Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [103]
I started making a mental list of possibilities as I drove the short distance from Ashton before turning onto a narrow lane that meandered up the northern slopes of the Downs. ‘Second gate on the right … and be sure to close it after you,’ I’d been told. I found the gate easy enough; a five-bar, bleached wooden one that had seen better days. Its five bars were now four, and it was in danger of becoming a three-bar gate if the looseness of the bar I was now pushing to open it was anything to go by.
The gravel track ahead curved round the slope of the Downs and dipped out of sight. Ahead, tucked below the brow of the hill, I could see the upper third of a roof, the red tiles wet and glistening in the watery afternoon sun. Beyond stretched the weald, a patchwork of fields, hedgerows and woods, punctuated by the spire of Chawcombe church, the rectory just visible in the trees alongside. No doubt Liza was in there entertaining Reverend Charles at this very minute. The raucous scream of a passing gull reminded me just how painful that entertainment was likely to be.
Having secured the gate as best I could – it meant slipping a rusty chain over the gatepost as the gate had dropped and couldn’t be bolted – I drove down the track.
Hawkshill Farm unfolded before me. Beryl had been right; it was indeed a time capsule. Apart from a couple of telegraph poles crossing the fields up from the main road and the distant hum of traffic to remind you of the twenty-first century, you could have been stepping back 300 years. The front of the farm facing me was flint-walled, set between courses of red brick, with small-paned, white-framed windows in brick surrounds either side of a wide-panelled, oak door, weathered grey. The dark, twisted branches of some climber – possibly wisteria– hung over the door, its drooping tendrils swaying in the breeze. To each side of the door a wide flower border ran the length of the building. Though bare, it looked well tended – shrubs were pruned, stalks of dead herbaceous plants cut back, the ground freshly dug and dark with manure. No intrusive modern conservatory was stuck on the side; no TV aerial or satellite dish adorned the two red-brick chimney stacks at either end; nothing marred the sense of having slipped back in time.
As I drove into the brick-paved yard at the side, I half-expected to find a cart-horse peering from one of the stable doors and a hay wain over in the corner. Instead, a Land Rover was parked there, albeit an ancient, mud-splattered green one; and next to it, a bright yellow Smart car. But no sign of anyone. The only sound was the occasional lowing from the oak tithe barn which linked the stables to the house. All the buildings were clay-tiled and, though some tiles had slipped and many were covered in lichen, they, combined with the oak beams of the barn and the knapped flint of the stables, created a picture-postcard charm, the rustic qualities of which would have done justice to a Thomas Hardy novel – Far from the Madding Crowd perhaps? Any minute, Bathsheba could have walked out of that barn, striding gracefully across the yard to meet me, her golden hair tumbling round her shoulders.
Instead, a short, dumpy figure shuffled into view as I got out of the car. She had a round face with a tomato soup complexion and mousy brown hair in a pudding-basin cut.
‘Ah, thought I heard a car,’ she said slowly. ‘Told Rosie it could be vet.’ Another stocky figure, with similar rosy-red cheeks and same-styled hair, sidled up beside her. Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, they stood identically dressed in baggy brown cords, shiny at the knees, and green, army-style pullovers pricked with straw. They made no attempt to move.
‘You were right, Madge,’ said the second figure. ‘It were vet.’ She turned and disappeared