Ten Steps to Happiness

‘I’m so sorry,’ she burst out. ‘It must be so awful for you. I wish I could…’ and to her dismay she started crying.

‘Hey,’ he said, laughing slightly and giving her shoulders a squeeze. ‘Hey…’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, I know you are, Jo…thank you…’

And they fell silent again, neither noticed for how long. Suddenly Grey (whose natural impatience had been kept in admirable check until then) yanked them rudely back to the moment.

‘Jesus fuckin’ hell, I’m freezin’ my arse off out here! Are they not asleep yet? I can’t hear a soddin’ sound!’

The cows slept all that afternoon and all night and most of the following morning. By the time they started getting restless again it was lunchtime and most of the work was already done. But there were still half a dozen Ministry men hanging around and the pyre was yet to be lit. Charlie, Grey and Jo met up in the cellar to decide what they should do next. They had run out of sleeping pills and the cows had rejected the litre of vodka mixed with milk and golden syrup. Jo produced a small bottle of Rescue Remedy and was arguing about how to get the drops onto the animals’ tongues when Jasonette’s right horn sent the bottle flying.

‘Well, fuck that,’ said Grey. ‘That’s fucked that then, hasn’t it?’ He made the animals jump.

‘Will you stop shouting,’ snapped Charlie.

‘Charlie, calm down. He’s only trying to help.’

‘Well. He’s not succeeding. He’s scaring the girls.’

‘Och, sod off.’

‘Yeah, Charlie,’ said Jo. ‘Actually I second that.’

The humans were growing as tetchy as the animals, and the animals were growing tetchier and noisier with every minute. Nobody noticed the General until he was standing right beside them.

‘EXCUSE ME!’ They all jumped. ‘Sorry to butt in,’ he said dryly, ‘but we may have a small problem. The fellow from Trading Standards has just called. He’s been in touch with the BCMS, whatever that may be. Or the BC something else. Anyway he seems to think there may be a couple of beasts up here which we haven’t accounted for…I told him it was nonsense, of course, but I’m afraid he’s like a dog with a bone. He’s on his way over.’

When he arrived the four inhabitants of Fiddleford were standing in a line at the end of the drive waiting for him. The plan, in as much as they’d had time to form one, was first and foremost to keep him away from the house. It was decided that the General, as soon as things looked dangerous, would discombobulate by feigning some sort of health attack; Jo, who didn’t like long walks, would rush him into the house and then Charlie and Grey, with an air of repressed panic and polite martyrdom, would insist on pressing on with the business, leading him on a circuitous route to the furthest end of the estate. When the man was looking exhausted, blue with cold, faint with boredom and regret at ever having returned to Fiddleford, they would direct his attention to a mound, a little hillock, a snow drift, anything which looked appropriate, and tell him they thought (though they couldn’t be certain what with the snow, and after so much time had passed) it was the place where the cows had been buried eleven years earlier.

It was a ludicrous plan and it didn’t work. Obviously. Because the first thing the man wanted to do, after expressing wholly unfelt regret for disturbing them once again, was to go to the lavatory.

‘Lav’s blocked,’ said the General, squaring his shoulders, refusing to break the line. ‘Sorry about that. Pipes are frozen. Have to go behind a tree…I think—Charlie, didn’t you bring a trowel with you, just in case the fellow came up with something like this?’

‘Certainly did,’ said Charlie, producing one from his back pocket.

‘Oh goodness, not to worry.’ Mr Coleridge gazed longingly between their heads at the handsome building behind them. ‘Isn’t there, perhaps, a functioning toilet I could use upstairs?’

‘No toilets,’ said Charlie. ‘Sorry.’

‘Ah well, never mind. I shall just have to store it up…’ He rubbed his soft white hands together and shivered. ‘Perhaps a cup of tea then? I won’t take up too much of your time. It’s just a simple matter to clear up, as you know. I’m sure it’s nothing. A minor oversight.’

‘Tea’s run out,’ said Jo. ‘Anyway it’s a diuretic. It’ll make you worse. Why don’t you let Charlie and Grey quickly take you off to where the poor old cows are buried? That way we won’t be wasting your time – and goodness knows you must be busy. And then if you get caught short along the way—’

Coleridge frowned. He didn’t like to be outside for any longer than he needed to be and he had absolutely no intention of spending his afternoon trudging through the snow in search of illegally buried animals. ‘This probably isn’t the time to mention it,’ he said, ‘and of course I realise the Act doesn’t, strictly speaking, apply to me. But you should be aware that you are in fact legally obligated to provide workers with a functioning toilet as well, of course, as the usual facilities for making hot beverages. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act. 1974. I only mention it because I wonder how the others are managing. Or perhaps you have provided alternative arrangements…’

Jo opened her mouth to say something appropriately soothing, but the General didn’t give her a chance to speak. He had yet to learn what a powerfully efficient ally he had in his annoying new daughter-in-law, so at the mention of unfulfilled legal obligations, he panicked.

‘Aaarrrggh!’ he cried, clutching his heart melodramatically and staggering forwards.

Immediately and with surprising elegance, Mr Coleridge lunged to catch him.

‘Quickly!’ he shouted, gripping the General’s shoulders. ‘Don’t just stand there! Let’s get him inside the house!’

The General struggled ineffectively for escape, but the man from Trading Standards was not to be put off. Transferring the General into one tight arm, he used the other to loosen his patient’s tie.

‘Get your hands off me, you filthy bugger!’ shouted the General. ‘…Help! Someone!…Charlie! Get this bugger off me!’

Mr Coleridge’s own father-in-law had died from a heart attack right in front of him only two years earlier, and it had been horrible. Whatever the General chose to call him he would do everything he could not to repeat the experience. Amid loud protestations from all four of them, Mr Coleridge lifted the General off his feet and carried him back into the house. Short of knocking the man unconscious, which was more or less out of the question, there wasn’t much they could do to stop him.

‘He needs,’ puffed the lilac hero, after he’d gently laid the General onto the drawing-room sofa, ‘a cup of hot, sweet tea. Don’t you think?’

‘I’m perfectly bloody well all right,’ spluttered the General, puce with rage. ‘Bit of wind, that’s all. And if you touch me again, you officious little bugger, I’ll have you up for assault. Is that clear?’

Lilac Man nodded phlegmatically. ‘I tell you what, though,’ he looked playfully across to Jo, ‘I could use a nice cup of tea myself!’

Just then, from the back of the house, came the unmistakable rumble they had all been dreading. Charlie, Jo, Grey and the General froze. They looked across at Coleridge in trepidation. They waited…

‘Mrs—Maxwell McDonald?’ wheedled Coleridge doggedly. ‘Or failing that a coffee would be super.’

The rumble continued. Was he deaf?

‘Smiley,’ said Jo quickly. ‘The name is still Smiley. In fact. And of course you could have tea, if we had any. But we don’t.’ She paused. The cows were in full voice now, and in unison. It seemed to her that they were getting louder every second. ‘But why are you asking me as opposed to anyone else? We’re all as capable of making cups of tea as each other. Or we would be. If there was any tea. Which as I say there isn’t…Isn’t that right, Charlie?’

‘Mmm? Oh, absolutely. The thing about tea…’

Slowly, at last, the man from Trading Standards held up a finger and frowned. ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘What’s…that…?’

Charlie clapped his hands together and stood up. ‘So,’ he shouted. ‘Who has sugar? Dad, I know you do. I know you do, Grey. You don’t, do you, Jo. And I don’t either. So the single remaining mystery, on the sugar front, is you, Mr Coleridge. Mr Coleridge, are you a sugar man?’

‘Shhh!’

‘Do you have sugar, Mr Coleridge?’

‘Shhh! Please. Be quiet—’ Still with one finger aloft, he headed into the hall. Charlie followed him.

‘I hate to be rude,’ said Charlie, padding unhappily after him, ‘but the back of the house really is out of bounds. I thought I explained. We can’t just have people trespassing…Mr Coleridge? Please! Where do you think you’re going?’

Mr Coleridge broke into a jog. As Jo had done two nights previously, he followed the by now thunderous noise through the back hall, past the boot room to the cellar door, where he paused and turned victoriously towards Charlie.

‘I have reason to believe—’ he said smugly.

‘What? Reason to believe what?’ snapped Charlie. The cows lowed again, more quietly this time, as if they were settling down at last, now that it was too late, and Charlie looked at him with hopeless desperation. ‘Mr Coleridge,’ he said quietly. ‘Please. Why are you doing this?’

‘For reasons of health and safety—’

‘But they’re in quarantine down there! They couldn’t be healthier or safer!’