Blue Bedroom and Other Stories Read Free Page B

chest, but it in no way resembled her usual healthy bleat.
    â€œThere, girl. There.” Tom spoke gently. “There she is.” He went right up to her, and with no fuss took hold of her horns. She did not struggle as she usually did when someone did this. Perhaps she knew that she had to have help and that Tom and Toby had come to help her. “There, girl, quietly now.” Tom passed a hand down her back, down the thick, rain-sodden fleece.
    Toby watched. He could feel his heart beating, not so much with apprehension as excitement. He was not afraid, because Tom was there, just as he had never been afraid of anything if Mr. Sawcombe stood beside him.
    â€œBut, Tom, if she’s got another lamb inside her, why hasn’t it come out?”
    â€œMaybe a big fellow. Maybe hasn’t got himself in the right position.” Tom looked towards the house, and Toby followed his gaze and saw Vicky, with her long spindly legs and her seal-wet hair, coming down across the field towards them, weighted sideways by a slopping bucket. When she reached their side and had dumped the bucket down, Tom said, “Good girl. Now, you hold her, Vicky. Firmly, but quite gently. She won’t struggle. Keep your fingers tight in her fleece. And Toby, you take her horns, and keep talking to her. Reassuring like. Then she’ll know she’s in good hands.”
    Vicky looked as though she were about to burst into tears. She knelt, right there in the mud, and put her arms around Daisy and pressed her cheek against Daisy’s woolly flank. “Oh, poor Daisy. You’ve got to be very brave and it will be all right.”
    Tom stripped off. His jacket, his shirt, his white T-shirt. Naked to the waist, he soaped his hands and arms.
    â€œNow,” he said. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
    Toby, clinging to Daisy’s horns, wanted to close his eyes. But he didn’t. Keep talking, Tom had told him. Reassuring like. “There, there,” said Toby to Daisy because that was what Tom had said and he could think of nothing else. “There, there, Daisy dear.” This was birth. The eternal miracle, Mr. Sawcombe used to call it. This was life starting, and he, Toby, was helping it to happen.
    He heard Tom. “There we go. There we go … take it easy, old girl.”
    Daisy gave a single moan of discomfort and displeasure, and then Tom was saying, “Here he is! What a whopper, and he’s alive.”
    And there it was, the little creature who had been the cause of all the trouble. A white ram with black spots, smeared with blood and lying flat on its side, but still a sizey, healthy lamb. Toby let go of Daisy’s horns and Vicky eased her loving stranglehold. Released, Daisy turned to inspect the new arrival. She made a soft, maternal sound, and stooped to lick it. After a little, she nudged it gently with her nose, and before very long, it began to move, to raise its head, to struggle, amazingly, to its long and unsteady legs. She licked it again, recognising it as her own, taking responsibility, loving and caring. The little lamb took a drunken step or two, and, before very long, with some encouragement from his mother, started to suck.
    *   *   *
    Long after Tom had dried himself off with his shirt and then pulled on his clothes, they stayed there, oblivious of the rain, watching Daisy and her twins; fascinated by the miracle, and yet delighted with themselves and their combined achievement. Vicky and Toby sat side by side on the ground beneath the old Scotch pine, and there was a smile on Vicky’s face that Toby hadn’t seen in ages.
    She turned to look at Tom. “How did you know there was another lamb there?”
    â€œShe was still pretty bulky and she didn’t seem very comfortable. She was restless.”
    Toby said, “That’s a two-hundred-percent lambing Mrs. Sawcombe’s got.”
    Tom smiled. “That’s it,