As anticipated, with the operation on Bo-Bo taking precedence, the morning’s list had spilled over into the afternoon. A little bit tired and more edgy than I cared to admit, I was planning to take a curtailed lunch break when Eric bounced in, having returned from seeing to one of Alex and Jill Ryman’s motley assortment of pigs and goats – I knew the Rymans and their two children, Emily and Joshua; I’d attended to their Miss Piggy’s farrowing last year.
‘Phew,’ he exclaimed, standing in the middle of the office, bringing his hands together in a loud clap. ‘That goat of Alex’s is a right bugger to handle. Fair wore me out trimming his hooves.’ He looked over to where I was about to settle in one of the two office armchairs, cup of green tea on the small table beside it. ‘I’ll get you to do it next time,’ he grinned, his face splitting like two halves of a melon while he patted his jacket pockets. ‘Which reminds me …’ He pulled out a folded piece of paper. ‘Emily did this for you.’ He stepped over and handed it to me. ‘Seems you’re flavour of the month over there. Especially with their little girl.’
Unfolding the paper, I found myself looking at a coloured line drawing which could have done justice to a Lowry painting in that it showed a brown, stick-like figure, clasping in one hand the handle of a black box, which I guess was meant to be a black bag, while the other hand was stretched out holding some sort of stick or pencil drawn in red crayon. The figure had strokes of yellow and brown pencilled round his head (hair?) – and his stick legs were encased in blotches of green (wellingtons?). Next to him were two joined circles, the smaller having ears and large red dots for eyes and nose – the larger having four stick legs, a curly tail, and between them a row of orange marks which I took to be teats, as, although it was a crude representation, the drawing was clearly meant to show a pig – no doubt Miss Piggy.
‘Is that supposed to be me?’ I asked Eric.
‘Yes, of course. Although she forgot your studs.’ Eric glanced at my ears. ‘Just as well … you ponce.’ But it was said with a smile.
‘And what’s that in my hand?’
‘The thermometer you rammed up Miss Piggy’s arse. That made a lasting impression on both Emily and Joshua. Jill says they’ve never stopped talking about it since.’
I was quite touched that Emily should have bothered to do a drawing of me – even if it was rather anal in its orientation – and vowed to thank her next time I got called over to the Rymans’ smallholding.
Meanwhile, Eric was suggesting I joined him for a quick pint over at the Woolpack.
‘I really don’t think I should,’ I said. ‘I had quite a difficult pyo to deal with this morning and there’s a dental to do before I start my afternoon appointments.
‘Oh come on, Paul,’ cajoled Eric. ‘Just a quickie.’
‘Quickie what?’ said Beryl, walking stealthily into the office post fag-out-of-back-door. I suspected she’d been listening in at the door. She slid in with that funny way of walking she had – almost a glide – and with her slightly hunched back I often pictured her as a black slug, half expecting to see a trail of slime in her wake. ‘You’re not going over to the Woolpack, are you?’
Right … she had been eavesdropping. She gave both of us the benefit of her withering look, and even though it was with just the one eye, it was every bit as effective as if she’d lasered us with two. I certainly felt as if I were being blasted back against the office wall. But Eric seemed to stand his ground.
‘Erm … just for a quick jar, Beryl,’ said Eric, running a finger round the collar of his shirt, the top button of which was undone. ‘It’s been quite a fraught morning for both of us.’ He glanced in my direction, his eyebrows curled. ‘Hasn’t it, Paul?’
Before I could reply, Beryl had butted in. ‘It’ll be even more fraught this afternoon if you come back the worse for wear.’ The withering look remained undimmed. ‘Paul’s still got Mr Henderson’s dental to do … and he’s got a full appointments list later. You’re fairly quiet, though.’ She stared pointedly at Eric. ‘But I’m sure I’ll manage to rustle up a few more clients for your evening surgery. So I don’t think the Woolpack’s a good idea … do you?’
Eric looked decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Well, if you say so, Beryl.’
‘I do say so.’
‘Who says so?’ The question was from Crystal, who had just breezed in and the words hung in the air as did her delicate perfume. We all seemed dumbstruck as no one immediately replied; but then Beryl rallied to and said, ‘We were just discussing the workload for this afternoon. There’s quite a bit on. So I don’t think …’ Her voice trailed off as she realised she was perhaps overstepping the mark.
Crystal wrung her hands together and the bracelets on her wrists tinkled. As did my heart briefly, as I reminded myself of my fantasies about me and Crystal making the Downs alive with the sound of music.
‘That’s what I think as well,’ said Crystal, a lilt in her voice. Really, Crystal? I thought with a sudden jolt. Perhaps I wasn’t being a silly little goatherd after all – until I realised she was talking shop, not musicals. ‘All the more reason for us to keep a clear head.’ She turned and smiled at her husband.
‘Of course, dear,’ replied Eric, giving Beryl a murderous look before sallying out, only to appear in the archway behind Beryl’s desk, raise his arms and, with two fingers forming a V on each hand, viciously claw the air above the back of her head – an action I could see but one he made sure was out of Crystal’s view. Beryl swung round suspiciously, just as he ducked out of sight, and we heard him whistling his way down the corridor to the tune of South Pacific’s ‘Happy Talk’.
I only wished Superman’s little dog could have taken his cue from that song, but it wasn’t so much ‘happy’ as ‘snappy’ talk when the time came to bring him up from the kennels for his dental. A very harassed Lucy, red in the face, out of breath, rushed into the prep room where I was waiting to start – Mandy’s role that afternoon was to assist Crystal with her clients in what I termed the ‘executive consulting room’ – larger and lighter, overlooking the rose garden – whereas the one allocated to me was dingy, its window partially obscured by a rampant Virginia creeper, and overlooked the exercise yard from where the odour of what dogs did when they were exercised would drift in should I dare to open the top vent. Many a time an owner would enter the room and wrinkle his or her nose at me, wondering, no doubt, whether I’d had curry for lunch.
I felt sure Mandy considered dealing with a dog’s teeth rather beneath her, hence her apparent willingness that afternoon to abdicate her role as my ops nurse and allow Lucy the privilege of setting up the descaler and having ready the thiopentone to anaesthetise Archie. Well, that was the plan … only Archie had other ideas. Hence the appearance of the harassed Lucy.
‘Paul,’ she said abruptly, ‘Archie’s proving impossible to catch.’
I had heard a few snarls emanating up from the ward and did wonder whether Archie had decided to be uncooperative. He must have been a real handful if he had thwarted the attempts of Lucy to catch him. She was a past master at dealing with difficult dogs, the bigger the better it seemed – the Rottweiler down whose throat she’d stuffed a crystal of washing soda after the dog had swallowed a Christmas stocking was a good example of her aptitude in dealing with well-muscled, strong dogs. It was almost as if they were a challenge – something that she relished.
Maybe I should build up my biceps and get her to relish me a bit more, I thought, as I followed her down to the ward, watching the curve of her slim hips, the neat calves encased in their dark stockings. I had an overwhelming desire to take a lunge at her in much the same way Archie had an overwhelming desire to do likewise as I approached his kennel, and he flung himself at the front and bared his teeth, biting the bars, growling. Of course, I’d have taken a much gentler approach in leaping on Lucy. But currently, with the way things were between us, such leapings were an unlikely event.
Stop this, Paul – concentrate on the present. A furious, white
ball of foaming pooch. How different to the little dog wearing his red cape that Mr Henderson had dragged in that morning. Perhaps we really did have here a miniature Krypto, the Superdog, ready to save the planet from an alien force, which he clearly thought I was. Archie had been kennelled in one of the smaller, upper cages which served to house cats and small dogs prior to their operations or in-hospital treatment. So that snarling ball of spit was directly level with my face … and not a pretty sight.
‘Now, calm down little fella,’ I said in the smoothest of dulcet tones I could muster. Archie’s reaction was to lunge at the bars again and clamp one in his jaws with a growl worthy of a dog twice his size.
‘Come on, Archie, no one’s going to hurt you.’ OK, not quite the truth. The dog was going to have a jab and some of his teeth might get yanked out – but he wasn’t to know. But then, by the way he re-launched himself at the bars with another savage snarl, I suspect he thought I was a lying toad and one that required annihilation. I began to think, Star Trek-style, that a stun gun might have come in handy to give Archie a quick zap. Whizz – Pow –Bang. One dog flattened, ready for his dental.
‘Paul.’ It was Lucy, holding a less exotic means of overpowering Archie – a small syringeful of tranquillizer.
There was still the problem of actually catching the dog to administer the sedative; but Lucy had the answer to that in her other hand – a pair of thick, suede gauntlets, usually used for pinning down cats, but applicable to fur balls of the canine variety such as Archie.
With the cage door cautiously opened sufficiently for me to lever in one gauntleted hand, to which Archie immediately latched himself, my dulcet tones rapidly descended into a series of deep and heartfelt utterances – ‘Why, you little sod …’, ‘Damn you …’ and ‘Bloody well behave yourself …’ as I struggled to pin Archie in one corner, with his head squashed against the cage wall and, at the same time, grip one of his flailing back legs to enable Lucy to jab the sedative into his thigh. My voice was quite croaky once we had achieved our aim, and I had released the dog and slammed the door on him, before he had the chance to sink his teeth into my gauntlet again. Oh, what a charming little pooch! I just wondered how many teeth I could legitimately pull out once he was under. The lot? No, that would be unethical. Besides, such was his savagery, he would no doubt still be capable of giving me a severe gumming.
In the event, having carried his inert little body through to the preparation room once he’d succumbed to the sedative, given him his intravenous thiopentone, intubated him to prevent any spray from the descaler trickling into his windpipe, and set to work on descaling his teeth, of which it was only the back molars that were heavily encrusted with tartar, I found I could only justifiably extract two loose incisors. And although I gave his prominent canines a good prod and poke, they were firmly embedded in the gums with no trace of decay, so there was no way I could find a reason to whip them out. ‘So, matey,’ I said, removing a couple of soggy swabs from the back of his throat and sliding out the endotracheal tube, ‘you live to bite another day.’
Lucy grimaced. ‘Thank you, Paul,’ she said as, without looking up, she sponged blood-tinged water from around Archie’s muzzle. Not exactly a term of endearment with its undertone of sarcasm. But at least it was a response. A communication of sorts. It could only get better, surely?
It certainly couldn’t get much worse. We still hadn’t been speaking to each other for days – apart from the basic necessity to converse to ensure the day-to-day routines were maintained. The banalities of life. Oh dear, I was sounding really jaded. I realised I was clutching at straws to think that we could turn things round easily; and the place to start that process was certainly not a heart-to-heart over Archie’s gnashers. I acknowledged Lucy’s help with a polite ‘Thank you’ and peeled off my ops gown and mask – the latter worn to prevent infected droplets from the descaler being inhaled – washed my hands, put on my watch and, seeing there was time for a cup of tea before starting the afternoon’s consultations, slipped out into the corridor only to collide with Beryl, who had been lurking there.
‘Just on my way down for my afternoon ciggie,’ she explained in a guilty whisper, peering round my shoulder into the prep room where Lucy was just picking up Archie to take him back to his kennel. ‘Everything, OK?’ she added, frowning in Lucy’s direction.
‘Fine,’ I sighed. ‘Just fine.’
‘If you say so,’ replied Beryl, clearly not believing a word I’d said, and hurried on, muttering under her breath.
An hour later, Beryl was a changed woman – not in the sense that she had changed her clothes; mind you, even if she had done, it would probably have been into a similar outfit to the one she always wore – black trousers, black polo-neck sweater and black cardigan draped over her shoulders. No, it was a mood change, brought on by the arrival of Ernie Entwhistle and his new puppy.
I heard her as I walked down the short passageway between my consulting room and reception, passing to my right the door into the waiting room, behind which I could hear the murmur of voices, a plaintive miaow and the panting of a dog. ‘Oh, what a sweetie!’ I heard her say. ‘Just like you,’ I heard him reply. Yuck! I stuck my tongue out. Beryl’s response was, ‘Oh, Ernie, you old devil,’ accompanied by a girlish giggle which abruptly stopped as I swung through the door.
‘Mr Entwhistle’s just arrived,’ she said, her manner becoming instantly businesslike the moment she saw me.
‘I’m afraid I’m a bit late,’ apologised Mr Entwhistle, turning his attention to me as the collie pup he had on a lead pulled towards me, panting and pawing the air in a friendly greeting – what a contrast to Archie.
I awaited Beryl’s customary tart response; none was forthcoming. Instead, Mr Entwhistle got a beaming smile and a ‘That’s no problem … Mr Mitchell was running late anyway.’ She turned to me with what for Beryl was almost an angelic smile. ‘Isn’t that so, Paul?’
Running late? Was I? Well, maybe a little.
‘In fact, he’ll be able to see you now.’
I will?
‘Won’t you, Paul?’
‘Yes, Beryl.’
‘See you in a bit then,’ said Mr Entwhistle, giving Beryl a little wave with his fingers, before he followed me up the passage with his puppy skittering over the vinyl ahead of him.
From my computer in the consulting room, I read that the collie was just under three months old, called Bess, and was due for her first vaccination. Mr Entwhistle hoisted her onto the table where, with a double click of his fingers, she promptly sat down, only to spring up again as I approached to give her a check-over.
‘Bess,’ said Mr Entwhistle, quietly. ‘Sit.’
Bess sat. With a triple click of his fingers, she fidgeted on the table with her front paws, first lifting one, then the other. He clicked again. ‘Shake a paw with Mr Mitchell then?’ he said. But all I got was an excited lick of my fingers and a frenzied wag of her rump and tail. ‘She’ll learn soon enough,’ he added. And no doubt be as obedient as Ben, I thought – she’d soon be jumping onto the table, sitting and raising a leg for shake-a-paw to the same finger-click commands that Ben used to respond to.
Even without doing shake-a-paw, Bess remained sitting down and allowed me to give her the required vaccination, my needle slipping under the skin of her scruff without her uttering so much as a whimper.
‘Wish all my patients were as well behaved as Bess,’ I said, thinking of the wretched Archie who would be now coming round from his anaesthetic. Having signed Bess’s vaccination card, given Mr Entwhistle an information pack on diet, worming and subsequent boosters, there was one comment I wanted to finish with. It had been going through my mind as I’d been examining Bess. Her markings – the white patch over one side of the head and the white socks – uncannily resembled those of Mr Entwhistle’s previous collie. I hesitated, wondering whether it was prudent to remind Mr Entwhistle of Ben. Some owners felt uncomfortable, as if acquiring a new dog was somehow disloyal t
o the memory of their previous pet. But I decided to take the risk.
‘You know, I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ I said, scratching the puppy’s back, causing her to turn and lick me enthusiastically, ‘but Bess reminds me a lot of Ben.’
Mr Entwhistle’s face creased into a smile. ‘No surprise there, Mr Mitchell,’ he said, reaching down to give Bess a kiss on her head. ‘She’s Ben’s great-great-granddaughter.’
As I watched them walk back down the passage, I anticipated there was going to be a great bond develop there, with many potentially happy years to look forward to. When I heard Mr Entwhistle chortle out in reception and Beryl’s titter in response, I wondered whether the same might apply to them as well, although I doubted whether Beryl would jump into bed at the click of a finger. But then you never know.
‘What’s happened to my 5.50 appointment?’ I asked her when Mr Entwhistle finally took his leave with another little wave of his hand and a ‘See you soon’ directed at Beryl, who was simpering, her rounded cheeks flushed, as she hunched up her shoulders and gave a little wave of her scarlet talons in return.
‘Beryl, my 5.50 appointment – the cockatiel?’
‘Bye,’ said Beryl, softly, as Mr Entwhistle paused, hand on the door, and gave another little wave in her direction.
‘Bye,’ he whispered.
‘Bye,’ she echoed, her hand still in the air.
‘Beryl.’
‘What is it, Paul?’ she snapped, dropping her hand once Mr Entwhistle had finally left.
‘The cockatiel.’
‘Oh, the cockatiel. Mrs Tidy cancelled. I’ve rebooked it for tomorrow.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘Didn’t I? Must have slipped my mind. Now, when is it you’re seeing Mr Entwhistle again?’
Clearly he hadn’t slipped her mind.
I quickly scooted down to the ward to check on Bo-Bo, who was staying in overnight. She’d come round from the operation OK but was obviously still weak; when she looked up and wagged her tail at me, albeit feebly, I felt she had a good chance of pulling through.
Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) Page 10