Three Bags Full (27 page)

It was to do with his own life, with the police station, and with his certainty that he didn’t want to go back there again. He left his glass of Guinness half full.

23

Heather Is Right

“Perhaps it all really did just seem like a trick to him, the spade and all the upset in the village. Perhaps it seemed easier to him when he thought of all the confusion he’d be creating.” Rebecca sniffed.

The sheep had gathered round the shepherd’s caravan the way they did in the old days, but there were no more Pamela novels now. Instead Rebecca read big, rustling newspapers with very thin sheets. The wonderful thing about the newspapers was that they contained stories about George, about Beth, even about their own appearance at the Smartest Sheep in Glennkill contest. Another wonderful thing was that Rebecca sometimes knew more than the newspapers said, because she had talked to Beth (who had left Glennkill now to spend the rest of her life on an island doing good works).

The story the sheep liked best was called “Sheep Bring the Truth to Light.” There had been a picture too, showing the platform in the Mad Boar and on it Maple, Mopple, Othello, and Zora—all of them small, gray, and without any scent, but unmistakable. Rebecca had held it right in front of their noses so that they could see it properly, and Mopple had tried to eat part of the newspaper. After that she let them look at the pictures only from a safe distance.

There was a picture of George with an unknown lamb in his arms, standing on the grass and looking very young and adventurous. (Cloud claimed to be the lamb in the picture, but the others didn’t believe her.) Beth, in a summer dress, young too and bright-eyed. “A Deadly Romance,” said the story that went with it. “Corpse Desecrated for Love” also showed Beth, but old, the way the sheep knew her, with a high-necked dress and a very serious expression.

Rebecca thought about Beth a lot. “She’s been quite different since that evening,” she said. “I think she’s the most romantic person I know.”

“That evening”—as the sheep understood—was the evening when four of them had taken part in the Smartest Sheep in Glennkill contest. They proudly raised their heads. They had done something vital that evening, even if they weren’t exactly sure just what it was.

The suicide business remained a mystery to the sheep. They couldn’t understand why George should have done such a strange thing—George, of all people, who usually said things in a way that a sheep could understand.

“Right up to the end, he probably didn’t know what he was going to do himself,” said Rebecca. “Sometimes that helps me—imagining that up to the last he thought he’d really go to Europe. But then he went on a different journey…”

She swallowed and passed her hand over her wet, reddened eyes. Rebecca’s eyes had often been red recently.

“But I know it can’t have been so simple. He made his will first, so that whatever happened
you
could go to Europe. He was a good shepherd …he took Tess to the animal shelter. He…he wrote me the letter.” Rebecca wiped a single tear from her cheek with her hand. She stared right through Mopple, who was standing in the front row of the sheep, hoping for a chance to nibble on that newspaper. An absent expression had come into Rebecca’s eyes. She lowered the newspaper. Sometimes it seemed as if their new shepherdess suddenly forgot about reading aloud to them when she was in the middle of it. Then they had to drive her back to work.

Heather and Maude bleated, a loud and penetrating bleat, and then Rameses joined in too.

Rebecca looked up and sighed. She opened the rustling newspaper again and went on reading the story of “The Lonely Shepherd and the Wide, Wide World.”

The Glennkill stories in the newspaper gradually became shorter and more boring, and Rebecca went back to the book that had already impressed the sheep when she first read aloud to them. Now, in the light of day, the sheep could see what a lovely picture it had on the cover: lots of greenery, a brook, mountains, trees, rocks.

But of course it was about humans again after all. A little uneasily, the sheep followed the adventures of a small flock of humans living on the moors. Their experience of newspapers had given the sheep a great respect for the written word in general.

“If sheep and humans can get into books so easily, then something can come
out
of books too,” said Lane, and Rameses and Heather began watching the new book suspiciously when Rebecca left it on the caravan steps after reading aloud. No one wanted to be suddenly taken by surprise by that wolflike Heathcliff out of the book.

But the book kept quiet.

Toward the end it even got romantic, with two ghosts wandering at liberty over the moors at last, the way they’d always wanted. The sheep thought of George, and hoped that his own soul was wandering on some green meadow now, perhaps with a little flock that he’d found somewhere.

One day Ham came wheeling himself along the path through the fields. The sheep fled uphill in their usual panic. From there, they watched what was going on by the shepherd’s caravan. Rebecca and the butcher greeted each other.

“I hope she’s not going to sell us,” said Mopple.

“She’s not allowed to!” bleated Heather. “It says so in the will!” All the same, the sheep looked hard at the two humans.

Rebecca and the butcher seemed to be getting on well together. The sheep never took their eyes off the butcher. He looked to them serious, wrinkled, and not nearly so dangerous now. Luckily, as a salty wind was blowing off the sea, they couldn’t catch his scent.

Heather came to the astonishingly bold decision to go and look at the butcher at close quarters. The amazed glances of the other sheep followed her downhill.

“. . there’s connections,” said the butcher. “Connections everywhere. Transmigration of souls and all that. I read a lot these days so as to understand the connections, know what I mean?” He turned his head and looked Heather straight in the face, half awkwardly, half curiously, and very respectfully. Perhaps he also nodded his head slightly, as if in greeting. Heather was so surprised that she forgot to look fearless and just stared at the butcher in amazement.

Rebecca shrugged her shoulders. “Why not? They were with him for so long. I can well imagine that there’s a little bit of George in the sheep…”

Heather gave the butcher a pert look and then trotted back to the others. A respectful flock of sheep awaited her. The butcher and Rebecca shook hands and then, to everyone’s relief, the butcher wheeled himself back toward the paved road. Life could go on.

And so it did. The sheep went to work as usual at dawn, and grazed until late in the afternoon. Then they assembled round the caravan to be read to. Then there was more grazing until they went back to the hay barn. A well-ordered life for sheep.

They liked to think of George, and were grateful to him for the will. “He was a good shepherd after all,” said Cloud.

The sheep respected George’s Place. None of them would have dreamed of nibbling the herbs and grasses that grew there, yet inexplicably George’s Place grew smaller and smaller.

“It’s because everything has an end,” explained Zora.

One morning, when the other sheep were still asleep, a round white blob slipped out of the protective embrace of the flock and made its way over to the cliffs. Mopple the Whale stood in front of Zora’s rocky ledge for a long time, thinking. Then he took a step forward. And another. Zora could do it. A third. Melmoth could do it too. Four. Five. He had looked the butcher in the face. Six, and Mopple was on Zora’s ledge at last. He carefully lowered his head to taste the herbs of the abyss.

More often than before, small groups formed as the flock grazed to exchange tales of their experiences.

“It was a trick,” said Cordelia.

“No sheep may leave the flock,” said Sir Ritchfield. “Unless that sheep comes back again.”

“Sometimes being alone is an advantage,” said Melmoth snidely.

“It
was
a love story,” bleated Heather, waggling her ears in triumph.

24

Zora Sees a Cloud

Rebecca closed the book with a bang. That was new. The Pamela novels had been printed on soft, thin paper, and would never have made such a good bang. Nor would the newspapers. Willow, who had gone to sleep in the back row, opened her eyes and then silently turned her back to the shepherd’s caravan. The others looked expectantly at Rebecca.

“That’s the end,” Rebecca explained. “We’ll start something new tomorrow.”

The sheep looked disappointed. What would happen to Heathcliff and Catherine as they wandered over the moors together? Why didn’t the book go on to say how the moors smelled when a shower of rain had swept over them? The story must go on somehow!

But Rebecca just sat on the top step of the caravan, and obviously had no intention of reading on. Her hand gently patted Tessy’s head, and Tess wagged her tail very slightly. You could see it was the first wag of her tail for a long time.

One morning Rebecca had brought Tess back in a car. Tess had strange, sad eyes. She didn’t go racing over the meadow as usual. She didn’t leap around the caravan looking for George either. Tess disappeared in Rebecca’s shadow and followed her red skirt everywhere, like a very young lamb following its mother.

“Time to sleep,” said Rebecca.

The sheep looked at one another. The sun was still high in the sky, the shadows were no longer than two galloping leaps, and they hadn’t finished their daily work of grazing and chewing the cud. Back in the hay barn? At this time of day? Never! Moreover, Rebecca had read aloud to them less than usual. They stared obstinately at their shepherdess.

“Mo-o-ore!” bleated Maude.

“Mo-o-ore!” bleated the three lambs.

But Rebecca was not to be moved. Anyone could see she was George’s daughter.

“The story’s over,” she said. “That’s it for today.”

Maude could scent the determination in Rebecca’s face, and fell silent, but the three lambs went on bleating. Rebecca raised her eyebrows.

“Next time I’ll read aloud from
The Silence of the Lambs
,” she promised. Then she rose from the steps of the caravan.

The silence of the lambs, that sounded promising. The mother ewes in particular hoped something would come of it.

“Go to sleep,” said Rebecca. “We’re off to Europe tomorrow. Very early. I don’t want to see any sleepy faces.”

And so saying she disappeared into the shepherd’s caravan with Tess at her heels.

“Tomorrow!” bleated Heather.

“Europe!” breathed Maisie.

“It’s good that we’re going to Europe,” said Cordelia thoughtfully, “but it’s a pity it means we must leave here.”

The other sheep nodded in agreement.

“If we could go to Europe and stay here at the same time,” said Mopple, “then we could graze in two places at once.”

They thought a little about the wonderful possibilities of double grazing.

Then Melmoth suddenly raised his head as if he had heard a call. His eyes were moist and shining. He began to prance about.

“Come over to the cliffs with me,” he said. “I want to tell you a story about saying good-bye.” The sheep willingly went with him. When Melmoth told them something, it was like a strange wind caressing their faces, a wind spiced with vague presentiments and mysterious scents. They followed the gray ram over to the cliffs.

Suddenly the crows on their tree began to caw, a bloodcurdling sound, the cry of carrion crows. Instinctively, the sheep looked for the dead animal that must be the cause of all this uproar. But they couldn’t see anything.

When they turned round again, Melmoth had disappeared. Just like that. They looked under the dolmen, in the hay barn, and behind the shepherd’s caravan. They looked in the hedge and under the shade tree, although Melmoth had been standing on the cliffs and couldn’t possibly have galloped over to the hedge in such a short time. He must be hiding somewhere, with his story about saying good-bye. But Melmoth was nowhere to be found.

Then Zora bleated in surprise. She had tipped her head back, and was staring bright-eyed up at the sky. A single dark gray storm cloud was hurrying past up there, driven over the sea by moody winds.

“He’s turned into a cloud sheep!” bleated Mopple.

“A cloud sheep!” bleated the other sheep excitedly. One of their flock had made it!

“Do cloud sheep come back?” asked a lamb after a while.

Othello tore his eyes away from the beach and turned to Mopple, Maple, Zora, and Cloud, who were still looking up at the shaggy gray cloud with mingled veneration and sadness. Othello wondered if he ought to tell them. Of course Melmoth hadn’t turned into a cloud sheep; something much more mysterious had happened: he had simply climbed down the steep tunnel through the rock under the pine tree and gone away.
Sometimes being alone is an advantage
.

Othello decided not to tell the others. They wouldn’t have understood it better, they’d have understood it worse. The more he knew about Melmoth, the less he really understood. And always he had the uneasy feeling that Melmoth understood perfectly. Understood himself, understood Othello, all the sheep—even the shepherds. Either that or he was just crazy.

Othello shook his head to get rid of the sadness. But shaking his head didn’t help, nor did scraping his hooves.

What helped him was the wind.

For the wind brought with it—who knew from where?—a leaf, and laid it carefully in front of Othello’s hooves. A golden leaf. Autumn gold. Swallow-flying time. The time of scents, mating time. Once again he turned back to the meadow, where Mopple, Maple, Zora, and Cloud were gazing reverently at a gray cloud. But he saw none of them. What he saw, scented, felt with all seven senses and several brand-new autumn senses too, were three dazzling beauties with white fleeces and intoxicating scents. And a rival, young and strong but inexperienced.

Othello looked forward to trying his strength against the rival almost as much as to what would follow the duel. His hooves impatiently scraped up earth, and the blood flowed through his veins faster than usual.

Then the wind turned, carrying away the scents of Zora, Cloud, Maple, and Mopple. Othello calmed down. Once again he looked down at the beach, where Melmoth had imperceptibly turned into a wandering gray dot surrounded by the darker gray of the water. From this distance, if he hadn’t known better, Othello would have taken him for a small wave, a drift of spray, a little foam on the vast expanse of the sea. But Othello didn’t see a gray wave. What he saw was a mighty rival moving away from the flock—his flock.

And Othello was content.