COUNTRY LOVING
As their relationship becomes more serious, Imogen gets to meet Matthew’s family, with interesting results
Rural life isn’t always idyllic, especially when it comes to dating…
‘Crazy sheep woman seeks man with equally peculiar family’
IT’S BEEN A STRANGE COUPLE OF DAYS. THIS IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED: MY CLOTHES FEEL TIGHTER – AND NOT BECAUSE I’VE GAINED WEIGHT; my fridge is full of chorizo; and Matthew’s pet lamb, Ramón, has a surprising new friend. It’s all because my relationship with Matthew has continued to progress and, as a result, his father and sister have come to visit so they can meet me. They arrived from Spain yesterday, and I immediately invited them over for lunch. It did not go well. Matthew’s older sister, Pilar, kept studying me with dark, critical eyes, and his father, José, was silent and sad. Eventually, out of desperation, I suggested they look at the cows. José isn’t very mobile, so Matthew drove him in his car up to the dry, sunny field. While they were all listening to my (dull) lecture on animal husbandry, one of the cows leant in through the open window and teased out the car keys with her tongue – it then took us 40 minutes to find them again.
After that, they clearly couldn’t wait to leave and, although I was hoping to do some damage control today, things were made more complicated because the sheep shearer was booked to come, and Matthew had promised to help. I had just got the ewes in the yard when Matthew appeared, Pilar pushing José in a wheelchair behind him. The two disappeared into the house, Pilar waving carrier bags and announcing that she was going to show me proper Spanish food. I tried to concentrate on showing Matthew how to roll up the fleeces properly. Then the shearer got going, and the work became a blur of activity as I chivvied sheep through a series of hurdles. I enjoyed watching as the thick fleeces, speckled with grass seed, were peeled off. Afterwards, the sheep looked relieved as they pattered out into the sunlight.
Two hours in, Pilar appeared, and said firmly, “I will help you!” I glanced up doubtfully. She’s a striking woman, with her stiff helmet of auburn hair, red nails, high heels and tight trousers, and I suspected she wasn’t the type to like the company of hot, angry sheep. I was wrong. I’ve never met anyone so hardworking. Within minutes, she was lifting ewes through the air, and presenting them, struggling and fighting, to the shearer. In between, she ticked off Matthew for rolling the wool wrong, or swept dung out of the way, all the while telling triumphal stories in broken English about her early years in the tailoring trade.
I’d grown quite fond of her by the time it was all over and we were letting the ewes back in with their lambs. This is always a comical moment, because the lambs don’t recognise their sheared mothers, and sidle away, wailing with alarm, at the sight of these affectionate but naked creatures rushing towards them. There was chaos for a while, and in the mêlée I failed to notice that one lamb was missing – Ramón, Matthew’s bottle-fed pet. When I returned to the farmhouse, it looked far cleaner than before, and smelled of chorizo and garlic. In the front room, the television was on so José could watch cricket, a cool breeze blowing through from the open kitchen door.
I ran upstairs to put on my trouser-suit in honour of Pilar’s meal. It felt strangely tight. For one horrible moment I thought I was bloated, then I realised that Pilar had taken it in so it fitted me perfectly. I went to fetch José, who was sitting in his wheelchair beaming, an arm round Ramón’s woolly neck. “You see my new friend?” he said, delightedly. And, as we sat down to dinner, Matthew whispered, “I think it’s safe to say they like you.”
Read the final instalment of Imogen’s story in our July issue.