ANGELA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 383, 25 October 1946, Page 30

ANGELA

(Written for "The Listener’ by

RACHEL M.

WHEELER

ER name," Grandfather said firmly, "is Angela." "Why Angela?" we protested in chorus. Anything less like an angel would be difficult to imagine. She was a Holstein, Sonia and stolid, as unremarkable a cow as you could find anywhere, but the lady had character. Grandfather had gone to the saleyards for no definite. purpose except that he liked going ‘there. He liked to watch the animals and the’ people, to lean over the rails and share the excitement and rapid fire of the auction. And so, like the Jack and the Beanstalk story in reverse, he had returned with Angela. He explained that it would be good for us. children to learn how to look after animals, cheerfully disregarding each year’s troupe of pet lambs, the angora rabbits, the two pups we were bringing up for the man down

the road, and the ponies on which we were forever sneaking rides. Po st PH

But Angela was different. Apart from her uses as an‘.educator, she had definite material advantages. We had been getting our milk from the farm: next

door, an unsatisiactory Dusiness Decauise sometimes it was forgotten and often it looked thin and rather pinched. Angela looked like ‘a good milker, Grandfather said, and besides it was time we learned to milk: as necessary an accomplishment to a country girl as dancing to a debutante. I wasn’t so sure. I could see disadvantages looming up as thick as beans at a beanfeast. So being the youngest, I stood politely aside and suggested that the others should learn first. They acquired the knack easily enough but somehow I could never get beyond the

dribble-up-the-sleeve, drop-the-bucket stage. After a while they gave up bothering about me and, gloating, I remained forever uninitiated. But I wasn’t allowed to escape entirely. On Saturday mornings it was my job to hitch a rope to Angela and graze her in the orchard, on the long grass that grew there, lush and plentiful. Normally there was sufficient feed for her in the paddock, but when the grass was drying up, Grandfather conceived the brilliant notion of letting her clean up the orchard, which she did in more ways than one.

With Grandfather she was a model of docility and eager co-operation, but with me she behaved like a fiend. Those Saturday morning sessions! Two hours is an eternity when you're small, and the sun is shining, and there’s a host of things you’re aching to be doing, but to be moored to a cow for two hours, and that cow. Angela, was sheer torture, She would wait till everyone was out of earshot, then she would suddenly toss her head and bolt through the orchard, the rope burning as it tore through my hands. Then she would wind herself, rope and all, round one of the precious trees, or she’d tangle herself up in the wire-netting and stand there, feet planted firmly on her rope, head lowered, daring me to do anything about it. Once she had actually cleared the fence and landed in the vegetable garden, trampling over Grandfather’s peas and broccoli. On such occasions, panicstricken, I’d stand there, bawling lustily, till at length someone came to the rescue. Then Angela would shake her head apologetically and meekly disentangle herself, while Grandfather would mutter that he didn’t know what children were coming to these days, they’d no animal sense, and when he was a youngster, etc., etc. a * * N other ways, too, Angela was a trial. On mornings when we were late she would be particularly perverse. We all

had our chores to do before school and Vivian was supposed to do the milking. Angela could sense when things were not running to schedule. She would refuse to see the cow bail. side-stepping this way and that, round it and past it till Vivian was nearly frantic. Then she’d isolate herself in the muddiest part of the yard, between the bail and the fowl run, and stand there idly flicking her tail, defying approach. Or she’d blunder into the wire-netting, and send the young: cockerels we were fattening for Christmas, flapping and cackling and skeltering round the yard. And Vivian would yell for me, and l’d drop the mash buckets, and between us we'd bail her up somehow; and afterwards Vivian would gulp her breakfast and rush into her clothes and down to the gate, but not before we’d sighted the school bus crawling like a caterpillar in the distance, and yelled to her to hurry. Sometimes the bus would be there and we’d have to ask the driver to wait, and the kids would be squealing with delight and shrieking, "Shut the gate! Oh, bother the gate. Gee up, Neddy!" and poor Vivian would come panting up, furious, nearly in tears. Yet when Grandfather went to milk Angela would come lollopping up as soon as she heard the bucket rattle, and

would stand like a rock without being bailed or anything. She had a maddening habit of switching her tail, too. Once when Vivian was milking she asked me to hold the tail out of the way. So I held it for a while but pretty soon I got bored and hitched it to a rope that hung from the top of the shed. Then I perched on a rail while Vivian finished and we talked about what we’d do when we were grown up. "And no nasty old beasts like you," said Vivian, unhitching the leg rope and giving her a none too gentle swipe on the rump. Angela,lurched out of the bail, then swung as if on a pivot, arrested in mid motion. The bail creaked and swayed: ominously. I squealed, "Earthquake!" and fled. Vivian cried, "Oh, Lord! Look at that! Silly! You left her tail tied up." Two inches of tail and the long middle ringlet dangled from the rope and poor Angela looked at us reproachfully. We were horribly contrite of course, but Grandfather never forgave us. He vowed we did it on purpose. * x * ‘THE day the load of mangolds arrived for the winter Angela was very excited. She raced up and down, obstructing everybody and doing her best to sneak in when we weren’t looking. That night she did a little solid work on the gate and in the morning there she was, blown up like a barrage ballooon, hiccoughing gently over the wreckage.’ Grandfather roared, "Which of you children left the gate open?" and there followed a bad five minutes, but by the process of reconstruction it was found that he was last in, so Angela got all the blame. After that the gate was always wired. Yet Angela was not easily defeated. When the apples were gathered and stacked in the wire hammock under the trees by the house, the sight was too much for her. Knowing that the gate was useless, she kept pounding up and down the fence looking for the weakest place. Finally she charged and later we found her, the hammock trailing on the ground and apples everywhere. You never saw such a mess. But Angela was completely unabashed, even playful. When we tried to drive her out, she refused to see the gate and capered across the wet lawn leaving her great hoof marks everywhere. Even Grandfather was annoyed with her. I think it was the air of complete innocence with which she used to cloak her evil doing that exasperated me most. Her misdemeanours were entirely unintentional. She was always so mildly astonished, so apologetic, like some dear old lady who has blundered into the wrong tea party. Yet, come hell or high water, she was determined to enjoy herself to the full. And there was the performance with the drinking trough that we kept filled from a tap at the end of the paddock. She would deliberately nose the trough over on its side, right it again, and then run up and down the fence, mooing plaintively, as if = hadn’t had a drink in years. . She certainly was a Sickibinedens beast. Yet we missed her hideously. When we moved to town and Angela was driven back to the saleyards, we all had lumps in our throats as we watched her lumber off. From the impudent. cock of her ears to the insolent flick of her tail, she was brimful of character-bad, perhaps, but nevertheless character,