Page 51 of Reckless

There were lights on in the house, and I followed Robbie around the side, where a door was propped open. Katrina Finch must have heard us coming; she stuck her head outside, eyes widening slightly when she saw me with Robbie. Then she schooled her expression, and said, “Kettle’s on.”

We went inside the kitchen. Robbie busied himself making two big mugs of tea, while I tried to keep out of the way. The kitchen was clean but cluttered. The only piece of modern technology I could see was the old square refrigerator, and it had to be at least my age. The stove was an antique cast iron monster complete with warming drawers and a pipe that channelled the woodsmoke outside. A dented old kettle steamed away on top of it, and Robbie wrapped a tea towel around his hand as he lifted it off. Pots and pans hung from hooks above the stove, and the big enamel sink looked large enough to take a bath in.

“Wondered where you were last night,” Katrina said to Robbie, her gaze cutting to me.

He dumped tea bags in the mugs. “Stayed overnight in the village.”

“Looks like it,” she said, still watching me.

I tried not to feel the intensity of her gaze.

“Tea’s done,” Robbie said abruptly, turning and shoving a mug in my direction. “Gonna show Alastair the milking shed.”

We escaped back outside.

The dawn light was fully here now, soft and golden, casting long shadows across the damp earth. The shed loomed ahead of us, and the sounds grew louder—the shuffle of hooves on gritty concrete, the low rumble of cattle, the sharper bleat of goats.

The shed was a large, galvanised metal structure that looked out of place beside the old farmhouse. The smell hit me first—sweet hay and dry grain and the rich, warm scent of animal bodies. The earthy scent of manure met the clean bite of the dawn air coming through the open door.

“Come on,” Robbie said, slapping a cow on the rump as we walked inside, and she ambled over towards a feeding trough.

Ten cows stood in a row, their flanks broad and warm, heads bowed towards the troughs. They looked up when we entered, and I didn’t have to be a farmer to hear the complaints in their lowing. Beyond them, in a separate pen, a cluster of goats formed a bleating knot.

“All right, all right,” he said, and his voice was different here. Softer. The voice he used for animals. “I’m coming.”

“They line up for this?” I asked with a faint laugh.

“They need milking,” he said. “And they want their breakfast after.”

He moved through the shed with a practiced ease, his body knowing the space even when his ribs slowed him down. He checked the water trough, ran a hand along a cow’s flank, murmured something I couldn’t hear. The animals watched him with their large, patient eyes, and something about the way he moved among them—gentle, unhurried, and completely at home—made my chest ache.

I stood by the door, unsure where to put myself.

Robbie looked up. “There’s a stool under the bench.”

“Oh, Jesus. You don’t expect me to help, do you?”

He flashed me a shy smile. “It’s just for sitting on, not milking. Got a machine for that and everything.”

“Well, thank god.” I found the stool and sat down, satisfied I was out of the way.

The milking machine sat against the wall—a strange stainless-steel contraption on wheels with a tangle of rubber tubes hanging from the lid like a nest of snakes.

“Best money we ever spent.” He wheeled it into position beside the first cow, a brown animal with a white patch over one shoulder. “Takes about seven minutes with the machine, and around twenty by hand. This one’s a double, too.”

I watched him work. There was no wasted motion. He tipped feed into the trough for the cows. Then he dipped each silicone teat in a small cup of solution—a quick, precise movement—then wiped them clean with a cloth. He attached the clusters one by one, four rubber cups finding their targets with that same economy of movement. When he had the first cow hooked up, he attached the teats to the second, and then turned on the machine.

The machine’s pulsation filled the shed, a rhythmic hiss-and-release that reminded me of a ventilator, and the milk began to flow through the transparent tubes, thin white streams that gathered into the canister in a steady gush. Robbie might not have had to milk the cows by hand, but that didn’t mean he moved away from them. He ran his palm along one animal’s flank, checked the fit of each cup, adjusted the angle of the tubing in accordance with some precise calculation I didn’t understand. His attention was absolute.

“They’re quiet,” I said.

“They're all quiet once they trust you.” He moved to the next cow and paid her the same attention he had the first. “Takes about three days with a new one. First day she’s nervous, kicks, holds the milk back. Second day she’s suspicious but curious. Third day she lets you hook her up and eats her breakfast like nothing happened."

“That's faster than most people.”

He huffed something that might have been a laugh. “People are harder.”

He worked through the cows in a steady circuit, checking each one as the machine emptied them, then turning them out of the shed when they were done. The canister filled, a pale yellow-white that sloshed gently against the glass window on the side. When the last cow was finished, he changed the apparatus on the machine, switched out the canister, and went through the same process again with the goats. It might have been boring, except I was fascinated by the way he moved. He was filled with a quiet assurance and confidence that I’d rarely seen in him, and I could have watched him all day.