My Former Heart

by Cressida Connolly

  None of his records were scratched, because he never let anyone else touch them. Isobel didn’t know why he bothered to check each one so meticulously, unless the whole performance was a silent ritual of self-congratulation. At her flat she and Alice barely bothered to put LPs back in their sleeves, simply dumping them on shelves or even leaving them strewn across the floor. They kept their record player on automatic, so that each disc clunked down onto the turntable and the stylus jerked across to meet it, like a mechanical bird at a mechanical feeder. Andrew, though, seemed to believe that putting the stylus onto the record by hand was a mark of connoisseurship. He kept a special little duster by the record player, impregnated with some chemical. At the weekends he liked nothing more than to spend an afternoon circling the surface of each record with this cloth. Isobel couldn’t believe how much time he spent over the care of his LPs. It was a hobby in itself, just to own records, before you’d even listened to a song. He never called them records, of course, or even LPs: he always referred to them as albums.

  Most of the music was actually pretty dire, she thought. Yes and Jethro Tull she especially dreaded. Some of the American stuff at least had melody and words that sometimes made sense. As seriously as he took the records as physical objects, their content was almost sacred to Andrew. To talk during certain passages of music amounted to blasphemy. He himself sang along, at times, although Isobel was not encouraged to do the same. He sang not carelessly but with great deliberation. He would look intently at Isobel while he mouthed the words, as if the lyrics he was parroting contained a meaning more urgent, more esoteric, more uniquely intended for her hearing, than any words of his own devising.

  ‘You ain’t got time to call your soul a critic, no …’

  He fixed her with a serious, slightly triumphant gaze, a look which struck her as wildly at odds with the song that was issuing from the record player, a song which could surely only be described as very silly. He was a troubadour in Barons Court. The song plinked and clonked along.

  ‘… sometimes we visit your country and live in your home Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.’

  When he sang at her like this, Isobel didn’t know where to look. It was almost enough to make you pretend you wanted to hear Tubular Bells, merciful in its absence of lyrics. It was difficult to gauge how she was meant to respond: should she nod encouragingly, smile or look solemn? She felt almost queasy with embarrassment, not only on his behalf, but her own. What would anyone think if they could see her sitting there, receiving this gibberish? Was this what all the young couples in London were up to, behind closed doors? Were all the guys in London looking deep into their girlfriends’ eyes, mouthing the words ‘Aqualung my friend!’ as if the world depended on it?

  Sometimes she felt she didn’t really have anything in common with Andrew. Most of the time she was pretty bored in his company.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ she asked him one evening, ‘that the best track on almost every album is track two of side one?’

  ‘You just can’t say that,’ Andrew said. ‘No way.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Isobel.

  ‘Well, on a concept album there’s no merit in one track over another. We’ve gone beyond tracks. Sure, it might have been track-based, in the early years. But where we’re at now – where we’ve been, basically, since Pet Sounds – it’s bigger than that. It’s not songs that bands are really into. None of that commercial stuff. It’s to do with a sound, a vibe. Building a soundscape.’

  Isobel sighed.

  The one thing she enjoyed was when he told her about the artwork which went into album-cover design. This was something she had taken entirely for granted before. Most of her own records just had pictures of the singer or group on the cover, looking sunny or sultry, depending on how cool they were: smiling was uncool, basically. The idea that it might be someone’s job to design the covers, to select lettering, pose photographs, create an ambience, was new to her. Andrew showed her record covers which often made no reference to the musicians at all. One had naked, impossibly pale children clambering over flat rocks beneath an orange sky; another, a slice of cake with a huge eye, sitting on a red swing. A Rolling Stones LP had a photograph of the flies of a man’s jeans with an actual zip covering – Isobel couldn’t help noticing – a palpable bulge. Andrew’s own favourite was Brain Salad Surgery, a gatefold album which opened out to show a strange skull, half stone, half bone, its lips and chin encircled in a paler beige and still, sinisterly, bearing their flesh.

  ‘It’s an amazing image,’ he said, inhaling deeply from a Rothmans Special.

  Isobel didn’t like this one so much, partly because it was frightening, but also because the music on the LP was, she thought, so peculiar and awful. She and Alice always watched Top of the Pops on a Thursday evening: she would never have confessed as much to Andrew, but she liked pop. She liked music you could dance to, whereas Andrew didn’t dance but preferred to do what he called ‘freak out’, which meant flipping his head up and down and around with his eyes closed, while seated. Andrew disapproved of singles because they were too commercial and too brief a form to allow the development of concepts. Most of his LPs didn’t even include any tracks which had been released as singles. They didn’t get played on the radio, at least not at any time of day when a normal person might have had the radio on. He just bought records, without even listening to them first.

  There was one other thing Isobel did like about Andrew. After their first, disappointing experience in the bedroom, Isobel had steeled herself. At least he was interested in her, or meant to be; in fact he seldom asked her a question. But he was a boyfriend. Subsequent bouts of intercourse were little improvement on the first, but they were the price you paid for being able to tell people you were going out with someone. It didn’t actually hurt again, but it wasn’t much fun either. It seemed to go on and on. Sometimes it went on for the entire side of a Yes album.

  Then, on their fourth or fifth night together, Andrew did something miraculous. Instead of rolling over on top of her after a few minutes of preamble, he lifted her nightie up to her chin and began to very slowly descend her torso, navigating by kisses. It was as if a snail was inching across her skin, depositing a silvery trail. By the time he reached her groin, pleasure and wonderment had overtaken reserve: when he parted her legs and pressed his face against her, Isobel entirely forgot how irritating Andrew could be. It was as if he was a different person, some sort of delivering angel.

  ‘I love you,’ she heard herself say.

  There was a solo album by Graham Nash on the record player. The voice – plaintive, half lisping – was suddenly beautiful, the slide guitars delicious and slithery. Eventually Andrew’s face appeared above hers. He wore the same expression – half smug, half priestly – as when he mouthed along to the words of his albums and, for a moment, she fancied that he might be about to break into song. But now she wouldn’t have minded if he had.

  Chapter 10

  Emily had to learn a list of the presenting symptoms for the most common ailments in dogs. Some were straightforward. Ear mites, say, or roundworm were easy to spot. Cheyletiella (which sounded like the name of an Italian opera, thought Emily), the mite known as ‘walking dandruff’, wasn’t hard to diagnose, once you’d seen a case. Roger, who ran the surgery where she was learning the ropes after she’d finished at college, filled her in. When a dog dragged its backside along the floor, tail lifted, owners always thought it was a sign of worms, and while it could indeed indicate infestation, it was more likely to suggest that the anal glands required draining. Some breeds were more susceptible than others. Cavalier King Charles were the worst. If people knew what they were in for, before they acquired a King Charles … They had trouble with their ears, too. And breathing. Overbred, that was the trouble. Mongrels were always more robust. Owners tended to kill with kindness: overfeeding, over-coddling. Hip dysplasia was aggravated by carrying
too much weight, but try telling the owners that. Some dogs you had in were so fat they could hardly walk.

  There were things to find out about owners, too. Women were braver than men. Cat owners tended to be worse than dog owners. More neurotic. And cats could get nasty, on the table. They could give you a ferocious bite, as well as scratching, and they were harder to keep under control during examination: you couldn’t really hold their muzzles. The trick was to get the owner to man the top end. Unless some parent had the bright idea of making their child deal with the pet. You could hear them, talking in harsh whispers in the waiting room: you asked for it, you said you’d look after it, you were meant to feed/walk the wretched thing every day. So now you can hold it while it gets wormed. Children often took fright if the animal struggled and just let go, which could make things tricky if you were in the middle of a procedure. Emily learned that the owners everyone dreaded most were the old age pensioners, especially if they were on their own; especially if there was something really wrong with their pet. You dreaded having to give them bad news. They’d come in with some ancient and adored pet, its eyes glassy with age, its hind legs rigid with arthritis, and all the time it would be looking at the owner with an imploring expression. It broke your heart, if you had to destroy the animal, knowing you were sending the owner home to an empty house.

  When she got to the larger herbivores, Emily would be surprised, Roger cautioned. You could turn up at a farm and be greeted by a great big bloke, red face, calloused hands, boots covered in mud and shit: the lot. Salt-of-the-earth types. But tell them an animal wasn’t going to make it and you had to look away, pretend to rummage in your bag, while they composed themselves. ‘Important rule,’ said Roger: ‘people don’t like it if you see them cry. They never really forgive you for it. You can guarantee a farmer will shed a tear over an animal. Funny, really. If it’s a bullock, it’ll be off to the abattoir or the local slaughter-man before it’s two years old, but that farmer will still come over all red-eyed if it has to go any sooner. Same with a dairy cow, and a heifer. It’s not just the money they’re going to lose on them, although that can be considerable; it’s that they get to know their cattle as individuals. With a sheep a farmer won’t be so bothered. You get the odd one.

  ‘The people who don’t show emotion are the serious horsy types,’ Roger went on. ‘The women, that is. Not the little stable girls who go in and help out on a Saturday morning: they’re still starry-eyed. They’d cry about a run-over rabbit. The men tend to choke up too. But women who work around horses all the time, they’ll call you out to come and shoot an animal, if it’s broken a leg, say, and they’ll greet you as if you’ve come for sherry, as if they haven’t got a care in the world. It’s all a front of course. Those people love their horses, but it’s a funny thing: riding a lot makes people brave. In the First World War you’ve got our cavalry facing German guns. Cannon fire. You or I would bloody – ’scuse my French – run for it. But they did it. They stayed and fought.’ One of Roger’s friends worked as an ambulance driver and this friend said those seasoned horsy type of women were the bravest people he ever had to deal with. Didn’t matter if they’d got a really painful injury, a nasty break: they never asked for anything stronger than a cup of tea.

  Roger and his wife Pat invited Emily for lunch one Sunday, soon after she’d arrived. Their house was detached, red-brick, with mothy evergreens screening it from the road. At the back was a pond with pampas grass to one side and a few plum trees, where Pat’s bantams were standing about. A lone bird with a long neck stood by the side of the pond.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Indian Runner,’ said Pat. ‘Used to have four of them, but they’re daft, even by ducks’ standards. Fox got the other three and I’d put money on him nabbing her too.’ Pat seemed unperturbed, even complacent. ‘You can’t afford to get too attached, not to ducks.’

  This was a phrase Emily had hardly heard, until her training. Now it was repeated like a sort of litany: you can’t get too attached. That’s what everyone who worked with animals said, all the time. Rule Number One: Don’t go getting too attached.

  Emily found that this suited her. She loved animals, admired their beauty and movement; liked nothing better, out walking in the woods, than to glimpse the bright eye of a deer through the trees, in the moments of enhanced stillness before the animal sensed that it was being watched, before it leapt away in one movement of a tawny flank. Walking across a field of sheep, she liked to stop and listen to them, grazing. The way they quietly tore at the grass sounded like a bristle hairbrush, brushing hair. Geese descending on an autumn river meadow at dusk, all honking madly, like furious drivers; or a hare, so surprisingly tall, racing through a field of bright, young wheat: these were the sights which Emily loved. But she felt no need to own an animal herself, to bring one indoors.

  Emily enjoyed her own company. She chose to live by herself, even though it was more expensive than sharing, renting a little first-floor flat in an old building – it was Number 2, Butter Lane, chosen partly because she so liked the sound of the address – which looked out at the oversized town church to one side and, to the other, onto a row of old houses like crooked teeth, some half-timbered, some brick. On the far side of the church was a monkey puzzle tree, which she walked past every day, on her way to and from work. The tree reminded her of her mother’s home in Malvern.

  ‘Where on earth is Alcester?’ asked Isobel, when Emily rang her sister to say she’d found a place to live.

  ‘You sound like Granny! That’s just how she’d say it,’ Emily laughed.

  ‘Yes, but where is it? Seriously. Surely you don’t want to live somewhere where you don’t know anybody.’

  ‘It’s near Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s nice. I can walk to work.’

  ‘But you haven’t got any friends there!’

  ‘Well, I came here for work, not just to make friends. You didn’t really know anybody, much, when you went to London, and now look at you: out every night. I can make friends. I will make friends, later. I like being on my own anyway.’

  ‘But what will you do? For fun, I mean?’ said Isobel. ‘London’s full of, I don’t know, people and parties and things. And men. There can’t be much going on in Alcester.’

  Emily just laughed. Sometimes she didn’t tell her sister things. Sometimes, even as a little girl, she fibbed: Isobel always wanted to know everything and she didn’t always want to tell her.

  In her third week, a man had brought in a strangely lethargic ferret. It was the first time she had seen a ferret up close. Its body was much longer than she would have imagined and its fur had a yellow-brown tinge, like a smoker’s fingers.

  ‘How long has he been floppy like this?’ she asked the man.

  ‘Since yesterday dinner time. He’d normally try and have half your arm off. He’s not right.’

  ‘I can see,’ she said. ‘What I think is the problem is that he’s got heatstroke. Where do you keep him?’

  ‘Out the back. He’s got a run and a little hutch and that,’ said the man.

  ‘And are his living quarters in direct sunlight?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Well, yeah. The hutch is, and he’s got the run. Part of that’s in the shade,’ said the man. ‘Is that wrong then?’

  ‘Well, it’s not normally as hot as it’s been this week,’ said Emily. ‘But ferrets don’t sweat and they don’t pant, which are the ways most of us keep cool. So they can overheat pretty easily. You need to be aware that, when you feel hot, your ferret feels very hot. Uncomfortably hot. I’m going to pop him in a bath of room-temperature water and introduce some fluids. Maybe be a good idea to leave him with us overnight, so we can keep an eye on him. OK?’

  ‘If that’s what you think he wants,’ said the man. ‘What time shall I come back for him?’ He looked worried.

  ‘Late morning, early afternoon. You could leave him ’til later, if you’re at work?’

  The man grinned, rather sheepishly she thou
ght. ‘I’m unemployed, just at the minute.’

  ‘You might want to move his hutch into the shade then, if you have time,’ she said.

  He came back for the ferret at half past one the next day. His name was Gary James. He didn’t thank Emily, but she was getting used to that. People tended to express gratitude in inverse ratio to what she might have expected. The worse the prognosis for their pet, the more precarious its future, the more they seemed to thank you. The ferret was fine, now.

  ‘You busy later?’ he asked.