Pets in a Pickle (11 page)

‘Pull a little on the ropes, Lucy.’

She pulled. ‘Enough?’

‘A bit more.’ I felt the foal’s head float nearer. ‘Bit more.’ The back legs started to dip out of reach. Then they were gone. ‘Done it,’ I declared triumphantly. ‘The foal’s turned round.’ I pulled my arm out and took one of the ropes from Lucy.

‘We’re going to start pulling quite hard,’ I warned the Richardsons who, though still at Clementine’s head, were both straining to see what was going on.

‘Don’t get too alarmed.’

‘We should be so lucky,’ murmured Lucy, wrapping her rope tightly round her palm.

‘Right. Here we go. Heave!’

We both pulled together.

Clementine emitted a long, deep groan.

‘You’re hurting her,’ cried Hilary.

‘No we’re not,’ I called out. ‘She can’t feel a thing.’ In fact, with the epidural, Clementine couldn’t even contract. Lucy and I were her labour. If we didn’t pull, the foal wouldn’t come out. So pull we did … pull … pull … pull. Slowly, the forelegs emerged, gleaming, steaming, covered in mucus. Then the head popped out, large, domed … to be rapidly followed by the long, brown, sticky body of the colt. He plopped on to the bedding in a pool of yellow fluids.

Hilary jumped to her feet. ‘Oh clever, Clementine,’ she cooed. ‘You’ve produced a wonderful baby.’

‘Yes, well done,’ exclaimed George, echoing his wife’s sentiments.

As for our part in the proceedings … Lucy and I just looked at each other and shrugged. At least Clementine seemed appreciative of our efforts. She gave a whicker of motherly concern and stretched round to give her son his first wash.

‘Well,’ said George as we cleaned ourselves up in the kitchen. ‘It seems congratulations are in order.’ His shoulders smartly jigged up and down.

‘Indeed, yes,’ added Hilary, her white face glowing, her thin lips curled back in a smile. ‘We can’t wait to tell Dr Sharpe.’

I squirmed with pleasure. It’s not every day one receives compliments. So it’s nice to get them when they come. ‘Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ I murmured, hoping I said it with the right touch of modesty.

Hilary cut in. ‘She’ll be so pleased to hear how well behaved Clementine was. Such a model patient. It made your task so much easier, I’m sure.’ Her bland, milky eyes blinked at me. Soulless. What a put down.

Dawn was breaking as we drove back over the Downs. The belt of rain had passed to leave a pencil of cloud scoring the pale eastern sky in a ribbon of pink. Below it, the orb of the sun had began to edge up with the promise of another hot day. It looked spectacular from the top of the Downs. So much so that, despite my tiredness, I impulsively swerved into a lay-by overlooking the undulating fields which stretched down towards Westcott and the silver line of the sea beyond.

‘Sorry. Hope you don’t mind,’ I said, turning to Lucy. ‘It’s just so beautiful.’

‘I don’t mind at all,’ she replied, smiling shyly at me. ‘In fact, I was rather hoping you would.’

We sat in companionable silence watching the sun rise over the far, grey-green line of hills. It surfaced as a giant ball of orange, sending out shafts of shimmering light which gradually washed across the fields, painting in the yellow of the corn, the bright red of the poppies.

Without taking my eyes off the scene, I spoke. ‘You know, I’m very pleased you came along tonight.’

‘So am I,’ said Lucy quietly.

Tentatively, I reached across and laid my hand lightly on hers. ‘Then we must do it again.’

‘I’d love to.’

As the sun continued to lift above the horizon, so did my spirits. Here it seemed was the dawn of a promising new day.

W
hen Crystal and Eric returned from their trip to Venice, I was immediately asked about the Richardsons. No surprise there. I’d sensed Crystal had been worried about the foaling and probably wondered whether I’d be up to the job. But then maybe that was just paranoia on my part. What was surprising was the warmth with which she responded to the fact that I’d delivered the foal by epidural.

‘Let’s hope George and Hilary appreciated what you did for them,’ she said, eyeing her husband. ‘Some people have been known to get on the wrong side of them all too easily.’

Eric reddened.

‘I’ll go and see what appointments Beryl’s lined up for me,’ he muttered and shot out of the office.

Crystal shook her head, causing her copper curls to tremble as if each coil was charged with electricity. How I’d love to run my fingers through them and be shocked. I was given one of her dazzling smiles. Oh, those cornflower-blue eyes. Yes, she was still my Julie Andrews. And yes, I could still skip for miles through meadows similarly flecked with cornflower blue, clasping that dainty hand with the gold bangle at the wrist. Providing she could keep up with me, of course. After all, she must be a good 20 years older than me. That, actually, was the worrying thing. Not whether she could keep up with me, but why I, a 25 year old, should feel drawn to this older woman with all the Julie Andrews connotations. Well, as mentioned previously, my mum could have something to do with it. You see, over the years she’d been heavily involved in the Light Operatic Society down in Bournemouth where she and Dad had been living for about 20 years. Early on, when I was still a young teenager, she understudied for the lead in a local production of
The Sound of Music
. Yes, you’ve guessed it. Maria. I got roped in to help her rehearse her lines over and over again. Until I almost knew them off by heart. And of course there were the songs. Day-in, day-out, Dad and I were bombarded with snatches of the melodies being sung over the washing-up, often with the soundtrack on our old Dansette record player blasting out from the living room. So I sort of got brainwashed. Over the years,
The Sound of Music
has laid buried in my psyche. Locked away until Crystal Sharpe turned the key and Maria emerged once more. A bit creepy. A bit sinister. But at least I didn’t have the hots for Christopher Plummer.

‘Paul. You all right?’

‘Er, yes … sorry. Miles away.’ In Austria actually … with the von Trapp family … but all too complicated to explain. Whatever, it seems I’d struck the right note with how I’d coped with the Richardsons. Either that or Crystal’s holiday had put her in a particularly generous mood, for suddenly the practice cottage – the one over in Ashton – was going to be at my disposal at the end of July.

‘The tenancy finished then anyway,’ said Beryl when I told her. ‘So they’d want to make sure they got you in there as quickly as possible.’

Thanks, Beryl. You make a guy feel really good. She was standing in the doorway leading to the back garden having what she termed her ‘in between’ smokes, cigarette in her right hand, with her left hand palm up, to catch the ash. Dreadful habit. But no one, it seemed, had been able to persuade her to stop smoking.

‘Been doing it for 50 years and what harm has it done me?’ she’d croaked when challenged, glaring out from a face full of wrinkles that would have done a prune proud.

She dragged on her cigarette and gazed out at the tired back lawn, worn from dog exercising, bare in patches from urine scald.

‘You know, Mrs Paget will be sorry to lose you,’ she confided. ‘Cynthia’s been a lonely woman since Henry walked out on her. Though she’s got Chico, of course.’

Ah, yes … Chico. The ankle-biting chihuahua.

‘But it’s not the same,’ she added, giving me a funny, one-eyed stare, ‘if you know what I mean.’

To judge from the look Mrs Paget had given me when she’d caught me in my boxer shorts, I knew exactly what Beryl meant.

‘She thinks a lot of you.’

I’m sure she did – especially out of my boxers. ‘She let me have some freezer space,’ I said for want of something to say.

Beryl’ s good eye widened. ‘Did she indeed? Then you were honoured.’ She stepped on to the patio and tipped the ash in her palm over a wilting clump of lavender before stepping back in. ‘Still, you’ll have all the freezer space you’ll need over at Willow Wren. Especially if you’re going to be on your own.’ I was subjected to another glassy stare.

There. I knew it. She was fishing. In my first few days at Prospect House, I’d told her I had a girlfriend in London – Sarah. I went up to see her a couple of times on my days off but she was never keen to come down to Westcott-on-Sea. Maybe she thought it too fuddy-duddy for her. Not surprising, since despite it being 2004, the town did have a mid Fifties feel about it with its sprawl of bungalows and retirement homes. Whatever – absence, in this case, made the heart grow weaker and we gradually drifted apart with vague promises to keep in touch.

That was before the dawn of my relationship with Lucy, that magical moment on the Downs. We’d been discreet since, making sure nothing affected our working relationship. But people weren’t daft – Beryl and Mandy, in particular, would have caught me looking at Lucy with a love-sick puppy dog expression on my face. And I’m sure the old tom-toms would have been beating between Mrs Paget and Beryl, telling her of Lucy’s visits to my lodgings. Originally, I had intended to ask Sarah down to share the practice cottage with me, assuming that we’d still be together. In the event, I found myself asking Lucy. There was no hesitation. ‘I’d love to,’ she’d said.

It did mean some reorganising of rotas for night duty, but Mandy was surprisingly co-operative. Probably glad to get Lucy out of Prospect House. The two of them sharing the flat above the practice must have had its problems … especially as they didn’t seem to get on particularly well.

‘Mustn’t upset the nesting love birds,’ she said. Sarcasm? Envy? There was a touch of something in the way she said it. But those damson eyes of hers gave nothing away.

It was decided Lucy would keep her room in the flat over Prospect House and stay there when it was her turn to take the phone at nights. Crystal and Eric didn’t seem too bothered at us hitching up.

There was just the one moment, during a lapse of restraint, when Lucy was in the dispensary counting out some antibiotic pills for a patient and I was hunting for a can of flea spray, that the narrow confine of the dispensary proved too much for me as I squeezed past her; I found myself giving her a kiss at the moment Eric bounced in for some worm tablets. He grabbed a packet and backed out, muttering about a castration that ought to be done.

Willow Wren was a nineteenth-century farm labourer’s cottage, the end of a terrace of three, the other two having been made into one. It was next to what had been the village pond, surrounded by willows, hence its name. The pond had been filled in during the Seventies and was now a cul-de-sac of houses dating from that period. The cottage still boasted a tall flint wall running down the length of a narrow back garden which, when we arrived, was a riot of brambles and overgrown shrubs. Clearly, the previous tenants hadn’t like gardening.

The cottage itself was sweet – whitewashed, red-tiled, a cat slide roof running down over the kitchen at the back. Inside, the wall between the two main rooms had been removed to make one large reception area, beamed with roughly hewn timbers and sporting a large, brick-faced open fireplace with a honey-coloured, oak bressumer. Up a steep flight of stairs there was a tiny landing with two doors leading off; one into a front bedroom with an uneven floor and sloping ceiling, the other through into a second bedroom off which was a bathroom with timbered walls and a view across the garden and beyond to the Downs. Very picturesque. I felt privileged to have been given this; all the more so as I had a pretty girl to live there with me. What more could I ask for? In the event, there was going to be lots more. As I soon found out.

It was as we were picking our way through the jungle of the back garden that we discovered, lurking under a welter of overgrown ramblers, a row of small aviaries backing on to the flint wall. There were three nesting sheds and four out-of-door flights; and considering the state of the rest of the garden, they were all in remarkably good condition with no holes in their mesh.

‘Hey, this is some find,’ said Lucy, gleefully. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

I caught her arm and swung her round to face me. Her eyes sparkled like dew on young acorns; the freckles on her nose danced.

‘Now what’s this all about?’ I said drawing her close.

Her lips drew back in a wide grin.

‘Come on. Out with it,’ I added.