‘My old dad told me,’ Rummins said. ‘When I were about eighteen, my old dad said to me, “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, “that’ll make you rich.” And he told me this.’
‘Has it made you rich?’
‘I ain’t done too bad for myself, have I?’ he said.
‘But did your father offer any sort of explanation as to why it works?’ I asked.
Rummins explored the inner rim of one nostril with the end of his thumb, holding the noseflap between thumb and forefinger as he did so. ‘A very clever man, my old dad was,’ he said. ‘Very clever indeed. Of course he told me how it works.’
‘How?’
‘He explained to me that a cow don’t have nothing to do with deciding the sex of the calf,’ Rummins said. ‘All a cow’s got is an egg. It’s the bull decides what the sex is going to be. The sperm of the bull.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘According to my old dad, a bull has two different kinds of sperm, female sperm and male sperm. You follow me so far?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Keep going.’
‘So when the old bull shoots off his sperm into the cow, a sort of swimming race takes place between the male and the female sperm to see which one can reach the egg first. If the female sperm wins, you get a heifer.’
‘But what’s the sun got to do with it?’ I asked.
‘I’m coming to that,’ he said, ‘so listen carefully. When an animal is standing on all fours like a cow, and when you face her head into the sun, then the sperm has also got to travel directly into the sun to reach the egg. Switch the cow around and they’ll be travelling away from the sun.’
‘So what you’re saying,’ I said, ‘is that the sun exerts a pull of some sort on the female sperm and makes them swim faster than the male sperm.’
‘Exactly!’ cried Rummins. ‘That’s exactly it! It exerts a pull! It drags them forward! That’s why they always win! And if you turn the cow round the other way, it’s pulling them backwards and the male sperm wins instead.’
‘It’s an interesting theory,’ I said. ‘But it hardly seems likely that the sun, which is millions of miles away, could exert a pull on a bunch of spermatozoa inside a cow.’
‘You’re talking rubbish!’ cried Rummins. ‘Absolute and utter rubbish! Don’t the moon exert a pull on the bloody tides of the ocean to make ’em high and low? Of course it does! So why shouldn’t the sun exert a pull on the female sperm?’
‘I see your point.’
Suddenly Rummins seemed to have had enough. ‘You’ll have a heifer calf for sure,’ he said, turning away. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
‘Mr Rummins,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Is there any reason why this shouldn’t work with humans as well?’
‘Of course it’ll work with humans,’ he said. ‘Just so long as you remember everything’s got to be pointed in the right direction. A cow ain’t lying down you know. It’s standing on all fours.’
‘I see what you mean.’
‘And it ain’t no good doing it at night either,’ he said, ‘because the sun is shielded behind the earth and it can’t influence anything.’
‘That’s true,’ I said, ‘but have you any sort of proof it works with humans?’
Rummins laid his head to one side and gave me another of his long sly broken-toothed grins. ‘I’ve got four boys of my own, ain’t I?’ he said.
‘So you have.’
‘Ruddy girls ain’t no use to me around here,’ he said. ‘Boys is what you want on a farm and I’ve got four of ’em, right?’
‘Right,’ I said, ‘you’re absolutely right.’