A Job for All Seasons: My Small Country Living by Phyllida Barstow

Author:Phyllida Barstow [Phyllida Barstow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910723586
Google: _N8RuAEACAAJ
Publisher: Merlin Unwin Books
Published: 2013-11-15T23:23:25.592970+00:00

Two days passed, and Jutte rang again. The ram was so friendly, so biddable. She didn’t know what we were worried about. He came when she called. She could lead him about like a lamb.

‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘He’s very good to lead. It’s when you take the headcollar off…’

Another day, another telephone call. Jutte again. ‘Please will you come and fetch your ram? Yes. Now. Immediately.’

We were just leaving to go out to dinner. ‘Won’t tomorrow morning do?’

‘It is better now.’ She sounded agitated. ‘We can’t wait all the night.’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘He’s got our neighbour up a tree.’

So the final throw had failed. When I rattled some cubes in a scoop, Ags came trotting away from his prey, and put his nose in the head-collar, ready for the journey home.

We gave him another month with his fat pals, and I asked my sister, the artist Olivia Stewart-Smith, to paint him. We tethered him between two strong posts, and he stood composedly while she started work on a frontal view, concentrating on his great head and noble, sweeping horns. Presently he grew bored, as sitters do, and leaned sideways, gently moving his right horn to and fro.

The artist worked steadily, and had already achieved a striking likeness when she realised that her subject was using the sharp inner edge of his horn to fray the head-rope. Only a few strands remained. She began to work faster.

‘You can’t have finished already,’ I said, coming out with coffee and finding her folding the easel.

‘I’ve got enough. I’ll take a few photographs and finish it in my studio,’ she replied, snapping away at a safe distance. Ags gave an experimental tug at his tether and, as the last strands parted, I understood the artist’s haste.

The portrait was a great success. Outlined in strong brushwork against a clear blue sky, the ram’s head with its curled horns menaces the observer, seeming about to charge out of the canvas. The artist has caught his split personality, too. One eye looks kindly, almost melancholy, its eyelid gently drooping, while the other fixes you with the cocksure, aggressive glare which foretold mischief.

As summer ended and the goodness went out of the grass, Duff finally put a bullet through Agamemnon’s head, and I resolved never again to make a pet of a ram.

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