Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide: A Collection of Short Stories. Fay Weldon
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sheep fascinated Galway: he’d wriggle under the gate and lie just the other side of it watching them, while they ignored him—rather insultingly, I thought—grazing right up to inches from his nose, in sheer defiance of his canine nature, which was, quite honestly, to chase them from here to kingdom come. You could see his ears twitching from the effort of not.
One day when I was putting the washing on the line, Mark—he must have been just over two at the time, let himself out through the gate and sat cross-legged and peaceful next to Galway, sheep watching. Olive, black and sinewy, stalked through patches of nettles—they never ate nettles—to join them.
It was the first day of spring after a long hard winter; the sky was washed and beautiful: you know that line in the psalms when it says, ‘And all the valleys shall be exalted,’ and you wonder what it means? One of those mornings. Our robin sat on the clothesline and said, ‘Well, spring’s here at last!’ or would have, I was sure, if he only had the power of speech. As it was, he just looked at me, head on one side, eyes glittering, for a full four beats longer than usual before flying off to the apple tree.
And I stood where I was, amazed. Because one of the lambs, dazzled perhaps by the sudden glittery sunshine, and all normal wintry rules of engagement deferred, had joined Galway, Olive and Mark. Sheep, dog, cat and child sat in a circle and stared at one another, and from one to the other, for all the world as if they were trying to decide who they were, what they were, which was the one they were like. The twins started crying in the house and I moved suddenly and the spell was broken, and they dispersed, but I think from that day on Galway decided he was a sheep; certainly after that he was for ever trying to be one of their number. The sheep didn’t want that, and when he ran up to join them ran off in the opposite direction in apparent distress and panic, and Galway would run after. A process known by the local farmers as ‘running the profit off ’em’. So it became our function to try and keep Galway out of the field while he tried to get in. Animals can be a terrible nuisance.
Oh, they were mischievous, those Soays, those dancing, prancing, nervy sheep from the Outer Hebrides. Once a year we had to round them up and take them to the livestock centre to be dipped against scabies. We humans would start from the corners of the field, and move in upon them from every angle, and Galway was allowed in because clearly he had the heart of a sheepdog in the body of a Labrador; he’d race round, knowing instinctively what to do, driving back any who ran for cover, and Mark at three joined in and waved his little arms in the air in the right place at the right moment, and between us we managed it. It was one of those days you don’t forget, such a mixture of joy and dreadfulness. My husband fell and drove a stick into his knee and simply pulled it out and carried on. On a normal day it would have meant doctors and stitches and tetanus jabs, and all that other human ritual to do with survival.
And then that autumn when Mark turned five, Galway was run over and killed. They’d built a new bypass at the end of the lane and he was sensible enough in many ways but his life experience had not included a six-lane highway, and we had failed to protect him. The grown-ups cried, the twins howled; Mark went and lay in Galway’s basket and I had to drag him out. Later, while he wailed, I swore never, never to have another animal. It was unendurable. The robin had gone, too. Some bird of prey, no doubt, or even Olive, I wouldn’t put it past her. She was upset too: she marked Galway’s absence by sitting in the apple tree long after dusk, waiting. Mark had screaming fits in the reception class at school; they sent him home for a psychologist’s report. He wouldn’t let me out of his sight, or only at dusk, when he’d go out on his own to feed the sheep.
A week after Galway’s death he came back smiling and said, ‘Galway’s in the field with the sheep.’ ‘That can’t be so,’ I said.
‘I am not in error,’ he replied, his spirit back, and his colour, and with it his five-year-old pomposity. ‘Galway’s got into the field again. I saw him. You’d better do something.’ I went out to look and there were the sheep, five ewes and a ram lined up, standing as usual on the burial mound staring, their background a red-streaked but darkening sky. No Galway. Well, of course not. We’d buried him under the mound. I went back in. ‘Mark,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry but he’s not.’
‘Yes he is,’ he said firmly, but happily, and went to bed on his own, refusing my assistance.
I took my husband out to the field just to check. It was almost dark by now. We had a torch with us. I could only just see the blackish blurs that were the sheep so I shone the torch and devil’s eyes glittered back at me, slit eyes, yellow and gleaming, Satan’s eyes, spooky but expected. Shine a torch at a sheep or a goat in the night and that’s what you get. I counted. Fourteen eyes. So many eyes are hard to count but they remained remarkably steady, lined up. I tried again.
‘How many sheep?’ I asked my husband. ‘Quick, before the light goes altogether.’
‘Six, of course,’ he said, beginning to count. ‘Five ewes and a ram. Why?’
‘Because there are fourteen eyes,’ I said.
‘Oh come on now, that’s impossible. They must be moving round.’
But they weren’t, they were just standing there staring, as if they knew something was up. The pair of eyes in the centre of the group were not so slit as the others, more rounded, deep green pools rimmed with white. Dog’s eyes in torchlight in the dark, Labrador’s eyes. I wondered if the sheep could see Galway too or if it were only Mark. ‘Fourteen,’ my husband said. ‘Can’t be.’
Now the Soays were making things difficult. They took to turning and tossing their heads, or who knows, perhaps they were winking; at any rate checking was impossible. And then they were off: the whole lot of them took to flight, and we heard the swift clippety clop of cleft hooves and then a short sharp cheerful bark as well, but you can imagine things.
I don’t know. Did we count wrong? I don’t think so. Mark went out alone into the field early the next morning—I couldn’t: fear had caught up with me—and came back to say firmly that Galway had gone off now but he’d be back by sunset. We stayed out of the field and let matters take their course. You could just about trust Galway to do the right thing. Olive took to sitting in the nettles the Galway side of the gate instead of cursing us all from the apple tree. Mark was taken back into the reception class and forgot about it being his job to feed the sheep, and cheered up. And little by little there was less evidence of Galway being around, the movement in the corner of the eye ceased happening, the blurred flurry at feeding time, just so long as you didn’t go shining torches into dark corners at night. But I do think he came back, or at any rate stayed around. It suited us all, didn’t it. Galway got his way and into the sheep field, where he’d so insisted he belonged, and the sheep accepted him, and Mark was healed, and we stopped feeling guilty about Galway’s death, because really you know there isn’t any such thing.
When I moved in his wife’s belongings were still there, all around me, even to the sheets on the bed. She didn’t so much as bother to change them, and very pretty, impractical sheets they were; fine white linen with scalloped edges and self-embroidery, the kind which have to be ironed after the wash. What an absurdity! Who has anything these days but drip-dry? She moved out saying she didn’t want anything of the past: she wanted to start again: she was desperate to have a new life, she couldn’t be her true self while married to him. I wish her every luck, but perhaps she didn’t have much of a true self to begin with. It’s easy to blame others for one’s own shortcomings.
Using her saucepans, drinking from her coffee cups, going through the house and switching on her brass lamps as evening fell didn’t bother me.