Bloodstock & Two Smoking Vets

By Carey Lenehan

Fast paced romance set against the gritty background of a rural English veterinary practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carey Lenehan
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781533732415

Book preview

Kicking Off

Hold him! Malcolm shouted, as the yearling colt reared up, lethal hooves pistons in the air above my head.

You bloody hold him, I growled as the rope burned a fiery trail across my palm stripping two layers of skin from every finger on my right hand.

I dodged a flying foreleg, waving the rope to keep the colt from hooking it, and scuttled back, boot heels skidding on the concrete. The colt grounded with a grunt. Barely pausing to re-align his four hundred kilo bulk he tossed his aristocratic head, wrenching my shoulder like a bungee rope, pounced to one side and lashed out viciously with both hind legs like a footballer aiming a hind flick at goal. There was a splintering crack like a double thunderclap and the X-ray machine, all six feet of it, tottered, wobbled and went over with a monstrous clatter and the crunch of smashed components. Shit. That was going to be expensive.

I darted towards him, slackening the rope which had been taut between us and allowing him the freedom to back up. He reached the wall and stopped, narrow flanks heaving, eyes everywhere, head up, neck ramrod straight, anger and disdain radiating from every sinew.

Easy, easy, easy, I muttered, taking advantage of the momentary lull to move upside and rub his rigid neck. Every vein stood proud and his nostrils were scarlet rings of alarm.

Bloody hell, Kris! Malcolm said amiably, viewing the damaged machine. At his voice the colt danced again, unshod hooves cloppetting on the floor in a tap-dance of nerves. I let him circle around me and grinned, mostly in relief. The X-ray machine was insured. I was not. Rather it than me, you might say.

Guess he felt that then. I tried to keep my tone even but it still came out like criticism of the man standing next to me, nerve-block needle still dangling from his left hand. Approaching forty and still pretty fit for a bloke who could put away a bottle of whisky a day and still get up in the mornings, Malcolm Hedgely, MRCVS, glanced at me, humour inevitably finding its way onto his craggy face.

Guess he did at that! He chuckled but there was a tiny shake in it and his eyes mirrored the relief I felt. He laughed again, louder this time, his sense of the ridiculous returning before anything else. That was Malcolm. Whatever his faults, and they were legion, you could always count on him to laugh off the disasters.

Might as well put him back in his box, he said, probing at the destruction with his foot as if it were a rattlesnake he'd just shot dead. Won’t be able to get a look at that splint today. I’ll call the owner and tell him the bad news. Oh, and don‘t forget to let the supplier know that this piece of shit is going to need... a small repair, and he ambled off back to the office, ditching the bent syringe into the sharps bucket by the door, leaving me alone with the four footed Rio Ferdinand who seemed calmer now that the nasty man with the needles had gone away.

Let’s get you away then, shall we? I guess this means I can have my day off after all! And, for that alone, the colt deserved a rub on the forehead and a minty reward. I rolled back the treatment room door and led him back to the stable yard.

Chapter One

Winding Down

There’s a nasty little wind which slides into Budbury around the start of September, bringing with it the bitter scent of winter. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who smells it. Everyone else just gets on with the drudgery of life, seldom looking up to see what the sky is doing. Me, I watch it all the time and, when those thin skeins of cloud begin to gather overhead and that drifting essence of cold comes to me on a late summer breeze, darkness falls over my mood and the urge to hibernate slips into my mind. I feel my metabolism slowing, my spirits in decline.

I felt it for the first time that morning as I left Russell House Veterinary Surgery, having made calls to source a replacement X-ray machine and ensure the prolonged internment of its enemy combatant. Rio Ferdinand was back in his box and I’d made a hasty escape before anyone found another reason for me to stay. My precious day off had been, unexpectedly, restored and all should have been right with my world. But it wasn’t.

September had turned only five days ago and here was that sharpness on the breeze, stinging at my eyes, needling the hair off my neck and slipping wicked fingers between the buttons of my blouse suggesting, insidiously, that I should have brought a coat. Hardly fair. Summer wasn’t even over for real yet. There would be long, strong days of rich warmth before winter bit down and debilitated me in any serious way. I looked up at the pale, hazy sky and tried not to shiver.

It was early still, only just after 9am. I’d only come in on my day off because no one else but me would handle the idiot horses that broke equipment. Perhaps I should have said no. Maybe if I’d flat refused and stayed in bed we’d still have had an X-ray machine and I wouldn‘t be currently fending off a cloudbank of oncoming gloom but, the thing is, I hadn’t ever really said no to Malcolm. Not this year, not last year... not sometimes, not never... Standing outside the Surgery door with that biting wind snickering around my ears, tugging at my unwisely lightweight clothing, I began to wonder, again, whether it was time I did.

Across the lorry park, the road and two fields, Budbury Hill beckoned me. Walking was good medicine. Sometimes the only medicine. Part of me wanted to creep home to bacon sandwiches and central heating but my best friend, Hugo, the goofiest Great Dane in the world, leered at me from the back of my ancient Volvo Estate, wagging optimistically. Walk first, I decided, then bacon.

I opened the rear passenger door and he bounced out, flapping his considerable jowls, clearly delighted with my capable prioritising. No doubt he’d be up for several slices of bacon later too, if I was of a mind to share.

I couldn’t help smiling, ever warmed by his vast, solid reality. All psychiatrists should be dogs. They listen to all your moans and complaints, never answer you back, hardly ever disagree or criticise and pester you to take exercise until you give in. As therapy goes, that's pretty priceless.

I clicked my fingers to him, crossed the road, chicaned his length through the kissing gate in the hedge on the far side and took the footpath that led up Budbury Hill to the Clump, trying not to mind that it would hurt my almost ex-smoker’s lungs to get there.

At the top the view, as always, was worth it. Wooded hills tumbling away into the misty distance like a rough sea, tops awash with drifts of low cloud constantly patterned by splashes of sunshine in the gaps of blue. From here all you could see of civilisation, couched amongst the trees and fields, was the occasional blink from a sun speared window or the dark, angular smudge of a chimney marking the hidden farms and far flung cottages. Elsewhere, trickling ribbons of country lanes led to tight clusters of houses clinging together like little clumps of flotsam. In many places curls of wood smoke rose from early morning fires. It had been chilly the night before. Dew filmed the foliage with silver and gossamer threaded spider webs were strung with droplets between every blade of grass.

The track split into two here where old meadow merged with older woodland, the left-hand path newly cleared and shingled, the right a continuation of the rough track we had been following. I caught my breath as an excuse to gaze at the view and Hugo mooched, nose in the weeds, waiting for me to decide which way next.

Come on then. I called, when I’d had my fill of looking, and took the rough path, which fitted my mood. At the crown of the hill, still well above where we were, a round stand of ancient oak trees loomed above the beech, hazel, chestnut and pine, a precious diamond of old English woodland that had not yet fallen to the foresters barking chainsaws. That was Budbury Clump.

Locals say that King Charles once hid from the Roundheads up there, climbing into the branches of the largest oak as his puritanical pursuers rode by beneath. I’ve no idea if it was true and, having never had much interest in history, I couldn't have said, one way or the other. Yet on certain days, when the wind blew the noise of traffic from the bypass the other way, when the chatter of leaves was high, there, amidst the pools of shadow and the arcing, shrouded summer branches, you could almost imagine it.

Getting to the heart of the Clump was always a challenge, surrounding scrub dense, crisscrossed by animal tracks that tunnelled through the brambles but were hard going for walkers. Only in amidst the trees did the undergrowth, starved of light and water, die back to leave a cool loam on which one could shake out a blanket, sprawl and hide from reality on the hottest days, gaze up at the sky between the felted arms of the Oaks and imagine oneself a sleeping beauty awaiting a Prince, if only you knew one.

In the summertime, I day-dreamed of taking a lover up there with all the trappings that romance can inspire, principally, champagne and strawberries, but today it was damp, chilly, sexually unappealing, and that scent of winter hung heavy in the air like a poisoned taunt upon the cooling breeze. The thought of getting naked on the dank earth today made me shiver, but my unsatisfied heart still ached for the dream even though I knew that my lover would never climb all the way up there for a shag. He wasn’t the sort to get intimate with the wilderness, preferring the cosy comfort of my bed, mostly, or the convenience of his.

Turning, I looked back down into the valley to where the little toy houses nestled amidst greenery just on the turn to gold. In the valley bottom a ribbon of road cut a narrow swathe of black through the beige and brown backcloth of post-harvest fields. Now and then tiny toy cars twinkled in the sunlight as they bombed back and forth from somewhere to else. I couldn’t hear them from here. The peace was delicious.

The path swung left, circling the hill. I followed it, tracking the dog who tracked the scents old and new left here by strangers and strange dogs. Sometimes the paths were crawling with people but it seemed pretty empty today. At night the woods were haunted by spirited groups of spliff-rolling teenagers - often there were beer bottles, bonfire remnants and torn Rizla packets in the clearings - but during the day the wood was left to the walkers, all shapes, types and sizes of them.

Hugo and I reached a point where a network of tracks greeted us, a multi-juncture of about twelve paths around a large clearing. There were some logs here, strategically abandoned for tired walkers and I plonked my bum down on the one that offered a partial, if interrupted, view of the valley below. Hugo gave a canine shrug of his bony shoulders and ambled off to sniff at the badger setts on the far side of the clearing.

I rolled a cigarette, balancing the pouch on my knees and trying not to let all the papers blow into the brambles. I was banned from smoking in the house, the car, the office, out in town, in the attic or the garden. Six year old daughters, conditioned by anti-smoking propaganda in school, can be very determined. Up here at the Clump, however, in the peaceful mid-morning with all day to change and clean my teeth, was the one place I could still get away with it. Even then I risked the possibility that she might smell it on my hair as she smothered me in hugs at school pick-up time and castigate me for the rest of the afternoon. I sighed to myself as I lit it. These secrets we keep from each other, the guilt that follows, tell me, what is the point?

I could hear someone coming now. Hugo had diverted himself from nasal meandering and now stood four square, feet planted, head raised, and ears to attention. It was his very smartest pose, but he still looked like he was about to say ‘Scoobydoobydooooo’ in a goofy voice. I followed his gaze, listening to the approaching tramp of feet on the path and the familiar, uneven scuffle of dog claws on the gravelled track.

They came round the corner as puffed as each other and, at first, it was difficult to tell who was walking whom. The dog was a fat yellow Labrador - why do people buy those dogs? - whose future certainly included attending an obesity clinic and treatment for hip dysplasia, and the owner was an equally rotund middle-aged lady with wild grey curls, rouged pink cheeks and telltale blue veins on either side of a bulbous nose.

I nodded politely and she smiled, puffed her way to my side and planted her ample, corduroy clad rump on the log two feet away from me.

Hello Kristina. She said with plums in her tone, as usual sounding vaguely disapproving, although I could never work out why.

Hello. Colder today, I remarked and she nodded, looking up at the sky with a frown.

Yes, it is, she said, First time it’s felt like winter, don’t you think?

My heart warmed to her for a moment and I almost forgave her for over-feeding her dog.

Nodding, I agreed,

The wind’s changed all right. I suppose we can say goodbye to the summer.

She looked regretful and I respected her for that, but I’d run out of words and could do no more than look down at my feet, hiding the cigarette in my fingers but betrayed by the healthy ribbons of blue smoke drifting up from between my knees. I wanted to take a large and lusty drag but it was an admission of sin and one person was the same as any other. I didn’t want her to look surprised and say the immortal line. Whose business was it but mine that I was a ‘smoker’, parent or not?

Mrs Brockwell, however, said nothing, watching the dogs do their circular greeting routine, noses attempting to insert themselves into each other’s anal glands, tails stiffly wagging, hackles half raised.

My dog and hers knew each other in passing but any fresh encounter was an opportunity for formality. Lilly was a bitch though and if a domination scuffle were going to ensue it would be she, not my loopy Great Dane eunuch, who would emerge triumphant.

Malcolm still all right to judge the kiddie’s pets on Saturday? Emily Brockwell asked suddenly, as though fishing for conversation, which she probably was. I was outpaced by the lead of her thoughts though. Mine had been somewhere inside a dog’s large intestine.

Oh, uh.... well, I guess, yes, if he said so. Then he’ll have it in the diary, you know....

My voice trailed away, loaded with disinterest. The last thing I wanted to think about was work. She didn’t express surprise at my vagueness. Malcolm was a busy chap and I was just the Vet Nurse he was currently screwing so why should I know what he arranged on his weekends off?

Evidently disappointed in me, she pushed herself off the log with both gnarled hands and clapped her hands together to alert Lilly that she was leaving.

Well, remind him for me dear. Just in case he’s forgotten. She said with a tone that demoted me from vet nurse to secretary in a matter of seconds. I swallowed irritation and forced a glassy smile. Of course I will Mrs Brockwell

It’s always such a lovely event, so important to the community. And so nice of Malcolm to have agreed to judge this year. We always get a big turnout. Seems there are more and more pets every time. She said, with a look that suggested the success might be of her own making. Then,

Will you be bringing yours? Of course he’s rather large for the village hall, hardly a kiddie’s pet really.... but it’s important to show your face, now you’re one of us. She went on. I suppressed a sigh and said,

I hadn’t planned to. Thinking.... I’d rather be dead.... but not saying it. I’m always so busy at the weekend. I said, evasive to the last. I had planned to give it a wide berth. I saw so many people all week, weekends were the only chance I got to be with my daughter. Sometimes that was important too.

She gave me a thin smile, barely showing teeth.

Well, it’ll be a shame not to see you there. And I got the distinct impression she thought I was being thoroughly awkward.

I said, Have a nice day, Mrs Brockwell. automatically. You too dear. She answered, as she stomped towards the downward path, but she didn’t sound as if she really meant it.

I sighed, stubbed the butt of my rollup on the ground, and stood, brushing the damp seat of my jeans. Hugo looked expectant, long tail wagging slowly.

This way! I announced, heading for the top of the Clump. What the hell! I had nothing better to do. Bacon could wait. Malcolm was probably shagging the stand-in on his coffee break and although I loved my Henry, I wasn’t ready to push him around the carpets at home just yet. An hour battling through wet undergrowth might make a pleasant change from housework and the peace at the heart of the Clump would be worth it.

The Pet show uncertainty bugged me the rest the morning. That, and the unwelcome idea my stand-in for the day might be a buxom blonde with pouting lips, just Malcolm's type, drove me crazy. Unable to murder my suspicions whilst trying to convince myself I just needed to check that diary, I found myself wandering up to the Surgery at lunchtime with the Pet Show concern as an excuse, in case anyone asked.

However, when I stepped in through the Surgery door, the girl who looked up from the reception desk, offering me a nervous smile, as if I’d caught her stealing from the petty cash, was someone I'd met several times before. My mood improved tenfold. Anna Remsky was sweet and harmless, definitely not a threat. Malcolm was anything if not predictable. He liked them obvious, oozing sex appeal and dripping with promise. All the more reason to wonder why on earth he and I were even together. Oozy drippiness was definitely not where I lived and, as many clients frequently reminded me, lean and small breasted as I was, I just wasn’t his type.

Oh... Kris, I know it’s your day off but I’m so glad you came in... I needed help with something. said Anna. My spirits sank. Should've stayed at home. That was the problem with temps; they never knew where anything was. Usually one of the Student Nurses covered the odd hour or two, or the occasional morning, but if I was going to be off all day we had to have a qualified Nurse to oversee them as Malcolm didn’t like the ‘kids’ running the place on their own. Pointing out that it was usually the temps that needed looking after only made him grumpy and obstinate. Someone qualified had to be on site.

Sure, Anna. What is it? That buzzing little sense of being essential bloomed in my gut like fungus. Sort of nice but tainted too.

Well, Julia Cannon called about her horse’s eye. She wanted to speak to you or Malcolm but he’s in the no-go area and I can’t reach his mobile. She wouldn’t talk to me at all. She’s called three times. I think she’s a bit cross.

She looked embarrassed and I felt sorry for her. Julia Cannon could be a battle-axe at the best of times. I sighed and looked upside down at the notebook from the public side of the desk. The third call was underlined in red.

Well, where has Malcolm gone then? Pete Foster’s? He was there first thing. He should have left by now. Call Pete to see if he’s still there or what time he left. I’ll go into the Surgery and try to talk Julia down off her ledge. Is that all? She had a look about her that suggested she had a list.

Well.... I hate to ask but... that Husky with the drip... he’s pulled it out again and I can’t get it back. The vein’s blown. Could you give me a hand raising the other one? Everyone’s on lunch. She sounded defensive but I could imagine her struggling alone with the bad- tempered victim of Warfarin poisoning who had been with us for five days and had become practised at turning round enough times in his cage to completely tangle his drip line and rip it out of his foreleg. I entertained ideas of putting Lucy Arbuthnott’s beloved Husky into suspended animation for about a hundred years before nodding at Anna.

Sure. Let me call Julia and then I’ll help you with that.

I went through into the deserted office and noticed with annoyance that someone, probably the final year Student Nurse Jude, had left my desk in a mess, paperwork and client cards scattered and not completed, a half full ashtray shedding papery flakes like flecks of dry skin across the jotter, pens missing, crumpled post-it notes not binned. I quelled annoyance and wrote one for her, sticking it to the front of my in-tray,

...  Jude, clear up this fucking mess or I’ll kill you!!

and picked up the phone.

It took me twenty minutes to placate Julia’s rage at not being called back for, ‘Oh, at least three hours Kristina! Doesn’t Malcolm run an emergency service these days...’.

By the time Anna and I had struggled with a wriggling, pissed-off, giant hairball of a Husky, who did not, under any circumstances, want that nasty needle back in his leg, it was after two o’clock and I was truly sorry I had come.

Spoiled bloody mutt, I hissed under my breath as he raked over-long claws down my chest hard enough to leave a symmetrical set of white welts in my flesh. Both Anna and I were hairy and out of breath by the time we had shovelled him back into his kennel and tied the lead to the bars short enough to permit only the minimum of movement.

He’s well enough to go home tomorrow. I told Anna with relief. Sometimes the long-term inmates could be so rewarding. This one I’d have happily seen leaving in a big black bag after half a day. Not exactly the caring image you wish to project but there you have it. Even Vet Nurses are inhuman sometimes.

We returned to the office, brushing ourselves down and straightening our clothes like a couple of lesbians after a hot session in the drug closet, just as TC came charging in from the stable yard.

TC was Swedish and had some unpronounceable Scandinavian name we could never remember. She didn’t seem to mind our cultural laziness and had adopted the nickname for herself after a year of trying to correct us all.

TC ran the surgery stable yard tucked neatly to the side of the main building. The symmetrical, red-brick square of boxes could support up to fifteen equine victims of mishap and misfortune at any one time. Her ship was a tight one and she marshalled the three permanent staff like a well-drilled crew, minus the whistle but with the whip, as well as managing the constant gaggle of Veterinary hopefuls and starry-eyed schoolies who streamed through the Practice. As Head Nurse and unofficial Practice Manager I outranked TC but I respected her entirely. Rain or shine she’d be up to her eyes in blood, shit and treatment lists. Very few of our sicker patients died in her care and many no-hoper’s went home to be reunited with their, usually, irresponsible owners thanks to her efficient determination.

Right now TC looked harassed, an unusual expression for the ice queen herself. Tall, blonde and blue eyed, she was damned by lumpy thighs and a waist as wide as her shoulders were broad. Consequently, she held no threat to me which meant I was able to like her unreservedly. That apart, TC had a knack for picking up the dumbest blokes in the world. I had never met anyone in my life before quite as stupid as her current loser, a gangly youth called Trev who supported a career of turning up late at the dole office and spending TC’s pittance on games for the Playstation that he always had to download the cheats to solve. Conversation with Trev was virtually impossible. Why d’ya do it TC?, was the question permanently in my mind whenever I had the misfortune to come face to face with Trev.

Ahh, Krees, she said, thank gudness you’re here. Dat big chesnut’s gone down again. Can give me a hand up? Ev’body’s on lunch. in her clipped and strange approximation of my language.

It’s my day off... I wanted to wail.... solve your own bloody problems. But then... I had come in, hadn’t I? What did I expect? Sympathy for having no life?

Sure. I said. That’s what I’m here for!

I was late for the school bell. The gravitational flow of parents was against me as I ran down the tarmac path, Hugo bounding at my heels. Dogs were banned from school premises because some people let them crap where the kids play. The headmaster scowled at me through his office window but I knew he wouldn’t say anything. We had saved his cat’s life after a particularly nasty RTA the year before. Besides, I wouldn’t let my dog do his business...

Hugo! I hissed as he began to make that strange, crouching stance which heralded the deposit of something humungous on the primary school’s finest patch of un-trodden lawn. Hugo cast me a look of abject suffering and I returned it with one that threatened blue-juice. He must have snapped it all back up because he gave a little, embarrassed, wriggle of his hips and followed me with his head lowered in shame and the grass un-christened.

Rounding the main block at a gallop we almost flattened Sassy’s teacher, a prim, middle-aged lady called Betty Morrissey. She had budgies and lots of fish. It always amazed me that people brought fish to the Vets but they did. As if a horse Vet was likely to know what could be wrong with a fish! Malcolm used to dish out tiny quantities of antibiotics to put in the water before sending them home to die. We always laughed about the fish.

Now she dodged Hugo and nodded at me with a thin smile. My Sassy was a good kid in school but the animal hairs on her clothing irritated Betty who was allergic to anything with fur and, as usual, she physically recoiled from me, as though contact might bring on leprosy, and pulled her handbag up to her chest in a, vaguely, defensive gesture. I returned the smile and hurried by with a grunt of apology. There were only one or two parents still in front of the school, chattering while their precious offspring gambolled out of control around them. Sassy’s little face peered anxiously from the bench by the main door. A smile leapt onto it as she saw Hugo first and then clocked me running towards her. She leapt up, grabbing her giant backpack and heaving it as high as her knees which, really, wasn’t very high.

Hey Baby. I said, bending to take it from her, smothering her with kisses and tangling my arms in hers. J’a have a good day? She nodded inside my grasp and wriggled free. Look Mama, I made a horsey. She thrust something at me that resembled six loo-roll inserts tied together with a bit of string and painted brown, smiles all over her small, freckled face.

‘Oh look, I thought, six loo roll inserts tied together and painted brown!’.... But I said,

It’s a beautiful horse, baby. Did you make it for me?

Sassy shook her head making the uneven bunches I had put in her dark hair that morning leap up and down like Arabian horse’s tails, "For Ma’com." She said very seriously. She would be seven in the spring and she still couldn’t pronounce the ‘l’s’ in his name. I stifled the urge to correct her and tried a smile instead.

Oh. Great. I said.

It was 9pm; tea was done and dusted, bath, story and bedtime completed. The cardboard horse had pride of place on top of the TV where Sassy had reverently placed it, knowing Malcolm would see it if he happened to come round whilst she was asleep. Exhausted, I sat down with a cup of coffee and the newspaper I had intended to read that afternoon then, suddenly, realised I had forgotten to check the diary about the Pet Show on Saturday, much less called Malcolm to remind him.

Shit. I said, loudly enough for the dog to raise a worried eyebrow. Then I thought again. Was it really my problem? Tonight? I would be at work by eight in the morning. I could check then. Except that tomorrow was Friday and if Malcolm had not remembered his, probably idle, promise he may have arranged another engagement on Saturday. He had a habit of disappearing on his days off to locations undisclosed. I had a theory that he led a double life and went to work somewhere else on weekends. It was easier than entertaining the obvious. However, the local Fete organisers would take a dim view of a no-show of the judge for the best canary class so I put my coffee cup down, picked up the phone and dialled the Surgery number. At least it served as a distraction from my cigarette craving.

It was late but evening surgery often didn’t finish until after 8pm. He might, just, still be doing his paperwork alone, well, alone with the whisky bottle perhaps.

He picked up on the second ring. Hedgely. He said, and I could hear the sharpness in his tone. He was