It's a Vet's Life: (2 page)

‘Push, Libs,’ he growls through gritted teeth. ‘You’ve got to bloody well help me out here. Can you give me a time check, Maz? In five minutes. If it hasn’t budged by then, I’m going to have to …’ His voice trails off as he takes another pull, but I know what he was going to say, that he’ll have to cut it up.

I feel sick at the thought of the foal coming out in
pieces
, but if that’s the only way to save the mare … I glance around at the cobwebs and dust in the rafters above, wondering if we could drag the mobile anaesthetic machine in and attempt a Caesarean, but the potential for infection is just too high. Mare or foal? It’s Hobson’s choice and I’m glad I’m not the one having to make it.

It seems however that it’s too late to be thinking about making choices. I have no need to hang on to Liberty any longer. She’s giving up, her eyes dull, her body trembling as she rests her head on the floor. I check my watch, aware of my heart beating in my ears as Liberty strains weakly yet again and Alex curses, and the time ticks by.

‘Alex, we’re on the countdown now, four minutes gone. I’ll go and get the kit,’ I say, afraid that if he doesn’t make a decision soon, he’ll lose both of them.

‘One last go,’ Alex mutters. He slaps Liberty on the flank. ‘Come on, girl. You can do it.’ He takes another grip on the foal’s hind legs, Liberty gives one last heave and the foal slides out along with a gush of bloody fluid. With a grunt of relief, Alex drags the foal right out so it’s lying on the mat alongside the mare. It’s wet and shiny, and still. And the mare is struggling to get up, so I move back worried about George’s safety with three-quarters of a tonne of distressed horse throwing herself around.

George, now quiet, seems struck by the significance of this moment. He watches Liberty stand up, steady herself then look for her baby. She sniffs its back as Alex clears the membranes from the foal’s nostrils. He grabs it around the hindquarters and lifts it with superhuman strength, so its head hangs down and fluid drips out of its nose and mouth. He lies it back
down
again and twists its ear, trying to get it to take its first breath.

‘Please …’ I murmur, remembering to breathe myself. ‘Please be okay.’

Alex rubs and bangs the foal’s chest, but nothing happens. While Liberty licks at the foal’s dark, wet coat, Alex stretches its head and neck out straight, closes its mouth and one nostril with his hands, then bends down and blows into the other. I watch the foal’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall again, but it’s no good if it isn’t breathing for itself.

‘Alex.’ I move around and touch his shoulder. ‘Alex, I think it’s time to stop.’ A lump like a tumour forms in my throat at the thought of losing something we’ve looked forward to for so long, eleven months to be precise. ‘It’s been too long. It isn’t going to make it …’ I tug roughly at his shirt. ‘Alex, you can’t perform miracles.’

He mutters something. I can’t hear the words exactly, but I think he’s suggesting that he can.

Suddenly, the foal coughs. Alex pauses and, keeping watch on its chest, puts his cheek close to the foal’s muzzle. He glances up and a small smile crosses his face. The foal coughs once more, then lifts its head and gazes shakily around the loose box.

Tears of relief prick my eyes. I know my Alex. He can do almost anything he puts his mind to. I should have had more faith.

Immediately, Alex turns his attention to the mare, checking the pulse at her cheek and the colour of her gums. He gives her neck a quick rub, and moves around to look under her tail. Apparently satisfied that there’s no sign of bleeding that might indicate a tear from the rather traumatic birth, he returns to the foal.

‘That was a bit of luck,’ he says, glancing up at me. ‘When they’re coming backwards, I usually give them a fifty-fifty chance, if that. I thought she’d had it.’

‘She?’

Alex lifts one back leg and nods.

‘Yep. It’s a lovely filly this time. Beautiful.’

She’s dark brown, almost black, with bright, intelligent eyes with a white star between them. I’m not sure how Alex can possibly judge her qualities so soon, although I recall he was the same with George, very much the proud father.

‘What now?’ I ask.

‘We’ll let mum and baby get to know each other. The foal should get up and start sucking within the next half-hour or so. We’ll leave the cord to break naturally, and then I’ll treat the navel.’ Alex hesitates as he stands up, rubbing his back. ‘I’m sorry, Maz, I’m talking to you like you’re one of my clients.’

‘I don’t mind. You’ve always done that.’ Chuckling, I step towards him and kiss his cheek. ‘I love it when you come over all masterful …’ Liberty is reaching round to lick at her foal’s coat. ‘What are you going to call her?’

‘Any ideas?’ says Alex.

‘I don’t know – she’s your baby. You decide.’ At least it isn’t like naming a child. An animal isn’t going to have to worry about being teased at school, or being classed as posh or chavvy because of their name.

‘I thought Scheherazade, after the Persian queen.’ Alex reaches out one rather sticky and bloodstained hand as if to take mine.

‘That’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? Just imagine standing in the field and calling for her. It’s a pretty name though …’

‘It will give the commentators something to think about.’

‘When you’re jumping her, you mean? Alex, you’re such a pushy dad.’ It won’t be for ages yet. He won’t start breaking her in to ride until she’s three or four.

‘I’ll call her Shezza for short.’

‘Oh, your mother won’t like that. She’ll say it lowers the tone. Hey, go and get washed first,’ I say, pushing him away. ‘You’re filthy.’

‘You didn’t used to mind,’ he says, grinning.

‘It’s George,’ I say lightly. ‘I don’t want him getting any nasty bugs, do I? I’ve got to go to work tomorrow and the nursery won’t have him if he’s unwell.’

Liberty stands up, leaving the afterbirth behind her. Her foal lifts her head, stretches her front legs out and tries to get up, lunging forwards and nosediving back onto the mat. On her second attempt, she makes it and stands with her legs splayed out, wobbling for a moment before taking her first tentative steps straight for her mother, where she nuzzles at her flank. George chuckles at the sight of the foal falling over. He has a wicked sense of humour.

‘Why couldn’t you have stood on your own two feet that quickly?’ I say to George. He was a lazy baby.

‘He doesn’t have to run away from predators,’ Alex observes. ‘He’s got two parents to watch out for him.’

The foal’s head disappears up between Liberty’s hind legs where she latches on to a teat and starts sucking noisily.

‘She sounds like your father drinking his tea out of the saucer, Alex.’

‘At least we’re not going to have to worry about feeding her. She’s just like George in that way. I’ll check the afterbirth, and then we’ll leave them in
peace
. I’ll pop out again in an hour, or so.’

Alex picks up the afterbirth, the red-grey membrane left of the placenta which supported the foal while it developed in the womb, and lays it out on the floor. It reminds me of one of George’s sleepsuits, a little larger and cut off at the waist, with the feet still on.

‘It’s all here,’ Alex says, meaning there’s none left inside the mare to make her sick. ‘I’m a bit paranoid – I might have seen lots of foalings, but it’s different when it’s your own.’

I let Alex slide his arm around my shoulders and kiss my cheek.

‘I suppose I’d better tell the parents. Mother’s been on edge as usual.’

Alex has always said he thought his mother would have loved him more if he’d been born a horse, I muse, as he looks at me expectantly, and I realise he’s hoping I’ll go, so he can stay with the new mum and foal. He doesn’t really want to leave them just yet.

‘All right, I’ll go,’ I sigh.

‘You couldn’t fetch me a clinical waste bag on the way back, could you?’

‘You’d better give me a clue where to find them,’ I say, amused. Neither Alex nor his father is exactly tidy.

‘They should be in the usual place. There’s a box on the shelf beside the radiator.’

Taking George with me, I head outside, up the steps and into the surgery. I don’t need a key – the door isn’t locked. I hesitate just inside, gazing around the room they call the office which leads on through another door into the consulting room/operating theatre, and a box room which contains a couple of old cages and an awful lot of junk. A fly buzzes frantically from behind the blinds. I open the window and let it out, along with
the
smell of cow and mothballs. I can find the radiator and the shelf beside it, but there’s no box of orange tiger bags. I survey the rest of the chaos.

‘It’s time your daddy and grandfather had a good clear-out,’ I tell George. He wants to get down, but I don’t dare let him. Old Fox-Gifford’s shotgun is out on the desk, lying across Alex’s laptop. The gun’s supposed to be locked up in the cabinet in the house when he isn’t using it, but he prefers to keep it to hand in case he comes across some poor unsuspecting squirrel or magpie, both of which he classes as vermin.

Giving up on ever finding a bag, I take George across the yard to the back door of the Manor, or what Sophia calls the tradesmen’s entrance, from which a pack of dogs come chasing out, whining and barking, as if they’ve never set eyes on us before. When I first met this motley assortment of Labradors and spaniels, my legs turned to jelly, but I know them better now. They are literally all bark and no bite.

‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ I growl at them, in an imitation of my father-in-law to be, and they calm down, milling around my legs and sniffing at George’s feet. I glance down to where one of the spaniels is cocking its leg over a pot of scraggy geraniums. Something white, a letter, among the red blooms catches my eye. I retrieve it very carefully. It’s unopened, marked as being from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and addressed to Alex’s father.

‘The postman must have dropped it,’ I tell George as I lower him to the ground so he can walk. Together, we make our way through the rear lobby, stepping over cast-off shoes and green wellies. It’s cooler inside the house, almost cold, until you reach the kitchen where a wall of hot air hits you.

Alex’s mother, dressed in an ice-blue blouse, grubby cream breeches and flat, lace-up shoes, is taking a kettle off the Aga that makes the room snug in winter and far too warm in summer.

There was a time when I couldn’t imagine having any kind of relationship with Sophia, but now she’s stopped calling me Madge and she looks after George for us one or two days a week, and because we have the Fox-Gifford men in common, we are on warmer terms. I can’t say we’re friends – we’re very different, coming from contrasting backgrounds – but we are both self-reliant and share a love of animals, foxes excepted. Sophia hates foxes with a passion.

I hesitate beside the huge oak table. There are several dog bowls, filled with tripe and biscuits, lined up on it. The stench makes me gag.

‘Hi, Sophia.’

She turns to face me, tall and slim, her face lined and her grey hair stiff with hairspray.

‘Hello, Maz, and darling George. I’m just putting the sugar beet to soak for the horses.’ She tips the water from the kettle into a bucket on the floor. There’s a pan of linseed bubbling over on top of the Aga too. She doesn’t believe in feeding prepared foods. ‘Can’t stop. Everything wants feeding.’

‘That’s a shame. I thought you might like to come and see the new arrival.’

‘Liberty’s had her foal.’ Sophia’s tired face lights up. ‘Oh, why didn’t you say?’

‘We had a bit of a crisis – it was presenting backwards. Alex had to pull it out in rather a hurry.’ I watch her wipe her hands on a raggedy tea towel and fling it down on the table where it lands in the tripe. She leaves it where it falls, and grabs an old coat from
the
pegs on the way out through the lobby, as Old Fox-Gifford comes limping along with his stick from the corridor beyond. He’s wearing a striped shirt with cord trousers that have faded to a peculiar shade of red, similar in colour to a huntsman’s jacket.

‘What’s this? What’s going on here?’ he says gruffly.

‘Maz says Liberty’s had her foal,’ Sophia says.

‘Good. Good. But why didn’t anyone come and tell me?’ Old Fox-Gifford dashes his stick against the floor.

‘Maz has just explained there was an emergency.’

‘All the more reason to have called me,’ Old Fox-Gifford mutters, his expression one of annoyance. ‘I could have delivered it.’

‘There was no time,’ I explain again, but Old Fox-Gifford isn’t listening, as usual.

‘Foalings are my forte,’ he goes on, his complexion growing darker and ruddier, his sideburns bristling. ‘Alexander knows that. What was he thinking of?’

Emergency or not, I doubt Alex would have called on his father for assistance this time. When Liberty’s first foal, Hero, was born last year, Old Fox-Gifford couldn’t help interfering and telling Alex he was getting it all wrong.

‘It wasn’t a personal slight,’ Sophia says, somewhat snappily. I’ve noticed recently how she humours Old Fox-Gifford’s opinions far less than she used to. ‘Alexander dealt with it.’

‘Oh, I found this in the flowerpot outside,’ I say, remembering the letter in my hand. ‘I don’t know how it got there.’ ‘It’s something from the Royal College. What are they hauling you up for?’ I add, referring to the fact that this august institution plays a role in policing the veterinary profession.