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 humans 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.
Bang.
Bang.
They were almost dead. The assistant slaughterer bent over the bodies and inserted his serrated rod into the bullet holes, twisted. With a final jerk, a final grunting, hiccupping moan, Caroline and Jasonette departed.
‘As a gesture of goodwill,’ Mr Coleridge said, ‘I shan’t be making a detailed report about the incidents surrounding this case. Suffice to say, Mr Maxwell McDonald, that all livestock on the Fiddleford estate has now been duly recorded.’
FIRE SIGNS
Since 24 December 1998 the older, text-only ‘fire exit’ signs should have been supplemented or replaced with pictogram signs. Fire safety signs complying with BS 5499 Part 1:1990 already contain a pictogram and do not need changing.
Safety
