Chapter 35
Ros
Ros headed back up to the cottage after her walk, taking the long way round so she could enjoy the evening sun glittering on the incoming tide.
She halted abruptly when she spotted a huge billy goat standing on top of the old dolmen at Riley’s Hinge.
It took a moment to figure out what she was looking at, the goat in profile struck such an arresting sight.
Then, one after another, more goats came into sight, until there were six she could make out.
The falling sun, a glowing sky, the whisper of something approaching a breeze through the long grass and the image of that huge goat would stay in her memory for a very long time.
She was officially, she decided at that moment, not just a fan of dear George, but of every single wild Irish goat that lived on the island.
When she eventually pushed the back door into the cottage, she decided she might as well get the worst over with.
She emailed the HR department and told them she would be very interested in filling the maternity leave on the mainland if it was still available.
She wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but at least it was something.
She could push it from her mind for the remainder of her time here on the island.
Once the email was sent, she sat back on the lumpy two-seater sofa that was her favourite place to curl up in the cottage.
She flicked down through the other emails and began to delete what she could identify as spam.
It was a way to pass the time, to not actually have to think about somehow fitting herself into an office job and starting over again.
She was just about to delete a message from the Goat Society when she realised it might not actually be spam.
She’d never heard of them, but what harm would it do to open an email?
The Parks and Wildlife Service cyber-security systems were surely robust enough to cope with someone whose photo identifier looked like George in a summer hat.
She scanned through the email quickly, expecting it to be some demand for cash for a refuge in some country where goats were more plentiful than people.
She read it a second time. And a third. The email was not a request for money, instead it was offering a grant to put in place three goat herders in Ireland to work with the society and manage goat herds in areas of conservation.
She must have read that email six times before she looked up the links at the bottom of it and each of them, from LinkedIn to Instagram, seemed to be authentic, although, Ros reminded herself, she was certainly no expert.
Expert or not, she had nothing to lose. She downloaded the application form for funding and a forty-page booklet about the work of the goat herder and the priorities and objectives of the society.
In short, from what she could see, the idea behind the scheme was twofold.
First, to increase awareness about the wild Irish goat and preserve the habitat to protect it in its native environment.
The second objective was to allow the goats to go about their business in a way that was environmentally positive.
In other words, the goat herder would be responsible for making sure that they grazed in areas that would otherwise be at risk of summer fires, so it would be up to the goats to keep down things that were especially flammable during the hot months of summer, thereby assisting the natural ecosystem to thrive.
It turned out that goats had only become a pest in the eyes of the farmer because they had been lured to the sweeter and naturally easier to graze ground of cleared-back land.
Ros sat back on the sofa and the idea tickled her. Jonah Ashe would love this; the notion that someone would be paid to manage the local goat population and save him the hard work of mending fences quite so regularly.
She scanned down through the paperwork once more.
They’d need a local management committee if they were going to draw down the funding, but that wouldn’t be a problem, she could imagine plenty of the local farmers would be enthusiastic about the idea, and they were offering a decent annual salary to the person employed as the goat herder.
She started to fill in the form, noting the final date for applications was drawing close.
Then, once she’d filled it in, she popped it into her bag and decided that tomorrow she would get signatures and, once it was in the post, she would go about setting up the committee who would manage the funding.
Hopefully she was right and plenty of people would be on board with it.
Later that night she pulled down one of Max Toolis’s old wildlife journals, hoping to gather as much information as she could about the native Irish goat.
Over the years, Max had subscribed to quite a few.
Mostly, these were the old-fashioned types of magazines that came with a giant folder and, every week, Max had faithfully slotted in the latest issue.
He had quite the collection. Ros had enjoyed many hours over the winter months thumbing through the pages.
She planned to bring them to him when she went back over to the mainland; if he didn’t want them, she would hold onto them.
She was rather hoping she could keep them, they were a real memory of her time spent in the cottage.
There were more farmers than just Jonah Ashe on the island and Ros decided that perhaps she should go to the local development company before going to the farmers to get help the next morning.
The development company on the island were always looking for projects to get involved in.
They busied themselves with the tidy village competition every year and ran what approached a chamber of commerce, but really only consisted of the hotel owners and a few of the locals who had self-catering cottages to let out to tourists.
Mai Boland, who was the chief bottle-washer, CEO and head lackey of the outfit, was completely taken with the idea. ‘So, there would be a job in it? I mean, they would pay your wages and you could stay on the island?’
‘That would be the plan and for that, we might actually do some good in staving off forest fires, stop the farmers from complaining about the goats and maybe even make a bit of a thing for the tourists around the presence of the goat on the island?’ Ros had hardly slept a wink all night thinking of the project.
‘But we have to submit the paperwork by the end of the week and I have no idea how many other places will apply for the funding, so…’
‘Well, let’s call the management company the Pin Hill Island Goat Society for now and then, if we’re successful in getting the funding, we’ll put directors in place for governance and…
’ Mai rhapsodised on about the possibilities for the project, but Ros just wanted some signatures and she figured they could sort all of that out later, if they were successful in the application.
This was what Ros was still thinking about as she pushed in the back door at Ocean’s End that afternoon.
Her mind was full of the possibilities that she might be able to afford to stay on the island after all.
It would mean staying with Constance until she got sorted, but she knew that in actual fact that was the very least of her worries.
Constance was just as excited as Ros when she told her what she’d been up to.
‘It’s early days, but at least we’ll get the application in and see what’s to become of it,’ Ros said then, realising she was actually far more enthusiastic about this than she had been about applying for the ranger’s job. ‘So, I might be staying with you for a while after all,’ she told Constance.
‘Oh.’ Constance clapped her hands in delight. ‘That would be just lovely. Mind you, it’s going to mean you’ll have clean out another bedroom,’ she said apologetically.
‘No problem, I’m very easily pleased…’ Ros listened to what sounded like a chime coming from the hall.
‘God, is it that time already?’ It was the clock in the office sounding out the half hour.
It had sat dormant for years, now it was working perfectly again.
‘Heather found the key, she found a tray of them tucked away in my mother’s desk.
She’s spent half the morning slotting them into various cupboards all over the house to match them with their locks.
I think she has most of them figured out at this stage,’ Constance said.
‘How on earth did I manage all these years without that lovely clock?’ she added as she took down the sandwich box that held an array of tablet boxes that seemed to be never very far away.
‘Silly really, Heather said it was only a case of finding the key and giving it an extra wind-up!’
‘It’s a lovely sound, all right,’ Ros agreed. There was something comforting about it. She stood at the window looking out as the sun fell heavy in the sky across the water. It was an incredible view; you could lose yourself in it, really, if you weren’t careful.
*
Back at the ranger’s cottage, the inventory was going slowly.
Ros had picked up a few boxes from the local supermarket and, so far, she’d only filled one with items that belonged to her.
Constance had told her to put anything she wanted in one of the spare rooms and so all she really had to do was walk out of the cottage with a weekend bag when the time came to leave.
‘Hello, hello…’ A tap on the door startled her and she turned to see Shane standing there.
He looked every bit as delicious as the first day he’d arrived on the island.
This time, he walked into her little home with a purpose that underscored the fact that this would be his cottage soon.
Ros shook off the notion; it was silly, after all, being so precious about a place that had never actually belonged to her to begin with.