by Cathy Kelly
‘Nothing.’
A moment passed.
‘You thinking of personal ads?’ Angie asked.
Leonie flushed and grinned. It was always a mistake to bullshit Angie, who was one of the smartest women she knew. ‘Yes. Desperate, isn’t it? I’m never going to meet a man round here, am I?’
‘Not unless you want to run off with the postman – who does fancy you, in my opinion. He takes a long time delivering the mail when you answer the door.’
‘You’re a cow, Angie. He’s practically at retiring age. And if he’s the best I can do, I may as well give up. It drives me mad, you know. People think if you work in a vet practice the place is a throbbing hotbed of lust with hormones all over the place because we deal with animals. I don’t see why,’ Leonie said plaintively. ‘What’s so sexy about staring at Tim’s face while he operates on some cat’s anal glands?’
‘It’s the old doctors and nurses thing,’ Angie remarked sagely. ‘Romantic novels are full of doctors and nurses having it off in between quadruple bypasses. It’s fictional fantasy, but everyone thinks it must be the same here. It’s the white coat that does it. Women want to be bonked senseless by a guy in a white coat because he’s in charge and they can indulge their “I couldn’t help it, m’lud, he made me do it” fantasy.’
‘Fantasy’s all very well, but the reality is very different,’ Leonie said, giving up on her horoscope because Virgos were going to have a bad day and fight with everyone. ‘Tim’s happily married, Raoul is engaged and, unless we both turn gay, you’re out of bounds. Maybe if Raoul went back to South America, we could hire a new hunky young vet and our eyes would lock over the operating table when we were neutering a ginger tom.’ She sighed at the thought. ‘Then again, he’d want to be deranged to fall for a divorced mother of three, wouldn’t he? An insolvent mother of three, at that. I’m broke again, Angie, my overdraft is in the stratosphere and Mel is whingeing on about new clothes…’
‘Personal ads are a great idea,’ Angie interrupted before Leonie got carried away on misery. ‘Loads of people use them these days and you’re not going to meet the man of your dreams in this town, now, are you? What would you say in your ad?’
Leonie extracted a piece of folded-up newsprint from her pocket. ‘I got this from the Guardian in the surgery waiting room. It’s got pages of ads. “Soulmates” they call them. I just don’t understand what they all mean. I read it for ages earlier and it’s like reading Mongolian. Listen to this: “Zany Slim Blonde F, GSOH, n/s WLTM creative M, preferably TDH for loving r/ship. Ldn.”’
Angie translated: ‘Zany blonde female with a good sense of humour, non-smoker, would like to meet a creative male, preferably tall, dark and handsome for a loving relationship. Based in London.’
‘Ah, gotcha.’ Leonie scanned the rest of the ads. ‘The only problem is that all these women are slim and all the men want slim women. See: “seeks slim, attractive woman…” She could be an axe-murderer, but as long as she’s slim, it’s OK.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Angie, who was tall, attractive in a sporty way and very, very slim.
‘It’s true. Look at them.’
Together, they scanned the list. The men, who described themselves as anything from ‘cuddly’ (‘That means fat,’ Angie pointed out), to ‘Not easy to describe in four to five lines’ (‘Short, fat and often mistaken for a pot-bellied pig,’ said Angie).
They giggled over some of the descriptions: the surgical walker who wanted a fun and adventurous companion; and Sir Lancelot who was seeking his Guinevere.
‘Would a wimple and chastity belt be necessary?’ Angie mused.
‘Listen to this: “Shy male, 35, virgin, seeks similar for relationship.” How could you be a virgin at thirty-five? That is weird.’
‘Not if he’s religious,’ Angie countered.
‘Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. What does “seeks for possible relationship” mean?’ Leonie asked, bemused.
‘That he wants to shag you senseless after a meal where you went Dutch and then he never wants to see you again,’ Angie said knowledgeably. ‘Happened to a friend of mine in Sydney. She’s a veteran of the personals, but even she got badly burned once. He said he was a gorgeous doctor and he wasn’t lying, so she forgot her plan to play hard to get and they did it on the first date. Champagne, chocolate body-paint, Polaroid camera, the lot. She never set eyes on him again. Bastard.’
Leonie shuddered at the thought of someone with Polaroid photos of her naked self. She read some more: ‘ “Seeks classy blonde for fun and games.” This is mad stuff. Why doesn’t he just hire a hooker?’
‘These are hip and trendy ads. You want a nice country ad in a country paper.’
‘You sure?’
‘Positive. Someone with a cosy hearth who has several animals, pots of money and who looks good in wellington boots.’
‘Wicklow is full of blokes like that,’ Leonie dead-panned. ‘The surgery is probably jammed with a consignment as we speak, all bearing red roses at the news that I’m looking for lurve. Oh yes, and a sick sheep they need looked at. Come on, we’d better get to work.’
They discussed the personal ads some more that morning as Angie whizzed through spaying four cats, two dogs and descaling the teeth on a very old beagle.
Leonie assisted her, shaving the animals’ bellies and disinfecting them before Angie got to work. It was also her job to monitor breathing and colour. Older animals were often put on oxygen during operations. Younger ones tended to do well without it, but Leonie kept an eye on their colour to make sure they were getting enough oxygen. At the first sign of a tongue going grey, she’d give them pure oxygen.
‘Be honest in your advert,’ Angie advised, delicately sewing up a tabby kitten’s soft beige belly. ‘Say “voluptuous”, because you are and you want to make sure whoever wants to meet you knows that. You don’t want to end up with some bloke whose aim in life is to make you lose a stone.’
‘It’s nice to have at least one friend who’s honest with me,’ Leonie said, keeping an eye on the kitten’s breathing. ‘If I asked anyone else, they’d lie through their teeth and tell me I’m slim, really. My mother is always telling me I’m beautiful the way I am and not to think about dieting, which is bullshit.’
‘Your mother is a wonderful woman and no, it’s not bullshit. Half the women in the country are trying to kill themselves dieting. It’s a waste of time – you know it. Most people who lose weight put it right back on again eventually.’
‘Tell me about it!’ Leonie groaned, feeling the waistband of her blue uniform biting into her flesh. ‘If I was to put an advert in the paper, what would I say?’
‘Voluptuous, sensual…’ began Angie.
‘Get out of here!’ shrieked Leonie, secretly pleased. ‘Sensual! You can’t say that.’
‘Why not?’ Angie finished the kitten. She gave her a shot of antibiotics and brought her back to her cage.
She returned with a Yorkshire terrier for spaying and took up the conversation as if she’d never been away. ‘You are, in every sense of the word. Sensual isn’t just to do with sex, you know. It also means someone who enjoys using their senses, and you do.’
‘Yeah but saying “sensual” in an advert in the Wicklow Times will result in a rush of callers thinking I’m looking for an entirely different sort of man friend, the sort who leaves the money on the mantelpiece.’
‘OK then, how about “Blue-eyed blonde, voluptuous, er…”’
‘…loves children.’
‘That might put him off,’ Angie pointed out, ‘ ’cos he’ll think you’re on the hunt for a sperm donor rather than a man.’
‘Well, I’ve got to mention the children.’
‘“Loves children and animals”?’ Angie suggested.
‘That’s it.’
Angie really began to get into the swing of things. She wanted to keep discussing adverts. But Leonie didn’t want everyone in the practice to know about her personal life. Lo
uise, one of the other nurses, kept going into the operating room to talk to Angie and Leonie didn’t want her to hear.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she hissed to Angie.
Operations over, Leonie went back to cleaning out the animals’ cages. As a nurse, she worked mainly at the back of the practice where two walls were lined with animal cages for their patients. At any one time, there could be forty animals looking mournfully out at the nurses and vets as they waited for operations or recovered from them. Today, there were several animals scheduled for spaying in the afternoon and three in for blood tests to try and figure out what was wrong with them.
Bubble, a pretty white cat with ragged ears, was vomiting constantly and needed a whole range of tests including liver and kidney function. Bubble had already been through the wars vet-wise. White cats were prone to skin cancers on the tips of their ears and Bubble had already had three operations. A seasoned surgery cat, she was very clever at escaping when her cage was opened, so Leonie had put an ESCAPE ARTIST sign over her cage. ‘Escape artist’ was better than ‘wild’, which was the sign they put over feral cats people occasionally brought in. These practically wild cats often tested positive for the feline version of HIV, and more often than not were put to sleep. Leonie had received many scars from being scratched by these poor, unloved creatures.
Below Bubble was Lester, a yellow ferret who was looking for a home. Lester was a bit of an escape artist himself and had managed to wriggle out of Louise’s arms earlier and had hidden in the medicine cupboard for ten minutes before he could be recaptured. Leonie carefully took Lester out and tidied his cage. Putting him back with a cuddly toy, she watched him play with it, biting its neck frenziedly. She’d thought of giving Lester a home herself because she could never bear to see animals unloved. Ferrets could bite but, so far, Lester hadn’t hurt anyone. Watching him kill the teddy, she reconsidered.
How would Lester describe himself for a personal ad?
Sleek, friendly male with an interest in the life of Houdini seeks loving home with someone who doesn’t mind being nibbled. Prospective females must enjoy romping in the garden and appreciate strong, masculine scent.
Leonie grinned to herself. Put that way, Lester sounded irresistible. She must remember to read between the lines of the adverts. Otherwise, God alone knew what would happen.
CHAPTER TEN
The one drawback about being one of the three members of staff who could work the switchboard was that you inevitably had to take over when the receptionist wasn’t available. And Carolyn, the girl who’d been working as the Dwyer, Dwyer & James receptionist for the past two weeks, was never available. Hannah was already regretting hiring her. Carolyn had been off sick once the previous week and today, she’d rung in at ten to nine claiming to have the flu.
‘Gillian, can you do reception today?’ Hannah had asked Gillian, who was still deeply resentful of the fact that Hannah had been brought in as office manager. Gillian had loved knowing where all the agents were and phoning them to check if they were all right. It gave her power over them.
‘I can until lunch,’ Gillian had snapped. ‘I’m on a half-day today.’
Which meant that Hannah didn’t have a chance to get on with her own work and had to spend the afternoon at the front desk, fielding calls in between trying to track down a consignment of office supplies which had gone missing.
Naturally, as soon as anybody walked in, the phones went mad. The woman standing at the reception desk didn’t look impressed by the fact that Hannah had had to answer four calls before dealing with her. The woman was quivering with impatience, but Hannah waited until she could see the red light on her switchboard go off, indicating that Donna Nelson was off the phone.
‘Donna, call for you on line one: a Mr McElhinney about the property in York Road.’
‘Thanks, Hannah.’
Swivelling in her new, very comfortable chair, Hannah finally faced the anxious-looking young woman in front of her reception desk. It was a low desk: it had to be, Hannah had explained to David James when he’d discussed refitting the office with her. ‘People need to be able to see you, not feel they’re queueing up at the post office.’
‘I do apologize for all the interruptions,’ she said in a conciliatory tone, ‘it’s been terribly busy today. Now, how can I help you?’
‘Number 73 Shandown Terrace, is it gone yet?’ the woman said, voice rising with each word, pale freckled face distraught. ‘We only realized it was for sale this instant. We’ve always loved that road and we so wanted to live there. Don’t tell me it’s sold.’
‘Hold on one moment,’ Hannah said soothingly. She scanned through her computer files and found the house. Steve Shaw, the agency’s obnoxious young agent, was handling the sale. He’d brought two people to view it but nobody had put in an offer.
‘Needs twenty thou spent on it before rats would live in it!’ Steve had snorted when he came back from his first visit to the property.
‘I’ve good news,’ Hannah said, ‘it’s still on the market. Would you like to speak to the agent who’s handling it?’
A few minutes later, Steve was sitting on the reception area’s oatmeal couch with the woman – sitting far too close to her, in Hannah’s opinion. That was Steve’s technique for selling property – invading women’s personal space and flirting with them as if they were the most beautiful creatures he’d ever set eyes on.
He’d tried it on with Hannah the moment he’d met her. Just back from his honeymoon and with a mocha Bahamian tan, he thought he was gorgeous. He thought she was gorgeous too and kept calling her that.
‘Why’d you join this company, Gorgeous, if you’re only going to break my heart?’ he’d said the first time she refused his invitation to lunch. This was only five minutes after they’d met. Even peering at him severely from behind her Reverend Mother specs hadn’t worked.
‘You’re very sexy when you glare at me like that,’ Steve had said cheekily.
He’d kept up this line of banter for the past three weeks and so far Hannah had resisted the temptation to knock him down to size. So far.
From her position behind the reception desk, she watched him put his hand on the client’s knee. Completely out of order, Hannah thought. The woman was clearly so relieved that her beloved house hadn’t been sold that she didn’t appear to notice the inappropriate gesture and beamed back at him.
It was a busy afternoon. Since David James had taken over the office, the entire place had been buzzing. Fliers about the company had been circulated around the area, two new agents had been hired, and the office itself had been redecorated one weekend. Gone were the coffee-coloured walls and the brown partitions. In their place was a facsimile of the Dawson Street branch, complete with elegant prints, discreet lighting and marvellous furniture. Hannah had been in charge of the transformation and it had been a joy. The reception desk was a curved swathe of bleached maple and the fresh flowers that sat beside the new state-of-the-art computer were replaced every three days. Even the faulty air ventilator in the ladies’ had been fixed. David James said he wanted the transformation to be very thorough.
Not a man for small talk, he nevertheless noticed every detail. He and Hannah understood each other perfectly. They had a meeting twice a week to discuss the business and Hannah found that she looked forward to these hour-long sessions. In private, David wasn’t the tough, silent type he appeared to be. When they’d finished discussing office improvements, he’d order Gillian to bring in coffee and the chocolate-chip biscuits he loved.
‘Shouldn’t be eating these,’ he’d said guiltily at their meeting that morning as he dunked his third biscuit into coffee, ‘but I love them.’
‘I thought only women were supposed to have a sweet tooth,’ Hannah teased. She’d discovered that he had a good sense of humour and enjoyed a bit of banter.
‘We can’t all be lean fighting machines like you,’ he retorted, casting an approving eye over her slim figure neatly dressed
in a burgundy silk twinset and grey tailored trousers.
If anyone else had made such a remark, Hannah would have bridled in case it was a sexual innuendo. But she felt relaxed with David James. Despite their close working relationship, she never sensed even a hint of impropriety in his attitude to her. They were colleagues, nothing more.
‘If Gillian wasn’t so deeply in love with you, you wouldn’t be getting those chocolate-chip biscuits,’ Hannah said slyly.
‘She’s not!’ He looked up in horror.
Hannah couldn’t resist laughing. ‘I’m sorry, David, she does have a bit of a penchant for you.’
Not wishing to reveal too much, she clammed up.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Hannah lied. ‘Only kidding. I better go and do some work, David.’
She left the office, inwardly amused at how someone as observant as David could totally fail to see that Gillian was obsessed with him. For a brilliant man capable of detecting the slightest nuance in a business conversation, he was clueless when it came to people. Gillian looked at her fiercely when Hannah sat back at her tidy desk. Nobody resented David and Hannah’s coffee-fuelled meetings more than Gillian.
It was just before closing time when David rang Hannah from his car phone. ‘I’ve got a client coming in to see me but I’m running twenty minutes late. Tell him that and give him a cup of coffee, will you, Hannah? I hope you don’t mind staying late, but it’s important. He’s an old friend. His name’s Felix Andretti.’
How exotic, she thought, writing the name down. At six, the staff who weren’t showing houses or meeting clients packed up and left the office.
‘Staying late?’ asked Donna, passing the reception desk with Janice, one of the two new agents.
‘Not really,’ Hannah replied. ‘I’m just doing something for David.’
‘Would you like to go for a drink in McCormack’s afterwards? Myself and Janice have just decided we need a pick-me-up drink. I never normally have the time, but I can stay out a bit tonight.’