Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [111]
‘I’ll leave it to you to work out the best arrangement,’ concluded Crystal tactfully.
With three days to go before Christmas Eve, Lucy still didn’t give any indication of what she was going to do.
‘Haven’t decided,’ she said when I tackled her about it. ‘Anyway, what’s it to you whether I stay at the hospital or not?’
She stormed away before I had the chance to say that it actually mattered a great deal. I couldn’t imagine me spending Christmas alone at Willow Wren and her in a similar situation at Prospect House. Especially now she didn’t have to. It seemed absolute madness … and yet it looked as if it was heading that way.
With two days to go before ‘crunch time’, there was the hospital’s Christmas party to get through. Not being on duty that evening, Lucy had come back to the cottage when evening surgery finished. I almost wished she hadn’t bothered as her mood was so foul.
We both got ready for the party in stony silence. She wore black trousers and a turquoise, halter-neck blouse, her fair hair done up in a chignon and, to me, looked absolutely stunning. I did try to compliment her but merely got a curt ‘Thanks’ in reply. So be it, I thought, as we drove over the Downs to the hospital.
It seemed the party was always held at Prospect House. I had had visions of a slap-up meal at one of the many fine restaurants which this part of West Sussex boasted.
‘No, no …’ Beryl had told me, ‘that wouldn’t be appropriate. Some of the practice’s long-standing clients get invited, you see.’
‘What … for drinks round the operating table? I said.
‘Goodness, no way,’ said Beryl not realising I’d been joking. I imagined it would be off-putting for a client to have nibbles where Tibbles had been castrated. It was drinks in the waiting room instead, the bandaged tree a focus for the small-talk.
‘I think it’s cleverly done,’ enthused a man in velvet jeans, with bleached, spiked hair and a silver cross tangling from his right ear lobe. ‘Very … very … allegoric. I can see how it alludes to pain and suffering … the healing of wounds … the spread of care through the branches of life. Splendid. Very well thought out.’
Not wishing to be lumbered with the likes of him, I quietly moved away.
‘Hello, Mr Mitchell.’ I turned to find George and Hilary Richardson standing behind me.
‘So how’s Clementine?’ I asked, after pleasantries had been exchanged.
‘Oh, she’s in fine fettle,’ said George Richardson, smoothing down each end of his moustache in turn. ‘And the foal’s an absolute poppet.’
‘Actually, we’ve a little something here to remind you of that evening,’ said Hilary, handing me the gift-wrapped parcel she’d been holding. ‘A “thank you” from Clementine.’
When I opened it later, I found I’d been given one of the mare’s old shoes, polished, with ‘Love from Clementine’ painted in gold round the edge. Yes … well.
‘Consider yourself lucky,’ Beryl said. ‘The Richardsons don’t usually part with anything belonging to her.’
The Rymans, too, bore gifts. A pound of sausages for each of us – pork, of course. ‘Miss Piggy’s half-sister,’ Alex informed us cheerily. Beryl promptly dumped hers on me.
With the arrival of Miss Millichip, the Rymans and her had a topic of common interest; and like pigs round a trough, they tucked into the canapés with snorts and snuffles of enthusiasm as the merits of porcine husbandry were chewed over.
Beryl had invited Cynthia Paget who shunted me into a corner of reception and repeatedly poked me with a cocktail stick as she enumerated on the virtues of her new young lodger, down for the pantomime season, starring in Westcott’s production of Aladdin, alongside Francesca Cavendish.
‘He’s been on TV you know,’ Mrs Paget informed me. ‘Played a corpse in an episode of Midsomer Murders, so he tells me. Against stiff opposition for the part, too! Such a sweetie. I’ve allocated all of my freezer space to him. Can you imagine?’
Obviously, the chap had been rubbing Mrs Paget up the right way. Only hope she didn’t eventually get on his wick.
Reverend Charles and his wife also made a brief appearance