Wyld Dreamers

eaten. I’ll go and find Julian, see w-w-what he says.’
‘Yeah, see Julian, that’s a brain wave,’ Amy says snidely as he disappears.
Another bird flies in and vanishes in the gloomy upper reaches of the barn. She’d like to follow it, fly up to the highest beam and settle on a ledge to watch everyone below. Ruffle up her feathers and hunch up her wings while her friends try to find her. Would she be missed?
That night they sit by the fire and play music and smoke grass. At one point, Maggie waves a joint at David when it’s snatched from her fingers by Simon. A mock fight starts. It ends up with Simon squatting on top of Maggie making her yelp with laughter. Julian puts Sticky Fingers on the turntable, announcing to the room that the album confirms The Rolling Stones as the best band in the world. David jumps up, declaiming that on the contrary Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band will change pop music forever and The Beatles reign supreme. Amy’s heard it all before. It’s something they do when they’re stoned. They find it hilarious; Amy does not. She rolls another joint.
The men protest when Maggie goes to the turntable, saying girls can be in charge of music. But when ‘Eight Miles High’ starts, everyone starts to sing and sway along to The Byrds. Everyone except Amy. She huddles against a chair hugging her thighs. It helps to quell the paranoia that is starting to bubble through her body.
‘Come on Amy, dance with me!’ David tries to pull her up off the floor.
‘I’m not in the mood,’ she says, shaking her head. If she can stay completely still, she’ll be fine.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he insists. ‘Come on, babe.’
He succeeds in hauling her to her feet and wrapping his arms around her, murmurs into her ear: ‘Don’t get all dragged down and depressed now, will you. You gotta handle this, yeah? Be cool.’ The remark crumples her heart. ‘What do you mean?’ she says, pushing him away. Why is he being so thoughtless?
‘Don’t get all… I don’t know, weird or whatever. Pass that over, Simon.’ He holds a roll-up to her mouth. The cardboard end is soggy. ‘Smoke this…’
‘I don’t want that!’ She shakes her head. ‘You don’t know what to say to me, do you?’
‘What do you mean? My beautiful woman is with me again. I’ve missed her. What else is there to say?’
It feels she is watching from a great distance as the people she calls her friends sway around the room. Their faces are indecipherable. People can’t talk about death or they don’t want to; they don’t have the words. Getting away is what she must do. Unnoticed, she slips from the room and climbs the stairs. Perhaps David’s right – what is there to say? There’s no heating in the house apart from the Aga so it’s freezing in the bathroom. Ignoring the dirty sink and damp towel, she quickly brushes her teeth. Just as she’s rifling through the airing cupboard for her nightie, kept there during the day to stop it getting damp, a bitter voice slams her against the wall.
The voice is in her head. It whispers cruelly that her mother’s death might be her fault. She couldn’t wait to get away, it hisses, she was even willing to lie just to escape to the farm with her boyfriend. Shirley wanted Amy to come home but Amy ignored her wishes. Call herself a daughter? Maybe Amy’s selfishness caused so much stress that the cells of her mother’s brain burst? Does unhappiness makes cells leak? Her mother was very young to have a brain bleed…’
The accusations hurtle round her head. The image of the lonely calf in the barn and Shirley lying in the mortuary shed are terrifying pictures. Amy grips the sink, forces herself to remain naked in the icy bathroom. Tears stream down her face. Her teeth chatter with cold but guilt makes her shake, too. Staring back from the mirror, her eyes are bloody pits. She deserves punishment.
‘Amy, what the hell’s going on?’ Suddenly David is in the bathroom and he is flinging his arms around her, subsuming her in his warmth. ‘What are you doing, you crazy girl? Look, I’ve brought a hot water bottle for you. Let’s get some clothes on you and… ’
‘David,’ she wails, ‘it’s my mother, I’m feeling terrible, I wonder if it’s my fault.…’
‘Don’t be silly, darling Ames. Hold up your arm…’
‘It could be, it could…’
‘Come on, let’s get you into bed,’ he says and bundling her into another jumper, drags socks up her frozen legs and half carries her into the bedroom.
The voice is stilled. The shuddering of her bones gradually wanes. But just before she drops to sleep, she is conscious of one last whisper, one last hiss. That though she may mourn her mother, no more is she bound into someone else’s story of her life. Appalling to acknowledge, it jeers, but she cannot deny that there is a sliver, a tiny pulse somewhere deep-down in her being that is glad that she is free.
It was raining when the vet turned up. ‘I’m used to it, don’t bother yourself,’ he said.
But Amy insisted on joining him. In clothes more suitable for a scarecrow, she took him to the pen where Daisy was waiting.
‘She’s calm, is she? Give her some nuts. I need to establish out why her calf was stillborn. I’ll do a blood test, of course but I’ll examine her too.’
The vet slipped on a thick plastic glove that covered his arm as far as his shoulder. ‘She may have had milk fever or brucellosis though she’s been inoculated so it’s unlikely.’
He slipped his arm under Daisy’s tail and pushed into the cow so deep that his elbow disappeared and his shoulder pressed against her hindquarters.
Amy winced.
‘Feels alright,’ the vet said twisting his arm to reach for another area in the cow’s vagina.
Amy wished he would move more