The Village Vet (12 page)

‘They’re lovely, aren’t they, Tessa?’ Wendy says from her perch on an upturned bucket. ‘Diane and I thought we’d keep an eye on them for a while.’

‘I needed to take the weight off my feet,’ says Diane, who’s managed to find an old but serviceable deckchair.

I realise that I’m not sure how to handle the
volunteers
. I don’t want to nag them when they’re here out of the goodness of their hearts, but I can see that it’s going to cost the charity a small fortune in tea and biscuits if they sit around doing nothing all day. Clearly there hasn’t been much grouting going on, and I don’t begrudge Wendy that because I’d rather be with the animals than making the finishing touches to the kitchen tiles too.

I have a lot to learn, I muse, and I’m not sure that I’ve done the right thing, taking the Sanctuary on. It isn’t merely the challenge of dealing with Diane and Wendy, but the contact with Jack, which, so far, has been more than I anticipated. It appears that, whether I like it or not, circumstances are conspiring to push Jack into my path as much as possible, because he’s back at four in the afternoon with the bits and pieces for the ducklings and three traps: wire cages with trip plates that the cats will set off once lured inside with some tasty food as bait, the doors closing behind them.

As Jack arrives, DJ is just going, leaving the cupboard doors on the floor, the kennels unfinished and Buster barking, unhappy at being left on his own.

‘He’ll get used to it, Tess,’ Jack says when I suggest I go and see him. ‘Surely, the more you keep fussing, the more fuss he’ll make.’ He pauses and goes on in a self-mocking tone, ‘That’s my compassion gone out of the window again.’

‘I shouldn’t have judged you the other day,’ I begin.

‘I do my best, within the constraints of the legal frameworks. Sometimes you have to follow the rules. You can’t always follow your heart.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Forget it. I have,’ Jack says with a shrug. ‘I’ll take those traps through to the kennel block.’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ I say, in penance for my recent comments about his commitment to animal welfare. I carry one and Jack takes two and we line them up on the bench under the window in the kitchen. I leave the door open, because all the time that Buster can see us, he isn’t barking.

‘You don’t have to help me,’ Jack says, as I return from fetching a handful of old newspapers from the pile that Mrs Dyer donated as a thank-you for taking in the ducklings, using them to line the base of each trap.

‘The ferals are my responsibility now.’ I gaze out of the window, squinting in the afternoon sun, looking for cats, but find my attention drifting back to Jack and the way his hair curls as it touches the collar of his polo-shirt. I notice the determined set of his jaw, suggesting strength of character, so unlike Nathan’s. ‘What shall we bait them with? Cat food or tuna? I’ve got a couple of tins somewhere in the bungalow.’

‘Cat food?’ Jack raises his eyebrows. ‘Times must be hard.’

‘Tuna,’ I say, relaxing when I realise he’s being funny. He always did like a joke, a play on words, or a gentle teasing. ‘I’ll get some.’ I come back from the bungalow with a tin and a fork. ‘This feels really weird,’ I begin. ‘I swore I’d never speak to you again, yet here we are …’ My voice trails off. I’m not sure I should have said anything.

‘It would be impossible not to speak to each other, considering we’re working together.’ Jack’s voice hardens. ‘If you don’t want to talk, don’t feel obliged. I’d hate to think I was putting you out.’

‘You aren’t,’ I say quickly. ‘I mean, I’m only chatting to you because – well, it would be even weirder not to.’
I
slip my fingers through the mesh of the trap nearest me and touch the trip plate. The door snaps down shut, making me jump even though I was expecting it. It’s Jack’s presence that is making me nervous.

Jack chuckles. ‘Mind your fingers.’

‘I’m not that stupid,’ I say lightly.

‘I know you aren’t,’ he says more seriously. ‘You always were the clever one.’

‘What do you mean?’ The phone starts ringing. As I go to pick up the handset and answer, Jack finishes, ‘At school you were the one who passed all the exams, teacher’s pet, even though you spent all those hours in my bedroom helping me to revise.’

I try to ignore Jack’s reminder of our shared past, concentrating on the person on the phone.

‘What was that?’ Jack asks as I cut the call.

‘There are two blue-tit chicks on their way,’ I say, unable to contain my excitement. The Sanctuary is up and running and the animals are already flocking to us in droves.

‘How are they getting here? Flying?’ Jack says. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t very funny, was it?’

‘It was moderately amusing. With a little more practice, we’ll soon have our own stand-up comedian.’

‘You reckon?’ Jack says, deadpan.

‘Maybe, with quite a lot of practice …’

‘I thought we’d put the traps in the garden behind the bungalow,’ Jack says, changing the subject. ‘The cats come in from the copse to look for food, they smell the irresistible aroma of tuna, and bingo, we’ve got them.’

‘Is it really that simple?’ I ask, picking up one of the baited traps.

‘I hope so,’ he says, bringing the other two. ‘The last
time
I set up traps down on the industrial estate, it took three weeks to catch a single cat.’

As soon as we leave the kennels, Buster starts barking again, his bark turning into a haunting howl that tugs at my heartstrings.

‘How will I be able to leave him like that all night?’ I say aloud.

‘Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Give him a night or so and he’ll be fine.’ When I don’t respond, Jack continues, ‘I’ll buy you some earplugs.’

We place the traps in the flower beds in the garden behind the bungalow, covering each of them with a towel so the cats don’t feel too exposed once they’re inside them, and we wait for a while some distance away to see if anything will happen. But Buster’s barking is enough to put any cat off coming within a mile of the Sanctuary, let alone the garden.

‘I’d better go.’ Jack checks his watch. ‘I’ll be back first thing to check the traps. I’ve spoken to Maz at Otter House and she’s ready and waiting to neuter any cats we catch overnight.’

‘If we catch any.’ I smile ruefully. ‘I’ll have to find a way of shutting Buster up.’

‘Eric,’ says Jack.

‘Nice try,’ I say, ‘but it’s Buster.’

Jack smiles back. ‘I hope you don’t mind me taking the van home for a few days – my Land Rover’s out of action. Shout if you need it.’

‘Okay,’ I reply, suddenly aware of how isolated I am, staying at the Sanctuary.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ Jack says. ‘Goodbye.’

‘’Bye.’ I walk around to the front of the bungalow with him and watch him drive away. I stand there for a while, inhaling the pungent scent of tomcat from the
tub
of begonias beside me and listening to Buster wailing plaintively as if his heart is breaking. Soon I can stand it no more, and I go and let him out of his kennel.

‘Hey, Buster.’ He jumps up, landing his paws on my thighs. With his mouth open wide and tongue hanging out, he looks as if he’s grinning. ‘You can come and spend the evening with me, but you have to sleep out here.’ I don’t know why, but I wonder briefly with whom Jack is spending the evening and with whom he might be sleeping too. Don’t go there, Tessa, I tell myself sternly. It’s none of my business, and I’m not interested either …

Back at the bungalow, I notice Buster is bleeding from one of his front claws where he’s been scraping at the kennel door. I make him stand in some salt water, dry his foot and dress it in a light bandage before sacrificing one of my socks, slipping it over the bandage to keep it clean and securing it with a strip of sticky tape, before Buster and I curl up together on the sofa with a few dog biscuits, a microwave meal for one and a glass of wine, interrupted by the arrival of the baby blue tits.

As with the ducklings, I’m not sure where to put them, so I take them into the bungalow and make them a nest of bathroom tissue in the incubator that someone on the committee has managed to beg, borrow or steal. They’re both tiny and covered with downy feathers. One looks quite well, alert and bright-eyed, while the other is cool to the touch and very depressed. I arrange to feed them their first meal, hunting around in the barn where Talyton Animal Rescue has stored various items of equipment, cages and dishes, and finding three sets of fine tweezers, too rusty to be of any use,
and
a heated pad that doesn’t work. At least the incubator is coming up to an acceptable temperature when I return indoors and search out the set of tweezers I use for plucking my eyebrows into some kind of shape. They will have to do.

I make up a dilute emergency rehydration solution of sugar, salt and water and use a make-up brush to dab it onto the edge of the chicks’ beaks. Although I wasn’t expecting the weaker chick to be interested, both of them drink, and I’m happy to go on to feed them with pieces of tinned cat food. The stronger chick gapes and accepts the food with great enthusiasm, continually gaping for more, while the weaker of the two refuses to open its beak until I stroke the food from the hinge to the tip until it gets a taste for the juice and eventually accepts a few tiny morsels.

Once they’re fed, I cover the incubator to make it dark and leave them overnight in the reception/office. I walk Buster back to the kennels, but he stops outside the door with his tail between his legs and refuses to budge, looking up at me with those big brown eyes of his. How can I resist?

‘Okay,’ I say, glancing towards the kennel block across the car park that’s shrouded in darkness, ‘you’ve won me over. You can stay with me, but don’t tell anyone. It won’t do my credibility as manager any good at all if we’re found out.’ I figure that if I put him back in the morning before breakfast, no one will ever know. Wagging his tail, Buster comes back to the bungalow, making me smile. If I’m honest, I’m doing this as much for me as for him.

My first night at the Sanctuary is very quiet, and rather long and lonely without my parents falling in through the front door in the early hours of the
morning
, or my dad turning up to chat over peanuts and a nightcap. I find myself alert to the unfamiliar sounds of the creaking gate, and the wind in the trees, but at least with Buster here I feel a little safer than I might otherwise. I think he’d soon bark if there was someone, or something, out there, not that I believe in baddies or evil spirits as such. It’s because I was brought up in the pantomime tradition by my mum and dad that I have such a lively imagination for wicked witches, wolves and stepmothers.

The baby birds wake me at dawn the next day with joyful chirrupings. Shifting Buster’s warm weight from my feet, I roll over and pull the duvet over my ears, but I can’t block them out and I start to panic that they might starve if I don’t answer their demands and feed them soon. It seems like a very long time since I put them to bed.

Buster thumps his tail against the duvet, making me smile at my sense of rebellion. My parents wouldn’t let me have a dog, let alone one that slept on the bed. Not that Buster’s mine, I remind myself. He’s under my care until we find him the perfect home.

The baby birds continue to make a fuss, so I drag myself out of bed. I look out of the window onto the car park and find myself face to face with DJ, who’s standing beside his truck. He gives me a small wave and I wave back before making a rapid retreat to grab my dressing gown to throw over my pyjamas. I make a mental note to remember to draw the curtains in future, something I didn’t bother with because I have no immediate neighbours and I assumed I’d be dressed before anyone turned up at the Sanctuary.

‘Do you want to go outside, Buster?’ I ask, but he
stays
where he is, curled up on the end of the bed. ‘You are one lazy dog,’ I tell him. I get dressed, feed the blue tits, grab a piece of toast, drag Buster outside for a walk, feed the blue tits, clean out the ducklings and feed the blue tits again. Unsure how I’m going to keep this schedule up for ten hours, I call Fifi to ask her if anyone is planning to volunteer today because no one has reported for duty yet. ‘I’m on my own with baby birds to feed,’ I tell her.

‘No one said this job would be easy,’ she says.

‘I’m not complaining – they’re very cute. I’m just observing that if I’m feeding blue tits every half an hour, I’m not going to have time to do much else. I’d appreciate some help.’

‘Oh dear, I’m afraid that you’re going to be unlucky today. Diane came to see me last night to have a go about you working at the Sanctuary. I don’t know how on earth she weaselled her way into the office of treasurer when she doesn’t seem able to put two and two together,’ Fifi grumbles.

‘She and Wendy said that you offered me the position without consulting with anyone on the committee,’ I say, wanting to know the truth. ‘I can understand why they’re annoyed if that’s the case.’

‘Tessa, I hope you’re not taking sides. Yes, I admit I didn’t put it to the vote, but I had to move in a hurry because I didn’t want you rushing off to work elsewhere, and you are the perfect candidate.’

‘But not the only one,’ I cut in. ‘Diane mentioned the possibility of giving the job to Jack.’

‘The silly woman! When she was in her teens, she fell off her horse, landing on her head. I don’t think she’s been right since,’ Fifi says. ‘Jack can’t be field officer and manager. You can see for yourself that there’s too
much
work for one person, and you can’t do his job because you haven’t his experience. And anyway, he has somewhere to live. He has his own house in Talyton. It’s you who needs a roof over your head.’