Out of the Ashes Read online

  This book is dedicated to all those farmers and farming communities who suffered during the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Monday, January 1st

  Thursday, January 11th

  Saturday, January 20th

  Monday, February 5th

  Thursday, February 15th

  Saturday, February 24th

  Wednesday, February 28th

  Thursday, March 1st

  Monday, March 5th

  Tuesday, March 6th

  Wednesday, March 7th

  Thursday, March 8th

  Friday, March 9th

  Saturday, March 10th

  Monday, March 12th

  Tuesday, March 13th

  Thursday, March 15th

  Friday, March 16th

  Monday, March 19th

  Sunday, March 25th

  Wednesday, March 28th

  Friday, March 30th

  Thursday, April 5th

  Friday, April 6th

  Sunday, April 22nd

  Friday, April 27th

  Monday, April 30th

  Afterwards

  Author’s Note

  An introduction I want you to read

  This story is not a story at all. It all happened. I know it did because I was there. I lived it. I saw it with my own eyes. It was a time of my life I can never forget.

  I wrote it just as a private diary. Dad gave me a lovely leather-bound diary for my thirteenth birthday last year. It’s peacock blue with a brass clip. I’m one of those few unlucky people whose birthday falls on Christmas Day, so whilst I might not get as many presents as my friends, mine are usually very special. And this was my most special present of all last year, mostly because Dad had had my name, Becky Morley, printed in gold on the front, and underneath, ‘My diary 2001’. And best of all, he’d done a drawing on the first page of Ruby – Ruby’s my horse. She’s bay, with a dark mane and tail, part Connemara, part thoroughbred. I used to think she was the most important thing in the world to me. Below the drawing Dad had written ‘Ruby, the only one who’s allowed to read this – except Becky. Love Dad’. It was a wonderful drawing too – Ruby at full gallop. It’s always amazed me how well Dad can draw. He’s got great big farmer’s hands, like spades, and yet he draws a lot better than me, better than anyone I know.

  From January 1st 2001 onwards, I wrote something in my diary about once a week, sometimes more. I could write as little or as much as I wanted, because the pages weren’t dated, no saints’ days, no holidays, just empty pages. So I could do drawings too, when I felt like it. My diary year, like everyone else’s, began on January 1st, but it ended on April 30th, because the story was over. There just didn’t seem any point in writing any more.

  Some time afterwards, I showed it to Mum. After all we’d been through together I wanted her to read it. Once she’d finished she gave me a long hug, and we cried our last tears. At that moment I felt we had both drawn a line under the whole thing and made an end of it.

  It was her idea, not mine, that my diary should be published. She was very determined about it, fierce almost. ‘People should know, Becky’ she said. ‘I want people to know how it was. I certainly don’t want their pity, but I do want them to understand.’

  So here’s my diary, then, with some of my draw­ings too. Not a word has been changed. The spelling has been corrected, and the punctuation. Otherwise it’s just as I wrote it.

  Ruby, the only one who’s allowed to read this – except Becky. Love, Dad.

  Monday, January 1st

  Dad was a bit bleary-eyed this morning. After last night I’m not surprised. We were up at the Duke of York seeing the New Year in, along with most of the village – Jay, Uncle Mark, Auntie Liz, everyone – the place was packed.

  But New Year 2001 for us didn’t begin in the pub. I stood with Mum in the dark of the church and watched Dad and the others ringing in the New Year. He’s a lot bigger than all the other bell ringers, and he rings the bell with the deepest dong. It suits him.

  Afterwards, in the cold night air we all tramped through the graveyard to join the party at the Duke. An owl hooted from up in the church tower, and Dad called out: ‘And a Happy New Year to you too!’

  Dad was laughing a lot like he always does, and drinking too, but no more than anyone else. Mum kept telling him that he’d had enough and that he’d only have a thick head in the morning. I hate it when she nags him like that, especially in front of other people. But Dad didn’t seem to mind at all. I think he was too happy to care. He was singing his heart out. He sang ‘Danny Boy’ and everybody cheered him. He loves to sing when he’s happy. Everyone was happy last night, including me. Jay and me went outside when the pub got too stuffy and smoky and we lay on the village green looking up at the stars. It was cold, but we didn’t mind. The owl kept hooting at us from the graveyard. Jay said she saw a shooting star, but she was just making it up. She’s always making things up, particularly what she calls her ‘experiences’ about boys, and sometimes that makes me annoyed because I think she’s trying to put me down. But last night she was just having fun. I feel she is more like my sister than my best friend. I know her so well, too well probably.

  Jay was beside me later on when we all linked arms and sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (I can never remember the words) before we went back home in the pick-up, Bobs in the back, barking his head off at the moon. He always barks and howls on moonlit nights – ‘like a ruddy werewolf,’ Dad says.

  When we got back I went to see Ruby in her stable to wish her a Happy New Year. I gave her lots of sugar lumps and a kiss on her nose. Then I did the same to Bobs so he didn’t feel left out – not sugar lumps, just a kiss. When I got up to bed Dad was already snoring, as loud as a chainsaw.

  This afternoon I took Ruby for a ride. Bobs came along. Bobs always comes along. Up through Bluebell Wood and down to the river. Two herons lifted off as we cantered across the water meadows. Love herons. The river was low enough, so I rode Ruby across into Mr Bailey’s wood the other side. Bobs had to swim, paddling like crazy, head up and looking very pleased with himself. We’ve got this brilliant arrangement with Mr Bailey. He lets me ride in his woods and in return I let him have horse manure for his vegetable garden. Unlike us, he keeps the tracks through his woods clear; so, as long as I look out for badger holes, I can let Ruby have her head. She galloped on well today, puffing and snorting like she does when she’s really enjoying herself.

  As I came out of the wood I saw Mr Bailey feeding his sheep. He waved at me and called out, wishing me a Happy New Year, which surprised me because he can be a bit grumpy. (He wasn’t in the pub last night. He’s a Methodist. He doesn’t like pubs.) Normally we only wave at each other at a distance. So I rode over to say hello, just to be friendly. He told me he’d be lambing down his ewes in a week or so (he calls them ‘yors’). ‘Don’t want any snow,’ he said. ‘Worst thing you can have at lambing time is snow.’

  Then he asked me if I’d made any New Year’s resolutions, and I said I hadn’t. ‘You should, Becky,’ he told me. ‘I always do. I don’t always keep them, mind. But I try. And trying’s what counts.’ So I thought about it on the way back home, and I made two New Year’s resolutions. First: to write in my diary like I’m doing now every single day. Second: to be nicer to Mum, if she’ll be nicer to me.

  Thursday, January 11th

  Both my New Year’s resolutions have been broken. It’s ten days since I wrote a word in my diary, and Mum and I still aren’t getting on at all. Now come my excuses. I didn’t write in my diary partly because I couldn’t think of anything much to write about, and partly because Mum kept on pestering me to do it. She kept saying it would be good practice for my English (th
at’s her trouble, she can’t stop being a teacher) and that Dad would be disappointed if I didn’t write in it every day. She pesters me about everything, not just about my diary.

  Here’s a list of my terrible crimes:

  1. I haven’t written my thank you letters for my Christmas/birthday presents. I’m doing it.

  2. I left Ruby’s gate unlatched and she got out. Once. By accident.

  3. I still haven’t tidied my room. So?

  4. I take long showers and use up too much water. I like showers.

  5. I forgot to take my wellies off – once – when I came in off the farm. I was in a hurry to go to the loo.

  6. I should spend less time with Ruby and more time on my homework – if I want ‘to get on in life’.

  What she doesn’t understand is how much I love Ruby. Dad understands. He’s the same about his cows and his pigs and the sheep. He loves them to bits. He’s got twenty-five Gloucester cows and he knows them all by name – so do I. He names them all after flowers: Marigold, Tulip, Rose, Celandine. The boss cow is called Primrose. Primrose is always the first into the milking parlour, the first through every gate. She’s got dreamy eyes and great curved horns. Dad loves her a lot – he’s always slipping her sneaky peppermints.

  In his dairy Dad makes the best cheese in the entire world – that’s what he says and he’s right. Double Gloucester, and it’s the only Double Gloucester cheese made from Gloucester cows in the whole country. He’s very proud of his cheese, very proud of his cows, and so am I. He’s always in his dairy checking on his cheeses in the cheese store. Don’t know why. Sometimes I think he just likes being with them.

  But it’s Hector Dad loves best, our old Gloucester bull. He was born on the farm twelve years ago, and he’s so gentle you can lead him around with your little finger. Dad used to put me on his back when I was little – I’ve got a photo of it in my album.

  Then we’ve got pigs – all ‘J’s, Jessica, Jemima and Jezebel. Black and white Gloucester Old Spots. There’s three families at the moment, all different sizes of piglets and all very cute – except when they get into the garden and start digging up the lawn with their snouts. Just a couple of days ago Mum saw them out of the window at breakfast and went chasing after them with a broom. She was in her dressing gown and wellies. Dad nearly killed himself laughing and so did I.

  Today I heard Mr Bailey’s first lambs bleating from across the river. We haven’t started lambing just yet. That’ll be in a couple of weeks’ time. Dad wins prizes for his sheep – some Cotswolds, some Suffolks. We’ve got about a hundred and fifty in all. Like he does every year, he’s picked me out three sheep of my own, my own flock – all Suffolks because he says they lamb easier. From now on I’ve got to look after them, and this year for the first time I’ve got to lamb them by myself when the time comes. I wrote out twenty names beginning with ‘M’ and chose the best three – Molly, Mary and May. Molly’s the pushy one, and my favourite already.

  I went back to school last week, last Monday. The heating broke down so we all froze. It was good seeing Jay and the others again, but I always find school strange at first. I’ll get used to it. I always do. At the end of last term there were Christmas decorations up everywhere. Without them the school looks bare and empty, like the trees outside my window. They look like skele­tons in winter. I’m fed up with this winter. It rains every day, which means the river’s flooded and I can’t cross over and go riding up in Mr Bailey’s woods, and there’s mud everywhere too. Ruby hates mud, and so do I. We agree on every­thing, Ruby and me.

  Mrs Kennedy’s away having her baby, so we’ve got a new English teacher, Mrs Merton. She told us all about herself. She’s thirty-five, married with two children and grew up on a farm like me, and she smiles a lot. I like teachers who smile.

  Saturday, January 20th

  Ruby’s gone lame, and I’m sure it’s because of all the mud. I’ve been leaving her out too long, because she hates being stuck in her stable all the time. Anyway, now she’ll have to stay in, whether she likes it or not. The vet said so. ‘Young MacDonald,’ Dad calls him. (He’s really good-looking, like Brad Pitt, and he wears an Australian hat.) So I call him Brad – when I’m thinking about him, which I do, often. He gave Ruby an injection and told me it wasn’t my fault, but he was only saying that. It was my fault, I know it was. He took a look at my sheep in the shippen and told me they could be lambing any day now. He thought Molly might possibly be having twins. She is so big, so wide. ‘Fine looking animals,’ he said. ‘I like to see well-kept stock, and there’s no farmer round here that looks after his animals better than your dad.’ Dad was right there behind him when he said it, and he was beaming all over his face.

  ‘I bet you say that to all the farmers, don’t you, young MacDonald?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Brad. And we all laughed then.

  That was the moment I remember best today. I suddenly felt I wasn’t younger than them at all, that I was one of them. Bobs chased Brad’s car all the way up the road, as usual. He’ll chase anything that moves, unless it’s a farm animal. Dad says he’s the laziest sheepdog he’s ever had. But I think he’s lovely – second only to Ruby in my heart. Maybe third. It’s Ruby, then Brad, then Bobs. Sorry, Bobs.

  At school Mrs Kennedy’s had her baby – well, not at school exactly. It’s a boy, and she’s sent in a picture of him which Mrs Merton pinned up in the classroom. He’s all wrinkled up and pink with his eyes tightly closed and his fists clenched. Mrs Merton got us to write about what he might be thinking behind his closed eyes. Jay wrote a long poem called: ‘Thinking nothing’ which was really good. And I wrote this whole story about the baby, dreaming of the life he’d had the last time he was alive, but I didn’t have time to finish it before the bell went. I’ll finish it another day.

  Mum is thirty-eight today. We gave her her presents at breakfast as we always do on birth­days. I gave her a painting of Ruby I’d done at school with Bobs running along behind and she was really happy with it. I know that because when she thanked me her eyes were smiling at me, and because she didn’t moan at me once all day.

  They’ve gone out to dinner at The Duke to celebrate and Moody Trudy’s here to babysit. I’m thirteen and they still think I need a babysitter. She’s sitting on the sofa right now, crying her eyes out. (Who’s babysitting who?) She’s broken up with her boyfriend again. Always the same boyfriend, Terry Bolan, up at Speke’s farm. She wants to get married, but he doesn’t. I can’t say I blame him. Trudy is moody, and I mean really moody.

  Bobs is in the kitchen with me as I’m writing this. He keeps sighing and groaning in his basket. Trudy’s still sniffling in the sitting room. I’ve had enough. I’m going out to talk to Ruby.

  Monday, February 5th

  All good news. I got an ‘A’ for that story about Mrs Kennedy’s baby’s previous life. Mrs Merton wrote that it was a strange story, but very imaginative. I like her more and more. And better still, Ruby’s foot is fine again. The vet came today, not Brad (pity!), another one, the one with a posh accent and a ginger moustache. He said I shouldn’t ride her out for a while, just to be safe. And, and – I had my first lambs. Molly gave birth this morning before breakfast. I went out with Dad to check the lambing ewes – he’s had twenty or so lambs already from his flock. We found Molly lying there in the corner of the shippen trying to do it by herself. She’d already given birth to one, but she was still struggling, still pushing. Brad had been right. There was a second one on the way. The head was already out. Dad didn’t interfere. He held Molly still and just told me to get on with it. I’d helped him before and watched him dozens of times. I knelt down and pulled firmly, gently easing the lamb out.

  It was hard at first because my hand kept slipping, and Molly seemed suddenly too tired to go on pushing. But then out came the lamb in one whoosh, and there he was lying on the straw. But he wasn’t breathing. He was completely still. I panicked and wanted Dad to take over. But he just told me to keep calm, not to worry. B
low in his nostrils, he told me. So I did. Still the lamb didn’t breathe. Then I had to hold him up by the back legs and give him a shake. ‘Now lie him down and rub him,’ Dad said. Suddenly the lamb began to splutter and cough and shake his head. I’d done it. All on my own (sort of). I’d given birth to my first lamb (sort of), a ram lamb (I love saying that out loud!). Dad checked Molly had plenty of milk, which she had.

  Molly licked him all over and in half an hour he was up on his shaky legs, staggering around and nuzzling for his first drink. I’ve called him ‘Little Josh’ after Josh, my little cousin, because he’s cute too, and because they have both got very short, curly black hair. So from now on I’d better call cousin Josh ‘Big Josh’, so I won’t get the two of them muddled up.

  I keep going out into the shippen to see if he’s all right. He’s learnt to walk, eat and talk, all in just a few hours. Amazing. He is so sweet and I’m so happy.

  Thursday, February 15th

  All my lambs are born now. May lambed by herself last night. So, including Little Josh, I’ve got four lambs and they’re all fine. Dad’s just about finished, but what with all the milking and cheesemaking, as well as the lambing, he’s very tired and stressed out. So Mum’s helping, seeing to the sheep in the morning before she goes off to school, and then in the evening when she gets back. She does some milking for him too, at the weekends, just to give him a break. I’m doing the pigs and poultry before and after school. So we’re all tired and fed up. At mealtimes we just eat in silence. That’s the trouble with everyone being busy, it makes everyone very boring. No one even argues!

  I can’t ride Ruby yet, so I spend lots of time with Little Josh in the shippen. That’s where I’m sitting writing this. Bobs isn’t allowed in, in case he upsets the ewes. So he’s sitting outside whining and sulking. He’s just jealous. Here’s a drawing of what I think I look like to Little Josh.

 
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