The Case of the Missing Boyfriend (44 page)

‘They go to Europe?’

‘Yeah, for veal. There’s no call for veal here.’

‘Right.’

‘So?’ he prompts, nodding at my camera.

‘Yes,’ I say, heading for the closest cow. As I approach its rump, I see that its head, which is poking through a metal frame to a feeding tray, is loosely tethered there. Oh, that won’t work . . . he can’t turn round . . .’ I say. ‘I wanted him looking back at me.’

‘No,
she
can’t,’ the man says.

I pull a face. ‘She! God, how embarrassing. Of course. God I feel like such a twit.’

The man really smiles for the first time. ‘Here, come round to the feeding alley,’ he says, beckoning with his head.

I circle the cow and follow his lead climbing over a small wall into a distinct concrete alley between two rows of cows facing each other head to head. The alley is filled with a grey powder which smells almost as rank as the slurry.

‘Is this food?’ I ask, looking at the cows unenthusiastically chewing the dust beneath my feet.

‘Yeah,’ he says.

‘What is it? It looks like concrete.’
And smells like shit
, I think.

He shrugs. ‘It’s high protein dairy feed,’ he says. ‘Soya and stuff.’

Looking down at the two rows of cows, maybe a hundred heads all turned to face me, each with two huge yellow tags through the left ear, the industrial scale and nature of the operation really hits me for the first time.

I crouch down to take a close-up shot of the first cow. Now it might just be me projecting, but as I look into her eyes I can’t help but frown in dismay – for I can sense nothing but sadness here. The contrast with Darren’s cartoon cow couldn’t be more pronounced.

‘You don’t look very happy,’ I murmur, and I swear that cow stares straight into my eyes, and zaps a reply straight into my brain. ‘Look around,’ she says. ‘Just look around.’

I sigh and straighten up and smile at the technician. ‘Are there any at all outside I could take pictures of?’

He shrugs. ‘Not here,’ he says. ‘It’s ZG here.’

‘ZG? Sorry . . . we city girls,’ I say.

‘Zero-Grazing.’

‘Right,’ I say, taking this in. ‘So they just . . . what,
stay here
?’

‘Well, yeah,’ he says, a little incredulous at my stupidity.

‘All the time.’

‘All the time.’

‘They
never
go outside?’

‘Well no. It’s ZG. As I say, if you want to see cows in fields you need to go to the Cornish show farm. That’s what it’s for.’

I nod. ‘And how many cows are in the show farm?’

He shrugs again. ‘Ten, maybe fifteen.’

‘And here, four hundred.’

He shrugs. ‘Yep.’

‘So do they get any exercise at all?’

‘We take them for milking three times a day.’

‘OK,’ I say with some relief. ‘Where’s that?’

He nods to indicate the far corner of the cavernous steel shed where twenty or thirty cows are tethered into different, rotary stocks with tubes from the vacuum pumping devices attached to their udders.

I feel suddenly sick. Actual bile rises into my throat and I have to swallow it back down. It could just be the smell, for the mix of odours rising from the grey powdered feed and the slurry the cows are standing in, and the smell of milk and udders, is far from a happy one. But it isn’t that; it’s out and out disgust, revulsion even, that humans could invent and build something so . . . obscenely
in
human. For this system, cows tethered in stocks in a dingy smelly barn, cows who can’t turn around, cows standing in shit, cows who have their offspring ripped from them apparently on the day of birth so that
we
can have their milk instead, this
is
obscene. This place is Auschwitz for cows and it’s quite literally making me puke. It’s like something from
The Matrix
, only with one major difference. These cows know
exactly
what’s happening to them.

I think about the boss saying that our drawings didn’t look very organic, and ask, ‘Just out of interest. Do they farm organic cows in the same way?’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘I don’t think the rules allow it, but I don’t know much about it, I’m afraid. You’d have to ask a farmer.’

‘You’re not a farmer?’

‘No, I’m a production technician.’

Then because my
production technician
is starting to frown suspiciously at me again, I snap three of the miserable beasts from a variety of angles and then pretending to fiddle with the camera controls, blindly take two random snaps of the whole disgraceful vista without him realising. And then I thank him profusely, and head as quickly as I can from that awful, awful place.

My trip just gained an entirely new purpose. It’s no longer about gaining a contract, it’s about convincing Peter Stanton that we don’t want the contract. We don’t want it
at all.

I stand outside looking at the empty fields around me, and I wonder why on earth anyone would decide to farm this way? How many pennies do we save on a pint of milk by inflicting such abject misery on so many creatures?

No, we will not advertise for Cornish Cow. I haven’t felt so determined about anything since I sat in front of those Cruise Missile convoys all those years ago.

Choreographed Compromise

Despite a freshly filled litter tray, a salad bowl of cat-munchies, and two full tins of Whiskas, Guinness is furious by the time I get home at ten. He screeches at me discordantly and then sits in front of the back door, his tail thwacking irritatingly against the tiles.

‘You really have no idea how lucky you are,’ I tell him, thinking of the cows. I try to stroke him but he’s having none of it so I simply open the door and release him, before heating and eating a bowl of macaroni cheese that’s been sitting in the fridge, and then collapsing into my bed.

The discussion with Peter Stanton on Monday morning is of course, lively. ‘I hardly think that the current economic climate is the time to get picky about which clients we are going to take on, do you?’ he says.

I push my photos back across the desk at him. ‘Please,’ I say. ‘Just
look
at them.’

He sighs and fingers the photos. ‘Did you ask them if they’re unhappy?’ he says. ‘Do you even know if a cow
can
be unhappy?’

‘Any living thing can suffer,’ I say. ‘And this place . . . this place is a concentration camp for cows. Honestly, Peter, just the stench . . . I couldn’t even put milk in my tea this morning.’

‘I’m sure,’ he says, then with another sigh he continues, ‘Look, we haven’t got the contract anyway. So let’s just wait and see what happens, eh? But if they do choose us, well, the future of quite a few jobs here could depend on it. And that would be a hard thing to refuse over mere principles.’

I nearly challenge him on the concept of
mere principles
, but think better of it. ‘Well, look . . . I’m sorry, Peter, but I can’t be clearer on this.
I
won’t work with them. I just can’t.’

‘Right, well, if push comes to shove Victoria can do it. As long as
she
doesn’t visit the farm we should be OK.’

‘Victoria won’t want to run the whole caboodle,’ I point out. ‘She won’t want to liaise with Creative and Media and . . . Anyway, the last I heard she’s gone vegan.’

‘If she has to she will. And as you know full well, if Spot On don’t do this then one of our competitors will.’

‘I expect that’s what the men who built Auschwitz said,’ I say, remembering one of my favourite student arguments.

‘I expect they did,’ Peter says. ‘And I expect like Hugo Boss, and Siemens, and Mercedes Benz, they all got bloody rich.’

‘Nice,’ I say.

‘Indeed. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get off to a meeting.’

Mark and Jude are thankfully more understanding of my point of view. ‘If we do have to do it, we’ll do it really badly,’ Mark tells me.

‘I’ll make sure they get the worst advertising campaign Spot On has ever produced,’ Jude agrees.

Even if we all know that this wouldn’t truly be an option, it’s sweet of them to say so. I can only hope that we never do get that contract.

On Saturday morning I head up to Waterloo to meet my mother.

She starts complaining about South West Trains even before she reaches the ticket barrier. ‘Guess how much this cost,’ she says, shouting and waving her ticket at me over the head of an old lady between us. ‘Go on, guess.’

‘Hi, Mum,’ I say. ‘Well, at least you didn’t have to drive. You usually arrive fuming about the traffic.’

‘Twenty-nine pounds twenty,’ she says. ‘From Camberley! Can you imagine? I could drive to Scotland for that.’

‘I don’t think you could actually, but—’

‘Completely full, and bubblegum all over the seat. I had to ask a man for a page from his newspaper, and now I expect I have newsprint all over my bum. Honestly. And they wonder why no one uses the train.’

‘You said it was full,’ I point out, hugging her briefly.

‘Only because the one before was so late everyone got on ours,’ she says. ‘Anyway . . .’

‘Yes, forget it now. You’re here. And I’m taking you for a lovely lunch in Covent Garden.’

As we head across the concourse towards the taxi rank, I wonder if I can ask her straight off what the visit is about. I’m feeling a little sick about our impending discussion. ‘So,’ I say, steeling myself to pop the question.

‘So,’ Mum replies, ‘how was your trip to Portsmouth? You drove, you said?’

‘Yes. Horrible. Well professionally, it was horrible.’

‘I really liked the place myself, but I suppose that was a long time ago.’

‘Oh, I liked the towns, and the countryside down there is beautiful. It’s just I had to go to this farm – our client is a dairy company: milkshakes and yogurts and stuff – but it was the most awful place, Mum, honestly you wouldn’t believe it. A factory farm I suppose they call it. All the cows were tied up in rows. They never turn around, and they never go outside. They never even see a blade of grass. Not ever.’

‘Really,’ she says, flatly. It’s exactly the voice she used when I was sixteen and ranting about Thatcher or the miners or nuclear power.

‘Yes. I don’t think I’ll ever buy non-organic dairy stuff again.’

‘Do you think it tastes better?’ she asks, apparently missing the point entirely.

‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘Much better.’

The man in front of us is wearing Grunge! carpenter pants. I nudge her and whisper, ‘Grunge! We did the advertising for those. They’re everywhere now.’

The guy in front overhears me and turns around. ‘They’re great,’ he says. ‘I love these trousers.’

Mum smiles. ‘You must be very proud,’ she says, unconvincingly.

And I think,
Am I?
For in the end, despite the fact that we have convinced millions of men that they need two zips instead of one, the world clearly hasn’t shifted on its axis.

‘Yeah,’ I say, vaguely.

By the time we climb into our cab it has started to rain.

‘Does it always rain in London?’ Mum says. ‘Because it was lovely in Surrey when I left.’

‘It was lovely here too, Mum. The weather’s changing today – they said so on TV. It’s back to winter now.’

As (with the recent exception of couscous) Mum’s tastes rarely stretch to anything more exotic than French, I take her to a lovely little bistro in William Street: Terroirs. It’s a choice that thankfully meets with her immediate approval.

‘Gosh how lovely,’ she says. ‘Exactly like being in Paris.’

We both order leek soup followed by steak tartare for Mum and, because I don’t think I’ll be able to do beef or dairy for a while, fish for me.

And then, served with two jolly generous glasses of red wine, we sit and stare alternately at each other and at people hurrying past outside, and prepare ourselves for whatever is to come.

‘So other than the cow thing, you had a nice trip,’ Mum says.

‘Yes, I loved Cornwall. I even looked at a few properties down there, just to see.’

‘You wouldn’t move to Cornwall!’ she laughs.

‘Why not?’

‘How could you? With your job and your friends and . . .’

‘I’m not sure London’s working for me,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure it’s making me happy. Not deep down.’

Mum raises an eyebrow. ‘You’ve taken a while to work that one out, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘Yes. Far too long.’

‘But Cornwall!’ she says. ‘It’s just so far!’

‘From you?’ I say. ‘From Surrey?’

‘From everywhere.’

‘It’s not far from Devon,’ I point out facetiously.

Mum frowns. ‘What’s in Devon?’

‘Well nothing. I just mean far from where? Far from what?’

‘The outer Hebrides aren’t far from the outer Hebrides,’ Mum says. ‘But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to move there anytime soon.’

‘That was my second choice actually,’ I say. ‘How did you guess?’

‘Yes, dear. Well don’t forget to send me a postcard.’

‘So what about you?’ I ask. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Oh everything’s fine.’

‘But you wanted to talk about something.’

‘Yes.’

‘Daughterly advice, you said.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

At that moment our soup arrives.