The haybarn

The big man grunted as he pulled himself from her, rocked back on his knees and hurriedly buttoned his dirty woolen trousers, the redness of his face fading to pale purple. His eyes avoided her. Janet sat up slowly, squinting against the hot white bars of light leaking through the boards of the haybarn wall. She loved this place. Once it had been a secret place, a safe haven of perfumed dust where she came to play alone. Now it choked her, threatening to make her retch. She closed her eyes tight. The impassive, protective image of Declan McGann hovered in her mind, comforting her. Her head ached and there was a shrill ringing in her ears. She was needing Declan more and more, and she thanked him mutely. She had discovered him in “Love me tender”, that she read a few weeks after she moved to the farm with her mother. She’d been reading Harlequin books; addicted to them her mother said, since she left school, devouring them slowly and lovingly, but Declan, with his dark good looks and calm, protective nature, had become a special companion.

“Hurry up and get your pants on” The man’s voice was gentle now, whining, sort of cajoling. She remembered that tone well. It was the way he sounded when she was little and he used to come up to town with a bottle of sherry for her mother and toffees with fluff stuck to them loose in this pocket… “Come and sit on your uncle Ted‘s knee”… And when she hesitated her mother, flushed and red eyed, would tell her not to be so mean, so eventually she would go and perch stiffly, waiting for the fingers that she knew would follow, probing between her legs, under the elastic of her underpants, hurting and making her feel confused and somehow guilty. She remembered the smell of his breath then, like a dead rat she had seen once drowned in a trough, and she was hoping that it meant Uncle Ted would soon die. But he had not and now they were all living together. It seemed she could never get rid of that smell or his taste from her mouth.

She knew she could not hate him, that he was not to blame. Almost as long as she could remember he had been visiting them. He used to get her to draw pictures for him on the blackboard in her room and if they had visitors he was always introduced as “Ted Blackwell, a good friend of the family. “ I don’t know where we’d be without Ted,“ her mother would chirp, “such a kind gentle, generous man“

Once when she told her mother that she did not like him, her mother had turned on her, her eyes black. “You owe that man everything, my girl, and don’t you forget it”. Somehow she knew when she left school they would end up moving to the farm. She started taking money from her mother’s drawer and catching the bus into town so she could hang around in the park all day, watching the ducks and the lovers at lunchtime and wishing she could meet someone to run away with. She remembered the day the letter came from the school counsellor. Her mother just sat at the kitchen table, twisting a tissue and her hands and crying silently. It was all her fault. She knew it. It was about then that she started getting the headaches. Her mother took her to the doctor but he said there was nothing wrong. He said it was probably just being a teenager and she hated him.

The tractor ground slowly up the muddy race to the cow shed. The sun was low in the sky silhouetting the man’s head as he hunched at the wheel. Janice watched his broad oil-skinned back and massaged her aching temples with tired fingers. She felt Declan‘s presence beside her on the trailer. She felt his strength encircling her. She made a decision. He would help her to end this. Halfway through milking she realised her headache was gone. She noticed Ted looking at her iintently and realised she’d been singing. She ran back to the house after milking, ran a bath and sat for a long time scrubbing herself with an old nailbrush, its bristles worn to spiky stumps. For the first time since they moved to the farm she felt really clean. She reread the two best chapters of “Love me tender” and then lay for a long time with Declan beside her, feeling excited but peaceful. She listened to the occasional rumble of voices in the living room and the burble of the TV late news and waited patiently for the sound of his slippers scuffing on the old hall runner. Eventually the house was silent . She opened the tall locker in the laundry, feeling in the dark for what she needed, and carefully llifted her Swanndri from the nail,  pulled the back door gently closed and stepped into her gumboots. and Swanndri and stumbled into the dark towards the barn walking awkwardly with her heels raised to reduce the slap of her boots against her calves.

When she woke the next morning her headache was back. It was still there at the end of milking and when they bumped down the race to the hay barn later in the morning, she had to hold her breath to stop herself vomiting. The man had to strain to see as he backed the trailer to the door of the barn. She waited inside. This was when it would happen, what he called their special time. Her head was pounding. She pulled the shotgun from the loose hay where she had left it and kicked off her boots. Declan was beside her. She could feel this gentle touch on her shoulder. The man had heaved himself down and was standing in the doorway. He saw the gun pointing at his chest and stood frozen. She felt calm now. She saw Declan‘s face and felt his breath on her cheek. She lowered the butt of the gun to the ground and closed her lips around the end of the barrel. It felt cold and clean. The man grunted sharply and started to move towards her as she felt for the trigger with her toe.