Summer at Hope Meadows: the perfect feel-good summer read (Animal Ark Revisited Book 1)

by Lucy Daniels

Mandy stood by the door of the clinic, trying to remember if she had everything she needed. Her veterinary equipment was in the car and she had the rehabilitation plans for the farm animals in a folder. This time, she was dressed in old clothes and a sturdy pair of wellington boots. The breakfast pancakes and celebratory tea were finished. It was time to return to Lamb’s Wood Cottage to see how the animals had fared overnight.

  Mandy had a strong suspicion that two of the sheep would probably have to be euthanased, unless they had made significant progress overnight. Just in case, she grabbed a fork and spade. They would be useful if she had to dig a grave.

  Hearing the sound of a car coming up the driveway, she walked outside and round the end of the cottage. It was James and Paul. With a feeling of dismay, she walked towards them.

  ‘Hi, Mandy!’ James called as he pulled himself upright. He stretched and then walked to the other side of the car to help Paul out.

  Mandy took a deep breath. ‘I’m really sorry, James,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to see you both, but I’m busy. Remember Robbie Grimshaw?’ She looked at James. ‘Course you do. I spent most of the day at Lamb’s Wood Cottage yesterday. Robbie isn’t well and his animals were being neglected. We sorted them a bit, but I need to go back and carry on.’

  James leaned on the car, his face amused. ‘I know that, silly,’ he said. ‘That’s why we’re here. I’ve heard all about your escapades.’

  ‘From whom?’ Mandy stared at him and he grinned.

  ‘Your grandmother, actually. I rang her about one of the recipes she gave me and she told me all the gory details. How you were almost shot, and then you saved hundreds of animals single-handedly … at least that’s how she made it sound.’

  Mandy shook her head, half amazed, wholly amused. She had forgotten how efficiently Welford whispers worked.

  ‘I came over to offer my help,’ James continued.

  Paul had climbed out of the car with James’s assistance and he stood with one hand resting on the door: tall, thin and impossibly pale. Mandy felt a rush of concern. He was in no fit state for rescue work. Despite the ghostly white aspect of his face, Paul smiled and Mandy felt the usual rush of painful affection.

  ‘Hello, Mandy,’ he said. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘You too, Paul,’ she said, meaning it. ‘Why don’t you both come in? Mum and Dad are in the kitchen. We’ve just finished breakfast, but we can get the kettle back on.’ She walked slowly, trying not to notice how much James had to help his husband.

  ‘Mum?’ She opened the back door and put her head in and Emily appeared. When she saw who it was, she rushed outside.

  ‘James! Paul! How lovely to see you both.’

  The two young men looked equally pleased to see her. James reached out for a hug. ‘Hello, Emily. We came over to help Mandy,’ he explained.

  ‘How generous.’ Emily looked from James to Paul. ‘Why don’t you go up to Lamb’s Wood and help Mandy with the animals, James, while Paul stays here to keep me company? I think I overdid it yesterday and I’d love to sit down this morning.’ She looked directly at Paul. ‘You and I could sit in the garden,’ she suggested. ‘It’s already lovely and warm, and I’ve got all the Sunday papers.’

  Paul dipped his head. ‘I’d be honoured to keep you company,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Emily.’ Together they made their way to the table and chairs that stood near the climbing-rose trellis. Emily made sure Paul was sitting comfortably before vanishing indoors to fetch tea and the papers.

  Mandy looked at James. ‘All set?’ she said.

  James squared his shoulders and saluted. ‘All set,’ he replied.

  Adam stuck his head round the back door. ‘Hello, James. Have you come to help?’

  ‘I have,’ replied James with a nod.

  Adam looked at Mandy. ‘Would you like an extra pair of hands? There’s some paperwork I need to do today, but I could spare a couple of hours.’

  ‘I think we can manage,’ Mandy replied. ‘If I can get a phone signal up there, I’ll call you if we need help.’

  Adam reached out and hugged her. ‘We’ll look after Paul,’ he whispered in her ear. Straightening up, he patted James’s shoulder. ‘Have fun! Don’t let Mandy work you too hard!’

  ‘Why change the habit of a lifetime?’ joked James as he followed Mandy to her car.

  Up at Lamb’s Wood Cottage, everything seemed calm. There was a new bale of hay standing in the yard, but no sign of a tractor. Bert must have finished the morning feed and gone away again, Mandy thought.

  James gave a low whistle when he saw the overgrown garden and tumbledown yard. ‘I can’t believe anything was living there,’ he said, climbing out of the SUV and walking into the farmyard.

  Together they made their way to the sheep pen. Three of the sheep were standing, Mandy was pleased to see, but as they got closer, she could see no movement from the fourth.

  ‘She’s dead,’ James said, climbing over the fence and bending to check more closely. The old sheep was cold and stiff.

  Mandy clambered over to join him. ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, crouching down beside James. She showed him inside the ewe’s broken mouth. ‘I could see she was in a bad way,’ she admitted, ‘but I wanted to give her a chance. That one there,’ she pointed to the Swaledale, which yesterday had also been unable to stand, ‘looked almost as bad. Dad seems to have worked one of his miracles.’

  The ewe was standing beside the other sheep, staring at James with huge yellow eyes.

  ‘Let’s get this dead one out before we check the others,’ Mandy said.

  The old sheep’s body seemed light as they lifted it between them, and Mandy felt tears prick her eyes at the thought of the animal starving slowly to death, unable to eat.

  ‘We can bury her over there.’ She nodded to an earthy patch of ground at the edge of the yard. They carried the sad bundle between them and left her underneath three silver birch trees. James bent down and stroked the ewe’s ragged fleece once more.

  As Mandy collected her stethoscope and thermometer from the car, they heard another vehicle approaching. It was Jimmy Marsh’s Jeep. They stood and watched as the car drew up and Jimmy got out and came towards them.

  ‘James, this is Jimmy Marsh,’ Mandy said. ‘He’s opening an Outward Bound centre up at Welford Hall. Jimmy, this is James, the best friend anyone could have.’ If Jimmy thought this was an odd introduction, he showed no sign. To Mandy’s relief, he also seemed at ease, despite their discussion the day before.

  James was looking at Jimmy with a puzzled expression. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ He frowned, his head on one side.

  ‘I’m sometimes over in York,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I’ve been in your café a few times for tea.’

  James’s eyes widened. ‘So you have.’

  ‘Good tea, best in Yorkshire!’ Jimmy declared, and James looked pleased. ‘I can’t stay long,’ Jimmy continued. ‘I’ll be back this afternoon to check over yesterday’s repairs and see if there’s anything else that needs doing. But Graham said he needs the crush back as soon as possible. Will you be using it this morning?’

  ‘We’ll need to check over the cows I treated yesterday,’ Mandy replied. ‘We’ll get that done first.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  The new cattle shed could not have been more different from the distressing barn where the animals had been yesterday, Mandy thought as the three of them looked over Jimmy’s hastily constructed fence. Instead of sinking into dung, the cows were standing on clean straw. Their legs had dried out and they looked calm, chewing cud, moving around and sniffing at the hay in the manger.

  Working together, James and Jimmy set up the crush in a corner of the byre. It would be much easier to catch the cows if they didn’t have to take them outside the pen.

  ‘There are three we definitely need to look at,’ said Mandy. ‘That one there,’ she pointed at the Hereford, ‘had badly overgrown feet. Dad trimmed them, but there’s a bandage on her
left hind which we’ll need to change. That one,’ she nodded at one of the Angus cattle, ‘she had mastitis … an infection in her udder,’ she explained when she saw Jimmy raise his eyebrows. ‘We’ll need to milk out that teat as best we can and she’ll need antibiotics. And that one,’ she pointed to the wild Galloway, ‘… that one I stitched up yesterday.’ She could see the sutures from a distance. The wound looked good, she thought, but if she could get a closer view, it would be much better. ‘Other than that,’ Mandy said, ‘I thought it would be useful to take blood samples to check for mineral deficiencies, but it’d be better to do that tomorrow. Otherwise the samples will just sit overnight until the post office is open.’

  Although the cows were not as anxious as they had been yesterday, it still took plenty of chasing to get them into the race. Mandy had plenty of experience driving cows but Jimmy and James were less expert. Several times they stood panting and laughing as the beasts crashed past them in the opposite direction.

  ‘They can tell I’m a novice, can’t they?’ Jimmy bent over to catch his breath.

  ‘They sure can.’ Mandy couldn’t help laughing. ‘One more try!’ she said. Jimmy straightened up as Mandy moved behind the cows and sent them on another circuit.

  ‘Well, that’s okay then,’ James said, forty minutes later as they let the last of the cows out of the crate. The stitched wound looked clean, the foot under the bandage was less swollen than yesterday and the udder, after several minutes of milking, was soft and pain free. ‘You’re some vet,’ he said.

  ‘You’re some friend.’ Mandy patted him on the shoulder with a smile. ‘And thanks very much for your help,’ she said to Jimmy.

  ‘I’ve enjoyed it.’ He looked from Mandy to James and back again. ‘I’d better get on though. Graham will be wondering where I’ve got to.’ Between them, they manoeuvred the crate out of the cattle pen, rigged it for transportation and attached it to the tow-bar of the Jeep. Mandy hoped it would stay put along the rutted track.

  Once Jimmy had ground his way over the scarred mud, the crush bouncing behind his Jeep, James looked at Mandy. ‘He seems nice,’ he commented.

  ‘He did so much yesterday,’ Mandy admitted. ‘I didn’t take to him the first time we met, but yesterday he surprised me. He pulled people in to help, I wouldn’t even have considered.’

  ‘Really?’ James was looking at her, an amused look on his face. ‘I thought you weren’t afraid to ask anyone, if there was an animal’s wellbeing at stake.’

  ‘Would you have asked Sam Western for help?’ Mandy raised her eyebrows and gave an exaggerated shrug.

  James looked amazed. ‘Did Jimmy do that?’

  ‘Not only did he ask, he succeeded. It was Sam who sent the straw.’

  James whistled, then grinned. ‘Sounds like a good man to have around. I’ll give him his tea for free, next time he comes to the café.’

  Mandy smiled, then got back to business. ‘Let’s assess the other sheep,’ she said, ‘and then we can look at the horse. The farrier is coming this afternoon to the Shire. His hooves are shocking.’

  She was pleased to find the ewe’s temperature was normal. According to her dad, it had been sky high yesterday. ‘Her lungs are clear,’ Mandy announced as she slung her stethoscope back round her neck. ‘We’ll give her another shot of antibiotic and see how she looks tomorrow, but I think she’s going to make it.’

  The Shire horse was looking much more comfortable in his deep bed of straw. Mandy got James to lead him around. She laughed when the old gelding gave a hearty lick to the back of James’s head, causing him to yell.

  ‘Urgh!’ he said, stepping away from the horse’s head and glaring. The gelding just reached out and nuzzled in James’s pocket, looking for something to eat.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ James said to him. ‘I should have brought you a carrot.’ The horse rested his huge head against James’s shoulder as if in agreement. James stretched up and rubbed beneath his forelock. ‘You’re a sweetheart, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m going to give him more pain relief,’ Mandy decided. ‘Hopefully once the farrier has been, he’ll be better, but he still looks a bit sore.’ She fetched the injection from the car and James steadied the mighty head as she pressed her thumb into the jugular furrow and raised the vein.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said a moment later. ‘I think he likes you,’ she added as the gelding rubbed his head on James yet again, knocking him two feet to the left.

  ‘Either that, or he has a very itchy ear,’ replied James, but he was smiling.

  ‘Dad suggested I should have a look in his mouth,’ Mandy said. Holding a torch between her teeth, standing close beside the Shire and facing in the same direction as him, she put one hand over the Shire’s nose and with the other, pushed her hand into the side of his mouth. Taking hold of his tongue, she turned it so it was pointing upwards and her fist was upright, holding his mouth open. Then she grabbed the torch and shone it onto the large molars at the back of his mouth.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about getting bitten?’ James asked.

  Mandy shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘There’s a gap here.’ She showed James the space between the incisors at the front and the molars further back. ‘So long as my hand is in that opening and I have his tongue, he won’t bite me.’ She let go of the tongue and pulled her hand out, wiping it on her jeans as the horse moved his head to snuffle in her ear. ‘His teeth look fine,’ she said. ‘As worn as I’d expect for a horse his age, but nothing that needs treatment.’ With a last rub of his neck, they left the horse standing with his nose in the hayrack.

  ‘We’d better go and bury the poor old ewe,’ Mandy sighed, and they trudged out of the yard to the birch copse.

  ‘A nice place to be buried,’ James commented, looking around.

  Mandy couldn’t help thinking of Paul. She wondered if James was doing the same. Holding out the spade, she pushed the fork hard at the ground and, when the tip was embedded, put her foot in place to drive it further. She felt as if she was forcing away her gloomy thoughts. They were both hot and sweaty by the time the hole was deep enough to ensure that foxes wouldn’t come and dig the sheep back up. A few minutes later, they had lowered the body into the ground and filled in the hole. Despite the sadness of the task, it felt like they had done the best they could.

  ‘We should go back to Animal Ark,’ Mandy said, looking at her watch. ‘Mum will be making lunch.’ They carried the tools over to her car and put them in the boot. ‘I have to be back here by two for the farrier,’ Mandy said. She waited to see if James would say that he would come with her, but he didn’t reply.

  Back at Animal Ark, the garden was deserted. Kicking off their wellies, James and Mandy washed their hands at the kitchen sink. Mandy wondered why Emily wasn’t there preparing food, but when they went through to the sitting room, the reason was clear. In the space of the morning, Paul seemed to have deteriorated. Mandy was shocked by the shadows under his eyes and the way his breathing seemed to have quickened. Something in her mum’s glance told her that Emily was worried too. Leaving James alone with Paul for a second, Emily and Mandy went through to the kitchen.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Mandy whispered.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Her mother’s green eyes were distressed. ‘He seems so tired and breathless. I brought him indoors so he could have a more comfortable seat, but it didn’t seem to make a difference.’

  ‘Did he say anything about how he’s feeling?’ Mandy asked.

  Emily shook her head. ‘He didn’t. And I didn’t like to ask.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. ‘Poor Paul, poor James,’ she said.

  The door opened, and James came in supporting Paul on his arm. ‘I think we’re going to call it a day,’ he said. ‘Thanks for this morning, Mandy.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. She walked over and hugged him, then turned to hug Paul as well. It was frightening to feel his skeletal body under the warm clothes he was wearing.
‘I’ll come over and see you both as soon as I get a chance.’

  ‘Even if you don’t get a chance, we’ll come and see you.’ Paul seemed to have rallied slightly. His face didn’t look quite so deathly white. ‘I hear you liked the name Hope Meadows.’ His face seemed all teeth as he grinned. ‘Maurice sent his regards,’ he said. ‘He enjoyed his visit. And I,’ he paused then continued, ‘…want to help some more, so I’m going to start doing some research into your application for charitable status.’ Mandy stared at him. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said. ‘I can do it all from the comfort of my chair. The Internet is a wonderful source of information, and failing that, there’s the telephone.’

  Mandy hugged him again. ‘You’re too good to me,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you again soon, I promise.’

  ‘We’ll be back over before you know it,’ James said. He sounded as if this was the most ordinary goodbye in the world, and suddenly Mandy wanted to howl. James gave his head a tiny, fierce shake and Mandy pulled herself together.

  ‘Drive safely,’ she said.

  Once they had driven off, Mandy made some sandwiches. Adam was out on a call and her mum seemed tired again. No wonder, Mandy thought. She’d had the easiest morning by far, working at Lamb’s Wood with James. She made the sandwiches carefully, filling them with egg and cress, which she knew Emily liked. She carried them through on a tray and they ate in the sitting room.

  ‘I’m going to have to head back to Lamb’s Wood,’ Mandy said as the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece approached quarter to. ‘The farrier’s coming for the Shire at two.’

  Emily looked up at her. ‘Thanks for lunch,’ she said. ‘That was lovely. Will you be okay going up there on your own?’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Other than trimming the horse’s feet, I don’t think there’s much else to do until the evening feed.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Mandy looked at her mum. There was something she had been wondering about throughout lunchtime. She glanced at the clock again. She had a few minutes before she needed to leave. ‘Mum, is it okay if I ask you something?’