Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [13]
Even so, getting back in time to use the kitchen in the evenings proved impossible. People came home from work to find a sick pet and would phone though asking to be seen. So consultations often ran past the allotted close of 6.00pm. I’d stagger back to Mrs Paget’s kitchen with barely time to throw a chilli con carne for one in the microwave.
It clearly concerned Mrs Paget. ‘My dear … I’ve been giving this some thought,’ she declared, wandering into the kitchen, ashtray in one hand, cigarette in the other, to stand watching me bolt down that evening’s ready meal – a fisherman’s pie through which I was trawling to find a flake or two of fish. ‘I can’t bear the thought of you having to rush back every evening. It must be so stressful for you. I’d like to help out.’
Help? That sounded promising. A little home cooking maybe? A nice shepherd’s pie with fresh vegetables from the garden waiting for me when I returned after a long and exhausting surgery?
‘Yes,’ she continued, dragging on her cigarette and exhaling sharply, ‘I’ve decided to extend your permitted time in the kitchen to 7.30pm.’
Oh wow. Lady Luck (Mrs Paget) has smiled (leered wantonly) on me. Perhaps when Beryl had talked about luck she’d sensed I needed more than being offered an extra half hour in a divorcee’s kitchen to give me a boost.
Her idea of getting lucky by having a black cat cross my path was way off course. But then she didn’t know that the path I found myself treading later that morning was going to be such an overgrown one, looping through a tangle of brambles, waist high with nettles.
‘Have you spotted him yet?’ trumpeted Major Fitzherbert from the safety of a much easier path – the paved one bordering his garden.
‘No. Not yet,’ I called back, swearing under my breath as a briar scratched a neat line of blood across the back of my right hand while another snagged my right sock. This can’t be happening, surely? I thought. Me, a professional person, floundering through a sea of thorns. Certainly, Crystal or Eric wouldn’t have allowed themselves to get in such a situation.
‘He’s in there somewhere, the little bounder,’ boomed the Major, his stick pounding defiantly on the paving stones.
I continued to edge my way further into the thicket, my back bending more and more with each step I took.
‘Keep going, there’s a good chap. Flush him out,’ ordered the Major.
I stooped lower, pushed forward a few more inches, arms clawing the brambles apart. This was getting ridiculous. Any minute now I’d be on my hands and knees pleading ‘Puss … Pu-u-uss … ’ which was nonsense when I understood from Major Fitzherbert that the cat in question was a rather large black tom indisposed to human companionship.
‘You mean “wild”,’ I’d said when the Major first informed me.
‘In the true sense of the word,’ he stated, his voice ringing with pride. ‘Fine fellow. Independent sort. Won’t let anyone near him.’
Then why in hell’s name was I attempting to lure the cat out of the wilderness of gorse and brambles that bordered Major Fitzherbert’s garden? But that, it seemed, was the Major for you. From the moment I met him, I felt compelled to obey his command. He was tall, solid and, apart from the white hair that swept back from a high, furrowed forehead, 65 years of living had done little to crumple the firm set of the jaw, the deep authoritative voice and the hooded, almost translucent, light-blue eyes. It was those eyes, with their penetrating, unblinking stare, that dared me to defy his order to drop my black bag and scurry into the thicket like a rabbit bolting down a burrow.
‘I think I saw him then,’ the Major barked again. ‘Over to your left a bit.’
I shuffled round only to be confronted by an impenetrable barrier of gorse, a blanket of yellow blooms producing a warm pungent smell reminiscent of coconuts. ‘No way through,’ I yelled back.
‘Nonsense!’
Over the riot of brambles, I could see the Major’s stick waving backwards and forwards. ‘Go on, man. Push through. Push.’
The Major might have been used to commanding a battalion of men to make the final push through