The cows of Durley
Thursday, June 3. 2010
This wee incident happened a few years ago, but last night walking across a field of young cows the whole incident came back so vividly I thought I'd share it.
I went for a walk in Durley yesterday, which despite its rather dull sounding name is a secret little corner of Hampshire that is almost too perfectly English and beautiful for its own good. William Cobbett called it 'certainly one of the most obscure villages in this whole kingdom'. Obscure in the true sense of hidden, cut off. And then some. With demonic cows.
I'd just emerged from a wooded hillside above the upper reaches of the Hamble River, all marsh and bluebells, into a meadow; I was about halfway across when I noticed that the cows I'd clocked on the way in where running my way, fast. The one in the lead was a young black thing, with a fair set of horns on it, and looked intent on running me down. I did the obvious thing and started backing away but it just kept on coming so I raised my arms and started bellowing at it (all the time, thinking, 'grab its ring'): it pulled up short and just stared at me. Meanwhile the rest of the herd had caught up and were lumbering up, careening into each other, mounting each other, generally looking chaotic. I started to back off and they followed so I charged them, shouting: they'd back off, but one would always resume interest so they just kept getting closer. I turned to identify an escape route and saw a gate behind me that I could leap...
Now, to my mind, cow’s aren’t dangerous as such, they're more just affectless somehow, with a latent, abstract potential for horrible damage. You don't get malice with cows, just a sort of dumb, belligerent interest. But all the while, you do wonder if there isn’t an uprising in there somewhere, all those years of disgusting servitude just bubbling away waiting to boil over. If they wanted too, surely they could; I mean, Christ, that's a ton of animal.
As I backed toward the gate, they just kept coming on in a kind of demonic v-shape: a few at the head most intent, the others drawn on, living the herd mentality. I held my bag above my head and charged one more time (what a warrior: man-bag in hand, screaming like a girl steaming into a docile bovine crowd, hardly William Wallace), then turned and bolted for the gate. I could hear the ground pounding behind me and sensed the hot mineral breath on the back of my neck. I vaulted the gate (yes, vaulted). As I landed there was a great clatter as the head of the pack battered into the gate. As I landed there was a horrible moment when I thought they'd got through, but thankfully they hadn’t - there was just a line of beasts, watching me from behind the gate, now spreading along the line of the fence. Thank god for barbed wire.
I was on a patch of land that was half wet woodland marsh, half farmland. What was immediately obvious was that I couldn’t go down, as it were, because that was flood plain for the river it looked like knee deep bog; to my left was a tangled mess of bog and scrub; right wasn’t an option as it was more bog and scrub and only lead the way I'd come; ahead was a steaming herd of cattle. They were just standing there, gawping, and obviously going nowhere. After sitting on a rock for a bit, mildly panicking, it was obvious that I'd have to go left and try and get through the bog/scrub. It was a torturous affair, all low brambles and ankle deep, sucking mud. All the while the cows were following my progress along the fence, lowing gently. I eventually reached the field boundary and all I needed to negotiate was a fallen tree that was matted with brambles and a barbed wire fence. I was triumphant and started threatening the beasts with all sorts of torments: I was coming back with a gun, with an axe, with a steak knife. As I leapt off the tree into the neighbouring field whooping with a rare kind of joy I gave the entire herd the two fingered salute and turned away.
As I turned away, I noticed that the field I was now in, whilst obviously being adjacent to the one with the cows in, was also more intimately associated. By a gate. That was open. I had an awful moment of realisation, a sort of disbelieving wrenching horror: this was destiny, I was to be made to pay for all the sirloin I'd savaged in the past, all that rump, topside; I was the sacrifice, the burnt offering, to ease the guilt of mankind - this had been ordained, I couldn’t escape. Looking frantically about, I was bound by the river on the left and a dense hawthorn hedge on the right. The opposite side of the field seemed many miles off. Behind there was a diabolic horde thirsty for penitent blood. It was over.
They could see me through the hedge and were trying to get through; noses appearing, feet appearing. As I backed away, they were moving along the boundary hedge, toward the gate, but quite obviously hadn't noticed it, or hadn’t put two and two together that it was a way through... My slow backing off soon turned into a quick stroll, which soon became a frantic scrambling run, uphill towards a distant stile, a beacon of safety. As I ran, wheezing like a consumptive, I'd risk the occasional glance over my shoulder, to see that they were no nearer working out the concept of gate, no nearer. I reached the stile. They hadn’t even got into the field yet. I stood statued on the stile for a bit, watching their progress, still a bit stunned. The sun had become a hanging orange ball by now, and there was a purple, washed look to everything. I felt oddly serene, ecstatic even. I dropped off the stile into a lane. As I headed up the cooling tarmac, I glanced into the field and noticed that the cows had found their way through the gate and where heading over, the herd as one, morphing and mutating, fluid. There was no intent there now though; I was out of sight, forgotten. Free to go.