Kate's Progress

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  At that point reality kicked in and she snorted. Yeah, five acres of potatoes ought to do it! What are you, Scarlett O’Hara? ‘As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!’

  Anyway, stupid girl, you’re not staying here. This is a Cinderella project, that’s all. You’re doing up the cottage and selling it, and moving back to real life, in London.

  But as she tramped away down the track, gazing across the wide moors, dappled with shadows of the fast-moving clouds, she felt a pang at the idea of leaving this place. It was so beautiful … Yes, she told herself, but that’s now, in May, with summer ahead. Think of winter here, cold and wet, shut indoors week after week with nothing to do. You’ll do up the cottage and get out just in time. Enjoy it for what it is – a working holiday.

  She had been walking for some time, enjoying the fresh air and the wonderful smells; she had spotted two groups of ponies at a distance, seen buzzards circling overhead, heard the trilling of skylarks, and underneath it the singing silence of the high lands. She had been following a sheep-trod, and the land under her feet began gradually to fall away from the flat top of the common, the drop growing steeper until she found herself at the edge of a coombe, on the other side of which there was a craggy rise to a green hillside, where a flock of sheep was peacefully grazing.

  It was at that point that Kate heard the whimper. It came from somewhere below her, on the side of the coombe, which was thick with heather, bracken, whin and gorse. She turned her head out of the wind and listened. After a moment it came again, a whimper that turned into a long-drawn-out whine of distress. It sounded like a dog. She craned her neck, moved a little way along the valley edge in each direction, but she could see nothing. But she was a dog-lover, and if there was one in trouble, she had to go and see if she could help. Perhaps it had slipped and fallen, or got itself stuck in a rabbit hole, or – well, something. She had to find out.

  She looked for a suitable way down, and found the faint mark of a trod through the vegetation which she began to follow. It was all very well for a sheep, but it was tricky going for a human, trying to find sound footing through the wiry heather-roots, loose stones and concealed hollows. And where was the dog? She tried calling, and heard a whimper of reply. She headed for where she thought the sound came from, but having to look down for her footing all the time meant she could not keep an eye on the direction her steps were taking her; and one bit of heather looked much like another. She called again, and thought she heard a sound from the vicinity of a large gorse bush – at least that gave her a landmark to aim for.

  She laboured on. Calling elicited no more sounds. Her foot slipped and for a shocking, heart-in-mouth moment she was skidding down the coombe-side on her back, clutching at passing roots to try to stop herself. She took the skin from one set of fingers before something held and she arrested the skid. She lay for a moment, staring at the sky, while her heart-rate slowed. A cloud of tiny flies descended, interested in the sweat that had broken out on her brow.

  She wondered what on earth she was doing. She’d heard no more cries of distress. If there had ever been a dog, it was probably long gone. Dogs didn’t fall – they were as sure-footed as sheep. She was risking breaking a leg for nothing – and if she did break something, who would ever find her? She was far enough down the coombe now to be invisible from the top. She would lie here and die of hunger and thirst, and one day, years hence, some intrepid walker would find her bare bones sunk in the heather. It came home to her that Exmoor was a wild place, and very different from London. It was a place you could actually get lost in – lost as in never being found again.

  Her heart was steady again, her breathing normal. She sat up and snorted at her own panicky fears and foolish fancies. She got over on to all fours and then carefully stood up, looked back up the way she had come, and saw that the gorse bush was only a few feet to her right, and above her. She had been going to give up on the phantom dog, but as she was so close, she might as well go and have a look. At least going up was easier – you faced the hillside and hung on with your hands, making yourself effectively four-footed instead of two. She called again, ‘Where are you, boy? Hey, boy!’ got no answer, but crabbed along and up anyway.

  And here was the gorse bush, and here was the problem. Underneath it, on the downhill side, there was a big, earthy hollow, probably where some animal – a fox, perhaps – had dug out a scrape for shelter. There was also a wandering line of old, rusty barbed wire, presumably the remains of an old fence, and a big, black, hairy animal was caught in it. As she reached the place, it turned its head, and she saw it was a mongrel dog with a thick, bushy coat. She saw what must have happened. The dog had gone in to the hollow under the bush, perhaps to check out the scent or look for rabbits, creeping under the wire, which had got snagged in its coat. Then in turning round to get out, it had wound the wire deeper until it couldn’t free itself. Subsequent struggles had only made things worse, and now it was hopelessly trapped, bound to the tough branches and roots of the gorse by iron teeth.

  The dog looked at her with white-rimmed eyes, and she had a moment of misgiving: a trapped animal could be savage. But the eyes were fixed on her face, and she saw the ears go down and the tail beat the ground to show submission and supplication.

  ‘All right, old boy,’ she said soothingly, crawling closer. ‘I’ll help you. There, there, be still now.’ The dog had tried again to struggle up to greet her. She put a cautious hand out, let it smell her fingers, and then stroked its head. It relaxed trustingly under her touch. Yes, trust was all very well, but how was she to release it? She didn’t happen to have wire-cutters about her person. All she had was a rather feeble penknife in her pocket, attached to her keyring. She thought of going for help, but she had taken a long time to get here, without passing any other habitation, and even if she walked back to the main road and flagged down a car, what could a car driver do, except take her to a village where she might or might not find someone with wire-cutters? And she had little confidence she could find this exact bush again, once she had left it.

  No, it was up to her. She used her fingers and felt around, tried working the animal free, but its coat was so thick and so well entangled that after ten laborious minutes she had only got two of the little barbed knots free. And as she sat back on her heels to rest for a moment, the dog began struggling again, tugging the barbs in deeper.

  She soothed the animal again, and decided it was the penknife or nothing. It was one of those foldaway Swiss jobs, which in her case had nail scissors, nail file and a screwdriver as well as the blade; but the blade was only two inches long, and not super-sharp. The nail scissors, she thought, might be her best bet for cutting the dog free. She got them out and discovered that, if she took a few hairs at a time, and didn’t try to cut the whole hank at once, the scissors would go through this animal’s dense coat. But it was going to be a long job.

  She had to attack it methodically, starting at the end of the strand, so that once it was free she could push it up out of the way and stop the dog reattaching itself. It was lying still now, and she wondered how long it had been here – long enough to be exhausted, weak from hunger and thirst? In a pause to rest her fingers – which were aching from the strain and sore from the pressure of the thin handles – she ran her hands over the dog’s body, trying to feel through the coat whether it was thin. She could feel ribs, but came to no conclusion – some dogs’ ribs you could always feel. The dog evidently saw this action as an endearment, for it moved its head and licked her nearest hand. ‘Better get on and get you out,’ she said, and it beat its tail in agreement.

  She went on, sawing away at the caught bits of coat, carefully untangling the wire, rolling it up out of the way. Her fingers were bleeding now, and she had snagged her hands and wrists on the barbed wire, and scratched every exposed part on the gorse thorns. ‘Next time,’ she advised the dog, ‘try getting snagged out in the open, preferably right beside a farm gate.’ The dog, lying quietly now, only
blinked in response.

  And at last, at last, she cut through the last, and worst, knot – she had to go deep and take out quite a wide area of coat: it was going to have a bald spot on its back near the root of the tail – and lifted the hairy wire clear, rolling it with the rest of the coil and pushing it outside the bush, well away from the dog.

  She sat back on her heels. Her neck and back ached from the constant bending. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘You’re free now.’

  The dog didn’t move. It looked back at her without moving its head, as if it thought it would be caught for ever.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, and slapped her hand encouragingly against her knee. It lifted its head now and looked at her, wagging, but still did not move. She started to wonder if it had some other injury. But she wouldn’t be able to tell unless it came out from the cave under the gorse. She reached for its neck, feeling for a collar. There was none, though there was a flattened ring of coat where it had worn one.

  ‘So, you slipped it, did you? You’re a runaway. Come out, out of there. Up, you lazy hound, up!’

  She got hold of its ruff and tugged, still making encouraging noises, and suddenly the dog rolled, getting its feet under it, and started wriggling out backwards, belly to the ground, not daring to try to stand up. She moved out of the way, got a fresh hold on the ruff and pulled, encouraging it, and suddenly it was out, stood up, stared about it rather wildly, and then gave itself a great long shake from ears to tail.

  Kate stood up, and grinned with pleasure at the sight. ‘Well, well. How does that feel?’ she asked. ‘Now, let’s see if there’s anything else wrong with you.’ She bent over, putting her hands on the dog to check it over, but it gave a great leap out from under her, knocking her off balance so that she sat down again, hard, and without a backward glance it raced away up the coombe side and disappeared over the top.

  ‘Well, I suppose that means you’re OK,’ she muttered. She had sat down on a stone, a sharp, pointy one, and it hurt. ‘Think nothing of it!’ she shouted after the dog. ‘My pleasure!’

  She got up stiffly, pushed the roll of barbed wire to where it could be seen clearly, examined her hands with a rueful expression, then put her penknife away and started up the coombe side for home. It was past lunchtime, and she was very hungry. And thirsty. She wondered if she had enough Elastoplast at home for all her injuries. She’d have to get some more when she did her next shopping. And she would definitely invest in a much more butch penknife. Carrying one in London could get you arrested, but out here in the wilds she reckoned it was only common sense. She could imagine a number of scenarios in which it would prove invaluable, even life-saving.

  At the top of the slope she stopped to rest, and beguiled by a patch of sunshine, she sat in the warm grass and stared out over the landscape. The dog was long gone, and no other earthbound creature was in sight, but a buzzard was cruising, fingertips splayed, over the scarp opposite, and a lark hung invisible, high high above her, its song an agony of beauty.

  How much her life had changed already, in the short time she had been on Exmoor! London seemed very far away, and improbably exotic, like an imaginary city. A fantasy land. Which in many ways, she reflected, it was.

  Six

  Dommie had decided, after that Saturday evening, that Kate was his special property, and every afternoon as soon as he got home from school, he came running from next door to see her. He followed her around, chatting about what he had done at school, and telling her his other little concerns – often incomprehensible to Kate.

  She checked with Kay if it was all right, and Kay said blithely, ‘Oh, Lor’, you keep him! If he’s round yours he’s not under my feet. Send him back if he gets in the way.’ So Kate gave him milk and biscuits, listened to him, and let him help her with a simple task here or there.

  She had no idea how to talk to children, so she spoke to him as she would to anyone, which was probably the right thing to do. At any rate, Dommie seemed to like it. He blossomed under her adult interest. He brought her presents – a feather he had found, an interesting stone, an earwig in a matchbox – and gave her some of his drawings, which he bestowed with lordly beneficence, explaining them to her like Brian Sewell unbending to a well-meaning but dense patron of the Tate. Often the subject was the Power Rangers – she soon knew more about them than she had ever expected or wanted to.

  ‘I’m a Red Power Ranger,’ he announced. ‘I got the helmet for Christmas.’ He said she could be one, now he had adopted her. ‘You can be Udonna,’ he said, ‘because you’ve got red hair, like her.’

  ‘Udonna? What’s she like?’ Kate asked, mixing up Polyfilla.

  ‘She’s the White Mystic Ranger,’ he said importantly. ‘She’s got a snow staff. She freezes stuff.’

  ‘That must come in handy,’ Kate said. ‘Like, leftovers and so on?’

  Dommie was patient with her. ‘Like, evil, she can freeze evil.’ He thought a moment. ‘She lives in the Root Core.’

  ‘Really? Oh well, it can’t be more uncomfortable than this place.’

  He watched her gravely as she Polyfilla-ed cracks in the plaster with a small trowel. ‘Can I do some?’ he asked, surprisingly humbly.

  ‘All right,’ she said. She found a crack at his level and a spatula and let him try. It was messy, but it kept him occupied. ‘That’s not bad,’ she said after a bit. ‘Keep it up.’

  He blushed with pleasure at her praise. ‘When I’m grown up, I’m going to marry you,’ he announced.

  ‘That’ll be nice,’ Kate said.

  ‘I’m going to be an engine driver. You can come with me when I drive it and be in the cab and do the coal.’

  ‘Coal? Oh, you mean a steam train?’

  He nodded. ‘Like Dad takes me on, at Watchet. He helps look after them.’

  ‘Yes, I remember the steam trains,’ Kate said. ‘I went on them when I was a kid, visiting my grandparents.’

  He was talking about the West Somerset Railway, which ran along the coast from Bishop’s Lydeard, through Watchet and all the way to Minehead. It was mostly run by volunteers and used restored steam locomotives and old carriages, but it was not just a plaything for hobbyists and train fanatics: it ran a regular service which was a valuable resource to people along the route wanting to get in to Minehead for a bit of shopping. It linked at Bishop’s Lydeard with the ordinary, boring railway, so they could run specials all the way from London to bring in extra funds to help keep it going.

  ‘So your dad’s one of the volunteers?’ Kate asked. She could see it, somehow – Darren was just the sort.

  ‘He’s an engineer, my dad. He makes the engines go, and then they let him ride in the cab and he took me once and it was awesome!’ His face shone with pleasure. ‘You can come too, when we go.’

  ‘I’d love that,’ Kate said. ‘I haven’t been on a steam train for years and years.’

  ‘But you might not be allowed in the cab,’ he said, anxious she should not get too excited. ‘Cos it’s only special people they let. But when I’m the driver you can all the time.’

  ‘Gor,’ said Kay when Kate relayed the conversation, ‘not choo-choos again! You another of ’em? I been once or twice but that’s my lot. Leave me cold, steam engines. Darren’s like a big kid with a train set, loves getting his hands dirty, and o’ course Dommie’s the same. Yeah, of course Darren’ll take you one day, if you want. He’d be thrilled, show you everything. He can talk about his old locos till the cows come home – getting him to stop, now that’s the trick. Fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You sure he’s no trouble to you, Dommie?’

  ‘None at all. I like having him around.’

  ‘Sooner you than me. But I s’pose it doesn’t matter too much if he makes a mess in there, does it?’

  ‘Exactly. And I think I ought to teach him some handyman skills, given that we’re going to be married when he grows up.’

  Kay grinned. ‘He said that, did he? Little monkey! G
ot a crush on you.’

  ‘It’s more than a crush,’ Kate said gravely. ‘It’s serious. I count myself an engaged woman. Only one thing bothers me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘How I’m going to feel about having you as my mother-in-law.’

  On Wednesday at lunchtime she discovered that she had completely run out of food. She had been up early and done a good bit of work, and given that her stomach was completely hollow, she thought she would treat herself to lunch in the village before driving to the supermarket to stock up. I deserve a decent meal, she thought as she went upstairs to the bathroom to clean herself up.

  She was feeling in need of company, too. This life was rather solitary. In London she had worked in a busy office and shared a flat with two others, but here if she didn’t go seeking company, she was alone all the time. Not counting her superhero Dommie, of course – but much as she enjoyed his visits, she craved some grown-up conversation for a change.

  She hadn’t yet tried out the Blue Ball, so she thought she’d give them a whirl, and since they appeared from the outside to be rather a different proposition from the Royal Oak, she gave herself an extra good scrubbing, and fetched out some slightly better clothes than her usual grotty garb. A nice mid-calf-length floral skirt in dark blue and green shades, and a sage-green top that went really well with her hair. Redheads were always told to wear green, but the wrong shade could be unforgiving and make you look gingery. At school her hair had been bright copper, tending to be frizzy, and she had hated all the remarks and the automatic name calling. But in adulthood it had darkened a bit, and she had learned to tame it – though it still didn’t do for her to stand out in the rain – so she didn’t mind it so much now. At least she had inherited her father’s dark eyes and sallow skin, so she didn’t have to endure the pale, freckled face and tendency to bright pink sunburn that was the lot of so many redheads.