Pets in a Pickle

by Malcolm D Welshman

  I knew at once it had to be Gertie and, apologising profusely, donned some wellingtons before accompanying Reverend James over to his garden. Sure enough, there was Gertie, sailing back and forth across the vicar’s pond clearly enjoying getting into deep water. Not so me. After several abortive attempts to shoo her ashore I asked permission to wade in.

  ‘Of course, my dear sir. Do whatever you consider best to bring the current circumstances to a satisfactory conclusion,’ sang the vicar who was stalking round the perimeter of the pond like a hungry heron. ‘But I have to warn you, the construction of the pond is such that …’

  It’s too damn deep. Yes. The warning was too late. I’d already put one booted foot in and water had slurped over the top. Short of a miracle – like walking on the surface of the water which was wholly unlikely unless the reverend had powers of which I was unaware – I was not going to get within reach of Gertie. Reverend James had swayed to a halt and brought the palms of his hands together as if about to pray.

  ‘It comes to me that I may have a solution to this current situation,’ he said. ‘They say “lead us not into temptation” but there are certain circumstances where one may stray from the concept of the true meaning. Wait here.’

  With his circumlocutory manner of speech, I wondered how many parishioners Reverend James had managed to send off to sleep during his sermons as I watched him head down the garden, his trouser legs ballooning round his beanpole legs.

  He returned clasping an armful of spinach leaves and began depositing little piles around the perimeter of the pond as if he were arranging prayer books. ‘Perhaps these little offerings will be an inducement to our feathered friend to forsake the attractions of the open water for the more edible nature of these leaves.’

  Gertie had stopped paddling and had her neck stretched over her back, her beak buried under one wing. Oh Lord, surely she hadn’t dozed off, lulled into sleep by the vicar’s words? But no … her head reappeared. She’d only been preening. With a beady eye, she watched the vicar finish his circle of leaves but remained bobbing in the middle of the pond.

  In frustration, I snatched up a leaf of spinach and waved it at her. ‘Come on, Gertie, move your …’ I stopped myself just in time from doing an Eliza Dolittle at Ascot, aware Reverend James was watching me. ‘… Self …’ I tailed off lamely.

  But it did the trick. There was a sudden loud cackle from Gertie. With a powerful kick of her legs, she shot in full throttle towards me leaving a wake that slopped over the banks; springing out, she showered me with water as she snatched the spinach from me.

  ‘Well, it seems my thoughts on the use of something of a vegetable nature have eventually borne the fruit of what we set out to do without too much effort,’ said James.

  ‘Yes. The spinach did the trick,’ I agreed.

  ‘You’re going to have to do something about it,’ said Lucy when later we were discussing Gertie’s wanderings over lunch. ‘Otherwise, we’ll have the whole of Ashton up in arms. And it will be our goose that will well and truly be cooked.’

  ‘Very funny,’ I said glaring at her. But, of course, she was right.

  Eventually, Gertie’s forages to pastures new were curtailed by wiring, staking and tying an assortment of plastic mesh, chicken wire and dismantled budgerigar cages across the bottom of the garden to ensure all goose-sized holes were plugged. But it meant I had to sacrifice my newly established vegetable plot.

  ‘Not to worry,’ I said, putting on a brave face as I watched Gertie gobble up the last of my young lettuces and radishes. ‘At least it’s helping to fatten you up.’

  Lucy winced. I knew she was getting rather fond of Gertie. She’d told me that every morning when she went down to let the goose out, there was a friendly honk. As the door to the potting shed was unlatched, Gertie would waddle out, eyes glinting; her head would immediately plunge into Lucy’s pocket, rummaging for titbits. And she adored being tickled. With a honk of bliss, she would raise each wing in turn so that Lucy could scratch the soft down underneath.

  As the summer slipped by, Lucy grew more and more concerned about Gertie’s future. She tried hard to convince me that it would be better to opt for a turkey at Christmas. ‘You do realise geese are very greasy,’ she said. ‘All that fat’s not good for the digestion.’

  ‘Lemon juice will soon fix that,’ I said, not appreciating the depth of Lucy’s feelings. Whoops.

  Her eyes blazed, and there was an angry swish of her ponytail. Oh dear; I’d obviously said the wrong thing. ‘You can cook the damn bird yourself then,’ she said, storming out of the kitchen while I discreetly closed the cordon bleu cookery book that I’d had open at ‘Roast Goose à la Perigord’.

  Matters weren’t helped when one of the Stockwell sisters phoned up with a recipe for prune and apple stuffing that I had requested. Unfortunately, Lucy took the call; and though she was polite enough to listen, all she scribbled on the telephone pad were a series of heavily inked-in daggers.

  But I wasn’t deterred. And Lucy began to realise that nothing was going to stop Gertie heading straight for the oven.

  Mid-September, it was Mandy’s twentieth birthday. She was going to head down to her parents in Dorset for the weekend but, on the Friday, there was a little after-work celebration at Prospect House. Eric donated three bottles of wine and Beryl made a few sausage rolls and bought in some ready-made pizza slices. Crystal proposed a toast and we all drank to Mandy’s health while she stood there, her face flushed with embarrassment. Having taken a few sips of wine, Crystal made her excuses and dragged Eric away just as he was about to refill his glass. There was an audible sigh of relief as we then set to and finished off the bottles between us.

  It was gone 10.00pm by the time Lucy and I got back to Willow Wren. There were a couple of honks from the bottom of the garden as I fumbled with my keys in the dark, trying to sort out the front-door lock. When we finally managed to let ourselves in, we promptly tripped over Nelson, snoring in blissful deafness on the hall rug.

  It had been a hectic day at the hospital, so Lucy was asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. But I lay awake for what seemed like hours, tossing and turning. When I finally dozed off, I dreamed I was being chased round and round the kitchen by an irate goose with a knife and fork in each wing.

  It was Gertie’s honking that woke me up, the cackling rising to a crescendo as I opened my eyes.

  ‘What the hell… ?’ I spluttered, trying to shake off my drowsiness as I fumbled for my dressing gown. Slinging it over my shoulders, I pounded down the stairs, convinced that Foxie had Gertie by the throat.

  An open back door greeted me, a pane of glass broken, the sound of footsteps running away. Too late, Nelson cottoned on to the fact that we’d had burglars and began to bark at a bowl of fruit.

  ‘Just think,’ said Lucy brightly the following morning, ‘if it hadn’t been for Gertie, heaven knows what they might have stolen.’

  Though we hadn’t much of value, I was a movie buff and did treasure my DVD collection. With that in mind, I had to admit that Gertie had saved our skins; so the least we could do was save hers. So, yes, I now agreed with Lucy – it would be turkey for Christmas.

  Gertie’s future seemed even more secure when a couple of weeks later I was given two turkey poults to fatten up. Lucy found them quite endearing creatures. As they grew, so did her fondness for them.

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘they’re proving great company for Gertie.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she added as we watched the trio strut happily round the lawn, ‘perhaps we should just have boiled ham with all the trimmings for Christmas lunch.’

  Fine, I thought, unless some client decided to give us a pig to fatten up. And if that became a pet, as seemed likely, what then for Christmas lunch?

  Nut cutlets.

  TODAY’S SPECIALS: HOT DOG AND FILLET OF FISH

  The dry weather experienced during my first few weeks at Prospect House turned into a full-blown heat wave come
August. This was good news for Westcott-on-Sea as it encouraged more trippers to travel the 50 miles or so down from London to take the sea air.

  Not that sea air necessarily equated with fresh air. Though, as mentioned before, Westcott had the genteel trappings of a seaside resort – a little stuck in the Fifties perhaps – with a pebbly beach, a wide promenade, a small, white-painted pier and pleasure gardens bedecked with scarlet geraniums; the pleasure to be gained from such attractions had to be balanced against the detractions of more unwelcome features. These took the form of piles of dark green bladderwrack washed up on the shore at this time of year, the swarms of black flies attracted to those piles, and the smell from them as they festered in the strong summer sun. It meant that the sea breezes gently blowing on shore, though cooling, were filled with the stench of rotting seaweed which, mixed with the smells from fish and chip shops, kebab and burger bars, drifted through the town causing many a visitor’s brow to furrow, their noses to twitch, wondering if the public conveniences had become blocked. Prospect House was two miles inland but even that distance failed to prevent it from smelling like a fish market on an off day.

  One Monday afternoon in particular was rank – and wasn’t helped by my consulting room window which I couldn’t open due to layers of paint gluing it shut. So the window remained tightly closed. That, coupled with a waiting room full of fetid dog and cat breaths not helped, I suspected, by one or two churning bowels, made for a rather rancid hour of consultations.

  ‘I’m afraid your next appointment’s not going to help matters,’ said Beryl holding up a can of ‘Summer Bouquet’ and spraying it vigorously over my head. I felt a mist of cloying cheap perfume descend on me, making me smell like a walking lavatory block. ‘It’s a very excitable bull terrier. You’ll need some help to hold her.’

  Lucy was off duty that afternoon.

  ‘It means asking Mandy,’ I said.

  ‘So? It’s part of her job,’ said Beryl with a shrug. ‘You’re not afraid to ask her, are you?’ she added giving me one of her unblinking stares. Before I could reply, she’d swivelled in her chair and called down the corridor. Mandy appeared out of the prep room. Beryl looked back at me, an eyebrow raised.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’m wondering if you can give me a hand with the next patient,’ I called out.

  ‘Well, I’m busy getting the instruments ready for tomorrow. It’s Crystal’s ops morning,’ Mandy replied, making no attempt to move.

  Eric bustled into reception having just seen out his last appointment. ‘Did I hear you say you needed some help, Paul?’ he queried.

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, Mandy can lend you a hand.’ Eric beamed down the corridor at her. ‘Can’t you?’

  ‘Of course, Eric. Just coming,’ she replied.

  Grrrrrr …

  Beryl was right about the bull terrier. Blodwyn exuded heat the minute she pounded in, huffing and puffing, scrabbling and skittering. She was a prime example of her breed – built like a tank, well muscled, thick necked, with a broad, egg-shaped head from which glinted deep set, small, button-black eyes. The only thing that spoilt her otherwise immaculate white coat were the numerous scars; you could almost tally them to her previous consultations for repairs to wounds ranging from those inflicted by neighbouring cats to a kick from a donkey over at an animal sanctuary in Chawcombe. Having made so many visits to the surgery, she was well known; and her excitable temperament had been noted and underlined on her clinical records.

  When Blodwyn steam-rollered in, Mandy and the dog’s owner, Mrs Timms, came flying in with her. Mandy, her lips set in a sulky line, armpits stained dark green, was sent hurtling into the consulting table while Mrs Timms bounced off the door, lost a sandal and grabbed at my coat to save herself from plunging under the table. Blodwyn flung the full force of her weight against my shins and I boomeranged from Mrs Timms into Mandy’s ample bosom. By the time we’d disentangled ourselves and wrestled Blodwyn on to the table, collapsing in a sweltering heap on top of her, the temperature felt as if it had soared several degrees.

  ‘It’s her ear,’ gasped Mrs Timms, in between spitting out dog hairs. ‘Blodwyn didn’t see eye to eye with my cousin’s Alsatian.’

  While Mandy kept a vice-like grip on the dog’s heaving bulk, I cautiously examined the jagged tear evident in Blodwyn’s left ear.

  ‘I’m afraid that will need stitching,’ I said as the bull terrier swung round, her lolling tongue spraying me with spittle. ‘Keep holding on,’ I added, looking at a red-faced Mandy. ‘You’re doing a good job.’ It didn’t take a minute to draw up a shot of sedative; and it took just a few more for Blodwyn to become drowsy enough for us to manhandle her down to the prep room where she was given an intravenous injection and the torn ear stitched.

  Just as I’d finished tying off the last suture, Beryl poked her head round the door, her hair like a layer of ravens’ wings – all of a flap. ‘Paul,’ she said in a loud whisper, hand to the side of her face, ‘would you be able to see a fish for me?’

  I felt like saying, ‘Only if it’s small fry,’ but the look on Beryl’s pinched face suggested I’d be wise not to bait her. I merely shrugged which she took as my acceptance. With another quick squirt of ‘Summer Bouquet’ aimed in my direction, she disappeared back up to reception.

  I could have tried ‘It all sounds a bit fishy to me’ on Mandy but she was in no mood for jokes and the shark-eyed look she gave me warned me off.

  But it was no joke when, half-an-hour later, the Golden Orfe landed on my consulting table in a large plastic bucket. To my inexperienced eye, it looked like a giant goldfish with dull orange scales, speckled black, and drooping tail and fins, spotted red. It hung motionless in the water, a large gash clearly visible near the base of its tail. Mr Chang, its owner, was a lithe young man who, I understood from Beryl, ran the Kowloon Chinese restaurant in the centre of Westcott.

  ‘You never know,’ she’d said. ‘If you sort his fish out he might let you have a Chinese on the house.’

  Mr Chang was olive-skinned, with narrow, hooded eyes and jet-black hair that stuck up like hedgehog spikes. He extracted a paper napkin edged with red and yellow dragons from his jeans and mopped his face.

  ‘Velly hot,’ he said.

  I agreed.

  ‘And velly smelly.’ His broad, snub nose twitched.

  I nodded again. ‘And the fish?’

  ‘Velly sick. We have large tank in window. Velly big.’ To emphasise the point, Mr Chang stretched out his arms. ‘Car crash into window. Break glass like so.’ He raised his hand and brought it swiftly down on the table in a karate chop. Water slopped out of the bucket. ‘All fish velly frightened. This fish sliced.’

  Sliced? Filleted? Battered? I had a brief mental image of orfe and chips before realising an ‘Ah so …’ had escaped from my lips. I quickly covered my slip of the tongue by saying, ‘Ah so … the fish got cut by a shard of glass.’

  Mr Chang’s dark eyes stared intently at me. ‘You put light?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, completely in the dark. How on earth did you stitch up a fish?

  Beryl watched, her one eye agog, as I struggled down to the prep room with the heavy bucket. Sliding it on to the table, I stepped back and bit my lip. Now what? I peered down at the fish as it slowly circled round and round.

  Mandy bobbed through. She must have seen me rubbing my chin. ‘You going to anaesthetise it then?’ she said.

  ‘Er … well … yes …’

  ‘Crystal uses Alka-Seltzers.’

  ‘Oh she does, does she?’

  ‘I’ve got some up in the flat if you want.’

  ‘Please.’

  When she returned, I took the tube from her, unscrewed the cap and tipped three tablets into my palm.

  ‘Crystal would use four in a bucket that size,’ said Mandy.

  I tipped out another tablet.

  ‘Probably five, thinking about it,’ said Mandy.

  Without comment, I tippe
d out a fifth and tossed the handful into the bucket.

  Within seconds, it was a sea of bubbles. The fizzing continued unabated, the surface of the water a white cauldron with no way of seeing what effect it was having on the fish. Twenty minutes later, the water had calmed down. So had the orfe. Having succumbed to the initial explosion of carbon dioxide, it was very calm – too calm to my mind. On its side, gills scarcely moving, it looked half dead. Whatever, I had to fish it out. Rolling up my sleeves, I immersed my arms into the gently fizzing water and cupped my hands under the orfe’s belly, gradually raising it to the surface. But as soon as the surface of the water was broken, the fish slipped out of my fingers and flopped back in with a splash.

  Mandy held up a square of muslin.

  ‘Crystal always used this,’ she said in a casual manner as if it was the most obvious thing to think of. So why hadn’t I thought of it?

  I snatched the material from her and pushed it into the bucket and under the fish. I have to confess it did make it much easier. With the orfe netted, I was able to drag it out and carry it through to the operating theatre where I plopped it on the table, rivulets of water running across to drip on to the floor.

  Mandy now held up a wet green drape. ‘Crystal always wraps this round the fish. Stops it drying out.’

  ‘Right!’ I plucked the drape from her and folded it round the orfe just leaving the damaged flank exposed. The wound was deeper than I’d suspected, extending from behind the tail to within a few inches of the dorsal fin. Now what? I saw Mandy open her mouth. ‘Crystal always uses …’ I expected her to say. But she didn’t say a word; she merely opened an emergency pack of instruments from which I extracted a sterile drape, spread it on the trolley and allowed her to tip the pack out.

  Despite having the Venetian blinds closed to the glare and heat of the sun, the theatre was hot and I knew I’d have to work quickly before the fish dried out. I threaded a needle and jabbed it into one side of the wound. The needle bounced off the skin. I tried again. The same thing happened.