As I’m stepping down onto the grass, I feel a sharp jolt of pain and my leg suddenly buckles beneath me. I lose my footing and fall flat on my face, my phone flying from my hand. What the hell was that? I scramble to my feet. Turning around, I see a thin wire running alongside the wooden rail—an electric fence. Ten points to me for being a complete urban cliché and not noticing that. Brushing down my dress, I see a muddy mark near the hem. What an excellent start to the day; electrocuted and muddied before it’s even ten a.m. Just as I’m thinking it can’t get much worse, I feel a nudge from behind. One of the cows is pushing into me.
“Hey, back off.”
When I look up, more cows are heading in my direction.
“Go away!” I plead. “Just shoo, will you?” I point a stern finger at the nudgy one.
“What are you doing?”
My head snaps back around to see Ted standing by the fence, watching me with a bemused expression. Nudgy is now looming over me, and I reach out my hand to push her away.
“They’re not pets, you can’t get in and stroke them,” says Ted, looking at me like I’m completely clueless.
“I know that! I wasn’t trying to pet them. I didn’t know the fence was electric and— Hey, get off me!” The running cows are getting closer, and I feel a rising panic in my chest. People die from being trampled by cows, don’t they? It always seemed a rather comical way to go, but now I’m staring death in the doe-eyed face, it doesn’t seem funny at all. “Ahhhh!”
Ted jumps over the fence in one swift movement—he’s surprisingly nimble. He walks purposefully toward the cows with an arm outstretched and says in a deep, stern voice, “Back you go now.”
The cows obediently scatter.
My heart still pounding, I look at Ted, impressed. He’s like a cow whisperer.
“They’re only young heifers, they won’t hurt you.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I didn’t mean to get in here, I’m not a complete idiot.”
His lips twitch, like he’s about to smile, and now I feel embarrassed that I freaked out about the admittedly rather small cows.
“Did you get the photo you wanted?”
“No, I dropped my phone when I fell,” I say feebly.
Ted shakes his head, takes off his cap and runs a hand through his hair before replacing it. Unlike his beard, his hair isn’t flecked with gray; it’s thick and brown. In fact, he’s got surprisingly good hair beneath the ridiculous cap.
The ringtone of my phone punctures the air. Ted and I search the long grass by the fence for the source of the sound. Ted gets to it first, but by the time he’s handed it to me the ringing has stopped. Unknown caller. Damn, it might have been J. Le Maistre.
“I’m sure they’ll call back. Do you want me to take a photo for you?” Ted asks, distracting me from my disappointment.
“Well, they’ve all gone now,” I say, waving a forlorn hand toward the retreating gang of cattle. “And I think I might have gone off cows.”
He laughs, a proper chesty laugh, and I can’t help feeling like I want him to take his cap off again, so I can see what his eyes look like when he laughs like that.
“Come on, Lady Muck.”
He reaches out to take my phone, holding it up to take a photo. I feel self-conscious beneath his gaze. Then he hands it back and wordlessly holds out his arm to help me climb back over the fence. It’s a gentlemanly thing to do, and his forearm feels firm and steady beneath my hand. At the car, he opens the side door and points to the seat.
“Just sit there a minute,” he instructs me.
Perching on the edge of the seat, I watch as he walks around to the boot. He returns with a bottle of water and some wet wipes. “My dad always keeps these in the car just in case.”
Bending one knee to the ground, he takes my hem in one hand and starts cleaning the mud from my dress. It’s a strangely intimate gesture, and I fiddle with my hands in my lap, not sure where to put them.
“I see—I really am Lady Muck.”
I should say “I’ll do it” and take the wipes from him, but I don’t. There is something calming in watching him; he’s gentle, yet his hands have a surgical precision.
“Not perfect, I’m afraid,” he says, standing up to return the water and wipes to the boot. He has done his best, but there is still a residual pale brown stain. Why did I buy such an impractical dress?
“Well, that was beyond the call of duty. Thank you.” I turn to watch Ted close the boot, dusting his hands off on his jacket. “Would you mind if I sat up in front, so I can see out more? I was starting to feel a bit carsick in the back with all these windy roads.”
“Of course.”
He hurries over to open the passenger door and doffs his cap. He’s mocking me, but in a sweet way, so I don’t mind.
“Thank you, kind sir,” I say, with playful formality.
As he gets into the driver’s seat, he throws his cap onto the backseat, then runs both hands through his hair, almost self-consciously.
“Your wish is my command, Lady Muck.”
TIGER WOMAN ON DOMESTICATION
Tigers hunt when they are hungry, sleep when they are tired, and growl when they are angry. We have been domesticated into cats—told when to eat, told when to sleep, told never to growl only to purr, told to play quietly in the corner with a ball of string, then roll over and have ours tummies rubbed. Remember: You are not a cat. You are NOT a cat. You are a wild animal.
Chapter 7
As Ted is driving, I check the photo he took of me. It’s perfect, there’s a cow in the background looking right at the camera, and I look happy, not like someone who stared death in the face just moments before. I post it on the Love Life Instagram feed alongside a snap of my mother’s photo. “Jersey Cow: Then and Now. My island adventure begins.”
Ted drives to a village harbor on the northeast coast called Rozel. He parks the car next to some white railings by the beach, and I instantly recognize the cove from the album. My phone pings with a text from Vanya:
Have you found him yet?
She has attached a succession of photos with half-naked men all holding suitcases—I can only imagine they are the result of a Google image search for “sexy suitcase man.”
I bite my lip to stop myself from snorting with laughter.
The narrow road hugs the bay, along the top of the harbor covering one side of the cove. At the far end is a bright blue kiosk with a red-and-white awning. Some boys jump off the harbor wall, squealing with delight before hitting the glassy water below. On the sand-and-pebble beach, I can see a woman climbing over rocks with two toddlers, collecting shells and other treasures in bright pink buckets. The children’s skirts are tucked into their knickers to stop them getting wet. This is the Jersey I imagined.