by Rebecca Shaw
“It’s a girl. That’s what Nuala’s always wanted, a little girl.”
“—I stitch up and finish off.”
Callum said decisively, “Right. When we’ve done, we’ll take her to Nuala to see. Her being so near the end I can do nothing but exactly as she asks. She just wants to hold her. To have a share in all this loveliness.” Callum concentrated on making the little kid as pretty as a picture for Nuala. “Her hooves, look! Aren’t they beautiful? So tiny, why, you can’t believe she’s real!”
“She is though and she won’t be the last, by the looks of Cassandra.”
“Black with these white patches, you have to agree she’s well marked.”
Dan finished closing up Sybil, and then suggested Callum take the kid for Nuala to see. He intended staying in the kitchen and getting washed before he left, but Callum insisted that Nuala would like to see him. “She doesn’t get much company, you know. People don’t know what to say.”
So he followed Callum into the dining room, now converted into a bedroom for Nuala. She lay in a big double bed, propped on snow-white pillows the color of her face. If it was possible, Nuala looked even more frail than the last time he’d seen her. There was no flesh on her face; it was quite simply skin stretched over bones. Once, she had been pretty, he could see that. She was wearing a bed jacket, so only her hands were visible on the counterpane, and they too, like her face, were skin and bone. Nothing more. There was such a terrible stillness about her you would have thought she was already dead.
Callum, carrying the kid in a baby’s blanket, laid it reverently on the bed beside Nuala just where she could reach to touch it. Her eyes glowed with delight. She whispered to Callum to put the kid in her arms, so he did, protesting that it was too heavy for her. She shook her head. Taking a big breath, which ran out before she’d finished speaking, Nuala said, “I always wanted a little girl. Remember that time when…”
Callum nodded. “What shall we call her?”
Breathing deeply she gasped, “Carmel.”
“Sure, that’s a great choice. Carmel it shall be. I’m going to take her back to Sybil now; she’ll be missing her.”
The tiny kid made a sweet attempt at an anxious bleat, so Callum scooped her up in his arms and left. Dan said, “Good morning, Mrs. Tattersall. I’ll be seeing you. Rose sends her love.”
Nuala looked at him and whispered, “Thank you. God bless. Look after Callum for me. You know, when I’m…”
“Certainly, I most definitely will. ’Bye Nuala.” He smiled at her and raised his hand in a half salute, at a loss to know what else to say. Dan found Callum seated in the kitchen watching Sybil and Carmel getting to know each other.
“That’s what we were going to call our baby that we never got to hold. Losing her broke Nuala’s heart.”
Dan’s answer to that was to squeeze Callum’s shoulder in sympathy. “Best be off.”
“There’ll be no point in it all without her.”
“I’ll call tomorrow perhaps, or better still, ring me if you need me. Right?”
“Right.”
Dan left Callum downing another whisky while he supervised Carmel having her first feed. He paused for a moment at the back door, thought about the cards life had dealt Callum, and remembered Jonathan Franklin-Brown and Rose and how happy he was by comparison.
“YOU say Dan’s gone to Tattersall’s Cop? That’s good of him.” Joy looked over the top of her glasses at Kate but had to wait for her reply while Kate counted the money a client had given her for some budgie seed.
“That’s right, exactly, and there’s your receipt. Thank you. ’Bye.” She turned to Joy. “Well, Callum rang to say his goat was in dire straits and he wanted Dan and Dan would understand, and so I rang him and Dan went.”
“Well, try not to ring him again; he needs this holiday, and with Rose…”
“I know but you see Callum’s wife is…well she’s dying and he can’t leave her.”
“Ah! Right! I see. And your exams, Kate? How are they going?”
“Third paper on Tuesday.”
“Yes, I know, but what about the two you’ve already done? Are you feeling happy about them?”
“Well, yes, I am. I seem to have aimed my revision in all the right areas so far, so fingers crossed. Thank you for giving me time off.”
“My pleasure. I don’t know why I’m wanting you to do well, though, because it means you won’t be here after September.” Joy laughed at her and all Kate could say was “Sorry,” with a smile on her face.
“You’ve done so well learning this job. Hardly a foot wrong all the time you’ve been here.”
“Well, not quite. I have had my moments.”
“Well, yes. There was that time when…and the other when…” They both collapsed with laughter.
“Seriously though, I shall be thrilled when you’ve passed and delighted for you to go. You’ve got just the right strain of common sense to make a good vet.” Joy picked up a stack of files from the counter and disappeared into the back to get on with some administration, leaving Kate on her own because Stephie had had to go to the dentist for an urgent appointment. She wasn’t by herself for long, though, because the afternoon clinic was beginning, and the first booking was for a budgie to have its claws and beak trimmed.
The client came in carrying a cardboard box punched with dozens of holes to give the bird air. She was a strange person, this client; she believed quite adamantly that animals were far superior to human beings, yet could allow her rabbits’ teeth to overgrow so much they couldn’t eat, neglect her ponies’ hooves so they could hardly walk, and permit her cats to have fleas to the extent they were completely overrun with them. Nevertheless, all of them at the practice had a great affection for her and her eccentricities. Her appearance was out of the ordinary, to say the least. It appeared she’d used a builder’s trowel to apply her makeup, and her hair was blacker than black, if that was possible. Today she wore a full-length black skirt, which looked as though it had done the rounds of the Nearly New Sales for far too long, topped by a mustard-yellow twinset covered in beaded embroidery, over which she wore a scarlet-sequined waistcoat. Miranda Costello was nothing if not colorful.
“Hello, Mrs. Costello. Take a seat. Rhodri’s almost ready for you.”
Mrs. Costello wagged a finger at her. “How many times have I told you, it’s Miranda to all my friends.”
“Sorry. Habit, you know.”
“That’s all right, dear. I do hope Rhodri won’t be long; Beauty hates being shut in. Listen to him making such a fuss; he’s usually so quiet when he can’t see me.”
Mrs. Costello sat herself down on a chair close to the counter, and Kate made the foolish mistake of asking her how all her other animals were. The moment the words were out of her mouth she could have kicked herself. There followed a long monologue of how wonderfully intelligent her animals were and of the tricks they got up to and…with an indulgent smile, Miranda added, “Listen to him talking to me. He’s such a talker he is; aren’t you, Beauty?” By then she had inched open the lid of her cardboard box to ensure that Beauty was in full working order, and before she could stop him, he’d swept out and perched in the top of the giant cheese plant in the far corner of reception.
“Oh! Beauty! Well, bless him, isn’t he clever? Knowing just where to perch. Doesn’t he look lovely all among the leaves? Come to Mummy, Beauty.” She held out her finger and made tweeting noises to Beauty, but he was listening to none of her enticements. Eventually she climbed on a chair and made a grab for him, and got him squawking and struggling in her hand. He nipped her hard on her fingers and made her squeal. She kissed him before she put him in the box, protesting and squawking, and fastened the lid back on. “I told you he was clever and he is. Better company than people he is, and certainly more obedient.” Then Beauty went completely quiet. “There you are, you see, he does know how to behave, really.” She preened herself like a budgie might, and sat back to continue her monologue.
Kate listened with half an ear to her stories for a few minutes more, wishing all the time that Rhodri would hurry up with his lunch. Eventually he did open his consulting room door and call out, “Beauty Costello, please. Good afternoon, Miranda, and how are you this afternoon?”
“Oh! I’m fine, Rhodri, and you?”
“Fine thanks. Claws again, is it? And beak I see.”
“That’s right. Yes. His claws and his beak.”
While he looked for the right piece of equipment to do the job, Rhodri asked her how her menagerie was getting along. “Oh! Fine, you know. Every one a treasure, the delight of my heart. Wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have animals to get up for in the morning. Dogs to walk; cats to feed; Beauty to clean out; stables to muck out, you know. Life’s full of promise for me.”
“Good.” Rhodri slid the lid off the cardboard box cautiously; he wasn’t in the mood for a bird flying around his consulting room resisting arrest. Without taking the lid off completely he slipped his hand in and felt about for Beauty. All he could find was an inert budgie. Lying on its back! Feet in the air! A sure sign of having gone to glory. Oh no! Not dead. He put a finger on Beauty’s chest, but could feel nothing. In his very bones he knew it was all hopeless. He quickly replaced the lid, and said, “I think maybe, Miranda, you’d better take a seat.” Rhodri, in a state of total panic, cleared his throat. This had happened to him once before, and the client had threatened legal action. He became cold all over, and the stutter he’d thought he’d gotten rid of forever came back. “I-I think all is not w-w-well with B-B-Beauty.”
“What do you mean, ‘All is not well’?”
“He appears to have had a h-h-heart attack.”
“A heart attack! Well, get him out and do what they do.”
“I’m afraid it’s t-t-too late for that.”
“Too late? Let me look.” She wrenched the lid off the box and saw Beauty feet up, lying motionless. “You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him! My Beauty!” She picked him up and tried prying his beak open and breathing into his mouth but to no avail. Beauty was dead and gone.
“I’m so sorry, Miranda, so sorry. It must be the shock, you know, of being fastened up in the box when he’s used to his freedom. A free-as-air budgie like B-B-Beauty, well…”
“Give him an injection, go on, something to bring him around.”
“Unfortunately there isn’t anything I c-c-can…”
Mrs. Costello clutched hold of the front of his white coat and begged and begged for Rhodri to resuscitate Beauty. “Please. Please.” When she saw him shake his head, she screamed and fell back onto the chair holding her handkerchief to her face, howling like a banshee. “Beauty! Beauty! Beauty!”
At this point, Kate, hearing the sounds of distress coming from Rhodri’s consulting room, and noting that the level of conversation in the waiting room had been reduced to nil as the clients pricked up their ears, decided to go to his assistance. She gingerly opened the door in case Beauty was free again, but saw him lying on the examination table and recognized instantly what the problem was. “Oh, dear! It must have been the shock of it all.”
Grasping at straws Rhodri repeated, “Shock of it all?”
“Well, he escaped in reception and Miranda had to recapture him from the top of the cheese plant. He was very upset, wasn’t he, Miranda?”
The howling stopped while Miranda shrieked, “Did I kill him then?”
“Not at all. It was no one’s fault, was it, Rhodri?”
Rhodri shook his head. “No one’s. Budgies do this sometimes—stress and strain, different environment, traveling here, escaping, you know. It’s all been too much for him.”
“Oh! My poor Beauty! What will his wife say? Oh! Beauty! I shall take him home and they can all come to his funeral. My poor Beauty. My little darling. My dearest Beauty.” She kissed him before she put him in the box. “You are sure he’s dead? Quite sure? I’d hate to bury him and then find…” Miranda looked hopefully at Rhodri.
Rhodri said reassuringly, “Quite sure. Quite sure.”
Kate took her elbow and led her out into reception, still weeping.
Between sobs she said, “I owe you, for the consultation.”
“There’ll be no charge, Miranda.”
“Oh! Thanks.”
“You’ll be all right getting home?”
“Oh yes, I’ve got the van.” She braced her shoulders.
“Are you sure?”
She nodded. Kate opened the door for her and saw her out to the car park.
“I shall miss him.”
“Of course you will; it’s only natural. Drive carefully.”
Kate returned to have a private word with Rhodri. Closing the door behind her, she said in a loud whisper, “That was a close shave.”
“Too right. He was dead even before I put my hand in to get him out. I can’t believe it; that’s twice it’s happened to me.” He completed his report of the consultation on his computer and said, “You’re a star, Kate. An absolute star.”
“Any time!”
“Don’t tempt fate! I don’t want that happening again. Who’s next?”
Rhodri carried on with his afternoon clinic, with the niggling thought of Beauty’s demise at the back of his mind all the time.
But he did have dinner at Megan’s to look forward to, and tonight he would do his utmost to be polite to Megan’s dad, Mr. Idris Jones. About the only thing they had in common was home rule for Wales; after that their conversation was barely civil. The old man was the last of four generations of farmers, and now that he was crippled with arthritis and chronic asthma, he had to rely on a daughter to carry on the farming tradition. With all that to bear, he was bitter. Words could scarcely describe the extent of his bitterness. Made worse by the fact that his only son, Howard, had left home to become a barrister in London, unmarried and with no prospects of marriage, which meant there would be little chance of a successor to the family heritage.
But Rhodri was determined he wouldn’t rise to the bait tonight, for Megan’s sake, because she took the brunt of Mr. Jones’s unpleasantness every day of her life. When he thought of Megan, his face broke into smiles. She was the loveliest, most beautiful, most delightful woman he’d ever met in his life, and he was determined, resolute even, that one day he and she would be married. He blessed the day there’d been all that confusion in reception, which had resolved itself by Megan’s coming to the practice, pet sheep on a lead, to get veterinary help. To fall in love, on a bleak winter day with the wind blowing down from Beulah Bank Top fit to slice a man in two, was the last thing he’d ever expected, but it had happened. Gloriously, magically it had happened for her too.
At home, as he shaved for the second time that day, Rhodri promised himself that tonight he would broach the subject of marriage to Mr. Jones, firmly and considerately. Though why he should have to ask his permission to marry Megan was beyond him; she was thirty-five and didn’t need anyone’s permission.
Showered, shaved, and changed, Rhodri scooped up his pet ferret, Harry, from under a sofa cushion, shut him safely in his outdoor cage, and set off for Beulah Bank Farm, singing his heart out with his favorite tenor solos from the Messiah as he drove, his spirits soaring the closer he got to Megan.
The climb up to the farm was spectacular. Mile after mile of wonderful hills piling one on the other with amazing views at every turn of the road. The farm itself stood tightly nestled into a hill, looking as though it had grown there rather than been built over two hundred years ago, and one didn’t come upon it until the turn into the farm gateway. There it was, gray-stoned, solid, secretive almost, but inviting at the same time.
And there she was, Megan Angharad Jones, waiting in the kitchen doorway for him to arrive, arms outstretched, her whole face filled with a smile. Half the house was in shadow, but the sun still shone on the back door, highlighting the glints of red in Megan’s hair, the sparkle in her dark eyes; and Rhodri thought, not for the first time,
of the wonders of the world and that surely it must be the eighth wonder that she loved him.
Rhodri went straight into her arms and kissed her hard and long. He stood back from her at arm’s length and asked, “How is it you always know when I’m about to arrive?”
“I’ll let you in on a secret. I look out of the kitchen window, and as you drive over the humpbacked bridge, I can just catch sight of you before you disappear into the trees; and then I need to count to thirty-five, and I know you’ll be here.”
“And there was I thinking we were telepathic.”
“And a bit of that too!” They laughed at each other and, arms entwined, went to find her father. He was seated as usual in his winged chair, a rug over his knees, a pipe in his mouth, the Daily Telegraph, which he read from cover to cover every day, discarded in the wastepaper bin at his side.
“Good evening, Mr. Jones.”
“It’s you, is it? I’d forgotten.”
“Hasn’t it been beautiful weather this last week? It’s the sort of weather that makes you wish you were somewhere exotic under the palm trees with a soft breeze just beginning to take the heat out of the day. Isn’t it now?”
“You wouldn’t if you were me. This heat is stifling.”
“It must help the arthritis though.”
“Well, summer, I can’t stand because the asthma always seems worse to me and, winter, I can’t stand because of the arthritis. Gets me every which way.”
Rhodri didn’t stop to think. “You can’t win, can you?”
Mr. Jones rounded on him. “Are you being impertinent on purpose?”
“I was trying to sympathize.”
“The only thing that saves your bacon is the fact that you’re Welsh.”
“It’s not the only thing that’s good about me, Mr. Jones. I love your Megan, as you know. All we want to do is marry. Why can’t you see your way to it?”
Mr. Jones banged his fist surprisingly hard on the table beside him, making all the invalid paraphernalia on it jump and rattle, and he shouted as best he could, “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, she isn’t marrying anyone. I need her. When I die, then she can marry.”
