The Shepherd's Life (16 page)

“Messerschmitt one-oh-nine,” I said.

“What?”

“Messerschmitt one-oh-nine … A G two R two … I think.”

Silence. Everyone was looking at me weird, wondering if I had made it up. Then they all looked at him. The veteran nodded, then started to grin.

Weeks later, there was a quiz in our local pub. We never entered a team against the teams of teachers and professionals who turned out and appeared to know bloody everything. Instead, we'd sit and drink and wind each other up or play pool. One of my mates figured we could win a quiz about World War II. About two hours later we were winning the quiz, and I was pretty much the only one answering questions. My mates were grinning from ear to ear and slating teachers at the bar about how easy it was. We were getting funny looks from the other teams, who were trying to work out how the village idiots were winning the pub quiz. In the end we lost by a point on the last general-knowledge round, a question about a 1960s TV show I hadn't even heard of.

Later that night one of my friends said, “What are you doing here … with us fucking idiots? You should go to university and do something smart—you're smarter than these teachers. You should fuck off and do something.”

I was unsettled, because I didn't want to be any different from anyone else. And I certainly didn't think I was any better or smarter than them. It was a stunt, some showing off based on having read a few dozen World War II books. But sometimes you can't go back when people know something new about you.

 

21

Things got bad. My dad and I fell out about a tup he bought. I hated it. With hindsight it was probably not a bad specimen, but at the time it wasn't what I thought we needed for our flock. It had some black wool in its neck that it shouldn't have had. He thought it was a birthmark and wouldn't be passed on to its lambs. I disagreed and thought it would put a horrible flaw in our flock for years to come. It would have been easy to try it on a few ewes and see, but it provided a spark for us to explode at each other. For weeks we fought, bullied, said cruel things, tested each other, spotlighted each other's flaws, and scored points in front of others. There were times when I could have killed him, and I'm sure he felt the same. On odd occasions we were dragged off each other, fists flying. Something broke. I said I was off, that I was leaving the farm. I knew I could swallow my pride and back down, but it wouldn't solve the big issues and I wouldn't respect myself. I'd seen people that should have left the farm and done something else but who had stayed too long. You could see them becoming surly and bitter, and I could feel that growing in me too. But I didn't really know what to do. I barely knew what a CV was. If I'd had one it would have read: GCSEs—didn't try and failed. Work—on a farm. And I had no money at all. I didn't even have a car and I lived fifteen minutes' drive from the nearest town. I guess the best thing I had going for me was that I had nothing to lose.

 

22

My two younger sisters turned out far smarter than me: straight-A students, the kind of girls that get on the front of the local newspaper, clutching a piece of paper after their exam results. Sometimes I'd help the elder of them with her homework. She found it funny that her brother who had flunked school read so many books and knew so much stuff. One night she challenged me to do her history homework. I think she had a hot date or something, so she left me to do it. It was like a joke between us to see how I did. I stayed up late and typed out (with one finger on a word processor she used) the essay. A few days later, she was seriously pissed off because the essay came back with a rave review from her teacher. He'd told her it was even better than her usual high standard. I laughed, and told her that school was a “piece of piss.” She told me that was it, no more goes at her schoolwork. She made it clear that whilst I may be brainy, she at least was at school and would get A levels—I wouldn't. So from that moment on I kind of knew I could do A levels if I wanted, or needed to.

 

23

My younger sisters were never as indoctrinated with the farm as I was. They were part of it too, but not blinded by it. They were always a lot more modern and with it. This was partly because things, including attitudes, were changing rapidly around us. The four and eight years, respectively, that separated me from my sisters made a big difference. It was also different because they were girls. In many farming families, the daughters have none of the boys' embarrassment about being something different, and know that their role is to leave and do something else to earn respect (either that or marry another farmer and start their own branch of the family doing much the same as their own folk). The same farmers who are proud of their sons for flunking school to come home to work on the farm are also proud that their daughters work hard at school and go off to do other things in the wider world. Attitudes to education have changed as well, with many farmers now proud (and perhaps a bit relieved) when their children choose to stay at school and live a different life; but that wasn't so true when I was young. It meant my mother got more of her way with my sisters, and they repaid her efforts with the kind of exam results to make any parent proud. They got into the local grammar school, a quite different school experience than that which I'd had. I'd been a little shit, and they were top-of-the-class material. It was hard to believe we were the same family.

 

24

I applied to the local adult education centre when I was twenty-one (it always sounded to me like they should be teaching porn) to do A levels in the evenings over two years. The teacher called me and told me I couldn't get into the course because I had no qualifications worth mentioning. I'd have to do them first, then reapply. I asked him whether the class was full, and it wasn't. So I asked him to give me a three-week trial, and if I was out of my depth and a nuisance after three weeks, I'd leave of my own volition and they could keep my course fee for the year. He prevaricated a bit and said it was irregular but he'd go along with it. So after I got my farmwork done, I'd jump in my parents' car and drive to Carlisle (half an hour away) and sit in classes from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The first week I was very nervous. I told myself I was in control and could leave if I didn't like it. I didn't tell anyone except my family and asked them to keep quiet about it. I wasn't doing it for anyone except myself, to show myself I could do it. The teacher had offered me the perfect challenge. I hate being told I can't do something. There were about twenty of us in the classroom. A couple of elderly folk studying for a hobby, a couple of youngsters trying to improve their CVs, and about fifteen single mums. There was at the time some weird policy about benefits that said you either had to try and get a job or had to be in education in order to qualify for benefits. So it was common practice for single mums on benefits to do a night a week at college with their friends. They were young, funny, chatty, and probably quite bright if they wanted to be, but mostly they were just totally disinterested in the course we were on. I sat with them and enjoyed the fun they were having. But since I'd left school, something had changed in me. I was on a mission this time, in the room because I chose to be there. It made all the difference in the world. The teacher would ask a question. Silence. The ladies at the back would pay no attention at all. The earnest few would try and answer and get it wrong. And then I'd answer it correctly. It was fairly easy if you'd read the books I had. In fact, after a couple of lessons it felt a bit like I knew more about some of the subjects than the teacher. I knew the academic debates about different issues. The teacher, to his credit, encouraged it. When I asked him after the three weeks whether I was still on the course, he told me not to be so bloody stupid. I'd got straight As. He started asking me a couple of questions each week after class. Why had I got no GCSEs? What was I reading? What did I do? Did I want to go to university? Had I thought about applying for Oxford or Cambridge? I laughed the last one off. “No way, I hate students.” And I did.

I'd never once wished I'd gone to university. The few people I knew who had didn't seem to have come back any the wiser for it. They seemed to come home full of nonsense. And they never really fit in again. Still, the question threw me a bit, because although I genuinely didn't want to go anywhere, if he thought I was that good at this book stuff, then perhaps it meant I had options. And I needed options. Books and doing my A levels became a kind of escapism, something to think about that I could control. I was discovering something about the wider world—that you could shape your own fate to a much greater degree than I'd ever experienced. If you read more, worked harder, thought things through smartly, or wrote or argued better than other people, you won. For a while I found this newfound freedom quite exciting and liberating. I found it a bit of a buzz to just be good at something, something that was nothing to do with my family or our farm, or anyone else except me.

 

25

I just had one small problem.

I couldn't write by hand.

I was always poor at handwriting at school, and for nine years after leaving school had not needed to write anything. What little writing I did, recording sheep numbers and other functional short notes, I did in block capitals. So when I signed up to do my A levels at evening classes, I wrote the weekly essays on a word processor. Typing with one finger, handing in tidy well-presented sheets of paper. And then, whack, it struck me in the face. It was about a month before the exam date and I would have to write the answers in essay form by hand and not in block capitals. Helen made me a pre-exam test to see whether I could write the essay answers by hand. Half an hour later I threw down the paper and stormed out of the room. My writing was almost illegible. Even worse, I found it so difficult to hold the pen that I spent all my time focusing on my handwriting and none thinking about what I was writing. Scariest of all was that the harder I tried, the firmer I gripped the pencil, the worse things got, until my hand was cramping, I was sweating, and losing my head. I was panicking. I was also ashamed. What sort of idiot knows all the answers but can't write them down?

Helen bought me a children's book for learning handwriting. I was surly and ungrateful, but eventually I could scribble words that someone could read, though even to this day I break out in a cold sweat if I am ever asked to write anything more than half a dozen words by hand.

In the years since I had left school I had observed the professional people who were buying houses in our village. These people seemed to earn more money in a week than I did in months, and it looked like you had to get an education to play their game. So I decided to. I was going to whore myself in a world I didn't like. And I figured that if you are going to be a whore, you should be a high-class one. I decided to do something I didn't really want to do. I would apply to university and see if I could get into Oxford. If I could, I would consider going. If I couldn't, I would bin the whole idea. So after a few months I had one A level to show for my efforts, was halfway through some others, and had a teacher who was prepared to write me a gushing letter saying I was some kind of dysfunctional genius who deserved a second chance.

 

26

I'd never been to Oxford, or anywhere like it.

They call it the “dreaming spires” but to me it just looked like endless streets full of stuffy church buildings, libraries, or palaces. Each college was, and is, like its own village, and operates like its own little half-hidden community. The streets had a strangely outdated film-set quality, with people hurrying past on old-fashioned bicycles, some in academic gowns, or striding past in long woollen coats and black polished leather shoes. The colleges are entered through little doors that are not entirely welcoming unless you belong through them. Through the little doors each college has a “porter's lodge” staffed with men that looked to me on first arrival like 1920s “manservants.” I cringed inside with discomfort when they kindly tried to help me, and instinctively hated the class-ridden set-up of this place. Beyond the lodges are shadowy cloisters, perfectly tended lawns, an occasional deer park, and long ivy-clad buildings with endless doors that lead in to staircases, or teaching rooms, where bookshelves rise from floor to ceiling. Each shadowy corner of Oxford is haunted by its past, so within minutes of being there I learnt that Japanese emperors, Nobel laureates, First World War officers, and endless poets or artists had lived in those rooms once. I felt like this was another England than the one that I was born into.

It seemed quite ridiculous that I might get in.

But they were apparently looking for people from “different backgrounds” and I perhaps turned up at just the right moment. They accepted my CV was a bit “unconventional” and took some essays and an application form as proof of my having some brains. It wasn't much—but it did secure me an interview, which I travelled down to on the train half cocky and full of myself and half scared witless.

I needn't have worried. The interview went like a dream. I found myself in front of a bunch of bored professors who did a kind of bad-cop good-cop routine on me. Age eighteen I would have wilted, but I was now in my early twenties. It was easy if you weren't really bothered. So, much to the amusement of the other professors, I got into a row with one of them. I like arguing. I'm good at it. When he went too far, and said something a bit silly, I teased him and said he was losing his grip. As I left the room after my time was up, I smiled at them as if to say, “Fuck you, I could do that all day.”

They all smiled back.

I knew I was in.

 

27