Chloe. Freya North

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      NINE

      Barbara stamped her hind hoof and positioned her forelegs squarely. She blew through her nostrils and curled her lips ever so slightly so that a noise midway between bellow and screech could hit Morwenna as soon as she shut the car door. When it reached her ears, a feeling of sinking dread coursed through and settled in the pit of her stomach. She looked over at Barbara who stared back icily with a glint most evil to her eyes. Though she opened the boot to double-check, she knew that her car was regrettably biscuit- and vegetable-free. Not a crumb. Not a shred. Not a bean.

      Morwenna decided on polite conversation but it merely served to irritate the goat further. Flattery was the only option left.

      ‘Ho! Barbara! There’s a good little goaty. My, you’re looking pretty, aren’t you?’

      Barbara stamped.

      ‘Listen, I don’t have a thing in these pockets. Very remiss of me. How about I make it up to you? Next time.’

      Barbara intended to ensure that there would not be a next time.

      As Morwenna approached, slightly stooped and with her right hand outstretched making strange tickling movements with her fingers, Barbara began to bob and weave like a boxer at the ringside. With just a few yards between them, Morwenna straightened up and put her hands on her hips.

      ‘You,’ she said, striding assertively towards Barbara, ‘are only a goat.’

      However, she had not reckoned on a goat with a grudge and, when it came to the simultaneous butt–bite–kick, Morwenna was viciously winded. Searching desperately for breath, she sat down with a thump on the damp ground, the meagre winter grass providing little cushioning. Barbara, who had turned her back on her and was defecating triumphantly, bleated with pride. Morwenna pressed her hand lightly to her thigh and winced. Once her breathing had calmed, she picked herself up with care and caution and walked to the car slowly. With as much dignity as she could muster, without looking back.

      ‘It was a goat,’ she mumbled into the neck of her thick jumper. She had rolled down her tights and hitched up her skirt to reveal a whorl of dark crimson and French navy. A splice of dry blood. Her leg trembled slightly but she told herself that this was due to her aversion to disinfectant, to infection, to Trust-me-I’m-a-doctor. It was, in part, also due to this doctor being extremely handsome.

      ‘A goat did this to you, Mrs Saxby?’ he asked quietly as he held her knee and crooked her leg up. His hands were warm, strong and hairless.

      ‘Ms,’ she replied taking her face out of the cavity of her polo-neck, ‘you know, with a zed. And yes, it was a goat.’

      ‘A billy-goat?’

       Ha! Billy’s goat indeed.

      ‘No. A pet goat.’

      ‘Gracious.’

      ‘Not mine.’

      ‘I’m not surprised!’ He laid her leg down gently and pondered into the crook of his index finger. ‘I see from your records that there is no record of tetanus jabs. In fact, we have no record of you at all for the last seven years.’ He looked at her face and saw anxiety sown deep behind defensive eyes. He also noticed their sparkle and felt a long forgotten butterfly take wing in his stomach. He smiled. ‘Either you’ve been as fit as a fiddle or you have an inherent mistrust of the medical profession!’

      Morwenna gave a nervous laugh and then retreated down into the mouth of her jumper.

      ‘We’ll give you a tetanus jab. And the once-over, too.’

      Morwenna sank visibly.

      ‘If it makes you feel any easier, I myself had the once-over just last week,’ the doctor assured her.

      Morwenna wondered why. He looked perfectly fit. He looked, actually, perfectly gorgeous.

      ‘At our age,’ he continued, scanning her notes, ‘it’s as important as servicing the car.’

       I don’t think I’ve ever had the Fiat serviced.

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘I can’t remember when I last had my car serviced,’ mumbled Morwenna.

      ‘Well then,’ he said grinning, ‘let’s hope we don’t find in you what undoubtedly lurks beneath your bonnet!’

      Morwenna looked at him sternly. ‘But the car’s been running fine. It splutters a bit, creaks here and there and can’t cope with cold mornings. Oh my God’ she declared as the metaphor dawned, ‘just like me!’

      ‘And me,’ he rued quite happily.

      ‘But why meddle if there’s no muddle?’

      He tipped back on his chair and observed her thoughtfully, tapping his fingertips together, wondering how to prolong her welcome presence in his surgery.

      ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to know if there’s a muddle before you’re in the middle of it?’

      Morwenna contemplated the doctor through the safety of her jumper which she had kept pulled up to just beneath her nose.

      ‘What’s involved in the once-over anyway?’ she said quickly, through her visor of wool.

      ‘Heart, blood, weight, lungs, breasts – nothing to it really. We’ll do it before we do the jab if you like.’

       I can’t let her go – I must just see if there’s a smile in there.

      Morwenna gazed through the surgery window to the beach. An elderly couple walked a pair of dachshunds and two children were playing energetically; she could hear their delighted laughter through their abandoned movement. Her thigh throbbed and her mind whirled.

      ‘OK,’ she said tentatively, keeping her gaze fixed where it was, ‘but I’ll just go for the jab today. And quick! Before I run away.’ She took her face quite out of her jumper and fixed a not-so-ambiguous smile on the doctor.

      Chloë has been at Skirrid End a month now, and has the saddle sores to prove it. She has also been nipped twice and trodden on often, but not by goats. She has newly defined biceps and firmer thighs as further proof of her new life, for every morning she is mucking out by seven-thirty, and twelve hours later she has bedded down eight horses and replenished twice as many water buckets twice a day. She rather likes the changes that country living has made to her body; her face has lost its pasty Islington tinge and her lungs are glad of the crystal air. Her hands are slightly thicker, her nails stubbier but she keeps them clean and trim and they are not unattractive at all. She has a healthy glow to her cheeks due in part to the crisp weather, and in part to the certain lust she has developed for Carl. Her lips, though, are a little chapped and she has convinced herself that they СКАЧАТЬ