“This is good. Thanks,” said David as he wiped the last of the Lasagne sauce from his plate with a piece of bread.

“Only ‘good’?”

“No. That was the best lasagne I’ve ever eaten. You’d better not tell Bronwyn or she’ll be after the recipe. This would go down a treat at the Pub.”

“That’s a family recipe I’m afraid, but I’m glad that you liked it. A lot better than those salt laden microwave meals that you seem to have been surviving on.”

“I don’t really have time for much else during lambing.”

Detta smiled.
“I know. Your animals come first and so they should, but it doesn’t do to go too far the other way. When was the last time you slept in your bed?”

“You noticed my sleeping bag then?”

“I did. So, when was it?”

“Just before lambing started.”

“Then tonight you will sleep in your bed. I’ll keep an eye on the ewes.”

“But you don’t know what to do?”

Detta shook her head.

“There are plenty of videos on YouTube. I’ve watched a few of them. If I get into trouble then I’ll come and get you.”

David didn’t answer so Detta tried another tack.
“You had to learn somewhere, didn’t you?”

He looked her right in the eye and slowly, he nodded his head.
“Ok, but promise me that you will come and get me no matter what time of the night it is?”

“I promise.”

David nodded. Detta was coming to understand that was his way of shutting down a conversation.

“Now why don’t you go out and tend to your babies. I’ll clear up in here.”

---

Over the course of the next two hours, Detta cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom. She got the big cast iron range going after a few failures due to some damp kindling. Slowly the room began to heat up much to her delight.

She also did two loads of washing. Actually, it was just one load that needed a second wash. The mess from the lambing had dried hard and one wash was nowhere near enough to shift it.

With the now clean overalls drying in front of the range, Detta sat down and took stock. It was clear that she’d only just started on the farmhouse. She wondered if it hadn’t been properly cleaned since the tragic death of Frances.

“That was then. This is now!” she said out loud as she stood up and put the kettle on. If she could do with a cuppa, she was sure that David would welcome one as well.

Detta carried the tea out to the shed. It was silent but for the sound of ewes and their lambs. Then she saw David. He was fast asleep in his sleeping bag.

For a second, Detta thought about turning around and going back to the now warm kitchen. The two lambs in the pen next to the stove had been fed and were comfortable so she decided that it was as good a time as any to get involved with the lambing.

Then panic set in. Despite watching a lot of videos on the subject, she had no idea where to start.

Detta sat down on a straw bale feeling totally lost. The enormity of what she’d let herself in for was starting to hit home hard. She needed some help and the only person to give it other than the one who was fast asleep just a few feet from her, was his sister Bronwyn.

Detta returned to the privacy of the kitchen before making a phone call.

---

“Hello Bronwyn,” said Detta when the phone was answered.

“I’m fine…”
“No. Actually I’m not that fine. I need help. David is exhausted and fast asleep in the lambing shed and I don’t know where to start with the Ewes that haven’t given birth yet.”

“Sorry for lumping my troubles onto you but there wasn’t anyone else this side of Barry Island that I could call.”

“Yep, I’m up shit creek. All my lofty ideas and cunning plans have come crashing down in a heap of smelly goat dung.”

“David said that there aren’t that many left to give birth but… Do you know of someone who could help me and therefore David out?”
“Some advice would be useful and if it could be on the QT then even better.”

“You do? How do I get in touch with him?”

“I do,” said Detta as she listened to what Bronwyn was saying.

“Ok, I understand. Thanks Bronwyn, I owe you big time.”

Then she laughed.
“Well, anything but that. David couldn’t wait to tell you then? I’ll give you some hints but my family guards two things in life. One is their Ice Cream secret sauce and the second is the recipe to Lasagne.”
Then Detta laughed.
“I will wait for his call. Thanks.”

Detta paced around the kitchen waiting for Bronwyn’s friend Alun Thomas to call. According to Bronwyn, he had a farm near Rhyader and was where she purchased the beef that she served at the pub from. Apparently, Alun also had a small flock of some rare breed sheep and those had only just been let loose with the ‘tup’ which thanks to YouTube, she now knew was a male sheep who’s only real job in the world is to make ewes pregnant.

Almost half an hour went by before her phone rang. She didn’t recognise the number so she hoped that it was Alun.

“Hello?”

“Hello Alun, thanks for calling. Can you help me out? Me and my big mouth…”

“Yep, I’m pretty much a total newbie.”

“David said around twenty over the next three days.”

“Ok, I am listening and I have a notepad at the ready.”

Detta spent almost twenty minutes listening to Alun and then asking him all sorts of questions in the hope that she didn’t come over as being totally stupid.

“Thanks Alun. You have been a big help. One day, I hope I can repay you for your kindness.”

She ended the call feeling both happy and embarrassed. Happy that at least some of what she’d picked up on YouTube was correct and embarrassed that she’d had to even ask some very basic questions.

Detta returned to the lambing shed and began to look for signs of an impending birth.

She looked at all the ewes who seemed to be fine. Detta saw none of the signs that indicates that a birth was imminent, that Alun had described to her on the phone. After pacing around for a bit, she sat down on a bale next to David.

The next thing she knew, it was dawn. David stirred which in turn woke up Detta. She found that he’d wrapped his arm around her as well as putting a blanket over her. When she discovered that, she encountered a brief moment of panic before relaxing.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said David’s voice.

Detta had to resist the urge to flee. She counted backwards from 100 before replying.
“I’m so sorry for falling asleep on the job.”

David chuckled.
“That’s ok. It takes practice to sleep with one eye on the ewes. You… no… we were lucky. None even came close to wanting to lamb last night.

This time, Detta did panic.
“The lambs in the kitchen. I must go to them. They will need feeding. I should have done it hours ago.”

David relaxed and let her literally dash out of the shed and into the house. She found the two lambs gently bleating. They were looking for a feed but the kitchen was warm, even if the fire in the stove had gone out.

As Detta warmed some more milk she thought back to the night. It had been a disaster in that she’d failed to stay awake but the only upside was that none of the remaining ewes had wanted to lamb while she slept. She rated her performance as a ‘D’ or even a ‘D-‘. There was a lot of room for improvement if she was going to make her time at the farm a success.

That thought caused her to freeze solid for a moment. Then a smile spread across her face. Despite all the mud and grime, this place felt like a home that needed her. Right there and then, she decided that she was staying no matter what.

---

Once the lambs had been fed, Detta turned her attention to making some breakfast. Sadly, the fridge was rather empty so it would have to be tea and toast. At least there was a pot of honey on the shelf in what had once been a pantry. There was little else on the shelves which seemed a shame to Detta. That and the evidence in the now emptied waste bin told her that food shopping was not high on his list of priorities.

Her musing was interrupted by the arrival of David.
“I’m afraid that the cupboard is pretty bare,” he said when he saw Detta spreading the last of the honey on some toast.

“Then I’ll have to go shopping sooner rather than later?”

David took a deep breath.
“Detta, please relax and sit down. You have been running around like a headless chicken since you arrived besides, we need to talk.”

Detta’s stomach did a few somersaults as she sat down.

“Thanks for being here last night. I got a few hours’ sleep and I feel a lot better for it so thanks for being here.”

“I’m sorry that I failed to stay awake.”

David smiled.
“Don’t worry about it. These things happen. I can see that you worked hard after I bailed out and went to the lambing shed.”
He paused and smiled.
“I do notice things other than lambs you know.”

Detta thought that his words seemed to be leading to a ‘but’ followed by the inevitable ‘thanks but no thanks’ from David.

He continued.
“I was not right in my mind yesterday which I put down to being exhausted. What I should have asked was why you came here? I remember you saying something about giving up your job and putting all your things into storage. There is more isn’t there?”

David had put Detta right on the spot.

She looked down at her hands before looking at David.

“I… When I was here before I … “
She stopped mid-sentence.
“Oh shit. I’m not doing this very well am I?”

David remained motionless.
“What I’m trying to say is that when I was here before, I felt something. At the time, I didn’t know what it was but by the time I got home the next evening I had an idea about what it was.”
She looked him right in the eyes.

“I know that it should be the man who says this, but I fancy you something rotten. I know that we come from very different backgrounds and that I would never want to even try to replace Frances, but when my job went pear shaped, I knew that I had to do something about what I was feeling.”

David appeared to be frozen to the spot.

The silence lasted well over twenty seconds. David’s mouth moved but no sound emerged.

Detta knew that she had to do something. She did.

She leaned over and kissed David. It was just a brief peck on his cheek but it did the trick.

“Sorry,” said Detta
“but you were stuck in the drowning fish mode.”

David laughed.
“I was a bit, wasn’t I?”

This time, the silence was not like the previous one.
“Detta…?”

“I know, I’m stuck in the past, but there is so much that you don’t know about me. Things that even my dear sister does not know about.”

“I’m here and I’m listening.”

“It is very complicated.”

Detta said nothing but waited for David to get the words that he wanted to say into some sort of order.

“I need to show you something. You know what they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

He offered his hand to Detta as he stood up. She accepted it. She’d had her say now it was David’s turn.

He led Detta out into the yard and said,
“Climb in.”
He was referring to his ex-army short wheelbase Land Rover. This was his daily transport when the small 4-wheeled vehicle or the much larger tractor was not right.

“Where are we going?”

“Up there,” said David, pointing at the hill behind the farmhouse.
“And down the other side a bit.”

Detta was puzzled but didn’t say anything. She got into the Landy. The full roll-cage made getting in a bit of a task for Detta. She almost gasped with amazement as David just climbed in without any fuss. Detta guessed that it was a case of ‘practice makes perfect’.

He took off leaving both dogs running behind them. They easily kept pace with the Landy. Detta wondered if they were enjoying it. Then she mentally smacked herself. Of course, they were.

David followed the track along the side of the hill. Detta had walked part of this track with Bess before. The track made a sharp right turn and continued up the hill. The view down the valley towards the village was breathtakingly beautiful. For Detta, this was the real Wales, not her home in Barry.

He carried on over the top of the hill and in front of them a large hole in the ground appeared.
“This is the quarry that supplied the stone to build the farm. All the materials for the original farmhouse, apart from the slate for the roof which came from a mine near Corris, came from the land that was part of the original farm. What we have now is four hundred hectares smaller than that. The previous owner bought the land beyond the quarry at the end of the 1990’s but what is left, is more than enough for the size of my flock.”

David drove down a steep incline into the quarry. It was pretty overgrown but a small cottage looked to be in decent repair. A single solar panel on the roof told her that there might even be a light.

After pulling up in front of the building, David stopped the engine and sat motionless.

“I’ve not been here since Frances… She was coming here on her Quad Bike when she rolled it near the hairpin bend.”

Detta wanted to comfort David but at the last moment, she decided against it. He needed to do this… whatever this was.

Detta noticed that David was gripping the steering wheel with all his might. This was clearly hard for him… whatever this was. She chastised herself for thinking in cliché’s. It was a failing of hers that seemed to take over when she was stressed.

With a sigh, David got out of the vehicle. Detta followed suit. This time, she found getting out a bit easier than getting in.

She noticed that he didn’t look at her as he walked up to the house and took out a bunch of keys from his pocket. Detta wanted to help but thought better of it.

David unlocked the door and switched on a light. Detta was surprised by how the inside was decorated. It was almost as if it was a woman’s boudoir from the days before WW1.

“Please… Come inside,” said David.

Detta followed him inside the building.
“This was to be our little hidey hole. Then…”

Some tears formed in his eyes as he remembered his late wife. Detta desperately wanted to comfort him but something stopped her. He had to work this out for himself.

“Sorry…” he said.

“There is nothing to be sorry about.”

“But there is. See that picture on the wall behind the bed?”

Detta walked over to the picture. It was a photo of a “Pride” march. From the background, Detta guessed that it had been taken in London.

“This was taken when I first met Frances. This… is me.”

David pointed to one of the marchers. He was pointing to a woman or at least a man pretending to be a woman.

“I fell off those stupid heels and Frances rescued me. She saw the real me and… fell in love with me right there and then. That’s Frances beside me.”

The tears were running down his cheek as he took the photo down from the wall and held it close to his chest.

Detta began to understand at least some of the secrets that David had been keeping for years. For a moment she wondered if his sister knew anything about his secret.

Almost without thinking, she moved close to David and gently took the photo from him and put it down on the bed. Then she took his hands in hers and kissed him gently.

More tears streamed down his face. It was almost as if a great weight was being lifted from him.
“You… you don’t mind?” stuttered David when she broke off the kiss.

“Mind? Why should I? I knew right from the moment you hauled me up from the mud that I wanted to be with you. There was just something about you that made me want to come back. I knew that there was a lot that you were keeping secret from everyone, but I had no idea that it was this, but it does not matter. This is part of you and any woman who wants to be in your life has to accept that you have a different side to you. She has to either go with it or go away. I choose to go with it… whatever it is in reality.”

David looked at her through very teary eyes.
“I can never be like Frances. Even for me to try would be an insult to her memory. I want to make you happy and that will make me happy.”

David didn’t react to her words.
“Why don’t we go back to the farm and I’ll put the kettle on? Then we can talk…?”

David wiped his eyes and slowly nodded his head.

---

“Sit Bess. Sit Patch!” commanded Detta when they were back at the farmhouse.

The two dogs ignored her as they headed for their water dishes. They lapped up the water as if it was going out of fashion. Detta smiled as she refilled their bowls. The two dogs satisfied their thirst and headed for their baskets that were either side of the Aga range.

She filled the kettle and put it on to boil. David had been very quiet on the journey back from the quarry. He was like most men in that they kept things bottled up for far too long. She knew how serious that could be. Her grandfather had kept his diagnosis of a heart defect secret from not only his wife but the whole family. It wasn’t until he keeled over while he was driving an Ice-Cream Van to Barry Island on August Bank holiday almost twenty years before, that anyone even had an inkling that he was ill. He’d been lucky in that his speed was low when it happened but for him, it was far too late. He died a week later. Those horrific days… she was only nine years old were on her mind as she prepared the mugs for the tea.

David had disappeared into the bathroom when they’d returned to the farmhouse. His eyes had been very bloodshot from the tears. In her family, crying was the domain of the women. The men were expected to remain impassive. If any of the men did cry it was done in private. David was a different kettle of fish and that was what had attracted her to him in the first place. He wasn’t the macho ‘alpha’ man that so many men tried to be, and in her opinion, most of them failed miserably.

---

Detta put two large mugs of tea down on the table and sat opposite David.

“That’s the last of the milk I’m afraid. There isn’t much in the way of food for tonight.”

“I would normally have gone shopping around lunchtime.”

“And stopped off for a pint on the way back?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

After a long silence between them, Detta said,
“I meant what I said when we were at the cottage. That photo of you at Pride showed me a happy person. From what I have seen and from what you have told me, you are just about existing. You deserve some happiness in your life if you will let me into your little world.”

“What about you? What do you want from life? You had a career but?”

Detta chuckled.
“You sound like my Da. I’m the black sheep of my generation. Right from an early age I was told that my destiny was to keep in the background, do the books and not make waves. Then I was to marry another good solid Catholic Welsh-Italian boy, have six children and be good and obedient wife.”

David laughed.
“I can’t see you ever following that sort of plan.”

“I’m glad that you can see that in me. I told my parents when I was fourteen that I would not be following their plan. Going to work for the Revenue was the final nail in the coffin of that plan.”

“Then you had an encounter with a certain goat?”

They both laughed.
“I did and my life changed. You changed my life and I’d like to try to make you happy. If you’d let me that is.”

“What if it does not work out?”

“I walk away with egg on my face but ‘Nothing Ventured, nothing gained’.”

David sat with his eyes closed. Detta knew that he was thinking.

After almost a minute, he opened them and smiled at Detta.
“Ever since Matilda welcomed you to the farm, I have been seeing us together here… Once some improvements have been made naturally…”

That was as far as he got. Detta knew that he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words.

“Then why don’t we give it a try?” said Detta.
Before he had a chance to reply, Detta leaned over and kissed David. That sealed the deal.

When they broke apart, Detta said,
“We should check on the lambs and then go shopping?”

David smiled.

“You do the lambs while I get changed.”

She grinned.
“Just my luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“It will be just my luck to have to help an ewe give birth. It will be my first!”

They both laughed.
“You will be fine.”

Detta wasn’t sure, but she was going to try not to mess things up.

[the end]