The Sweetest Thing (10 page)

‘Tasha was a striking girl and Oliver was the family’s golden boy. Guy had to buy his brother out – he had a half share in the farm – so when his mother went into the nursing home, he could only find the money to keep her there by selling Uphill House. It was a dreadful scandal when it all came out.’

‘How long ago did it happen?’ I ask.

‘It must be three years now. Guy was heartbroken. At first I thought he’d never get over it, but recently … well, I’ve begun to hope that he’ll be happy once more, settle down and have a family, an heir for the farm.’ I wonder if Fifi is a little in love with Guy herself because she continues, ‘I should hate to see him hurt again.’ She takes one last sip of coffee, thanks me for my hospitality and prepares to leave, but she isn’t quite finished yet. ‘Guy’s found it hard to accept that he’ll never bring his mother home – still feels guilty about putting her away. She set fire to the barn – the one at the farm – and then he realised he could no longer cope.’

‘Thanks for all the info,’ I say.

‘I’ve just remembered … we have a voucher deal for second-hand school uniforms for single-parent families, like yours. No offence, but people are usually too proud to ask.’

‘I can afford to dress my children,’ I say stiffly.

‘Just one more thing,’ she says. ‘If you’re not used to an Aga – you don’t need to bake pastry blind. Just put your tin straight on the floor of the roasting oven.’

‘I’ll try that,’ I confirm. ‘Thanks again.’

‘I’ll see myself out.’

I watch Fifi walk smartly across the lawn to her Mercedes. Why do I get the impression I’ve just been warned off?

I remove the dough from the fridge, unwrap it and let it warm up before kneading it gently and rolling it out. I have strawberry jam – made locally – but I’m short of apples, in spite of the huge crop on the trees which isn’t ready to harvest yet – so I make jam tarts and a cheese and onion quiche. While I’m waiting for them to bake, I ring Talyton Animal Rescue and find myself speaking to … guess who? Fifi.

‘Guess what? I’ve rung someone about a dog,’ I tell Adam when he and his sisters come in for lunch – hot quiche and a green salad, followed by three blackberries each, and as many jam tarts as they can eat. ‘I’ve made an appointment to see a couple, but it isn’t until Saturday.’

‘But that’s ages, Mum,’ Adam says, and I have to agree with him. Although I’m not into dogs, Adam’s excitement is infectious and Saturday does seem like a long time to wait.

‘Do you want to show me your ideas for this logo?’ I ask.

‘Um, I haven’t finished them yet,’ he says.

‘That’s because you were on Facebook,’ says Georgia. ‘You’re always on Facebook.’

‘It’s the only way I have of keeping in touch with my friends.’

‘Oh, never mind. I wondered if we might go and watch the milking this afternoon.’ I’m thinking that it might make the time pass more quickly, which is how
we find ourselves outside the parlour at Uphill Farm at three o’clock.

‘I hope you don’t mind us dropping by now?’ I say, as Guy shoos the last stragglers of the herd into the collecting yard. I notice how he’s wearing green wellies, boiler-suit and a faded blue cap, turned back to front.

‘Not at all,’ he says, smiling. ‘It’ll be nice to have company for a change.’

‘I’m sorry about the inquisition the other evening. I’ve made them promise it won’t happen again.’

‘Well, you know everything now Fifi’s been to see you. I’m sure she didn’t hold back.’ He sighs. ‘I saw her car outside the house. Scandalmonger. What did she say about me?’

‘Who says she said anything about you?’ I say, teasing him for his arrogance in presuming he was the subject of conversation.

‘Of course she did. She can’t keep a secret.’

‘Do you have secrets then?’ I ask him.

He shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid I’m not that mysterious. What you see is what you get. Go on in. That way, past the tank and through the doorway. There’s a balcony you can watch from safely. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

We go inside the building, past an enormous stainless-steel tank, and through a door into the milking parlour itself. There’s a radio on, Radio 1, which surprises me. I thought Guy’s taste would be more Radio 4. There’s also the hum of machinery, and the intermittent mooing of a cow. It’s noisier than I expected, more intense, and the air is thick with the scent of chemicals and cow dung.

‘The cows are coming in,’ says Sophie, excitedly.

‘Stay behind the rail, Sophie,’ says Adam, holding her back, his hands on her shoulders.

On the same level as the balcony, on each side is a platform for five cows. In the centre is a pit where Guy is walking about, making sure the cows move right up to the end. When he has five cows on each side, he pulls a lever and the doors from the yard slide shut.

‘Do the cows mind being milked?’ Georgia calls out.

‘They look forward to it because they get fed then,’ Guy calls back. He pulls more levers, releasing feed into the mangers in front of each cow.

‘They’re very dirty,’ says Sophie, wrinkling her nose. ‘Yuck.’

It’s true. The cows have muddy knees and mucky tails which they flick across their backsides now and then.

‘Their udders are huge – some of them can hardly walk,’ I observe.

‘They tend to be the older cows,’ says Guy. ‘They lose their figures.’

I can empathise. At a certain age everything starts heading south.

‘As for the dirt,’ Guy goes on, ‘we dip and dry all the teats to disinfect them. If we get bacteria in the milk, we have to throw it away. Ho, Kylie!’

The cow’s udder is low-slung and I can see a network of swollen veins across the mottled skin. She has four huge teats, like a man’s fingers, leaking milk.

‘I’m attaching her to the milking machine now with this cluster of teat cups,’ Guy explains as he slips this claw-shaped contraption with four tubes to the cow’s udder. ‘Then the vacuum pump sucks the milk from the teat in pulses, like a calf would suck the milk from her.
That’s what you can hear, the pulsations of the machine.’

It’s like a regular beat and I find it hypnotic.

Guy moves on to the next cow in the row.

‘What’s that one called?’ says Georgia.

‘This one’s Rihanna. The next one along is Amy. Adam, if you’d like you can come down here – if you don’t mind getting those city clothes dirty,’ Guy says. ‘You can flick this switch to let Kylie’s milk into the bulk tank from the chamber here. It’ll go through to the dairy via that pipe that’s fixed to the ceiling.’

Adam goes down and flicks the switch. I notice how he hangs on to Guy’s every word, how he watches and learns from him, and I remember, my chest aching with nostalgia for those days now long gone, how he used to help David clean the car or set up the new TV, when he was little.

‘When you’re in the pit here, you have to remember to watch their tails.’ Guy smiles. ‘If they lift them, stand well back, but keep half an eye on the cow behind you. Cows are messy creatures, but then what goes in must come out, and they have to eat a huge amount of grass to make milk every day and grow a calf inside them each year. It’s a miracle. Well, I think it is.’

‘I don’t believe in miracles,’ says Georgia.

‘I like to keep an open mind,’ Guy says, and he takes off the last set of clusters from the cows on the left side of the parlour and lets them out before letting the next five in. There’s a rhythm to it, and an end product and, it turns out, a mess to clear up at the end, a bit like baking.

I look at Guy in a new light. Underneath the quiet exterior, he is a man of passion. He must be if he was roused to go and get his gun. He’s been hurt, which
might go some way to explaining his sometimes brusque manner. I can understand – I know how it feels to be betrayed. David didn’t run off with my sister, but it still hurt. Good grief … I pull myself together. I’ll be feeling sorry for him next.

Adam and Guy drive the cows out to the field at the end, then come back to sweep and hose down so that the parlour’s ready for the next morning, while the girls and I meet Napoleon – that’s what Guy calls the cockerel – and the long-legged red chickens who are wandering around the farmyard, pecking and scratching at the dirt.

‘Come and have a look at all the milk in the tank,’ Adam calls eventually, and we head back into the dairy where Guy lifts the lid of the stainless-steel tank.

‘This is what keeps the milk cool until the driver collects it in the morning.’

I’ve never seen so much milk, I think, watching it froth at the surface.

‘It looks like one of those coffees at the coffee shop,’ Adam says.

‘You mean a cappuccino,’ I say.

‘Yeah, that.’

‘Where are the cartons, Guy?’ Georgia asks.

‘Oh, I don’t put the milk into the carton,’ he says. ‘It goes off to a central depot, a big commercial dairy, to be packaged. Some of this goes for organic yoghurt as well.’

‘Are you an organic farmer then?’ asks Adam.

‘I’ve converted the farm to organic, hence the red-and-white cows. My father used to keep the black-and-white Friesian-Holsteins, but these Dairy Shorthorns are better suited for the purpose. They have lower milk yields and last longer in the herd,
and the bull calves can be reared for meat, not culled.’

I glance towards the girls. I don’t think they understood and I’m glad. I don’t want to have to explain the concept of the culling of cute boy calves to them, not that I knew much about dairy farming until today.

‘Why did you decide to go organic?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t it more expensive?’

‘Yes, so the product attracts a premium, but that isn’t the point. I don’t use inorganic fertilisers on the land, or antibiotics as routine. I believe that’s better for the cattle, the farm, and ultimately for mankind.’

I didn’t realise milk production was so involved, and I’m surprised to find Guy is a modern, progressive kind of farmer with strong views on intensive food production and the environment. I confess, he’s impressed me today.

‘How much milk can a cow produce in a day?’ asks Adam.

‘Up to forty litres, but that would depend on where she is in the milking cycle, what she’s being fed on, and her breeding.’

‘How long do cows live for?’ asks Georgia. ‘Only we had three hamsters and they didn’t live for very long.’

‘It wasn’t all our fault. The neighbour’s cat got the last one.’ As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I have to backtrack very fast, but it’s too late. The damage is done, and I’m mortified.

‘You told a lie, Mum. You told a big fat lie and now you won’t get to Heaven when you die and I’ll miss you,’ says Sophie through tears.

I reach for her, but she backs away.

‘I was trying to protect you.’

‘If you wanted to protect someone,’ Georgia joins in, ‘you could have bought The Hamster a new cage that
the cat couldn’t get into, instead of telling us to stick the old one together with Sellotape. I told you it wouldn’t work.’

Now the subject of The Hamster has been raised, Sophie remembers that we left him behind at our old house, which upsets her even more.

‘You said, Mummy, that we’d dig up his skelling-bones and bring him with us, but you forgot and now he’s all alone.’

‘You forgot too,’ Adam points out. ‘You can’t heap all the blame on Mum.’ But Sophie can and does, in no uncertain terms. I am the worst mother in the world.

I glance towards Guy. He’s looking at me, his expression one of amusement. He’s actually all right. Far from what I assumed at the beginning, Guy is no simpleton, no country bumpkin, but a far more complex – and, dare I say, intriguing – character than I’d thought.

‘I think we’d better go,’ I say apologetically. ‘Thank you for showing us the parlour, Guy.’

‘It’s a pleasure,’ he says. ‘You’re welcome any time.’

‘’Bye,’ I say, getting away as fast as possible. Georgia apparently decides to keep her options open regarding the pony by letting the subject of The Hamster drop, while Sophie refuses to communicate with me again until she’s forced to by circumstance later the same evening.

‘Mummy, Mummy!’ I hear her screaming from the bathroom and immediately assume the worst: that she’s taken a tumble off the throne or fallen in a bath of scalding hot water. I charge upstairs and open the bathroom door.

‘What’s wrong?’ I say, hardly able to catch my breath.

Sophie screams again when she sees me, stamping her foot, her towel wrapped around her narrow shoulders.

‘Sophie, that’s enough. Now, calm down.’

‘Mummy!’ She’s running on the spot, pounding the floorboards, as she points to the bath. ‘There’s a spider!’

I am overwhelmed by a skin-crawling mix of relief and fear. Of all the many consequences of the divorce, I never thought of this one. That I’d have to take on the role of removing spiders from the bath.

‘Go and wait outside,’ I say, my palms moist. ‘I’ll deal with it.’ I’m not sure how. I lean over the bath to assess what I’m dealing with and suppress a scream of my own. This is no money spider. It’s enormous with black hairy legs. And it’s just sitting there on the rusty circumference of the plughole. I toy with the idea of turning the tap on then, feeling that would be cruel, wonder if I should suggest Sophie delays her bath-time.