Bethany (22 page)

Then someone else came out of the parlour and up the stairs. The bedroom door opened. It was Alex, in a terrible state of agitation. She pulled her clothes off and climbed into bed, shivering and muttering. Utterly bewildered, I did not know what to do.

Finally she said bitterly, ‘Keeping me up until three o'clock in the morning, when I have to go to London tomorrow.'

‘
What
?' I said.

‘I'm going to London tomorrow. Oh, don't you start, Kay. I've had enough for one night. Just go to sleep.'

I did eventually manage to get a little sleep. In the morning before anyone was up I drove Alex to the station to catch the early train. She seemed calm.

It rained hard the morning I took Alex to the station: fat, heavy summer raindrops. I welcomed it as it streamed down my face and neck and soaked my shirt. The goats hated it, and I took them hay in their stalls. I was collecting a last armful of hay when Simon ducked under the doorway into the barn.

I did not want to talk to him. I wanted to be alone. My feelings about Alex had turned another somersault in the past few hours. She had been very gentle when she said goodbye to me at the station, almost as if she were concerned about me, when I had far more reason to be concerned about her. Her composure seemed unnatural and I was afraid to conjecture what lay behind it.

‘Where is Alex?' asked Simon.

‘She's gone to London,' I said. ‘I drove her to the station.'

‘She has gone to London?' he repeated incredulously.

I had assumed that he'd known she was leaving in the morning. I now realised that she had decided on this abrupt departure not in spite of her conversation with him but because of it. It was flight.

I met his eyes, and saw in them such distress that I was shocked.

‘It's terrible,' he said. ‘It's terrible.'

I leant against the wall of the barn and watched the rain. The world was dissolving, I thought.

Simon said, ‘Can we talk?'

My brain computed automatically. It was half-past eight. I had to be at the office at nine. No, we could not talk.

‘I have to go to work,' I said.

‘This is important,' said Simon.

‘So is my going to work.'

‘More important than what is happening now?'

‘I can't do anything about what is happening now,' I said, ‘I can go to work, and I have an obligation to.'

‘And you think that's more important?'

I closed my eyes. I felt very tired. Ahead of me I saw an emotional ordeal I did not think I had the strength to face. I wished it could all be over, without knowing what I wished for. I clung to the familiar.

‘I'm sorry, Simon, but I'm going to work,' I said. I pushed past him with my armful of hay into the yard, where the rain had slowed to a patter of drops, conscious as I walked towards the goat-shed of his sad eyes pressing on me.

If I had not been so preoccupied I would have known that Myrtle would kid that day. She was due, and a goat due to kid will nearly always, in a dry spell, wait until the first damp day. When I came home from work the kid, pure white and a billy, was lying neatly folded in a corner, while Myrtle stood above him munching hay. Her udder was tight and distended. I waited until everyone else was out of the way, then took her into the stall to milk her. I did not want anyone to witness this scene.

It was essential to take off the milk, because the kid had already drunk its fill and Myrtle was producing enough for the normal complement of two. She was already uncomfortable:
if not milked, in twenty-four hours she would have mastitis. Nevertheless she would do her utmost to prevent me milking her; she would want to keep every drop for the kid. I had dealt with Myrtle before: it would be a question of whose will broke first.

I tied her by her collar to the hook in the wall, gripped the collar in my left hand, pressed my left leg against her flank and, making noises as soothing as possible in the circumstances, reached for the swollen teat with my right hand. She leapt in the air, bucked violently, and threw me against the opposite wall.

I picked myself up and tried a different position, holding her against the wall with my thigh while with my left hand I gripped her left hind leg to stop it kicking. She lashed out with a kick like the recoil of a cannon and I found myself five feet away in the water bucket. After half a dozen further attempts we both had a rest. My elbow was bleeding. I had squeezed about an ounce of milk out of the teat.

I talked to her, explaining why I had to do it. She flicked her ears and bleated piteously. I fed her some bread from my pocket and tried again, cursing Alex who always went away when she was needed.

After half an hour I was exhausted, but so was Myrtle, and I had drawn off about two pints of milk. It had gone on to the floor, the walls, my jeans and boots. I hadn't bothered to bring a saucepan – it would just have been an additional hazard. I untied her, patted her, and with a grim sense of achievement walked outside into Simon's ice-cold gaze.

‘What are you doing to that goat?' he said.

It was a disastrous moment to be pert, but I couldn't stop myself.

‘It's more a question of what she's been doing to me,' I said.

‘You tie her up, force her to be milked, and then make jokes about it?'

‘Look,' I said, and all my strength drained away in utter
weariness, ‘I had to milk her. She has too much milk. She'll get mastitis.'

‘She was terrified.'

‘I can't help it. I had to do it.'

‘Hitler said he had to kill the Jews.'

‘She would get ill, Simon. Goats can die from mastitis.'

He must have seen something in my face that convinced him. He opened the gate of the goat-pen to let me through. I went back to the house. He walked away without another word.

About an hour later I heard a tremendous clatter from the goat-pen followed by an agonised bleat. I rushed out in time to see Myrtle pinning one of the other goats, Janice, against the fence and butting her viciously. Janice had obviously gone too near the kid.

To prevent further violence I shut Myrtle and the kid away in their own part of the shed. Then I went down to the cottage, sat on a log and thought. In the space of a few hours the goats had become an enormous problem.

The previous evening, before Alex left, the goat question had been given a thorough airing. They were still being tethered. On a few occasions we had let them free, and as a result the apple trees in the orchard had suffered severely and a shrub on the lawn had been reduced to a mangled wraith. But I was conscious each time I led them out and snapped the chains on to their collars that I was doing something which ran directly counter to the aims of the group, and which escaped condemnation only because the other members of the group had nothing directly to do with the goats.

That Sunday, however, Pete had watched me as I moved their stakes and took them out to browse along a new section of hedge. He brought up the subject as we sat talking in the parlour. ‘The goats are still being tethered,' he said.

We went through it all again, the necessity of preserving vegetables, the difficulty of fencing, the pointlessness of giving the animals away. I, as always, felt defensive about my role
as goat-keeper, which was silly because no one was attacking me. I also felt irritated. It was all very well for them to take this high tone about the subjugation of animals, I thought, but they were glad enough to have the milk in their muesli and their evening cocoa. So when Pete said, ‘Why do people keep goats, anyway?' I said they did it for the same reason as we did: they liked the milk.

There was a silence, and then Coral said brightly, ‘Well, let's stop drinking the milk. We'll have cows' milk instead.'

I mustered my patience and explained to her for the third time that while cows were not actually tethered they were subjected to treatment far crueller, being the raw material of an industry that systematically killed, castrated, and separated young animals from their mothers in the name of profit.

‘Nearly half the beef in this country comes from the dairy sector,' I said. ‘In every bottle of cows' milk there's a dead calf.'

The silence that followed this statement was even more thoughtful. Simon broke it by saying, ‘Perhaps we should stop drinking milk.'

Of course we should. I did not want to, but was ashamed to say so. Everyone else was in agreement. Dao, asked whether the children could do without it, said that Thai children had never tasted milk until the Americans introduced it into the schools as a propaganda stunt. Alex reminded us that it was possible to buy a milk-like substance made from plants; it was used by vegans.

The upshot of the discussion was, firstly, that we should stop drinking milk, and secondly, that we should begin immediately on fencing off a whole field for the goats. Until it was ready we would keep them in their enclosure where, although they did not have much freedom, they were at least not tethered. They would still, for a time, have to be milked, but I would take a little less each day until eventually the yield dried up. The question of cheese and butter did not arise, since
we hardly ever ate cheese and used soft margarine on our bread.

It all seemed very simple, until Myrtle had her kid. Now I could not leave them all in the enclosure together because Myrtle would savage the other two intermittently all day. In the ensuing panic the kid might even be trodden on. I could not let them out, because they would eat the vegetables. There was no other enclosure into which I could put them. There was only one thing I could do. I would have to leave Myrtle and the kid in the pen, and tether the other two.

I knew that I should say something about it instead of simply getting on with it, but I had never shaken off the idea that the goats were my responsibility. I also knew that to raise the subject at breakfast time would invite another lengthy discussion which would make me late for work. So in the morning I slipped out and led the two goats down to the field. The sun was already hot, and I had trouble finding a patch for them that was both shady and good pasture. They made things difficult for me as only goats can, giving a tremendous tug on the chain when my grip was most relaxed, then suddenly careering in a circle and wrapping the chain round my legs.

With mounting irritation I hammered in the stakes in what I knew was not the best position, and started walking back towards the house. I continued walking for about twenty yards after I heard Janice bleating, but when the bleating rose to a pitch of frenzy I had to turn back. I had committed an elementary mistake: the curve of the hedge partially hid one goat's grazing circle from the other, and when her companion was grazing close to the hedge Janice could not see her. Goats hate being alone.

I went back and moved Janice's stake. Then, hot, tired and depressed, I walked slowly back up the drive. At the top, under the laurel tree, stood Simon, pale with disbelief.

‘Why have you done that?' he demanded.

‘I had to,' I said, ‘because of the kid.'

‘Two days ago the group agreed to stop milking the goats.
Last night you milked a goat which was so unhappy to be milked that you had to use force. Two days ago the group agreed not to tether the goats. You have just tethered them.'

‘I have to tether them,' I said. I tried to sound calm. ‘Myrtle is attacking the other two because of the kid.'

He jerked out his arm and pointed down the field. ‘It bleated after you,' he said, with such emotion in his voice that it was as if I had chained him to a stake.

‘No it didn't,' I said.

‘It bleated after you and you moved it a few yards and left it there.'

‘It bleated after the other goat because it couldn't see it,' I said. ‘That's why I moved the stake.' I was no longer trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.

The anguish in Simon's eyes darkened into anger. He towered above me.

‘You knew it was wrong,' he said. ‘You walked up that drive with your shoulders slumped and your feet dragging. You are suffering.'

‘I'm tired, and it's hot, and I have a lot of things to do before I go to work.'

‘To work?' He forced the word out as if he could not believe I had said it. ‘You are going to work when
this
has happened?'

I had a suffocating sense that we would go on playing this scene until I capitulated. I did not want to listen to any more.

‘Yes, I'm going to work,' I said. ‘I'm late and I don't even have time for breakfast.'

I walked past him into the house. When I came out ten minutes later he was still standing under the tree.

‘Goodbye, Kay,' he said.

I looked him in the eyes. Blue, fathomless eyes. I did not care.

‘Goodbye, Simon,' I said, and slammed the car door shut.

I got through my day's work mechanically, my thoughts circling round what had happened. I felt emotionally drained. It seemed suddenly a great strain to go on living in the rarefied
atmosphere of the group. I longed for ordinary things: pub conversation, rough laughter, the tolerance and humour of the world. I yearned for the company of people who accepted the necessity of milking and tethering goats, people who did not require of me a remorseless and unremitting self-scrutiny. But even as my mind formed these images I saw behind them the unconscious cruelty, the moral sleep of the animal soul I had rejected. I belonged to neither world: I was condemned to myself.

I thought about Simon. He seemed to be two people. The second, the Simon whose granite silences and unexplained withdrawals frightened and baffled me, appeared only rarely, but when it did it was as if I had found myself alone on an alien planet. The first Simon was capable of infinite understanding, wisdom and love. I did not know what the second Simon was capable of, and the doubt terrified me. It terrified me not because I was afraid of being hurt by him, but because I had placed my soul in his hands and I might have been wrong. If the second Simon could strike such fear into me, I thought, what might he have done to Alex, whose tough exterior concealed such vulnerability, such frail balance? Her mental distress when last I had seen her might, for all I knew, have become something I could not even think about.