Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [112]
‘How’s Liza doing these days?’ I enquired above the hubbub of voices.
‘Sorry, didn’t quite catch that,’ said the vicar, cupping a hand round his left ear.
‘He’s getting a bit hard of hearing,’ confessed Mrs Venables. ‘I blame it on all the ear plugs he keeps shoving in his ears. Bound to cause some blockage.’
‘What’s that, dear?’
‘Mr Mitchell’s asking how Liza is.’
There was a shake of his head.
‘Liza,’ I said louder, leaning closer to him. ‘The cockatoo.’
Reverend Charles visibly flinched. He drew back and, with a trembling hand, snatched up a cheese and pineapple cocktail and popped it quickly in his mouth, snapping the stick between his fingers. Mrs Venables answered for him. ‘Oh, she’s fine, Mr Mitchell. Always in such good voice. Charles wouldn’t part with her for the world,’ she said, turning to him. ‘Would you, dear?’ she bellowed in his ear.
The vicar’s head shook even more violently and he seemed to cross himself. Or maybe he was just scratching his chest.
Eric bounced between clients, sloshing wine into glasses, thrusting peanuts at people, his bald head glowing, his red nose a challenge to any reindeer, Rudolf or otherwise.
Crystal looked divine in a soft suit of muted grey with a filigree of gold round her neck, matching the delicate earrings that hung from those wonderful petite ear lobes of hers. She glided demurely through the gathering, a nod here, a word there, a longer conversation with the Richardsons who handed her a horseshoe-shaped present which she accepted with gracious ease.
I caught Lucy’s eye; the look she threw me was a reminder of the problem we were still saddled with, and it quickly brought me down to earth with a bump. Felled … rather like what happened to the Christmas tree.
During afternoon surgery on Christmas Eve, there was an almighty crash from the waiting room accompanied by the wails of a cat and some frenzied yapping. I rushed through to find the tree had been toppled by a frightened cat trying to scale it and several dogs were scuttling through the pile of needles while a Boxer was cocking his leg against the upturned trunk.
‘Told you it was a bad idea,’ crowed Beryl from her perch in reception. In the mood I was in, that scrawny neck of hers was a sore temptation for being throttled.
With Mandy having already gone off duty, it was Lucy’s restraining hand, dustpan and brush in the other, that calmed me down with a softly whispered ‘Take no notice of her’. Between us, we righted the tree, ignoring the panting and slobbering dogs around us.
Once it was straightened and secured in its bucket, we stood back and looked at each other. Maybe that guy with the bleached, spiked hair had been right; maybe the decorations on this tree were allegorical – standing, as he said, for wounds being healed. Our wounds, the emotional wounds between Lucy and me. The look Lucy gave me suggested he’d been talking a load of rubbish – absolute trash. She was clearly still needled.
By the end of the afternoon’s consultations, I was frazzled. So much for heavenly bells ringing out with glad tidings, the practice phone just wouldn’t stop ringing with problems of neither comfort or joy.
A Mrs Moody brought in a poodle whose top-knot was tied with tinsel and red ribbon. ‘Lulu’s sliced her paw on a broken decoration,’ she said full of Christmas spirit … and gave a little burp to prove the point.
There followed a Jack Russell who had seized the chance to wolf down half-a-dozen chocolate angels and whose innards were now pinging like discordant heavenly harps; and the gas emanating from his rear end you could have put a match to and sent the little chap into orbit.
The last patient was a Persian brought in a cat basket festooned with gold ribbons and a tiny Father Christmas tied to the bars. She’d been caught gnawing at a defrosting turkey and was now being sick.
I wondered what Father Christmas had in store for me the next day – a lame Rudolph with an infected hoof?
‘And you, too,’ sighed Beryl as the last client wished us yet another