Pets in a Pickle

by Malcolm D Welshman

  Eric cleared his throat quietly. ‘And my list? What’s that like?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got stacks left.’

  ‘And ops? Any booked for me?’

  There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘Not tomorrow, Eric. It’s Tuesday, remember? Crystal’s orthopaedic morning. She’s got two pinnings, a cruciate and a patella luxation to deal with. Mandy’s already got the theatre set up.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Good of you to remind me.’

  Did I detect a note of sarcasm there? A bit of irony?

  Whatever, Eric turned to me, his baby-faced features still wreathed in smiles, his eyes twinkling. ‘The wife’s a dab hand with the scalpel. Cutting-edge surgery and all that.’ I quickly found myself being shunted into the operating theatre. ‘It’s not really my forte,’ he went on, ‘so I’m happy to leave all the complicated stuff to her. But I don’t mind doing the odd spay or castration. Just to keep my hand in.’

  We were now standing in front of a very complicated-looking anaesthetic machine. As if reading my thoughts, Eric said, ‘Looks a bit of a monster, doesn’t it?’

  I nodded and fiddled absentmindedly with one of the knobs. There was a sharp ‘pfss’ and the needle on the nitrous oxide cylinder gauge shot up.

  Eric appeared not to notice. ‘But don’t worry. Mandy, our senior nurse, is in control of all the anaesthetics. Knows what’s she’s doing. Got high standards. But then, of course, she was trained by Crystal. So it’s what you’d expect.’

  The needle on the nitrous oxide gauge continued to register an escape of gas despite my furtive efforts to turn it off. I began to feel light-headed. Funny. Very funny. What a laugh this all was.

  The theatre door suddenly swung open and a head popped round. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Ah, Mandy,’ exclaimed Eric. ‘Let me introduce you to …’

  ‘M-M-Mitchell,’ I interrupted, my voice high and squeaky as I tried to fight back an attack of giggles. No use. ‘P-P-P-Paul Mitchell?’ I squealed, feeling my lips crease back in an idiotic grin. ‘Pleased to meet you … hee … hee … hee …’

  There was the sharp click of heels across the polished floor as Mandy marched over to the anaesthetic machine and snapped off the valve I had been playing with. A plump, round-faced girl, she looked a picture of prim efficiency in her starched green uniform and bob of neat, auburn hair. She arranged her generous lips into a thin smile before turning to rearrange the endotracheal tubes with which Eric had started to nervously play, placing them back into their neat rows, graded in size.

  ‘Anything you’d like to ask me?’ she queried, giving me a hard stare that said, ‘This is no laughing matter, mate.’

  My lightheadedness evaporated in an instant.

  Eric came to my rescue. ‘Thanks, Mandy. But I think we’ve dealt with everything now.’

  He and I tiptoed out of the room leaving Mandy minutely checking the anaesthetic machine for signs of further tampering. I half expected her to whip out a duster and start polishing its knobs.

  Eric rolled his eyes up as the theatre door swung to behind us. ‘Don’t be put off. Mandy’s excellent at her job. Hopefully, she and our new recruit, Lucy Gentle, should make a good team.’

  I remembered the blonde-haired girl who’d been mopping down the reception floor and the shy smile she’d given me.

  ‘Lucy’s just joined us as a trainee nurse,’ explained Eric. ‘Pleasant enough girl … just a bit reserved. But with Mandy’s help, she’ll no doubt find her feet.’

  Back in the office, I had just taken a mouthful of lukewarm tea when I heard the swish of tyres in the drive; the deep growl of an engine cut out, a door slammed; a voice vibrated through reception, the tone pitched to shatter a decanter at 40 paces. ‘Have I missed him?’

  There was a murmured response from Beryl.

  ‘Sounds like Crystal’s back,’ said Eric.

  The mug in my hand jumped as the office door swung open and in swept Dr Crystal Sharpe BVetMed, BSc, PhD, MRCVS.

  Although I had never met her, I had, of course, already formed a mental picture of this formidable lady. Her impressive qualifications alone made her worthy of the title of ‘Doctor’. But not a Dr Dolittle … definitely not. I was thinking more in terms of an Agatha Christie sleuth. A tweed-clad, brogue-shod, veterinary Miss Marple, black bag in one hand, stethoscope swinging in the other, ready to track down and treat illness in any cat or dog that dared to cross her beastly path.

  How wrong I was.

  The woman who swirled to a halt in front of me in a cloud of delicate perfume was far removed from that crusty old image. I was drawn to Crystal Sharpe immediately. In fact, if this Julie Andrews lookalike could have taken me by the hand, whisked me out of the office and up on to the Downs with a burst of ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’, I’d have been a very happy goatherd. But why the Julie Andrews comparison for heaven’s sake? After all I was 25. Surely I’d be more into the likes of Britney Spears or Mariah Carey, they being of my time. It was all to do with my mum and her dabbling in light musicals when I was a teenager. Well, at least I think so.

  ‘You must be Paul Mitchell,’ Crystal Sharpe was saying in a clipped, mid-shires accent.

  I found my hand clasped by hers – slim fingers, short, well-manicured nails, devoid of varnish. Her face, too, was unblemished by make-up. Laughter lines sprang from the corners of intense, steel-blue eyes, eyes which at that moment were boring uncomfortably into mine. Dainty pearl studs adorned petite ear lobes below fringed, short tresses of copper curls. A perfect English rose? Maybe. But would there be a thorny side to this lady?

  The hand unclasped itself and an apology made. ‘Sorry I wasn’t here to meet you. But I’m sure Eric was able to give you some idea how we operate.’

  I felt myself blush, remembering my giggling fit in the theatre.

  Her husband’s face lit up with another cheery smile. ‘We covered most things,’ he said, putting a finger to his lips and giving me a conspiratorial wink.

  ‘And, of course, we’ve studied your CV very thoroughly,’ added Dr Sharpe. ‘So …?’ She was again scrutinising my face. ‘Are you prepared to take the post?’

  My mind was still leaping goat-like over alpine meadows. I should have been asking more questions. What happened to the last assistant? Why did he leave so quickly? Why were they so desperate for a replacement? But my head was up in the clouds. And mesmerised by Crystal’s piercing blue eyes, I said, ‘Yes,’ without thinking.

  Minutes later, I found myself skipping down the drive of Prospect House whistling ‘The Lonely Goatherd’ having promised to start the following week.

  Seven days later, I’d plummeted down from those alpine slopes on to the more earthly terrain of the second consulting room in Prospect House where I was peering into a cage stuffed with bars, swings, wheels and tunnels.

  ‘Fred’s a bit of an escape artist,’ explained the woman as her son unlocked the three padlocks on the cage door; he then stood back, reconnected himself to his iPod and started rocking on the spot again.

  There was what looked like a nest box up in the far right-hand corner of the cage.

  ‘He’ll be in there,’ said the woman, catching my quizzical look.

  Only with my whole arm crammed in up to my shoulder, elbow wedged in the bottom corner, could I get my fingers anywhere near the nest box. I cautiously inserted three fingers. What was I going to find? I felt the prickle of straw, the warmth of fur and then suddenly the pain of a creature’s teeth sinking into my index finger.

  ‘Ouch.’ My hand shot out of the nest box bringing with it a tan ball of fur which held on grimly, bouncing through the rodent playground as I extricated my arm from the cage. I inadvertently flicked my wrist. The tan ball sailed over my shoulder and crashed into the instrument trolley scattering scissors and scalpels.

  I pounced. ‘Got you,’ I said. But missed.

  Fred nimbly scuttled between the bottles of antibiotics. The youth stopped jigging to step nonchalantly round the cons
ulting table and scoop Fred into his palm before dropping him into mine with a ‘Here, mate’.

  I mouthed my thanks and stared down at my first patient. Fred the hamster. Not exactly a giant of the pet kingdom. Had five years of intense study really culminated in me being given the beady eye by this tiny little rodent? I scruffed the creature and turned him over. His eyes bulged. His whiskers twitched. With lips parted, two long, yellow incisors curled down like scimitars.

  I scrabbled with my left hand for the nail clippers. Two snips and the teeth were restored to normal length.

  ‘He’ll be able to eat now,’ I said. I should have added ‘… and nip now’, since I suddenly felt Fred test his teeth by sinking them into my finger. They were sharp, very sharp, making me feel quite needled.

  Beryl’s eye was quick to spot the splattering of blood on my white coat as I ushered Fred and Co. out into reception, my bitten finger crossed in an attempt to staunch the still dripping blood. ‘Paul,’ she warned, ‘I should get out of that coat before …’

  ‘Before I catch sight of you.’ The voice of Maria – sorry, Crystal – sang through the air. But it was far from melodious. By its icy tone, I was clearly not one of her favourite things.

  Startled, I jumped round to find Crystal standing in the doorway of the office, arms folded, every pore oozing disapproval.

  ‘I think you’d better come in here a minute,’ she went on.

  Beryl cast me a pitying look as I trailed across like some errant schoolboy approaching the headmistress’s study. I sensed I was about to face the music … but it wasn’t the sound of music I wanted to hear.

  A WING AND A PRAYER

  In the event, my anticipated hauling over the coals by Crystal turned out to be no more than a gentle admonishment. She’d been anxious to make sure I replaced my blood-splattered coat before seeing my next patient.

  ‘I realise you’re just finding your feet,’ she’d said. And hamsters just finding my fingers, I thought, my bitten index finger still throbbing.

  ‘Don’t hesitate to change coats whenever you need to,’ she went on. ‘Mandy will always oblige.’ She gave the sweetest of smiles.

  Oh, that smile. Then, as in the future, I found myself zooming up an Austrian mountain as those coral pink lips curved and those soft, apple cheeks dimpled. ‘Do … re … mi … fah …’ – a long, long way to run? Yes. But definitely worth it. Crystal could light up my life any time. My ray … my drop of golden sun.

  As for Mandy: doe … a dear? No way. I soon found out she was the Mother Superior of Prospect House. No novice nun was she. No Maria.

  ‘Another coat … so soon?’ she’d queried when I’d nipped down to the laundry room to ask for a replacement. Her spotless, crisp, creaseless habit (uniform) positively crackled with displeasure. The look she gave me nearly had me on my knees, clasping the gold chain round my neck – a small one, nothing too chunky, I wasn’t medallion man – while begging for forgiveness.

  Beryl, on the other hand, tried to keep a motherly, less superior eye on me. Just the one eye as it happened. Eric was later to tell me that she’d lost her right eye in a childhood accident and had had it replaced by an artificial one.

  ‘And be warned,’ Eric said, ‘if she gets flustered, it’s likely to fall out. Then everything grinds to a halt while we scrabble around looking for it. Almost got swallowed by a spaniel once. So do keep an eye on her. Preferably two.’

  Beryl certainly gave me a look every time I arrived for work. I’m not sure whether she disapproved of the gold studs in my ears, the gold necklace or my highlighted hair. Maybe she just thought my Chinos were a little too tight and my short-sleeved shirt a little too shocking pink. Whatever, I was eyeballed daily.

  Still, she did try to ease me into the routine at Prospect House. Usually, there were two consulting rooms in use simultaneously. I was allocated the smaller, darker one overlooking the exercise yard. Eric and Crystal used the larger, sunny room overlooking the rose garden. Eric and I did morning and evening consultations, Crystal a smattering of early afternoon ones.

  ‘Time for her special clients,’ Beryl informed me, ‘when she’s not being requested to visit them, that is. Like Lady Derwent, for instance. She’s specifically asked for Crystal to make a house visit. Her Labradors need their annual boosters.’ To emphasise the point, that morning, she drew a long vermilion nail across the computer screen where ‘Lady Derwent – Warren Place’ had been typed in capitals with ‘CMS’ alongside. ‘But don’t look discouraged, Paul,’ she went on.

  Me? Look discouraged? Well, maybe I was looking a little down in the mouth. But hey, come off it, Paul, I’m the new boy. My chance will come one day. Then everyone will sing my praises. Do … re … for me.

  ‘You may find the next client interesting. A Miss McEwan,’ said Beryl, twisting her head towards me, her heavily painted lips pulling back, their corners disappearing into her cheeks. ‘She’s got a …’

  Further words were lost as the reception room door swung open and in sailed a diminutive woman, like an out-of-control kite, her body encased in a tartan cape which billowed from her tiny shoulders and flapped round her booted ankles. ‘Dear me,’ she cried, her voice high-pitched, shrill. ‘It’s blowing a gale out there. Who’d have thought … late June!’ She spun to a halt in the middle of reception, her neck craning from the cape like a jerking pigeon on the lookout for crumbs. Her beady eye caught Beryl’s glassy one. ‘I wonder if someone would be kind enough to fetch Cedric out of the car for me. He’s a bit difficult to manage on my own. It’s the old hands, you see.’

  As if to demonstrate, her arms flew out from the folds of the red cape and, palms forward, she waved her hands at shoulder level. Any minute I expected her to burst out into song – ‘My Old Mammy’ perhaps? There seemed to be a full compliment of digits on each hand so I guessed she was talking about a touch of arthritis.

  I didn’t wait to find out, leaving Beryl to sort out the situation while I melted back into my dingy consulting room made more dingy by a Virginia creeper growing out-of-control round the window. Still, it helped to block the view of the adjacent exercise yard which, I was to discover, always smelt foul even though constantly being doused down with disinfectant. The malodorous air constantly permeated the room and made clients sniff and eye me suspiciously as soon as they entered.

  When Miss McEwan’s records flashed up on the computer screen I scrolled down through her details. OK – she owned a Collie called Ben. He seemed to have a long clinical history. It went on for pages, then abruptly stopped six months ago. Put to sleep with terminal cancer. Oh dear. But then maybe this Cedric I was about to see was his replacement? A sweet new puppy requiring his vaccinations?

  I jumped at the sound of metal crashing into the door.

  ‘Do be careful, dear. You’ll upset Cedric,’ trilled Miss McEwan as Lucy, her face beetroot, wisps of hair floating free from her pony-tail, struggled in, arms wide apart, hands clutching the sides of a large, blue metallic bird cage, covered in a red tartan blanket matching Miss McEwan’s cape.

  ‘Meet Cedric,’ gasped Lucy. ‘If you need any help just shout.’ She gave me a shy smile and then slipped out to leave me with Miss McEwan’s coal-black eyes staring out from a face with the complexion of a once-used tissue. She gave a sniff and looked round as if wondering where the smell was coming from before saying, ‘Cedric’s very special, you know.’

  I slid the blanket off the cage and found myself being stared at by another set of coal-black eyes. Only these belonged to a bird a little larger than a blackbird and with bright yellow wattles. It hopped along the perch towards me, cocked his head and fixed me with a beady look.

  Miss McEwan edged along the consulting table and did the same. ‘He’s very special,’ she repeated, turning to the bird. ‘Aren’t you, Cedric?’

  The bird bobbed up and down and then, in Miss McEwan’s precise tone of voice, said, ‘Cedric’s special.’

  Miss McEwan gave a high-pitched tinkle of a laugh
. ‘Yes, you are, pet. Let’s hope this vet knows how to treat mynahs.’

  I didn’t actually. We briefly covered the workings of a chicken at Veterinary College and I once poked a dead blackbird I’d found on my parent’s lawn; hardly the stuff of avian medicine. The nearest I’d got to operating on a bird was pulling the giblets out of an oven-ready chicken. Cedric gave me a startled look and rapidly hopped away.

  Miss McEwan addressed me. ‘They’re not like cats or dogs, you know.’

  I did know. Five years of veterinary training had at least taught me that. I took a deep breath and rather pompously said, ‘I am familiar with the avian species.’ I could have added, ‘… roasted at gas mark 6 with sage and onion stuffing.’ But somehow I thought Miss McEwan would find the comment in poor taste. So I tried to be tactful. ‘You say his name’s Cedric?’

  ‘Ask him,’ shrilled Miss McEwan.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Ask him. Go on. He wouldn’t mind. It’s his party piece.’

  I groaned inwardly. This was all I needed – a tête-à-tête with a mynah bird. But maybe this was all part of establishing a good rapport with clients. A new learning curve for me. So I turned to his cage and cleared my throat. ‘What’s your name?’ I said.

  The bird bounced back and forth along the perch, clearly delighted at being spoken to. But he didn’t reply.

  ‘Ask him again,’ urged Miss McEwan. She saw me hesitate. ‘Go on. Ask him.’

  I felt a tic throb in my forehead. This was getting silly. But such was Miss McEwan’s insistence I felt obliged to obey. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ echoed Cedric in a perfect imitation of Miss McEwan’s voice, the tone so strident I almost felt compelled to answer.

  ‘Go on, tell him,’ shrieked Miss McEwan, hopping from one foot to another, her cape flapping wildly round her shoulders.