It was one of those mornings when Bella wondered why ever she had married a farmer and lived in the depths of the countryside for the last five years. The night-time gale had been so strong that the old farmhouse windows had rattled constantly and John had been up most of the night checking on the animals.
She yawned and began to cross the farmyard with difficulty. Her wellies slipped in the shallow mud just as ice skates would across the surface of a rink. Where the mud lay in deeper patches each footstep felt as if her boots would be sucked off her feet by the brown stickiness. It was just five o clock and barely light. The storm that had been blowing since before bedtime, was now over. There should have been a quietness in the air, but the morning calm was being shattered by John’s chainsaw shrieking at the top end of the drive where an oak tree toppled by the gale was completely blocking the way in and out of the farm.
He had left it to her to re-check the animals. Last night she had helped him lead the two retired seaside donkeys Punch and Judy into the modern steel-clad barn. She could now see the remains of their shed blown to pieces and flapping against the hedge at the far end of their paddock. Bella entered the barn and found that the cows, sheep and goats had made room for the new residents with little fuss; indeed the two donkeys seemed to be at home in their new surroundings. She busied herself with feeds for them all and then ventured outside again into the mud of the yard. The farm cats had climbed up onto the old barn and were sitting along the roof line looking down disdainfully at the muddy ground. Bella counted six of them – none missing.
The duck pond had doubled in size overnight but there were no ducks to be seen, not even around the water’s edge. Where were they? The two pairs of mallards that were the usual residents had disappeared along with their new broods of ducklings. The ditch at the far side of the pond had brimmed over and was now on a new course straight through the pond. The water, normally slack and motionless, was now full of ripples carrying large twigs and other debris along at full pelt. The ducklings, like striped bumblebees, would not be able to cope in such fast moving water. Bella picked her way over to the pond and parted the long grass where she knew two nests had been built. There was nothing left of them.
A raucous braying from the steel barn began to echo across the yard. What was the matter with Punch and Judy? Everything had seemed fine when she had left them just a couple of minutes earlier. Perhaps the goats were causing trouble. She turned and went back into the barn. It was dim inside and her eyes took a while to accustom to the darkness. Punch and Judy were still hee-hawing loudly but the goats were nowhere near them. But there, running around in the straw bedding on the floor, she saw two pairs of ducks and two crocodile lines of tiny ducklings. Found you, she thought.
