by Manda Scott
Steff finished her chart. Her eyes met mine over the head of her boss. ‘I could take him up to the Lodge if you want,’ she offered. ‘I can rig up an oxygen source and keep him in a basket by the bed. That way you two can go home and get some sleep.’
Nina reached forward and toyed with the fluid pump. Changed the rate and then changed it back again.
She needs sleep. And she has nowhere to go.
‘Can she use Jason’s room?’ I asked.
Steff shook her head. ‘Jay’s driving back from Congress tonight. He just phoned from Carlisle. He’ll be back by three.’
There was silence. Steff looked at me. Said nothing. Very pointedly said nothing. Nina put an extra dose of antibiotics in the drip.
I pulled my keys from my pocket. Thought of Kate and wondered if the spare room was still free. ‘OK.’ I looked at the clock. Just after two. ‘I have to be up in something less than six hours from now. Let’s get you home.’
11
The barn smelt of horse abdomens. Of old hay and hot urine. Of horse-breath and new-born foal. The horses slept. Peaceful, standing sleep, heads over the door, one leg crooked at the stifle, changing legs once in a while to shift the weight. The foal slept lying down, tight-curled like a cat, flicking his tail in time to the dream. Rain stood over him, eyelids drooping, her nose brushing the straw. A pile of fresh dung steamed in the corner. Small, firm balls of dung. Just as they should be. I opened the door to let Nina into the box to check it. All the others started with loose dung. After a day like today, we’re not leaving anything to chance. She checked over the mare. A hand on a pulse, a fast look under the eyelids, a finger pressed to the gums. A rectal thermometer. The colt balked at the strange touch. He stood up and shuddered, once, to shake off the straw and the hand and then skitted sideways, white-eyed, until she had him in the corner. She crossed her ankles and sat down in the straw at his feet. He stood over her, flicking his ears like a deer. She reached up a hand and he let her touch his muzzle, stroke the side of his face, feel along the edge of his jaw to the pulse. She shifted back against the wall and he pushed past her, pushed his way up under his mother and sucked. Milk dribbled white down his jugular furrow.
Nina stood up slowly and left the box.
‘They’re fine.’ A whisper, because the horses slept. ‘All safe so far.’
‘Do we need to watch them through the night?’
She looked at her watch. Two thirty. ‘No. There’s no need.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll check them at four, if you want to take a look in at six.’
Very tempting. I would give a lot, right now, for a night’s unbroken sleep. I don’t suppose I’m the only one. ‘No. It was me who brought her home. I’ll do four. You do six. We’ll need to be up by then anyway.’
‘If you like.’
I led the way back across the yard. Frosted gravel crunched underfoot. A late moon hung yellow over the hill. Kate’s Beetle sat just outside the gate in the place it had been since morning. Frost sprayed leaf-vein patterns round a crack in the windscreen.
Inside, Kate slept under a blanket in the big chair beside a fire that was banked to last all night. My alarm clock ticked softly on the mantelpiece, set to ring on the hour. I turned it off. We woke her. At least, we brought her close enough to the surface to walk upstairs to the spare room with a hot-water bottle and an extra blanket. She was asleep again before we closed the door.
We stood outside on the landing, whispering again just because it was late. ‘Looks like the spare room isn’t free after all’
‘Looks like. I could sleep in the barn if you want. It’s warm enough. I’m sure the horses are very accommodating.’
‘I’m sure they are. But the bed’s big enough for two. So long as it’s clear that we’re going to sleep. That’s all. Nothing else.’
‘Kellen.’ Weak, silent laughter. Bubbling close to the edge. ‘I couldn’t … really, honestly, I couldn’t. Even if you wanted to. Just show me the bedroom and show me the bed. If we stand here talking about it much longer, I’ll pass out at your feet.’
‘Oh. OK. Sorry.’ I forget she’s never been here before. She fits in. Like one of the cats. ‘Bedroom’s down here. At the top of the stairs. Bathroom’s next to Kate’s room.’ I opened the linen chest on the landing. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’
‘Forget the towel. You’ll have to live with me filthy.’ She put her hand on my shoulder. Lightly. Without fire. ‘Do you think I could borrow a toothbrush?’
She slept without the nightmares. I know because I watched her. Watched her slide down through the shell of total exhaustion into dreamless unconsciousness and then, later, after I’d been out to check Rain at four, I watched her roll on to one side and saw her eyes flicker into the sleep of dreams. Pleasant dreams. Dreams to smile for. No blood. No talking skulls. No whispered incitements to death. I dozed, half-awake, unused to the foreign feeling of a woman beside me in the bed again, listening to the alarm clock tick through to five and then on again towards six. The first time, I switched it off before it rang. The second time, I didn’t set it at all. I lay watching the squat outline grow sharper against the rising grey light from the window. It’s not often I see the dawn after the end of March. Twice in three days is at least once too many. I got up at five thirty.
The ponies have Monday mornings off. Which means everyone else has Mondays off too. Except me. On Mondays, I get up early and come home as early as I can. On wet Mondays, I feed the herd in the morning before work and spend the best part of the evening mucking out. If it’s anything other than pissing wet, I rug them all up and turn them out before work and then all I have to do when I get home is feed them, skip out and brush off the mud.
The reeds on the duck pond were bending gently towards the barn, pushed by a wind coming down from the top of the ben. In April, the wind comes from anywhere and everywhere and it usually brings rain with it. I stuck my head outside the back door and looked out past the Hawthorn paddock towards the mountain. The grey rock at the top stood out sharply against the almost-blue of the sky. No rain between me and the crags. In April, that counts as a fair enough day by anyone’s standards. I lifted the two New Zealand rugs from outside the pantry and dragged them off to the barn.
They’re a resilient lot, our ponies. They cope remarkably well with being thrown out half an hour earlier than usual into fields where the grass is still stiff with early morning frost and there’s ice still crackling at the edges of the river. I left the doors to the barn standing open and walked down the line fitting rugs, checking feet, feeling legs. They ambled out, one at a time, as I finished and they let Tîr herd them, in ones and twos, down the slope behind the barn, round the back of the beech wood and in through the open gate of the far paddock.
If I could teach the dog to bolt the gate behind the last one, we’d have a fully automated turning-out system. As it is, I get to amble down the same path, following the swinging rump of the grey garron gelding that we bought to replace Midnight when she retired. He’s not the brightest of ponies but he’s solid and safe and he can carry an overweight businessman on a full day over the ben and still find the energy for a quick canter on the home run which says a lot for three centuries of Highland breeding.
I closed the gate over behind him and waited for the dog to slide through under the low rail of the fence before turning to face the wind and the long slow climb back up to the farm. It’s not a bad way to start the week.
Nina was in the barn with Rain and her foal when I got back. She was wearing my work clothes, the ones I left in the basket by the wardrobe, waiting for some spare time to do the ironing. My spare fleece looked good on her. She has the knack of wearing things well. Even my unironed work clothes.
I leaned on the door and watched her sweet-talk the foal into letting her take his temperature. There’s a fine line between necessary handling and abuse of a youngster. If the youngster’s going to be your star stallion, it’s a good idea to persuade him that people are friendly bef
ore he weighs more than five of them put together. She took it gently, with professional care. He stood quietly enough.
She looked up and saw me watching. ‘I raided your wardrobe, do you mind?’
‘Of course not. Take what you need.’
‘I did.’ She let herself out of the box. Rain followed her to the door and banged hard against it with her foot. The noise of it rang down the barn. A staccato rhythm of horse-frustration. She hates being separated from the rest of the herd. I lifted the headcollar and foal slip from the hook outside the box. Nina stood with her hands in the pockets of my jeans. A thin vertical line bisected her forehead. The human equivalent of a horse banging on wood.
‘You should have woken me, Kellen. I said I’d do the six o’clock check.’
‘I know. But it’s not six o’clock yet.’
She looked at me, long and pensive. ‘Did you sleep?’
‘Enough.’ Enough to run on coffee for the kind of day I have planned. ‘I don’t have to go in to work and save lives.’ Which is one of the many reasons I am truly glad that I’m not a surgeon.
‘Nor do I. I just have to go in and explain why we’ve got another dead horse in the PM room.’
‘Leave that to the pathologists.’
I let myself into the box and sat down in the straw as she had done and spoke promises to the foal. Promises of new grass and open spaces and the strange stories told by the wind. All that was his if he would let me put on the foal slip. He snored at me through flared nostrils and backed away behind his mother. I stood up and slipped the head collar on to the mare instead and then tried again with her son. Second time round he listened to the promises, let me slide the fine leather over his nose and fasten the buckle at his cheek.
I handed the mare’s lead-rope to Nina. ‘Are they OK to turn out?’
‘As far as I can tell.’ She stood back to let me out of the box. ‘Have you done the morning treatments?’
‘Not yet.’ I lifted a tack box full of syringes and needles and Matt Hendon’s supply of the necessary drugs. ‘I thought you could do it. Since you’re here.’ And that way I don’t have to stick needles in a foal that might grow up to hate me if I do.
‘Really? I thought you wanted to bring them home because you didn’t trust us to keep them healthy?’ It was difficult to tell if she was being serious.
She made up a vial of Crystapen, drew the resulting solution into a syringe, fitted a needle and passed it to me with exaggerated care. ‘It isn’t me that needs the practice, Dr Stewart.’ She dribbled spirit on to a swab and held that out, too. ‘You do it. I’ll watch. And don’t forget to flush with hepsaline afterwards. You don’t want to be calling someone out here at eight o’clock because the line’s clotted up.’
Too true. By five past eight tonight I fully intend to be fast asleep. I don’t want to spend any more time than I absolutely have to playing doctors and nurses with the ponies.
Nina held the mare and watched me inject three times into the catheter; drugs, more drugs and the heparinised saline to keep the line clear. Just what the doctor ordered. It’s hardly complicated stuff.
Nina took the empties and stashed them in a clear section of the tack box. ‘Did they get their eight o’clock shots last night?’ she asked.
‘I don’t expect they did.’ I hadn’t thought of that. ‘I didn’t ask Kate to do it. I wasn’t expecting to be home that late. Does it matter?’
‘I doubt it. This is insurance. If you’re lucky they won’t need it.’ She caught the foal. ‘If you’re unlucky, it probably won’t make any difference.’ She kept her face straight. Teased with her eyes. ‘It’s all fairly academic, really.’
‘Thanks.’ I just love academic medicine. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that sixty per cent of the people in hospital are there because some cretin with a degree prescribed unnecessary medication?’
She shrugged loosely. ‘See it as a safety measure. We don’t want you getting complacent too early.’
‘I don’t want the foal getting needle-shy, either.’
‘Then do it gently. It won’t do him any harm.’
She held the foal and reminded him of the stories that run on the wind. I fitted the finest needle I could get on to the syringe. The colt nibbled the wilder ends of her hair and chose not to notice the stabbing itch of steel in his rump.
‘Good.’ She flicked up a thumb. ‘I’ll check his bloods when I get into work. If his globulin’s high enough, you won’t need to give him any more after this.’
‘That would make Sandy’s day.’ Mine too. We brought in a needle-shy mare once. She stayed less than a week. A needle-shy stallion defies imagination.
We turned the mare and foal out and walked back together from the Hawthorn paddock. Walked through the orchard where the late frost had caught all of the early buds. Across gravel that was softening in the first touch of the sun. Past the duck pond where half a dozen mallard drakes were contemplating gang-rape on the two available ducks. Through the back porch where a tortoiseshell queen was teaching the red kittens a hundred and one ways to murder a dead mouse. Back into the kitchen where the kettle had long since boiled dry and the room was fog-thick with steam.
Nina sat on a stool at the breakfast bar and left me to sort out the mess. ‘You haven’t considered going electric, I suppose?’
I pulled out a packet of J-cloths and mopped condensation from the surface of the breakfast bar. ‘I’ll go electric when you get double glazing.’
We remembered, both of us at the same time. Ugly, awkward and painful.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t. It’s not your fault.’
‘Not yours either.’
‘No.’ She shook her head, slowly. ‘But there was a while, before last night, when I was wondering, if I really could have been that crazy.’
‘But you wouldn’t have kicked Killer.’
‘No.’
I checked the base of the kettle for holes and, finding none, filled it with cold water and put it back on the heat. She watched me do it, biting her lip, pensive.
‘Why did you go to the cottage, Kellen?’ she asked.
‘To see what was there.’ I dug an enamelled pot from the cupboard under the sink. ‘Porridge?’
‘Mmm.’
I can cook porridge. It’s one of the few things I do well. I can do it, even, with someone watching every move from the other side of the counter. It just requires a little bit more concentration. The trick is to catch it, just on the edge of the boil, and hold it there until it starts to stick on the spoon.
It was just about there when she spoke again.
‘So what did you find?’
‘Nothing.’ If you leave it too long it burns. I lifted the pot off the heat. ‘Just the cat.’
‘Did you go inside?’
‘Not for long.’ It was burnt. Just at the edges where the enamel was thin. I used a ladle to spoon out the unburned surface layers. ‘Here,’ I slid a bowl across the counter. ‘Should stop you going hypo ’till lunchtime at least. There’s salt in the mill.’
She opened three drawers and found herself a spoon. Ground salt absently over the bowl. Watched me eat with eyes that were not about to let go. ‘Why, Kellen?’
You can only push these things so far.
‘Because I was wondering, too, if you really could have been that crazy.’
‘And what if I wasn’t just being crazy? Were you wondering that too?’
I made crystal circles with the salt. Stirred them in.
‘Anything’s possible.’
She sat still and watched me eat. The kettle boiled. The smell of coffee brightened the air. I drank. She watched and didn’t drink.
‘Do you really think if I was going to try again, that I would use fire?’
‘I didn’t think you’d try to cut out your scar, but you did.’
‘I was hallucinating, Kellen, I didn’t know what I was doing.’ She wasn’t hurt. She wasn’t angry. Something in between
both and more than either.
‘And did you know what you were doing on Skye?’
‘What?’
‘On Skye. The holiday with Matt. When you tried to cut out your scar with a scalpel blade, did you know what you were doing then?’
She stared at me. Lost focus and found it again. Asked questions and answered them before they ever reached her lips. When she spoke, it came slowly. ‘I cut my arm on a window, Kellen. I fell. I wasn’t hallucinating at all.’
‘You “fell” through a window?’
She looked past me, over my shoulder, to where the window looks out to the ducks. Looked through a different window to different mountains. She took a long time to answer. ‘It was an accident,’ she said finally. ‘He was angry. He didn’t mean it.’
‘Matt?’
‘Mmm.’
‘And did he ask you not to tell me?’
‘No. It was me that was in therapy, Kellen. Not him. You didn’t need to know.’
Really.
‘So why did he tell me you did it yourself?’
‘I don’t know, Kellen …’ She reached out across the counter and laid her hand over mine. Smiled, dry and ironic. Her forte. ‘Maybe he wants you to think I’m unstable.’
Maybe he does.
I took back my hand.
Maybe he’s right.
A car crunched to a halt in the yard. Something small and underpowered. The dog nosed her way out of the back door. Size twelve Doc Martens padded across the gravel.
Nina crooked her head to look out of the window. ‘Company?’
Naturally. Some folk have no sense of timing. The back door opened. I stood up to make the introductions.
‘Stewart, meet Dr Nina Crawford of the University of Glasgow Veterinary Teaching Hospital.’ MacDonald stood in the doorway, a red kitten balanced on either palm and he nodded to Nina as if he’d known her all his life. ‘Nina, this is Inspector Stewart MacDonald of Strathclyde Central Constabulary.’ And then, because she was looking at him as if he might spontaneously throw his jacket around her shoulders: ‘Garscube isn’t on his patch.’