Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [22]
It must have been a couple of months later when Eric and I were again over at the Woolpack after yet another hectic Friday evening surgery.
Bernie was quick to apologise as Eric ordered a couple of lagers. ‘Sorry. We’ve let things slip a bit,’ he confessed. ‘Being summer and all that … we’re just so busy.’
‘What was that all about?’ queried Eric as we settled at a table.
‘See for yourself,’ I replied as Peggy waddled into view from behind the bar and came over to Eric with the usual lop-sided grin on her face.
‘Hello, Fatso,’ he said reaching down to give her ears a tickle.
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘She’s supposed to have been on a diet and lost weight.’
‘Fighting a losing battle, I’d say.’
Peggy shuffled off in search of customers willing to hand over a crisp or peanut in return for a sloppy grin of thanks. There were plenty on hand. I watched as another mouthful of calories was swallowed.
‘You need a new strategy,’ added Eric, downing his lager. ‘Let’s give it some thought. Drink up and I’ll get another round in.’
By the time we’d finished our second pint we’d come up with a plan – a good plan. Excellent. Guaranteed to fight the flab. By our third pint we decided we’d write it up in the Veterinary Record. A stunning study, well researched. By our fourth, a doctorate in obesity was ours for the taking. Atkins Diet? Eat your heart out.
I made the mistake of mentioning the plan Eric and I had concocted to Mandy the next morning.
‘I can’t see it working, myself,’ she said, her pinched lips and cold manner far more effective in sobering me up than the Alka-Seltzers I’d taken first thing.
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ she echoed with a dismissive sniff.
Lucy, who had been folding vetbeds at the back of the ward room, intervened. ‘Surely it would be worth a try. If it didn’t work … well … nothing’s lost.’
I saw Mandy check herself. ‘It’s not for me to say, of course,’ she finally said, her eyes flicking from me to Lucy. If looks could kill, Lucy would have instantly become dead meat. Not for the first time I felt the tension between them.
She promptly contradicted what she’d just said by adding, ‘But there’s better things we could do with our time.’ Her plum-coloured eyes continued to bore into Lucy as if trying to goad her into a rebuke. She glanced across at the stack of feed bowls waiting to be washed. The inference was obvious. I saw Lucy redden and her freckled nose twitch.
‘I actually agree with Lucy,’ I decided to say and watched – with delight, I must confess – at how rapidly Mandy’s face went pale, save for two hectic blotches on each cheek. Now, now, Paul. Naughty boy … you should stay out of all this. But I felt the plan Eric and I had formulated the evening before had some merit – it had not been just the drink talking – and so was grateful of Lucy’s support.
In fact, thanks to her, the plan actually swung into action.
She volunteered to find out the calorie content of anything that Peggy was likely to be offered as titbits in the pub and, within 24 hours, had come up with a list of the calories in a crisp, peanut, a chip, a variety of chocolate bars and portions of sandwiches and pasties.
‘It’s a bit hit and miss,’ she confessed.
‘That’s not a problem,’ I said. ‘It’s just to give people a guide.’
When I gave Bernie the list his raised eyebrows said it all. He handed it to Brenda. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I suppose it’s worth a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ Except more pounds on Peggy, I thought.
So we went ahead. Anyone caught giving Peggy a titbit had to put a calorie fine in a charity box displayed prominently in the bar. The amount of the fine was proportional to the estimated number of calories in the titbit.
Bernie told me later that one teenager, his tongue loosened by too many alcopops, asked whether the slim-in was for Peggy or Brenda and nearly got a pasty in his face as a result. ‘And he wasn’t the first to crack that joke,’ Bernie said. ‘Brenda’s getting quite touchy about it all.’
As co-instigator