The Gastropoda Imperative, Peter Barns [story books to read txt] 📗

Chapter 9

”It’s no use sitting there with your bottom lip stuck out like that, young lady.”

Lyra Harrison did her best to ignore her mother’s taunts, tossing her long auburn hair over her shoulder and looking out of the window.

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t have stayed at home by myself,” she said, folding her arms.

“Because you’ve only just turned sixteen. Did you really expect me to leave you on your own for five weeks?”

“Why couldn’t she have paid someone to look after her stupid animals, that’s what I want to know?”

Macey Harrison pulled the car around a big lorry, feeling the slight fluttering in her stomach she always did when she was forced to overtake on a narrow road with a restricted view. Manoeuvre completed, she checked her rear-view mirror and relaxed a little.

Glancing over at her daughter, she chuckled. “You really will step on that bottom lip of yours if you don’t stop sulking.”

“Oh hardy ha. Very funny, mum.”

“Look Lyra. Your aunt didn’t ask to get cancer you know. So stop being so selfish. Just think how you’d feel if you had to go into hospital for a double mastectomy.”

“Suppose.”

Lyra preferred not to think about her aunt, or the fact that she was having such an horrendous operation. All she knew was, she’d been yanked away from her home in London, to spend the next few weeks on some stupid farm looking after some stupid animals. And right at the beginning of the school holidays as well! She’d planned to spend time with her girlfriend, Karna. Necture Boys were playing at the Lyceum, and there were at least four films they wanted to see together. It just wasn’t fair.

“It’s not so bad, Lyra. You might even get to enjoy it, you know.”

“How can being stuck on some muddy farm be, ‘not so bad’?” Lyra mimicked air quotes.

Her mother chose to ignore her daughter’s sarcasm. “It’s not actually a farm. It’s a small holding.”

“Whatever. It’s all the same. Smelly animals in smelly fields.”

“Should be a turning up here somewhere,” her mother said, “Keep an eye out for a signpost to Hartland, will you?”

“There,” Lyra called.

Her mother took the turning and Lyra watched the fields pass by for awhile. “Mum?” she said eventually.

“Uh huh?”

“Why did dad say I couldn’t stay with him?”

It was the question Macey had been dreading. Stanley, her ex, had recently moved in with a younger woman. “Woman? Huh, almost a girl!” Macey had thought when she’d first seen her.

When she’d phoned her ex to discuss Lyra staying with him for a few weeks, he’d hummed and hawed so much that she’d finally shouted at him: “What the hell’s wrong with you, Stanley? Your daughter wants to come and spend some time with you. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Well, no I don’t. No of course I don’t.”

Macey caught the slight emphasis on the ‘I’.

“Oh don’t tell me—”

“Well it’s a bit awkward,” he cut across her.

“Yes I’m sure it is Stanley. But if you can’t get your act together with Tara as far as your daughter is concerned—” The line went silent and she could see Stanley in her mind’s eye, gazing at the floor with a perplexed expression on his face - something he always did when things got heated and he didn’t know how to deal with it. “Oh never mind. Just tell, Tara the tart, that we won’t be putting her out!”

Tara the tart, was the name Macey and Lyra used when talking about Stanley’s new partner.

Macey cut off the call with a stab of her thumb and leant back in the kitchen chair, taking three deep breaths. As if by magic, her body and mind relaxed, just as Jenny her yoga tutor, had taught her it would.

Unfortunately, deep breathing wasn’t going to help her deal with her daughter’s question. “Well darling—” she began.

“You didn’t ask him, did you?” Lyra responded with a snap in her voice.

Macey hesitated for a fraction of a second, then shook her head slightly. “I can’t do this on my own Lyra. I’ll need to go to the hospital to visit my sister. It’s a very serious operation and she’ll need support. Please don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

Lyra knew, the moment that her mother had called her darling, she hadn’t even bothered asking her dad if she could stay with him. She only called her darling when she was feeling guilty about something.

“Take the next right,” Lyra snapped in a sulky tone, trying to follow the narrow lanes on the map spread out over her knees. Why her mother couldn’t just get a sat-nav like everyone else, she didn’t know. Digging out the written instructions her aunt had sent them, she pointed through the windscreen. “Look out for an unmade road, whatever that is. It should be somewhere on the right..”

They soon found out what an unmade road was as Macey turned the car onto a rough track with a strip of grass down the centre.

“Oh great,” Lyra said. “That’s all we need. A bloody tramp camping out at the end of our road while we’re here.”

“Lyra, watch your tongue. What do you mean? What tramp?”

“Didn’t you see him? He was sitting at the end of the track, drinking something from a bottle. Looked like cider to me.” Her mother shot her a glance and Lyra shrugged. “I do go to parties occasionally mum. I do know what a bottle of cider looks like.”

“Oh here we are,” her mother said, pulling the car alongside a dilapidated old wooden garage.

***

Lyra was surprised when they walked around the end of the garage and saw the cottage they were going to be staying in. It looked like something out of a fairytale - a long, stone building, one-and-a-half stories high. Chimney stacks were built on each end and a line of four small dormer windows spanned the slightly wavy, slate roof. There were two doorways, so it had obviously been two small cottages at one time. One of the original doorways had been turned into a big window, through which Lyra could see a large, flat screened TV. Two trellises had been nailed to the white, rough-caste walls, both covered with a riot of yellow and red roses.

The place looked beautiful.

Lyra followed her mother up the path to the front of the cottage. As they reached it, the door flew open and a portly woman rushed out, squealing with laughter. She flung her arms around Lyra’s mother and they hugged each other. Lyra suddenly found herself enveloped in a pair of fleshy arms and an ample bosom, as she in turn was welcomed.

“My,” her aunt said, holding her back so she could get a good look at her. “I haven’t seen you since you were so high.” She held her hand at waist level, her eyes wrinkling as she chuckled. “Must be, what, twelve years ago?” she asked, turning to her sister for confirmation.

“So nice to see you again, Freda. Lyra, say hello to your aunt.”

“Auntie Freda,” Lyra said.

“Come in, come in. I’ve got a nice cup of tea on the brew. Why don’t we all sit down and have a cuppa and a nice chat? Catch up on old times, hey?”

Lyra groaned quietly and her mother gave her a warning look.

“Why don’t you go and get the stuff out of the car, while Freda and I have our chat,” she said.

“Good idea, Macey. The staircase is just along on the left, through the study, dear,” she called to Lyra, hustling back inside the cottage.

“Okay if I take a look around outside first?” Lyra asked.

“Be careful of the pig, dear. He gets a bit frisky sometimes,” her aunt’s voice called from somewhere inside the cottage.

Lyra looked at her mother with raised eyebrows. “Pig?” she mouthed.

Her mother shrugged, giving her another warning look, this time accompanied by a frown, before disappearing to join her sister.

Lyra turned to look at the front garden. It was a riot of colour, one half laid down to flowers, the other to vegetables. She walked over for a closer look but didn’t recognise anything. Vegetables came in plastic packets as far as she was concerned, so the various green shoots and funny looking plants meant nothing to her.

Walking along the front of the cottage, she came across two large paddocks set across the end. Two sheep and a goat lifted their heads to stare at her as she appeared around the corner. She smiled and walked over to the fence. The goat trotted over, curling its top lip and rolling its head backwards in the most alarming way.

Moving away from the goat, Lyra followed the fence until she came to the back of the cottage. Hearing the sound of running water, she walked in amongst a line of trees to find that a small brook ran along the back of the property. The bank was steep and she almost slipped down as she negotiated it.

Finding herself a little disappointed when she finally reached the bottom to discover it was more of a shallow ditch than a brook, she turned to her right. Following the brook, she came upon three outbuildings, realising that one of them was the back of the garage they’d parked beside, and that she had made a complete circuit of the property.

Walking into the biggest shed, Lyra spotted a wooden stall, its floor covered in deep straw. Inside there was some kind of wooden bench thing at one end. The rest of the shed had long, thick rods fixed on brackets at various heights up the wall. Small, square, open sided boxes, were set out underneath and these too were lined with straw.

She went over for a closer look, just as a chicken poked its head through a small hole cut into the wall. It looked at her and gave what she could only think of as a cluck of utter contempt before disappearing again.

Lyra chuckled, shaking her head as she went to explore the next outbuilding. Its door was split, the top half tied back. Sticking her head over the bottom half, she took a look inside. The floor was straw covered, but other than a big mound of straw piled up in one corner, there was nothing to see. Then she noticed the pile of straw tremble, as though something inside had moved.

“Hello?” she called, feeling a little silly.

Her greeting was answered by a deep grunt and a series of snorts. A pig unexpectedly stuck its head up out of the straw and looked over at her. It wiggled the end of its big wet snout, as though saying a hello back. Lyra was enchanted and clicked her tongue at it.

“Hello piggy,” she called. “And what’s your name?”

The pig suddenly launched itself out of the straw, running across the sty, squealing at the top of its lungs. Alarmed, Lyra stepped back, tripped on something, and sat down on the grass with a hard thump.

The pig banged against the door, so hard that Lyra was frightened it might get out. She scrambled to her feet, doing her best to brush the mud off her brand new jeans as she headed for the house. .

“Stupid bloody pig,” she muttered, “Stupid bloody pig on a stupid bloody farm!”

Chapter 10

Lyra’s mother had asked her to go down to the village and pick up some bits of shopping. Being completely bored, she’d readily agreed. Even the half hour walk to the village and back was preferable to clearing smelly wet straw from the pigsty. Ugh, that job was so gross!

Just outside the village Lyra passed a dilapidated bus shelter. The plastic walls were so marked and scratched that she couldn’t see who was sitting inside, only their dark shadows.

Hurrying passed, Lyra hunched her shoulders when she heard someone wolf-whistle.

“So much for political correctness and equality of the sexes,” she muttered, picking up her pace a little. The whistle was followed by