Pets in a Pickle (30 page)

There was a faint reply from the direction of the dispensary. ‘Coming.’

When Mandy appeared, Crystal ordered her to help carry the anaconda into the operating theatre. I was flabbergasted when she uttered a meek ‘Certainly’, and picked up a length of Sid without batting one of those long, dark eyelashes of hers. And to think she’d been so squeamish about the tree frog and skink. Moreover, she didn’t flinch when Crystal asked her to prise open the snake’s jaw while I was shown how to insert a stomach tube down Sid’s oesophagus and syringe in ten millilitres of liquid paraffin. Not a murmur, not a squeak out of her. I could happily have squeezed a coil of Sid round her neck.

A three-day wait followed. I felt the strain and I’m sure Sid did as well – especially when he passed the heating pad. Within 24 hours, his appetite had returned and a rat had been devoured. Mr Patel was over the moon.

‘And guess what, mate,’ he exclaimed, ‘I tried putting another plug on the heating pad … just on the off-chance.’

‘And …?’

‘It still works.’

Crystal was also pleased at the outcome. ‘You made the right decision not to operate. It would have been risky.’

I squirmed in Sid-like fashion. But when she went on to say there were a couple of interesting cases that had cropped up at the Wildlife Park and would I like to take a look at then with her some time, I almost tied myself in knots.

Beryl cawed with alarm and nearly toppled from her perch when I wrapped my arms round her, gave her a squeeze and told her the news. After all, it was she I had to thank for having pushed the exotics my way.

I
‘m not sure when I was first asked the question, but I’ve a feeling it was soon after I’d started at Prospect House, back in June. Heavens … was that really only six months? Seems aeons ago. And the person who asked it was Mrs Paget. Ah, yes, dear Cynthia Paget – the lady with whom I had lodged. The lady who saw me struggling to cope with the rigours of veterinary practice and offered to help by allowing me extra time in her kitchen – not to mention extra freezer space. She’d asked me to have a look at Chico – that little chihuahua of hers – now dead, a casualty of a road accident. Back then, the only casualty was my heels. If I’d been an angel, the place where I’d have feared to tread most would have been in Mrs Paget’s hallway as I was constantly being nipped there by Chico.

Mrs Paget, in her loose-fitting, pink-quilted housecoat, suggested I examine Chico in her bedroom. ‘He’s much calmer on my bed. It’ll be easier to see what’s up,’ she explained, her housecoat slipping down a few inches. I wasn’t having any of it – well, certainly not from the likes of Mrs Paget. He – and not she – found himself being manhandled in the sitting room where overgrown nails were clipped and the only thing bared were the usual teeth.

‘Had I always wanted to do it?’ she asked as the last nail clawed its way across the carpet.

The question was also asked by Mandy, while I was deep inside a Great Dane bitch trying to locate her reproductive organs.

And the answer? Yes – I’d always wanted to be a vet. Well, at least since I was ten years old.

At that time we lived in Nigeria, my father an army officer. In our large, corrugated, red-roofed bungalow with its sprawling compound, I amassed a large menagerie of pets. No surprise that my favourite book was Gerald Durrell’s
My Family and Other Animals
. I, too, had my animals: a cat called Sooty; three tortoises; some rats; five ducks; several chickens; an African Grey parrot called Polly; a monkey – the species of which I never did find out; and, most treasured of all, Poucher – a Labrador-cross with the sweetest temperament you could ever have wished for.

I’ll never forget the time she went missing. For three days, we lived in fear that she’d been attacked by some wild animal and was lying out in the bush slowly dying. We searched high and low but found no sign of her. She eventually crawled home, her right leg nearly torn off at the thigh. The army doctor saved her, patiently stitching up the muscles, tendons and skin while I stood by and watched, riveted to the spot … fascinated. And, as I nursed her back to health, encouraged her to take her first meal, helped her to limp round the garden, saw in the dark brown eyes the trust she put in me, I knew I couldn’t possibly do anything else with my life other than take the path that beckoned – the path that led to becoming a vet.

Of course, I didn’t put it quite like that to Mrs Paget, otherwise I’d have had her falling at my feet, kissing them as Chico bit them.

But I had achieved my ambition.

So was this it? Rummaging around Cynthia Paget, clipping the nails of her vicious chihuahua? Yes, well … maybe I still had to reach my peak. And to judge from Mrs Paget’s heaving bosom, she clearly hoped I’d have a peek at hers.

One client who’d had ambitions to scale the same heights but had backed down at an early stage was Miss Millichip.

‘Always wanted to be a vet,’ she declared, ‘ever since I was a mere slip of a girl.’

I couldn’t picture Mildred Millichip as a mere slip of anything. But the Laws of Nature being what they are meant that she must have been young … once. Someone must have conceived her; someone must have allowed her into the world; someone must have gathered her up in their arms and loved her. I’m sure someone did. But it was hard to imagine who that someone might have been.

Could she ever have had shiny plaits or a glossy pony-tail, I wondered, gazing now at her wiry, grey straggle of hair like a discarded scouring pad, tied back with an elastic band and a couple of broken-toothed combs? And were those grey eyes ever innocent and trusting as they now stare back at me like two torpedoes ready to fire, echoed by the raft of grey on a protruding upper lip? No one could say she was pretty. Her looks caught your eye rather like a thorn snags your sock.

‘Only, the war intervened,’ she continued.

First or second? I thought.

‘Put a stop to everything. Career, the lot.’ She sliced a set of square-nailed fingers through the air. ‘All got the chop. But we had to do our duty. I was in the tank corps, you know.’

No surprise there. She was built like one.

‘And after the war … well … I landed up here.’

‘At least you’ve got your animals,’ I ventured to say.

Indeed, Miss Millichip had a whole battalion of them, putting my Nigerian menagerie to shame. She lived in a post-war bungalow she shared with a multitude of cats and odd stray dogs; but most of her time was spent in one or other of the many outbuildings which housed the main bulk of her brood.

It was through Beryl – who else? – that I first met her earlier that summer. The receiver was waved at me when I arrived for work one Wednesday morning. Could I visit a Miss Millichip?

‘Ask her to come in.’

Beryl’s eye widened in horror and, hand clasped over the receiver, said in a loud whisper, ‘Not Mildred Millichip. She never comes in.’

I’d been told that practice policy was to encourage appointments rather than visits. So if that was the case … I snatched the phone from Beryl.

‘Mr Mitchell here. I gather you want a visit.’

‘Mr Mitchell … I don’t think I know you.’

‘I’m new here.’

‘Oh, in that case, put me on to Dr Sharpe.’

‘I’m afraid she’s not here.’

‘When will she be back?’

‘When she’s finished her match …’ would have been the truthful reply as it was Crystal’s tennis morning. ‘This afternoon. But she’s booked up with appointments,’ I said.

There was a loud tut. ‘And Mr Sharpe? I doubt if he’s booked up. He’ll have to do, I suppose …’ The tone was distinctly unenthusiastic.

Eric was at the dentist’s. I saw Beryl hold up her hands, rocking them from side to side in unison, while shaking her head and silently mouthing, ‘No! No! No!’ She looked like she was auditioning for
Guys and Dolls
. Clearly, I was in danger of rocking the boat if Eric and Miss Millichip were on board together. ‘He’s unavailable,’ I said. Beryl sat down with relief.

‘You’ll have to do then,’ said Miss Millichip, her voice sounding distinctly disappointed.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘The greyhounds’ got canker.’

‘Well, can’t you bring him in?’

There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘What do you think I am? Some sort of American bus service? It’s my greyhounds … all eight of them.’

That set the tone for a track record of visits. Whenever she phoned demanding one, I’d be trapped into making it. You could bet on it every time.

On that visit, as on subsequent ones, I had problems finding her in the maze of sheds, lean-tos and outhouses that encircled her bungalow. I never discovered her in the house actually sitting, putting her feet up. Her feet were always firmly entrenched in green gumboots, plastered in mud, striding from building to building.

She could be in the kennels housing her greyhounds and beagles or in the stables with her three Welsh ponies. Failing that, there were the hen houses and duck quarters; and, if not in there, then in the pig sties tending to Gert and Daisy, her Yorkshire Saddleback pigs.

Central to this conglomeration of buildings, adjoining the tack room, was a small shed which she called her ‘brain centre’. An office of sorts, it was littered with paper. Charts of pig growth curves hung, faded and lopsided from the walls. A curling, year-at-a-glance calendar given to her by a veterinary drug company, its logo emblazoned across the top, was festooned with multi-coloured pins and scribbled names. Bessie, Babs, Clarence and many more, signalled the dates that bitches were mated, dates they were due, intermingled with farrowing sows, calving cows and dates booked for the farrier and horse dentist. It looked like some coded battle plan from World War II with Miss Millichip the Commander-in-Chief, the only person capable of unscrambling it all.

Along the opposite wall ranged a series of shelves, bowed down under the weight of a motley collection of ancient books and journals:
Hodder’s Guide to Animal Husbandry
was one title I picked out – 1961, second edition. Another was
General Principles of Animal Nursing
. Its sepia pages could have proudly graced the shelves of the Science Museum’s library. But one book above all – a book that Mildred Millichip constantly referred to – was an old veterinary dictionary, long since superseded by later editions. The binding was cracked, pages Sellotaped in, others dog-eared from constant use. And that was the problem – the constant use. Miss Millichip was always quoting this dictionary, always looking up medical conditions, always trying the suggested remedies.

‘My bible,’ she’d say, forgetting her bible was an edition more appropriate for treating the ailments of the animals as they emerged from the ark rather than administering to the needs of modern livestock. The greyhounds with the ear problems were a good example.

‘Canker,’ declared Miss Millichip in a no-nonsense, don’t-challenge-me tone of voice. She’d hoisted one of the greyhounds on to a table in what she called her ‘inspection shed’ where the poor creature sat trembling, head tilted to one side. When the dog’s hind leg came up in an attempt to dig at her ear, Miss Millichip’s hand shot out to ram the leg down.

‘Stop that, Gemima,’ she boomed. Both dog and I flinched.

Besides my usual black bag, I’d brought a small leather case containing a set of instruments for looking at eyes and ears. I was particularly proud of this set – precision-made in Germany, expensive and brand new. Time spent peering unclearly into the murky depths of dogs’ ears was now a thing of the past. With the aid of my gleaming auriscope, I could scan those canals, now sufficiently well illuminated and magnified, to make diagnosis of any ear problem an easy task.

Well, in theory anyway.

Aware that Miss Millichip’s torpedo eyes were trained on me, I made a show of snapping open the case, picking out the auriscope base and clipping on the head containing the bulb and magnifying lens. I now had to attach a cone from a choice of four, varying in size according to the size of the ear canal being examined.

‘Now let’s see,’ I said aloud, ‘which one would be most suitable for Gemima?’ My fingers hovered over the cones. I felt like a little schoolboy deciding on which sweetie to choose. Will I ever grow up?

There was a loud sniff from Miss Millichip.