Ambrose sat down in the grass under the tall trees, their papery leaves ashiver in the air above. The herd stood about or grazed quietly.
The calves were six months old. When he had seen them first they were tiny, frisking creatures with fuzzy, cat-like tails. They had seemed unsure of what to do with their tails, waving them randomly in the air. Now the calves were about two-thirds the size of their mothers, burly and solid but with touches of babyishness apparent from certain angles.
Ambrose had sat for five minutes when one of the calves – the golden, gingerbread one with a white face (was it wrong to think of him as Baby Siegfried?) – approached and nuzzled his elbow and licked his arm. Once, vigilant mothers would not permit Ambrose to get closer than the shelter of trees at the far end of the paddock – their alert and fearsome stare forbade anything more. With a high-stepping trot they would gather their children around them in a herd about the bull – twenty-four mothers, twenty-four children, one huge Hereford bull, his lips pulled back and his nose wrinkled.
Now they all placidly grazed around Ambrose’s seated figure.
As Ambrose sat there, a calf occasionally broke from eating the grass and returned to its dark mother to nurse, and she, with infinite solicitude and affection, would bathe her large child with her tongue – his head and neck and behind his ears. The calf would lick her nose once in return.
The dictionary houses millions of words, but without the least possible hesitation I wish to say that the word ‘mother’ remains unparalleled in terms of sweetness, love, concern, intimacy, closeness and oneness. There is no other word as significant as ‘mother’. The mother is affection, the mother is love, the mother is concern, the mother is closeness, the mother is inseparable oneness.
The Hereford bull surveyed all. His head was giant and woolly. Patriarch, author and authority, calm in assurance.
Most of the cows were Angus, but Baby Siegfried’s mother was an isabela-white-coloured lady with twisted horns.
It was a tableau of archetypes, paradigmatic, heraldic and profound. Ambrose thought of huge, wooden sculptures by David Nash:
… a threefold power dynamic plays out: the block at base supports the entire composition, over it, the middle section develops a ‘receiving gesture’ while from above, in an ‘arriving gesture’, a fervently wished-for dispensation pours down. In Nash’s imagination, this is how father, mother and child are united. In surging unification, all three form a simultaneity of opposites and within that, a comprehensive, precisely calibrated life metaphor.
Most cows are impregnated by a rubber-gloved veterinarian. Most cows have their babies dragged away within 24 hours of birth and most of those tiny creatures are killed three days later – alone, discarded waste products of industry – the rest kept alive in shivering groups drinking from a bucket. We have need of your mother’s milk.
Ambrose sat on the grass, the calm sound of grazing around him.
Barnaby McBryde
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