Chapter 3
Ros Stokes
Six months, Ros realised, was the longest she’d spent sleeping in the same bed since her mother died.
That was four years ago. Strange, because she hadn’t come to expect ever staying in one place for very long, much less having a place to call her own, what with the state of the rental market in Ireland being what it was.
After her mother passed away and she could no longer afford to pay the mortgage, Ros’s biggest priority was finishing out her degree.
If she had to sofa surf through her finals, what did it matter?
She’d promised her mother she’d graduate with her degree in environmental science and she’d kept her promise.
Sometimes, she thought her mother had sent the ranger’s cottage and the job on Pin Hill as her way of saying: well done, darling, well done .
It was a nice thought. It made up for the occasional stabs of melancholy when she thought of all the things she was missing out on thanks to a few rogue lymph nodes and a diagnosis that came too late to do much more than let her sit by while her mother slipped away.
No point thinking of any of that now. Ros pulled her hair back from her face.
The wind was in one of those moods when it couldn’t decide on a direction and so her too-long red hair blew about her face, making it hard to see ahead of her.
She pinned it up untidily with a grip from her bag.
No need to preen. The only ones to pass judgement on her appearance were the wild goats and the gulls, who were much too busy catching breakfast to bother with her.
With a sheer drop down a rocky face to her left, the one thing she needed was to know exactly where each foot was going to find safe purchase.
This morning, the views were as breathtaking as she’d ever seen them. She’d just walked along a track that ran from her cottage to Muffeen Beag, checking on several nests of sea birds tucked beneath the cliffs out of sight for the most part.
The nests were perfectly intact, hidden from view for the common walker. She felt a familiar swell of relief and gratitude within her that they were safe. She still dreaded coming upon one that had been vandalised by some brute who thought they didn’t matter.
God, she shivered. She was doing far more than her job, far more than the other rangers would have done.
Or was she simply making amends? Sometimes she wondered, when the memory of that night came rushing back to her.
It was an accident. She hadn’t set out to cause any harm.
Not her fault. That was what her supervisor said and Colleen French had told her to remember that, no matter how bad things got.
But heads had to roll, not Ros’s obviously, she was just on placement, hardly even a bearing never mind a cog in the wheel.
In the greater scheme of things perhaps early retirement was not the end of the world, or at least, that was the way Colleen had tried to paint it.
Ros was vilified, of course, the silly girl who’d let slip the location of a precious eagle nest. It resulted in the nest being destroyed by a group of yokel farmers intent on believing that the arrival of the birds posed some threat to their livestock.
It was her darkest secret; her greatest mistake.
The guilt of it still made her chest constrict if she didn’t push it from her mind in time.
Being a woman didn’t help either. She’d toyed with the idea of cutting off her long red hair, resorting to dungarees, but there was no covering over the porcelain fineness of her skin or the fact that her willowy frame belied a resilient hardiness that meant she could work as well as any man, even if she’d never look like it.
The sensible part of her knew it was wrong to tar all farmers with the same brush, but she couldn’t help being wary of them for the most part.
They should all be working together for the good of the environment, but too often Ros felt as if it was a them-against-us situation and so she set about her work mostly quietly, making sure to avoid conflict if she could.
It still rattled her. The sadness and waste of the destroyed nest, the shame of being at fault through silly naivety.
There was no excuse, she should have known better.
Then, when she graduated, she’d been aware that anyone looking too closely at her résumé would have known immediately that it was she who had been responsible for the destruction of something so precious.
She had been the reason Colleen French had to retire and, of course, Ros knew what the subtext was – Colleen was a woman, she was soft, not able to do her job, compromised.
In truth, it was shorthand for the undercurrent of male chauvinism that was the prevailing culture of a male-dominated profession.
Ros still felt badly about Colleen; she’d been good at her job.
She didn’t deserve having to take the rap for Ros’s mistake.
The finish-up was, neither of them were exactly employable at the end of it, Colleen for having been in charge and Ros for having been the cause of her losing her job.
No-one would want to employ the person who cost their boss her job, would they?
Stop it . It was a beautiful morning, she had the most spectacular view in the world all to herself. She should be enjoying it, not beating herself up over things she could not change.
Ros halted suddenly when she heard a strange sound rippling on the breeze before her.
It took a moment to pin it down as a bleating goat.
The island was full of them. Wild, they roamed about on land that was too scraggy and rocky to farm.
Often, they feasted on weeds and wildflowers growing along the sides of the most winding roads, munching happily while motorists tried to navigate already narrow stretches around their reckless dining positions.
She’d seen them at the top of Pin Hill the previous summer, when the ground was festooned with daisies and buttercups and all manner of other treats that the goats were happy to idle over for days on end.
This goat didn’t sound as if it was idling though; it sounded as if it was in trouble.
She found herself moving more quickly, while still careful to watch her step.
One wrong move here and it was a good two-thousand-foot drop into the ocean beneath.
But the goat had not fallen over the side, as she feared it might have, instead it was lying in a bunch at the end of the track.
It must have fallen from the ledge that hung over the path.
A tiny pathetic creature, its bones jagged beneath his shaggy body, it was only young.
How long had it been here? she wondered.
How long more could it survive? For a moment, she thought she was too late.
The goat lay so still. Ros moved as quietly and gently as she could, hardly daring to breathe in case she frightened the animal.
Then it bleated once more, much louder than she’d have expected, and the sound startled her so she screamed and found herself almost tripping over the rough surface of the road side.
She steadied herself for a moment, trying to assess what the matter was without getting too close.
That was the first lesson of conservation.
Don’t go close to feral animals. Do not help them, unless you are absolutely certain that they need help.
This goat, a young male from what she could make out, was obviously in trouble, otherwise, Ros knew, she wouldn’t have gotten within fifty yards of him.
She walked around the animal now. His head was low, short gasping breaths coming from his open mouth and his eyes closed.
Perhaps dying, but then the animal looked at her, lifted his head and opened up those strange eyes, pinning them on her.
Ros could swear later it felt as if the little fella was begging her for help.
She bent down, put a hand on the creature’s back, ran her palms over the animal to check for breaks.
She found what she was looking for quickly.
The goat was lying on it, what felt like a dislocated hind leg.
Ros was no vet, but it didn’t take a degree in biology to see this kid was in real trouble.
The whole shape of the hip and back was completely distorted.
She stood for a moment, moved to the side, knowing that her presence alone could be enough to cause too much stress for the goat.
She couldn’t carry him back to the cottage.
She didn’t have a car and she couldn’t think of a single person she could call to help her.
It felt as if the seconds were ticking loudly in her head, when she heard the roar of what she presumed was a big four-by-four on the road winding up the hill beneath her.
This track ended at a locked gate. Beyond it, she could see farmland, stretching out and back up the mountain.
It was good land, obviously cleared back and drained when that was the way farms were managed.
Ten years ago, farmers were still clearing land, heedless of the wildlife they were evicting as the price for an additional acre for their dairy herd.
Thank goodness things were now changing back again.
The vehicle, when it arrived, was one of those awful off-roader things, ancient and billowing black smoke behind it. Not a scat of road tax on it either, Ros noticed.
She stood out before the jeep, fearing otherwise the driver would run right over the injured kid.
‘Hey!’ the man shouted out his open window. ‘What the…’ He was looking behind her, trying to make out the crumpled goat on the road.
‘Hey,’ Ros repeated back to him, but she kept her tone determinedly friendly. ‘Can you help me?’
‘I… well, I’m just about to check on my ewes…’ he said, but they both knew there was no passing her.