Ill Wind

It didn't snow straight away but she knew it wouldn't be long.

She'd woken in the morning to an unfamiliar metal squealing as the weather vane on the barn swung round to the North. And to the sound of banging. But she didn't think. Patrick would have known to go and close the barn doors but Patrick was gone. There were so many things he used to do of which she was simply unaware. They'd made a good team. But now, alone, she was a novice again, and she cursed herself for the things she didn't do until it was too late.

Coombe Farm nestled in the rounded belly of the valley end and usually benefited from the shelter of the rolling hills that cradled it. The fields on the northerly side bathed in generous sunlight and the wooded slopes of the hills opposite softened the breath of the warmer winds from the south. But at this time of year, the wind swung around and sharpened its edges. It smelled of frost and peat and smoke and damp. It seeped through the cracks in the door and rattled the glass in the windows.

The wind wrapped itself round the back of the house and found the year's gathered detritus – old sacks, leaves, straw – and scattered it back across the yard. She felt as if she'd been found out. Everything the wind said was cruel. A judgement. The songs it sang were bitter and grating. It found her flesh between her clothes and dragged its sinister blade across her skin. There was no getting warm. The smoke backed down the chimney and smutted the clothes on the dryer in front of the hearth.

She cursed the wind every moment she had to venture outside. She cursed Patrick too for leaving her to this, this bitter solitude. She stayed in as long as she dared, putting off the tedious tasks she knew she must perform. She went to the back bedroom and opened the blanket box, cursed the moths that had evidently been feasting on the blankets and garments within. At last she found it Patrick's old Guernsey and the looseknit shawl her mother had worn. She wrapped herself against the oncoming grief of the wind.

She battled across the muddy yard and opened the henhouse. The five were hunkered on the lowest perch, their heads pulled down into the shoulders of their wings, feathers ruffled up such that she could see the purple grey roots of their plumage. She tipped grain into the feeders and cracked the ice in the water trough but the birds remained in their maudlin meditations, sullenly blinking at her for disturbing them. She could feel their annoyance. Should she leave the flaps open? They showed no inclination to venture out into the gritty wind.

'You've got drink. You've got scran. You'll survive a day,' she said.

It was only after she had lowered the flaps again that she heard the beating of wings come from inside,

'Ah, bugger you,' she said. 'Bugger the lot of you! You'll stay in there now and like it!'

Now the snow had started, thick and fast. It had plastered itself across her back much more thickly than she had realised as she tended to the chickens. She turned her head as if to challenge the beast wind but was forced to squint her eyes against the icy blasts. Snow crystals stung her cheeks. Head down, and pulling the shawl tighter around her, she set off across the yard to the barn.

And now she saw her mistake, the barn door had been flung open before the wind. She should have come here straight away – as soon as she had caught the sound of the weather cock grinding its unfamiliar wail. The barn had shuddered and swallowed gust after gust of the shouting wind.

During the night the milker had given birth. She had heard the animal lowing, a dark rich guttural moan. Patrick would have recognised the signs and she would have left her bed and followed him to the barn, lantern in hand, to see to the animal. She knew how to follow him. She knew how to be at his right hand. She knew what he would need before he knew himself. But with Patrick gone, the rhythm was upset. The natural order was in chaos. The sound and sights that were language to him, cues and clues as to what he needed to do, now went untranslated for her. She was alone and the wind sharpened her aloneness, tattering the memories of their life together, ripping their story from the landscape and leaving her with broken words, fragments of their togetherness that no longer meant anything but just hung like brittle flags, dissolving under the acid breath of the North wind.

The milker lay on her side. A black motionless mound was spilled in the straw beside her.

Snow still gusted in through the open barn door. It had been closed the previous night as usual. She had made sure of that. But as had so often happened before, the wind change had challenged the latch and caught the great timber panel full force, splintering the wooden closure like kindling. Patrick had had to repair it many times, had often said he should get an iron fixing from Howlett the farrier, but had never got round to it.

She cursed him again, this man whom she had loved so deeply, relied on so completely and who had left her so suddenly.

It was her grief at losing him that was transfigured into this anger at him and now, as she stooped to test the little corpse for any vestige of life left, she cursed Patrick until the tears ran. She held the head of the calf in her lap, pulled at the mucus that still clung to its muzzle. But nothing. The animal's eyes were half open but glazed and dim. The neck was stiff and cold.

The milker turned her head towards the woman and a deep rolling growl rippled in her throat.

'Tis too bad, old girl. Too bad. I'm sorry.'

She stood up. Pushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her wrist. She bent and found the calf's front hoofs and, holding them together in one hand dragged it out of the barn. The umbilical cord trailed after it, terminating in a massed clamp of blood and slime and mucilage. She would figure out what to do later. It would come to no harm now, no greater harm anyway, and the cold wind would slow the rotting. She left it around the side of the barn and covered it over with some old sacking.

The snow was falling thicker still and no sooner had she pulled the sack over the little corpse, than the flakes began to blanket it.

She rubbed her hands on her skirt, cupped them together and blew into the opening between her thumbs. As she stood and looked down the valley, into the very throat of the wind, she saw a dark smudge among the falling snow, moving vaguely, slowly, towards her. The smudge moved in the rhythm of a person walking, head down, trudging through the thickening quilt of powder.

She saw the body opening and closing with each heavy step.

A person, a woman, coming towards her – a dark, hooded figure looming out of the snow towards her...

19.02.2019