by Rebecca Shaw
“This early?” He picked up the receiver, saying, “Rhodri Hughes speaking.”
Kate went back to reception and replaced the receiver.
“Client?”
“Don’t know. I’ll be back—just going to get myself organized. My shoes are soaking wet.”
Using the mirror in the women’s staff cloakroom, Kate combed through her hair and wished for the thousandth time she had naturally curly hair that would bounce back to life immediately after she’d removed her headgear. But she hadn’t, so she combed through it, pushed it about with her fingers a bit, found she’d buttoned her uniform up wrongly and thought to herself that that fact alone augured a bad day.
The moment she opened the cloakroom door, she could hear Rhodri shouting. Stephie was shouting back at him: “I didn’t answer the phone. It was Kate.”
Joy came out from her office saying, “This noise is quite unacceptable. Kindly refrain, the pair of you. I will not have my staff spoken to like this, Rhodri. Whatever is the matter?”
“That bloody Megan Jones. They put her through to me. They know—I’ve told them—I don’t want to speak to her. How many times have I to say it?”
Joy grinned. “We’re not here to field your personal calls, you know. You should tell her the truth, that you’re not interested.”
“I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“Oh, poor dear boy. If you’re so kind, why not take her out?”
Rhodri shuddered. “Not likely. She’s not my type.”
Kate apologized. “I’m so sorry; it didn’t click that it was her. I’d just rushed in and . . .”
“That’s no excuse. Her accent is recognizable, for God’s sake, surely. Don’t ever do it again.” His dark eyes were almost boiling with temper and he quite intimidated Kate.
“I am so very sorry. I promise, cross my heart, that I won’t let it happen again; it was just that . . .”
Rhodri wagged his finger at her. “Best not, because I can’t answer for the consequences.”
Joy bristled at his threat. “Mr. Hughes! You will not threaten my staff, if you please. It is entirely your fault that this situation has arisen. Apologize immediately.”
Though startled by the level of anger in Joy’s voice, Rhodri had to recognize the rightness of what she said: He’d caused sweet-tempered, gentle Joy to become distinctly ungentle all in a moment.
“I beg your pardon, Joy and Kate, for losing my temper . . .”
Stephie pouted at him. “And what about an apology for me? You shouted at me too.”
“Yes, and you too, apologies all around.”
Joy stood with her hands on her hips, head to one side. “So, are you going to sort it out or shall I?”
Rhodri pondered the way out she had offered him. “No, thank you. I’d be less than a man if I allowed you to do it. It’s something I must do, hurt feelings or not.” He grinned. “I’ve taken her out three times and I’ve known from the start she wasn’t right for me. Let’s face it, she was revolted by Harry and how can a man go out with a girl who doesn’t like Harry?”
Kate, wondering who on earth Harry was, asked, “Harry? Who’s Harry, for heaven’s sake?”
“My ferret.”
Kate began laughing and found she couldn’t stop. Rhodri looked at her and for a moment she thought he was going to be angry again, but he wasn’t. He caught the infection of her laughter and he too began to laugh, the rich, musical sound echoing around reception to the delight of the clients who were just beginning to arrive.
When finally he stopped and had wiped his streaming eyes, he said between gasps, “I’ll have to be cruel and do the dirty deed. Tell her straight from the shoulder that it’s no go. I’ll ring her tonight. Curse the woman.”
Joy suggested a stiff whiskey prior to dialing her number.
“Maybe you should give up Harry,” said Kate.
Rhodri looked appalled. “Give up Harry? Certainly not. Love me, love my ferret.” He turned on his heel and went back to opening his mail.
Stephie put down the receiver, altered an appointment on her computer and turned to Kate. “Can you imagine that? ‘Love me, love my ferret.’ I ask you. It’s a rotten, smelly thing; I’ve seen it. I can’t believe anyone could fancy him, never mind him and a ferret.”
Kate’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, I don’t know, all that Celtic emotion. He’s quite attractive once he gets worked up.”
“He might be laughing now but he won’t forget what you’ve done. He’s like that—bears a grudge, you know, for ages.”
“In that case I shall deflect his annoyance by showing an interest in his ferret.”
Stephie raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you’re that hard up . . . Adam OK?” She looked slyly at Kate during the lull in ringing phones and then asked again, “Adam OK?”
“He’s fine, thanks. Yes, fine.”
“Did you go somewhere exciting yesterday?”
Kate, who was printing out the visiting lists for the farm vets, shook her head and asked casually, “Did you?”
“Well, Sarah One and I went to this new leisure complex that’s opened. Expensive but brilliant. You and Adam should try it. I expect he’s a good swimmer with his build.”
But the morning had begun in earnest and the two of them got no further opportunity to discuss the weekend, for which Kate was grateful. She hadn’t, in fact, seen Adam apart from when he had sat outside her house from twelve until one, waiting for her to come out to go for their regular Sunday pub lunch. Her dad and Mia had gone to a factory outlet place first thing, so they hadn’t seen him, and Kate had refused to go out to speak to him. She’d already told him she wasn’t going and, being in a temper because of his refusal to join her and the others for a drink the previous night, had decided he could sit there till the cows came home if he wanted to; after all, it was a free country. He had a right to park his car where he chose as long as he wasn’t on a double yellow line. She’d peeped through the net curtain several times and nearly gone to the door twice to speak to him but defiantly changed her mind.
In fact, trying for vet college again had become more of a distinct possibility each time she’d looked out. Adam’s horizons were so limited, and how could anyone be such a fool as to sit outside all that time and not knock on the door. But then he had never knocked on the door on Sundays; he’d always simply parked and waited for her to come out—something about not disturbing Mia and her dad on a Sunday. Other days he knocked and walked in. A creature of habit was Adam. How he’d cope with the new job she couldn’t imagine. But she was glad he’d got it, even if his behavior had become so odd. Going out with the boys for the evening! That was a joke, surely?
“Kate! Hello-o-o!”
Jerked back into the present, Kate looked up from her lists. “Sorry, Scott, just printed out your list. Here you are.”
“How’s my favorite girl this morning?”
“First, I am not your favorite girl; and second, here’s your list; and third, it’s a long one; and fourth, this call here I’ve just added on sounds critical.”
Scott groaned. “Oh God! Not Applegate Farm. I swear there’s a curse on me. Cross it off my list and give it to Zoe, please, I beg you.” Scott got down on one knee and put his hands together as though in prayer. “Please. For your favorite Aussie?”
“You know that Zoe, being pregnant, can’t go because it’s an abortion, so you’ll have to go.”
“Stephie! Tell her I can’t go. Please.”
But Scott’s mistake had been calling Kate his favorite girl. “Kate is in charge and she’s right,” Stephie said. “Zoe can’t go.”
“Very well, but if something goes wrong, I shan’t be responsible for my actions. That farm is the filthiest . . .”
Kate stopped him speaking by placing her finger on his mouth, which he swiftly took the opportunity to kiss as she said softly, “Not in front of the clients, please.”
Looking suitably chastened, Scott ambled out. He closed the glass door beh
ind him and turned to press his face, contorted into an alarming grimace, against the glass. Kate waved her hand at him and then ignored him. He came back in to make another remark but thought better of it and left when he saw Joy taking over the reception desk.
“Accounts, Kate. You’d better get on.”
“Right, I will. Scott didn’t want to go to Applegate Farm.”
“He never does, but he must.”
“Why doesn’t he like it?”
“Because,” Stephie said, “he always makes mistakes there.”
“Mistakes?”
Joy denied this. “For some reason, things always go wrong for him there and he’s got a thing about it now. But he can’t pick and choose.”
So the clients couldn’t hear, Stephie whispered, “Nasty man is Mr. Parsons. Very rude. You should hear him on the phone. Disgusting!”
“Only because Mr. Parsons thinks Mungo is the one vet capable of attending to his animals.”
Stephie muttered, “Some animals! Well, we’ll see what he has to say when he gets back.”
“That won’t be for ages. I’ve given him a list long enough to keep him busy all day.”
“So you should, Kate; he has to earn his money. He gets paid enough, believe me. Off you go and you too, Stephie, and take a break. Please.”
SCOTT flung himself into the Land Rover, opened the windows wide, turned on the radio, checked he had his laptop with him, swung into gear and charged out of the car park in despair. Sure, he’d played the fool in his attempt to avoid this call, but underneath it all he seriously—oh, so seriously—didn’t want to go. Most especially on a wet day. If only there’d been a nurse free to go with him, that might have helped, but with Bunty still away . . . He had a suspicion that her absence would be put down to him. How could she expect a young, virile man to resist her charms? She was round and cuddly and blond and tanned, and had what his ma would have called come-hither eyes. It had all happened so quickly—she eager, he hungry—and those sexy legs and the swing of her slender hips as she walked across the farmyard to the Land Rover for his drug box . . . well, what with the dark and everything, what else could she expect, having spent the evening egging him on?
But he hadn’t meant for this to happen . . . just the once, as Pa would say if he were here, it only needs once, just once and she’s up the spout. He brushed aside the thought that a little Spencer had most assuredly had his life snuffed out this week, signaled left onto the Applegate Farm track and thought about the thick mud that always covered the yard, be it drought or flood, and planned his precautionary strategy. Scott took off his precious Timberland boots and changed into his Wellingtons before he got out. As his feet touched the ground, a voice shouted, “Taken long enough. Come on, then. Be sharp. It’s Zinnia.”
“Morning, Phil. Wet day.”
Phil Parsons was a short, stocky man with a rotund waistline and massive red, swollen hands and an overlarge head. He was never without, summer or winter, a black balaclava, which entirely covered his face and head except for a slit where his mouth and nose were, and two holes through which his eyes could barely be seen, as the holes didn’t quite match where his eyes came. Consequently, one never quite saw both eyes at once, which was disconcerting and affected one’s relationship with him. Added to which, if one got too close, he smelled strongly of the all-pervading odor of someone whose program of personal hygiene had been severely neglected.
From the back of the Land Rover, Scott pulled out some equipment he thought he would need, and slid and slithered his way to the cow barn. It was windowless, so the only light came from the open door and two hurricane lamps hanging from the cobwebby ceiling. In addition, today there was Blossom Parsons, Phil’s young wife, holding a torch.
“Morning, Mr. Spencer. Poor morning. You been on call all night?”
“For a change, no, I haven’t, Mrs. Parsons.”
Scott, from the first moment he had met her, had retained a certain formality when speaking to Blossom Parsons, for he was intensely aware that she fancied him and she made it abundantly clear even in front of her husband. Scott’s technique was to ignore her remarks as though concentration on the animal he’d come to see was taking up all of his mind. He went to have a word with the cow. He stroked her head and spoke softly to her, looked at her eyes to judge her temper, checked her gums to see if she was in shock.
“Hold the torch for me, Phil, right here, please. Let’s see what’s come away.”
“No, no, I can do it.” Mrs. Parsons laid a hand on his back as she leaned forward to get the beam shining where he wanted it. Her fingers began very subtly massaging his spine.
“She’s not got rid of it all and she’s not well either. Got a temperature, I would think. What is she, about fifteen weeks?”
Phil scratched his head through his balaclava. “Couldn’t say for certain, but about that.”
“Look in your records.”
“Do me a favor. Natural farming I go in for. If they’re in calf, they’re in calf and if they’re not, they’re not. Writing it down doesn’t put them in the club and what’s more it takes up my time.” Phil peered at the bloody mess surrounding the tiny, immature dead calf laid on the barn floor. “My bull knows his business better than me. Don’t need no pen an’ paper, he don’t.”
“I see.” By this time, Scott had his hand in the cow’s uterus and Mrs. Parsons had stopped massaging him.
“I’ll go put the kettle on, shall I?”
There were some farms where Scott could enjoy a mug of tea sitting at the kitchen table talking farming, and there were some where he couldn’t. Applegate Farm came into the latter category. When he’d been offered tea the first time after a long, cold wait for a calf to arrive, he’d accepted and eagerly gone inside to get warm, but after the shock of seeing their filthy kitchen and the indescribable chaos that reigned in there, he had vowed he’d die of hypothermia before entering that kitchen again.
“No, thanks, Mrs. Parsons. I’ve more calls this morning than I can cope with. I’ll just take a couple of blood samples and give Zinnia an antibiotic, and then I’ll be away.”
“I’m real disappointed you won’t have a cuppa. I made cherry cake yesterday and there’s a slice left. Let me put it in a bag and you can take it home to finish your lunch with. Won’t be a minute.”
“She should be all right now, Phil. Any ideas why this happened?”
Phil shook his head. “None. Just one of them things.”
“I’ve said this before and I’ve got to say it again: This place needs cleaning up. Milk produced here! God help us! No wonder Milkmarque says you don’t reach its hygiene standards and refuses to collect.”
“There’s plenty of people’ll buy my milk. Don’t need no puffed-up officials, I don’t.”
Scott held up his hand to silence him. “Say no more; I don’t want to know. Right. But it’s a disgrace. A complete disgrace. If I mention it in the right quarter, you’ll be in deep trouble, so make sure when I come back the day after tomorrow to see Zinnia that you’ve made a start. No, more than a start, actually done it. The cow barn, the yard, everywhere. Right?”
“I heard.” Phil sniffed his disgust and turned on his heel back into the barn.
Hoping to escape before Mrs. Parsons came out of the farmhouse with his cherry cake, Scott headed straight through the yard, out of the gate and across the farm track to where he’d left his vehicle. He had stored his equipment and stripped off his protective clothing when she bellowed from the farmhouse doorway, “Scott! Your cake! Here!” Mrs. Parsons held up a brown paper bag, making no attempt to walk across to him. There was nothing for it: Politeness and good client relations demanded that he walk over to get it. Taking a moment to replace his Wellingtons, Scott crossed the farm track and slurped his way over to the house. The route from the barn to the track he knew, but he’d never walked from the track to the farmhouse door before and he unwittingly dropped up to his chest into the slurry pit which, through years of practice
, Phil and Mrs. Parsons and Zinnia and the rest of the herd would have known to avoid. The farm always smelled, but by disturbing the slurry, as Scott did with the speed of his fall, he spread an extra layer of stench not only over himself but also the whole yard.
They pulled him out between them without a word being exchanged. Phil got a bucket, filled it from the tap in the yard and threw it over him, then another and another.
“No, no, come into the house. You can stand in the bath and strip off in there. I’ll lend you something of Phil’s.”
Three buckets of water had made little impression on the stinking mess that was Scott. His spanking-clean chinos were now thick with cow dung; his checked shirt, bought in Sydney the day he left, was weighed down with the thick sludge; his boots were filled with it; his bare arms and hands oozed the stuff. He took a moment to be grateful that he hadn’t had time to change into his Timberland boots before she’d called him. Bitter desperation filled him. Strip off in front of Mrs. Parsons? Not likely! An outfit belonging to Phil? Even less likely!
“Thanks all the same. Do you have some newspaper for the car, Phil? I’ll get back to the practice and shower there. I keep a spare set of clothing there just in case.” He didn’t, but in circumstances like these a lie was neither here nor there.
He lumbered across to the Land Rover with filth squelching in his boots at every step. Before he got in, he smoothed his hands all over himself and squeezed away as much of the loose stuff as he could. The newspapers he spread all over the seat and the back of it, and gingerly climbed in. Scott opened every window, reversed and was about to stamp on the accelerator when Mrs. Parsons appeared beside him.
“Your cake! Don’t go without it.” She held the bag up to the window, and Scott reached out a stinking, filth-streaked hand and thanked her politely for it. The ludicrousness of the situation struck him and he began to laugh and was still laughing, but by then somewhat hysterically, when he arrived back at the practice.