Thomasina. Paul Gallico

it, and Mr Peddie felt the horror clamped like a hand about his heart, squeezing that member until it felt in some similar measure the pain that was oppressing the widow Laggan. Mr Peddie had one of those awful moments to which he was prone when he could not decide what it was that God would wish him to do, what God Himself would do, were He to stand there with them all in the presence of the misery of the widow Laggan.

      For to Mr Angus Peddie there was neither gloom nor sourness, nor melancholy about either the God or the religion he served. Creation and the world created, along with the Creator were a perpetual joy to him and his mission seemed to be to see that his flock appreciated and was properly grateful for all the wonders and beauties of nature, man and beast as well as the great and marvellous unexplained mysteries of the universe. He did not try to explain God, the Father, or the Son, but worked to help his people love and enjoy Him. A man of unusual tolerance and breadth of vision, he believed that man could deny God for a time, but not forever, since God was so manifest in everything that lived and breathed, in things both animate and inanimate, that He was universal and hence undeniable.

      And yet, human being that he was, he felt the panic when his God seemed to turn His back upon the likes of the widow Laggan and his own warm heart was riven with pity for her plight.

      There stood a weeping fat woman dabbing at her eyes with a small cloth, the tears straggling unevenly over the curves of her cheek and her triple chins quaking and jouncing. And in a moment she would walk out of there and begin to die.

      Peddie felt the strong push of the impulse to rush into the surgery of Mr MacDhui crying: “Stop, Andrew! Don’t kill the animal. Let it live out its time. Who are you who hate him to play God?” but he resisted it. What right had he to interfere? MacDhui knew his business, and veterinary surgeons, just as doctors, frequently had to make decisions and break news that was painful to people, except that to the former was sometimes given the additional mercy of destruction to save pain and suffering.

      Mrs Laggan said once more, speaking as though to herself: “Twill no be the same wi’out Rabbie,” and went out. Mr MacDhui’s beard came in through the door again and he stood there a moment regarding them all truculently as though experiencing some remnant of the scene that had just taken place and the sympathy engendered for the old woman.

      He asked: “Who’s next?” and his countenance took on an even greater expression of distaste when the Glasgow builder’s wife with the Yorkshire terrier half arose irresolutely from the hard, waiting-room chair and the dog gave a shrill yelp of terror.

      A small voice said: “Please, sir, could you spare a moment?”

      Someone remarked: “It’s little Geordie McNabb, the draper’s boy.”

      Geordie was eight. He wore khaki shorts and a khaki shirt and the kerchief of the Scout Wolf Cubs. He had a round, solemn face with dark hair and eyes and a curiously Chinesey cast of countenance. In his grubby hands he clasped a box and in the box palpitatingly reposed his good deed for that day. MacDhui strode over to him overpoweringly, overtoweringly, looming over him like a red Magog, thrusting his bristling beard nearly into the box as he boomed: “Well, lad, what is it you want?”

      Geordie stood his ground bravely. Patently, inside the box there was a green frog with heaving sides. The boy explained: “There’s something wrong with his foot. And he cannot hop. I found him by the side of the lochan. He was trying very hard to hop but he couldn’t at all. Will you make him better, please, so that he can be hopping again?”

      The waves of old bitterness had a way of rolling up inside Andrew MacDhui at the oddest and most ill-timed moments, causing him to do and say things that he did not mean to at all. Here he was in his waiting-room full of clients and it suddenly came over him as he stood bent over and looking down into the box – “Doctor to a frog with a broken leg, that’s what you are, my great, fine fellow—”

      And thereupon the old angers and regrets returned to plague and irritate him. Had there been justice in the world, all of these people in the room, yes, and the child too, would have been there to consult him about ailing hearts, or lungs or throats or livers, aches and pains and mysterious cramps, sicknesses and diseases, which he would combat for them and put to rights. And there they were instead with their pampered, snuffling, mewing and whining little pets kept for their own flattery’s sake or because they had been too lazy or selfish to bring into the world a child on whom to lavish their affection.

      The ailing Yorkie was quite near to him and MacDhui, his nostrils already flaring with disgust of himself and all humanity, caught a whiff of the perfume with which his mistress had scented him. He therefore replied to Geordie McNabb out of the black cloud of anger enveloping him: “I have no time for such foolishness. Cannot you see that I am busy with a room full of people? Go put the frog back by the pond again and leave it be. Off with you now.”

      Into the dark, round eyes of Geordie came that expression reserved to children who have been hurt by and disappointed in their grown-ups. “But he’s sick,” he said, “he’s not well. Will he not die?”

      MacDhui, not less unkindly this time, steered the child towards the door and gave him a farewell pat on the behind. “Off you go, boy. Put it back where you found it. Nature will look after it. Now, then, if you like, Mrs Sanderson –”

       CHAPTER TWO

      If it is family you go by, then you will certainly be impressed with mine, for I am a relative of that Jennie – Jennie Baldrin of Glasgow – about whose life and times and adventures in London, aboard ship and elsewhere, a whole book has been written and published.^fn1

      We are Edinburgh on one side of my family, several of my forbears not only having been employed at the University in the usual capacity of hunters, but one or two are said to have contributed to scientific knowledge and advance. We are Glasgow on the other, the Jennie Baldrin side.

      Jennie was my great-aunt and she was most distinguished and Egyptian-looking with a small, rather narrow head, long muzzle, slanting eyes and good-sized, rounded, well-upstanding ears, and in this I am said to resemble her closely, though, of course, our colouring is quite different. I mention this with excusable pride since it shows that we trace our ancestry back to the days when people had the good sense to recognise us as gods.

      That false gods are worshipped today – well, more’s the pity, for in Egypt, in the old days when members of our family were venerated in temples, times were better and people, by and large, seemed happier. That, however, is neither here nor there and does not concern what I have to tell. Yet, if you know that once you were a god, no matter how long ago – well, it is bound to show somewhat in your demeanour.

      Nor does Jennie play any part at all in what is to follow, except that I suppose I inherited something of her independence, courage and poise, not to mention elegance, and I brought in her name only as a possible point of interest to you should you happen to be familiar with her story.

      I too have had a most curious adventure and experience, one of the most interesting and marvellous things that ever happened, at least that part which concerns myself.

      I will not keep you in suspense. It has to do with a murder.

      But what makes this story different from any you ever read is that the one who is murdered is – ME.

      The name I bear, Thomasina, came about through one of those ridiculous and inexcusable errors committed by so many people who attempt to determine our sex when we are very young. I was originally christened Thomas when I came to live at the home of the MacDhuis in Glasgow to be the pet of Mary Ruadh, then aged three. When the error became obvious the name was simply feminised to Thomasina by Mrs McKenzie, our housekeeper, whether I liked it or not and without so much as a by your leave.

      I do not know why people are quite so stupid at determining our sex when we are young. The difference is easy enough to see if you will just look instead of guess, and take a little trouble, for with boys, things are apart, and with girls they are near together, and that’s