LITMIR.BIZ

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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 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

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