Crowded Marriage

by Catherine Alliott

  She’d cut me off. A blast of classical music filled my eardrum for a brief moment, then a curt male voice cut in.

  “Where exactly is this cow?”

  “Are you the vet?”

  “Yes, I’m the vet. Where’s the cow?”

  “She’s at Shepherd’s Cottage. It’s a little house on the Latimers’ estate. You go past their main gates and—”

  “We’ll be there directly. Stay where you are and don’t go near any other stock.”

  “No, I won’t, but I was just saying to your receptionist, the cows aren’t actually mine and—oh!” Now he’d cut me off. I was left holding a buzzing receiver. Rude man. Didn’t he want a bit more info? Directions to the cottage? Although I supposed everyone round here knew the Latimers. Should I ring Piers, I wondered feverishly, pacing up and down the tiny kitchen. Tell him one of his beloved exotics had died? I quaked at the thought and decided better of it. No, let the vet do that. It would be better coming from him; better he told Piers there was nothing I could have done and that I’d—you know—nursed it to the end. Done all I could. Yes, leave it to the professionals.

  I stood in the open front doorway, my arms tightly crossed and looked at the four remaining cows standing mournfully at the fence. Did they know? Yes, of course they knew. Animals could sense it, couldn’t they? And did any of them have it, I wondered. Were they all going to die? I trembled. Oh, thank God Rufus hadn’t been here. He’d have been so upset. Would still be upset, I thought with a pang. The little brown one was his favourite, the most friendly. I hoped it could be dealt with…efficiently. Taken away before he got back. But what did one do with a dead cow? Bury it? You’d need a bloody big hole. No, incinerate it, probably. I shuddered.

  Don’t go near the other stock, he’d said, but I had, I thought with a jolt. Just before I’d gone to find the little brown one, I’d tried to give them some hay. Had they licked my hands? Yes—one of them had. I remembered her big pink tongue. Although, now I came to think of it, it was yellow in the middle. I looked at my fingers in horror. Ran to the loo and washed them thoroughly. But what if I’d bitten my nails, could I still catch something? I thrust them under my armpits, clamping my arms down tight.

  Minutes later, as I stood at the front gate, my eyes avidly scanning the horizon behind the cottage, a dark blue Land Rover sped along behind the hedge and down the zigzag track towards me, followed by a white van. The Land Rover screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust, and out leaped a man in a white plastic boiler suit and a space mask. Two similarly dressed men jumped out of the van behind. They ran round the back to open the double doors, and seemed to be dragging some sort of tarpaulin tent out between them. It looked like something I’d seen on the news, ages ago, some kind of isolation unit. I went a bit hot; made to go towards them.

  “No, stay there!” One of them swung round and shouted thickly through his mask. I stopped obediently in my tracks.

  “This way?” shouted another, spacemanlike figure from behind his mask, pointing towards the cows’ field.

  “Um, yes. But—listen, when I said I thought it was foot and mouth, I wasn’t entirely—”

  “IS SHE SEPARATED FROM THE REST OF THE HERD?”

  This was boomed at me from a loudspeaker, making me leap in the air. One of the masked men was crouched down on the opposite side of the van and was directing his foghorn at me from across the bonnet. The other man seemed to be spraying stuff all over the wheels, all over the track, and all over my car too, from a long thin hose. Good Lord.

  “Yes, she’s in that copse over there,” I yelled back. “But look, I’m not entirely sure she’s even—”

  “STAY…IN…THE HOUSE!!”

  This was blasted at a million decibels. The echo from the megaphone hung portentously in the air and I froze, paralysed in its reverberation. When I’d come to, they were off, the three of them, at the double: gripping their equipment and their plastic tent, running as fast as their space suits would allow, across the field towards the copse, looking for all the world like some sort of anti-terrorist squad. Like something out of the SAS, I thought nervously. Heavens. Was this really necessary? I watched them disappear into the trees. Well, I assumed they knew what they were doing, but it seemed a bit over the top to me. I chewed my thumbnail, remembered the yellow tongue and shoved my hand hastily under my arm. Actually, no. Best to be on the safe side. And anyway, I was pretty sure any farm animal death had to be attended to fairly rigorously these days, what with all those bossy EU restrictions from Brussels. The Common Agricultural Policy, or whatever it was called. No, you couldn’t just go burying a cow in a field. It might be diseased, might infect the land. Yes, I’d definitely done the right thing, I thought, going more buoyantly now to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Acted very promptly.

  I bustled around the kitchen getting out proper leaf tea, not bags, and a plate of biscuits. I had an idea vets were rather like vicars, and you had to offer them the works. James Herriot always seemed to be swigging it in farmhouse kitchens—obviously a perk of the job.

  A few minutes later the front door burst open. I jumped in surprise. Well, I suppose I had left it on the latch.

  “In here!” I sang, pouring boiling water in the pot.

  A white-suited man strode through, still in his mask. He took up most of the kitchen. I could just see his eyes and mouth, through the mesh.

  “Do you mean the Murray Grey?” he demanded thickly.

  “Sorry?” He had a rather unfortunate manner, this chap. For a vet. Not exactly bedside.

  “Are we talking about the same cow? The Murray Grey?”

  “Well, it’s the little dark brown one, without the horns,” I said patiently. Golly, there were only five of them and only one was flat on her back with her legs in the air. Perhaps he was newly qualified? I went to the window. “The others are all paler, see? With horns.” I pointed at them lined up at the fence. “She’s more—oh!”

  “That one?” He jabbed his finger on the pane of glass. My hand shot to my mouth. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock had mysteriously joined her friends, and was lined up alongside them, gazing over the fence at me.

  “Oh. My. God.” I clutched the windowsill. “That’s amazing!” I turned to him. “How did you do that?”

  “I’m Jesus Christ in disguise.”

  I gaped.

  “I nudged her with my foot, Mrs. Cameron. That cow has a dust cough. She does not have foot-and-mouth.”

  I stared at him some more. “Oh!” I clutched my heart. “But…the green slime—”

  “Grass. Cud, to be more precise, regurgitated from her stomach as she slept.”

  “Cud! Really? And she was just asleep? But—what about all that white stuff on her feet?”

  “Chalk. Which adheres to hoofs in clumps in the wet.”

  “Gracious. Oh, well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? I did say before you went rushing out there in such a tearing hurry that I wasn’t entirely—oh, what a relief.” I clasped my hands, beaming delightedly at him. “Rufus will be so pleased—that’s my son—he’s only nine. I was dreading telling him Princess Consuela Banana Hammock had bitten the dust. She’s his favourite. Cup of tea?”

  He didn’t respond. The eyes behind the mesh stared fixedly at me. His voice, when it eventually came, was dangerously low. “Have you no concept, at all, of the mayhem, you’ve caused? The chaos?”

  I paused as I tipped the pot to pour. Righted it. “Sorry?”

  “On the way over here I put a restriction order on all neighbouring farms within a twenty-mile radius, stating that no livestock, absolutely nothing, should be moved. On farms within a five-mile radius, I placed an order instructing that all cattle should be prepared for slaughter and incinerated.”

  I put the teapot down. “Killed?”

  “And burned. The lot of them.” I stared at him. A vision of mountains of burning cows swam horrifically before my eyes. Carcasses and bones dripping with acrid flesh; the fumes, the stench…My mouth dried. I s
at down slowly on a stool.

  “You mean…all Piers’s stock? You’ve ordered them to be…?”

  “Such is the highly contagious and virulent nature of foot-and-mouth, I had no option.”

  “Oh Christ.” My hand flew to cover my mouth.

  “Happily I was able to reverse the order on my mobile just now.”

  “Oh, thank God!” I jumped up and clutched his plastic hand. Nearly kissed it.

  He snatched it away. “And thankfully, no lives have been needlessly lost. But, Mrs. Cameron, your reckless and alarmist behaviour would most certainly have spelled the end for this local farming community, and probably for the whole of the South of England. The ripple effect would have sent shock waves throughout the entire country, and because of the last outbreak, I’m not sure English farming would ever have recovered. The beef industry certainly wouldn’t, maybe not even the government.”

  The government? I’d almost brought down the government? I sat down again, rather abruptly this time. The stool rattled.

  “I’m…so sorry,” I whispered. “I had no idea. I—I just knew cattle got that disease. It was the only one I’d heard of, and—and, well, I looked at her mouth and then at her feet, and I—”

  “You applied the same impulsive, cavalier attitude that you do to your underwear?”

  I frowned. “What?”

  He took off his white hat and mask. I stared. Oh my God. It was the gypsy with the curls. Heathcliff. My dinner companion from the other night, the one I’d sat next to at the Latimers’, with the twinkly eyes, only his eyes weren’t nearly so twinkly now.

  “Clearly whipping your pants off and causing a national disaster are all in a day’s work to you, Mrs. Cameron. I’m not suggesting, incidentally, that the one could in any way lead to the other.”

  “Oh!” I stood up, furious. “How dare you? How dare you come here and—and hoodwink me like that!”

  “I dare,” he said in level tones, taking a step towards me, “because you dared to breeze in from London and apply a ridiculous warped logic to what you saw as a simple rural situation. In one blasé knee-jerk reaction you almost brought down an entire community. You made no attempt to consider the repercussions your alarmist telephone call would cause, or the devastation your amateur diagnosis would create. And then you attempted to brush it off brazenly, and offer me a cup of tea.”

  I swallowed, caught in the barely controlled fury of his flinty dark eyes. “I—I’m sorry,” I muttered. “You’re right, I didn’t think. It was stupid of me.” His eyes continued to bore into me. Then his hand went to the zipper at his neck. He unzipped his entire boiler suit, right down to his crutch as I quickly averted my eyes. I had an awful feeling he was naked underneath.

  “It’s all right,” he said, stepping out in jeans and a T-shirt. He bundled the suit under his arm and made for the door. “You’re quite safe.”

  I watched him go, rooted to the spot for a moment. Then I ran after him. He went down the path and stashed his suit away in the open boot of the Land Rover. The white van had disappeared.

  “Where have the others gone?” I spun around.

  “Back to the lab to report a false alarm to the Ministry of Agriculture. As fast as possible, I hope. We don’t want DEFRA sniffing around. We’ll never get rid of them.”

  “I’m truly sorry,” I said humbly, twisting my hands agitatedly. “And will Princess Cons—the Murray Grey recover? I mean, from her cough?”

  “She will if you stop giving her straw to eat and give her hay instead. The straw’s full of dust. It’s getting in her throat.”

  “Oh Lord, you mean—”

  “Don’t you know the difference?” he said irritably, throwing his space shoes in the boot, sitting on the back bumper and getting out some Wellingtons. He thrust his feet into them. “Come with me.”

  In another moment he was striding off towards the barn and I was mincing after him, picking my way through the mud in my beige suede boots.

  “This is straw,” he said, plucking a handful of the stuff I’d been giving them, “and this, is hay.” He snatched an identical handful from another bale. I blinked. “Er…”

  “Feel it,” he said impatiently. “It’s much finer. It’s dried grass, as opposed to dried stubble.”

  “Yes it is, isn’t it?” I marvelled as I fondled it. “Gosh, how awful. I’ve been giving them the wrong stuff!”

  “They’ll live,” he said crisply. “Cows eat straw in extremis. It’s used as bedding in the winter, but if they’re not getting hay they’re not getting essential minerals so they’re more prone to magnesium deficiency. Then you really will get them keeling over with their feet in the air, frothing at the mouth.”

  “Heavens.”

  He turned and gave me a probing look. “How about a lick?”

  I bristled. “I beg your pardon?”

  “A cow lick,” he said impatiently. “Have you got one?”

  “Oh!”

  “Provides them with essential vitamins until the grass comes through properly.” He strode off towards the feed bins, picking up lids and peering in.

  “Here.” He reached in and brought out what looked like a gigantic soap on a rope, then went across the yard to the cows and tied it on their fence. The cows clustered instantly, licking avidly.

  “Oh, look!” I said delighted. “They love it.”

  “Course they do.”

  We watched as they slurped away.

  “But why do they need licks and hay in the first place? Why can’t they just go in that lovely green field over there, behind the orchard?” I pointed. “They keep looking at it longingly. I nearly let them in the other day.”

  “It’s too rich, got too much clover, and clover’s got a hollow stem, full of air. If they eat too much they blow up like barrage balloons.” He looked at me. “Cows can’t burp. Didn’t you know that?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Why would I? “So…what happens?”

  “They explode.”

  I stared. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He shrugged and made off towards his car. “OK, give it a whirl. Put them in the clover field. I’d stand well back though, if I were you.”

  I gazed after him. I wasn’t at all sure I liked this man’s attitude: half hectoring and half, I felt, poking fun at me. All the same, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to return from the school run and find bits of exploding cow all over the place.

  “No—no, I’ll give them hay,” I said decisively, scuttling after him again. God, this man could shift. “And I’ll take the straw out of the roundels.”

  “You’ll have a job. Most of it’s been trampled into the mud. Piers won’t be too thrilled at having his fields wrecked like that.”

  I turned back to see that the cows had indeed pulled it out and flattened it comprehensively into the mud. One of them was even lying on it.

  “Don’t tell him!” I breathed cravenly.

  “What, that his cows were on death row, or that you’ve been feeding them bedding?”

  “Either,” I trembled. “I’ve only been here a few days. He’ll think I’m incompetent, probably kick us out. And Alex will kill me,” I added in a low voice.

  He gave the first hint of a smile I’d seen since he’d arrived. “Your secret’s safe with me. Luckily for you, we weren’t able to contact Piers this afternoon. And anyway, the straw will rot in time.” He sat in the open boot of his Land Rover and took his boots off. He shot me a quizzical look. “Alex is your husband, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one sitting next to Eleanor at the far end of the table the other night?”

  “That’s it.”

  He gave me an odd look.

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “No, what?”

  He shrugged. “I thought I’d seen him here before, that’s all.”

  “Yes, you probably have. He often pops down here. Piers and Eleanor are very old friends of his.”

/>   “Ah,” he said shortly.

  He stashed his Wellingtons away, and changed into deck shoes.

  “And why isn’t he feeding the cows for you?” His dark eyes flashed up to meet mine. “That’s hard work, heaving those bales into roundels.”

  “Oh, because he’s not here during the day. He works in London. And actually,” I lied, “he gets terrible hay fever.”

  “Does he now.” It was said in a slightly mocking way that made me bristle. And all in that lilting Irish accent. Why hadn’t I recognised it in the first place? But his mask had muffled it. I felt stupid. He’d made a fool of me.

  “Right. Well, if that’ll be all…” I said crisply, drawing myself up to my full five foot three.

  He stood up slowly and regarded me a moment. “Yes. That’ll be all. Although I saw from my records on the way over here that these cows are due a booster soon. They’ll need it if you want to take them anywhere.”

  “Oh, they’re not going anywhere,” I said impatiently. What—off on their holidays? With their suitcases and sunglasses? “They don’t need that.”

  “This isn’t an optional flu jab,” he snapped, “it’s mandatory. If you’re moving them to different pastures, which, I happen to know Piers does in the winter, they’ll need it.” He slammed the boot shut. “I’ll be up in due course to administer it. Good day, Mrs. Cameron.”

  “Good day,” I snapped back as he got in the car and shut the door. He started the engine with a flourish and roared off in zigzags up the track, the dust hovering in his wake.

  Rude man, I thought as I watched him go. Thoroughly, rude man. There was no call to speak to people like that. Particularly to clients. I squared my shoulders. I mean, OK, I’d rattled his cage with the foot-and-mouth scare and I could see how that might be annoying, but actually, what he’d really been worried about was an outbreak occurring on his patch; in his own back yard, so to speak. I stalked into the house and shut the door. Yes, he’d been more concerned about saving his own professional skin than about saving the cows.