Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) (7 page)

‘OK … ready?’ I said, poised with scalpel in hand like a conductor about to wave his baton.

‘I’m ready,’ said a twin. ‘Are you, Madge?’

‘Yes, Rosie, I am.’

‘We’re ready, vet,’ said Rosie.

A brief smile of reassurance flicked across Lucy’s face. ‘You’ll be fine, Paul,’ she whispered.

I dropped my wrist and the blade plunged deep into Deidre’s hide to slice down the flank and reveal the underlying bed of glistening white connective tissue
criss-crossed
with small, pulsating arteries and the dark red striations of the muscles, some of which twitched involuntarily.

As I sliced deeper, the first of several small arteries was cut. A fine jet of blood sprayed into the air and splattered down my gown, stopped only by a pair of artery forceps clamped to the spurting, severed vessel. I cautiously cut deeper until – with a quiet puff of the vacuum being broken – the abdominal cavity was entered. Enlarging the aperture, I revealed parts of the digestive tract – the grey, glistening, rounded end of the rumen, a sea of small bowel, the dark curve of a kidney – but my main focus was on the massive wall of womb directly in front of me.

It bulged and rippled as the calf inside twisted about.

I took a deep breath, realising it was going to be a mammoth task to get the gravid uterus in line with the incision I’d made and then, holding it still, cut through the uterine wall and extricate the calf. And so it proved. Even with both my arms immersed in Deidre’s abdomen and enfolded round the womb, I could barely lift it to the edge of the wound.

‘Lucy, I think you’d better scrub up and give me a hand here,’ I gasped.

She swiftly did as instructed while I grimly held on to the womb, pushing it out towards me as best I could.

‘Now see where those feet are poking up?’ I nodded at the tent of grey uterine wall I was supporting, level with the gap in the abdominal wall. ‘Put a scalpel through that.’

Lucy reached between my arms and cut where I had indicated. A tiny hind-leg immediately popped out.

‘Rope it quick.’

That done, I took the scalpel from Lucy and enlarged the uterine incision to winkle out the other hind-leg, which she roped as well. The two of us then hauled on the ropes and the steaming body of the calf slithered out of the womb, up and over the edge of the abdominal incision, to collapse in a pile of mucus and membranes in the straw.

‘Rosie, Madge, see to the calf,’ I urged and was pleasantly surprised to see them move with the speed of – not exactly lightning – but with sufficient alacrity to ensure they’d pulled the calf up by its hind-legs and had swung it to and fro to get its airways cleared, and had then been rewarded by a splutter and a cough.

‘It’s a boy,’ said one.

‘So I see, Rosie,’ said the other. ‘A boy.’

‘That’s what I said, Madge.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s a bull calf,’ they chorused at me.

I wasn’t really paying attention as there was a pressing need to get the uterine incision stitched and over-stitched as it was rapidly contracting down now the calf had been removed. Within minutes, it would be a tenth of its size. Lucy held up the cut edges while I sewed, and then assisted as I closed the abdominal wall, drawing the layers of muscle and connective tissue together and running sutures through them. Finally, the skin was pulled across and stitched in place, leaving a long, pink line down Deidre’s flank.

One of the two Stockwells had been rubbing the calf’s coat with a handful of straw while the other waited until I’d finished suturing and dusting the wound with antiseptic powder, and then released Deidre’s halter from the iron ring. The heifer immediately swung round and started to lick and nuzzle her new offspring.

Lucy, with quiet efficiency, packed up all the instruments, clothes and ropes, taking them across the yard to the back of her car.

‘Vet and his young ’un will be needing wash,’ declared a twin.

‘Indeed they will, Madge,’ said Rosie, getting to her feet and stepping back from the calf.

‘Over in kitchen, then,’ said Madge.

Lucy and I cleaned ourselves up with the soap and tepid water provided and, having declined the offer of a cup of coffee – for fear it would take hours to make – we made our way back into the yard accompanied by the Stockwells. Before leaving, we decided to check on the calf.

The sight of a newborn creature starting on its life’s journey never ceases to amaze me, whether a hatched chick flapping its bare wings for the first time, a little froglet swimming or a baby crying with unfocused eyes, waiting to latch on to its mother’s milk. Deidre’s calf was no exception. He seemed to be all legs, gangly, long-limbed, uncoordinated, as he attempted to stand, his rump up in the air, aquiver, only for him to topple forward onto his side. Undeterred, he tried again, heaving himself up, staggering like a boxer coming round from a knock-out blow. This time, despite lurching backwards and forwards and twisting to one side, he remained standing, all four limbs splayed out; and as if to proclaim his achievement, he emitted a gurgly ‘Naaarh’ while Deidre curled her tongue round his head with a reassuring ‘Naaarh’ of her own.

‘Dear old Deidre,’ murmured one twin, looking over the half-door of the barn.

‘She is a dear, yes,’ said the other, gazing in as well. ‘Best if we left her to it.’

‘I think it’s best, Madge,’ said the first, nodding.

‘That’s what I said, Rosie.’

‘I heard you.’

‘It’s fine by you then?’

‘I think it’s best, Madge.’

‘You’ve already said that.’

‘Just agreeing with you.’

‘You think the same then.’

‘I do, Madge.’

‘We think it’s best,’ they chorused, swinging round, as one, to look at me. ‘What do you think?’

Oh dear. Best to say our goodbyes, and we did so with the customary addition of ‘Contact us if you have any worries.’

Hopefully, the Stockwells wouldn’t have any worries. I couldn’t say the same about myself. I drove ahead up the gravel track from the farm and stopped at one side to open the gate and allow Lucy through in her Fiesta. Was I opening the gate to a new future together or, to judge from the lack of acknowledgement as she drove away, just closing the gate firmly on our relationship, in much the same way as I slammed the Stockwells’ gate shut, once I’d driven through it? Hmm … only time would tell.

I
’d first bumped into Lucy last June, on the day I went for an interview at Prospect House – ‘bumped’ in the literal sense of the word.

I’d breezed in that day, surprisingly undaunted by the prospect of the interview, although I was aware that one of the Principals of the practice, Dr Crystal Sharpe, had quite a reputation in the veterinary world as a leading figure in hospital management – in fact, she had been instrumental in turning Prospect House into the country’s first small animal hospital some 26 years earlier; and I already knew from papers she’d had published in the
Veterinary Record
that she had a keen interest in orthopaedics and was on several high-profile committees dealing with issues of animal welfare.

Bounding through the front door, I almost tripped over the young nurse. She was behind it, stooped over a mop, wiping the floor.

‘Whoops, sorry,’ I exclaimed, careering to one side, narrowly missing her. I was aware of hazel eyes, blonde wispy hair, a lock of which had fallen loose across her forehead, and an elfin-like, freckled face which was to jump about in my imagination during the weeks to come.

It was the Richardsons’ foaling that brought us together – difficult, fussy clients of Crystal’s. Lucy had helped out that night, as unflappable and efficient as she was with the Stockwells. After the foaling, we’d driven back over the Downs as dawn had broken, the eastern sky a ribbon of pink. I’d stopped to look across undulating fields slowly being brushed with yellow by the rising sun and, on the coast, the sea had begun to sparkle like a necklace of diamonds being gradually drawn from its black velvet box. We’d sat in companionable silence, absorbing the view until I reached over and tentatively laid my hand on hers. It wasn’t retracted. How different this latest encounter at the Stockwells had been – a blanket of fog … a cold, depressing outlook … the slamming of a gate about to fall apart. It didn’t bode well.

Yet, in the previous six months, we’d got along fine. There had been ups and downs, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted. And during that time, we were very lucky to have the practice cottage, Willow Wren – over the Downs at Ashton – at our disposal. It was the end of a terrace of three 19th-century labourers’ cottages – the other two now converted into one – and had been built by the village pond with its fringe of willows, hence the name. The pond disappeared in the 1970s to be replaced by bland, lookalike, three-bedroom properties which now surrounded the cottage to the east and south, although an original high, flint wall granted a degree of privacy for its long, narrow back garden.

At the front of the property was a tiny square of lawn which you could look out onto from the lounge and the bedroom above it; beyond, through a coppice of spindly silver birches and three towering beech trees, in which there was a large rookery, you could just make out St Mary’s Church, the incumbent of which, Reverend James, was to become a colourful character in our lives.

The cottage itself was whitewashed with a red-tiled roof sloping down to a more recently added kitchen. The two ground-floor rooms had been knocked into one, the original oak beams of the ceilings, still with their chamfered edges, exposed, and the large fireplace, concealed for years behind 1950s and then 1970s-styled fire surrounds, had been uncovered and restored with a new honey-coloured oak bressumer and a facing of old bricks. The kitchen door led onto a small, south-facing patio, a great suntrap sheltered by the wooden panels of next door’s fence. Here we were to enjoy many alfresco meals, but also some moody ones, as our relationship bucked and swayed.

There was a small, raised brick edging to the patio, beyond which a narrow lawn stretched down parallel to the wall, the border between the two a mass of cottage garden-style bulbs, shrubs and plants. It was a delight to get on the Internet and track down the names of the different species and I anticipated the arrival of spring when some of the shrubs would burst into bloom. Little did I realise that, when that time came, my anguished thoughts would be elsewhere, pushing the yellow of forsythia, the sweet smelling pink of daphnia and the striking red of japonica to the furthest recesses of my mind.

What delighted Lucy the most when she first moved in with me – apart from the limitless sex on offer – was the discovery of a row of small aviaries running down the length of the flint wall, partially buried beneath a jungle of rambling roses and brambles.

‘What a find!’ she exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘It’s just what I want …’ a phrase I heard on several occasions in our bedroom, as well.

Within days, she’d trained in the roses and hacked back the brambles; she then set to on restoring the flights, converting them into accommodation for her collection of budgerigars, one rabbit and two guinea pigs.

To this small menagerie was later added Gertie, our Embden goose, given to me to fatten up for Christmas, but becoming a pet when she alerted us to an impending burglary.

Then there were three cats, headed by Queenie, a longhaired, white-and-grey Persian, who reigned over the others, hence her title; and an elderly, sweet-natured, but deaf, Jack Russell called Nelson – the black patch over his left eye accounting for his name, despite Lord Nelson having been blinded in his right eye. His previous owner, an elderly lady who had gone into a residential home, obviously hadn’t been that strong on her history. Perhaps she would have been safer calling him Patch.

Lucy and I had been in Willow Wren just over two months, delighting in its garden and delighting in each other, when Joan and Doug Spencer, our neighbours next door in Mill Cottage, informed us they were selling up.

‘We want to be nearer our daughter over in Gloucestershire,’ Joan explained. ‘And what with the two grandchildren growing up so fast, we felt it best to make the move now.’

‘Wonder who we’ll get as new neighbours?’ pondered Lucy, peeping out of the front window as the ‘For Sale’ board went up next door.

The Spencers had kept themselves very much to themselves and were extremely tolerant of all that went on in our cottage, especially as the partition wall was thin and none too soundproof … as I discovered one weekend when I was attempting to do a patch-up job in the bathroom. The timber-framed dividing wall had plaster infill, layered on laths of wood, and one small section of plaster just above floor level had dropped out. I was on hands and knees, prising out the loose edges, when a strip of exposed wood splintered, and plaster on the Spencers’ side fell away, leaving a gaping hole.

‘Bloody hell,’ I muttered. I’m not sure what it is about peepholes but the very name conjures up an eye voyeuristically peering through, spying on whoever might be on the other side. And I confess I was guilty of being one of those Peeping Toms. I was squinting through the hole just as Joan came into her bathroom, pulled down her knickers and squatted on the loo, inches away from my face. Whoops.

Doug was very understanding about my botched attempt at DIY. ‘That’s the problem with old houses,’ he said cheerfully, as he set to and repaired their damaged side of the partition wall with me watching – from his side not mine. ‘You never know what you’re going to find.’

I agreed wholeheartedly, as I tried to banish the image of his wife with her knickers round her ankles.

It was only a matter of a week or so before their cottage was sold and a speedy completion meant the Spencers moved out in late August.

‘I think you’ll like the new owner,’ said Joan, coming round to say her goodbyes, as the removals van shunted its way out of the hard standing adjacent to their cottage and, with much grating of gears, pushed down through the tunnel of silver birch trees and out past Willow Wren. ‘She’s a widow whose son lives over in Chawcombe. He’s the vicar of St Augustine’s.’