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Chapter Three

I was now twelve and quite big for my age, so I was expected to assist my father at milking time, which required me to be up at five in the morning to bring in the cows. Skipper was now a working dog alongside Max and Shep, but he and I had a very special bond. He learned how to round up the cows as we brought them in for milking and really enjoyed running with the other dogs. During winter, it would be almost completely dark, and I was always amazed at the times I would see shooting stars, as there was no light interference in the atmosphere.

My parents were members of the local Baptist Church and played a big part in that community. So Rachel and I got taken to church every Sunday. My dad also said grace at mealtimes and often read to us from the Bible. I mentioned a topic we were discussing at school called ‘evolution’, and my dad turned red in the face. He started to speak loudly, then stopped and paused as if trying to regain his composure. He coughed, then said quietly, ‘You must never use that word in this house.’

I couldn’t understand why, as he made no further explanation, and I felt a strange atmosphere around my dad for quite some time. Eventually, I raised this with my mother, who sat me down and told me about the teachings at church and how God had created the earth in seven days. She went on to explain that evolution was a theory that disagreed with creation and that we went to church to learn the truth.

I was not sure how I would explain to Mrs Baxter, my teacher, that ‘evolution’ was such a bad word. When the time came and I had discussed my problem, Mrs Baxter gently told me that the learning process in our education involved our history and that people disagreed with a lot of historical facts. ‘Some parts of history are difficult to think about,’ she said. She also talked about wars and atrocities and human behaviour in history that would not be tolerated today. ‘But that is history,’ she said, ‘and we cannot change it.’

Mrs Baxter also said that learning needed not be a threat to anyone’s beliefs and that our class topic involved books written by a man called Charles Darwin on the origins of animal species. ‘The books take a view that may seem to contradict the teachings of creation as mentioned in your family’s church,’ she told me but said we wouldn’t use the word ‘evolution’ again, and I was quite relieved. Mrs Baxter gave me a book called The Voyage of the Beagle as I was interested in animals and nature. She said I might be a little young to read it, but I could keep it and try again as I got a little older

My love of animals went beyond Skipper; in fact, I regarded all animals as equals. I became very interested in the relationships between various animal species and also birds. I would play with our goats, pretending I had food so they would chase me. I would then chase them, and they seemed to enjoy it. I was also fond of our sheep, particularly at lambing time; there were several lambs each year, and we had names for them all. I felt sad that the sheep were just kept for their meat.

Another sad event that really troubled me was when the male calves were taken from their mothers at one week old, put in a pen at the farm gate, where they would bellow out to the mothers, only to be picked up and thrown into the back of a truck, taken and slaughtered for veal. Although I loved my father, I sometimes found him to be heartless and cruel to the animals, not just the calves. Whenever I mentioned it, he would say we must be cruel to be kind, and I knew that he meant it, but I found it hard to accept. Although he was kind within our family, he was strict as far as religion and morals were concerned. My father never seemed to discuss matters that were important to him and seemed to consider one’s thoughts and beliefs as private.

Rachel had taken up horse riding when she was seven and was a very good rider. There was no opportunity for organised competition of any kind, so riding was just for fun. I loved our horses: Tempo, a fourteen-hands bay gelding, and Redhead, which was a chestnut mare, just thirteen hands, slightly smaller but built more solidly than Tempo. Rachel preferred to ride Tempo, which suited me fine as Redhead was much livelier. We would ride down to the river or up into a wonderful valley in the hills, with Skipper following or running on ahead, often arriving home as it was getting dark.

In winter, our whole family would go skiing at Coronet Peak, which was only about thirty minutes’ drive from our farm. Rachel and I could ski well and it was a lot of fun. At the end of the day, we would come home and sit in front of the fire. My mum would make us hot vegetable soup, and steak and kidney pie, and we would all talk about our best ski runs.