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MillerBy D.R. Jeanes |
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The family solicitor, half-moon spectacles balanced toward the end of his nose, looked gravely at the various members of the family dotted about his office. ‘I’m afraid the contents of the will may be of some surprise to you,’ he began. The family leaned forward eagerly. There was a lot of land. Six hundred acres, give or take a haystack. Miller’s grandfather had been a ‘grafter’. Married to his work, never at home except to impregnate his long-suffering wife. To this end he had impregnated her at least five times. For his sons and daughters were sat now in the solicitor’s office. Their offspring too were also in attendance. Three grandsons by the two daughters, and two granddaughters by the three sons. Miller’s cousins, Carl and Christopher, sat quietly with the others as the solicitor read the will. They left equally as quietly come the conclusion. There was nothing for them. Nothing for any of them, except for Miller, who inherited the lot. Useless at school or at social intercourse, Miller had spent his days helping his grandfather with the farm. When it was the lambing season he could be found up to his armpits in sheep. He knew all the correct things to do, from dipping to shearing and even, on occasion, the butchering as well. He was the obvious choice to inherit the farm. And yet, the family had turned up on the off chance that granddad had had a last minute change of heart and had divided the land equally. Knowing his grandfather rather better than the rest, Miller could have told them they were wasting their time, the old man had no time for people who had no time for him. A born mis-truster of the world and it’s so-called experts he raged regularly at the inept weather reporters on the TV and had been known to take down his shotgun from the wall when election times were near and the prospective candidates ventured onto his land to canvass his vote. Carl collared him on the way out. ‘Got what you wanted then?’ he said. It was by way of a question. ‘What, bit of peace and quiet?’ Miller replied. There was a frosty silence. ‘If you knew what was good for you, you’d consider selling the land and dividing the money up between us. That would be fair.’ ‘Where does it say that I have to be fair?’ said Miller, quoting what he thought was scripture at his pious relative. ‘He left the land to me to do with it what I want. That was what he wanted.’ ‘So, what are you going to do with it?’ Carl’s wife, a stick-thin, bitter-looking woman with an apparent eating disorder had joined him at his side. ‘It’s six hundred acres, for God’s sake!’ ‘I know how much land there is,’ said Miller easily. ‘Walked it enough times, looking for lambs and foxes. There’s talk of there being a big cat abroad as well.’ ‘Surely these days,’ said Carl ‘it’s too big a farm to be economically viable. Consider selling off about half. That would be an astute investment, save work for you as well. ‘I might do that,’ Miller mused. ‘Now you’re talking,’ enthused Carl. Three hundred acres at today’s prices, well…’ he did a quick bit of mental arithmetic. ‘Could see us all alright for a couple of hundred thou.’ Miller shook his head. ‘There won’t be any handouts though,’ he said. ‘Farming’s tough. Money’s tight. If I sell the land it’ll be to support the farm.’ ‘But what is the point of supporting the farm?’ asked the stick insect. There’s only you there.’ ‘For future generations,’ said Miller humbly, aware that, as a convinced bachelor the chance of any further generations coming from him was, at the moment, quite a long shot. He watched as they got back into their company car. It was a fight that he felt was not over by a long chalk. The rest of the family ebbed and flowed around him. Unlike Carl they made no attempt to coerce him or influence his thinking. They knew him for what he was, a cussed old man like his grandfather and father before him, a chip off the old block. Driving home in the taxi Miller did some thinking. Why couldn’t he sell some of the land. Was that what his grandfather would have wanted? Miller shook his head. Probably not. His grandfather spent many a spring evening trimming and pruning his hedge borders, “what’s mine is mine”, he used to say. And every square inch of his land was carefully guarded to the exact extent that it was coveted, in his grandfather’s mind, by his neighbours. “Right” put us here, Miller learned. At a point in history, probably in the English civil war under Oliver Cromwell, his ancestors had been given this land, had fought for it, one way or the other, and that meant it was not for sale; not to anyone. Swaying along the lanes in a hansom cab, it occurred to Miller that he was now, technically, a millionaire but the thought gave him little comfort. There was work to be done. Lots of work. Farming’s tough… Miller stood on the graveled road by the perimeter fence and watched the carrion begin to circle over the animal’s kill. The sky was clear but the night was darkening, no moon but a red glow on the horizon. Miller wondered what the morning would bring. The flock had been unaware of the cat’s approach. They had scattered like sheep when the poor unfortunate one was caught and had retreated to the far southern corner of the field, from where they had baa-ed pathetically as the single lamb was ripped apart. They would need gathering together before nightfall. Miller, his shotgun broken over his arm, studied the fallen creatures closely. The cat lay still, but Miller stared at it intently watching for the slightest movement. Did animals play dead? He didn’t know and wasn’t taking any chances; the big cat had already taken over a dozen lambs from Miller’s land in the last two seasons. Miller felt in his left-hand greatcoat pocket for two more cartridges, warming them in his palm for a second or two before pushing them home into the barrel with a calloused thumb. Snapping the gun shut he squelched through the muddied gateway and advanced cautiously down the hill. The ground was pitted and rutted due to the animals and the last rains of September and Miller watched his footing carefully. An engine sounded elsewhere in the valley, his neighbours probably, hearing the shot, their curiosity aroused; it wasn’t only his land that the black cat had preyed on. For months the local newspaper had been full of reported sightings of the animal and Miller had been amazed to finally catch a glimpse of it: a slight, stealthy shadow moving slowly and effortlessly in the twilight, under the shadow of the plane trees, along the ridge of the pasture. Perfectly at one with nature but to Miller, who had inspected the view a hundred thousand times, the shadow looked wrong and the cat’s timing couldn’t have been more off. Miller had silently loaded and leveled his gun at the creature in the time it took to bring down its latest prey. One shot was all he’d had time for but it looked as though it had killed the animal. Miller pondered as he crossed the last few yards to where the big cat lay. Maybe there would be a reward? Not that he needed the money, still, the farmers from the surrounding area would be grateful to him for ridding their lands of the beast, and favours could be called in, which was always handy come harvest time. The cat lay on its side, as animals do. Miller had shot it in the shoulder; an open, gaping red wound that seeped blood, but it wasn’t dead, not yet anyway. It turned a yellow eye on Miller and growled pathetically with what strength remained. Miller watched it impassively from behind the gun. He thought about the lambs he’d lost but he could also see things from the cat’s point of view. Cats are natural born killers, they kill to eat. Not like men, who kill for other reasons. But where had it come from? How did it come to be habited here, in the wilds of West Dorset? Was it an unwanted pet? Discarded by some misguided parent of an ungrateful child? Or had it escaped from a zoo? Miller doubted the latter; there were no zoos within a hundred miles of Willow farm. Many had speculated in the local rag, speculated on its species as well. To Miller’s eyes it looked like a Jaguar. Its tail was long and bedraggled as though it was too heavy for the animal to lift off the ground and out of the Dorset mud. The cat looked as though it had seen some rough times as well. Scars around its eyes and several bare patches along its flank bore testament to the many battles the creature had fought over the years of its life. All over now anyway, thought Miller and cocked the gun. One shot to the head and that would be that. What happened next took him by surprise: At the top of the hill a vehicle scrunched up the gravel sounding its horn in friendly greeting. Miller turned, distracted by the noise, and in that instant the cat sprang at him. The first thing Miller noticed was the smell. The mixture of the open wound combined with the animal’s fetid breath overwhelmed his senses. The cat wrapped its forearms around Miller’s chest howling at its own pain and wrestled him off his feet. Moments later he was flat on his face with the cat’s powerful hind legs shredding his clothes and then tearing into his skin and muscle. He was powerless to move. Vaguely he was aware of shouts from his visitors but the cat held him in a well-practiced, vice-like grip, the claws of its front feet embedded in Miller’s chest. The continual scraping of its hind legs cut huge pieces of flesh from his body and Miller began to die. He experienced a sudden, strange feeling of peace as the searing pain stopped abruptly; the cat had severed his spinal cord. The next moment his neighbours arrived with their guns, tearing down the hill, their throats full of curses. The first shot went straight through Miller’s shoulder. Ironic, he thought vaguely. The next cartridge took the heart out of the cat. Drifting in and out of consciousness from somewhere he couldn’t quite identify, Miller heard the voices of his friends. ‘Damn, ‘e’s ‘ad it.’ ‘What a mess! What a smell!’ ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ And so to Paradise, thought Miller. Leaving behind all the muck and blood and bone of life to, well, what? God alone knew. Time would tell. He drifted away. Carl sat on the bench with Mrs. Brooking and looked out over the manicured terrace lawns to the fields beyond. The summer sun shone from its zenith and bathed the grass and the trees with an emerald green glow. Songbirds sang in those trees and faintly in the distance the builders could be heard behind the house digging the foundations for the new swimming pool. Mrs. Brooking had come up from the village to enquire whether Carl would agree to letting the Townswoman’s Guild hold their annual fair on the lawns and Carl had readily agreed. ‘Always glad of the opportunity to put something back.’ Mrs. Brooking beamed. ‘So kind of you, Mr. Stephens. Not every landowner would be so generous.’ She caught sight of the brass plaque attached to the back upright of the bench and read the inscription out loud curiously. ‘”Here lies Hercules. Sheep may safely graze”. She looked puzzled. ‘An appropriate epitaph, don’t you think?’ She looked confused, ‘I’m not quite sure, who was Hercules?’ Carl crossed his legs. ‘My pet cat. We lost him over a year ago I’m afraid.’ She sympathized. ‘You must have thought an awful lot of him.’ Carl nodded. ‘You might say, if it wasn’t for Hercules, I wouldn’t be sat here talking to you today…’ | |