Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing

I closed my fist around the cartridge.

It was too early to call, and too close to the last time. But if it was Iris who answered, she’d hang up straight off anyway. I held the phone in one hand, the cartridge in the other, squeezing. It rang a long time and I imagined Mum getting out of bed, wrapping herself in her dressing gown and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Phone calls at unusual hours were always bad news; I should have waited, she’d be worried. The voice when it picked up was deep and unfamiliar, a man’s. For a second I thought Dad was alive after all, it had all been a trick. He didn’t answer with Mum’s usual Hello, 635? He said, ‘Yep?’

I opened my mouth and almost responded.

The man sniffed. ‘You there?’ he said. When I left, the triplets were small boys. Now I supposed they were not. The voice cleared its throat, there was the muffled sound of the earpiece being smothered by something, like he held it to his shirt front. Maybe it was early enough to be cool in the house, maybe he wore a jumper, or a sweatshirt with a hood.

‘Mum?’ I heard him call away from the speaker, not over-loudly, but like he was testing, seeing who was near him. ‘Iris?’ There was no response that I could hear. His voice came back to me. ‘Listen, I’ll get the money, okay? Message understood, loud and clear, I’ll have it by the end of the week. Please don’t call here, it’s got nothing to do with me mum — she’s not well. End of the week, I promise, man—’

‘Who in hell are you—?’ I heard Iris close in the background and the phone slammed down in its cradle fast and loud enough that the line crackled before it went dead. I looked at the receiver in my hand and lowered it gently back into its cradle. Behind me, the door opened and Lloyd stuck his head in.

‘I think it’s started,’ he said, his face white. The phone rang and we both looked at it. I’d forgotten to withhold the number. It rang and filled the house. I’d never heard it do that before.

‘Are you going to answer that?’ asked Lloyd after six rings. I shook my head. Inside that mouthpiece, everything from before. The hot smoked air, the birds. The salted ends of my hair when it flew in my mouth. My family.

I unplugged the phone from the wall and the silence was instant. I rested my rifle over my shoulder, nodded to Lloyd, and we headed back to the shed.

The woolshed was a dark block against the hill. I washed my hands in the trough, while Lloyd went on ahead of me. I could feel it, the ripple going through the sheep, the new feeling for some of them, the old familiar ache for others. The hiss of leaves in the wind and from behind the shed, a single low sheep call. I felt it, the skin on my back prickling like something stared hard at me from behind the dark. It was holding its breath but it was there.

In the doorway I breathed in the manure and warmth and blood of what was happening. I could make out three who were shifting about, unsettled, one who threw her head back, curling her upper lip. Lloyd crouched by her pen and stroked Dog. His beard made it look like a nativity scene. He glanced up at me and shrugged.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘she knows what to do, she’s done it before.’ Last year she’d had triplets — one girl and two boys. The girl now scraped the ground outside with her hooves, waiting for her turn. The boys had gone with the butcher.

I walked slowly up to her and she stood and turned around, like when Dog makes a nest. Her waterbag poked out of her and as she twisted, it burst and she turned around again, surprised-looking, and licked at the wet spot on the floor.

‘What in god’s name was that?’

‘Her waters,’ I said.

Lloyd shook his head in disbelief.

‘Did you think she’d lay an egg?’

I waited until the head and forelegs were showing and then I checked another two who were shifting. I felt like I could lie down in the hay with them, a pang, just for a moment, of what it must be like to give birth to something, and then I went to get the iodine spray. Soon there would be more of us.

By the time the first lamb slid out, the others were in full swing, the quiet stomp of mothers trying to get comfortable, the dark smell of blood and the wet warmth. I unhooked a shoulder from the umbilical cord with my gloved fingers, and out spilled a boy lamb and then soon after, his sister. The night went on; when there was a lull, when the shed went quiet, Lloyd poured coffee and mixed it with whisky.

‘I’m not much use,’ he said.

‘I feel better having you here,’ I said and blushed because I hadn’t expected to say that. He drank his drink and put honey on a slice of bread for me.

‘I don’t expect your hands are all that clean,’ he said and he held it up to my mouth. I took a bite even though I wasn’t hungry. In the quiet time last year I’d hurried back to the house and slept for a few hours. Now instead, I passed a torch over the sheep left outside. I counted and counted again. I went back to the shed and sat down in the hay next to Lloyd and Dog. We watched the lambs in the orange glow of the gas lamp.

‘You got any children?’ Lloyd asked.

‘No.’

‘Me neither.’

When the first washes of light came up over the fields, I got on to docking and tagging the lambs. Lloyd held them with his hand over their eyes while I did it.

‘It’s not that bad,’ I told him, ‘just like having your ears pierced.’

He looked at me. ‘How would you know?’

The lamb wriggled as I passed the punch through the cartilage. ‘He’s just startled by the noise,’ I said and moved around Lloyd to get to the tail. I slipped on the band and motioned for the lamb to be put back in the pen. It bumped around trying to get away from the feeling of it chasing him.

By the time we were done a morning breeze had crept into the shed and Lloyd was staring at the void that was his first dead lamb. It had come out grey and frog-like. I put a small triplet under the dead body and we watched while the mother of the dead lamb nosed the body off and started to lick at the nose and mouth of the live one. It let out muffled baas and its tail switched underneath it. I yawned loudly.

‘You go and rest,’ Lloyd said, his voice a croak. ‘I’ll come and get you if anything happens.’ Dog was settled watching Lloyd watch the dead lamb. My neck ached.

‘I’ll have a quick bath,’ I said, ‘I’ll be half an hour.’

Crossing the field, for a moment the sky was blue, making the trees black at their trunks. I reached the doorway of my house and looked out. It was still there, whatever it was, the feeling like something had hunkered down in the valley, waiting and watching and ready to stoop.

While the bath filled I sat on the toilet lid, listening to the sound of the sparrows that nested under my bedroom window waking up as the light began to come into the sky.

The water was hotter than I could bear and I couldn’t get my hand in deep enough to touch the plug without feeling it start to cook, so I ran the cold. My bones ached like a creaking boat. By the time the water was manageable, I was cold and my feet prickled as I submerged them. As I lowered myself in, the water started to spill onto the floor, and scrabbling for the plug I lost my balance and fell backwards, smacking my head against the back of the bath, and the water formed into two colliding waves, which splashed out and all over the place. It ran through the gaps in the floorboards in a steady stream and would show up as a brown stain on the kitchen ceiling. My head hurt. I kept my eyes closed and breathed out through my mouth, afraid of the moment I would have to assess the damage. Poor Archimedes idiot.

The back door opened downstairs. I opened my eyes. There was some blood. It was not too bad, considering the crack it had made, and the thump I was feeling, but then I saw that actually there was quite a lot, and it was turning the water around my shoulders luminous green. Downstairs, it was Lloyd. It was Lloyd downstairs.