by Robert Fripp
Chapter 5
The Bull and his keeper chose their moment well. It was late, past midnight. The room was so warm that a party of guests had thrown open the french doors to stand on the terrace, where a gentleman howled at the moon and the rest of them laughed.
Seeing the double doors standing open, the Bull hissed at his keeper, “There’s our chance, Reg! I need a head start. Hold back young Map.”
“Righto, Ted.”
In the wink of an eye, the Bull bundled up Alicia Parsons complete with her Louis Quinze chair and its fine silken seat, and started roaring towards the door.
Gregory Map, the reluctant suitor, was not far behind when the Bull’s keeper, shouting mock protest, over-reached for the animal’s tether and fell in front of Map, taking him down. In the best tradition of circus clowns, Garland clambered all over Map in an effort to rise.
The Bull was out on the terrace by now, the shaggy thing roaring through a press of party goers with Alicia still in her chair, shrieking protests in his arms. He’d forgotten, in his excitement, to secure the flap in the fleece through which he could see. It opened and closed as he ran, sometimes sighted and sometimes blind.
“Put me down! You brute, let me go!” The young lady pummelled the Bull with her fists and kicked with her feet, but it was no use; she lost one of her evening slippers against the foot of her chair.
The keeper and Map were some seconds behind, the keeper weaving from side to side, ostensibly clowning, in fact to stop Map tearing past.
“Gregory!” Alicia screamed. With the bulk of the bull pressed against her she had no idea that Gregory was in hot pursuit.
“Let me pass, man!” Gregory Map tugged at the keeper’s coat. Garland stumbled on the lawn. Again they both tripped.
“Gregory!”
The Bull meanwhile roared blindly across the lawn and into the night, the sight-flap in his chest blocked up against the struggling girl.
Behind them a crowd was gathering outside the french doors. Men hooted and cheered “Tally-ho!” while women protested or giggled into their hands. The orchestra gamely played on.
Garland was wrestling with Map on the lawn, meanwhile, but it didn’t stall the reluctant suitor this time. Without more ado, Map cuffed the keeper on the jaw and started after the sound of Alicia’s screams.
The Bull was too winded to keep up the pretence of a roar, but enough of his vision returned to reveal the great black bulk of the enormous cedar tree, its lowest branches reaching thirty feet out from the trunk and brushing the ground. He was making for the cover of the tree when—Crash!—the Bull’s head struck hard and wedged firmly in the fork of a branch. Stunned, but not defeated, the Bull shifted his load, managed to wriggle free of the Bull’s head together with its supporting pole, and rushed on, headless, Alicia struggling in his arms. Now she was able to reach inside the fleece and pull a real head of hair. The Bull began bellowing in earnest as it never had bellowed before, struggling with the girl and ducking under branches of the ancient cedar tree.
“Alicia!” Young Map was gaining fast.
The Bull smashed his right shoulder into a branch, cursed a very human oath and, ducking, ran under the branch and kept on as if the hounds of hell were at his heels. Then, all of a sudden, the sound of gravel underfoot pulled him up short. He turned, the girl still tugging at his hair, and looked behind as best he might. The house, large as it was, was partially hidden behind the vast bulk of the tree.
As if it had all been a dreadful mistake, the Bull put the startled girl down on the gravel of the carriageway, still seated absurdly on her chair, telling her soothingly, “There you are, love. No harm done.” With that, the headless thing ran on.
Not a moment too soon. In the time it takes an owl to stoop on a mouse, young Map was at her side.
“Gregory!”
“Alicia!” He knelt before her on the gravel of the drive and stroked her hair while she wept tears of relief down his neck. “Are you all right?”
“Just shaken.”
“Alicia, dear, thank God. I love you so.”
“O Gregory, you do?”
Moments later the most extraordinary sight rewarded the intrepid souls who had ventured from the house to follow the chase through frigid air on a winter night.
The young lady in a thin silk ball-gown with a missing shoe sat contentedly on her Louis Quinze chair on the moonlit drive while a young man knelt before her holding hands, rapt in moonlight and her spell.
The following morning a grounds-man found the Bull’s head impaled on its pole and stuck fast in a fork of the cedar, its grey-blue glass eyes staring out in amazement towards Yew Tree Wood on Hambledon Hill.
In years to come, Raymond Parsons would consider his investment the very best money he had ever spent.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Endnote on the Dorset Ooser
The Dorset Ooser has been around for a few centuries, frequently reported at Child Okeford. Interested readers can find several sources. At this writing I suggest:
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_Ooser#Dorset%20Ooser
b. Then, scroll that same Wikipedia page to ‘External links’
c. Download Daniel Patrick Quinn’s Dorset Ooser study (2000)
d. or, Use this Internet Search term: Ooser:Quinn