When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson Page B

teenager? ' "Teen" is the clue -thirteen, fourteen, etcetera. She's only twelve.'
    'Double figures count; Josie said casually. 'They start earlier thes e days.' 'Start what?' Jackson had passed through his teens without ever being aware o f them. He had been a boy at twelve and then he had joined the army at sixteen and become a man. Between the two he had walked in the valley of the shadow of death, with no comfort to hand.
    He hoped his daughter would have a sunny passage through those years. He had a crumpled postcard from her in the pocket of his jacket from when she had been on a school trip to Bruges in her half-term. The postcard showed a picturesque view of a canal and some old red-brick houses. Jackson had never felt the need to go to Belgium. He had transferred the card from his old leather jacket to the North Face jacket -his disguise -although from no clear motive, only that a message from his daughter, banal and dutiful though it was (,Dear Dad, Bruges is very interesting, it has a lot of nice buildings. It is raining. Have eaten a lot of chips and chocolate. Missing you! Love you! Marlee XXX'), seemed like something you shouldn't just throwaway. Did she really miss him? He suspected her life was too full to notice his absence.
    A ragged-looking sheep, long-in-the-tooth mutton, stood foursquare in the road ahead, like a gunslinger waiting for high noon. Jackson slowed to a stop and waited it out for a while. The sheep didn't move. He hooted his horn but it didn't even twitch an ear, just continued chewing grass laconically like an old tobacco hand. He wondered if it was deaf. He got out of the car and looked at it threateningly.
    'Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle "Dixie"?' he said to it. It looked at him with a flicker of interest and then went back to its incessant chewing.
    He tried to shift it bodily. It resisted, leaning its stupid weight against his. Shouldn't it be frightened of him? He would be frightened of him if he was a sheep.
    Next he tried moving its hindquarters, to get some grip and torque, but it was impossible, it might as well have been cemented into the road. A headlock also got him nowhere. He was glad there was no one around to witness this absurd wrestling match. He wondered about the ethics ofpunching it. He backed off a few step s to rethink his tactics. Finally he tried pushing its front legs from beneath it but he ended up losing his own balance and found himself sprawled on his back on the road. Across the pale winter sky an even paler cloud floate d overhead, as white and soft as a little lamb. From his prone position, Jackson watched its progress from one side of the dale to the other. When the cold had not only seeped into his bones but had begun to freeze the marrow inside them, Jackson sighed and, getting to his feet, he saluted his opponent.
    'You win,' he said to the sheep. He climbed back in the car, turned on the CD player and put on Enya . W hen he woke up there were no sheep anywhere.
    He was definitely off the map now. The sky was leaden, threatening snow. Higher and higher, heading for the top and some mysterious summit. The celestial city. It was a gated road and it was laborious having to get out of the car and open and close the gates each time. He supposed it was a way of corralling the sheep. Were there shepherds still? Jackson's idea of a shepherd was a rough-bearded man, wearing a home-made sheepskin jerkin, seated on a grassy hillside on a starlit night, a ram's-horn crook in hand as he watched for the wolves creeping on their bellies towards his flock. Jackson surprised himself with how poetically detailed and completely inaccurate his image of a shepherd was. In reality it would be all tractors and hormones and chemical dips. And the wolves were long gone, or, at any rate, the ones in wolves' clothing were. Jackson was a shepherd, he couldn't rest until the flock was accounted for, all gathered safely in. It was his calling and his curse. Protect and