About Last Night . . .

by Catherine Alliott

  She rang off and I fled outside. I could still hear Minna in hysterics behind me with Nico shouting at her, but Lucy and Robin were on my heels. When I raced into the stable, Nutty was in the far corner, looking rather less pleased with himself than he had done a few minutes ago. His sides were heaving and he was sweating and pawing the ground.

  ‘Quick, get a head collar on him. Poppy says he mustn’t lie down.’

  ‘Is she coming?’ asked Lucy, flying to get one and quickly clipping it on him.

  ‘Yes, five minutes, she’s at Baldwin’s.’

  ‘Is it like colic? Keep him upright in case the gut twists?’ asked Robin. I’d forgotten he hunted.

  ‘Yes, although in this case, I don’t know if it’s the gut twisting or – shit, he’s going down. Quick.’

  Robin, Lucy and I jerked his head up and pushed him on to walk, pulling him round his stable.

  ‘Should we take him out? Walk him in the yard?’ Lucy asked as he snorted and rolled his eyes in alarm.

  ‘Poppy said no. He’s too strong, he might just pull away from us and go down. We just have to keep him moving in here.’

  But Nutty was in trouble now: terrible trouble. Terror was in his wild eyes at what was happening to his insides which very recently had been so sated, so comfortable, so lip-smackingly fine. Now, all of a sudden, he was in tremendous pain and lying down seemed to him the obvious option.

  ‘NO!’ we shrieked as his front knees buckled. Robin gave him a sharp slap on the buttocks to jerk him on, his other hand pulling the head collar. ‘Get on!’ he roared as Nutty, bewildered, unbuckled his knees and staggered into a walk. ‘Lucy, get behind him,’ he ordered, ‘I’ll pull.’

  Minna and Nico appeared at the stable door. Minna was in floods. ‘I’ve killed him, haven’t I?’ she wailed. ‘The sugar beet will swell and his insides will burst, won’t they?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I told her.

  ‘But where will it go to, all the food? It’ll have no room, it’ll just swell and swell until it gets so massive his stomach will explode!’

  ‘Shut up, Minna, you’re not helping,’ said Lucy as Nutty, panic in his eyes, tried to jerk the rope away and rear up simultaneously in fear, backing into the corner.

  Robin held on valiantly. ‘Easy boy! Easy there, walk on!’

  ‘I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it!’ Minna cried, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Take her away, Nico,’ yelled Robin.

  ‘Yeah, piss off, Minna, you’re not helping,’ snapped Nico.

  ‘I can’t, I have to be here with him, it’s my fault!’

  At that moment, in the unfolding, unhelpful cacophony surrounding poor Nutty’s distress, Poppy’s car was heard pulling into the yard. A car door slammed, then running footsteps.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ I murmured as she appeared. I flew to open the stable door for her.

  She came in with her bag and one look at Nutty told her all she needed to know. ‘Right,’ she said quickly. ‘So what I’ve got to do, if you could keep him upright and as still as possible,’ she was crouching and unpacking her bag as she spoke, ‘is get this plastic tube down his throat.’ She pulled out a long length of transparent flexible tubing from within. Robin was still valiantly wrestling with the snorting, stamping horse.

  ‘What will that do, suck the food out?’ I asked, flattening myself against the wall as Nutty and Robin surged past. Poppy was still searching for something else in her bag, riffling about. Paddy would have got the tube down by now.

  ‘No, it’s not the stomach that’s the problem, it’s the breathing. Everything swelling up to block the oesophagus.’ She was approaching Nutty with one end of the tube but I noticed her hands were trembling a bit. Poppy was only young. Very much a new assistant. I wondered how long she’d been qualified. Now didn’t seem quite the moment to ask. I caught Robin’s eye; he’d also seen her approach somewhat hesitantly.

  ‘Right, so we open his mouth and you shove it in, is that it?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s it,’ she agreed, as if we were just popping a little pill in his mouth, not a ruddy great tube, all the way down to his stomach.

  It was a great deal easier said than done. By sticking his fingers in the corner of Nutty’s mouth to open it – not easy, given that it was a moving, if not jerking target – Robin gave Poppy short but crucial opportunities, which Poppy somehow managed to bungle each time. She missed again, for the fourth time.

  ‘Here, you do the mouth and I’ll get the tube in,’ said Robin, exasperated, as Nutty whinnied frantically.

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Nico backing away. He’d have added a bit of muscle to hold the horse but this was not his sort of thing. But try as we would, Poppy, Lucy and I couldn’t hold Nutty’s head still enough so that Robin could get his mouth open with his tongue out of the way, and Nutty was getting more and more panic-stricken, whinnying and rearing as we grabbed and shouted, and he was a big horse.

  ‘Oh, please let him be quick!’ gasped Poppy as Nutty surged forward suddenly, barging the door with his chest and shooting the rope out of our hands.

  ‘Do you mean to die? Let him be quick to die!’ shrieked Minna, who, oh so helpfully, was still with us, albeit some yards from the stable, her hands over her wet face, or shoved up into her vertical hair.

  ‘No, let him be quick getting here!’ Poppy said breathlessly, grabbing the head collar again. ‘Paddy, I mean.’

  ‘Paddy’s coming?’ I cried.

  ‘Yes, I rang him, but he was over towards Ludlow, Barnacre Farm. But he’s on his way.’

  ‘But Paddy’s in London!’ I shouted above the whinnying din.

  ‘No, he came back yesterday, I wondered why you rang me.’

  ‘Oh!’ I breathed, confused, but heartily relieved. Paddy was coming – oh thank God. Surely he couldn’t die if Paddy was here?

  A cry went up from the yard as a car was heard and Minna ran to get him. We had a problem, though, because in that moment, Nutty had decided that he really would lie down, that it was the only way to relieve his terrible, searing pain, and his knees had gone and he was on his side, almost taking Lucy and me with him. In fact we were both on our knees.

  ‘Oh!’ We panicked, trying to stumble up.

  ‘Get that horse on its feet,’ commanded a steely, controlled voice as the stable went dark and the vet’s form blocked the light.

  ‘Paddy, we can’t,’ I gasped, ‘he’s too strong – oh Paddy, he’s eaten sugar beet.’

  ‘I know. Here, Robin, pull the rope hard and level while I get behind.’

  Robin did as he was told as Paddy, with seemingly superhuman strength, telling Lucy and me to do the same at the sides, got behind his buttocks and pushed like the blazes. Somehow, we got the poor thrashing horse to his feet.

  ‘Did you give him a shot?’ he asked Poppy.

  ‘No!’ she gasped. ‘Oh – God, sorry, I just knew the tube had to—’

  ‘Quite right, but this will help.’

  In a seamless movement Paddy had opened his bag, taken an already loaded syringe and dexterously slotted it into Nutty’s neck, pushing in the serum.

  ‘To knock him out?’ I breathed.

  ‘Not completely, we need some compliance, but it’ll sedate him a bit and hopefully calm him. Now, hold the other end of the tube, Poppy, and feed it in when I say.’ The tricky operation that four of us had been struggling with was completed in moments as Paddy held the head collar with one hand, opened Nutty’s mouth and shoved the tube in with the other, and Poppy fed it through, noticeably calmer now. But Nutty’s eyes had disappeared back into his head, no doubt in supreme discomfort, surely ten minutes into eating the food.

  ‘Oh God, are we too late?’ I gasped as we all propped him upright, his soaking sides heaving, his breathing filling the stable and going rickety rackety, like a pneumatic drill.

  ‘We’ll see. He may be too spent to accommodate the tube, we’ll see.’

  ‘Don’t we have to get the
food out of his stomach?’

  ‘No, to be honest that’s a myth. The stomach’s so big it will stretch and accommodate the beet, and anyway, it’ll empty into the intestines. No, it’s choke that’s the problem because he’s bolted it, something’s got stuck and we need to flush it out.’ He was shooting a liquid through the tube now as he talked. Perhaps due to the tranquillizer, or perhaps Paddy’s presence, Nutty seemed a bit calmer. His eyes were still white and rolled back, but he was quieter, and he seemed to be getting used to the tube. He was breathing more easily.

  ‘I think we may have flushed it through,’ Paddy said as he held the tube with one hand and stroked Nutty’s neck with the other. ‘Think we might be clearing things, eh, mate?’

  So it was not a substitute oesophagus to breathe through, it was to clear the obstruction. Poppy had got that wrong or got confused. But who could blame her? She was only young, and in the heat of the moment and with a thrashing horse, all foaming mouth and steely hooves – thank God we’d all avoided those, he’d lashed out a couple of times – who cared what the tube did? She’d had the right idea. None of us could really breathe as we watched Nutty intently, including Poppy, I know. Please live, please live, we all seemed to be willing him, as Paddy stroked and cooed in his ear, and suddenly, I knew he would. If Paddy stroked and cooed in my ear, I bloody would, too. Such tenderness. Such genuine concern. It made my eyes fill up, while Nutty’s, so wild and panicked earlier, began to flicker and half close. His breathing became more regular, his sides heaved a little less. His head dropped right to his knees, but he didn’t try to lie down. He just stood, nose almost on the shavings, recovering slowly, gathering strength. After a few minutes, I dared to say it.

  ‘He’s going to be OK, isn’t he, Paddy?’

  ‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘I think he’s out of the woods.’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ gasped Minna, at the door, covering her mouth, her eyes wide and wet. I saw Poppy glance to the heavens and shut her eyes briefly. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed.

  ‘Got that a bit wrong,’ she gasped.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ said Paddy in that level, steady way. ‘You got the treatment exactly right.’

  ‘Not sure I’d have shot the fluid down.’

  ‘But he’ll make it, that’s the important thing,’ said Lucy, and Poppy glanced at her gratefully. ‘Robin, you were brilliant,’ Lucy added warmly. He had been brilliant. We wouldn’t have kept him upright but for him; he’d have gone down a lot sooner.

  ‘Well done, mate,’ said Paddy, and Robin looked pleased. Paddy was a bit of a local hero round here, which I always laughed about, because let’s face it, the competition for that title wasn’t fierce.

  ‘You know Nina Bartlett has your practice photo on her fridge, don’t you?’ I’d tease. I wasn’t laughing now. There was so much, so much, I wanted to ask him as we stood in that quiet, highly charged stable, watching Nutty recover. Why are you here? Why aren’t you in London? Is Claudia with you? Did she pack her bags that very second and is even now installed in your house with you? That house. Paddy’s darling little thatched white cottage, surrounded by lush water meadows. Was she even now unpacking her suitcase upstairs, throwing open the bedroom window to the buttercups, singing as the swallows swooped and soared in the sky, smoothing down the duvet, taking a look around her new surroundings, going out to pick some flowers for the side of the bed, suddenly a nature lover, a Damascene moment having taken place, together with a great surge of love?

  Paddy was talking to me. Looking into my eyes with his steady brown ones and telling me about a new feeding regime. ‘Nothing, obviously, for a while, but access to plenty of water. It’ll need topping up regularly. And then tomorrow a little molasses but make it good and sloppy, and little and often, like a child. Not a proper feed. No hay yet. Take that net away.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And keep him in. Box rest for the next couple of days.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘But then he can go out in the paddock with Buddy, but not over where Tufty is, it’s too lush. He needs to come in, too.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Perhaps something more was in my eyes, because his face softened. ‘Are you all right, Molly?’

  I saw Lucy’s head snap round at this change of tone. She glanced from me to him.

  ‘Yes. Just a bit … all in.’ I managed a wan smile.

  ‘I can imagine. That was very traumatic.’ He gave a sympathetic smile. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘Well, I’ve got to get home now. I brought a friend down with me and I just need to see she’s OK, but I’ll be back later to check on him.’

  I felt my face collapse. Knew my mouth had drooped dramatically too, like a child’s. Like Nutty’s head had to his knees. She was in his bedroom. She was smoothing down the white Egyptian cotton, watching the swallows.

  ‘OK,’ I managed. I couldn’t do anything about the mouth.

  ‘About six o’clock all right?’

  I couldn’t speak. Nodded miserably. ‘Perfect,’ I agreed eventually. ‘Absolutely fine.’

  Paddy and Poppy began to pack up their respective bags. Paddy was speaking encouragingly to her, I noticed, praising her. Lucy caught my eye sympathetically, perhaps with some insight. Minna wanted to stay with Nutty, even though Paddy had said he’d be fine. Nonetheless, she sat down in the corner of the stable, her back to the wall, hugging her knees. Nico sloped up, took a view and sloped away again. Lucy and Robin left to go back in the house, Lucy giving my shoulder a quick squeeze on the way out. I saw Mum open the back door for them.

  Paddy and Poppy were still deep in conversation as they went on their way to their cars. I shut the stable door behind me and followed them out. When Poppy had got into her car, having packed her stuff in her boot, Paddy gave her a pat on the back, then walked to his.

  ‘Thanks, Paddy,’ I said.

  He turned back, surprised. ‘Oh, no problem,’ he said vaguely. ‘All in a day’s work.’

  It was as if I were Jo Saunders at Baldwin’s, or Jake’s father with his herd of Friesians at Longmeadow. As if I were just another client. A box ticked. And a bit of a relief to be driving away from, if he was honest.

  He eased his long legs into the open cab in one elegant motion. Then he turned the ignition and the engine roared into life. A few moments later, I watched his red pickup drive out through the gates with a lump in my throat. I saw it turn and go down the lane behind the hedge. I was still there a moment later, when it had disappeared.

  30

  Paddy texted me later to say that if it was all right, he wouldn’t come by at six; he’d come round after dinner instead, at about ten. But no one needed to be there, he’d just pop his head into the stable. Check Nutty was OK. After dinner. I felt sick. Where? I wondered. Out in town? Or perhaps on the terrace in the garden, it was such a lovely evening. And who would cook? Could Paddy cook? I didn’t know. Perhaps they’d do it together, laughing as they chopped vegetables, music in the background. I actually had to hold on to the sink and breathe in case I really did heave.

  I determined to be there anyway at ten, when he called, to greet him, with a smile even bigger than Claudia’s. And I’d be in the kitchen, not in the sitting room in front of the television where I usually was, and where I’d miss him and wouldn’t see the car. I dressed carefully for the occasion. Obviously I didn’t dress up, I dressed right down, but my jeans were skinny and clean – I washed and tumbled them quickly – and the jumper was new, a kind of loose, crochet, oatmeal affair, worn over one of Lucy’s vests. Not much make-up, obviously, but a bit. Foundation to cover the brown sun marks and red spider veins, then a touch of pink lippy. And a bit of eyeliner. Oh – and mascara, just on the top lashes. OK, a tiny bit on the bottom. I came downstairs. Lucy glanced up from the television in the playroom where she was lying on the sofa, her head in Robin’s lap.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked in wonder.

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘O
h.’

  Robin didn’t notice, but Lucy’s eyes followed me into the kitchen. I hoped she wouldn’t come in. Ask questions. Diplomatically, she didn’t, which was probably rather a bad sign. She’d already caught the mood in the stable and sensed the total lack of interest on his part and the blatant begging on mine. Luckily I had no other audience since Minna, having satisfied herself Nutty was fine, had walked to the pub to meet Ted, and Jake had sloped round here to see Nico. The pair of them were even now ensconced in his room upstairs, smoking God knows what. I quietly shut the kitchen door on the television. After a while, though, as I watched the clock creep up to ten, pretending to busy myself tidying the kitchen which couldn’t be cleaner, Lucy came in. She went to the fridge for a bottle of wine.

  ‘Who’s this friend then?’

  ‘Hmm?’ I turned from the depths of the empty dishwasher, pretending I had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘The girl. The one who’s staying with Paddy.’

  I feigned surprise. ‘Oh! That one. His girlfriend, I think.’

  ‘Ah.’ She regarded me sympathetically. Then she grinned. ‘Good to let him know what he’s missing, though, eh?’ She looked me up and down.

  I laughed heartily. ‘Good heavens, no. I wasn’t trying to do that! It’s Paddy, for heaven’s sake.’

  My forced jollity faded as she left the room. I made myself a cup of tea then switched it to a glass of wine. Reapplied my lipstick and sat down. It was five minutes past ten. Suddenly I jumped up. To be found sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of wine was not good. Instead I perched on it jauntily, swinging my legs, my eyes on the back door for his lights. When I saw them, I’d busy myself again, so I’d look – you know. Busy. But I didn’t see them. And my eyes began to hurt with the staring. And then my mobile rang, making me leap, because it was in my jeans pocket on vibrate. It was him.

  ‘Hello?’ I breathed.

  ‘Molly? You OK?’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Yes! Yes, sorry. I was … something went down the wrong way.’

  ‘Oh, right. How is he?’

  ‘Who?’