Thomasina. Paul Gallico

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       CHAPTER FIVE

      On Thursday mornings, Mr MacDhui left his house before seven for farm calls in the immediate neighbourhood so as to return in time for his office hours, which were from eleven to one, leaving him the afternoon, if need be, for more distant visits.

      Before departing on this day, he rattled off instructions to Willie Bannock: “I shall be stopping at Birnie Farm to see a case of scour, and Jock Maistock suspects the blackleg amongst his Ayrshires, so see that there is an ampoule or two of vaccine in the bag. I will be testing John Ogilvie’s herd, and I may stop at the Macpherson chicken farm if there is time and relieve the mind of the widow. If I am late getting back, tell the folk to bide.”

      He did not neglect the morning round through his modest animal hospital with the indispensable Willie in his train. On this particular day the veterinary seemed more aware than usual of the irony of this routine, which convenience and necessity had dictated should be almost an imitation if not a burlesque of that in the great hospitals in Edinburgh and Glasgow. There, he knew, each morning, the house surgeon, followed by an interne or two, a matron and a train of nursing sisters, paraded through the wards, inspecting charts, having a thump or a look at a patient, diagnosing, prescribing, dropping a pleasant or cheery word at each bed, dispensing hope and courage along with medicines and leaving the ward behind him brighter, happier and at ease, each human armoured more strongly for his or her fight against injury or illness.

      MacDhui, looking with a mind’s eye turned resentful, could see himself in this healer’s role as he had since he had been a boy, a doctor whose mere presence in the sick room was enough to banish sickness and bar the Angel of Death. Since it had been denied him, he denied in turn the warmth and love which is so much a part of the cure of any ailing mind.

      They were immured in scrupulously clean cages in which paper or straw might be changed by Willie a dozen times a day, properly diagnosed, drugged, bandaged, fed, watered and thereafter ignored by him. Pausing before each cage, he regarded each inmate as a specimen and a problem from whose exhibition of symptoms or reaction to treatment there was further knowledge or experience to be gained. But as fellow creatures, prisoners like himself aboard the same revolving ball of rock, dirt and water, brothers and sisters in one great family of the living, he did not consider them at all.

      They seemed to feel this as he went by and remained quiescent, regarding him with sad or morose eyes, or giving vent to minor-keyed complaints, whines, mews, snuffles.

      They went through the aisles of cages with Mr MacDhui appraising and ordering dosage and treatment as always, to Willie’s intense admiration, for Willie was mortally in awe of this great, red pagan who could cure wee craturs. Nor were there any to be ‘put away’, which came as a great relief to the attendant, for one of his duties was to play the part of executioner when MacDhui decided that an animal was better off dead than alive, a decision from which it appeared nothing could turn him once it had been made.

      It was a job Willie hated, but he never presumed to question the orders of his chief, and with gentleness, chloroform bottle and rag, got the unhappy business over with as quickly as possible and put the remains on the heap out back of the house where he would not have to see them until the day’s end when the incinerator was fired and all waste matter from the hospital burned, including small corpses.

      “Try a larger dose of the No. 4 formula on Mrs Sanderson’s dog and I’ll have another look at it when I return. If that confounded parrot keeps up its abominable noise, you have my permission to wring its neck.”

      He took his bag into which Willie, who knew every ailment at each farm and what was required almost before MacDhui told him, had packed syringes, plungers, enemas, sprays, disinfectants, vaccines, dressings, sutures and needles, gauzes and plasters as well as various stock items against emergencies, went out, climbed into his jeep and drove off.

      Willie waited until he saw him reach the end of Argyll and turn the corner into the High Street before with almost unseemly haste he hurried back to the animal hospital where he was received with a perfect pandemonium of enthusiastic barks, whines, howls, shrieks, squawks, mews and general animal hurrah for a loved human.

      Willie, who just about came up to Mr MacDhui’s shoulder in height, was seventy, and fifty of those years he had devoted to the love and care of animals. MacDhui had inherited him from the man from whom he had bought the practice. Spry and alert, he had a friar’s atoll of white hair about his skull and melting brown eyes that gave away his character and kindness of heart.

      This was The Hour. Dogs stood up frantically on their hind legs inside their cages, pawing and shouting at him, birds shrieked, cats stiffened their tails and rubbed their flanks against the cage doors in anticipation, even the dogs too sick for greater demonstrations managed at least a waving and a thumping of their flags.

      “Now, now –” Willie said, surveying the pandemonium with the most intense satisfaction – “one at a time now, one at a time!” He stopped at the first cage of a fat dachshund who went hysterical in his arms when he took him out, screaming, wriggling, licking his face, singing a passionate obbligato over the general chorus of enthusiasm. “There there, now, Hansi – dinna excite yersel so, or ’twill appear on your chart no less and the doctor will read that I’ve had ye oot for a spell. Ye’ll be awa hame tomorrow or the next day –”

      Thus he went from cage to cage, bestowing love, the secret medicine which surely effected as many cures as the doctor’s drugs, or helped them along. Cats and dogs that were well enough he had out for a hug, or a bit of play, the sick had their ears and bellies rubbed, the parrot his head scratched, the lot of them pampered, petted and spoiled until each had had its turn and been calmed down, when the regular routine of care and medication went forward.

      The morning was misty and the smell of sea salt mingled with coal and peat smoke was in the air from the breakfast fires as Mr MacDhui drove through the streets of grey stone СКАЧАТЬ