They each had a slightly different cattle call. His older brother produced a low, booming sound midway between a moo and a foghorn. Their father’s call had two notes, the second lower than the first, and usually had a trace of words to it, a sort of weary ‘come ‘long’. His own tended to emerge as a sort of falsely cheery Hey-oop! with a rising note at the end. He hated raising his voice or trying in any way to seem different but, try as he might to imitate the others, his call always came out the same way. Fog had come in off the sea soon after dawn and was drifting inland as a succession of clammy curtains. The steers were Charolais crosses so in these conditions became almost invisible, their buff and off-white flanks barely distinguishable from the pale granite of the hedges and pearly grey of the fog. There was a distant low-lying field where they spent the night sometimes, grouped together out of the wind like so many companionable boulders. He was about to jump off the hedge to go in search of them there when he heard them – one crazily high-pitched moo first and then a chorus of baritone answers – and stayed put to call them again.
