my hand would cup his chilly muzzle – he’d picked up purring from the cats but was able to simultaneously sound up to four discrete trills and rattles. I’d given up on even the possibility of affection from any source, so this enthusiasm meant a lot to me. I’d long suspected that while we only ever see in other people that which we desire or fear, animals can calmly scan and judge – from aura to essence – the whole of us.
That winter they moved Jacob to the big field, building him a stone-flagged log shelter, wired and tarpaulined to keep out the rain: I wondered if there was a television in there. He’d sit on his threshold, as if fronting the essentials of life, like Thoreau at Walden. His co-tenants – three doomed, embittered geese – periodically assaulted him: he’d just stand still, unblinking, lost in the transcendental, while they pecked themselves out, to finally collapse, exhausted and choking, their beaks wadded with fluff Sometimes he’d jump the wall and, unhefted, move about the hirsels, wrecking the grazing systems, even reaching the Herdwicks beyond the hause. Mandibles clicking like a power loom, he passed over the grass like a blight, leaving not so much as a green stain. No one seemed to mind, although the other sheep avoided him – more out of respect than aversion, slipping away if he dowsed towards them. The farmer and his wife bore oblations: Waldorf salad seemed to be Jacob’s staple diet. Where would it end? Suppose they were to anthropomorphize their entire stock?
Jacob would roll his eyes sarcastically if I joined the weekend procession of red and yellow hooded figures trudging into the mist but then follow to share my sandwiches and crop around me when I stopped to read. Sometimes the farmer joined us: once he told me that the only book he remembered reading was Papillon. He said it was wonderful but that he’d only got seventy pages in: what with the weather, the seasons, the animals and their births and deaths, his world must have seemed already fully-stocked with wonders. Jacob would always walk me back to the car park, often even trotting a few hundred yards down the lane in pursuit…In the driving mirror I’d see him gradually slow, stop, then turn away in apparent desolation.
The wrestling began one afternoon as we sat by the side of the summit tarn. I was lost in the epicene, exquisite world of Firbank’s Vainglory, absently patting Jacob whenever he nudged my arm. At last, with a hurt and derisory snort, he moved away. Then there was a pause – ‘just long enough,’ as Firbank puts it, ‘for an angel to pass, flying slowly.’ What happened next I had to piece together later: at the time it felt as if I’d been struck by lightning. He must have retreated for a considerable distance, like a fast bowler pacing out his run-up, then turned and charged into my back, tumbling me, legs still crossed, for what seemed a full half-dozen revolutions. As I struggled to my feet he was dancing around like a boxer, head jerking back with an evil, equine grin of triumph. I grabbed his horns like bicycle handlebars and twisted as if I was trying to unscrew his head. Then he reared up on his back legs and pushed – I pushed back. Then he pulled and I pulled and we fell on to all fours, then rose up again. And so we proceeded, in a stately to-and-fro waltz, to circle the water, until the ridiculousness, the sheer delight of it hit me and I collapsed, helpless with laughter. Jacob was trying to laugh too but a series of explosive sneezes was the best he could do. My copy of Vainglory had been trampled, well-pulped in the process: I wondered how aesthetic Ronald would have got on against Jacob – OK, probably, better than the Hemingways and Mailers.
The next morning my face and neck were scarlet-rashed from friction with that coarse fleece, more kemp than wool. In the following months my body was mapped with bruises, their colours shifting through the spectrum, as if I was turning into a chameleon. My shins were the worst: Jacob’s pipe cleaner legs kicked like steel-capped Docs. These welts didn’t hurt – they seemed, strangely, to have taken my previous pains away. Every Sunday morning we’d wrestle. Sometimes he’d stop fighting and suddenly become dead weight, sheer mass, toppling on to me like an oak wardrobe…At others he’d abruptly break my hold, as if my fingers had been cobwebs, then amble off, cropping…But usually I’d force him down and press one horn to the ground for a three-count. I was under no illusions, though: he was letting me win – he could have decked me any time he liked. Once, as we were locked in close combat, I lost my balance and rolled him over in an inadvertent Kamikaze Krash, stunning him. I saw something like respect in his glazed, refocusing eyes before he laid me low with a butt to the breadbasket. He’d imparted an extra twist to his horns that left my spleen twanging – for the next two days I was pissing blood. I realized that all these animals bred to slaughter for our covering and food could turn and crush us in an instant. The terrible goose-strikes absorbed by Jacob’s coat would have broken my arm or leg: a well-organized herd of Friesians could devastate a town – I liked to imagine them, rampaging through the Vista View Estate.
Whenever Jacob rushed towards me – like a fist-shaped, fast-blown cloud – I felt a residual flicker of fear. Suppose this was a different sheep, an evil cousin on a family visit? Or suppose he’d forgotten me? When I dive into water I always wonder if I’ll still be able to swim and when I get into my car I fear that I won’t remember how to drive – or, rather, I fear that the water or the machinery will have forgotten that I’m supposed to be – however notionally – in charge. I didn’t drown, I didn’t crash and Jacob kept letting me win. Sometimes the farmer and his wife would watch – he’d offer tips as an ex-Cumberland wrestler, she’d suggest that we do a novelty act at Grasmere Sports – or passing tourists took photographs, leaving lines of small denomination coins on top of the field gate; but mostly we fought unobserved, under the shadows of the domed, silent mountains, like decrepit titans who’d long ago fallen asleep or died.
Our wrestling reminded me of something I’d read or heard about – maybe archetypal, out of anima mundi? – but I could find no sources in the legends of Greece or Rome, The Golden Bough or Joseph Campbell. Maybe I was a new god, making my own mythology from scratch? There was only the British Museum’s beautiful sandstone relief of Khnum of Elephantine, the ram-headed god who created first the sun, then the pantheon of other divinities, then at last, out of Nilotic silt, formed Man on a potter’s wheel. Perhaps the dust in me was raging at its creator, all my constituent atoms striving to return to their previous carefree existence as motes? Or were they embracing him in thanks, celebrating by mock contention his gift of life? Khnum: Lord Of The Two Lands, Weaver Of Light, Governor Of The House Of Sweet Life, Guide And Director Of All Men – I tried these titles out on Jacob but he either didn’t or pretended not to recognize them.
Not only had I entered a second, blissful childhood – with a best friend who was always ready to play out – but the next three years were also my golden time of bewildering sexual success and potency. Although Jacob was gelded, maybe I’d picked up some residual pheromones in our rollings? Younger girls wanted to learn about life, while older women wanted help to forget what they already knew. To teach or divert, to reveal or conceal, to disturb or console? – luckily, these two contrary roles involved my saying and doing the same things, in roughly the same order. For that second, crucial assignation I’d always suggest a nice country stroll: taking them to meet Jacob was like a rite of passage. I’d put on my paint-stained jeans, well-holed sweater and ancient Barbour jacket, crusted with lanolin and suint, impacted with boluses of mud. One girl asked me if we were going potholing, another – sniffing – if I was a fan of Charles Bukowski.
They never seemed to wonder why I’d begin shouting when we got out of the car. Jacob, on hearing my voice, would run towards us. We could feel the earth shake, hear his hooves thudding like tymps: the air seemed to shimmer, and there was a malevolent hissing sound like expelling steam – I suspected that he’d been taking lessons from the stud bulls in the next valley. Eyes bugging, swollen to twice his normal size – awful personification of rapacious nature and patriarchal lust – he’d arrow towards his victim, the maiden sacrifice…but then, with a great wordless cry, I’d throw myself upon him and we’d grapple. Curiously, none of my companions ever screamed after his initial appearance, never ran for safety or assistance, never even tried to help me with so much as a prod of a dainty foot. They’d just drape themselves, Andromeda-style, over the badger-shaped boulder to watch the show. Maybe mine was a common ploy and they were thinking oh no, here comes that old tame sheep routine
