The Bookshop on the Corner (13 page)

S
urinder slept all the way back to the farm, waking briefly as they went into the barn to squeak, “Seriously? You get this? It's all yours? There's nobody in the bathroom or anything? How is this fair?” then immediately falling on the sofa and passing out again.

Nina, however, felt wide awake, even though it was well after one o'clock in the morning. She looked out of the small back window and noticed the light still on over in the farmhouse. Someone else wasn't sleeping. As she watched, she saw another light come on, and another, then the door banged hard as Lennox stalked out of the house. He appeared to be swearing. Nina jumped up. She pulled her coat and wellies back on and slipped out of the door.

“Jesus CHRIST!”

She hadn't meant to creep up on Lennox as quietly as she
did and scare him out of his wits, but it was too late. He whirled around as if she was holding a spade poised to whack him on the head.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

“What . . . what the hell are you doing out here? It's the middle of the bloody night!”

“I know! I know! I'm sorry! I wondered what you were doing.”

“What the ruddy hell do you think I'm doing?”

Nina thought this might be a rhetorical question, because she absolutely didn't have a clue.

“Um. I don't know. I thought maybe you might have heard an intruder.”

“I did,” said Lennox shortly. “It turned out to be you.”

“Oh,” said Nina.

Lennox sighed. “You're a townie, aren't you? What do you think, that farming is a nine-to-five job? Well, it's not. If you must know, Ruaridh thinks we've a lambing gone wrong in the upper field, and I'm going to check it out and see if we need to call Kyle out. He's the vet. Vets are like doctors for sick animals.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right, I've got it,” said Nina. Lennox had stopped by the Land Rover.

“Are you still here?” he said.

Nina didn't know what to say, but she felt emboldened by her night's adventure, and not at all ready for sleep. She simply shrugged.

Lennox paused.

“Do you want tae come? We might be able to use a small pair of hands.”

“Sure,” she found herself saying, barely able to recognize herself.

As she jumped into the Land Rover, she was surprised, but then not really surprised, to find the dog in there, too. He licked her hand.

“What's your doggie's name?”

Lennox looked appalled. “He's a dog, not a doggie. He's a professional working farm dog. Very valuable, too.”

“So does he have a name, or just a bar code?”

Lennox's hand strayed to the dog's head, as it often did, seemingly unconsciously.

“Parsley.”

This was so unexpected—she had assumed it would be Bob or Rex or something equally to the point—that Nina grinned.

“Hello, Parsley,” she said. “What a lovely name!”

Parsley snuffled a little and licked her hand.

“It's a silly name,” said Lennox.

“Well
I
think it's lovely,” said Nina. “A lovely name for a lovely doggie. Dog, I mean.”

For once, as the Land Rover bumped over the muddy track up the hill, Nina didn't care about saying the wrong thing, didn't feel embarrassed. There was something quite liberating in Lennox being so rude. She could tell he was like this with everyone, and it gave her license to be slightly bolder than she might have been otherwise. She turned in her seat to look at him. He had a solid jaw, blue eyes creased from squinting across the fields, a strong nose and chin, a sprinkling of wiry stubble across his cheeks, and thick hair poking out from under his cap. He didn't look like a man who had ever been inside; even the car seemed too confining for him. He was made to stride across the moors on long legs, the wind behind him. There wasn't a soft edge to him anywhere; he was all lean angles.

Suddenly, seemingly in the middle of nowhere—there wasn't
a light to be seen—Lennox stopped the Land Rover. He got a hurricane light from the backseat and turned it up to full.

“Ruaridh?” he whispered into the night.

“Aye, here, boss,” came a voice behind him.

“Where are you?”

“In the lean-to. She's not having a good time in there. Twins by the feel of it. It's like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Lennox swore and strode forward, Nina stumbling behind him.

“Did you call Kyle?”

“Aye, he's at a calving on the other side of the brae.”

“Well, that's terrific,” said Lennox, putting down his lantern.

The lean-to, attached to the side of a barn, wasn't cozy, but it was out of the full force of the wind, which made a lot of difference. A ewe was lying on her side, looking very distressed, bleating pitifully.

“I know, I know, old girl,” he said. It was the first time Nina had heard anything like softness in his voice. “There, there.”

There was a large jar of a Vaseline-style concoction on the floor, and Lennox started rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing up in a bucket. Suddenly Nina got a massive James Herriot flashback.

“You're not . . . ,” she said, nervously, “you're not going to stick your arm up that animal's fanny? This isn't
All Creatures Great and Small
.”

The carrot-topped Ruaridh shot a glance in Nina's direction.

“Don't mind her,” said Lennox.

“What is she, work experience?” said Ruaridh, in an accent Nina could barely understand. Then he said something else in Gaelic that she one hundred percent absolutely couldn't understand, but it made Lennox laugh, which Nina thought
was profoundly unfair in the circumstances. Lennox shook his head.

“Nah, let's have a shot at it.”

Ruaridh held the ewe's legs to stop her struggling, and Nina found she couldn't help but look away as Lennox stuck his arm inside the animal.

“Oh for goodness' sake,” said Lennox, cross but amused by her reaction. “Honestly, there's being a townie and there's living in complete and utter denial. Do you want this ewe to have her lambs or not?”

“I know,” said Nina. “I've just never seen anything like it before.”

“Won't get this in your books,” he teased. Then he frowned. “Ah, I can't grip it. My damn hands are too big. Come on. Come on, little one.”

The sheep bleated painfully again.

“I know, I know. Sorry,” said Lennox, wrestling around. “Dammit. What about you?” he said to Ruaridh.

“Mine are the same,” said the younger man, showing his large rough hands. “Couldn't get my hand and the legs out at the same time.”

“No. I know.”

There was a pause. Then Lennox fixed Nina with a look. “I was going to see if you could help us, but you seem far too squeamish for all of this.”

Nina swallowed. She had read plenty of animal stories, not from preference but simply because she had read nearly everything as a child. Calligraphy, code breaking, ventriloquism; there was absolutely nothing in the little children's library she hadn't devoured, nothing she'd missed at all.

But as for dealing with real animals, in the wild, that was some
thing she hadn't considered. She'd never gotten closer to a lamb than eating one on Easter Sunday, or briefly looking up from her book while passing a field of them on a train. This big, smelly, panicking creature in front of her, this was something different altogether, and she wasn't at all sure how to cope with it.

She nervously advanced a little bit. She felt Lennox's eyes on her, and realized he totally expected her not to be able to cope. This steeled her a little. He already thought she was a useless townie; she wasn't going to confirm his suspicion.

“I could . . . I could have a shot,” she said carefully. Lennox's eyebrow moved ever so slightly.

“Are you sure?”

“Could I make things worse?”

“Maybe. Any news from Kyle?”

Ruaridh looked up from his phone. “Still at the calving.”

Lennox sighed in exasperation, then looked at Nina again.

“Hmm,” he said.

“Do you want me to have a shot or don't you?” said Nina, cross and anxious.

“Well, that sheep is worth a bit more than you, that's all,” said Lennox.

The ewe gave a noise of keening pain that made them all wince.

“Oh God, okay. Get in there,” he said, and kneeled down by the animal's side. “And try not to make things worse.”

Nina washed thoroughly in a basin of soapy water, then lathered up her hands with the Vaseline and tried to get used to the smell. Then tentatively she touched the sheep.

Lennox laughed. “It's only a sheep. It's not going to bite you.”

“There's a live animal in there,” pointed out Nina. “It totally might bite me.”

“Well, it won't be alive for much longer if you don't get a move on,” said Lennox, as the poor sheep strained and twisted in distress.

Nina took a deep breath and plunged her hand in. She was left-handed, so Lennox jumped up and came around her other side.

“Right,” he said. “What can you feel?”

“A whole load of squidge,” said Nina, panicking slightly. She could feel her hand and arm getting crushed. “I can't . . .”

“Okay, okay. Just relax, get used to it. It's not every day you stick your hand up a sheep.”

“It isn't,” agreed Nina.

“Try shutting your eyes,” suggested Lennox. “You'll feel more of what you're looking for that way.”

Nina closed her eyes briefly and it made a lot of difference. Under her fingers, the baby sheep started to become clear: a little nose, ears, and a great tangle of legs.

“He's all mixed up!” she said. “He's got too many legs! Oh no!”

“Okay,” said Lennox, his mouth twitching.

“Why has he got too many legs?” Nina was becoming slightly hysterical. It felt like some kind of alien spider being.

“Well, let's just assume for a moment that there's more than one lamb in there.”

“Oh yes,” said Nina, relieved. “Twins. Of course. You said. That makes more sense.”

Ruaridh snorted in the corner, and Lennox shot him a
look. He went off to fetch some fresh water, still looking very sceptical.

“Now,” said Lennox. “I need you to get four legs together that all belong to the same animal. Do you understand?”

Nina nodded. She could feel them now, all mixed up like a jigsaw puzzle, as Ruaridh had said, and quickly and carefully she set about unfolding the legs from under each lamb, until triumphantly, she had four hooves in one hand. It felt oddly like changing a duvet.

“I've got one!” she said.

“That's great,” said Lennox. “Now, pull it a little. Gently. Not too much.”

The little animal moved forward, then stopped.

“It's stuck,” said Nina, as the sheep gave another great wail of distress. “It's stuck! I can't get him out any more!”

“Don't worry,” said Lennox, pulling out a piece of rope. “Here. Get your hand out and then loop this around the hooves.”

Nina stared at him. “You're going to pull out a lamb with a rope?”

“Unless you'd rather perform a Caesarean section?” grunted Lennox, speedily tying a slip knot and passing her the rope.

Her hands were absolutely disgusting now, and although it was horribly warm inside the sheep, it was still completely freezing in the lean-to, and she'd had to take her jacket off and roll her sleeves up, which she wasn't enjoying in the slightest. She was trembling slightly as she took the rope and put her hand back inside the ewe, but after a few false starts she managed somehow to get it around the hooves.

“Okay,” said Lennox. “Are you ready? Because I'm going to pull, but if it's not ready, we'll have to start all over again.”

“Farming is very different from how I thought it was,” said Nina, looking anxiously at the coiled rope in Lennox's hands.

“There are things you can't read about in books, you know,” grunted Lennox. “Are we ready or not?”