Pets in Prospect - Malcolm D. Welshman [7]
Beryl certainly gave me a look every time I arrived for work. I’m not sure whether she disapproved of the gold studs in my ears, the gold necklace or my highlighted hair. Maybe she just thought my Chinos were a little too tight and my short-sleeved shirt a little too shocking pink. Whatever, I was eyeballed daily.
Still, she did try to ease me into the routine at Prospect House. Usually, there were two consulting rooms in use simultaneously. I was allocated the smaller, darker one overlooking the exercise yard. Eric and Crystal used the larger, sunny room overlooking the rose garden. Eric and I did morning and evening consultations, Crystal a smattering of early afternoon ones.
‘Time for her special clients,’ Beryl informed me, ‘when she’s not being requested to visit them, that is. Like Lady Derwent, for instance. She’s specifically asked for Crystal to make a house visit. Her Labradors need their annual boosters.’ To emphasise the point, that morning, she drew a long vermilion nail across the computer screen where ‘Lady Derwent – Warren Place’ had been typed in capitals with ‘CMS’ alongside. ‘But don’t look discouraged, Paul,’ she went on.
Me? Look discouraged? Well, maybe I was looking a little down in the mouth. But hey, come off it, Paul, I’m the new boy. My chance will come one day. Then everyone will sing my praises. Do … re … for me.
‘You may find the next client interesting. A Miss McEwan,’ said Beryl, twisting her head towards me, her heavily painted lips pulling back, their corners disappearing into her cheeks. ‘She’s got a …’
Further words were lost as the reception room door swung open and in sailed a diminutive woman, like an out-of-control kite, her body encased in a tartan cape which billowed from her tiny shoulders and flapped round her booted ankles. ‘Dear me,’ she cried, her voice high-pitched, shrill. ‘It’s blowing a gale out there. Who’d have thought … late June!’ She spun to a halt in the middle of reception, her neck craning from the cape like a jerking pigeon on the lookout for crumbs. Her beady eye caught Beryl’s glassy one. ‘I wonder if someone would be kind enough to fetch Cedric out of the car for me. He’s a bit difficult to manage on my own. It’s the old hands, you see.’
As if to demonstrate, her arms flew out from the folds of the red cape and, palms forward, she waved her hands at shoulder level. Any minute I expected her to burst out into song – ‘My Old Mammy’ perhaps? There seemed to be a full compliment of digits on each hand so I guessed she was talking about a touch of arthritis.
I didn’t wait to find out, leaving Beryl to sort out the situation while I melted back into my dingy consulting room made more dingy by a Virginia creeper growing out-of-control round the window. Still, it helped to block the view of the adjacent exercise yard which, I was to discover, always smelt foul even though constantly being doused down with disinfectant. The malodorous air constantly permeated the room and made clients sniff and eye me suspiciously as soon as they entered.
When Miss McEwan’s records flashed up on the computer screen I scrolled down through her details. OK – she owned a Collie called Ben. He seemed to have a long clinical history. It went on for pages, then abruptly stopped six months ago. Put to sleep with terminal cancer. Oh dear. But then maybe this Cedric I was about to see was his replacement? A sweet new puppy requiring his vaccinations?
I jumped at the sound of metal crashing into the door.
‘Do be careful, dear. You’ll upset Cedric,’ trilled Miss McEwan as Lucy, her face beetroot, wisps of hair floating free from her pony-tail, struggled in, arms wide apart, hands clutching the sides of a large, blue metallic bird cage, covered in a red tartan blanket matching Miss McEwan’s cape.
‘Meet Cedric,’ gasped Lucy. ‘If you need any help just shout.’ She gave me a shy