Pets in a Pickle

by Malcolm D Welshman

  But Frankie had thought of that. The main road was sealed off by the police car, fire engine and attendant Land Rover, their blue lights flashing to light the way as Dilly was led across, a bell-caped Stockwell swishing each side of her. I watched the gate, temporarily repaired to five bars, being pushed open and the Jersey herded through. The gate closed and the Stockwells were swallowed up by the night.

  ‘Funny pair,’ commented Frankie. ‘Seem to live in a world of their own.’

  I nodded, thinking of the time-warp sensation I felt when I last called on them. Which side of the fence was it best to live on? I really did wonder as engines revved up, lights flashed, tyres screeched away and, when I turned on the radio, I was greeted with news of the latest terrorist threat.

  But on this side of the gate were the Cuddles, Clementines and Miss Piggys of the world needing care and attention. And I needed them just as much as they needed me. They were the drug which kept me addicted to veterinary work … they were my fix.

  My only regret at present was that I didn’t have Lucy to share that satisfaction with me. Our relationship was floundering in an emotional pit – much like the one the Jersey had been stuck in. A pit that was dragging us under.

  Come on, Paul, I thought, there has to be a way of pulling us out of this mess – strops or no strops.

  A CRACKER OF A CHRISTMAS

  We were now approaching the season of goodwill, the time for festive cheer – Christmas. Though the look on Beryl’s face as I dragged a Christmas tree into reception could have slayed a reindeer at 50 paces and stopped any bells jingling in their tracks.

  ‘We don’t want that thing in here, thank you very much,’ she said casting a jaundiced eye – as we know, her one and only – at the tree I was now propping up against the wall.

  ‘Why ever not, Beryl?’ I declared still full of conviviality; but I could feel my good mood beginning to wither under her gaze. What she needed was a good dose of volts to get her switched on. Lighten her up.

  Her glass eye continued to flicker on and off me as she replied, ‘The needles make a mess everywhere. And a dog’s bound to cock his leg against it. I’m sure Crystal wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘What’s this? What’s this? Did I hear my name being mentioned?’ Crystal had swung into reception, bright, bubbly, full of cheer. This was more like it.

  Beryl wobbled on her perch. ‘I was just saying about the tree …’

  ‘Ah, yes, what a good idea. Just the thing to give the place a bit of festive cheer, don’t you think?’ Crystal flashed Beryl a smile.

  ‘Well, if you say so …’ faltered Beryl.

  I picked up the tree and took it through to the waiting room humming ‘We wish you a merry Christmas …’ conscious of the filthy look Beryl was giving me.

  That lunchtime, Mandy and Lucy went into Westcott’s ‘Everything a Pound’ store and returned with boxes of lurid purple-and-emerald-green glass balls and red amorphous plastic figures which could have been angels, elves or Victorian carol singers depending on how they caught the light and at which angle you viewed them.

  They set to work festooning the tree with this clutter of tat but found they had underestimated its size and were forced to supplement the decorations with blobs of cotton wool and lengths of white bandage draped across the branches. As a result, the tree ended up looking like something Florence Nightingale might have practised on prior to going out to the Crimea – the splashes of red ornaments adding a certain bloody realism.

  ‘No, I think that’s going a bit too far,’ I said, throwing up my hands when they showed me some blown-up latex surgical gloves sprayed with gentian-violet, the idea being to tie them in pairs over the doorways.

  However, the tree, despite its wounded appearance, did lend a touch of festive cheer to the hospital. And I certainly needed it to help boost my spirits – for two reasons.

  For a start, I was going to be on duty over the two days of Christmas; I’d thought it likely being the new boy, so no real surprise. Though to be told in July, only two weeks after starting at Prospect House, did seem a little over-eager on the part of Crystal and Eric. Still, there we go.

  Then there was the problem with Lucy. A week before Christmas, I learnt that she was going to be the duty nurse for those two days. Oh dear; I could foresee difficulties there. Communications between the two of us were still patchy, to say the least. We weren’t really speaking … not in the heart-to-heart sense. Everything was very much on a neutral footing, everything on hold. So … great! What a Christmas I had to look forward to. More ‘woe, woe, woe’ than ‘ho, ho, ho’.

  Crystal called me into the office to discuss the matter. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m prying, but how are things between you and Lucy?’ she asked.

  I outlined the situation without going into too many details. I had been warned not to let it interfere with work. But then I didn’t think it had; both Lucy and I had got on with what was needed to be done each day without the atmosphere becoming too strained. Though, obviously, there’d been enough tension for Crystal to have picked up on it. Probably Mandy had kept her informed. Sweet girl.

  ‘Thing is, Paul,’ Crystal went on, ‘the Christmas duty roster means the two of you will be working on your own together. Do you foresee that being a problem?

  ‘Don’t see why it should be. We’ve managed so far.’

  Crystal tapped her nails on the desk. Those neat pink shells … so dainty. She continued to tap. Clearly something was on her mind. ‘Eric and I have been discussing the phone cover. In past years, we’ve always had the calls diverted to our home number and assume you’d like to do the same and have them put through to Willow Wren this Christmas.’

  I shrugged. ‘Fine by me.’ As I said it, I suddenly realised what she was getting at. Of course – what would Lucy do? By having the calls diverted, there was no excuse for her having to stay at the hospital those three nights like she had been doing these past few weeks whenever she was on duty. She could just as easily be with me at Willow Wren, only needing to go in to see to the few remaining in-patients each day and to help me out with any emergencies should they arise.

  ‘I’ll leave it to you to work out the best arrangement,’ concluded Crystal tactfully.

  With three days to go before Christmas Eve, Lucy still didn’t give any indication of what she was going to do.

  ‘Haven’t decided,’ she said when I tackled her about it. ‘Anyway, what’s it to you whether I stay at the hospital or not?’

  She stormed away before I had the chance to say that it actually mattered a great deal. I couldn’t imagine me spending Christmas alone at Willow Wren and her in a similar situation at Prospect House. Especially now she didn’t have to. It seemed absolute madness … and yet it looked as if it was heading that way.

  With two days to go before ‘crunch time’, there was the hospital’s Christmas party to get through. Not being on duty that evening, Lucy had come back to the cottage when evening surgery finished. I almost wished she hadn’t bothered as her mood was so foul.

  We both got ready for the party in stony silence. She wore black trousers and a turquoise, halter-neck blouse, her fair hair done up in a chignon and, to me, looked absolutely stunning. I did try to compliment her but merely got a curt ‘Thanks’ in reply. So be it, I thought, as we drove over the Downs to the hospital.

  It seemed the party was always held at Prospect House. I had had visions of a slap-up meal at one of the many fine restaurants which this part of West Sussex boasted.

  ‘No, no …’ Beryl had told me, ‘that wouldn’t be appropriate. Some of the practice’s long-standing clients get invited, you see.’

  ‘What … for drinks round the operating table? I said.

  ‘Goodness, no way,’ said Beryl not realising I’d been joking. I imagined it would be off-putting for a client to have nibbles where Tibbles had been castrated. It was drinks in the waiting room instead, the bandaged tree a focus for the small-talk.

  ‘I think it�
�s cleverly done,’ enthused a man in velvet jeans, with bleached, spiked hair and a silver cross tangling from his right ear lobe. ‘Very … very … allegoric. I can see how it alludes to pain and suffering … the healing of wounds … the spread of care through the branches of life. Splendid. Very well thought out.’

  Not wishing to be lumbered with the likes of him, I quietly moved away.

  ‘Hello, Mr Mitchell.’ I turned to find George and Hilary Richardson standing behind me.

  ‘So how’s Clementine?’ I asked, after pleasantries had been exchanged.

  ‘Oh, she’s in fine fettle,’ said George Richardson, smoothing down each end of his moustache in turn. ‘And the foal’s an absolute poppet.’

  ‘Actually, we’ve a little something here to remind you of that evening,’ said Hilary, handing me the gift-wrapped parcel she’d been holding. ‘A “thank you” from Clementine.’

  When I opened it later, I found I’d been given one of the mare’s old shoes, polished, with ‘Love from Clementine’ painted in gold round the edge. Yes … well.

  ‘Consider yourself lucky,’ Beryl said. ‘The Richardsons don’t usually part with anything belonging to her.’

  The Rymans, too, bore gifts. A pound of sausages for each of us – pork, of course. ‘Miss Piggy’s half-sister,’ Alex informed us cheerily. Beryl promptly dumped hers on me.

  With the arrival of Miss Millichip, the Rymans and her had a topic of common interest; and like pigs round a trough, they tucked into the canapés with snorts and snuffles of enthusiasm as the merits of porcine husbandry were chewed over.

  Beryl had invited Cynthia Paget who shunted me into a corner of reception and repeatedly poked me with a cocktail stick as she enumerated on the virtues of her new young lodger, down for the pantomime season, starring in Westcott’s production of Aladdin, alongside Francesca Cavendish.

  ‘He’s been on TV you know,’ Mrs Paget informed me. ‘Played a corpse in an episode of Midsomer Murders, so he tells me. Against stiff opposition for the part, too! Such a sweetie. I’ve allocated all of my freezer space to him. Can you imagine?’

  Obviously, the chap had been rubbing Mrs Paget up the right way. Only hope she didn’t eventually get on his wick.

  Reverend Charles and his wife also made a brief appearance on their way through to a carol service in the Festival Hall.

  ‘How’s Liza doing these days?’ I enquired above the hubbub of voices.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,’ said the vicar, cupping a hand round his left ear.

  ‘He’s getting a bit hard of hearing,’ confessed Mrs Venables. ‘I blame it on all the ear plugs he keeps shoving in his ears. Bound to cause some blockage.’

  ‘What’s that, dear?’

  ‘Mr Mitchell’s asking how Liza is.’

  There was a shake of his head.

  ‘Liza,’ I said louder, leaning closer to him. ‘The cockatoo.’

  Reverend Charles visibly flinched. He drew back and, with a trembling hand, snatched up a cheese and pineapple cocktail and popped it quickly in his mouth, snapping the stick between his fingers. Mrs Venables answered for him. ‘Oh, she’s fine, Mr Mitchell. Always in such good voice. Charles wouldn’t part with her for the world,’ she said, turning to him. ‘Would you, dear?’ she bellowed in his ear.

  The vicar’s head shook even more violently and he seemed to cross himself. Or maybe he was just scratching his chest.

  Eric bounced between clients, sloshing wine into glasses, thrusting peanuts at people, his bald head glowing, his red nose a challenge to any reindeer, Rudolf or otherwise.

  Crystal looked divine in a soft suit of muted grey with a filigree of gold round her neck, matching the delicate earrings that hung from those wonderful petite ear lobes of hers. She glided demurely through the gathering, a nod here, a word there, a longer conversation with the Richardsons who handed her a horseshoe-shaped present which she accepted with gracious ease.

  I caught Lucy’s eye; the look she threw me was a reminder of the problem we were still saddled with, and it quickly brought me down to earth with a bump. Felled … rather like what happened to the Christmas tree.

  During afternoon surgery on Christmas Eve, there was an almighty crash from the waiting room accompanied by the wails of a cat and some frenzied yapping. I rushed through to find the tree had been toppled by a frightened cat trying to scale it and several dogs were scuttling through the pile of needles while a Boxer was cocking his leg against the upturned trunk.

  ‘Told you it was a bad idea,’ crowed Beryl from her perch in reception. In the mood I was in, that scrawny neck of hers was a sore temptation for being throttled.

  With Mandy having already gone off duty, it was Lucy’s restraining hand, dustpan and brush in the other, that calmed me down with a softly whispered ‘Take no notice of her’. Between us, we righted the tree, ignoring the panting and slobbering dogs around us.

  Once it was straightened and secured in its bucket, we stood back and looked at each other. Maybe that guy with the bleached, spiked hair had been right; maybe the decorations on this tree were allegorical – standing, as he said, for wounds being healed. Our wounds, the emotional wounds between Lucy and me. The look Lucy gave me suggested he’d been talking a load of rubbish – absolute trash. She was clearly still needled.

  By the end of the afternoon’s consultations, I was frazzled. So much for heavenly bells ringing out with glad tidings, the practice phone just wouldn’t stop ringing with problems of neither comfort or joy.

  A Mrs Moody brought in a poodle whose top-knot was tied with tinsel and red ribbon. ‘Lulu’s sliced her paw on a broken decoration,’ she said full of Christmas spirit … and gave a little burp to prove the point.

  There followed a Jack Russell who had seized the chance to wolf down half-a-dozen chocolate angels and whose innards were now pinging like discordant heavenly harps; and the gas emanating from his rear end you could have put a match to and sent the little chap into orbit.

  The last patient was a Persian brought in a cat basket festooned with gold ribbons and a tiny Father Christmas tied to the bars. She’d been caught gnawing at a defrosting turkey and was now being sick.

  I wondered what Father Christmas had in store for me the next day – a lame Rudolph with an infected hoof?

  ‘And you, too,’ sighed Beryl as the last client wished us yet another ‘Happy Christmas’ and was ushered out of reception, the door being locked rapidly.

  ‘’Struth,’ declared Eric, rolling out of the other consulting room, sweating profusely. ‘Let’s hope for your sake that’s it for now and you have a quiet time over Christmas.’ He gave me a rueful look, his eyes flicking to Lucy who had appeared in the doorway. ‘The two of you, that is.’

  ‘Well, you can call on us any time should you run into difficulties,’ said Crystal, striding through from the office where she’d been finalising some accounts on the computer. ‘We’ll both be at home.’ She, too, glanced at Lucy. There was an awkward pause.

  ‘Well, anyway, happy Christmas everyone,’ said Beryl straining forward, presenting her cheek for a peck. We all obliged.

  With final best wishes made, Beryl, Eric and Crystal piled out, leaving Lucy and me standing in the empty reception, only the muffled sound of a dog yapping forlornly in the ward to break the silence. And was it going to be just that? A silent night – a night wholly apart?

  ‘Well, Lucy,’ I said, hands in my pockets. ‘It’s your decision – you staying or coming back with me?’ I looked at those hazel eyes, the freckles on the snub nose, the fringe of hair across the brow. Standing in front of me was the best present I could possibly wish for – if only she’d let me wrap her in my arms.

  But it seemed my wish wasn’t going to be granted; Lucy backed away. ‘I think it best if I stay here,’ she murmured, averting her eyes.

  So be it, I thought. But what a crazy, crazy situation.

  My mood was still foul on Christmas morning, and was matched by the frozen chicken I�
��d forgotten to take out of the freezer when I’d got back to Willow Wren the night before. It was standing stiffly on the draining board looking as frozen as I felt when the phone rang. The voice at the end of the line had a thick, Scottish accent and was full of doom and gloom. No Christmas spirit there.

  ‘What seems to be the problem? I asked trying to keep the chill out of my own voice once I’d confirmed that, yes, I was the vet on duty.

  ‘It’s Eve … our British Blue. She’s attacked our daughter’s moose.’

  ‘What?’ I replied, startled by the thought of some moose-savaging moggy stalking round Westcott like Godzilla.

  ‘A moose,’ repeated the voice dourly. ‘You know, like in Tom and Jerry.’

  ‘Oh, you mean a mouse.’

  ‘Aye, Mickey. Our daughter’s pet moose.’

  I hadn’t much experience in dealing with mice. ‘Is he badly injured then?’

  ‘There’s only his tail left. She’s very upset.’

  ‘I’m sure she is,’ I said rather icily as I pondered over my chicken. ‘But you can always get your daughter another one,’ I added somewhat tactlessly.

  ‘Noooo,’ drawled the voice. ‘It’s Eve that’s upset … she swallowed Mickey … she’s now very poorly.’

  ‘You’d better bring her in then,’ I said jotting down his name before shoving the chicken on to a large plate and placing it on top of the fridge out of reach of Nelson, Queenie and Co, who had been circling my legs, looking hopeful.

  I rang through to the hospital to warn Lucy that a Mr McBeath would be coming in. Her tone sounded as icy as the bird on the fridge. Talk about being given the cold shoulder.

  My mood reflected that of the sick-looking British Blue that turned up on my consulting table half-an-hour later. She was true to her breed in appearance: dense, blue-grey coat, broad-chested, large, rounded head with coppery-orange eyes. Though I knew British Blues tended to be calm and collected, Eve was more laid-down than laid-back. She was distinctly off-colour. I was faced with a miserable moggy that lay on the table without moving, head down, eyes dull, saliva matting the fur round her mouth.