Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
I t was a bright Sunday morning, and I was just brushing Pluto down after an early-morning ride when my phone began to ring. Teddy’s name flashed up on the screen.
“What is it?” I answered, phone balanced between my ear and shoulder as I battled with a saddle, bridle, and grooming kit while also trying to open the stable door without dropping anything.
There was mumbling, a muffled sound, a slight squeal and a thunk, before I heard Teddy’s distant voice saying, “Shit.”
“Teddy, are you there? Did you pocket-dial me, for Christ’s sake?” Pluto was watching my struggle with interest between munching on his hay and hoping I might drop a treat or two for him, probably.
There was a load of static and then another squeaky little sound.
“Hannah, is that you?”
“Yes! You called me, you idiot, so of course it’s me,” I said with an undisguised sigh. I’d made my way across the yard and was finally able to put everything down in the tack room. “What do you want?”
“I need your help,” he said quietly. “And calling someone an idiot is definitely not on the wooing curriculum at the Fraser Foundation for Flirting, just so you know.”
“The Fraser Foundation for what? Actually, never mind, I don’t want to know,” I muttered, closing my eyes. “What kind of help do you need?”
“I’m in my shed and there’s a sort of devil sheep in here and it won’t let me out.”
“A ‘devil sheep’?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, you’re going to have to run that all past me again.” This must be a wind-up. Teddy had said a lot of really random stuff in the last minute or so, and my brain was struggling to compute it all.
“First, I am not an idiot. Perhaps you should repeat that for me, Hannah?” He paused, but when I remained silent, he sighed and carried on, “Secondly, I’m trapped in my shed.” Another slightly pregnant pause. “And thirdly, I need your expertise to help me escape.”
“From the clutches of a devil sheep ?” I added, thinking that I might use this turn of phrase in the future. Some of my ovine patients could certainly be classified as devilish.
“Yes.”
“Do you need me to come right now?”
“If you would, yes please, otherwise I don’t think I’m getting out of here alive.”
“You are quite possibly the most dramatic person I have ever met, Ted Fraser.”
“Please, Hannah, I don’t know how much longer I can fend it off.” There was a distinctive bleat in the background and Teddy let out a decidedly unmanly noise.
“Fine. Where are you?”
“Come around the side of the house and go straight out the back. The shed is about a hundred metres away at the bottom of the garden. Please be quick.”
“I will. But I’m at the stables so may be a while.” I heard him groan, but what did he expect me to do? “Be brave, Teddy, I’m coming to rescue you.”
“Hurry,” he hissed, and then the line went dead.
A Cheshire cat-sized grin stretched across my whole face, and I began to laugh as I slipped off my riding hat. I hung it neatly on its allotted peg with all my other stuff and headed out to my car. The images that my mind was conjuring up about this predicament were too funny. And so, with a light-hearted bounce in my chest, I drove towards The Old Rectory.
* * *
Pushing open the ancient creaking garden gate at the side of the house, I called out just in case he was lying in wait to prank me. “Hello? Ted?”
But there was no answer. Maybe this was actually happening and it wasn’t a joke. Maybe all six foot three inches of well-muscled, highly educated, supremely confident Edward Fraser were indeed trapped in a shed with a terrifyingly devious demon sheep. This made me smile even more. Hilarious.
Heading down the shadowed path by the side of the house, I stepped out into the sun-dappled back garden and began threading my way amidst the undergrowth, following some stepping stones twisting between towering walls formed of overgrown bushes higher than my head on both sides. In front of me, there were some low outbuildings, at one end of which a stable door stood ajar. This looked like the probable setting for the comedy sketch I was imagining, and I rubbed my hands together in wicked glee.
“Ted?” I called through the doorway.
“In here! Where have you been?”
“I told you – I was at the stables. I came as quickly as I could.” As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, a dusty, tumbledown shippen, split into several small pens by old wooden gates, came into view. At one end of the building was Teddy, pressed firmly up against the wall. There was a broken gate by his feet and a large, rotund white Angora goat gazing up at him and blocking his exit to the door. “Made yourself a friend, have you?”
“It broke down the gate to attack me,” Teddy whispered, his eyes huge and round with terror, his body attempting to become one with the whitewashed stone wall behind him.
“Attack you?”
“Yes, it made this awful noise.” As if on cue, the goat bleated loudly. “Just like that. Then it charged at me. What kind of animal even is it?”
I snorted and laughed. “Ted, it’s a goat, and it just wants to be friends.”
“A goat?”
“Yes. Latin name Sheepimus Devilius .” I sniggered, proud of my own joke.
“Very funny. How was I supposed to know there was a goat in my shed?” He looked back down at the animal. “ Why is there a goat in my shed?”
“I don’t know, but you could just step around it and come out?”
Teddy glanced up at me and shook his head, all his usual swagger and bravado gone.
“You can do it, Ted. I promise the goat won’t hurt you.”
He shook his head again.
With a long sigh, I entered the building, climbing over a rickety gate and walking towards the goat, gently using my knee to push her away. I held my hand out to Teddy, who grabbed it with both of his like I was a life raft in a stormy sea, gripping on so tightly that my metacarpals screamed in protest.
The goat bleated again and Teddy jumped, scooting around and placing my much smaller body between him and the object of his fear. He pressed himself firmly against me, his fingers now digging painfully into the tops of my arms, while the goat pottered about haphazardly for a moment, bumping into the wall and bleating mournfully.
“Let’s get out of here,” Teddy whispered in my ear, his towering frame folding around mine from behind.
“There’s something not right about that goat. I think we should check it out,” I said over my shoulder.
“No, we should leave and shut the door,” Teddy insisted, tugging me back towards the exit.
“No, we should mend the broken gate and check that the goat is ok,” I said, shaking myself free of his grasp.
Teddy grumbled something incoherent, which sounded a bit like “Let sleeping devil sheep lie”, but I chose to ignore it and stepped further into the pen. The goat was fairly elderly by the look of it, and her eyes were coated with a milky film. She seemed unsure and bewildered, and when I waved my hand in front of her face there was no response.
“She’s blind,” I murmured.
“Blind?” Teddy repeated.
“Yes, I think she was following the sound of your panicky, maidenly screams and accidentally broke the gate. I think she was frightened and disoriented. I don’t think she charged at you on purpose.”
“Oh.”
Teddy had edged closer, still behind me though, with the air of someone ready to flee. I knelt down and gently started to scratch the top of the goat’s head, crooning quiet words to her, and she leant into my touch.
“See, she’s a softy. There was absolutely no need for such a hulking great big idiot like you to be frightened of a lovely little goat like this, now was there, Ted?”
Grumbling, he crouched next to me on the balls of his feet, tentatively reaching out to touch the soft, curly fleece of the goat.
“I think I may already have mentioned that idiot is not a term we use when we’re being nice to people, Hannah.”
I glanced sideways at him with a smirk, meeting his slightly less terrified gaze, and he begrudgingly smiled back at me.
“Maybe not, Ted, but idiot is definitely the right term to use for a grown man who’s frightened of a blind old goat.”
“I’ll definitely be putting all this in my report to Giles.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Then, in a sarcastic voice, I said, “What a vewy, vewy bwave boy you are, Teddy.”
“You’re not anywhere nearer to being less prickly, just so you know.”
“I gave up my Sunday morning to rescue you from a devil sheep. A little gratitude wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Fine. Thank you. You’re my hero.”
“You’re welcome. Now, let’s fix this gate, check she’s got food and water, and then maybe find out who owns her.”
“I own her.”
Teddy and I turned as one to the open doorway, where a stooped, elderly lady in a blue headscarf and matching wellies was watching us with complete puzzlement.
The goat, who had also heard her, launched herself across the pen towards us, crashing into Teddy and knocking him clean off his feet and onto his arse, long legs flailing wildly in the air.
Perhaps a better woman would have helped him. She would certainly have shown some concern for his wellbeing or offered him a hand. But not me. I was too busy leaning on the gate in fits of laughter, which I didn’t even try to stifle, at all.