Chapter 11 #2
‘It’s like that here. The one thing that you need for this job is comfortable walking shoes…’ Ros said lightly, but she’d learned the hard way with blisters and wet feet at the start.
‘Well, in fairness you need a bit more than that now.’ He had been eager to correct her earlier when she had pointed out some hedgerow plants with their Latin name.
Real rangers call them by their proper names; Latin is only for your final exams. She tried to brush it off, but it stung, this way of letting her know that actually you needed more than a degree to do a ranger’s job.
His point was, she needed experience. She needed to be a person who belonged in the country, not one who grew up in a flat in the city.
They walked back to the cottage via the cliff trail.
It was as stunning as on any day she’d walked it and she hoped that maybe they might catch a glimpse of basking sharks in the water.
Ros thought that surely, if that went into a report, it would have to be another string to the bow of the island.
They stood for a while, looking out to sea.
The water was calm today. Shane had been lucky in travelling across; some days it was ferocious, reminding Ros of a wild beast, angry, roaring and hungry.
The sound of the crows making their way back across the island to their nests after the day reminded them it was time to make a move for home.
‘It’s getting late. We should probably get an early night and set off first thing for Pin Hill?’ He sounded eager to get going, whereas Ros could have stood there for another hour, drinking in the beauty of the place.
‘Sure, I’ve got a lasagne in the fridge. We can heat it up and turn in for the night.’ It was shop-bought, but it would do. Suddenly, no matter how long it had been since she’d actually spent time with an attractive man, she found herself wanting to get away from him for a few hours alone.
Ros realised she wasn’t going to get her wish for that any time soon when they turned into the back yard of her cottage to be met with a parked and idling huge four-by-four jeep.
Jonah Ashe was nowhere to be seen, but then, just as she pushed through her back door, he emerged from one of the tiny sheds that bordered one side of the property.
‘You have bats,’ he said as if she didn’t already know it.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t they bother you?’ He walked towards them, stopping for a moment to nod at Shane.
‘No, not particularly. I mean, they’re protected, we’re lucky to have them here.
No-one disturbs them – so long as you leave them be, they’re happy to nest and I’m happy to have them,’ she said, eyeing the door he’d pulled out tightly behind him.
She marched across to open it slightly once more so the bats could emerge when the day had drifted into darkness.
‘Pah! Protected. I never heard such madness. Bats are well able to survive in nature, how do you think they made it through for the last fifty million years?’
‘Well, be that as it may, Ros is right,’ Shane said.
‘They are protected and anyone interfering with their nests would find themselves in trouble with the law if it came to our attention,’ he added a little primly.
It seemed whether Ros invited them both or not, they were following her into the cottage, when really, all she wanted was a bit of peace and quiet.
Shane was hanging up his coat, now he turned, extended his hand to Jonah and introduced himself, making sure to mention his reason for being on the island.
‘Good God, more of our land being taken over for swamp and bog,’ Jonah muttered. ‘I hope it won’t interfere with my application for a wind farm?’
‘I can’t comment on that, but there are plenty of examples where the two aren’t mutually exclusive, it really depends on where you want to situate the masts,’ Shane said. ‘It’ll be down to compatibility with the site and, of course, your neighbours might have some say in things too.’
‘What can I do for you, Jonah?’ Ros stood between them. This was one conversation she didn’t want to have to tell her boss had happened in her porch while her rescue goat lay half asleep in his bed at their feet.
‘Oh, yeah, it’s what I can do for you. I have the vet coming across tomorrow.
I know it’s probably not… well, I mean, let’s face it, whatever chance the poor bugger has…
but if you wanted, I could send him your way when he’s finished at my place.
’ He didn’t sound as if he particularly wanted to send anything her way, but it was how the island worked, you didn’t waste a resource as precious as the vet if he was making his way across.
‘Of course, it’ll cost you, you do know that? ’
‘I think I can afford it,’ Ros said, ‘but don’t worry, he was coming here anyway, I called him the other day, so…
’ She didn’t add that she’d have paid all her wages to sort out George if she had to.
She bent down to him now, placed a hand on his snout, assuming that like dogs it was some indicator of good or bad health.
Did she really need to check? He looked even worse than when she left him this morning.
God, poor George. His crate needed to be cleaned, his water changed, it had been a long day for him on his own. At least he hadn’t tried to stand on that leg, chance would be a fine thing, he could hardly lift his head tonight, much less his leg.
‘Did you expect him to be up and running already?’ Shane had followed her to the porch and he leaned against the door jamb now, watching her.
He wasn’t an animal person especially, he’d told Ros when he’d spotted the goat earlier, but she thought you’d have to be made of marble not to fall for George.
‘Of course not, but it’s been a long day for him and he’s going to need to have his bedding changed and…
’ She was lucky, Max Toolis must have bought the Sunday paper every week he lived here and he rarely recycled the old copies, so there were stacks of free bedding in one of the sheds outside.
She began to fold in a layer around George now, hoping it would support his injury as well as keep him cosy.
‘That doesn’t look good.’ Jonah stated the obvious. He had bent down next to her and was holding George while Ros pushed extra bedding around him and checked his injury.
‘No,’ she said quietly and willed him not to say what she knew he was thinking – that she should never have taken him home, that they should have put him out of his misery rather than prolonging it.
‘A wild goat is never going to do well caged up, the stress alone…’ Jonah paused.
‘Well anyway, he’s here now, I suppose.’ He stood for a moment assessing the whole set-up.
‘He’s doing a rum job on that plastic bed, isn’t he?
’ It was true, in his short spurts of wakefulness, George had managed to gnaw his way through the rim of the old dog bed she’d put him into.
‘A strong antibiotic would go a long way,’ Shane said from his vantage point in the doorway. Ros found herself being grateful that he was here, if only to act as a foil against the damning judgement of Jonah.
‘Yes,’ Ros said, but there was no getting away from the fact that George looked a lot worse than he had earlier that day. She took a deep breath. She would not let these men see just how upset she was, she wouldn’t give either of them the satisfaction.
Once George was looked after and Jonah had charged out the back door to whatever was next on his agenda, she and Shane ate in near silence.
Shane read over some report he’d pulled from his bag.
Ros flicked mindlessly through her phone.
It seemed her whole Instagram feed had room for nothing more than images of one soppy goat.
It turned out there was an avid goat community on social media and now she was getting messages from people all over the world wishing George well.
One girl, Aisha, from Germany owned a goat farm – Ros had been intrigued, because Aisha told her she hadn’t a scrap of land, but her business was thriving.
In fact, what she did was brilliant. She was responsible for herding a flock of goats from one mountain to another and, between them, the goats managed to clear the ground of enough growth so that there were no longer mountain fires in the region.
‘See, George,’ she told the sleeping goat that night, ‘your appetite could yet be your greatest strength, if only you’d been born in Germany. ’
As she closed her eyes that night, all she could do was pray that George would make it through the night. It was decent of Jonah to think of sending over the vet to her, even if he’d left unsaid that he thought she was foolish for taking George home and trying to patch him up.
The sun was pale lemon, picking out frosty webs and the dew still resting on the grass when Ros and Shane set off the following morning with a flask of strong coffee Ros had made up.
It was hard not to feel in good humour as the day stretched out ahead.
George, by some miracle, looked a little brighter before they left; maybe keeping the wound clean was going some way towards halting an infection.
Early morning birdsong, the rustle of wildlife taking cover as they approached and the sight of fishing boats bobbing out to sea in the distance lifted her spirits further.
There had been many times when she’d set off walking and not returned until late evening, bringing a packed lunch and settling down to enjoy views so spectacular they still took her breath away.