‘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 only 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