3. 1968
1968
Of all the seasons, early spring, when the air is sly with cold and the birds are starting up and the fields are filled with lambs, has always been my favorite. Bobby was mad for our lambs. He fed the waifs year after year with a bottle, that was his job, he wouldn’t let anyone else touch it, even stayed off school to do it one time. A spirited boy, he wore shorts right the way through winter and no coat, even when the headmistress sent him home for one. A golden boy, he sang so much when he was little we called him Elvis. He was tall and skinny with brown hair that stuck up just like his uncle’s.
Jimmy has the transistor radio playing, I can hear it well before I reach the tin barn. It’s the Beatles: “Hello, Goodbye” at full volume. Not very pastoral, but it’s clearly working for Jimmy’s hangover. I watch him as I come in through the gate at the top of the field, he has one hand resting on a ewe’s backside, hips swaying from side to side, left foot jiggling.
“Where’s Frank?” I say, and Jimmy points to the bottom of the field.
Together we stand and watch as my husband vaults the fence. One strong arm placed on the top rail, his body swung out at a right angle before he clears it like an Olympian hurdler. I see him doing it most days but it still gives me a small rush of pleasure, the simple joy of it in a man whose life is dominated by hard work.
He walks up the field toward us, swinging his arms energetically; even from here I know he is probably whistling. This is Frank where he most loves to be.
Most of our ewes have delivered, we have forty-six lambs out to pasture with a handful still in the stalls. Only one bottle feeder and one stillborn. Frank and Jimmy look over the pregnant sheep, palms against their bellies to check for a breach, examining their rears for signs of birth. It’s more instinct than anything; they could do it in their sleep. Jimmy is the soft touch, he chats to the ewes while he works, gives them Rich Tea biscuits when he’s done. Frank is always in a rush, in his head an unending checklist of tasks, a brain that holds too much.
“Think we could wrap up the mothers’ meeting and crack on?” Frank says, and Jimmy rolls his eyes.
“Bossy so-and-so, isn’t he?” he tells the ewes.
The sheep have a long, sloping field to themselves but they don’t spread out much, always clustered up here, next to the barn. In a week or so the lambs will become more independent, and that’s when they start frisking off in one direction or another, spindly legs buckling. The stage Bobby loved the most. He was a farm boy, he understood how it worked, but every single year it broke his heart when it was time to ship his babies off to market.
I don’t know which of us hears the barking first. We spin around to a golden-haired lurcher tearing toward us.
A stray dog, no owners with him, charging our lambs.
“Get out of it!” Frank tries to block the lurcher. He is six foot two, broad and fierce, but the dog just darts around him, straight into the thick of our ewes.
The sheep are moaning, tiny offspring bleating in fear; only a few days old, but they sense the danger. A flick-switch change in the dog. Eyes black, teeth bared, body rigid with adrenaline.
“Gun, Jimmy! Now!” Frank yells, and Jimmy turns and runs to the shed.
He’s fast, Frank, racing at the dog with his primeval roar, but the dog is quicker. It picks off a lamb, nips it up by its neck, throat ripped open. The appalling red of its blood, a jet of crimson pools on the grass. One lamb, two lambs, then three; guts spilling out like sacrificial entrails. The ewes are scattering everywhere now, stumbling out, terror-blind, their newborns exposed.
I’m running at the dog, shrieking, trying to gather up the lambs but I hear Jimmy yelling, “Out of the way, Beth! Move.”
And then Frank has grabbed me into his arms so tightly I’m pressed right into his chest, and I can feel the thundering of his heart. I hear the gunshot and then another, and the dog’s quick, indignant howl of pain. It’s over.
“Bloody hell,” Frank says, pulling back, checking my face, a palm pressed against my cheek.
We walk over to the dog, the three of us cooing and calling out to the sheep, “Come on, girls,” but they are shivering and bleating and giving the three infant corpses a wide berth.
Out of nowhere, like a mirage, a boy comes running up the field. Small and skinny in shorts. Maybe ten years old. “My dog,” he screams.
His voice so sweet and high.
“Fuck,” Jimmy says, just as the child sees the bloody heap of fur and yelps, “You killed my dog!”
His father is here now, panting and flushed, but scarcely different from the boy I knew. “Oh, Jesus Christ, you shot him.”
“Had to.” Frank gestures at the butchered lambs.
I don’t think Gabriel has any idea who Frank is, or at least, who he is married to, but then he turns and catches sight of me. Momentarily, panic flits across his face before he recovers himself.
“Beth,” he says.
But I ignore him. No one is looking after the child. He is standing by his dog, hands covering his eyes as if to black out the horror.
“Here.” I’m beside him in seconds, my hands on his shoulders. And then I kneel in front of him and wrap my arms around him. He begins to weep.
“Keep crying,” I say. “Crying will help.”
He collapses against me, wailing now, a boy in shorts in my arms.
And this is how it begins again.