June, 1971
Andy had messed up big-time in his final year at uni. He didn’t like his course. Economics, the ‘dismal science’ that ascribed a sovereign power to selfishness, thus scorning as scientifically irrelevant altruism, paternal and maternal love, solidarity, charity, and every noble human impulse. He was repelled by his tutor, a posturing, pipe-smoking, bow-tie-wearing fraud. Andy had received an education there, but he had received it from his friends. He found Borges’ stories, Bergman’s films, Auden’s poems… You can fill-in the list for yourselves.
What’s more, he was dumped back then by Vanessa (‘don’t ever call me Nessie’). She ‘explained’ the circumstances to him: ‘It’s not that I don’t love you, but I do love Antony more.’
So he collected his undistinguished degree and left. He needed a fresh start, but he’d run up debts – Vanessa had never paid for anything. So he headed back home and worked double shifts at an all-day, late-night café on the ring road. By the end of the summer, he’d cleared his debts, paid for some driving lessons, and bought an old ex-works Ford van for £40 quid. He drove it 400 miles up to Aberdeen – they’d just discovered oil under the North Sea there. He was heading into the unknown and it exhilarated him.
Andy found he loved the city and the countryside round about: he soon caught himself whistling the tune of ‘The Bonnie Lass o’ Fyvie.’ But he hated working on the rigs. More specifically, he hated the long helicopter journeys back and forth over the North Sea every fortnight: the near-deafening noise, the constant shaking and juddering, the dreary views of the desolate waves. Each flight was a nerve-jangling test of endurance.
But he had a plan. After three and a half years, he’d saved enough to buy a semi-derelict croft, up in the hills forty miles north-west of the city. Two small fields and a bit of rough-grazing hillside. The house had been empty for three years, but it had electricity, a well and and a pump-house. The steading was derelict: the roof had fallen-in, but that didn’t matter too much, nor did the lack of a toilet. On the boundary was a lovely highland burn: he’d guessed correctly that there were trout in it.
The plan was to raise goslings for the Christmas market. Geese are the only species of poultry that you can’t factory farm. A gander will service no more than three geese, so he’d have to make sure that each of his little family groups was kept apart (otherwise the ganders would start fighting). A good goose will lay up to about twenty eggs a year, but only if you take the first two clutches of eggs away from her. Then you have the problem of how to hatch those first two clutches: there’s no machine on the market designed for hatching goose eggs and a broody hen could only hatch out three big goose eggs at a time. What’s more, ganders become less fertile after the age of seven and it’s tricky introducing a young replacement… (I’ll stop the complications there, you get the broad picture).
Anyway, the plan worked, more or less. Each late September/early October, when the first frosts came, and the nourishment went out of the grass, Andy sold his goslings onto an arable farmer outside Stonehaven, who fattened them up for Christmas on his surplus barley. And slowly, over the years, Andy re-roofed the steading, dug out a septic tank, put a shower and toilet into the old larder, developed a fertile kitchen garden, and was well-liked by his farming neighbours who appreciated a hard worker.
November, 1991
It was evening; a clear sky meant there’d be a frost that night. Mungo, the cat, appeared at the window. Andy went to let him into the warmth, though he really preferred Mungo to sleep in the steading to discourage rats and mice. As he stood at the open door, he heard noises from the geese, who would normally be a sleeping by that time. He pulled his wellies on and went to investigate.
The geese were stirring, but it wasn’t obvious at first what was disturbing them. The moon was just up, but it was only a slim arc, and the sky was full of stars; the Milky Way was a broad north-south celestial highway. But there, at the northern edge of the Milky Way, was a large black cloud. The cloud was spreading and growing fast, and a strange ragged sound became apparent. Andy had seen this event before, but never ever on such a very great scale: the wild arctic geese were heading south for the winter.
The black cloud grew rapidly closer and the noise became a cacophony. Andy was transfixed: there must’ve been thousands of them. They flew directly overhead, shutting out most of the starlight. His own geese were now enormously excited, half of them started to run and flap their wings, determined to join the wild tribe. But domestic geese are bred to put on weight: they are good swimmers, but they can’t fly.
About a minute elapsed. The black cloud and the noise dwindled into the south. Andy’s geese were all looking in his direction, but he knew they weren’t looking at him: they were watching that disappearing cloud.
He turned and walked thoughtfully back to the house. Not for the first time, he felt sorry for his birds, his little flock. He reckoned he understood their dull sense of loss. He kicked off his wellies and went back to his chosen domesticity – the warm kitchen, where Mungo was curled-up on the mat in front of the stove.
Image: A red sky with a flight of wild geese from Pixabay.com
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