Homecoming (23 page)

He hangs up and walks to the outbuilding where the feed is kept, to pick up a sack of ewe rolls. They are feeding them constantly, the ewes, now their time is near. He drags a sack out to the yard and heaves it onto the front of the quad bike, and as he straightens, he glimpses the back of Ann’s fleece. Almost a stranger, both nursing their bruises and unable to bear the other one bumping up against them. He watches her on the far side of the yard, walking into the field behind the hay barn – the hospital field they call it, for any that are weak or ailing.

He drives the quad bike onto a track running out back across the in-bye. The workload has been heavier without Max these last days, but not half as hard as it would become in the next month or so. If Max doesn’t pull his boots up, Joe’ll have to hire in help and they can barely afford that.

As he approaches the first field, the bleating from the ewes is loud – louder than it should be. You expect it once they’ve lambed, the constant bleating, which is a conversation with their young. But not so early. He drives the bike to the centre of the field, distracted by the noise, and stops at the metal manger. He dismounts and hauls the bag of feed over, tips it up and empties it. As he does so, he looks across at the sheep who are calling out in their strange way. One approaches the manger and begins to feed and Joe feels down her swollen belly, saying, ‘What’s all this noise then?’

Joe is scanning the field and then his gaze stops on something – a pinkish-white blur on the grass, about thirty feet away. He strides over, folding the feed sack as he goes, thinking it a badger that’s been half eaten by a fox or some such and he should get rid of it in the sack.

‘Oh no,’ he says, kneeling beside the aborted lamb. It is pink, wrapped in its amniotic sac as if cellophaned, its little legs out front. He stands and kicks it with his boot. Its mother has not left its side, though she has stopped short of licking it clean. She nips at the grass occasionally, but mostly she has her head up, crying out.

An early one, he thinks. He puts the stiff little body in the feed sack.

It happens.

He thinks to carry on with his rounds of the fields, checking them. Then he sees another whitish blur on the grass, further away. No, he thinks, no, no, no. This is something more. He is walking faster now and the ewes’ bleating is loud in his ears. More little blurred bodies on the ground, beside walls or in ditches. A couple have been got at by foxes, their heads torn off. Joe begins stumbling, to see how many there are, hidden, in the dip beside the stream, in grassy pockets, as if the ewes have gone off, private, to deliver their shame. How many more, up on the fell, that he didn’t notice? How many more in the next field?

Joe sits down on a rock. A ewe, who still has her lamb inside, nips at the grass beside him. He rubs his forehead. How many? At least twenty dead in this field alone, near a month before term. What have I done? How has this happened? He is rubbing and rubbing his forehead, harder, until he is hitting it with a clenched fist.

The ewes are crying out. He knows them and they know him. And here’s death on the field, fresh and raw. Some of these ewes, that were crying out with their loss – he’d rubbed them at birth until they warmed up with life. Fed them careful, kept them with their mothers, clipped their horns, picked maggots from behind their ears. And now this, death all over his field, and who’s to say how many more?

What has he done? Made some terrible mistake? He thinks to the year and the decisions he’s made. To buy that tup – was it a wrong ’un? To put them out on the fell – too soon? Too cold? He knows what it likely is. Toxoplasmosis. And he thinks to the feed, the stuff he’d bought in from Granville Harris. That knockdown price. Why had they wanted him to take that feed so bad, Eric and Granville, if it wasn’t to get shot of it? He bangs his fist against his forehead. He can’t bear to check the next field, for what he might find there.

Dusk the following day and Joe squints and rubs his eye where the smoke has stung it: blue smoke, which swirls over the pyre behind his hay barn. Still more to burn. No news from the laboratory, but he’s sure it’s the toxo. At the top of the pile of bodies, bent legs with dainty hooves are silhouetted, black in the burning blue mist.

He walks fast away to his Land Rover, driving at speed towards Lipton. His mind is foggy. He operates out of a visceral, unthinking part of himself.

Joe pulls up outside the club. It is still light – the evenings are lengthening into spring. Glory days, usually, but not now. He wishes it was winter, two months ago, when things could still be rescued, when there was still time, when the dark would have covered him up.

‘Hello Joe,’ says Eric, without his usual garrulous laugh. He is standing next to Ron Chappell as always, in an otherwise empty room. ‘Shall I call Keith to fetch you a pint?’

‘I don’t want a drink from you, Eric,’ says Joe. ‘I’ve taken enough from you.’

‘Here we go,’ says Eric. ‘Keith?’ he calls to the bar, keeping his eyes on Joe. ‘Keith! A pint for the dark crusader here. What’s troubling you this time, Joe?’

‘Granville Harris keeps cats,’ says Joe.

‘Ah yes, that makes it all clear.’

‘He keeps cats. You knew Granville Harris kept cats. And you know what cats give to sheep – you’ve been a farmer. You know that cats and sheep must be kept apart. You knew that feed was bad. And so did Granville. And now my lambs are dead.’

‘Ah, so your bad flock is down to me is it, Joe?’ says Eric. He jangles his keys in his pocket, shaking his head. ‘I’ve brought down your flock as well as carrying on with your wife? My, I’ve been busy.’

‘Primrose lost her baby,’ says Joe. He can’t think. The lack of sleep these last two days, the terrible scenes at the farm, and now the warmth of the bar, and the way Eric seems unsullied, makes Joe confused.

‘I know Primrose lost her baby,’ Eric says. ‘I’m sorry for it, man. She should have been kept away from sheep in her condition, but I’m sure it wasn’t that. I’m sure there was no connection with what happened to Primrose. You mustn’t blame yourself, or anyone for that.’

Joe presses on. ‘The two of you plotted against me. “Joe is on his uppers,” you said. “Joe will take it and pay for it, too.” And now my lambs are dead and there’s bodies all over my fields.’

‘And how do you know it’s Granville’s cats that passed a sickness to your sheep? It was Granville’s cats, was it, and not any of the strays that wander in? Or your own cats, Joe, the ones that hide in your yard? You know that for certain, do you? Or what if it’s some other infection? Are you certain it’s the toxo? This is becoming a habit – accusing me. I’m your friend, Joe. But this is becoming too much of a habit.’

Joe is feeling the futility of it all, but he blunders on. ‘You wanted to bring me low,’ he says. It’s as if the room doesn’t exist, only the words as they emerge from his mouth. ‘You wanted to see me make the choices you’ve made. You’d see me cook breakfasts and turn down beds like a woman.’

‘And why the heck would I want that, Joe?’ Eric has put down his pint and is standing tall before him, his patience worn out. ‘And less of the “low” I’ll thank you. And another thing. I’m not after your wife – I’ve a very nice one of my own, who spent some nights crying over the rumours you started. Now get out, Joe. Go home. There’s no talking to you.’

Eric turns his back on Joe.

He walks out of the club into darkness and climbs into his Land Rover. He takes out his phone and dials Max’s home number.

‘Hello?’ says Primrose.

‘Primrose? It’s Joe.’

There is silence down the line.

‘Primrose?’

‘Yes.’

‘I said it’s Joe.’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you ever near sheep? When you were pregnant, were you ever out back near the sheep?’

‘We haven’t got any sheep.’

‘No lass, our sheep. The sheep on our farm.’

‘I know about sheep, Joe. I knew not to go near ’em or to be in the yard. Not to touch anything. Course I knew that.’

‘But Max, he could ’ave brought it home to you on his clothes.’

‘Why are you saying this, Joe? Are you saying it were my fault? Do you think we caused it, or that I could have stopped it from happening?’

‘Not you, Primrose,’ says Joe, and he gulps for air in his too-small cabin of the car. He tries to take a deeper breath. ‘Not you, no.’

‘Well then, why are you askin’ me this?’ says Primrose. ‘You all think it, all of you – that I should’ve taken better care of it. Max thinks it were my fault.’

Joe puts his head back. Closes his eyes. The phone is in his lap. ‘Not you, Primrose,’ he whispers.

He pulls down on the steering wheel and it’s almost too heavy for him, pulling the Land Rover out of its parking space outside the club. He eases out gently and as he does so he notices Eric’s Nissan Micra parked one space up. Its red paintwork is colourless under the light of the street lamp.

Joe drives at a crawl and his heart begins to pound as he turns the steering wheel a fraction with his left hand. His body is quick with adrenalin and then he feels it, the violence of metal on metal, the rock of his Land Rover as it scrapes and slows. The resistance against the accelerator. And then the alarm, like a small dog yapping, breaking up the night. He pulls away and the resistance stops and he drives fast up Lipton High Street.

Bartholomew drives up the M1 in Leonard’s fifteen-year-old Peugeot 205, the car rattling ever louder as his speed increases. He has his foot to the floor and he is hunched over his steering wheel, his body stiff with terror. His righteousness has evaporated. What use was it now, when they were in so much trouble? And where had he been, while they were scooping up dead lambs off their fields? Ignoring their calls for help. Sleeping in. Watching television alone with a ready meal.

And his claustrophobia over Ruby – that had evaporated, too. Now, all that was left was her absence. If she’d been with him, she’d have made him his better self, taken one look at that email and bundled him into the car there and then, saying ‘You have to go to them, Bartholomew. If you wait, you’ll regret it.’ But he had waited – a whole day – to square things with Leonard, get cover at the garden centre, pack his bag. What was
wrong
with him?

He forcibly drops his shoulders and pushes out his neck, to stretch the stiffness out, keeping his eyes on the road. He is regretting everything, especially his frozen heart these last two months. He needs Ruby: her help, just as his parents need his. He needs her to make him feel things right. But she’s gone. He doesn’t even know where she lives any more.

Five hours later, he pulls into Marpleton but instead of parking outside the farmhouse, he turns left onto a track before the house, which takes him across the in-bye. The car rocks and the stones are a tinny hail as they hit the base. Bartholomew has both hands on top of the steering wheel as he squints through the windscreen and out left and right through the passenger windows. At last he sees him, a kneeling figure over on the far side of one of the fields, beside a ewe.

‘Dad!’ he shouts, but the figure doesn’t turn.

As he approaches Joe, he sees the ewe is dead. Joe is holding a newborn lamb in one hand. Its skin is wrinkled in that way that the new have of looking like the very old. It is lying limp in his flat palm.

‘His mother didn’t make it,’ says Joe.

Bartholomew sees Joe’s trousers encrusted in mud, his knees sinking into the damp turf.

‘Come on, dad. I’ll sort this one out. Let’s get you in.’

‘No, I’m fine,’ says Joe. ‘I just have to see her right. Get her to the pyre. And mend this one.’

‘I’ll do it, dad. You’re exhausted and you’re nearly soaked through. I’m going to sort it all out. I’m here to help you now. I’m here, and I’ll get some lads in to help.’