by Niels Hammer
“What’s the distance between the road where we have to park and the fence?”
“About two hundred metres, but it’s through a fairly dense wood. The Sheep may be anywhere within the enclosure and it’s quite large. They’ll be somewhat afraid of us and run away if they can. I know roughly where the fence is, its circumference I mean, and if we can find the Sheep with the binoculars we should quite easily be able to herd them into a corner. Slow down, it’s here, turn left and continue. Now the car’s hardly visible from the road.”
Caitlin unwrapped the electric gun and inserted the batteries.
“I have the syringe, the ketamine phial and the infrared binoculars. Is there anything else?”
“No, that’s all, and I have the torch.”
“I remembered the compass. If we’re going two hundred and twenty degrees south-westwards now it means we’ll have to go back forty degrees north-eastwards.”
Navigating in and out among the trees while feeling with his feet for roots on the ground – which was resilient and sweet beneath his feet – he walked slowly with both hands stretched out to push the branches aside so she could follow him without being hit when they swung back.
“Watch out! There’s the fence and the open ground is straight ahead.”
“The light is better here. In the wood it was pitch dark. I felt the trees rather than I saw them.”
“It’s electric. I’ll press the wire down for you.”
Holding on to his arm she stepped over the fence and held the wire down when it was his turn.
“It’s quite large, the open space of the meadow.”
Even in the misty darkness it had an air of clouds and Sky the canopy of the trees had hidden.
“About five hundred by two hundred meters. Let’s see if we can find them.”
He gave her the binoculars and adjusting the focus she scrutinised the area from East to West. A smell of wet grass – a faint rustling of the leaves above their heads.
“Yes, there they are, I don’t know how many. They’re all huddling together.”
“Are they close to the fence?”
“If it continues straight ahead from here they are, so we will have to go out into the open and follow the direction of the fence.”
They began to walk down-hill over the short-cropped grass which painted their steps over with a dense and humid silence – but Caitlin paused from time to time to see if the Sheep had moved.
“When we come close enough they can smell us, though the wind is south-westerly.”
“I can begin to differentiate them now. We’re about fifty metres away.”
“We’ll keep a distance of about ten to fifteen metres and speak quietly.”
“They’re beginning to move down along the fence.”
“You should walk a bit further outwards and then begin to move in the same direction as we do now to reach the far side of the fence. Then we can shepherd them into a corner.”
“I’ll use the torch when I fire the gun, but I have to be as close as three or four meters.”
She merged with the night and he waited till he saw a short flash. At a distance of about ten metres from the fence he began walking down towards the corner and as his eyes had had about twenty minutes in which to adjust to the darkness he could now discern a dull grey moving mass – but also sense the smell of wet wool that still lingered in the lee of the trees where they had sought shelter. As he approached the Sheep they began to become agitated and some of them ran up along the fence to escape. A weak bleat came now and again from within the moving mass of safe-seeking bodies and he could imagine how difficult for a hawk or a falcon it would be to focus on a particular individual in a constantly moving flock of birds. A loud bump – indistinguishable muted sounds and a low whistle – it could only indicate an accident and as he ran down the hill the whole flock seemed to slip away up along the fence. Caitlin was almost kneeling astride a Sheep while trying to get the electric gun out of her pocket.
“I wish you could see yourself sitting there on that sprawling and smelly lump of wet wool.”
Too intent upon the task at hand to laugh Caitlin gave him the torch and he illuminated the Sheep’s head – but became ill at ease when he saw how frightened she appeared to be – so how could they tell her that they did not mean to do her any harm? The grey and dirty-looking wool acquired an artificial pink sheen and at a distance of one and a half foot Caitlin aimed the gun at her neck. The Sheep who now partly seemed to have accepted her fate became convulsed with trembling – and he did not like the sudden sound of the gun. It was too loud and too artificial in the stillness of the night – but to finish the experiment he took out the phial – attached the needle to the syringe and sucked out all ten millilitres.
“Here, give me a little more light.”
He knelt down to press the needle into her back leg. The wool was thick and he forced the tip down into the muscle till he knew that the solution would seep out into the tissue of the cells and not flow up along the shaft of the needle.
“Now we have to wait for half an hour or so. What happened?”
“The sheep suddenly bumped right into me, nearly knocking me over, it was so unexpected. I had been looking at them with the binoculars as they moved down along the fence. They were about thirty yards away, and I nearly fell, but instinctively I leaned forward and then I got hold of her and sat down.”
The Sheep had now fallen asleep so Caitlin disengaged the two small arrows from her neck and put the gun back in her pocket. All the other Sheep had vanished uphill in the dark. The flock mentality of social animals ensured that the majority survived by sacrificing the individual – but human animals sacrificed the sooth-sayers – Sokratēs – Iēsous – Mansūr-e-Ḥallāj – Hypatia.
“They would have no natural enemies here, would they.”
“A Fox would kill a lamb, but not a full-grown Sheep.”
“In Scotland we have eagles, but the farmers get a certain compensation, and I think eagles also would avoid a full grown sheep and concentrate on the lambs.”
“Or on a dying Sheep. I had not expected the effect of the ketamine to come so quickly.”
“Maybe she had a shock?”
He put his fingers down through the curls on her throat to feel the pulse.
“She’s still very much alive.”
“Let’s wait and see. Both the electrical gun and the ketamine appear to work as we had expected and to-morrow morning I’ll phone Barbara to say that I can take Taffy, her Golden Retriever, out for a long walk. It always irritates her that she has to spend an hour or more trudging along the pavement just to give her some exercise, and even if she’s not in heat by rubbing her with a towel enough smell will be left on it to attract the dog guarding the house.”
“I took a bit of venison and left it outside, so by Wednesday evening it will be very rare.”
“I hope that the dog will have recuperated before she returns, then she might not discover her loss before Thursday morning.”
A light drizzle had begun again to fall from the low-hanging clouds and as he embraced her she embraced him and they stood thus with their chins resting on each other’s shoulder and their wet warm cheeks pressed together and waited for the Sheep to awake. A swishing sound – a soft snorting – came down the hill and she eased the torch out of her pocket. As he turned his head she flashed the light on a Badger less than ten yards away. Astonished by the sudden glare he or she spun round to shuffle back and Caitlin extinguished the light.
“I thought it might have been a Boar.”
“There are some here and there, but I have not seen any yet, only upturned greensward.”
“Look at the Sheep. She’s getting up. What’s the time now?”
“Eleven fifty-five. It has taken forty-five minutes. How long time do we need?”
“Thirty m
inutes, seven minutes with the dog, five minutes to remove the transmitters, three minutes to get in, ten minutes to find the jewellery and five minutes to get out. She’s walking away now to join her family. Let’s go! Do you have the ketamine and the syringe?”
“Yes, and you have the binoculars and the torch?”
“Before we leave the house we must make certain that we have the infrared binoculars, the pick gun, the towel, the piece of venison, both plastic bags, the ketamine, the electric gun, the phial, the syringe, the needle and the torch. In fact, we should each have a torch.”
They climbed back over the fence and he looked at the compass to get the direction.
“Will it be difficult to open the door?”
“No, I don’t think it should take more than a minute. Your door took less than thirty seconds.”
“Is it an art?”
“To some extent maybe, but what matters is experience, and with a modern pick gun it’s easy.”
Turning in and out among the trees they nearly failed to see the ditch they had to jump to reach the road.
“Do you know what kind of lock she has on her door?”
“A standard pin tumbler lock. The same on both the front and the back door. Four weeks ago I had a look to make sure. There is the car.”
They drove off and having dropped the envelope with their passports and birth certificates at the pillar box in the village they were back in time to get a cup of tea and a glass of Armagnac.
“You’re seducing me.”
“It’s because you want to be seduced; but it’s you who are seducing me.”
“You will give me a measure of peace.”
“And security. A home maybe, and a sense of mutual trust.”
“How far do you trust me?”
“All the way and beyond. Our excursion might manifest a fraction of that trust.”
The major motive was to see how far he trusted her – how far he was willing to go. It was her acid test – but she was already certain that he would pass it. Each woman wanted to be wooed according to her temperament – more often than not formed subconsciously by childhood experiences. But there was also a certain substantiality to such a test. It meant something because the stakes were high. The trial had taken shape unconsciously – but the second she became aware of its full significance the ramifications would be as obvious to her as they were to him now –
“We had better go to bed.”
Savouring the last vapours on his tongue he followed her up the stairs to participate in the nightly ritual that now would be the standard of the future according to all the seamarks that were visible from his present position.
XXVII
Caitlin had been looking keenly at him for a while already. That was why.
“The weather is going to change so let’s drive down to the beach before sunrise.”
“The water will be cold.”
The bed felt warm and soft – the daylight grey.
“I’ll keep you warm.”
“How could you do that? I would feel listless as the cold – ”
“Nonsense, and that was not what I meant at all, so come on!”
“Then I must have a cup of tea first, to get me my bearings.”
“All right, but hurry up while I find towels and swimming – ”
“We don’t need any. The beach will be deserted. Seals are not dressed like Mis’ess Grundy.”
“But I don’t like to go naked.”
“And I don’t want to see your natural beauty obscured by false pretensions. We cannot defile the morning Sun or the purity of the Sea by flaunting prejudice and dishonesty.”
“You’re impossible!”
“Just as you like it.”
Taking his clothes he went down the stairs to fill the kettle with the minimum of water for one cup – and while the tea drew he struggled – still not fully awake – to find the right side of his underwear and unravel his recalcitrant trousers.
“You can drink your tea while I drive.”
Rocked in her boisterous roll and clutching his cup he staggered down the driveway to collapse in the car – but before he had closed the door she was swinging out on the road – too eager to assume that anyone else could be up and about that early.
“There’s plenty of time before sunrise, almost a quarter of an hour. Turn right here.”
“Luckily there’s no traffic yet.”
The way she drove made it hard to drink without spilling the tea.
“Turn right again at the crossing. Look! That was a pale Buzzard, did you see him?”
“No, just the tail. I thought it was an owl. I was concentrating on the road, you know.”
Appropriate silence remained the most subtle of all diplomatic tools.
"There’s the sea behind the dunes, so when do we have to turn left.”
The impatience in her voice – to reach the horizon.
“Soon, there’s only one kilometre. You can see it now, opposite the tall Fir Trees to the right.”
As she stopped the car he savoured the last drops of his still warm and fragrant tea. The sooner the better – so taking their towels they trudged through the long stretch of loose sand before they reached the sand that was lapped firm by the waves. Both to the North-West and the South-East the broad beach – almost of Palaeogenic origin – lay stretched out – flat and windswept – though not to-day – with Lyme grass and a rich larder – where the water flowed in over the shore – for seagulls and waders. Stimulated by the stillness of Dawn they began breathing in unison to fill their lungs – the seat of love – with air that was fresh and dewy from the night but also saturated by salt and finely spiced by sea-weedy and fishy flavours. A pair of Godwits and three Dunlins were tripping along the broad flat tongues of water to pick up the molluscs and crustaceans the Sea served on lazily subsiding plates of silver.
“You see, it was not a minute too early.”
When they had shed their clothes and stood naked side by side time slowed down to a standstill – the time needed to forget all languages – and they left their disguises behind on the liminal interface of land and water. She took hold of his hand and together they ran out into the shallows just as the halo of the Sun began to be visible above the pale blue horizon in the North-East. The wide expanse of water did not reflect any movements in the air – the slow lazy swell that ebbed out on the shore was an echo of winds that already had found peace in non-existence. He focused on the warmth of her hand and tried to disregard the icy touch of the all-encircling ocean that wrapped itself up around his trembling legs – but her sense of exultation reflected the perpendicular red rays that from the sharply visible rim of the rising Sun turned the Sea into rose-water. The brilliance made him screw up his poor night eyes and look sideways at her. Francesco del Cossa – March – Minerva with the long arrow – sensual serenity personified to reflect the Sun as it rose above the Sea. The inner light illuminated her skin – the hissing heat of her lips touched his cheek for she was in league with that which was as she skipped forward to spread joy as splashing drops around them both. Diving down by unconscious consent they shivered abruptly in the slightly turquoise liquid – which blurred their memories of trees and clouds seen at a distance through air and water vapour – by letting them see greenish wrack – sea-shells and long-ribbed sand through its glassy density at close quarters. Floating opposite each other with interlaced fingers they transcended the weight of human gravity to join the tribes of Seals – Otters and Dolphins in their three-dimensional domain because they contained within their phylogeny identical levels of sensation – but when the iron in their blood had distributed all its oxygen appropriately they rose to break the shimmering mirror of the surface – in which they – an instant later – saw the Sky – the slanting beams of the rising Sun and themselves reflected all together as momentarily s
eparate cohesions. Embracing each other they sank down into the sea-silence of the underworld again and pressed their cold lips together to heat the blood and fuse – but their muscles responded sluggishly and a yearning to quicken the heartbeat drove them on to swim shorewards. In waist-deep water they rose to turn round and watch the water’s surface – that here and there was beginning to be ruffled by a tip-toeing breeze – and feel the ninety-four thousand billion cubic meters of the North Sea as a living entity whose real depth it was impossible to fathom. Shivering with cold he watched her belly rise and subside to the rhythm of her diaphragmatic breathing – and the rays of the Sun as they marigolded her skin and sparkled from violet to yellow in the downwards-trickling drops from her tresses. As cold and strong as the Sea – as firm and smooth to the touch – as keen as salt – she had furthered a katharsis that had left her clear and pure for the day ahead so that she could do what she had to do and throw him three times over.
“We had better go back and take a warm bath to rinse off the salt. You’re cold as ice.”
A pair of Grey Seals – lying complacently at the water’s edge – watched them as they hid themselves in bathing towels – picked up their clothes and staggered back across the sand – as if still uncomfortable by the reemergence of earthly gravity.
“That was nice. Just what I needed. How lucky we are to be so close to the sea here.”
“You take to the water like a White-billed Diver.”
“Do I really? It was a wee bit colder than I thought it would be; and you’re really cold, I can see that. It’s amazing, the change in shape. I will have to rectify that as soon as we come home.”
Her self-assurance and indulgent humour –
“I hope you will succeed for right now I feel utterly – ”
“It’s nothing that a hot bath and a firm touch cannot cure.”
So returning to themselves they felt slightly different from what they had been when they woke up and went upstairs to bathe and reflect their difference by cohesion.