Chapter XXI A Visit to the Vets

 

 

“Meena, you’re joking!” I yelled in disbelief.

“No, she rang me more than an hour ago. She wanted to see you and to apologize to you personally.”

“Apologize!?” I could not imagine proud arrogant Melanie Sheldrake apologizing to anyone, least of all to me. In any case I had no wish to see her apologizing. In fact, I had no wish to see her at all.

“Meena. We’ll give that a miss. If she wants to apologize she can do so to her bloody animals. She can cut them up, disembowel them, feed them drugs and fags and then she can apologize to them.”

“Oh, grow up, Peter,” Meena got angry. That of itself was a rare sight. Meena was normally a quiet mouse who endured her frustrations and humiliations either in silence or in a screeching whine. Yet suddenly, in the last 5 days, she had matured and come out of her shell. Now if she wanted to be angry, she got angry. Simple as that. And she was angry now.

“I thought you were a man, Peter. Yet you can’t face a single female and accept her apology. Shame on you.”

“I have no wish for her mind-numbing so-called apologies. She can go to hell.”

Meena’s voice took on a more reasonable tone. “Peter, this Pinkerton Plaza issue is tearing us apart. People are taking sides and mounting the barricades. Frankly, I am not sure we are behind the right barricade. The people in the pub were not the people I was hoping to stand with. You’ve got to talk it through with someone who knows the issues and sees the other side.”

“The other side?” I snorted angrily. “What other side? The bigoted racists? You saw their leaflet. The miserable old fogies like Wheeler who are against all change and want to live for ever next to a derelict industrial site? A site that drags down the quality of our environment? Not to mention our Council Tax base? Meena, you were magnificent tonight. Why do you want to draw back, now?”

“Yes we won that battle. You laid the plans, Peter, and despite all the upsets the plans worked well. Yet in our celebratory drink I watched these characters and thought, where are our people? Where are the people we are supposed to protect from the shark developers? Where are the people who will vote for us at the next election?”

“Meena, don’t bottle out. These planning giants always take time and effort. It’s always a long journey”.

“But a journey in the right direction? Look at Owen Draycott. Look at Chris Finneston. You yourself seem to suspect Finneston of playing a double game. Perhaps just listening to Melanie Sheldrake will set your mind straight. Hear an alternative voice. And she does want to apologize to you.”

“I don’t want any of her sackcloth and ashes. Any of her hysterics. Any of her views on this development. I’m not putting a foot inside her door.”

The cab pulled up outside a veterinary clinic. It was a corner shop near the end of a ribbon development of shops. Around the corner was one of those long residential roads with Edwardian terrace houses. Above the shop was a sign reading “Hardington, Sheldrake and Noyes – Veterinary Surgeons”. Underneath was a notice announcing that the clinic handled domestic and exotic animals. Above the shop front of the clinic was a residential flat. A light could be seen through the curtained windows. I could not tell from here if the flat was part of the clinic or approached as a separate unit from the rear.

The clinic was of course closed at this hour but the light from a back room was filtering through and betrayed the presence of an animal more exotic and more toxic than any that would normally be handled here.

As the cab stopped, there was silence. Meena was waiting for me to step out of the car. I sat there in stubborn silence too. Two can play at this game.

“Well?” she said in the end.

“I’m not getting out, Meena. I’m staying in the cab. I’m tired and I want to go home.”

“You coward,” she sneered at me.

“Suit yourself,” I responded.

There was a further silence. Meena was not going to give up that easily.

She put her arms around my neck and gave me a hug. “So, my brave little lover is frightened of a woman after all. And I thought that I was with a man. Look, Peter, I’m going in because I promised to see her anyway for a minute. Just follow me in. You don’t have to say anything in there, or do anything. I promise.”

“I’m staying here.”

“Please yourself. But you diminish yourself in my eyes. I shall go in now for a couple of minutes. Have a think and then follow. I’ll make sure the front door is not locked. If you don’t go in, then sit here and wait. I still want this cab afterwards. Remember if you don’t go in then morally Melanie has won. You backed out.”

Then she turned to the driver. “Cabbie”

“Yes, Madame?”

“Please wait here for me,” she said to him. She was now ignoring me completely like I was so much air. “I won’t be long. A couple of minutes may be.”

“Yes, Madame.”

She got out of the cab, walked up majestically to the clinic entrance and rang the bell.

After a minute, a figure in some sort of white coat let her in. They both disappeared. All was silent.

I sat in silence at the back of the cab. The driver was uncharacteristically silent too. I was determined to brazen this out.

Yet I had to confess I was curious. And my curiosity was growing with each moment of silence. What on earth was Melanie Sheldrake planning? How had she won round Meena to this? There was a strange bond between the two women even though they were miles apart in character and in their strong political beliefs. Yes, I know. Opposites attract. But this should have been the unstoppable missile hurtling at the unbreakable wall. Perhaps that would have to be my role.

The minutes ticked away. The silence continued. The mighty titans – Intransigence and Curiosity – were still locked in deadly conflict inside me.

Finally, after nearly 5 minutes sitting in the dark, something had to give. It was the driver’s patience. “Will they be long, Sir? Do you think, Sir?”

“I’ve no idea. You know. Women!”

“Know what you mean Sir. Sometimes they don’t know what they want. And sometimes they’re so sure of what they want they expect us to leap in and guess their intentions. Mind you I often stop here for people with sick pets. It’s a successful practice, Sir. Very popular. Dr Hardington has been here for at least 30 years. He’s near retirement now. He treated my dogs. And my kid’s hamster. Used to deal with the usual domestic animals. Cats and dogs and tortoises and rabbits.”

“But it says exotic animals,” I commented.

“That’s new, that came with his junior partners. He took them in about 5 years ago so they can take over the business when he retires. Miss Sheldrake is the one. She treats snakes and pet baby crocodiles as well as the usual animals. I know, because I bring the clients here. She’s well known too, now she is a Councillor. Opposed to them Ruskis trying to build their drug emporium down Claybury way. Don’t want them here. I’m with her all the way on that.”

It occurred to me that taxi and minicab drivers would have most to gain from such a development knowing how generously Russians tipped. It amused me that his prejudices were blinding him to the obvious commercial advantages from the development of this site. But I was also uncomfortable at how Melanie Sheldrake was obviously a popular name in the area.

I thought that I preferred the earlier silence to this cabbie prattle. But I knew that this was a luxury now denied to me. It was my fault. I had said “You know, women!” I had let the genie out the bottle. There was only one way to put the cork back in.

“Perhaps, I should go and chase them up?” I volunteered.

“Very good, Sir.”

“Please wait.”

“Like the lady said, Sir”.

Reluctantly, I stepped out of the cab. I walked towards the shop entrance, wondering how I should make my entrance. Like a petulant husband chasing up his wife? Like a curious visitor? Like an angry sullen Councillor who had just been assaulted by this woman? Yes, that would be the best one.

I pushed open the door, John Wayne style. The foyer was empty and dark. The gloom was only broken by the light shining through an opaque sliding window behind the receptionist’s desk. I could hear indistinct animated talk and even a peal of laughter. I built myself up into the big brooding silent presence that would break up their little party.                                                                                                                                                                                           

This time I would glide in silently. Like Banquo’s ghost.

I walked towards the door alongside the sliding window. It had the words “Surgery” written on it. I pushed the door and was almost blinded by the bright neon strip light.

The room was white-tiled like a hospital operating theatre and covered on one side with shelves with glass doors full off medicines and various metal implements surmounting a large sink. Another wall was covered with books, some weighty and encyclopaedic in girth; others no more than small pamphlets each with information on various specialized animals. There were pictures of Africa on the wall and charts with cross-sections of dogs, cats and smaller furry animals. In the centre of the room were a couple of chairs set around a large 3 metre long operating table with straps, levers and even a crane contraption above. It was obviously state of the art and looked very new.

The two women were half-standing and half-leaning against the operating table deep in animated conversation when I stepped in. The first thing I noticed was that Melanie Sheldrake had bright red lipstick and bright red hair-band over her auburn hair. Melanie Sheldrake was not particularly a pretty woman but her face, albeit a little pinched at times, could be described as handsome in the way that some women from the horsy set were handsome. She was wearing a long clean white lab-coat that hugged her well contoured body but she had a thin bright red sash tied around the coat and a stethoscope peering out of one pocket. Her legs seemed bare, at least below the knee, but she wore bright red high heel shoes. These again matched the colour of her sash, her lipstick and her hair-band. In fact, I had to admit, she looked quite stunning.

As I came in, they both jumped up and Sheldrake hastily took the stethoscope out of her pocket and placed it around her neck. By force of habit, I suppose. She must have done this every time a new animal was being brought in to her surgery.

This animal that had just come in did not say a word. It took in the scene. It glowered at them, or tried to.

Meena came up to me. “Melanie was just telling me about some of the exotic animals they treat here. Do you know that there is a guy who has a couple of llamas? When they bring them here for their jab they lead the llama in here, place a harness underneath her attached to that 1 ton crane, Melanie gives her a sleeping injection, and then they lift it up and place it on this bed. Then,” she added with the excitement of a primary pupil who had just finished an exciting lesson, “she adjusts the table to whatever height or tilt she needs.”

Meena began pressing buttons and pulling levers while the contraption behind her began to change its shape amid whirring noises, just like a hospital bed. “Then she covers the animal with these safety straps. Some of them are attached directly to the table and others are loose.” She pointed to some leather straps in a metal cupboard attached under the table.

“Very interesting, Meena. Can we go now, please? The cabbie is getting impatient.”

I was pointedly ignoring Melanie Sheldrake. There was no way I would speak to her unless she did apologize to me first and, frankly, I did not want to speak to her anyway even then.

“Melanie was going to lend me a book about chow chows. You remember Ching, don’t you? Then, if you insist, we shall go.”

Melanie had given me a cursory glance when I first came in and then continued to stare at the books on her shelf. A funny way to introduce an apology, I thought. Now she spoke up.

“Actually, Meena, I’ve just remembered. The book is not down here. It’s upstairs in the flat. I’ll fetch it. Come on up. Both of you.” (This was said almost as an after-thought.) “It may take a few minutes to find.”  

She walked through the back door of the surgery. There was a corridor there with hutches and cages of animals being kept overnight and with a staircase running alongside leading up to the flat over the top of the shop. Meena shot me one quick appealing look and followed Melanie up the stairs. I half-followed as far as the staircase. I stood there striking a defiant melodramatic pose with my arm on the bottom rung of the stairway banister. Then realizing that the only living things that could observe my heroic posture were a wizened old tortoise and a neurotic looking parrot and that they were unlikely to applaud, I pocketed my pride and my posture and went up the staircase as well.

There was only one living room upstairs as well as a bathroom and a laundry room, all huddled around the top of the staircase. The door to the living room was half open. I went in. I could hear Melanie explaining to Meena that the flat was lived in by the most junior partner, Tim Noyes, who was now on a 2 week holiday. Consequently, she and Dr Hardington took it in turn to live in the flat just to make sure that the hospitalized animals downstairs had 24 hour supervision. It was only fair that she did this because her work on the Council made it difficult to keep up her professional routine in the clinic during the day. Now that struck a sympathetic note with me. After all my Council work had made me neglect my practice. This dilemma simply went with the territory.

She lived very comfortably in a flat bought her by her father in Winchcombe Green ward where she had all her personal books, her dresses and her sports equipment. Here conditions were very basic and Spartan. Yet she liked her job, she liked her “patients” from the animal world and was more than happy to rough it like this from time to time.

As I watched them Melanie had poured out a Peach Bacardi Breezer from the fridge which she shared with Meena. Meena was sitting in an armchair.

At last Melanie Sheldrake addressed me. It was not a long sentence. In fact, it consisted of two words, one of which was the indefinite article. “A drink?”

I shook my head.

Meena already had the book on Chinese dog breeds in her hand. Melanie Sheldrake sat down on the arm rest of the armchair on which Meena was sitting. Meena motioned me to sit down in the one remaining armchair, which faced hers directly.

“Come on, Peter, I know you,” said Meena. “You would love a whisky. A neat whisky. No ice. I know that you would. Just get him one, Melanie. Don’t ask him. You know what men are like.”

“I know,” grumbled Melanie, getting up from the arm rest to fetch the whisky bottle standing by her bedside cabinet. “You should see the old fuddy duddies and farts in my group,” she said. “Not a single pair of balls between the lot of them. To them I’m just a bit of totty who occasionally cajoles them and tells them off like a good nanny. I have to goad them and chide them. It’s exhausting. They all behave like they have barely finished their potty training. Men!” This last word, pronounced with great finality and with an element of disgust, was accompanied by the thud of a glass of neat whisky being plonked onto the table alongside my armchair.

I looked at the whisky glass with a vague sense of unreality. I did not pick it up. Not yet.

“The cab is still waiting,” I reminded Meena.

“That’s true,” said Meena suddenly. “Let me quickly go down and talk to him.” She seized the book on Chinese dogs and ran downstairs. I could hear her walk through the surgery and then the waiting room. The front door was opened and then shut; next I could hear the steps outside. Melanie got up to peek out of the window overlooking the street outside. I could hear a car door open and then slam shut. Then a car engine revved up. Presently there was the distinct sound of a car driving off. Meena must have let him go.

“OK, Meena has gone,” said Melanie Sheldrake to nobody in particular. She plonked herself back into the armchair. I did not quite understand her. “Meena gone?” I asked incredulously. Had she forgotten I was here?

“We are alone, I think, Councillor Axtell,” Melanie pronounced.

We sat in silence for about a minute as I pieced together the implications of where I was and with whom. I finally reached out for the glass of whisky. She gulped down some of her Breezer. The bright red lipstick stained her glass.

Suddenly this unreal world was pervaded by reality. “But my briefcase is in the taxi!” I blurted out.

“I am sure Meena will look after it, including” and she lowered her tone, “your personal correspondence,” she added with a light sneer.

I remembered my acute embarrassment when she had found my invitation to the Love Boat trip and its obvious references to the sado-masochistic London scene. That only made me angrier.

“You should not have been reading my correspondence,” I snarled at her.

“Oh dear, Councillor. I think we are starting on the wrong foot. I have no intention of quarrelling with you tonight. I have some important things to say and I want us to understand each other clearly. First, can I unreservedly apologize for my behaviour tonight? I had no right to strike you like that. Especially in front of witnesses. No matter how much I must have felt provoked. I am willing to make amends in any way for what I did to you.”

I looked at her in astonishment. After all it was a fairly handsome apology. Probably it was the first time ever that I had looked at her face to face without feeling immediate hostility. She was still dressed in her flimsy white lab-coat with the red sash. The coat reached down to her knees. Her shins and ankles were indeed bare and uncovered. Close inspection made me realize that possibly, under that coat, other parts of her body could be bare too. Certainly this flimsy cover of a lab-coat seemed to cling to the contours of her body as she sat nonchalantly in the armchair looking directly at me.

She was actually eyeballing me, curiously waiting for my response. Her bright red lips were pursed as if she was sizing me up. I wanted to carry on hating her, even to throttle her or beat her. I also badly wanted to kiss those glossy red lips.

I gave her no response, except to drink another sip of whisky.

“Secondly, I need to speak clearly about what I know and have been told on good authority about this huge development over which we are disagreeing. Can I start?”

“Do I really need to hear your views on that, Councillor Sheldrake? I know them already.”

“I see there is still a barrier between us that prevents us having an open dialogue,” she sighed. “Councillor we must remove that barrier.”

I remained silent, waiting.

“Is it true Councillor that you hate me personally?” I was astounded at her directness.

“Hate is too strong a word,” I replied. “But we have, err…, shall we say, strong disagreements. Even,” I could see she was anxiously waiting for my words, “… passionate disagreements.”

“Personality clashes, would you not say, Councillor?”

“Perhaps, yes,” I conceded.

“Well at least, Councillor Axtell, that means that you have a personality, which is more than I could say about most people on the Council.  Don’t you agree?”

This was an unexpected back-handed complement. I could not think of anything to say. I was still in no mood to be complementary to her.

“What I want to discuss with you, we must discuss without anger and animosity. Is there any way we can remove those barriers?”

I remained silent. I looked away. I looked at a copy of Michel Houllebecq’s “Atomized” lying on the table with a leather bookmark stuck half-way through the book. Somehow this erotic philosopher seemed an odd bedside companion for a serious person like her.

“Can we then go back to my previous point?” she said. “I have wronged you. I should not have hit you. I wish to apologize and make amends. How can I do that so that we can clear the air?”

I listened again to this strange plea. “All right, Councillor Sheldrake, I accept your apology.” It was said quickly, mechanically. It sounded hollow. Even to me.

She looked at me carefully. Her bright red lips pursed up again. “I fear that you still don’t accept my apology in the spirit in which it is given. Not really. I see. You are still too sullen, too resentful. Oh yes, you are! Don’t protest. Feelings still a little hurt, are they? The slap perhaps too strong for you?”

Her new taunts infuriated me. Back to the old Sheldrake, I thought. And for a second I had thought she had been mellowing.

“Yes, I fear my apology should be more concrete.”

I was still silent. She was right of course. I still hated her. My acceptance of her apology had only been half-hearted. But what was she driving at?

She squirmed and moved her body into a new position in the armchair. Somehow the top button on her lab-coat had managed to get loose and I was acutely aware of a highly visible cleavage peaking underneath her white coat. She crossed her legs and kicked off her high-heeled shoes. This move still did not reveal much, but I sensed that there was something ready to be revealed at that level too. It was certainly a provocative pose.

“I should think, Councillor, that your private interests or, err…hobbies, would lead you to express your feelings in a more physical way, perhaps. Anger can be transformed into a certain activity. Retribution can be physical and leads to the removal of stress and unnecessary anger.” Pause. “Or so I have read.”

I eyed her carefully, taking in her words as slowly and as deliberately as she had pronounced them herself. She shifted her position yet again and the end of her lab-coat was caught in a fold in her armchair. Consequently, the coat was askew now, revealing her white knee within arm’s reach of my armchair. My hand was on the point of shooting out to touch it. And the top of her coat was dragged sideways too. Her braless peach-like left breast was almost as exposed as the knee. The nipple was just a tantalizing millimetre away from appearing.

I looked at her face again, enigmatic but passionate, her eyes staring directly into mine with a mischievous earnestness, her glossy red lips invitingly open. Then she leaned slowly to the side of her armchair, picked up what looked like a thick leather dog leash and placed it across her lap.

It took me just another few seconds of hesitation. Could she mean…?

My base instincts were taking over. “Yes, Melanie Sheldrake, I suppose that I do want a proper apology.”

“Well, I am ready to give it.”

I had no doubts now about her meaning now. Then I reached across and picked up the dog leash. I looked at her again and found her gaze was still directed at me, expectantly.

Then I heard myself say, “Right, Melanie Sheldrake, downstairs! Get back into that surgery. Now!”

Without any other gesture or hesitation, Melanie put on her high heeled red shoes, stood up and walked out of the door towards the staircase, with the grace of a French aristocrat on her way to the scaffold.