Authors: Russell Hill
I reached the brow of the hill just before the hedge that separated the field from the lane, and I turned and looked back.
A light went on and I knew it was the farmhouse and then another light directly below it. The bedroom and the kitchen. Maggie was up and Robbie would be up, too, and I imagined her padding around the kitchen in her bare feet, rising up on her toes, her breasts free under the dressing gown tied loosely at her waist. The lighted windows were diffused by the rain that came now, softening the yellow points one above the other like the eyes of some animal lying on its side in the darkness. A light went on in the farmyard and I knew Robbie was going out to the shed. He would milk the cow, let it out into the pasture, clean the stall and come back in for breakfast.
I watched a few moments longer and then started down. I had forgotten the walking stick at the top and the slope was slippery. I lost my footing several times, falling backwards, sliding for several yards before I was able to brake myself with my heels in the soft turf. I knew I would be a muddy mess when I got to the bottom.
I was soaked through by the time I got to the wall at the edge of the farmyard and I climbed over rather than work my way along the wall to the gate. As I passed the barn the dog barked and Robbie came to the open door, a pitchfork in hand.
“Holy Jesus,” he said. “If I didn’t know it was you, I’d think maybe you was a nutter running from your keepers.”
I stood in the spreading light, looking down at my ruined shoes, my trousers caked with mud, and I knew I looked incredibly foolish.
Robbie had a huge grin on his face as he stood looking out into the rain. “I could ask where in the hell you’ve been or I can just assume that you’re a daft American who likes to wander around in the rain and dark. May I suggest you come in here and take off what’s left of your clothes. You go traipsing into Maggie’s kitchen like that and you’ll know what wrath is.”
I went into the shed where there were several sheep penned at the end, and a bare light bulb hanging down with a cord running from it to what looked like a large electric shaver. It had long teeth along the face and piled on a pallet next to it was a mound of sheep’s wool, dirty gray on one side, pure white on the other, long slabs of it, and among the penned sheep was one naked sheep, pale and skinny.
“Shearing time?” I asked.
“Not really,” Robbie replied. “Not for another month. But Michael Stryker told me the army put down Billy Gray’s flock and they’ll put the rest of Michael’s down tomorrow and it didn’t make sense to kill sheep with perfectly good wool on them. So he said I should shear mine, just in case they decide to do my flock in too.”
“But isn’t the wool diseased?”
“No, it needs a host that’s living, and if I bag this with camphor and store it in the rafters, after all this shit is done and gone, I can at least get a few quid out of it. I’ve got a chap in Southampton says he’ll take the lot. He won’t ask questions. I won’t get full value but at least I’ll get something.”
“I thought the government was going to reimburse farmers for the animals they kill.”
“I can see you’re a real Mary Poppins, Jack. They’ll take a year and they’ll haggle over how much it’s going to be and we’ll see endless pieces of paper. Big farmers like Michael can weather that, but for me it means going on the dole.”
“But when they come for your sheep, they’ll see that they’ve been sheared.”
“If they decide to come for my sheep, then Will and his brothers come over and we dig a pit and I do them in myself, save the fuckers the trouble, and tell them I couldn’t bear for anybody else to slaughter my sheep. They’re dumb enough to buy that story. Besides, I won’t shear them all at once. I figure if I do five sheep every morning and five every night, I can do most of the flock in ten days. I turn the sheared ones in with the flock and they’ll blend in. It’s not all about the money, Jack. It’s my way of punching that pompous prig in the shiny boots. Now you get out of your wet kit and wrap yourself in this.” He offered me a blanket that hung over the edge of a stall. It had the rank smell of sheep and cows and was rough to the touch.
Robbie opened the edge of the pen, grabbed a sheep by a leg and dragged it out. Jack the dog stood, watching the other sheep, tense, and when one of them made a bolt for the opening the dog nipped at it, just enough so that the sheep turned in panic and rammed into the others.
In a flash, Robbie had the sheep on its back, the head between his legs, and he took the clipper, turned it on, and cut a wide swath up the belly, turning the wool away from the skin, returning to make another pass, and I watched as he expertly peeled the wool off the legs, then shifted the struggling sheep to its side and continued up toward the spine.
Suddenly he let out a yelp, and dropped the cutter. He bent to pick it up again. “Fucking thing’s wearing out,” he muttered, and I could see that the cord was frayed and he had obviously gotten a quick electric shock.
I waited until he finished and released the naked sheep. He pushed the mound of wool onto the pallet and straightened up. “Baa baa, black sheep, have you any wool,” he said. “Yessir, yessir, three bags full. Ten quid a bag, Jack. One for my master, one for my dame. One for the old chap who lives down the lane. You know what that means, Jack?”
I shook my head.
“It means the poor fucking farmer didn’t get but a third of what he sheared. Lady Uppercrust got a bit since she owned the field, and the old chappie down the lane, he must have been the tax collector, and it hasn’t changed all that much. Just the names. Only now two and a half bags goes to the Inland Revenue. These were my father’s shears. Poor fucker used them for thirty years. But he could shear a sheep in a minute, clean as a whistle, not a nick, not a drop of blood, not a tuft left anywhere. Naked as the day they were born. He’d shit in his pants if he could see me here now. He wanted me to be an educated man, letters after my name, wear a coat and tie. Here I am, stink of sheep with their shit smeared on my boots, you need only half a fucking brain for this kind of work, Jack. Be a good trick if I fried myself with his shears, wouldn’t it? I got to fix them before they electrocute me. That would be a good joke. Dorset sheep farmer gets a charge out of shearing his sheep. Make a good tabloid headline. You best be getting into some dry clothes before you catch your death.”
“As near as I can tell, you’re an educated man, Robbie.”
“If you don’t have the fucking letters after your name in this country, Jack, the upper class pisses on you. I’m a sheep farmer, and I’m no better than those lads you got shitfaced with.” The anger in his voice told me the conversation was over. He reached for another sheep and Jack the dog edged back.
I stripped off my clothes, wrapping myself in the old blanket and crossed the farmyard to the yellow light of the kitchen door.
Wrapped in the blanket, I went into the house where Terry began to giggle and Maggie eyed the bundle of wet clothes in my hands.
“What have we here, Terry? One of America’s red Indians come with an offering? What in the world happened to you, Jack Stone?”
“I went for an early morning walk.”
“Looks more like an early morning crawl in the muck. Here, let me take those,” and she reached out for the wet clothes. As she took them, her hand stroked my wrist momentarily, a soft gesture that was like an electric touch. “I’ll wash these and we can hang them by the Rayburn. They’ll be dry before noon. You’ll probably want to run a bath before you have breakfast.”
Robbie was in the kitchen when I came down in dry clothes and he watched me as I ate the hot scones that Maggie set on the table. Finally, he said, “Well, Jack, are you staying on another night? Or have you had enough of Dorset farm life?”
“I don’t want to get in the way of things,” I said. I looked at Robbie. “Do you want me to settle up now?”
“No, that can wait until tea time. I’m off to Southampton to flog off some wool.”
He went to the hallway and took down a jacket. “I’ll be back by tea time, love.”
My wet pants and shirt and socks were, I could see, arranged on a drying rack next to the Rayburn. There was no school, Maggie explained, because of the troubles with the farms. Terry stayed at the table, drawing pictures of army lorries and sheep lying on their backs with X’s for eyes and I went upstairs to my script. I worked for a while, and the words didn’t come as easily as they had in the early hours, but I was satisfied with what I was doing and could hear Richard’s voice saying, “Now this is more like it, Jack.” It was the first time I had thought of Richard and my Los Angeles writing life since I had come to Sheepheaven Farm.
I stared at the laptop and then it went blank as the screen automatically went to sleep. I realized that I had been staring at it for several minutes. I was thinking of Maggie downstairs someplace, and I closed the laptop, went out into the hall and down the stairs. She was in the kitchen, standing at the sink, peeling potatoes. She turned her head as I came into the kitchen.
“What are you up to, Jack Stone? Off for a walk? The great screenplay all finished?”
“No and no.” I put my hands on her shoulders and began to knead the base of her neck.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Right there. I’m full of knots.” She stopped peeling potatoes, put her hands on the edge of the sink. I kept massaging her shoulders, feeling the little ridges of muscle with my thumbs.
“You’ve got strong hands,” she said. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“In another life,” I said. “I was Cleopatra’s masseuse.”
“No adders here,” she said. Then she bent her head forward and said, “Yes, right there. That’s it,” and let out a little yelp. “It’s all right, it’s good pain,” she said. “Keep at it, Jack Stone.”
I worked on her shoulders for a bit, then reached around and unbuttoned the top buttons of her blouse so that I could pull it over her shoulders and her bare skin felt good under my hands and I felt myself hardening, and I wanted her more than ever. She didn’t move, stayed bent over the sink and I moved my body closer to hers until I was pressing against her and she said, “No, Jack Stone, not now,” but she was pressing back against me, moving her body, and I slid my hands down over her shoulders until I was cupping her breasts and she said, again, softly, “No, Jack Stone,” but she reached up and brought one of my hands down to her crotch and I pressed against her, pulling her body back against me and her head came back against me, her hair in my face and I kissed the top of her head and slipped my hand down inside her skirt, pressing my finger into her and she said, “You’ll make me come,” and I said, “Yes, come. Now,” and I pressed my finger harder, sliding it in her smooth wetness, pulling her against me while she bent forward over the sink, grabbing the edge with both hands and as I moved my hand faster I could hear her voice, quick sobs and unintelligible words and her body tightening, her fingers clenching the edge of the sink.
It’s hard for me to remember what else happened. I know we sat opposite in the kitchen talking, and she said she didn’t want anybody to get hurt, not Terry or Robbie, and I should go away but when I said, “Do you mean go off for a walk or pack my bag and leave the farm?” she said, “You should probably go away from here. I don’t know what to do about you.”
“When? Do you want me to go now? Tomorrow?”
“Soon.” That was all she said. I remember stroking her face, tracing her cheekbones with my fingers and her eyes were closed, as if she were a half-asleep cat and then she opened her eyes and said, “Out, Jack Stone. Out of my kitchen. Go for a walk until you walk into the sea and bring me back a lobster or a piece of jade as big as your fist. Go!” She rose and pulled her hair back, knotting it, and went to the sink where the potatoes lay, half-peeled, turning brown.
I put on a mac and went out into the gray light of mid-morning and I walked across the field in the direction that Terry had run. But I thought only about Maggie standing at the sink in the kitchen and Maggie bent over the edge of the sink and her quick sobs and I thought, go away from here, Jack Stone, leave her alone, you’ll only do great harm if you stay, but I knew that I would go back to the farmhouse and I would tell Robbie that I wanted to stay on, and I would stay until something happened that forced me to go.
All went well in Southampton, Robbie said. “The bugger knows what I’m up to and he’s right with it, said if I wanted to knacker some of the lambs on the sly he’d take care of it, but I told him no, I drew the line at that.”
It was mid-afternoon, and a weak sun was trying to shine. “I’ll stay on another night or two, Robbie,” I said.
“You’re all right, Jack,” he said. “A bottomless pit of pound notes. Nat West Bank, you are, Los Angeles branch.”
“No, I don’t have all that much. And when I run out, I’ll turn tail and run.”
He laughed. “Stay on here, Jack-o, on the dole with us when the army knackers our sheep.”
He was nervous about Terry being off with Jack, and asked if I knew which direction they had gone. I pointed up toward the rise in the field and he said, shit, I told him not to, and set off determinedly in that direction. I watched him grow smaller as he climbed the field and then was conscious of Maggie at my elbow.
“He’s off to find Terry, isn’t he?”
“Yes. He worries too much. He forgets that he wandered off in these fields at that age. Terry’s a lot like Robbie, but Robbie can’t recognize that.”
She hugged her arms around her chest and said, “Come back inside. Have a cup of tea with me.”
The kitchen was warm, heat radiating from the Rayburn, and Maggie filled the kettle.
“Did you know Robbie when he was a boy here?” I asked.
“No, I met Robbie at Cambridge. He was a medievalist. I came there with a touring company of the Ballet Rambert. I trained at the Royal Ballet School and then got picked by the Rambert and I danced in one of the companies that went out into the counties. We did
Ondine
in Cambridge. The stage was canted and the curtain opened on the deck of a ship at sea, the backdrop rising and falling, and all of us moving as if the ship were rising and falling and suddenly this handsome man bolted from his seat for the door. Afterwards, in the dressing room, we all laughed about it, but then he showed up. Turned out he was there to see one of the other dancers, and he’d had too much to drink before the performance and when the curtain went up and the backdrop rose and fell and the ship moved and we rose and fell as well, he suddenly felt sick, and he went outside the hall and lost it all in the shrubs.”