a laugh.”
“My own flesh and blood,” said Gran.
“Would you hold on to this one?” Cowgirl said to Roger, handing Jamie over to him. She slung Ryan over her shoulder, as if he was nothing more than a jacket.
“NO! Put me down!” he shouted.
Cowgirl turned to Roger. “I think I can manage that one too.” Roger lifted up Jamie so she had one on each shoulder, struggling away.
“Thanks for the lunch, Lilly,” she said.
“Pleasure’s all mine,” said Gran.
“See you up at the farm,” Cowgirl said as she walked off with Ryan and Jamie hanging down her back.
Gran watched her go with a big grin on her face. “You got a special friend there, Gemma,” she said. “You can learn a lot from her instead of that ne’er-do-well Sian. And you,” she said to Darren. “I’ll be speaking to your mam, make no mistake.”
So off we went, and I’m thinking I’ve got to walk back into school with Cowgirl, who happens to have two boys slung over her shoulders, one of them being Sian Jenkins’s brother – ’appy days.
NINE
We went back across the scuzzy Mawr Common, towards school. It was bad enough to have to walk back with Cowgirl, without the extra attention we were getting. She had her arms wrapped around both boys’ legs like she was carrying two sacks of fodder to the milking shed. Ryan started hitting Cowgirl as he hung over her shoulder. She stopped. “See those stingy nettles?” she said. “You hit me one more time and I’ll walk through them, backwards.”
“I feel sick,” said Jamie.
“Teach you to bother people who do no harm.”
Ryan hit her again. “PUT US DOWN!”
“Right, that’s it!” Cowgirl went up to the nettle bushes, turned and walked into them backwards. Ryan and Jamie screamed like they were on a roller coaster.
Kids followed us as if it was a daily event, and so by the time we got to the school entrance there was a crowd. Then Sian was standing in front of us. God, she looked angry. “Put my brother down!”
“Not yet. Almost there.”
Sian turned on me and my knees went wobbly. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
“She was with her, Sian,” said Ryan, upside down. “She was there.”
I pointed at Darren. “I was sorting my brother out, wasn’t I?”
“She and Cowgirl were round my gran’s!” said Darren, the grass.
“Cosy,” said Sian, glaring at me, and I knew that was it – I was in deep. She turned to Cowgirl. “Put ’em down – now!”
“No.”
Sian grabbed her brother and started to tug. Karen, one of Sian’s best mates, held Jamie, but Cowgirl carried on walking as if she was a horse pulling a plough. Ryan and Jamie screamed. Everyone was laughing, and then Cowgirl let go. Ryan, Jamie, Sian and Karen ended up in a pile on the ground. I would have laughed too, if I hadn’t been thinking about what Sian was going to do to me.
TEN
“I didn’t know what they were doing, Mam. Honest.”
“You were naughty, Darren,” she said, staring at the TV, having a smoke.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” I shouted. “He was ringing the doorbell so that his mates could break in the back to help themselves – burglars!”
“Don’t shout, Gemma! I don’t come home to listen to you shouting, all right?”
“Yeah, Jamma,” said Darren. “Mam’s watching TV and having a rest. You can see that,” he added as he slid on to the settee, like a creep. “I wasn’t robbing, Mam. Honest to God.”
“They were going to call the police!” I said.
“Who were?”
“Gran and Roger.”
“Oh, I’ve never liked that Roger – rude, he is, and miserable!”
Darren leaned his head on Mam’s arm. “Cowgirl dragged them through stingy nettles, Mam.”
“Who is this girl?”
“Kate Thomas,” I said, folding my arms. I was stood in the middle of the lounge like I was the mam and they were the kids.
“Massive, she is,” said Darren.
“What was she doing round your gran’s, anyway?”
“Robbing her, for all we know,” said Darren.
“Gran invited her,” I said, though I was past caring. “She lives on a farm, milking cows.”
“Should have seen their faces after going through the stingies, Mam – all lumpy they were.”
“Oh! I knew it was box fourteen!” said Mam, staring at the TV. “Seventy-five grand she lost! Should have listened to me.”
“She should have listened to you, Mam,” said Darren.
I couldn’t bear watching him crawl, so I went up to my room.
I took out a jewellery box Gran had given me years ago, not that I’ve got any proper jewellery, and I looked at the dried grass and leaves inside.
When we went for that picnic, me and Darren went exploring – we used to get on OK then. I was wearing lovely new sandals Dad had bought me, and they’d got all dirty. It was a few days later that the police arrived and arrested him. Mam was crying. I was crying. It was horrible. Dad said he’d be back, but he wasn’t. He got sent to prison for petty larceny and fraud, which is a posh way of saying stealing and cheating.
Well, the day after he was arrested I was putting on my new shoes and I noticed dried grass still stuck to the soles. I cried. Not because they were new and all dirty, but because when the leaves and grass got stuck to the shoes everything was OK. Then a few days later it was all not OK.
I don’t know why I did it, but I pulled off all the bits of dried stuff and put them in the jewellery box. Silly, I suppose – just dirt, people’d say. No one knows what it is, ’cept me, and all from a place I remember but can’t find.
I wondered if Dad ever thought about that picnic at the waterfall. He had no worries sitting in his cell, not like me. I had to go back to school and face Sian, and it was all Cowgirl’s fault.
“Why did I have to open my big mouth and tell Gran?” I said out loud.
I closed the box and fell back on my bed.
ELEVEN
The great thing about cycling is that it’s good for you, but no one thinks you’re doing proper exercise. See, if I’d started jogging around the Bryn Mawr everyone would’ve made fun of me, but being on your bike lots goes unnoticed. And when you cycle you leave everything behind, like my brother Darren, or facing Sian at school.
It was a cold day, but lovely and sunny too. So I cycled up to the farm. It would only take me about twenty minutes to get there, but I wanted to go the long way, from the top of the valley and down the hill – eyes wide open this time. I loved the wind and the speed. Fantastic. I thought I was going to take off.
There was no sign of anyone when I got there. A truck was parked outside the farmhouse with “Nigel Thomas Landscape Gardener” written on the side.
“Looking for Kate?”
I turned. There was a man standing there. He was big and stocky, with curly black and grey hair – the man who had stopped when I was lying in the road. It was Cowgirl’s dad. I could tell because he had the same narrow, serious eyes.
“Yes,” I said.
“She’s in there.” He nodded towards the milking sh
ed. “I remember you,” he said. “Lying in the road. Came up here, didn’t you? My wife said you fell over.”
I nodded.
“Not going to sue us, are you?”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“Wouldn’t have imagined Kate had any friends,” he muttered as he walked past me and into the house.
I decided I didn’t like him.
I wheeled my bike to the milking shed and leaned it against the wall. Someone was singing inside. I peered round the doorpost and there was Cowgirl hosing down the floor. I watched her for a while. She seemed happy, scrubbing the floor and singing away – something in Welsh. When she saw me her expression turned from happy to annoyed. “Shouldn’t creep up on people!”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Lilly here?”
“No. I came on my bike.”
“Well, you’ll have to wait.”
Making people feel welcome seemed to run in the family, I thought. I stood there, like a cow waiting my turn for milking, while she carried on hosing and sweeping the water out. Thorough job she made of it, I’ve got to say.
Finally, she turned off the water. “I’ll go and get Jane.”
“That your mam?”
“What? No, she’s a cow.”
“Who? Your mam?”
“NO! Jane. Jane is a cow, you stupid––”
“You invited my gran, you did,” I snapped. “You didn’t invite me, but she’s my gran and … and I want her to have a nice day…” My voice went thin. Cowgirl leaned her brush against the wall.
“I’ll get Jane. You wait here for your gran.”
She went off and I sat on the step of the shed, wishing I’d just carried on cycling along the top of the valley. It wasn’t long before I heard Roger’s car straining to get up the hill. By the time it turned into the farm it was sounding like it was about to explode. Roger stopped the car next to the shed and got out. “It better still be on,” he said. “Didn’t think she’d make it coming up from the Mawr!”
Gran sat there waiting, so I opened the door for her, like a chauffeur.
“He’s been moaning from the moment we left,” she mumbled. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Then I saw Mr Banerjee getting out the back. “What’s he doing here?” I whispered.
Gran frowned and came close to me. “Gemma, do me a favour, I been looking forward to today so don’t show us up. He’s come to see the cow, like me. And as a Hindu he has more right to be here than us.” She turned to him. “Isn’t that right, Mr Banerjee? The cow is a special animal in India?”
He nodded and smiled. “Very special.”
Mr Thomas came towards us.
“Like Cardiff central station here today,” he said. “You all come to see Kate?”
“Yes,” said Gran. “She invited me up. I’m Lilly, Gemma’s grandmother. Kind of her to invite me. See, during the war I used to be––”
“Didn’t know she was giving guided tours,” he said. “Make sure you sterilise your shoes before you make contact with any of the cows. We don’t want you bringing your Bryn Mawr germs up here.”
“Of course,” said Gran. “If it’s not convenient…”
Mr Thomas nodded at something behind us. “Here she is.”
We turned and there was Cowgirl leading a cow towards us. Her dad walked up to her. I couldn’t hear what he said, but Cowgirl went red and said something back.
“I don’t care,” I heard him say. She walked past him like he wasn’t there, and the cow followed.
“They get foot-an’-mouth, it’ll be your fault,” her dad called.
Cowgirl ignored him and brought the cow over to Gran. “Lilly, I’d like you to meet Jane.”
“Hello, my lovely,” Gran said as she stroked the cow’s head. “Oh Kate, I hope we haven’t got you in trouble?”
“No, Lilly. We’ll just make sure you’ve got proper footwear and clean hands, like I was going to do anyway. Jane’s the best behaved of the herd. She’ll let you milk her the old-fashioned way.”
Mr Thomas started his truck and drove out of the yard. Cowgirl watched him go. “First things first,” she said. “We need to get you all in wellies and your hands washed.”
She was like a different girl. Her dad had joked about her giving a tour, but that was what it was like. She soon sorted us out with wellies. “These should fit you, Gemma,” she said, which was the first time I’d ever heard her use my name. She got us washing our hands, supervising us like a teacher. Then she led us back to the milking shed where the cow was waiting for us.
“Here you are, Lilly,” said Cowgirl, as she placed a bucket and a stool under the cow. I was nervous for Gran, because she did go on about her time on the farm during the war and here she was being tested, sort of.
“It’s been many years, Jane,” she said. “I’ll do my best.”
The cow glanced at Gran as if she understood.
Gran bent down and took a thingy in each hand – teats, she said they were called – and began to squeeze them. Nothing happened at first. I glanced at Cowgirl watching her, then there was the sound of something drilling into the bucket. It was amazing how much milk came out with each squeeze.
“Natural, you are,” said Cowgirl, but Gran just carried on like she had a job to do. The cow kept eating the fodder and the bucket was half full of milk before long. I’ve got to say I felt proud of Gran. She finally stopped and sat back with a groan. She grinned. “Ooh, I’d forgotten what a strain it was, bending over for long.” She looked up at me. “Going to have a go, Gemma?”
I wasn’t expecting that. “Nah,” I said. “Not bothered.”
“Oh, go on,” Gran said. “It’s not many times in life you get the chance to do something like this.”
My cheeks became all hot. I shook my head. “No thanks.”
“I would like to try, please,” said Mr Banerjee.
So he had a go too.
TWELVE
We took Jane back to the field to rejoin the rest of the herd, and we stayed at the gate watching them for a while. Some were lying down, and others chewed at the grass.
“Granddad told me we had over two hundred head of cattle before I was born,” Cowgirl said. “We had about fifty before the foot-an’-mouth outbreak, and now twelve.” She pointed across the field. “These fields were all ours. Sold to Mostyn’s farm now.”
“Old miser Mostyn,” said Roger.
“But if it’s Mostyn’s field,” said Gran, “how come you’re still using it?”
“We rent it off him, for the cows to graze on.”
“Aren’t there any baby cows?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “They’re away now.”
“Why?”
“Ever wondered how it is that cows give milk all year round?” Gran asked me. The way they were looking at me I got the feeling they knew something I didn’t.
“Their calves are taken from them and we take their milk because they carry on producing it.”
It sounded cruel. “But the calves are their … babies.”
“But you want your milk from the supermarket like everyone else, don’t you?”
“In India, we share the milk with the calves,” said Mr Banerjee.
“And you’d never kill the cow. Isn’t that right?” asked Gran.
Mr Banerjee shook his head and smiled. “Never.”
We watched the cows in the field for a while longer, and then headed back to the farmhouse. Cowgirl’s mam came out to meet us.
“Hello, Gemma,” she said. “How’s your leg?”
“Fine, thanks.”
She was introduced to Gran, Mr Banerjee and Roger – Kerry, her name was – and she invited us into the kitchen for tea. The cheery, chatty Cowgirl was gone as she silently helped her mam. Gran went on about what a lovely day she was having.
“It must be hard for farmers these days,” said Mr Banerjee.
Kerry nodded. “When I married my husband this was a busy workin
g farm and we made a good living. Now farmers are either the big timers like Don Mostyn or else you’re struggling and looking how you can make ends meet. The days are numbered for that herd.”
Cowgirl’s lips went tight.
“You’re selling them?” asked Gran.
“Not one of Kate’s favourite topics,” said Kerry, “but we’ve not much choice. They’re past their prime now, and Mostyn wants that field back.”
“They’ve got lots to give yet,” said Cowgirl, like she was talking to herself.
“How old are they?” I asked.
“Some are six, some seven.”
“Six! Is that all? How long would they live for if…”
“Twenty, thirty years,” Mr Banerjee replied.
Cowgirl nodded, then a truck pulled up outside and I saw her glance at her mam. The door of the truck slammed and in walked her dad. He looked down at us.
“You know, Kerry, I think Kate’s hit on a good sideline here,” he said. “Farm tours with tea and cake thrown in. What d’you reckon?”
Kerry laughed. “Well, you never know.”
“I’d pay,” said Gran with a smile. “You must be very proud of Kate.”
“Takes after her granddad, she does,” Mr Thomas said.
“Yes, I remember Gareth well,” said Gran. “He didn’t say a lot, but I liked him. And I’ve never seen anyone in my life work harder than your father.”
Gran had picked her moment. Mr Thomas’s stern look vanished. He seemed sort of itchy, like he wished he hadn’t come in. “Maybe it was because the world was at war,” Gran continued, “but he was up before anyone else and in bed after everyone else, seven days a week. Then he was called up and I remember he was in the papers when he returned – got a medal for valour.”
“That’s right,” said Kerry. She walked over to the wall and lifted off a picture. “There he is. That’s Nigel in his mam’s arms.”
