by Limey Lady
‘My binging history is probably very similar to yours, so I’d hardly be telling you anything new. But I’m prepared to bet you don’t have many escaped bulls on your résumé.’
‘You are correct. Please proceed.’
Chapter Eight
‘Okay,’ Heather began. ‘Brutus was the only bull on the farm. And he was a whopper, weighing in well over a ton. He looked magnificent but had an awful temper, even for a bull. He was famous for it. Just about everyone was afraid of him. There was no need to put a notice up in his field. Whether you had been told about him or not, one glance was enough.’
She chuckled. ‘My dad wasn’t afraid of him, because he was the farmer. And some of the local kids saw him as a challenge. The dare was to run across the corner of his field, covering as big a diagonal as possible. We put chalk marks on the wall to show the best efforts.’
‘We?’ said Vic. ‘Does that mean you were involved in such a rash, foolhardy challenge?’
‘Of course I was. I invented it. And I always had to beat anyone who broke the record . . . which I still hold to this day, incidentally.’
‘Did Brutus ever get you?’
‘No, but I had a couple of near misses. And he “assisted” some of the other kids over the wall with his horns.’
‘He does sound bad tempered.’
‘He was. And I could never work out why. Back then I was only a slip of a lass, but I could see that he had it good. No real work to do, just a few dozen cows to take care of. The way I saw it, he lived life like a sultan with an enormous harem.’
‘How old are you in this tale?’
‘I was eleven and three-quarters.’
‘So you were still innocent, then.’
‘Still with years and years of virginity left,’ Heather agreed. ‘Although I already knew only too well what beasts did to procreate. I saw them at it every day. Anyway, it happened one Monday, during the summer holidays. I’d been up on the moors, rabbiting . . .’
‘Rabbiting?’
‘That means shooting rabbits. But only for the pot . . . I wasn’t sadistic or anything. I only took what we needed.’
‘Ye gods, girl,’ Vic rolled her eyes, ‘is there no end to your surprises?’
‘I can usually produce something when the occasion demands. Anyhow, I was on my way home when I saw that the gate was open and Brutus was gone. I knew he couldn’t be with Dad because it was market day. And nobody else could do anything with Brutus. When I got a bit closer I realized exactly what had happened. The farm lads had been in to feed him and hadn’t shut up properly behind them.’
‘Couldn’t it have been the local kids fooling around?’
‘No. They wouldn’t do that. Besides, Brutus knew them and had a grudge. They couldn’t have opened the gate and got away fast enough.’
‘Okay. Please continue.’
‘I ran back to the farmhouse to find out they already knew. My mum had had a phone call to tell her that Brutus was stampeding through the village. She was busy berating the farm lads. There were only two of them and they were blaming each other. Mum had obviously heard enough. She told the three of us to go fetch Brutus while she skinned my rabbits.’ Heather laughed heartily. ‘Mum has always been so unflappable.
‘Well, it was quite an adventure at first. We went down the hill . . .’ she broke off. ‘Do you know much about Micklethwaite?’
‘I know where it is on a map,’ said Vic, ‘but I’ve never been.’
‘It’s like a long, uphill lane, with farms grouped at both ends and a village in the middle, and with lots of new houses going up these days. Back then there weren’t so many. Our farm was up the steepest bit of hill. When we got to the hairpin bend we could see a police car blocking the road below us. That was when it started to feel more like an emergency.’
Miss Efficiency was still lying under Heather, staring up at her, seemingly rapt.
‘There were two policemen,’ Heather said, seeing them clearly in her mind’s eye. ‘They’d stopped Old Jack and he was out of his Landy, wanting to know what was going on. Old Jack owned the next-but-one farm to us and he was a bit hard to understand. Normally he let Young Jack do the talking to townies, but Young Jack wasn’t about on that particular day. He must have been back at the farm with Baby Jack.’
No way could Vic resist. ‘Baby Jack?’ she echoed.
‘Old Jack was the farmer. Even though he wasn’t doing much farming anymore, he was still the main man. Baby Jack was his grandson. He must have been about thirty and did most of the heavy work for his dad, Young Jack, who’d have been pushing sixty by then.’
‘I’m glad I asked.’
‘Well, the policemen were telling Old Jack that a bull was running riot in the village; chasing cars and people; knocking down walls; tearing up the village green. They were closing the road from this end while their colleagues closed it down by the canal bridge.’
Heather laughed again. ‘I wasn’t very impressed with their blockade. The road was narrow but Brutus would have barged past their car as if it wasn’t there. They’d put up some of that blue and white tape too. Obviously he was going to respect that!
‘Then one of them asked Old Jack if he had a gun in his Landy.
‘”Nay lad,” he said, “est thar asking me to shoot another man’s beast? Shame on thee! Ar would nay shoot another man’s beast if Ar were t’last man standing.”
‘I don’t think they could exactly translate that, but they got the gist. Ignoring me as a useless little girl, one of them started questioning my farm lads while the other got his radio out.
‘”Ar’ll tell thee what to do,” Old Jack said, although they were ignoring him as well by then. “Ye two get thissens down there and tether him. Ar’d do it missen, if Ar wa’n’t eighty-three.”
‘The one on the radio was asking for armed support and that did it for me. I ducked under their tape and hurried round the corner. They never even saw me go.’
*****
Heather pictured the scene again, expecting dark clouds to slip across the sun.
‘I can’t tell you how creepy it was,’ she said. ‘Micklethwaite Lane is usually quiet but that afternoon it was like a graveyard. I suppose I’d been expecting to see chaos and hear bulls bellowing and women screaming. But it was deserted . . . and deathly silent.
‘I reached a turning to a footpath that takes you through the fields and over the beck to East Morton. But one of the policemen had mentioned the village green, and that was farther down the lane, so I kept going. By then I was so emotional I was crying.
‘And talk about angry! I was surrounded by incompetent males. Two farm lads who couldn’t begin to latch a gate; a bull who didn’t know when he was onto a good thing; two policemen whose answer to a simple problem was “armed support”. The only man who had a clue was Old Jack, and nobody was even listening to him.’
She sniffled, surprisingly close to tears as the memories rushed back.
‘I was worried too,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t find out how badly we were struggling for another year and a bit. Eleven and three-quarter-year-olds can’t really understand farming finances, can they? Deep down, I could tell things were changing, though, and for the worse. We used to have six good farm lads; but that summer we only had two feeble ones. Dad’s Landy was even more knackered than Old Jack’s. Some of the milking equipment kept going on the blink. There were lots of little things like that. And now one of my dad’s biggest assets was going to get shot. I kept expecting helicopter gunships to arrive and wipe him out.’
Vic’s eyes seemed wider and browner than ever. ‘Was Brutus very valuable?’
‘He was there to keep the cows happy, so he was worth more than his weight in burgers. I suppose I didn’t particularly like him, but I didn’t want his girlfriends disappointed. And I definitely didn’t want him to cause thousands and thousands of pounds of damage and upset the villagers . . . No more than he had done already, anyway. And besides . . .’
; ‘Besides,’ Vic prompted.
Heather wiped away a solitary tear. ‘Besides, he was Dad’s beast. Dad might have wanted to shoot him for running riot. I wasn’t going to let anyone beat him to it.’
Vic reached up and stroked Heather’s cheek. Hardly noticing, Heather went on with the tale.
‘So I was walking down this creepy lane, angry and very concerned. There were a few parked cars and I was checking them as I passed, thanking God that none of them had been crunched. Then this voice suddenly shouted, “BEWARE OF THE BULL!!”
‘Well, I must have jumped ten feet into the air. When I landed I looked round in panic, expecting a road full of Pamplona’s finest coming at me, not just Brutus. But there wasn’t anything.
‘It took a moment to work out the voice was coming from an upstairs window, in one of the relatively new houses off to my left. It was this woman, leaning halfway out.
‘”BEWARE OF THE BULL!!” she yelled again.
‘”I am beware of the bull!” I yelled back. “It’s my flipping bull! Where is he?”
‘”He’s berserk,” the woman wailed. “Beware! Oh beware!”
‘Nowadays I believe she was drunk or stoned. At the time I thought she’d cracked up and that it was all Brutus’s fault. I asked where he was again and she said something about running through a wall.
That made me look farther downhill; and I saw what she meant.’
Heather shook her head. ‘Somehow Brutus had jumped out of the lane, over a high wall and onto an enormous lawn. I could see where he’d landed; it was all churned up. He hadn’t jumped back though. Oh no. He’d charged straight through.’
‘I’m thinking Tom and Jerry here,’ said Vic, still stroking Heather’s cheek. ‘You know: an outline of a bull in the brickwork.’
‘It probably was like that for an instant, when it actually happened. But it was a proper dry stone wall. By the time I got there twenty yards of it was heaped in the lane. I was shaking when I went to inspect the damage, expecting to find pieces of broken horn and gallons of blood. But Brutus hadn’t left much of a sign . . . apart from a pile of steaming manure on a clear patch of tarmac.’
‘Bullshit?’
‘It was Brutus’s statement, not mine.’
‘Never mind whose statement. This is the best story I’ve ever heard.’
‘Is it really?’
‘Yes, it sincerely is. Please go on.’
‘I couldn’t have left the roadblock much more than five minutes earlier, but I was still expecting those gunships at any second; gunships or dozens and dozens of snipers scurrying into position. I found out later that the policeman got a flea in his ear when he’d asked for armed support. His sergeant told him to forget Health and Safety and go rescue the bull, before it hurt itself.
‘I didn’t know that right then, though. I was getting more and more desperate with every step.’
‘I’m starting to panic myself,’ said Vic. ‘Did you get there first?’
‘I carried on until I got to the green. That was churned up worse than the lawn. There were benches on it; wooden ones with arms and backs, like you get in the park. One had been knocked over. The other was reduced to matchsticks. And there was a boy up a tree.’
‘A boy . . .’
‘Yes; a younger one from school. He was shouting “BEWARE!” too, but not as politely as that woman in the window.
‘”Come on down,” I told him. “I’ll catch you.”
‘”But the bull,” he said. “It’s behind you.
*****
Heather allowed herself a dramatic pause before continuing.
‘My neck must have creaked like a rusty hinge as I had a look. Daniel was right. Brutus really was behind me. Luckily, he was quite a way off and not taking much notice.’
‘Phew,’ said Vic. ‘Narrow escape.’
‘Escape didn’t come into it.’
‘Go on, tell me more.’
‘What I’m calling “the green” has houses on three sides of it; very old, well-established houses. It’s the classiest part of the village. One of them had the most wonderful flowerbeds and hanging baskets, full of mauves and yellows . . . every nice colour under the sun. Brutus must have decided it was lunchtime. He was really pigging out on the mauve ones.
‘I told Daniel to stay in his tree and went towards Brutus. I’ve got to be honest, by then I wasn’t angry anymore. I was a little cautious. And my worries had changed. All I could think of was how Brutus hated the kids who dashed across his field more than anything . . . and how I was the one who dashed across it the most.
‘”Brutus,” I said, trying to sound delighted to see him. “What are you doing here?”
‘He stopped munching and glared at me. No doubt about it. He knew exactly who I was.
‘”Come on,” I persisted. “Let’s go home to the farm.”
‘I had got close to him by then. He’d had his head in one of the baskets but he left that swinging and turned his whole body to face me . . . the whole ton and a bit of it.’
‘Oops,’ said Vic.
‘Oops indeed. I said something pathetic like, “There’s a good boy,” and he started pawing the ground.
‘”RUN!!” Daniel howled. As if I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve always been a good runner. And I’ve always been a champion tree climber, too. I knew I could probably get up into the branches about a nanosecond before Brutus got me.’
‘But . . .’
‘If I did that he would be off again, causing more damage until those gunships arrived. So I didn’t wait for him to charge. I marched straight up and smacked him on the nose. Not hard . . . but not so soft either. I’d seen Dad do that to show who was boss. “Come on,” I repeated, “home to the farm.”
‘For a second or two I was sure he was going to gore me. Then he just snorted and stopped pawing. And we both knew I’d won, even if he didn’t instantly obey.’ Heather smiled wryly. ‘He went back and had another go at those flowers, but it was only token defiance. Like a naughty little boy.’
‘What happened next?’ Vic wondered.
‘That was it, really. I led the way and he followed. No rope or anything. One of the farm lads had that, and I’d forgotten to take it off him.’
‘Brutus just followed you?’
‘Yes. I’d say he followed as obediently as Gyp, Dad’s sheepdog, but Gyp has a mind of his own when he isn’t supposed to be working. He’s a Border Collie, you see. He would have got bored after less than two paces. Brutus followed far more obediently than Gyp ever would.’
‘And you did all this singlehanded?’
‘Yes. By the time we reached the roadblock I knew I didn’t need the rope, so I just kept going. Those policemen were still arguing about their proposed rescue. They were gob-smacked when we passed, but Old Jack laughed, as if he knew I could do it all along.’
‘What did your dad say?’
‘He wasn’t too happy about being called back from market. Mum eventually got him by telephone in The Castle . . .’
‘Don’t tell me: the pub next to Skipton Castle.’
‘That’s right. He’d just started his first pint. He gave the farm lads grief about that for weeks.’
‘They got the blame then?’ Vic smiled. ‘He didn’t shoot Brutus?’
