Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  Monday, 14 May 2007

  Splish splosh

  Went shopping for a bathroom. There was a moment. The baby was crying, the four-year-old was demanding I attach his moulded red plastic Power Ranger to the rocket and my husband said if we went with the bath taps and showerhead I wanted, they would obscure the view out of the window. I thought: ‘Do you know what? Fundamentally, I don’t care. In a month or so, I won’t even notice. Let’s just decide something and go.’

  We had already been bathroom shopping in one of those shopping warehouses where you buy food in bulk and televisions that think they are cinemas. There were some very large shoppers in that very large shop. People so large you wondered whether they shopped in bulk because they ate in bulk. You wanted to point at their trolleys and ask: ‘Ever wondered why you’re fat? Stop shopping here. Shop in your local grocer’s. It will cost more. You will eat less. You will get thinner.’ I shouldn’t scoff. I look at the boys some mornings. I say: ‘Did you grow last night?’ They are taller than they were when I put them to bed. There are other mornings when I look at my hips. I say: ‘Did you grow last night?’ They are bigger than when I put them to bed. Doubtless, there will come a day when I will heave myself, rippling and sodden, out of my luxury bath, abandon my village shops and insist we go shopping with a forklift.

  Thursday, 17 May 2007

  Hinged and hung

  Newly carved window frames and doorways hang suspended by ropes from the rafters of outbuildings. They frame space and make you think of possibilities. You could step through the empty door to find a finer world, open a magic window on to a sunnier life. The frames hang like a promise and say: ‘The future is walking through our doors any minute now. Keep faith awhile and see.’

  I know I can relax. Where there was a wall along the back of the kitchen, there will be doors to a courtyard garden. One of the builders placed a penny coin, as shiny as could be, beneath the first stone of the door surround to wish us luck. Is that not kind and noble? A well-meant wish for luck. Can a house fail to be happy when founded on another person’s kindess? He does the same in every house he builds. I could argue it is a new life we are building up here but mine is not a new house. Nobler yet, then, to wish me luck. He made an exception. Perhaps he thought we needed more luck than most.

  Friday, 18 May 2007

  The hardest word

  The Patient Mother emailed me. She said: ‘There’s so much I want to say and most of it focuses on the appalling attitude I have recently adopted towards you. I haven’t phoned you as you asked me to do because I was afraid you wouldn’t really want to talk to me. I have behaved terribly, like a stupid spoilt child, not to mention … sheep – following suit, if you know what I mean. I have never meant to ignore you, snub you or act coolly towards you. It’s something I’ve never done to anyone before and believe you me it’s preyed on my mind every day … I actually feel quite disgusted with myself. Please forgive my rudeness. I am truly sorry for being so pathetic.’ She ended: ‘I hope we can be friends again and maybe even one day meet up for coffee (or tea in my case).’

  I know that she considers her own and special child has blossomed in the school and I understood why she was angered by my words. I thought: ‘Cor blimey – how cool is she to have the courage to say sorry and how brave of her to do it with such electronic grace?’ I replied: ‘Listen, honey. Fret not. Everybody is entitled to their opinion and all sorts of people thought I should not be blogging about the school. Various peeps got swept up in the scandalous fact I was writing, without necessarily absorbing what I was saying. I respect anyone’s right to hold a different opinion from my own. 100 per cent. Truly. Re “the other girls in the dorm” not speaking to me: A) I am a grown-up and worse things have happened; B) long before your email, I had written you a “Get out of jail free” card for any number of reasons … So we are A-OK. Promise. And coffee or tea would be lovely any time that suits.’

  Saturday, 19 May 2007

  Beefcake

  A London Friday night. Where would I have been? A chichi supper in a sushi restaurant, exhausted by work, distracted from enjoyment by a who-knows-why apathy of the soul? Maybe not. Maybe a just-out movie, alone or with a friend. Alone, I am likely to cry in movies, sit in crushed velveteen seats, eat tear-wetted popcorn, grope hopelessly for tissue scraps. If given the choice, I prefer company and laughter. But in the country. Tra la. Who goes out to dinner in the country? Some do. I don’t, or only when the moon’s shine is blue. Certainly not a movie. What’s ‘a movie’? Better, far, a stock-judging event, a fund-raiser for a good and rural cause. I can die happy now I have stared at a cow’s backside all night. I asked myself: ‘Does life get any better than this? Right here, right now, staring at this particular cow’s arse?’ I thought to myself: ‘I bloody hope so.’

  Then I thought: what is not to enjoy about a Charolais cow? Who needs a Hollywood star rising from the sea? Watch the muscle ripple in that young bull’s rump. Admire the conformation of that heifer, set four-square and shapely. This cheeky Suffolk tup, a painted caramel and black-faced beauty, spraytanned for the night. A city dweller – which, of course, is far from what I am – a city dweller might think one sheep looked much like a fleecy other. Might feel they would rather eat the steak than spend quality time at the weekend with it. That is not me, of course.

  To judge the beast, a farmer told me you look to see if they are ‘breedy’ – that is to say, if they are a bright, attractive sort of animal. To be regarded as breedy, the animal’s ‘top line’, which runs along their back, has to be straight and true and they should not be knock-kneed. Judges rank and mark the differences between the creatures in secret; contestants score them. Frighteningly complicated mathematics are done by frighteningly clever women sitting in front of an Aga. Calculators tap, there is a quiet scurry of papers and a winner emerges whose judgement matches that of the judge. I did not win; though, as it turned out, I am a good judge of bull.

  They are cool customers, these farming types. They march you to the creamy bull, which is a thing of power and beauty. They flay it with their practised butcher’s eyes, point and say: ‘Under that, the fillet,’ or ‘The hindquarter’s where the eating is.’ Conversation is of bull semen in straws and the washed-out embryos of calves. Breeding and the money breeding is worth; £55,000 for one Charolais bull recently. It makes me think, when a farmer wants a wife, does he do as the rest of the world does? Catch a smile thrown by a pretty face? Buy her a drink? Cadge a kiss? Fall in love? Or, as he stands at the crowded bar with a note folded and standing to attention in his hand, does he watch the way she moves across the room? Listen for the knock of a knee? Check the brightness of her eye? Span with invisible hands the spreaded width of her hips? Does he ask whether money will be well-spent?

  Wednesday, 23 May 2007

  Scooby Doo, where are you?

  I wanted a night away to take my mind off all the building work. Not to go down to London. I miss it too much when I come back. I had a seriously bad idea. I decided I would spend a night in one of the castles up here – not the King’s but one that claims to be ‘Britain’s Most Haunted Castle’. Then I had an even worse idea. I thought: ‘If I am going to spend a night in Britain’s most haunted castle, I should do it on my own, otherwise it would be cheating.’ Cheating who, exactly? The dead but not yet gone? A night away from the children. I could have spent it at a luxury hotel with a complementary spa treatment. I could have zipped down to London and spent it with a credit card. I could have found a lover in a chat room, made some excuse about the car running out of petrol and spent it in cyberspace with my hand on my mouse. Instead, I spent it in a cold apartment up a stone tower without another living soul in sight.

  Before I went up to my apartment, a ‘ghost walker’ gave us a tour of the castle and its grounds, describing horrid, bloody tortures in the sort of professional detail I did not think entirely necessary. There were half a dozen of us on the walk. He shut us up in the darkness of the dungeon,
described the freezing touch of a twelve-year-old girl dead from pneumonia and the heavy rose scent of a deserted and unhappy wife. He claimed that as he had sat in one room, a rocking chair started to rock violently, while on another night, a flag had dropped from the chapel wall to wrap itself round a visitor.

  When he found out I was staying the night, he told me the little bedroom in my tippy-toppy tower apartment had a ‘very oppressive’ atmosphere. He predicted: ‘I bet you won’t sleep in that one tonight.’ ‘Not now I won’t,’ I told him. He said visitors often abandoned my apartment in the middle of the night after doors opened and banged shut and lights went on and off. I said: ‘Feel free not to share.’ Not one to take a hint, he claimed two staff would no longer work in it after they went into one of the bedrooms and the door ‘jammed’.

  Tour over, apartment cautiously entered, I made a cup of tea and poured a glass of wine. I poured two – I didn’t want anyone thinking I was rude. I opened up the visitors’ book. George: ‘1 a.m. Lying in bed, eyes open, wife asleep. A round ball of light flashes and is gone. Again a round ball of light.’ A Whitby couple: ‘Caught lots of orbs. How exciting. Just to warn others, one was in the sitting-room area of the apartment.’ Orbs are considered by some to be the souls of the departed. Others think they are dust. The problem is that I am reading this book in the sitting-room area of the apartment in a chair that smells like it is trying to pass on a message. A message like: ‘Don’t sit here. Someone is sitting here already.’ I think: ‘Relax.’ There is a knock on the door. I think: ‘Bugger politeness, I am not answering the door to anyone who might be dead.’ Then I think: ‘I should stop reading this book and go to bed,’ but I am slightly worried that if I stop reading, I will look up and a hooded figure will say: ‘Boo.’

  Eventually, I make myself look up and take stock. There are three bedrooms in the apartment: the little one I have been warned about, a twin-bedded room and one with a double bed. The little room is up a stone staircase and has a curtain across the entrance; the other two bedrooms both have doors. I am no sooner going to sleep in the oppressive little bedroom than fly. Neither am I going into any bedroom where the door ‘jams’ and the walls start to bleed. The ghost walker did not say the walls would bleed but it pays to think ahead. Reluctantly, I choose one and settle down, but for some reason I cannot quite sleep. I lie there in the bed pretending to sleep in case anyone is watching. I figure if I am awake, any watcher would presume I am in need of company. I am not in need of company. I am in need of my head examining. I do the metaphorical equivalent of stuffing my fingers in my ears and humming loudly. I do not hum out loud. I do not want to make any noise which would draw attention to myself. I do not want to hear anything more and I certainly do not want to see anything. I lie there as the hours crawl by, and wait for dawn, which arrives at least three hours late. I have brought Alpen and milk for breakfast and find a bowl and spoon in the cupboard. My heart is pounding so loudly as I open the box, I think: ‘Do you know, I don’t think I am that hungry. I think I will drive home now and eat my cereal there.’ And on the way back, driving home along an empty road over the dew-drenched moors, my heart lifts and I think: ‘I am alive. I am alive.’

  Saturday, 26 May 2007

  I have seen the future – and it might just work

  I am impressed by the skill I see around me in the cottage. I enjoy the evidence of craftsmanship. I can appreciate a plaster-perfect wall; the subtle, creamy finish of a painted room; red clay flattened brick rescued from underneath the kitchen floor, cleaned and displayed in a newly opened-up hearth; a landing floor, quilt-patched with wood rescued from that kitchen floor, each piece eased in and nailed down by a craftsman. It is not just a matter of a job and a bill. I can appreciate the efforts of a man trying to steam, sand, scrape and burn whitewash and distemper clinging tight to the ceiling beams it has loved for years. I know his arms ache and his breath catches in the dust as he helps to build an idea of a house.

  An American friend told me that I am in a conversation with the house. True. My house speaks to me of the past, the present and the future. In that corner of what will be my sitting room, a pantry stood; that windowsill by a greasy wall was where a woman made her butter; the hearth we have uncovered once held a kitchen range. I have listened and learned something of the house and those who lived here, in the rewriting of its rooms and passages. The present, of course, is around in all its brick-dusted glory, patterns keyed in the render, electric cables hanging from the walls, strangers who have become friends marking the rooms with their skills. But I can see the future better than the present. As I stood on the landing looking down the painted corridor through the house, I saw soft painted walls and light from mended windows. The walls pushed back to open up the route between what were two houses, knitting the divide with space. I thought: ‘Perhaps this could be my home. Perhaps I could hang pictures along these walls.’

  Wednesday, 6 June 2007

  Bad hair day

  My husband takes this land in his stride. He never seems to blink at it. I find the country odd in so many ways. Everywhere you go, there are animals. You do not walk down a city street to find it teeming with wild dogs. Not unless you are very unlucky. Here, however, sheep and cows are everywhere, while the roads hop with hares, but the animals are never left to enjoy their bucolic peace. Someone always wants something from them: their meat, their milk, their young. Yesterday, it was their wool.

  I went to watch a gang of New Zealand sheep shearers in operation. Five hunky men with big biceps, torn vests and distressed jeans, sweating to the sounds of the Eighties. My Gay Best Boyfriend would have loved it, but any relationship, you could tell, would be abusive.

  The shearer tumbles a fat, woolly sheep over a wooden gate. Whoomph! His buzzing machine shears hang from the metal gallows above him. ‘Time to leave,’ thinks the sheep. Too late. Pop rock from a dangling boombox belts out in time to a bleating beat. The sheep is sitting on her back end, black hooves waving in the air, when our macho shearer hero shoves her foreleg between his own ragged, muscular legs. Hunched over her body, he starts to strip her.

  Down the belly and into the lower reaches, down the inside of a hind leg and then up and around her tail end. One hand moves with the machine, the other stretching the skin; it is beginning to get chilly down there. Up and along her side to the spine; the flesh showing tremble pink underneath striped white fuzz. Down the foreleg and shoulder. He tilts back her head and holds it against his six-pack, pressing the vibrating tool up and around the throat; he throws the loose noose of fleece around and over her head and pushes her on to her back to reach round her bared shoulder better. Suddenly, her head is between his legs as he works down the second shoulder to the last leg.

  It takes a minute and a half, maybe two, to strip a sheep of her dignity. The shearers straighten, only to haul out another sheep, clicking a counter to show they have a new squeeze between their knees. I cannot believe they do not dream of sheep at night. I do not want to know the details. I am certain that sheep dream of them; an electric barbers’ shop from hell with Kiwi demons.

  The gang spends around six weeks in Northumberland and Scotland, with each man expecting to shear around 250 sheep a day. At this farm, on this day, they were shearing Beulahs and Texel crosses. They shear twice a year in New Zealand and most of this group have recently arrived from Canada. Belly wool is taken off first and discarded. Aside from that, the fleece comes off in one piece. The gang also includes two ‘wrappers’, who throw the fleece on to the floor, clean side down, tuck in the neck end, fold first one side then the other and roll it into a bundle. The bundles are then tossed into a large plastic bag for one of the wrappers to stomp down, much as grape pickers stamp on grapes. The wool pack is then sewn up with cord threaded through by a large nail hammered into a needle.

  Each fleece will bring around £1 from the British Wool Marketing Board; each sheep sheared costs the farmer around £1. Traditionally, the belly fleece and the little tufts of
wool that come off during the shearing were all sold. Even muck on the tufts was cut off to allow those tufts to be sold as well. Now, the price of wool is low enough to mean the tufts are left where they lie. The Sheep Farmer said: ‘Cash-wise, it’s a useless exercise. We do it for welfare reasons or they are eaten alive by maggots.’ I saw a maggoty sheep. Not pretty. He went on: ‘The other reason is they get heavy with the dew, and they roll over on to their back and can’t get up. Then a crow will come and peck their eyes out.’

  The ‘ganger’ in charge, shouted me over to him as I folded and rolled a fleece, grease on my hands. I thought: ‘Lucky me.’ It has been a long time since a rugged New Zealander showed an interest in me. In truth, a rugged New Zealander has never shown any interest in me. He was called something indisputably male. It might have been ‘Dave’. Perhaps it was Gnasher. I walked across and looked down. He had a sheep between his legs. I thought: ‘Should I be here?’ He gestured to me to throw a leg over. I thought: ‘I am never going to get an offer like this again.’ I used my knees to hold the sheep in place, holding the shears in one hand and a leg in the other. I think it was the sheep’s leg. I was tense. It might have been Gnasher’s. In which case, he should drink less and eat more. As Gnasher helped me push her head between my legs, I thought: ‘I hope sheep don’t bite.’ This is not the thought you want to be having as a sheep stares balefully at your backside and you give her the worst haircut of her life. They don’t bite; at least, she didn’t. She would have had good reason. She was definitely having a bad hair day. The only good thing to be said about my shearing was that I did not actually kill her. That and the fact it brought me closer to Gnasher. I do not know which of us was the more traumatised by the end of my shearing, me or the sheep. Me, I think. It has been known for farmers’ wives to run away with a tractorman or shearer. Strangely, he did not ask me to run away and join his gang. I could learn.