Ballygobbard, 1999
It’s spring but it’s still cold so I’m wearing the jigsaw jumper with the big polo neck that Granny Reilly knitted me and a pair of leggings with pink love heart shorts on over them. They’re Majella’s shorts, but she left them in my house after a sleepover, and I’ve been coveting them ever since her auntie took her up to Dublin and bought them for her in Clerys. If she finds out I’m wearing them to feed lambs she’ll be bulling.
‘Hold the bottle firm now, good girl, Aisling. These petties are hungry this morning and they’ll pull off you if you’re not ready.’
Daddy calls all the orphan lambs ‘petties’, and they come screaming down the field when he calls them every morning to be fed in the calving shed. He opens the pen and the first one runs over to me, tripping in the thick layer of straw that covers the floor, its little tail wagging excitedly. I proffer the warm MiWadi bottle full of milk to it, and it sucks hungrily on the pink teat, pure delighted. The straw scratches my legs through my leggings, and Daddy places another bottle into my free hand and releases another wriggly pet towards me to clamp down on the teat. I go down on my hunkers and rest my elbows on my knees, steadying myself with a shoulder against the gate. The lambs are so vigorous with their gulping that they’d easily have me pushed over otherwise.
Daddy gets two more bottles on with ease and smiles over at me. ‘You’re doing a fine job, so you are.’
‘Sure, I’ll make a great farmer just like you when I grow up, Daddy.’
‘You will of course, if you want to.’
‘And I’m going to feed all the lambs with a bottle, even the ones that have mammies.’
‘You won’t have much time for everything else so. It’s hard work being a farmer, you know.’
‘I can already drive the tractor. And Paul can help me.’
Daddy laughs. ‘You’re going to run it together, are ye? And no fighting?’
‘I’ll push him in the slurry pit if he annoys me.’
‘Oh Jesus!’ Daddy’s laughing again.
My first lamb loses the teat and screams at me. ‘Here it is, you eejit. Here!’ He finds it again and his tail goes into overdrive once more.
‘Paul wants to be a rally driver when he grows up, Aisling. I don’t know if he’ll have time for lambing and dosing. And I thought you told Mammy you might be a nurse like her?’
I have thought it would be cool to be a nurse. Mammy has her own stethoscope and always has good stories about people getting into the wrong bed or waking up from operations talking about their sister’s husband’s affair. I have to get my tonsils out next month, and I’m hoping I don’t wake up telling stories about me and Majella rewinding the sweaty-car bit from Titanic over and over again.
‘Sure, maybe I’ll do both. Someone will have to do it when you’re old and gummy like Granddad.’
Daddy draws his lips over his teeth and drops a bottle for a second to smoke an invisible pipe.
His lamb roars in protest and I raise my eyebrows. ‘Now look who’s a better farmer!’
Daddy chuckles and placates the lamb. ‘Alright so, you’re a brilliant farmer. And you’d be a brilliant nurse, or teacher, or astronaut, or –’ He stops to think.
‘Rally driver,’ I offer.
He gives me a look. ‘I mean, you can be whatever you want when you grow up. Sure, I’ll be farming here until I’m ninety years old and poking calves into pens with my walking stick. And you’ll have your own house and you might be bringing your children here to feed lambs.’ He gives me a sideways look. ‘And your husband.’
I wrinkle my nose in disgust. ‘Ughhh, don’t be gross, Daddy! I’m never leaving the farm.’
‘Okay, well you might change your mind when you grow up. Or you might make this your home forever. It’s up to you. Don’t be worrying about it for the moment.’
‘I’ll always be here in Ballygobbard. Me and Majella want to have a DVD shop. I’m going to look after the money, and she’s going to get Leonardo DiCaprio to come and open it for us.’
Daddy throws his eyes up to heaven. ‘No better women. No better woman, Aisling.’