Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [38]
‘It’s her ear,’ gasped Mrs Timms, in between spitting out dog hairs. ‘Blodwyn didn’t see eye to eye with my cousin’s Alsatian.’
While Mandy kept a vice-like grip on the dog’s heaving bulk, I cautiously examined the jagged tear evident in Blodwyn’s left ear.
‘I’m afraid that will need stitching,’ I said as the bull terrier swung round, her lolling tongue spraying me with spittle. ‘Keep holding on,’ I added, looking at a red-faced Mandy. ‘You’re doing a good job.’ It didn’t take a minute to draw up a shot of sedative; and it took just a few more for Blodwyn to become drowsy enough for us to manhandle her down to the prep room where she was given an intravenous injection and the torn ear stitched.
Just as I’d finished tying off the last suture, Beryl poked her head round the door, her hair like a layer of ravens’ wings – all of a flap. ‘Paul,’ she said in a loud whisper, hand to the side of her face, ‘would you be able to see a fish for me?’
I felt like saying, ‘Only if it’s small fry,’ but the look on Beryl’s pinched face suggested I’d be wise not to bait her. I merely shrugged which she took as my acceptance. With another quick squirt of ‘Summer Bouquet’ aimed in my direction, she disappeared back up to reception.
I could have tried ‘It all sounds a bit fishy to me’ on Mandy but she was in no mood for jokes and the shark-eyed look she gave me warned me off.
But it was no joke when, half-an-hour later, the Golden Orfe landed on my consulting table in a large plastic bucket. To my inexperienced eye, it looked like a giant goldfish with dull orange scales, speckled black, and drooping tail and fins, spotted red. It hung motionless in the water, a large gash clearly visible near the base of its tail. Mr Chang, its owner, was a lithe young man who, I understood from Beryl, ran the Kowloon Chinese restaurant in the centre of Westcott.
‘You never know,’ she’d said. ‘If you sort his fish out he might let you have a Chinese on the house.’
Mr Chang was olive-skinned, with narrow, hooded eyes and jet-black hair that stuck up like hedgehog spikes. He extracted a paper napkin edged with red and yellow dragons from his jeans and mopped his face.
‘Velly hot,’ he said.
I agreed.
‘And velly smelly.’ His broad, snub nose twitched.
I nodded again. ‘And the fish?’
‘Velly sick. We have large tank in window. Velly big.’ To emphasise the point, Mr Chang stretched out his arms. ‘Car crash into window. Break glass like so.’ He raised his hand and brought it swiftly down on the table in a karate chop. Water slopped out of the bucket. ‘All fish velly frightened. This fish sliced.’
Sliced? Filleted? Battered? I had a brief mental image of orfe and chips before realising an ‘Ah so …’ had escaped from my lips. I quickly covered my slip of the tongue by saying, ‘Ah so … the fish got cut by a shard of glass.’
Mr Chang’s dark eyes stared intently at me. ‘You put light?’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, completely in the dark. How on earth did you stitch up a fish?
Beryl watched, her one eye agog, as I struggled down to the prep room with the heavy bucket. Sliding it on to the table, I stepped back and bit my lip. Now what? I peered down at the fish as it slowly circled round and round.
Mandy bobbed through. She must have seen me rubbing my chin. ‘You going to anaesthetise it then?’ she said.
‘Er … well … yes …’
‘Crystal uses Alka-Seltzers.’
‘Oh she does, does she?’
‘I’ve got some up in the flat if you want.’
‘Please.’
When she returned, I took the tube from her, unscrewed the cap and tipped three tablets into my palm.
‘Crystal would use four in a bucket that size,’ said Mandy.
I tipped out another tablet.
‘Probably five, thinking about it,’ said Mandy.
Without comment, I tipped out a fifth and tossed