Barbed

The warm trickle of blood emerged from my throbbing wounds, snaking down my clenched fingers and hanging like Christmas baubles on the barbed wire. Finally, something else, finally, I can feel; something else. My flesh, embedded in the threatening teeth of the barb, warming the steel. The hot pain flooding my senses, drowning the noise, the torment, the torture. I released a deep and satisfying breath, eyes closed, face to the clouds. People speak of broken hearts. Well, you can save those cliches for greeting cards. My very soul, what makes me; well; me, has been bound by perpetual anger and pain. ‘Time is a healer’, ‘You will get through this’; well meant words delivered from the lips of those who care, pass through me and drift away in the breeze. I listen, I nod, I cry. Perhaps time will help to lessen the pain. But here, in this field, on this breezy July morning, stands the shadow of the woman I once was. How did I even get here? What does it matter? There is nothing else, I have nothing else. Here I stand; empty, blood dripping, tears rolling. This place of beauty and peace hides a dirty past. Eyes up, drinking in the sweet relief from the looped horror playing, again and again. This is my solitude, I’m not letting go. I’m never letting go. My thoughts are interrupted by a voice riding the breeze, tickling my back. 

***

The weathered farmhouse porch gave a clear line of sight over the patchwork of paddocks and the woods beyond. The glorious summer dawn welcomed fluttering yellow hammers, diving in and out of the hedgerows. Nearby pheasant calls drifting on the morning air from the Smithy Woods over yonder. All seemed as it should be, apart from the distant shape, rooted by the fence in the old cow pasture. 

My eyes might be getting on a bit, but this was no deer, no fox, or cattle. For months now, no cattle chewed the cud on Twelve Acre Farm, just dung and straw left now. The shape did not react, it just stood. I rubbed, then wiped my eyes, lifted my red, sweat-stained cap, then fixed it firmly back on my balding head. With what I deemed to be a decent balance of authority and volume, I yelled, “You there! This is private land”

No response, as still as a rock. Striding across the paddock, brushing past the knee-high grass, the shape became clearer, it was a person. I would have preferred a deer. My footsteps in the summer grass gave away my ever-approaching presence, but still, this mystery imposter did not move a muscle, or make a sound. Standing, pressed up against the wire fence, back facing me, head tilted to the heavens like a child waiting for the first flake of snow. This is why I shouldn’t watch those horror films with Mary, I thought, as a chill crept up my back. I paused, around ten feet away from the figure, out of arm's length but close enough to communicate without yelling.

“I’m Tom, you are on my land. Can I help you?”

I studied the back of what was clearly a woman. Red rain jacket, white linen dress and sandals. Not dressed for rambling through fields. Her hair was bunched up in a haphazard way, reminding me of the bygone days when on the rare occasion that Mary wasn’t home, I was tasked with getting my girls ready for school. The dramatic yelps as I brushed their hair and then the eyes rolling as they looked at my attempts at plaits, then resorting to ‘only just’ a pony tail. Their bright eyes twinkled as they ribbed me about my clumsy attempt at hair styling. Thoughts of the girls passed as I studied the hair of this stranger. I began to get a familiar feeling, a feeling that we had met. Moving slow and quiet like I would if rounding up a stray heifer, I positioned myself next to her. Her head dropped to stare straight ahead into the distance. And then she spoke.

***

“I know who you are, Tom”

Increasing her grip on the fence, Laura turned to face the man to her right. Finding his blue grey eyes under the red peak of his cap, staring right back into hers. She watched his skin fade to pale as the realisation struck him. His eyes scanning her face, his mind casting back to their paths crossing that March morning, here, at Twelve Acre Farm.

“Do you remember me?” she said.

Tom heard the question, but couldn’t reply. His mouth failed to move as his brain forced him to relive that snowy March morning. The very thing he had buried deep, locked away so he could sleep again.

“Do you remember me Tom?” she said.

“I do. I know who you are Ms Turner” Tom’s eyes dropped and as they did so, he noticed Laura’s bloody hands gripping tight to the barbed wire. “Good lord, let go!” he said as he took off his check shirt to use as a bandage. “Let me help you Ms Turner”

Laura lifted her head to the sky once more as she released a hearty laugh, explosive, frenzied and short lived. She whipped her head to Tom once more.

“Can you bring her back Tom? Can you, can anyone bring my little girl back?”

Tom stood helplessly as the body of the wounded creature before him, trembled and shook, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

“I wish I could. I really do, I wish.” Tom couldn’t finish. He placed his weathered hands across his eyes, hiding away from the moment. Masking the tears welling up as he remembered the look of pain and terror on Laura’s face, her screams of anguish on that dreadful day. It was early March. The air was cold, but the sun shone bright over the blanket of fresh snow. Twelve Acre Farm had an exposed but beautiful position South of the Pennine Hills. The weather could turn like a coin from sun to rain, wind to snow. It had a tumultuous rigour and beauty about the place. This farm had been in Tom’s family for three generations. Over fifty head of cattle grazed the land, they too had breeding lines going back to when Tom’s Great Grandad first set up the farm. It was a family business, his daughters grew up herding cattle, riding quad bikes and driving tractors. All grown up now and off doing their own thing, Tom was grateful that his girls weren’t around to witness the tragedy on that March morning.

Laura took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she spoke. “If only I had kept her close, held her hand. I don’t see her anymore Tom. I don’t see my Sophie’s long chestnut hair, or sparkling green eyes any more. All I see is the crumpled heap and the red against the snow. The deep red against the pure white snow.”

Laura remembered her desperate footsteps through the deep snow, running, head whipping from Sophie then across to the ever approaching herd charging towards her. It happened so fast. One moment Laura was smiling as she watched her daughter and their tar black dog run ahead of her, Sophie squealing with glee, Pepper running beside her barking with delight. Nobody had spotted the small herd of cows with calves at foot, taking shelter in the far corner of the field. Sophie stopped and stared as she saw the fast approaching herd of cows running towards her. She picked up Pepper in her arms, who’s bark had switched from play to protect within seconds. She heard her mother’s screams for her to run. Sophie ran, clasping Pepper to her chest. But the herd saw danger, fueled by the urge to protect their young, they descended on Sophie and Pepper. Child and dog disappeared underneath hooves, haunches and horns as Laura looked on in horror.

“I couldn’t reach her. I didn’t protect my baby. My Sophie. My everything.”

Tom placed a hand on Laura’s shoulder. “It was a terrible accident Laura, you aren’t to blame. Let me help you Laura, you need to let go and we need to take a look at your hands, you're losing a lot of blood.”

“I’m not letting go. I let Sophie go. I let her run ahead. I didn’t see your cows. I just let her go and now she’s gone.”

Tom remembered that morning. The first thing he heard was the shouts of a mother to her child, ringing across the valley. “Run Sophie” Then the small scream of a child followed by a noise he will never forget. The desperate scream and spine tingling whaling of a mother losing her child in front of her very eyes. By the time Tom had arrived at the scene, the cows had charged away, leaving bloody hoof print patterns trailing off in the snow. There lay the crumpled body of eight year old Sophie Turner. She lay, unmoving, central to a crimson circle on white canvas. The air ambulance lifted Sophie and Laura away, but it was too late. The poor girl and her beloved Pepper died from internal bleeding.

As the helicopter disappeared out of sight, Tom stood, and stared down at what lay in front of him. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the pink, blood splattered wellington laying on the snow. Over thirty years of farming cattle without incident. The odd kick and head butt over the years, but nothing like this. He turned, and walked back to the farmhouse. He knew deep down that it was herd instinct, the cows saw Pepper as a predator, the squeals and barks raised their adrenaline, charging to protect their young. Regardless, he couldn’t look at the cattle again after that day, let alone care for them as he had all those years. Every last one went to the slaughter house. There would be no more cattle at Twelve Acre Farm while he had breath in his body. 

Tom looked into Laura’s puffy eyes as he spoke softly. 

“Laura. You can do this. Do you think Sophie would have wanted her mum to hurt herself like this?”

Tom gently placed his hands on Laura’s and she released her grip. The blood flow increased, splattering her dress, crimson against white. Tom ripped his shirt in two and wrapped Laura’s hands to help stem the blood flow. Hand around her shoulder, he guided her, in silence to his Land Rover. As they walked he glanced over his shoulder, back at the paddock. Beyond the blood stained wire they had left behind, he could see her standing there again. Still. Pink wellington boots, long auburn hair, sparkling green eyes. Tom quickly looked ahead. The screams he heard at night had stopped, but the girl often stood and stared. The car journey to the nearest hospital was a long one. Laura sat in silence, staring straight ahead, oblivious to the desperate attempts of reassurance and small talk from her driver. Tom left Laura that day, in the safe hands of the nurses in A&E, who cleaned and stitched her wounds and referred Laura to psychiatric care.

Tom continued his routine on the farm, tending his crops, keeping busy. He still struggled to sleep, turning to whisky to soothe his mind and allow him a night’s sleep. Several weeks passed, the summer was drifting by, giving way to the colours of autumn. Tom poured his morning coffee and strode out onto the porch, slumping back into the creaky rocker on the deck. He looked across to the paddock, half expecting to see the familiar outline of Sophie in her usual spot. He gasped as his eyes soaked in the sight of two figures holding hands in the distance. Right in the spot where poor Sophie died. The coffee cup smashed on the porch deck as he jumped to his feet. Stumbling down the steps, across the first paddock, he paused. The distant shape of Laura standing next to Sophie, holding her hand made Tom’s heart thump like a rabbit’s foot. He ran across the paddock to the fence, but there was no one there. Empty. ‘Must be the whisky!’ he thought. The shrill cry of the kitchen phone made him start. He turned quickly back to the house.

“Hello, Twelve Acre Farm”

The voice at the other end of the phone had a tone that Tom was all too familiar with. The same tone he heard when he heard his Mary had passed in the hospital.

“When?”

Tom thanked the caller, hung up the phone and slid slowly down the wall, sitting white faced on the linoleum floor. “She couldn’t do it. He said. She couldn’t let go.”