Chapter Twenty-Three
Jamie
The first lamb of the season was born at just after midnight on the seventeenth of March, a date I knew I’d never forget for as long as I lived.
We’d gone out to do one last check before bed because Will had been pacing up and down the kitchen with a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach.
So we’d wrapped up warm, loaded Nell up onto the back of the quad bike, and headed out to the fields.
The sky was cloudless and studded with a million stars, the moon so close to full it looked like someone had tried to draw an approximation of a circle and flattened it on one side.
It was crisp and cold, our breath fogging in the air, and the world felt almost empty.
The first of the flocks we checked were fine, albeit surprised to see us, and the second were the same. It was only when we got to the third, in one of the fields closer to the farm, that Will noticed one of the ewes was in labour.
I couldn’t see the signs at first. Over the past few weeks, it had been easy to see the ewes becoming more uncomfortable as they waddled around, their unborn lambs wriggling and kicking, but Will pointed out her pacing, the way she’d taken herself off towards a corner of the field and was restlessly standing up and lying down, pawing her foot into the ground.
“She’s trying to make a soft bit of ground for the lamb to be born onto,” Will said.
He’d parked the bike farther away and switched off the headlights because he didn’t want to scare the ewes.
Nell sat by his feet, keeping watch over her charges with quiet contemplation.
The only source of light was the moon, but it shone brightly as if the universe knew we needed it tonight.
“Does she need help?” I asked, unsure if we needed to intervene. I’d done some reading about the stages of labour for ewes, including one complete with very detailed pictures, but reading about it and seeing it happen were completely different things.
“No. She’s fine at the moment. Most of this lot should be because they’ve all had lambs before, but there’s always a risk.”
“Will you know?”
“Aye, I will.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll message Higgs and let him know we’re starting. Are you warm enough? We’re going to be here a while.”
“I’m good,” I said, burrowing deeper into my coat, glad I’d thought to put multiple layers on before we’d left the house.
Will tucked his phone into his pocket and put his arm around my waist, holding me close as we stood in comfortable silence.
“Good girl,” Will muttered. “That’s it.” He turned to me and pointed with a gloved hand. “Can you see the water bag? That’s the end of the first stage of labour. We should have a lamb within the next hour.”
I tapped the face of my watch to make it glow. “It’s just after half eleven.”
“Are you sure you want to stay? You can take the bike back.”
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “I’m not missing it.”
Will smiled and nodded, putting his hand down to rub Nell’s head.
I’d never felt as strangely anxious as I did watching the ewe in labour.
My heart was pounding so loudly I heard it in my ears, and once or twice, I looked around for the source of the noise before I realised it was coming from inside me.
Will exuded calm, and that helped, but I also knew he was probably suppressing any emotion he felt because he didn’t want me to worry.
“Are you okay?” I asked, sliding my hand into his and squeezing.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You can tell me if you’re not.”
“Just pre-lambing jitters,” he said quietly.
“I get them every year. I keep thinking about all the things that can go wrong, and sometimes I get stuck there. I know there’s a risk of losing some, and sometimes I worry about losing all of them.
I just… I want them all to be okay. I want the births to go smoothly and give us happy, healthy lambs.
Not just because we need them to if we’re going to make it through another year, but—”
“You care about them,” I finished. “You want them to be safe because you care. I think you care more deeply than any man I’ve ever met, and it’s incredible.”
“Yeah, well… I’m not…”
“Shut up and take the compliment, farm boy,” I hissed, jabbing him the ribs and trying not to laugh. Will grinned, but he didn’t say anything else.
It was true, though. Will gave so much of himself away, and from the outside, all you could see was selfless generosity.
But from where I was standing, it felt like Will was on the verge of giving everything away and keeping nothing for himself.
And all I wanted was to fill the void and encourage him, just occasionally, to think about himself.
“There’s the feet,” Will said a few minutes later. “Not long now.”
I watched, almost unable to believe what I was seeing as the ewe panted and strained.
I saw the lamb’s feet and the round projection of its nose as it began to appear.
The second waterbag surrounding the lamb burst, and Will made a pleased sound.
Then suddenly, the lamb appeared, its head and shoulders being pushed out, and a few moments later, it fell gently onto the soft ground.
I gasped, my heart clenching at the sight as a raw mixture of emotions rushed over me.
The mother turned and started to clean the lamb up, licking its coat and stimulating its circulation. I heard its babble of tiny bleats, and my heart melted.
“That’s it,” Will murmured. “Good girl. Clever girl.”
“It’s so small,” I said, watching as the ewe began to nudge the lamb to its feet.
It attempted to stand, its new legs wobbling as the muscles were tested for the first time.
The first time it tried, it went straight back down again, giving a plaintive little bleat of confusion. “Oh… not quite… come on.”
“It can take them a few minutes. They have to figure out how to make everything work for the first time.”
“It reminds me of watching people stumble out of clubs at the end of the night,” I said as the lamb tucked its feet underneath itself for another attempt. It stood up, then sat straight back down again. “Although, to be fair, that baby has more coordination than I’ve ever had.”
Will chuckled. “I’ve never been much of a club person, even at university.”
“I thought farming students were known for going hard. It’s like every university’s rugby team. They’re always the ones who’ll drink you under the table.”
“Most of my friends were, and I went out with them a lot during my first year, but I never really enjoyed it. Mostly because a lot of them were straight and ended up dragging me to clubs full of girls because they wanted to get laid. It was always bloody awkward when girls came up to me and wanted to dance and I had to politely tell them they were barking up the wrong tree. After that, most of them just wanted to treat me like some sassy gay bestie, which wasn’t really my style either.
After a while, I just stopped going out with them. ”
I nodded. “If you ever fancy reliving your club years, I’ll take you out in London one night. Just for fun.” I only wanted to do one night, though, any more than that sounded exhausting. “Maybe we could take some of the others too if it’s their sort of thing.”
“Maybe,” Will said, but he didn’t sound convinced, and I wondered if I’d stumbled onto something that made him uncomfortable. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned London at all.
I watched as the lamb staggered to its feet and took its first stumbling steps forward to its mother, who bleated in support and nudged it into place as it searched out its first drink.
“There we go,” I said. “Success.” I turned to Will and smiled. I was still clutching his hand, and I squeezed it again tightly. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me stay.”
“Of course.” His eyes flicked back over to the newborn, who was happily suckling away. “The first one is always special. It’s something you never forget.”
He was right. I wouldn’t forget anything about this night.
“What do we do now?” I asked. “Do we need to wait for the placenta?”
Will gave me a surprised look like he hadn’t expected me to know that. “Yeah, I’ll wait.”
“I guess it’s always worth making sure,” I said. “The articles I read talked about some of the issues that can happen post-birth. And during. And before. There were a lot of pictures too. I didn’t think I’d ever see what a sheep’s vulva looked like up close, but here we are.”
Will gave a low laugh. “Just wait. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chances to see more of them.”
“Not too many please. I am in no way ready to be a sheep midwife. I’ll be the one standing there with towels and iodine.”
“We’ll make a shepherd of you yet,” Will said, giving me a smile that made my whole body light up.
“Maybe. It would certainly be a career change. Although I’m not sure hedonism counts as a career unless you’re Oscar Wilde, and sadly, my writing skills are sorely lacking.”
We stood in silence for a few more minutes, watching for any more changes and occasionally stamping our feet to keep warm.
“Can I ask you something?” Will said, his eyes still fixed on the ewe in the corner.
“Sure.”
“What made you do the reading?”
I shrugged because I didn’t know how to answer that without getting into the whole mess that was my feelings.
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to go into this totally uninformed.
You have enough work to do without teaching me everything.
I thought if I at least read a few blogs and articles and things like that I’d know the basics.
I still don’t know if I’ll be much help, but hopefully, I won’t be completely ignorant of what lambing entails. ”
Will stared at me, his face a mixture of expressions that swirled too fast for me to read. It looked like there were a million things he wanted to say, but in the end, all he said was, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, squeezing his hand again. “I’ll probably still ask a lot of questions, though, and some of them might be quite stupid.”
“No such thing,” Will said. “Especially not if you’re learning.”
“I’m glad you think so because I’ll be holding you to that.”
Will hummed and put his arm around my waist, pulling me against him. There were so many things about the future unspoken between us, and I knew we’d have to address them one day, but now was not the time.
It was too perfect a moment to break.