The Cows at the Fox and Sty

The walk is supposed to take forty-five minutes, which is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to spend walking, provided nobody has put anything interesting along the way.

Maddie has checked the route and the weather. She has even checked her shoes, although what she expected to find wrong with them she isn't sure. They are the same shoes she wore yesterday, and nothing dreadful has happened to them overnight.

It is a lovely evening.

The sun lies warm across the fields. The hedges are thick with leaves, and the air smells of cut grass and something sweet that Maddie can't identify. A blackbird sings from a fence post. Farther away a tractor moves slowly across a slope, almost silently at this distance. Maddie stands for a moment in the shade of an ash tree, enjoying the coolness against her face.

Bees work through the flowers along the path. They look terribly busy. Maddie wonders whether a bee has ever set off to collect pollen and become distracted by a particularly nice leaf. There must be at least one bee who isn't very good at being a bee.

She hopes the others are understanding.

The footpath leads between two fields and through a wooden kissing gate. Maddie has never understood why it's called that. There is nobody to kiss, and the gate itself is made of splintery wood and smells faintly of sheep. Perhaps somebody once kissed somebody here and the gate has been taking the credit ever since.

She gives it a small pat as she passes.

“Well done.”

For a while she walks without thinking about anything in particular. The path is dry underfoot. The tops of the long grasses brush her bare arms. Somewhere beyond a hedge, unseen water moves over stones. It is the kind of evening that makes getting somewhere seem much less important than being on the way.

Maddie has brought her phone, a bottle of water and a packet of fruit pastilles. The red ones are already gone.

Lou had texted before she left.

Going far?

Just a little walk.

Your little walks have a history.

Forty-five minutes. Circular route. Very straightforward.

Take water.

I have water.

Drink it.

You're very bossy for someone who lost her glasses in a fridge.

They were sunglasses. It was bright in there.

Maddie had laughed at that for longer than was strictly necessary.

She checks the time now. Twenty-seven minutes since she left home. The path rises gently towards two old stone walls and a cluster of rooftops among the trees. She is making excellent progress, although she isn't entirely sure whether she's gone halfway or merely walked for half the time.

Then she sees the sign.

THE FOX AND STY

REAL ALES · LOCAL CIDER · GARDEN

An arrow points down a narrow lane.

Maddie stops.

A pub. With a garden. And local cider.

This is precisely the sort of thing that interferes with a forty-five-minute walk.

There is no reason she couldn't sit down for five minutes. Five minutes is a perfectly normal amount of time to spend in a pub garden. People probably do it all the time.

She follows the arrow.

---

The Fox and Sty is a low stone building with crooked chimneys and white-painted windows. Its hanging sign shows a fox looking rather pleased with itself beside a pig who appears to have made a serious mistake.

Maddie studies it.

Why would a fox and a pig run a pub together? There would be questions about trust. About catering. About who was responsible for the sausages.

She decides the pig owns the building and the fox handles publicity.

Behind the pub are six wooden tables on a patch of grass, a climbing rose against the wall, and a low fence separating the garden from a field. A narrow stream runs beyond the far hedge. Two people share a bowl of chips beneath a parasol. An elderly man in a flat cap is reading a newspaper with a pint beside him. Under his chair lies a brown dog, apparently disappointed by the entire concept of an outing.

Inside, the bar smells of old wood and chips.

“Evening, love,” says a woman with short grey hair who is polishing glasses.

“Hello. Do you have local cider?”

“Three. Dry, medium or sweet.”

“Medium, please.”

“Pint?”

Maddie hesitates. She is walking, after all.

“Yes, please.”

The cider is amber and slightly cloudy. She pays and lifts it carefully from the counter.

“Nice evening for the garden,” the woman says. “Mind the gate at the bottom, though. We've got a cow who's learnt the latch.”

“A cow?”

“Mabel. Cleverer than she looks, unfortunately.”

Maddie turns this over in her mind as she goes outside. It isn't every day you're warned about a cow with mechanical abilities.

She chooses a table near the fence. The cider is cold and tastes wonderfully of apples.

A swallow cuts low across the grass. The old man turns a page of his newspaper. The dog opens one eye, decides nothing requires his assistance, and shuts it again.

Maddie settles back.

Five minutes, she thinks.

Possibly ten.

---

The first cow appears on the other side of the fence.

She is brown and white, with a patch over one eye that makes her look as if she has been involved in a disagreement and would rather not discuss it.

Maddie watches her.

The cow watches Maddie.

“Hello,” Maddie says.

The cow moves towards the gate. She lowers her nose to the latch, feels around it and lifts.

There is a small metallic click.

Maddie sits up.

The cow pushes. The gate swings inward.

“Oh,” says Maddie.

The cow steps into the garden.

“Oh,” says Maddie again, in a slightly different voice.

Two more cows appear behind her. One follows at once. The other pauses in the gateway, as though considering the implications, then comes through too.

Three cows are now standing in the garden of The Fox and Sty.

Maddie puts down her cider.

She has never seen a cow operate a gate before. She isn't sure whether to be impressed or worried about what else they've learnt.

The old man looks over his newspaper.

“Oh, for goodness' sake.”

His dog sits up, assesses the cows, and returns to the ground.

Mabel lowers her head to a patch of clover beside Maddie's table. The second cow heads for the climbing rose. The third stands in the middle of the grass, looking around as if she has arrived at a party and forgotten whose birthday it is.

“Are they supposed to be here?” asks the woman beneath the parasol.

“No,” says the old man. “That's the problem with them.”

The second cow takes a mouthful of rose.

“Oi!” he says. “Not the roses!”

The cow continues chewing.

The woman from the bar appears carrying a tray of empty glasses. She stops, looks at the cows, then at the open gate.

“Oh, bloody hell. Mabel.”

So this is Mabel, the one working through the clover. Maddie is pleased to have been formally introduced, even if the introduction was not intended for her.

“Frank! Can you get Jim?”

“Jim's gone home.”

“Well, get him back!”

Frank folds his newspaper, very neatly, and reaches for his phone.

“Are they dangerous?” asks the woman with the chips.

“Only to the roses,” says the landlady.

The rose-eating cow reaches for the leaves higher up the bush. Mabel carries on with the clover, apparently satisfied with her choice.

Maddie moves her glass a little farther from the edge of the table.

Mabel is eating clover with tremendous concentration. For the moment, everybody appears to be getting what they came for.

---

News of the cows reaches the bar. A few customers come out to look, drinks in hand, and stand near the back door. Soon the usual evening arrivals begin turning up too: a pair of cyclists, a family with three children, two walkers who have evidently come for supper. Some see the cows. Others are given detailed accounts by people who have seen them for almost three minutes.

The cows carry on.

One examines a picnic bench. Another discovers an empty bucket and wears it briefly on her nose. A little girl applauds when it falls off with a hollow clonk.

“Don't encourage it,” says her father.

Maddie is delighted. There ought to be a procedure for this. A bell, perhaps. A designated cow marshal. Somewhere there must be a document explaining what to do when livestock enter licensed premises.

She wonders whether cows count towards a pub's maximum occupancy.

A muddy green Land Rover pulls into the lane. A broad man in shorts and wellington boots gets out and comes in through the pub garden entrance.

“Evening,” he says to nobody in particular.

The landlady folds her arms.

“Jim.”

“Carol.”

“Your cows.”

“I can see that.”

“They're eating my roses.”

Jim looks at the cow pulling leaves from the rose.

“Well, don't do that, then.”

The cow does not alter her plans.

Jim walks calmly around the animals, gives them room and encourages them towards the open gate. The rose-eating cow leaves first. The other follows after one last inspection of the bucket. Both wander away into the field.

Mabel, meanwhile, is still at the clover.

Jim looks at her. She looks at Jim.

“Come on, Mabel.”

Mabel chews.

“Come on.”

She takes another mouthful.

“Don't start.”

Maddie rather likes Mabel. She appears to have principles.

Jim goes back to the Land Rover and returns with a small bucket of feed and a length of chain. He gives the bucket a shake. Mabel lifts her head at once and follows him through the gate, joining the other two cows in the field.

Apparently Mabel's principles are negotiable.

Jim shuts the gate, checks the latch and loops the chain he brought from the Land Rover around the gate and post.

“There,” he says.

Carol looks at what remains of the rose.

“She'll grow back,” Jim offers.

“That rose is older than your cows.”

“Well, she'll have to set them a good example.”

Carol shakes her head, though Maddie notices she's smiling.

The children give Jim a round of applause. He raises the bucket in acknowledgement and drives away.

The cows are gone.

---

The garden, however, is no longer quiet.

People who hadn't even seen the cows are discussing them with considerable authority. Somebody has pulled a chair close to Maddie's table. A group near the door laughs loudly at something she hasn't heard, and the sound of glasses and voices seems to arrive from several directions at once.

Maddie takes another sip of cider.

It's still lovely cider.

But the garden no longer feels quite like the place she sat down in. A chair scrapes over the paving. Someone calls an order across the tables. The small space that had belonged to the swallows and Frank's newspaper has filled with people.

She looks beyond the fence. The fields are quiet, their hedges touched gold by the lowering sun.

She finishes her pint and checks the time.

Oh.

Her forty-five-minute walk has been going on for nearly two hours, and she still has to get home.

She opens the map on her phone. The circular route she intended to follow passes through another field, over several stiles and across something marked Ford.

Maddie doesn't much like the sound of the ford. A ford ought to be a car. Instead it is a place where a road and a river have failed to agree on who's in charge.

The lane through the village is a little longer, but she knows it. It has a pavement for much of the way, a small bridge and no need to cross water unexpectedly.

She chooses the lane.

This seems sensible. She finishes the water in her bottle before setting off.

She takes one last look at the gate. The chain is firmly in place. Mabel will have to develop an entirely new skill before her next visit.

“Evening,” Maddie says to Carol as she passes the bar.

“Enjoy your walk, love.”

“I did. Especially the cows.”

Carol sighs.

“Everyone does except me.”

---

Beyond the pub, the lane curves towards the village. A few windows glow behind cottage curtains. Somewhere somebody is cooking onions, which makes Maddie realise she is hungry.

The road climbs gently past a churchyard and then turns between high hedges. She knows where she is, and she is quite content walking at her own pace.

The last sunlight catches the tops of the hedgerows. In the shadow underneath them, the air has cooled. A blackbird is singing as if it has remembered one final thing to say before bedtime.

Maddie lets the quiet settle around her.

At the little stone bridge she stops long enough to watch the stream moving beneath it. Two leaves drift through the reflected sky and vanish under the arch. She stays until they are gone, then walks on.

A bat crosses the lane ahead of her, then another. She wonders whether bats ever follow the wrong echo.

Probably.

She hopes they have a system for apologising.

Farther on she passes the old red telephone box, which hasn't contained a telephone for years. Someone has filled it with books instead.

Maddie looks through the glass. A cookbook, three crime novels and something about railway signalling.

Railway signalling could be interesting.

She considers going in.

Then she thinks about the toast she could make at home.

“Another day,” she tells the books.

She walks on as the first houses of her own village come into view.

---

By the time Maddie reaches her front door, the sky has gone deep blue. She takes off her shoes, puts her empty water bottle on the kitchen counter and makes two pieces of toast.

She was out for a little over three hours. Her original plan was forty-five minutes. There is probably a category of scheduling error for this, although she's not sure what it would be called.

She sits down with her toast and texts Lou.

Home.

The reply comes almost immediately.

And the cows?

Home too, I think.

Did you enjoy your walk?

Maddie considers the warm fields, the cider, and Mabel opening the gate with the confidence of somebody arriving for a reservation.

Very much.

Good. Same again tomorrow?

Maddie looks at her walking shoes by the door.

Perhaps somewhere without cows.

Lou replies almost immediately.

You'd miss them.