Chapter 4: A Fight for Love and Glory

When Andrew left, I began the most demanding ten days of my life. I was both physically exhausted and on an emotional high by the end of them. It was a time out of my life bracketed at beginning and end by Robinson’s. Before we left the house to begin our chores, I borrowed Dave’s mobile phone to call Ellen, the head of Human Resources. She and Anne had decided that I needed a longer break so she had approved three weeks. She had a meeting with management at ten to explain her decision. “That arrogant assistant of yours managed to screw things up before tea-break yesterday.”

About two months ago Madelaine, a young woman with an engineering degree, was appointed as assistant maintenance engineer. She thinks that her 2/1 degree should make her my boss, so she ignores all my advice. I let her get on with planning the production schedule while I take care of the machines. Yesterday our best milling machine threw a tantrum which she could not deal with. Her first response was floods of tears but now she is telling the management that it is my fault since I deliberately withheld information from her. The good news is that Jim will be in later today to soothe the old milling machine and get production restarted.

On the home front, Glenda had a sort of one-day flu, which sounded very similar to a hangover. She went to bed early on Sunday and it wasn’t until she woke on Monday morning that she discovered my absence. She phoned Robinson’s before the word of my leave had circulated but Ellen called her back to explain things. She could barely contain her glee when she told me this, since she had never approved of Glenda and would have enjoyed rubbing her nose in things. My wife was told that I am hunting wildflowers in a secret location and will be gone for three weeks.

Pausing only to pick up my new notebook and a pack of cheap pens, I was still smiling when I joined Dave at the sheep pen. He handed me a list of numbers, waving his hand over about a square mile of wilderness. The numbers corresponded to tags on the ears of our sheep, and my duty, if I chose to accept it, was to check they were all present and accounted for. It certainly looked like mission impossible. We agreed to meet back at the cottage at noon to compare notes. Tomorrow, we plan to take packed lunches and stay out all day.

If you, like me, think that a sheep is a sheep is a sheep, then you could not be more wrong. I checked ears for almost a week before I realised that I was recognising the animals I had checked previously. Once you spotted it, their faces are as individual as ours and I was soon able to complete my list from a distance. Even more surprising was that each animal has a distinct personality. By the middle of the second week, I was giving my girls names. The excitable, rather intense one I called Anne since she shared her character with the professor. There was an Ellen and a Pat - and I even found one I dubbed Glenda. This sheep looked at me intently, probably expressing indifference, but it could easily be mistaken for devotion.

You get funny thoughts when you spend hours alone in the company of sheep surrounded by nature in the raw. I began to recall all those tales of improper behaviour between shepherds and sheep. I certainly wasn’t tempted at the moment, even by Glenda the sheep, but I wondered if that would change after I had spent the whole winter in their company. That was the first time I had consciously considered making my life on this isolated farm. Dave was ecstatic when I mentioned the possibility to him.

Once I could recognise the faces of the girls, I could begin really looking at the plants around me. There was very little of interest on the ridges, but the dips and hollows were a cornucopia of strange and wonderful species. Dave’s phone had limited internet capability so I was able to do some checking, although far less than I would have wished. It was just as well, really, since I was too physically tired to concentrate. So far as I could judge, there was nothing truly unexpected amongst the plants I found, but I was developing an idea for my thesis.

The flock had no adventurous members; they were all perfectly happy to eat what was close at hand. Over the course of two weeks they did, however, spread further and further from the pen where we had unloaded them. It was Andrew who pointed out that we needed a sheepdog to help us keep them together. In the spring, they would be giving birth, and it was important that they should be close to the house so we could help where necessary. He had a young dog that he could give us.

Flubber was partly trained but had social problems, according to Andrew. It came as no surprise to discuss the personality of a dumb animal. About sixty of the sheep stayed in my territory and I now knew them by name. Dave was a little slower to recognise the individuality of his part of the flock, but he was getting there. I think it was my aptitude that Andrew appreciated, since he was insistent that the dog would be mine. Flubber seemed to agree, making a great fuss of me from our first meeting. Dave admitted that he was a little uncomfortable around dogs, refusing to have one in the house when his daughters were young.

I know they say that you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but that is bad advice when dealing with a crafty highlander. Andrew told me no lies about Flubber but he was exceedingly sparing with the truth. For a start, she was named after an extremely bouncy substance invented by a mad scientist, and she lived up to her name. Andrew was developing a kennel of collies that could be trained to win sheepdog trials. There is very little prize money in the sport, but the prestige of winning has sent the price of champions through the roof. His old dog, Fly, had won local trials and he had spent over a thousand pounds to mate her with a champion stud dog from somewhere in the Borders. He sold the two dog pups and kept the two bitches, Flitter and Flubber. Both showed promise as trial dogs but Flubber could not agree with either her mother or her sister.

Andrew was disgusted when I could not whistle, so he had to reach me the arcane words of command, ‘go away’ and ‘come by’ and other equally meaningless phrases that caused a sheepdog’s ears to flick with intelligence. It was when I asked him for a demonstration that I first learned that Flubber had a problem. She listened intently to Andrew’s instructions, and then did something completely different. Despite this problem, I took her with me when I went out to count sheep.

She walked by my side while I chatted about this and that, looking up at me from time to time. I was enjoying her company, as I confided my plans for my doctoral studies. My notebook was full of observations, and talking out loud, even if only to a dog, was helping me to put my ideas into order. Just as I was about to turn for home, I spotted a sheep far enough away to defy identification. She was feeding quietly, clearly in no distress, but my conscience was urging me to walk over to check.

While I was musing, Flubber crept away. It was our first day out together and I deduced that she had become bored and was heading home for supper. I was still looking at the sheep when Flubber appeared behind her, crawling forward on her knees. The sheep stopped eating, lifted her head and glanced behind her before sauntering towards me. I then watched a master class as the dog eased the sheep in my direction without causing any anxiety. When she got close enough for me to recognise her, I called out. “It’s Anne! She’s probably found another rare hybrid to guzzle.”

I don’t suppose either animal appreciated my rather feeble joke, but both responded to my words. Flubber reappeared, panting, at my heel, while Anne lowered her head to continue calmly nibbling. From that day on, I never gave Flubber a command. She seemed to read my mind or my body language because she always knew what I wanted, sometimes before I was aware that I had decided. She only ever misbehaved in Andrew’s presence.

While she and I were getting to know each other, her legal position was being decided by Andrew and Dave. We did deals with our neighbours for sheep dip or Stockholm tar, on the basis of a handshake, but the disposal of a dog required the services of a solicitor. The price was fixed with certain contingencies, depending on the future success of Flitter in sheepdog trials. Then there was an agreement on a suitable sire and the ownership of the pups if we chose to breed Flubber.

Dave did all the legal work, eventually buying Flubber for Auchnasheen Ltd. No one had any doubt, however, that she was my dog, and I was her master and companion. She was friendly and even tempered, except when she met someone who wished me harm. Much later in our partnership, she sat on my feet, glaring at the man sitting opposite me with her teeth bared. She didn’t make a sound but there was no mistaking the menace.

Although I was not yet prepared to announce it publicly, the arrival of Flubber settled my future. She and I would spend the remainder of our lives somewhere remote, caring for sheep. I had a job and a wife to dispose of before I could reach that goal, but somehow, I knew that it would happen. Flubber could not survive away from the high moorland, and I was little better. Andrew had witnessed similar bonding of man and dog before, but it was Mary who got closest to what had happened. “Flubber has spotted something in you, Fred, that the rest of us missed. I sensed something and it sounds as if Dave and your professor were dimly aware, but it took that comical mutt to release it.”

She may have been correct. There was certainly a change in the atmosphere after the arrival of the dog. Dave’s anxiety diminished and, for the first time since we had met, he began to truly believe that he could make a success of his venture. Perhaps it was only that we had passed the stage of terminal exhaustion that made our first few days such a foggy memory. After supper, we had the strength to chat about something other than pregnant sheep. “I was incredibly stupid to start this, wasn’t I?” Dave said, absent-mindedly fondling Flubber’s ears.

“Rather say, incredibly courageous. It is your example that has given me the courage to consider throwing up everything I had before to become a Doctor of Philosophy. If a ditchwater dull forensic accountant can become a successful sheep farmer than there must be hope for folk like me.” He sat, shaking his head. “It wasn’t courage that drove me, Fred. I had lost everything that mattered to me and was in terminal despair. If there is any credit due, it’s to Penny.”

Amber had always been a rather sulky girl, demanding attention and treating her wants as mattering more than the needs of the rest of her family. Always excitable, it was no real surprise that she made such a vicious attack on her dad on the eve of her wedding. Dave was hurt by her attack, especially when she compared him unfavourably with her mother’s lover, but it was simply an expression of her personality.

Helen’s approach to life had always been to put the telescope to her blind eye as Nelson did at Copenhagen. Set your goals, plough through the obstacles until you achieve them, then smile and offer condolences to the people you ruined en route. Until she established Henderson as the man in her life, she would do and say anything. Later, when she had everything she wanted, would be time enough to smooth Dave’s ruffled feathers. In the meantime, he could put up with her new reality or leave.

Helen and Amber had behaved in character; Dave was able to accommodate to their dismissal of him with relative equanimity. His problem arose when Penny, his stalwart supporter, sided with her mother and sister. This was the ultimate betrayal. He had devoted himself to the woman and two girls for most of his life, before he was dismissed without even a chance to argue his case. His wife had not only cheated on him, but she had also lied to him when she denied that there was another man involved in the decision to divorce him.

“Nobody loves me, everybody hates me. I think I’ll go and eat worms,” Dave laughed at himself, but he could not disguise the depth of his hurt. He had suppressed his own wishes for thirty years, to be a loving and supportive husband and father. As it turns out, he suppressed more than even he knew, since he never suspected he possessed the ability he has shown in getting Auchnasheen Farm up and running. He will not, perhaps, be a great shepherd but his organisational skills and his ability to find the right people has made the venture work.

Richard, who had met Dave when he was an accountant, opened his house to him when he wanted to change his life. Andrew had raised his eyebrows in surprise that a man with such an infamously short temper as Fergus would have tolerated Dave while he learned shepherding from scratch. Mary and Andrew first met Dave as the rich city-dweller who could spend thousands to refurbish the old farmhouse as a holiday home; now they are his closest friends and warmest supporters, spreading news of Dave’s successes beyond the local neighbourhood.

That brought my thinking to our own meeting in front of the closed café. Looking back, I believe that we all warmed to him that morning because he freely admitted his inability to handle the situation. Fixing a fanbelt is a simple enough task, but Dave didn’t know where to begin. It was only after I got to know Andrew that I discovered that the hundred sheep in the lorry were the best that money could buy. The vendor could have foisted inferior animals on Dave without him knowing.

It was his interaction inside the café, however, that marked his special quality. I have known Pat half my life, watching her deal firmly but gently with proposals of all sorts from men of all shapes and sizes, from truckers to lawyers and businessmen. Dave was in her company for less than an hour, but I watched as she responded to him with a warmth I had not seen before. Dave is not an object of pity that we help in order to make ourselves feel more talented or successful; we seem to recognise that he is honestly striving to reach an impossible goal.