Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [54]
When Mandy and Lucy returned, they looked disappointed. Neither had recognised the woman, though Mandy thought she might have seen her in an advert for cat food, but wasn’t sure.
Whatever, this so-called celebrity of Beryl’s was clearly not A-list – more Z by the sound of it. When I went up to reception to meet her, however, the act she put on suggested she thought she was way above the likes of those who advertised cat food, even if it were top quality, came wrapped in silver foil and was fit for a queen.
‘Daaaahling,’ she drawled in a mid-Atlantic accent, an arm flamboyantly flung out to greet me as she strode across reception. ‘If you could see me now I’d be so, so grateful.’
It was so, so very Katherine Hepburn that I half expected her to have a leopard on a lead as the actress did in Bringing Up Baby when co-starring with Cary Grant. Now that would have been something. I could picture the headlines in the Westcott Gazette: YOUNG VET TREATS LEOPARD OF FAMOUS ACTRESS. Not that I considered myself a Cary Grant. More a Carry On – a Sid James sort.
‘I’m Francesca Cavendish,’ the woman was saying. ‘You may have seen something of me on TV.’
A woman on a sofa with a leopard … sorry – a cat … purring round her legs waiting for her to open a pouch of tuna. Yes; maybe I had.
This Francesca Cavendish was certainly theatrical in appearance, though the vibrant clashes of colours and styles made her, to my mind, more a dame of the pantomime rather than the theatre. The crimson, blue and yellow turban, from which a cowlick of blue and grey hair hung across her forehead could have come from Ali Baba; the purple corduroy breeches were very Prince Charming; and the brown leather boots laced to the knees recalled Dick Whittington. It was difficult to place an age on her. Beryl had reckoned on seeing her in Beat the Clock, and I guessed the woman was still trying to do just that: arrest the march of time. Her face was wrinkle-free, no loose chins, the skin drawn taunt over prominent cheek bones as if it had been gathered up in a knot and tied beneath her turban. The porcelain features were given further doll-like attributes by ruby-red lips, the large bottom one of which constantly dropped down, and long, false eyelashes that fluttered like bats’ wings at me.
Beryl had bustled back in and was now tapping details into the computer. Francesca Cavendish gave an address in Belgravia, London. ‘I’m just down here for the summer …’ she explained, pushing back the loop of a blue pashmina shawl that hung from her shoulder, ‘… resting.’
Beryl insisted on having her ‘resting’ address which was a block of flats behind the multi-storey car-park off Westcott’s seafront.
Cat ads finished then, I thought. Now, now, put your claws away, Paul.
‘So you will see me?’
‘I can squeeze you in.’
‘So kind.’ The bats’ wings gave another frenzied flap. ‘I’ll just get the chauffeur to bring my Oscar in then.’
What? An Oscar? Was this actress more talented than I’d imagined? Francesca Cavendish turned and gracefully floated across to the open front door, the ends of her pashmina billowing behind her. Here she paused, hand on her hip, and beckoned. A minute or so later, a man appeared carrying a dog that looked like a small, fluffed-up cushion. It was a bundle of white, silky-haired, from which peered two button-black, red-rimmed eyes. Not quite the Oscar I’d had in mind. I recognised the man as being the taxi driver who’d brought me up from the station for my interview. He looked at me and winked as he handed the dog over to Miss Cavendish.
‘If you’d be so good as to wait in the car, I’m sure this won’t take long,’ she said to him, giving Oscar a kiss on the head as she gathered the dog up in her arms, enfolding him in one end of the shawl.
‘If you’d like to come this way,’ I said, resisting the urge to bow and point down the corridor with bent elbow whilst apologising for the lack of a red carpet.
In the consulting room, Francesca Cavendish billowed to a halt in front of the table and ran a finger along its surface, her bottom