Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) (16 page)

It was no surprise to find I’d arrived at a very neat,
well-ordered
bungalow, whose white, wrought-iron gates gleamed, matched by a white lacework of wrought iron over a spotless, white garage door, with a similar gate in white leading down the side to a pristine UPVC front door – also white. The front garden was completely devoid of vegetation. If there used to be patches of lawn each side of the drive like the neighbours, then they’d long since been covered by mock-brick paving slabs; and although most of the close had neat privet or escallonia hedges dividing their gardens, Number Seven had a no-nonsense low, concrete wall down each side – rendered in white, of course. The only concession to nature was a couple of wooden tubs beneath the front window, which contained splashes of multicoloured garden centre primroses and a few
mauve-and
-black winter pansies.

It was Mr Tidy who answered the door when I rang the bell.

I seemed to recall the only word I’d had out of him to date was ‘chlamydia’ – or, in his wife’s words, ‘charmid ear’ – one of the bugs that could be carried by birds and passed on to humans. This time, he was more effusive and uttered two words: ‘Come in.’ But at least it was accompanied by a smile – albeit somewhat forced – which revealed a set of gleaming white teeth so uniform in their appearance they could only have been dentures, a fact confirmed by the way ‘Come in’ was accompanied by a whistle of air through his gnashers and a rattle of dental plates. No wonder he was a man of few words. But his reticence was more than made up for by Mrs Tidy, who bustled out into the hall and, with an ‘I’m pleased you could visit,’ ushered me into the front room where, on a shiny, white, Formica-topped table in one corner, was Billy’s cage with the cockatiel on his perch inside, looking rather subdued. There was certainly no raised crest or scuttling along the perch as I approached. He just sat there, feathers ruffled.

‘He’s gone very quiet these last 24 hours,’ said Mrs Tidy. ‘There hasn’t been a peep out of him … has there, George?’ She turned to her husband who had followed us in and was standing behind his wife, half hidden by her. He poked his head round her and shook it. I swear I heard his dentures rattling against his jaws. Alas, poor Yorick.

‘And what’s more,’ she went on, ‘he’s got loose.’

For a second I thought she meant he’d escaped. However, my momentarily blank look didn’t escape her notice as, with an exasperated and emphatic ‘tut’ which signalled her great reluctance to use the language of the lavatory, she said, ‘He’s got the runs …’ and shuddered.

This was backed up with a helpful interjection by George, whose supportive ‘Squits …’ whistled through his teeth.

I looked into Billy’s cage and saw that his sand sheet was unsoiled. ‘I’ve just cleaned him out,’ said Mrs Tidy. ‘Can’t be having that sort of thing lying around. All those …’ She took one of the deep breaths with which I was becoming familiar, before she’d utter a word of which she disapproved, then, out it came, with the full force of her loathing: ‘
Bugs
.’

There was another pause … another intake of breath … followed by, ‘I think he might have picked something up from your consulting room last week. He’d been perfectly all right up to then. But now, those germs could be everywhere.’ She raised her arms like the prongs of a forklift truck about to dump a pile of bricks on me, just as Billy did his own dump of a pile of diarrhoea. Splat! The liquid mass splashed down onto the sand sheet at high velocity. ‘There! See what I mean? We could be exposing ourselves to untold contamination.’ Mrs Tidy side-stepped and swung round on her husband, pumping a muscular arm up and down. ‘George, do the honours please.’ She pointed to a tea trolley covered with a small, white tablecloth, on which there was a box of clear plastic gloves, a white, moulded face mask and a stack of sand sheets; under the trolley was a black plastic bag.

Mr Tidy scurried forward, clamped the mask to his face, looping its elastic fastening over his skull, rummaged in the carton to extract two plastic gloves and, having donned these, he pulled out the black bag, undid its tie and propped it open against the table; he then yanked Billy’s tray far enough out for him to extract the sand sheet, which, as he withdrew it, he carefully folded over back into itself, and then quickly lifted it free and popped it into the adjacent black bag. A clean sand sheet was slid onto the tray and the tray pushed back in, the gloves peeled off and tossed into the bag, and the bag firmly sealed with its tie before you could say ‘George’s your uncle’. Mr Tidy then sank back behind his wife – silent, save for the quiet clatter of his teeth over a job well done.

Having watched, spellbound, this finely executed performance, I tried to collect my thoughts as to what might have precipitated Billy’s condition. I was a bit puzzled, especially as the laboratory screening had been clear. I reminded Mrs Tidy of those negative results.

‘Ah, but there are some bugs you can miss,’ said Mrs Tidy. ‘George found that out on the Internet, didn’t you, George?’

He nodded, with a muted whistle, as if about to speak.

‘There’s one in particular that you might not pick up unless you take several samples. Isn’t that right, George?’

There was another whistle.

‘George may not say much but he’s very good at finding things out on Google, aren’t you, George?’

Whistle. Whistle.

‘The name of that …
bug
(a shudder here) … er … “camp” something or other. What was it, George?’

George had, by now, cranked up a sufficient head of steam to set his dentures in motion. He blew the word out: ‘Campylobacter.’

‘There you go. That’s the one. Heard of it?’ said Mrs Tidy, addressing me.

I had heard of it. Campylobacter was a bacterium that could be carried by dogs, cats and birds. But it could also be carried by quite a high percentage of humans, without symptoms being shown. That was the limit of my knowledge. As to its detection, well, I assumed it could be picked up by faecal screening, though, from what Mrs Tidy was telling me, that could be missed if only one sample was taken. But then if detected, so what? It was carried by animals without symptoms being shown. Ah, yes, but Billy
was
showing symptoms, wasn’t he? But then not symptoms of any serious illness – he was bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed.
Well, feather-tailed, to be more precise. Oh dear, I was beginning to tie myself in knots here.

I questioned Mrs Tidy further and was able to verify that Billy, indeed, was still bright and perky, eating and drinking as normal.

A little bell started to ring in my brain. Eating … appetite … food.

‘What exactly do you give him to eat?’ I ventured to ask, prompted by further sparking in my neurons.

‘Come through and I’ll show you,’ replied Mrs Tidy, and marched me through a scrupulously clean kitchen to an extension at the back which served as a utility room – washing machine, boiler, Belfast sink and scrubbed draining board, with wall and floor units to each side. Mrs Tidy flung open the wall unit to the left of the sink. There, displayed on two shelves, were large, white, plastic containers, with screw tops, each neatly labelled with its contents – peanuts, sunflower seed, sesame seed, millet. ‘I make sure they’re all washed and dust free before I give them to Billy,’ said Mrs Tidy, proudly.

I could picture her sitting at the kitchen table, dusting and polishing each single seed, lining them up in ranks for inspection to see if they would pass muster.

‘What about fruit?’ I asked.

‘Yes, of course.’ Mrs Tidy bent down and swung open one of the units next to the sink. ‘I keep most of it down here.’ She pointed to the white, plastic vegetable rack wedged inside. Each of its three tiers held a different fruit or vegetable. Shiny red apples in the top rack, pears in the middle and sprouts at the bottom. ‘I steam the lot of them,’ she added, straightening up. ‘I feel happier doing that. At least it lessens the chances of Billy picking up one of those you-know-whats.’ Her lips drew into a thin line at her oblique reference to the bugs, which she seemed convinced were ever-present, constantly threatening to invade and exterminate all life on Earth.

It was at that point I decided to take the risk and challenge her misconceptions; and just hoped it would be the right move.

‘Mrs Tidy,’ I started tentatively, ‘I’ve a feeling that Billy’s environment is maybe just a little too sterile.’ I saw her eyebrows begin to rise, her eyes narrow, but, undaunted, I went on: ‘He needs a few bugs around to build up his immunity.’ Her eyebrows continued to rise, only stopping when the creases on her forehead looked as if a tyre had just driven across it. I ploughed on: ‘He needs a more down-to-earth diet.’

Perhaps I should have chosen my words a little more carefully as I saw Mrs Tidy visibly flinch. Her response to ‘bug’ was no surprise, but the flinch detected at the mention of ‘earth’ was a bit worrying. It seemed this lady really did have a problem with her concepts of hygiene; but I dug my heels in and stuck to my guns, even though it meant being subjected to great shovelfuls of scepticism from her. But my persistence paid off and, eventually, I managed to get her to acquiesce. I left, having got her to promise to feed Billy a more natural diet without resorting to scrubbing and steaming every morsel of his food.

Mind you, as I negotiated my way out of Shepherd’s Close, Lark Rise, Drovers Drive and Downs View Drive, I wasn’t entirely convinced I was on the right track in my diagnosis of Billy’s condition. I could be heading up a blind alley in much the same way I found myself in a dead end when I took the wrong turning out of Drovers Drive and ended up having to reverse out of a Downside Close, whose name I hoped didn’t reflect on what was going to happen next.

They say you shouldn’t take your work home with you, but I just couldn’t get Billy out of my mind; and that evening, I found myself in front of the computer, bringing up Google and typing in a search for diseases transmitted from birds to humans. I tapped into the first one shown, and up came a very simple summary of bacteria that could be carried by dogs, cats and birds and which could be passed to humans, with the symptoms to be seen should a human contract the disease. It might have been a simple summary but, even without explicit details, it was enough to make me scared witless, so I could just imagine how Mrs Tidy must have felt, as I was sure her husband would have shown it to her, his dentures all of a rattle as he did so. Diarrhoea … vomiting … abdominal pains … fever. All of these symptoms were attributable to campylobacter if caught from dogs, cats or birds. And Mr Tidy had been right – faecal screening for the bug could be inconclusive unless a series of tests were carried out. I felt my bowels contract on reading that. Oh Lord … perhaps my diagnosis had been wrong. Heaven help me if the Tidys also went down with enteritis. But hang on, that was highly unlikely as they were so thorough in their cleaning of Billy’s cage. As for Billy, we’d have to see. I had left instructions with Mrs Tidy to get in contact should things not improve and, as a week passed and I heard nothing, I assumed he was on the mend. Until the parcel arrived.

‘It’s addressed to you,’ said Beryl, sorting through the morning’s stack of mail. She slid the parcel across the counter. ‘Looks a bit suspicious if you ask me.’

I wasn’t asking her but it did look a little unusual all the same. It was a standard A4 Jiffy bag, but there was nothing standard about the way it was taped all round its edges and had a biohazard label back and front and a handwritten ‘Handle with Care’ next to my name, an unintentional juxtaposition I felt sure. The bag bulged in its centre so there was clearly more in it than just paperwork.

Beryl adopted her ‘eye-wide-open, jaw-dropped,
brick-bashed
-owl’ look as she contemplated me holding the packet. ‘I wouldn’t open it if I were you, Paul,’ she warned, giving a little shake of her head. ‘Don’t you remember the letter bomb in that London office last year. It blew the bloke’s hand off.’

My hand, which had been holding the parcel, rapidly detached itself from said packet and I hastily replaced the suspect package back on the counter, an action which had Beryl spring from her chair, her wings of lacquered hair flapping. She backed rapidly through the archway and bumped into Eric, who was just bouncing up the steps from the office. As usual, he’d been going at a rate of knots, so the velocity of their impact was considerable. So was the point of their impact. In her startled state, Beryl had backed away with one hand in front of her and one behind. It was the one behind, with its plethora of spiky talons, that drove straight into Eric’s genitals.

‘Bloody hell, Beryl,’ he gasped, his face going puce with pain. ‘I’m knackered enough as it is without you grabbing my goolies.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Beryl, pulling her hand away as she swung round. ‘It’s just that we’ve got a letter bomb on the counter there.’ She directed a talon at the parcel next to which I was still standing.

‘What?’ shouted Eric, looking over Beryl’s shoulder and spotting the parcel. ‘Oh my God,’ he added anxiously. ‘Paul, don’t be a prat. Move away … NOW!’

‘What’s going on up there?’ It was the sharp, clear tone of Crystal’s voice echoing up the corridor from the kennels where she’d been doing her ward round with Mandy, checking her orthopaedic ops from the previous day.

‘Nothing to worry about, dear,’ Eric cried in response. ‘We’ve just got a bomb in reception.’

‘Christ, Eric, what on earth are you talking about? What bomb?’ Crystal’s voice came closer, until I could see her squeezing her way between Eric and Beryl, the three of them now crammed in the archway. Then the top of Mandy’s head with its starched cap hove into view behind them, swiftly followed by a flash of blonde as Lucy joined her from the dispensary. If what I had in front of me was indeed a bomb, then with one quick rip of the Jiffy bag being opened I could have blown the entire staff of Prospect House to smithereens in one fell swoop.

‘Shall I nip down to the office and call the police?’ I heard Mandy say.

‘Just hang on a minute,’ declared Crystal. ‘Just let’s see what we’re talking about here.’ She was about to move forward when Beryl put out a restraining hand and, in a hushed voice, turned to dramatically remind everyone of the arm that had been blown off by the London letter bomb. Uhmm, I thought, give her yet another chance to recall the story and it would be a torso blown to smithereens; then perhaps a leg or two tossed in as well.