Thomasina. Paul Gallico

Well, I know, for one thing, how I am when I am made to do something.

      Then Mr MacDhui changed quite suddenly from being kind and gay to becoming most stern and ugly. He pushed out his great red beard at his daughter and growled: “That will be all and enough of that, Mary Ruadh. You have had plenty of play. Now say your prayers at once or I shall have to punish you.”

      Mary Ruadh asked: “Daddy, WHY do I have to say my prayers?”

      If she asked this once, she asked it at least four times in the week. I had to smile inside to myself for, of course, I knew it was just to keep putting it off, just as when we are ordered to do something we suddenly discover that we have a most important bit of washing to do.

      His answer would always be the same: “Because your mother would have wished it; that is why. She said her prayers every night.”

      Mary Ruadh then asked: “Can I hold Thomasina while I say them?”

      I had to turn away to conceal the smile on my face because I knew the explosion that was coming from Mr MacDhui.

      “No, NO, NO. You cannot. Kneel now and say your prayers properly this minute.”

      Mary Ruadh asked that same question every night, not, I think, to make her father angry, but rather as a kind of routine in case some day he changed his mind and said yes.

      It always succeeded in making him quite furious, and whereas at other times he simply ignored me as though I did not exist, I am sure at that moment he hated me.

      He then stood beside her bed while she knelt, folded her hands together in the manner that was prescribed for her, and began her petition:

      “God bless Mummy in Heaven and Daddy – and Thomasina –”

      I always waited to make sure that my name was mentioned well up in the list that included such odd bods as Mr Dobbie, the grocer, and Willie Bannock and Mr Bridie, the dustman, of whom she seemed to be fond, and then I went over and rubbed against Mr MacDhui’s legs, purring and putting hairs on his trousers, because I was well aware that it infuriated him, but he didn’t dare shout, or kick, or swear, or do anything about it, because by that time, Mary Ruadh was in the middle of her rhyme which went:

      Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

      Look upon this little child;

      Pity my simplicity,

      And suffer me to come to thee AMEN

      and which was a very important one so that he could not stir until it was properly finished, by which time I would be under the bed where he could not reach me.

      But he seemed to forget that he was angry when the prayers were finished and she lay upon her pillow with her ginger hair tousled about and he looked down upon her after he had kissed her goodnight. I used to watch his face, and all the bristle seemed to go out of his beard at once, and his fierce eyes turned soft. It was even more than soft. Soppy! Then he would blow himself up with a deep breath, turn, and stalk out of the room, like somebody in a play.

      But I just stayed under the bed and waited my turn.

      When he was gone, Mary Ruadh would call – “Mrs McKenzie! Mrs McKenzie!” and when she came in, she would say – “I want Thomasina!”

      I wouldn’t make it difficult for the poor old soul, but by that time would be cruising close to the edge of the bed. Mrs McKenzie would reach down, pick me up, and put me into Mary Ruadh’s bed. Mr MacDhui who had gone off to his study always heard her doing it, and knew that it happened, but pretended that he didn’t …

      Well, that was what THAT day in my life, in fact, what many days in my life were like – for in most respects one day was very like another – except for the pain I felt at the base of my spine from the bump I had received when I fell off Mary Ruadh by the statue of Rob Roy, as I have told you already, and which was followed by the morning of my assassination.

       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