It clearly concerned Mrs Paget. ‘My dear … I’ve been giving this some thought,’ she declared, wandering into the kitchen, ashtray in one hand, cigarette in the other, to stand watching me bolt down that evening’s ready meal – a fisherman’s pie through which I was trawling to find a flake or two of fish. ‘I can’t bear the thought of you having to rush back every evening. It must be so stressful for you. I’d like to help out.’
Help? That sounded promising. A little home cooking maybe? A nice shepherd’s pie with fresh vegetables from the garden waiting for me when I returned after a long and exhausting surgery?
‘Yes,’ she continued, dragging on her cigarette and exhaling sharply, ‘I’ve decided to extend your permitted time in the kitchen to 7.30pm.’
Oh wow. Lady Luck (Mrs Paget) has smiled (leered wantonly) on me. Perhaps when Beryl had talked about luck she’d sensed I needed more than being offered an extra half hour in a divorcee’s kitchen to give me a boost.
Her idea of getting lucky by having a black cat cross my path was way off course. But then she didn’t know that the path I found myself treading later that morning was going to be such an overgrown one, looping through a tangle of brambles, waist high with nettles.
‘Have you spotted him yet?’ trumpeted Major Fitzherbert from the safety of a much easier path – the paved one bordering his garden.
‘No. Not yet,’ I called back, swearing under my breath as a briar scratched a neat line of blood across the back of my right hand while another snagged my right sock. This can’t be happening, surely? I thought. Me, a professional person, floundering through a sea of thorns. Certainly, Crystal or Eric wouldn’t have allowed themselves to get in such a situation.
‘He’s in there somewhere, the little bounder,’ boomed the Major, his stick pounding defiantly on the paving stones.
I continued to edge my way further into the thicket, my back bending more and more with each step I took.
‘Keep going, there’s a good chap. Flush him out,’ ordered the Major.
I stooped lower, pushed forward a few more inches, arms clawing the brambles apart. This was getting ridiculous. Any minute now I’d be on my hands and knees pleading ‘Puss … Pu-u-uss … ’ which was nonsense when I understood from Major Fitzherbert that the cat in question was a rather large black tom indisposed to human companionship.
‘You mean “wild”,’ I’d said when the Major first informed me.
‘In the true sense of the word,’ he stated, his voice ringing with pride. ‘Fine fellow. Independent sort. Won’t let anyone near him.’
Then why in hell’s name was I attempting to lure the cat out of the wilderness of gorse and brambles that bordered Major Fitzherbert’s garden? But that, it seemed, was the Major for you. From the moment I met him, I felt compelled to obey his command. He was tall, solid and, apart from the white hair that swept back from a high, furrowed forehead, 65 years of living had done little to crumple the firm set of the jaw, the deep authoritative voice and the hooded, almost translucent, light-blue eyes. It was those eyes, with their penetrating, unblinking stare, that dared me to defy his order to drop my black bag and scurry into the thicket like a rabbit bolting down a burrow.
‘I think I saw him then,’ the Major barked again. ‘Over to your left a bit.’
I shuffled round only to be confronted by an impenetrable barrier of gorse, a blanket of yellow blooms producing a warm pungent smell reminiscent of coconuts. ‘No way through,’ I yelled back.
‘Nonsense!’
Over the riot of brambles, I could see the Major’s stick waving backwards and forwards. ‘Go on, man. Push through. Push.’
The Major might have been used to commanding a battalion of men to make the final push through the jungles of Africa, but I was just a novice vet in the leafy suburbs of West Sussex and nothing would induce me to go further. I retreated, preferring to confront the barbs of Major Fitzherbert’s tongue to the multiple lashings I was getting from the gorse and brambles. I felt the parting rasp of a briar as I struggled back to the relative safety of the border; I could feel the Major’s eyes on me as I carefully edged through his delphiniums and lupins – lined up like soldiers on parade. Woe betide me if I broke their ranks.
‘Got away from you, did he?’ crowed the Major as I hopped back on to the path, plants intact, self-confidence crushed. ‘He’s a cunning beast. Devil of a job to outsmart him.’ He thrust a hand deep into the pocket of his cavalry twill jacket, tapped his stick against his cords and then began to hobble briskly towards his cottage.
I snatched up my black bag and trotted behind him.
Halfway up the path he stopped and looked over his shoulder. ‘You know what I would do, laddie?’ The hooded eyes bore into me, mere slits, shadowed against the sun. ‘I’d dart him. You know … like the zoo chappie.’
I glanced down and minutely inspected the pinpricks of blood that the back of my right hand sported. Who did he think I was? Some sort of big game hunter on safari in a white topee, stalking the slopes of the South Downs for his wretched feral cat – a cat that was apparently wounded and in need of stitching? My patience, like the blood oozing from my scratches, was running thin. I took a deep breath. ‘A better idea would be to trap him.’
Major Fitzherbert’s eyebrows knotted together like two white caterpillars head-butting. ‘Trap?’ The word reverberated round the garden, causing several blackbirds to shoot out of the undergrowth squawking with alarm. ‘Don’t hold with that sort of nonsense.’
‘I mean … er … corner him somewhere,’ I faltered, feeling myself to be the one already trapped, impaled on stakes in the bottom of a pit. ‘Like in a garden shed … or … ’ I desperately looked round, trying to break from the hooded blue eyes that were still fixed on me. I pointed to the left of the cottage. ‘Perhaps in your greenhouse over there?’
The Major finally glanced away. He drew himself up to his full height, took his hand out of his jacket pocket and pulled the flap down smartly. ‘Well …’ he harrumphed, ‘that could be one plan of action, I suppose. Leo does take the occasional cat nap in there.’
‘Leo?’
‘That’s what I said, laddie – Leo. He’s more of a lion than your average cat. I’ve always admired animals with a bit of spunk. None of this pussy-footing around with lap dogs and the like.’ He gave me another hard stare before turning to march stiffly on up the path. ‘Let’s go and take a look shall we? Give it the once over.’
The greenhouse was a magnificent structure, very Victorian with whorls of glass and white cast-iron tracery; its shape was reminiscent of the Albert Hall, having a central domed roof dwarfing – and quite out of character with – the thatch of the cottage. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to make some favourable comment, especially with the Major breathing down my neck. I wasn’t going to shirk my duty.
‘What a superb greenhouse. And that central dome … very … er … imposing.’
‘Pleased you should say that. Most people think it’s out of keeping. But then there are so many fuddy-duddies round here. Far too conventional, the lot of them.’ He gazed at the greenhouse and sighed. ‘Had it built when I returned from Africa.’
To judge from the riot of palms and vines I could detect through the misty panes, he must have returned with a slice of Africa as well. The whole building was bursting at the seams with greenery. As the Major slid back the door, several long, sappy tendrils flopped down over the entrance. He parted the vines and took a deep breath of the steamy atmosphere, standing motionless, for once silent. At last he snapped to and said, ‘Brings back the old memories. Those were the days.’ He sighed. ‘Does need a bit of a prune though.’
I peered into the emerald interior. Any second, I expected a humming bird to flash into view or a swallowtail to flit from the dense array of white lilies, scarlet hibiscus and bowers of purple bougainvillaea that ranged down each side of a central walkway, a gravelled aisle on which a basking python would not look out of place.
I step
ped back. ‘So you think we could trap him in there?’
The Major gave another loud harrumph as he thrust the door closed. ‘Your idea, laddie, not mine.’
I persisted. ‘Do you put food out for Leo?’
‘I do indeed.’
‘Then perhaps we could crush some pills in it.’ I reached into my black bag and pulled out a vial of yellow tablets, extracting three to offer to the Major.
He took them and rolled them round in his palm. ‘What are they? Knock-out pills?’
‘Tranquillisers.’
The Major snorted. ‘Still say it would be better to dart him.’
‘Let’s just give this a try,’ I said, my voice as firm as I could make it. ‘If nothing else it should make Leo drowsy.’
‘Doubt if he’ll take them. He’s a cunning devil. Very sharp.’
‘Whatever. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.’ Fingers crossed? What was I saying? I’d thought I wasn’t superstitious. I left promising to return the next day providing Leo was then inside the greenhouse and had been given the doctored food. Touch wood, he would have eaten it. Touch wood? I was at it again.
My mood wasn’t too good when I returned to Prospect House. Beryl’s choice of words was unfortunate. ‘Any luck?’ she asked.
‘Just the opposite … a complete waste of time. Didn’t even see the creature.’
Beryl lowered her good eye and discretely re-booked the visit for the following day. Major Fitzherbert phoned that afternoon to insist I made it 11.30am on the dot as he’d have bagged the lion by then.
‘Sorry, Paul,’ she apologised. ‘I did try to explain you might have other visits booked as well but he hung up on me.’
I reassured her that’d I do my best to get there on time and, no, I wasn’t going to treat a real lion.
When I arrived the following morning, the Major was dead-heading roses, a battalion of which were planted in formal ranks round the edge of the front lawn. I could picture him parading up and down, inspecting each one for the merest suspicion of black spot, the slightest touch of mildew. He swung his arm out and twisted his wrist to give an exaggerated look at his watch as I climbed out of the car. I’d already noted the time – 11.35am.
‘I’ve just phoned the surgery,’ he said snapping his secateurs in the air. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’ The glare from the hooded eyes and the waving secateurs suggested I could be next in line for dead-heading.
I wasn’t going to apologise for being five minutes late and, with my black bag in one hand, cat catcher and leather gauntlets in the other, I walked up the path and said, ‘You’ve got the cat then?’
‘It’s all going according to plan. Leo’s in the greenhouse.’ The Major winced as he picked up his stick and proceeded to hobble towards the building. ‘Damned leg’s playing up today. ’Fraid I won’t be of much help.’
Beryl had told me about his leg. Apparently, the Major liked people to think it was the result of having been gored by a rhino. But her receptionist friend from the health centre had let it slip that he’d damaged a ligament having tripped over a loose paving stone in town.
As we rounded the corner of the cottage, I noticed a trail of string hanging from the kitchen window and fastened to the door of the greenhouse.
Major Fitzherbert stopped to explain. ‘When I was sure Leo was inside the greenhouse, I pulled the door shut from the kitchen. Clever eh?’
‘Er, good idea but …’ I’d just side-stepped a large plate of congealing chicken casserole and looked down at it.
The Major butted in. ‘You can forget that malarkey. I guess Leo could smell the tablets in it.’ There was a hint of pride in his voice.
‘You mean to say … ’
‘He didn’t take them.’
He saw my mouth drop open. ‘Nope. Not one scrap,’ he added, giving me one of his penetrating stares. ‘It doesn’t bother you, does it? With that contraption of yours you can still catch him.’ He waved at my cat catcher.
‘Well … yes … I can … but it might have been easier if he’d been a bit sleepy.’ I put down my equipment; as the panes were misted up I gingerly slid open the greenhouse door a fraction and peeped in. The cat was nowhere to be seen. I made the mistake of asking, ‘You sure he’s in there?’
‘Good grief, laddie, of course he is. I was the one who trapped him. Saw him go in with my own eyes.’ The Major’s caterpillar eyebrows met and wiggled. ‘No doubt he’s in there just waiting to pounce.’ He emphasised the word ‘pounce’ with such gruffness that I jumped – something he was quick to notice. ‘Not scared are you?’
‘No … no … not at all,’ I lied, shaking my head, my innards already turning to jelly at the prospect ahead.
‘Good. Wouldn’t like to think you were a namby-pamby.’
‘But as Leo didn’t take the tablets, we may well have quite a fight on our hands.’ My hands, actually, I thought miserably. ‘And if he starts to dash around, you may find a lot of your plants get damaged.’
The Major seemed unperturbed. ‘Can’t be helped. Leo’s got a large gash on his back. It needs attention.’ The Major stepped forward and thrust his face in mine. ‘And you’re going to give it. Right?’
I felt like jumping to attention with a smart salute. Instead, I nodded and reached down for the cat catcher. This consisted of a hollow metal tube threaded with a strong loop of cord which, if one was lucky – there, that word again – one could lasso over a cat’s head and pull tight to restrain the animal. Well, that was the theory. I had yet to put it into practice.
The Major gave a derisive snort. ‘Don’t hold out much hope for that contraption.’
‘It’s all we have.’
‘You should dart him.’ The Major levelled two fingers like the barrel of a pistol at me. ‘Bang. Over he goes. No problem.’
I bit my tongue, fighting back the urge to remind Major Fitzherbert that Leo was not a lion but a feral cat of ordinary proportions – at least I assumed that to be the case, as I had yet to set eyes on the wretched creature. Besides which, I wasn’t a good shot. My pub darts prowess – or lack of it – was proof of that. So even if we did have a dart gun, it would still have been a hit-or-miss affair. More miss than hit, with me more likely to anaesthetise a potted palm rather than Leo.
Clutching the cat catcher in one hand, I slipped into the greenhouse to be immediately assailed by a wall of hot, humid air. I felt the sweat sprout from my upper lip while my armpits dripped.
There was a sharp rap on the glass, and the blurred face of the Major loomed beyond the condensation. ‘Seen him yet?’ he demanded.
‘No. Not so far.’ I slowly crunched down the central path, nervously glancing from left to right. The towering mass of greenery surrounding me was so dense it could have hidden a posse of pussies. The dark green leaves of a giant philodendron rustled. I paused and then tiptoed forward. A flash of black slipped behind a palm. With the pole starting to slide through my greasy fingers, I stopped again and was just wiping my palms on my trousers when Leo padded into view framed in a shaft of sunlight. He was a magnificent tom, broad headed with scarred, twisted ears. He stopped when he saw me. Large green eyes, the pupils mere slits, stared at me, oozing defiance. With a loud, rattling hiss, he arched his back. The ‘Puss … pu-u-uss …’ I was about to utter faded on my lips. I could see the wound Major Fitzherbert had been concerned about – a jagged lump of skin torn from the cat’s right shoulder blade. As I took a step closer, Leo melted behind a clump of bamboo.
‘Blast you,’ I muttered as I continued to move forward, advancing on the bamboo, the cat catcher held out in front of me. Suddenly, a loud snarl rent the air. There was a flash of black. I ducked as Leo hurled himself over my shoulder, his claws slicing through my jacket as he scrabbled past my head. I swung round, the cat catcher veering in a wide circle, the noose slicing across an adjacent potting bench, scooping out a tray of fuchsia cuttings, sending them spinning into the air and pattering on to the wall of the greenhouse like a hail
of bullets.
There was another rap on the glass. ‘What the hell’s going on in there?’
‘It’s just Leo. He’s proving a bit difficult to catch.’
There was a chuckle. ‘That sounds like my Leo. Bit of a tearaway if ever there was.’
I couldn’t agree more. My torn jacket was testimony to that.
Two crushed cinerarias, a squashed begonia and three severed azaleas later, I managed to snare Leo amid a torrent of hisses and spits.
Only then did the Major venture in brandishing his stick triumphantly. ‘Jolly good show,’ he bellowed. ‘Reminds me of when I bagged my first lion.’ He placed a restraining foot on Leo’s squirming back as instructed, while I pumped in the anaesthetic injection I’d already drawn up. I breathed a sigh of relief as Leo’s writhings slowly subsided and he slumped into unconsciousness.
The Major didn’t comment on the piles of uprooted seedlings on the potting bench; he merely swept them to one side to clear a space.
‘So let’s have him up,’ he declared enthusiastically, seeming to be energised by the heat while I felt more and more like a limp lettuce.
Freeing Leo’s inert body from the noose, I pulled him up on to the bench top. The Major pushed me aside in his eagerness to look at the wound. ‘Ah … ah ha … just as I thought. It’s fly-blown. See?’ He poked a finger and thumb in the wound and held up a wriggling white maggot. ‘Saw it once in a leopard I shot. It ruined the pelt.’
I fetched my black bag and began cleaning up the torn skin, snipping back the matted hair, wiping away the yellow ooze and dipping a pair of tweezers into the seething mass of grubs, to pick them out one by one.
‘Drop them in there,’ instructed the Major, pointing to an empty seed tray. ‘Twenty four,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘Pity I don’t still fish.’ He shuffled the tray from side to side watching the maggots roll round and round. ‘Just think,’ he mused. ‘Poor old Leo walking round with that little lot squirming around under his skin. Just proves what a tough little blighter he is.’ As he spoke, he lifted up the cat’s tail and peered between his legs. ‘By Jove. What whoppers. Bet he’s the talk of the town amongst the ladies round here.’
Pets in a Pickle Page 4