by Daisy Waugh
‘Which one was yours, Charlie?’
He looked up slowly, with a faint smile of welcome. ‘This one,’ he said, nodding at his feet. ‘Jasonette. At least, I wanted to call her Jason. But Georgie said…you know…Jason was a boy’s name…’ He fell silent.
‘Jasonette…’ Jo smiled. ‘You know you should probably get back out there, Charlie,’ she added gently. ‘They’ll be wondering where you are.’
‘I know.’ He didn’t move. ‘I just—it sounds ridiculous, but I don’t much want to be there when they kill…I should never have told them about the bloody goat.’
‘You had to. He’s been living with the other animals. If they were infected—’
‘Which they bloody well aren’t.’
‘Yes, but for all you knew he was infected, too.’
‘He could have been down here now…’
Jo went to sit on the bale beside him. She put an arm around him and they sat together for several minutes without speaking, watching as the animals’ eyelids grew heavy. Charlie was lost in his grieving, and Jo could do nothing for him except sit with him and wait. She had never known Charlie’s sister but he spoke about her so often she sometimes forgot they’d never actually met. Strong-minded, bold, friendly and incredibly hearty, Georgina Maxwell McDonald would have been the sort of girl Jo disliked on sight not so long ago. Now, living in a house with three men, and already far less troubled than she used to be by what passed for urban hip, Jo wished that she and Georgina could have been friends. Sometimes (which she kept to herself because she knew it was absurd) Jo even found herself missing her. At that moment, sitting beside Georgina’s mourning twin and feeling hopelessly inept, hopelessly impotent, Jo didn’t care how absurd it seemed. She missed her sister-in-law, or the sister-in-law she imagined, more than she had ever missed anyone, alive or dead.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she burst out. ‘It must be so awful for you. I wish I could…’ and to her dismay she started crying.
‘Hey,’ he said, laughing slightly and giving her shoulders a squeeze. ‘Hey…’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Oh, I know you are, Jo…thank you…’
And they fell silent again, neither noticed for how long. Suddenly Grey (whose natural impatience had been kept in admirable check until then) yanked them rudely back to the moment.
‘Jesus fuckin’ hell, I’m freezin’ my arse off out here! Are they not asleep yet? I can’t hear a soddin’ sound!’
The cows slept all that afternoon and all night and most of the following morning. By the time they started getting restless again it was lunchtime and most of the work was already done. But there were still half a dozen Ministry men hanging around and the pyre was yet to be lit. Charlie, Grey and Jo met up in the cellar to decide what they should do next. They had run out of sleeping pills and the cows had rejected the litre of vodka mixed with milk and golden syrup. Jo produced a small bottle of Rescue Remedy and was arguing about how to get the drops onto the animals’ tongues when Jasonette’s right horn sent the bottle flying.
‘Well, fuck that,’ said Grey. ‘That’s fucked that then, hasn’t it?’ He made the animals jump.
‘Will you stop shouting,’ snapped Charlie.
‘Charlie, calm down. He’s only trying to help.’
‘Well. He’s not succeeding. He’s scaring the girls.’
‘Och, sod off.’
‘Yeah, Charlie,’ said Jo. ‘Actually I second that.’
The humans were growing as tetchy as the animals, and the animals were growing tetchier and noisier with every minute. Nobody noticed the General until he was standing right beside them.
‘EXCUSE ME!’ They all jumped. ‘Sorry to butt in,’ he said dryly, ‘but we may have a small problem. The fellow from Trading Standards has just called. He’s been in touch with the BCMS, whatever that may be. Or the BC something else. Anyway he seems to think there may be a couple of beasts up here which we haven’t accounted for…I told him it was nonsense, of course, but I’m afraid he’s like a dog with a bone. He’s on his way over.’
When he arrived the four inhabitants of Fiddleford were standing in a line at the end of the drive waiting for him. The plan, in as much as they’d had time to form one, was first and foremost to keep him away from the house. It was decided that the General, as soon as things looked dangerous, would discombobulate by feigning some sort of health attack; Jo, who didn’t like long walks, would rush him into the house and then Charlie and Grey, with an air of repressed panic and polite martyrdom, would insist on pressing on with the business, leading him on a circuitous route to the furthest end of the estate. When the man was looking exhausted, blue with cold, faint with boredom and regret at ever having returned to Fiddleford, they would direct his attention to a mound, a little hillock, a snow drift, anything which looked appropriate, and tell him they thought (though they couldn’t be certain what with the snow, and after so much time had passed) it was the place where the cows had been buried eleven years earlier.
It was a ludicrous plan and it didn’t work. Obviously. Because the first thing the man wanted to do, after expressing wholly unfelt regret for disturbing them once again, was to go to the lavatory.
‘Lav’s blocked,’ said the General, squaring his shoulders, refusing to break the line. ‘Sorry about that. Pipes are frozen. Have to go behind a tree…I think—Charlie, didn’t you bring a trowel with you, just in case the fellow came up with something like this?’
‘Certainly did,’ said Charlie, producing one from his back pocket.
‘Oh goodness, not to worry.’ Mr Coleridge gazed longingly between their heads at the handsome building behind them. ‘Isn’t there, perhaps, a functioning toilet I could use upstairs?’
‘No toilets,’ said Charlie. ‘Sorry.’
‘Ah well, never mind. I shall just have to store it up…’ He rubbed his soft white hands together and shivered. ‘Perhaps a cup of tea then? I won’t take up too much of your time. It’s just a simple matter to clear up, as you know. I’m sure it’s nothing. A minor oversight.’
‘Tea’s run out,’ said Jo. ‘Anyway it’s a diuretic. It’ll make you worse. Why don’t you let Charlie and Grey quickly take you off to where the poor old cows are buried? That way we won’t be wasting your time – and goodness knows you must be busy. And then if you get caught short along the way—’
Coleridge frowned. He didn’t like to be outside for any longer than he needed to be and he had absolutely no intention of spending his afternoon trudging through the snow in search of illegally buried animals. ‘This probably isn’t the time to mention it,’ he said, ‘and of course I realise the Act doesn’t, strictly speaking, apply to me. But you should be aware that you are in fact legally obligated to provide workers with a functioning toilet as well, of course, as the usual facilities for making hot beverages. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act. 1974. I only mention it because I wonder how the others are managing. Or perhaps you have provided alternative arrangements…’
Jo opened her mouth to say something appropriately soothing, but the General didn’t give her a chance to speak. He had yet to learn what a powerfully efficient ally he had in his annoying new daughter-in-law, so at the mention of unfulfilled legal obligations, he panicked.
‘Aaarrrggh!’ he cried, clutching his heart melodramatically and staggering forwards.
Immediately and with surprising elegance, Mr Coleridge lunged to catch him.
‘Quickly!’ he shouted, gripping the General’s shoulders. ‘Don’t just stand there! Let’s get him inside the house!’
The General struggled ineffectively for escape, but the man from Trading Standards was not to be put off. Transferring the General into one tight arm, he used the other to loosen his patient’s tie.
‘Get your hands off me, you filthy bugger!’ shouted the General. ‘…Help! Someone!…Charlie! Get this bugger off me!’
Mr Coleridge’s own father-in-law had died from a heart attack right in front of him on
ly two years earlier, and it had been horrible. Whatever the General chose to call him he would do everything he could not to repeat the experience. Amid loud protestations from all four of them, Mr Coleridge lifted the General off his feet and carried him back into the house. Short of knocking the man unconscious, which was more or less out of the question, there wasn’t much they could do to stop him.
‘He needs,’ puffed the lilac hero, after he’d gently laid the General onto the drawing-room sofa, ‘a cup of hot, sweet tea. Don’t you think?’
‘I’m perfectly bloody well all right,’ spluttered the General, puce with rage. ‘Bit of wind, that’s all. And if you touch me again, you officious little bugger, I’ll have you up for assault. Is that clear?’
Lilac Man nodded phlegmatically. ‘I tell you what, though,’ he looked playfully across to Jo, ‘I could use a nice cup of tea myself!’
Just then, from the back of the house, came the unmistakable rumble they had all been dreading. Charlie, Jo, Grey and the General froze. They looked across at Coleridge in trepidation. They waited…
‘Mrs—Maxwell McDonald?’ wheedled Coleridge doggedly. ‘Or failing that a coffee would be super.’
The rumble continued. Was he deaf?
‘Smiley,’ said Jo quickly. ‘The name is still Smiley. In fact. And of course you could have tea, if we had any. But we don’t.’ She paused. The cows were in full voice now, and in unison. It seemed to her that they were getting louder every second. ‘But why are you asking me as opposed to anyone else? We’re all as capable of making cups of tea as each other. Or we would be. If there was any tea. Which as I say there isn’t…Isn’t that right, Charlie?’
‘Mmm? Oh, absolutely. The thing about tea…’
Slowly, at last, the man from Trading Standards held up a finger and frowned. ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘What’s…that…?’
Charlie clapped his hands together and stood up. ‘So,’ he shouted. ‘Who has sugar? Dad, I know you do. I know you do, Grey. You don’t, do you, Jo. And I don’t either. So the single remaining mystery, on the sugar front, is you, Mr Coleridge. Mr Coleridge, are you a sugar man?’
‘Shhh!’
‘Do you have sugar, Mr Coleridge?’
‘Shhh! Please. Be quiet—’ Still with one finger aloft, he headed into the hall. Charlie followed him.
‘I hate to be rude,’ said Charlie, padding unhappily after him, ‘but the back of the house really is out of bounds. I thought I explained. We can’t just have people trespassing…Mr Coleridge? Please! Where do you think you’re going?’
Mr Coleridge broke into a jog. As Jo had done two nights previously, he followed the by now thunderous noise through the back hall, past the boot room to the cellar door, where he paused and turned victoriously towards Charlie.
‘I have reason to believe—’ he said smugly.
‘What? Reason to believe what?’ snapped Charlie. The cows lowed again, more quietly this time, as if they were settling down at last, now that it was too late, and Charlie looked at him with hopeless desperation. ‘Mr Coleridge,’ he said quietly. ‘Please. Why are you doing this?’
‘For reasons of health and safety—’
‘But they’re in quarantine down there! They couldn’t be healthier or safer!’
‘We’re not talking about the health and safety of your animals, Mr Maxwell McDonald. We’re talking about the health and safety of the community at large. For which, at this moment in time, I am currently responsible.’
‘They’ve had no contact with any livestock for over twenty years, Mr Coleridge. And they’re in quarantine. Please…What harm can they do down there? Can’t we at least test them? Can’t we test them first? And if they’re carrying the disease—Which they aren’t…’
‘My job, as you know, is simply to make a note of all livestock on the premises, and that is what I have come here to do—’
‘But what harm are they doing? What harm can they possibly do?’
‘For reasons of health and safety—’
‘This has nothing to do with health and safety! You know as well as I do the cows are no threat to anyone down there.’
‘For reasons of health and safety,’ he said steadfastly, ‘I must ask you to open that door.’
‘Not me,’ said Charlie. ‘Open it yourself. But watch out. They’ve been known to attack strangers.’
Coleridge hesitated for a second. Highland cows are always gentle, and Charlie’s were the most gentle of all. But Coleridge didn’t know that. He knew only that they were hefty, and horned and very hairy…He considered retreating to fetch reinforcements, but then they might hide the cows somewhere else, somewhere he might never find them. He couldn’t risk it. Plus he had the law on his side, and a delicious, intoxicating sense of his own efficiency. Mr Coleridge garnered all his courage, thought briefly of whom he might sue should anything go wrong, took the few steps to the cellar door and opened it.
The animals had somehow managed to break out of their makeshift stable at the end of the corridor and were standing in the middle of the main room, surrounded by broken bottles and in a large pool of what at first glance looked like blood but was in fact some of the General’s best wine. They greeted Coleridge with a long, low wail of pitiful bewilderment.
Coleridge quickly summoned the vets, the slaughtermen and two of the pyre operators who could be spared, now that the fire was lit. They all looked on (or stood guard) while Charlie coaxed the animals up the cellar stairs again.
‘I am sorry,’ said Mr Coleridge as they passed him – and in his own humdrum way he meant it. ‘I’m sure you will understand, once the heat of the moment is passed, so to speak. I’m only doing my job. Please don’t run away with the impression that I’m enjoying this.’
Charlie shrugged. ‘At least if you were enjoying it,’ he said, ‘there would be some point to the exercise.’
He led them through the back yard, across the yard beyond, to the steep path which led to the bottom field. Grey, the General and Jo walked silently beside him, and, like a gaggle of official mourners, the law enforcers followed close behind. It was dark by then, and their slow journey was lit by the snow’s reflection of the flames from the distant pyre. As the three old friends shuffled along, the one leading the others to their execution, the animals kept up their mournful wails of protest, and Charlie chattered to them incessantly. They were his childhood companions, his link with the past. In their gentle, affectionate souls he felt that a small part of his mother and his sister were living yet, and he felt that his mother and sister were watching him on this long slow walk, and that with every step he took, he was forsaking them.
The cows seemed to have no sense of what was about to befall them until they came to the point, over the brow of a small upward slope, where for the first time the smell of roasting flesh hit their nostrils, and the full, loathsome scale of the burning pyre and the great pile of carcasses which lay illuminated at its base became clear for all to see.
After that the cows wouldn’t move. They were transfixed. Nothing Charlie, or Grey or Jo or the General, or the pyre builders, or the slaughtermen, or the vets said or did could make them take another step. After a while Mr Daniels, the burly senior slaughterman, made a point of looking at his watch. ‘We can’t stand about ’ere fur ever,’ he said. ‘We shall have to kill ’em as they stand.’
‘No,’ said Charlie.
‘But they ain’t movin’ nowhere, Mr Maxwell McDonald. We shall be ’ere all night.’
‘You’re not killing them here,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re not. They need…’ He cast around for something, anything, to delay the moment. ‘They need to be tranquillised first.’
‘With respect,’ said one of the vets, ‘you’re only prolonging the process. They don’t need to be transquillised. As you can see they’re quite calm. They need—’
‘Don’t tell me what they need,’ said Charlie. ‘Don’t fucking tell me what they need.’ He rested his head on Jasonette’s shoulders and all the hu
mans fell silent, looking at him.
Mr Daniels nodded at his assistant and stepped forward, his bolt gun at the ready. The two of them walked around the side of the animals and came to a halt at their heads.
‘Sedate them,’ barked the General suddenly. ‘Why don’t you sedate them?’ Something in his voice made Jo look across at him. There were tears rolling down his face.
‘The longer we stand here,’ the senior vet tried his best to sound as patient as he wished he could feel, after so much killing, ‘the more alarmed they’re going to become. Go on, Mr Daniels. Please. Continue. Get it done.’
Mr Daniels held up his gun and Jasonette stood there, waiting, offering him her large furry temple. ‘We’ll be doin’ ’em a favour, you know,’ he muttered disapprovingly. ‘Old beasts like this. They’re better off dead.’
Charlie leapt at him. Before he had time to think, before anyone had time to stop him. Charlie had never in his adult life hit a single soul, but there was a crack as his fist struck the slaughterman’s jaw. Mr Daniels lurched backwards, blinked in surprise, and immediately lurched forwards again to wreak his revenge. And then Jo, until that point strangely anaesthetised by the horror, sprung suddenly to life. Head down and yelling, she lunged for Mr Daniels’ burly chest.
‘No!’ cried Charlie, trying to catch her before she got hurt. ‘No, Jo, don’t!’
Daniels looked from one to the other in confusion. It distracted him for a second, long enough for Grey, 6′4″, fearless and frightening without even trying to be, to step up between them.
‘Leave it,’ he snarled, glowering down at Daniels. ‘Leave it.’
They eyeballed each other. Daniels hesitated. ‘They’re only a couple of fuckin’ cows,’ he said, retreating with a surly shuffle. And with that, and with Charlie and Jo both restrained by the pyre builders, and the animals standing alone, helpless but not entirely oblivious, he took his gun, took aim and fired.