When both lambs were lying dead, the men took one each and carried them into the shed, front legs gripped in one hand, back legs in the other. They set them down on the curved, slatted benches by the doorway, feet pointing at the roof. David shook his knife in the basin of water, then wiped the blade and washed his hands. Sandy removed his own knife, turned it over, inspecting it.
‘Is he sharp enough?’ asked David.
‘Should be.’
Though he’d done this job before, Sandy did not feel confident. There was a lot to remember, and he waited until David had begun before he started himself, watching and following the older man’s movements. He removed the feet and lower legs. The joints split with a crunch, like the first bite of an apple. He washed the blade, then lifted the skin around the breastbone and made an incision, first one way, towards the neck, and then the other, towards the belly. Lifting the flap of pelt that faced towards him, he pressed the knife beneath, separating the skin from the flesh, like a label from a parcel. He laid the blade down, then put his right fist into the space he’d created, running his knuckles back and forth against the join, gently at first, then harder, forcing it back, widening it, until his whole hand could fit inside. It was hot and clammy in there, beneath the fleece, and Sandy felt he was entering some private, forbidden space, the heat a kind of warning. He felt the shape of the ribs against his fingers, the firm curve of the body. And as he reached further, soft-punching towards the stiff ridges of the spine, he tried hard to think only of what he was doing, not what he had done.
One side complete, he walked around and began from the other, loosening the lamb from itself until his hand met the space he’d already made beneath. His knuckles were stinging with the effort, and he paused a moment before continuing, slicing and stripping until the cloak of skin had been completely removed and the animal lay unwrapped on the bench.
Sandy looked over at David, watching the quick, perfect movement of his hands. He tried to copy, lifting the thin membrane that covered the stomach cavity, slitting it carefully, holding his blade away from the bulging gut below. A fatty, fetid smell erupted from within, and the coiled mess emerged, delicate and horrific. This is where it can go wrong, he thought. Everything you don’t want to break is here: a full bladder and intestines. He cut a line from the groin up to the sternum, then cut deeper, towards the neck, splitting the rib cage. The animal came apart.
David had never taught Emma how to kill and gut a lamb. Nor had he taught his older daughter, Kate. He was not a traditionalist in every way, but he was in this one: men taught their sons, so he taught Sandy. Perhaps he had imagined that knowledge being passed on further, to his own future grandson, though he never spoke such a thought aloud. But now, today, the severing of that unspoken thought was apparent to Sandy, and perhaps to David, too. Today, they were only neighbours. The understanding of that change stood between them as they turned around their tables in silence, like lonely dancers.
‘Is du feenished?’ asked David.
‘Almost. I’ll be wi you in a moment.’
David walked to the cupboard on the side wall and fetched a handful of metal hooks. He punctured the hind leg tendons of his lamb and pushed one hook through each. Sandy stood beside him and took hold of the metal, then lifted the lamb as high as he could manage. David reached his hand in and cut away the dark liver and the heart, setting them aside. He sliced the diaphragm, cut the windpipe and oesophagus, then pulled the insides out, flopping the guts into a plastic bucket at his feet. Finally, the kidneys were removed, with an ivory nugget of fat congealed around them.
‘Okay, hang him up,’ David said, ‘and we’ll start ageen.’
When they were done, there were eight bodies suspended from the rail that ran along the side wall of the shed, each marbled pink and purple and white. All warmth had gone from them now, and all hints of the life so recently ended. They were solid and stiff. In a few days they would each be in pieces, stacked in David’s chest freezer. Sandy’s too, he hoped.
The two men cleaned the mess, bundling skins and guts and heads into black bags, scraping the jellied slick of blood from outside and brushing detergent over the blotched floor. They stood together in the doorway, then, looking out over the croft and the valley as an arrow of geese came wing-striding overhead, the air whimpering through their feathers. They watched the birds go, south towards Treswick.
David turned to speak. ‘Is du wantin ta tak een o yon heads hame?’ he asked. ‘Fir company, lik.’
Sandy let the joke hang between them for a moment, enjoying the awkwardness of it. Then he laughed.
‘No, I’ll likely be aaright.’
David nodded solemnly. ‘If du says so.’
Sandy noticed a spatter of blood on the older man’s face, and he felt an urge, then, to tell him, or to wipe it off with the sleeve of his jumper. But it didn’t matter. He was the only one who would ever see it.
‘So du’ll be back da moarn?’ David asked. ‘Just a few left noo, but I could dae wi dy help ageen.’
‘Yeah. I’ll be back.’
‘Good. Ah’ll ask Mary to mak extra fir denner. Du can eat wi wis. Come alang aboot ten, if it suits dee.’
Sandy smiled and picked up a polythene bag with two livers and two hearts inside, the clear plastic clinging to his greasy hands. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he said, then turned and walked back up the driveway and out onto the road.
* * *
‘Darlin, I’m just putting the tatties on. Make sure you’re back in twenty minutes, okay?’
‘Aye,’ David shouted. He was rummaging for something in the porch cupboard, then he was gone. The front door opened and closed. A bustle of cold air arrived in the kitchen, and Mary stepped closer to the stove. Her husband had a way of hearing without seeming to listen. It used to irritate her but not any more. She knew he’d be back in time to eat.
The sounds and smells of food filled the room, and Mary was there at the centre of it. She stood with her hands pressed into the pocket of her apron. Everything was in or on or ready. There was nothing left to do but wait. Five minutes, ten minutes, maybe more, she could just be still.
For most of her life, free time was something she never had. Bringing up two girls, working, feeding everyone: no time had ever felt free. And if she did pause, which of course sometimes she had to, those moments were always tainted with guilt, as though they were not rightfully hers but were stolen from someone else, someone more deserving. Stopping to sit down, with a cup of tea in her hands, she would be assailed at once by the thought of everything she could and should be doing instead. A list wrote itself around her. The living room needed hoovered, the bathroom needed cleaned, food needed cooked, laundry needed washed. She never resented the work she had to do – she had chosen this life, after all – but she hated the way it directed her thoughts, like a policeman inside her.
When she married David, they’d agreed: he would work the croft, she would work the house. It wasn’t a business deal, exactly, but it was an understanding. Both of them had their own jobs besides that – he at the oil terminal, she at the primary school in Treswick, ten minutes’ drive away – and that suited them fine. The animals didn’t interest her much. Not while they were alive, at least. She helped in the vegetable garden when she was needed, lifting potatoes or whatever it was that had to be done, and she tended to the plants in the flowerbeds. But otherwise, most of her work had been indoors. And for twenty years or so it had seemed endless, a list from which nothing ever could be crossed.
Then Kate left home, and Emma moved south for university, and everything changed. Unclaimed time sneaked up on her, as though it had been hiding in the house all along. Without warning, she would find herself with nothing in particular to do, and she would search, then, for something useful to occupy her. The house became cleaner than it had ever been. The garden