Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [32]
That was before the dawn of my relationship with Lucy, that magical moment on the Downs. We’d been discreet since, making sure nothing affected our working relationship. But people weren’t daft – Beryl and Mandy, in particular, would have caught me looking at Lucy with a love-sick puppy dog expression on my face. And I’m sure the old tom-toms would have been beating between Mrs Paget and Beryl, telling her of Lucy’s visits to my lodgings. Originally, I had intended to ask Sarah down to share the practice cottage with me, assuming that we’d still be together. In the event, I found myself asking Lucy. There was no hesitation. ‘I’d love to,’ she’d said.
It did mean some reorganising of rotas for night duty, but Mandy was surprisingly co-operative. Probably glad to get Lucy out of Prospect House. The two of them sharing the flat above the practice must have had its problems … especially as they didn’t seem to get on particularly well.
‘Mustn’t upset the nesting love birds,’ she said. Sarcasm? Envy? There was a touch of something in the way she said it. But those damson eyes of hers gave nothing away.
It was decided Lucy would keep her room in the flat over Prospect House and stay there when it was her turn to take the phone at nights. Crystal and Eric didn’t seem too bothered at us hitching up.
There was just the one moment, during a lapse of restraint, when Lucy was in the dispensary counting out some antibiotic pills for a patient and I was hunting for a can of flea spray, that the narrow confine of the dispensary proved too much for me as I squeezed past her; I found myself giving her a kiss at the moment Eric bounced in for some worm tablets. He grabbed a packet and backed out, muttering about a castration that ought to be done.
Willow Wren was a nineteenth-century farm labourer’s cottage, the end of a terrace of three, the other two having been made into one. It was next to what had been the village pond, surrounded by willows, hence its name. The pond had been filled in during the Seventies and was now a cul-de-sac of houses dating from that period. The cottage still boasted a tall flint wall running down the length of a narrow back garden which, when we arrived, was a riot of brambles and overgrown shrubs. Clearly, the previous tenants hadn’t like gardening.
The cottage itself was sweet – whitewashed, red-tiled, a cat slide roof running down over the kitchen at the back. Inside, the wall between the two main rooms had been removed to make one large reception area, beamed with roughly hewn timbers and sporting a large, brick-faced open fireplace with a honey-coloured, oak bressumer. Up a steep flight of stairs there was a tiny landing with two doors leading off; one into a front bedroom with an uneven floor and sloping ceiling, the other through into a second bedroom off which was a bathroom with timbered walls and a view across the garden and beyond to the Downs. Very picturesque. I felt privileged to have been given this; all the more so as I had a pretty girl to live there with me. What more could I ask for? In the event, there was going to be lots more. As I soon found out.
It was as we were picking our way through the jungle of the back garden that we discovered, lurking under a welter of overgrown ramblers, a row of small aviaries backing on to the flint wall. There were three nesting sheds and four out-of-door flights; and considering the state of the rest of the garden, they were all in remarkably good condition with no holes in their mesh.
‘Hey, this is some find,’ said Lucy, gleefully. ‘Couldn’t be better.’
I caught her arm and swung her round to face me. Her eyes sparkled like dew on young acorns; the freckles on her nose danced.
‘Now what’s this all about?’ I said drawing her close.
Her lips drew back in a wide grin.
‘Come on. Out with it,’ I added.
‘It’s just these aviaries …’ She hesitated. ‘They’ll be perfect for waifs and strays.’
‘Waifs and strays?’ I echoed uneasily. ‘What do you