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  The morning surgery seemed to confirm this impression; a few humble folk led in nondescript pets with mild conditions and I happily dispensed a series of Bovril bottles and meat paste jars containing Stewie’s limited drug store.

  I had only one difficulty and that was with the table, which kept collapsing when I lifted the animals on to it. For some obscure reason it had folding legs held by metal struts underneath and these were apt to disengage at crucial moments, causing the patient to slide abruptly to the floor. After a while I got the hang of the thing and kept one leg jammed against the struts throughout the examination.

  It was about 10:30 a.m. when I finally parted the curtains and found the waiting room empty and only the distinctive cat-dog smell lingering on the air. As I locked the door it struck me that I had very little to do till the afternoon surgery. At Darrowby I would have been dashing out to start the long day’s driving round the countryside, but here almost all the work was done at the practice house.

  I was wondering how I would put the time in after the single outside visit on the book when the door bell rang. Then it rang again followed by a frantic pounding on the wood. I hurried through the curtain and turned the handle. A well dressed young couple stood on the step. The man held a Golden Labrador in his arms and behind them a caravan drawn by a large gleaming car stood by the kerb.

  “Are you the vet?” the girl gasped. She was in her twenties, auburn haired, extremely attractive, but her eyes were terrified.

  I nodded. “Yes—yes, I am. What’s the trouble?”

  “It’s our dog.” The young man’s voice was hoarse, his face deathly pale. “A car hit him.”

  I glanced over the motionless yellow form. “Is he badly hurt?”

  There were a few moments of silence then the girl spoke almost in a whisper. “Look at his hind leg.”

  I stepped forward and as I peered into the crook of the man’s arm a freezing wave drove through me. The limb was hanging off at the hock. Not fractured but snapped through the joint and dangling from what looked like a mere shred of skin. In the bright morning sunshine the white ends of naked bones glittered with a sickening lustre.

  It seemed a long time before I came out of my first shock and found myself staring stupidly at the animal. And when I spoke the voice didn’t sound like my own.

  “Bring him in,” I muttered, and as I led the way back through the odorous waiting room the realisation burst on me that I had been wrong when I thought that nothing ever happened here.

  CHAPTER 21

  I HELD THE CURTAINS apart as the young man staggered in and placed his burden on the table.

  Now I could see the whole thing; the typical signs of a road accident; the dirt driven savagely into the glossy gold of the coat, the multiple abrasions. But that mangled leg wasn’t typical. I had never seen anything like it before.

  I dragged my eyes round to the girl, “How did it happen?”

  “Oh, just in a flash.” The tears welled in her eyes. “We are on a caravanning holiday. We had no intention of staying in Hensfield”—(I could understand that)—“but we stopped for a newspaper, Kim jumped out of the car and that was it.”

  I looked at the big dog stretched motionless on the table. I reached out a hand and gently ran my fingers over the noble outlines of the head.

  “Poor old lad,” I murmured and for an instant the beautiful hazel eyes turned to me and the tail thumped briefly against the wood.

  “Where have you come from?” I asked.

  “Surrey,” the young man replied. He looked rather like the prosperous young stockbroker that the name conjured up.

  I rubbed my chin. “I see. …” A way of escape shone for a moment in the tunnel. “Perhaps if I patch him up you could get him back to your own vet there.”

  He looked at his wife for a moment then back at me. “And what would they do there? Amputate his leg?”

  I was silent. If an animal in this condition arrived in one of those high-powered southern practices with plenty of skilled assistance and full surgical equipment that’s what they probably would do. It would be the only sensible thing.

  The girl broke in on my thoughts. “Anyway, if it’s at all possible to save his leg something has to be done right now. Isn’t that so?” She gazed at me appealingly.

  “Yes,” I said huskily. “That’s right.” I began to examine the dog. The abrasions on the skin were trivial. He was shocked but his mucous membranes were pink enough to suggest that there was no internal haemorrhage. He had escaped serious injury except for that terrible leg.

  I stared at it intently, appalled by the smooth glistening articular surfaces of the tibio-tarsal joint. There was something obscene in its exposure in a living animal. It was as though the hock had been broken open by brutal inquisitive hands.

  I began a feverish search of the premises, pulling open drawers, cupboards, opening tins and boxes. My heart leaped at each little find; a jar of catgut in spirit, a packet of lint, a sprinkler tin of iodoform, and—treasure trove indeed—a bottle of barbiturate anaesthetic.

  Most of all I needed antibiotics, but it was pointless looking for those because they hadn’t been discovered yet. But I did hope fervently for just an ounce or two of sulphanilamide, and there I was disappointed, because Stewie’s menage didn’t stretch to that. It was when I came upon the box of plaster of paris bandages that something seemed to click.

  At that time in the late thirties the Spanish civil war was vivid in people’s minds. In the chaos of the later stages there had been no proper medicaments to treat the terrible wounds. They had often been encased in plaster and left, in the grim phrase, to “stew in their own juice.” Sometimes the results were surprisingly good.

  I grabbed the bandages. I knew what I was going to do. Gripped by a fierce determination I inserted the needle into the radial vein and slowly injected the anaesthetic. Kim blinked, yawned lazily and went to sleep. I quickly laid out my meagre armoury then began to shift the dog into a better position. But I had forgotten about the table and as I lifted the hind quarters the whole thing gave way and the dog slithered helplessly towards the floor.

  “Catch him!” At my frantic shout the man grabbed the inert form, then I reinserted the slots in their holes and got the wooden surface back on the level.

  “Put your leg under there,” I gasped, then turned to the girl. “And would you please do the same at the other end. This table mustn’t fall over once I get started.”

  Silently they complied and as I looked at them, each with a leg jammed against the underside, I felt a deep sense of shame. What sort of place did they think this was?

  But for a long time after I forgot everything. First I put the joint back in place, slipping the ridges of the tibial-tarsal trochlea into the grooves at the distal end of the tibia as I had done so often in the anatomy lab at college. And I noticed with a flicker of hope that some of the ligaments were still intact and, most important, that a few good blood vessels still ran down to the lower part of the limb.

  I never said a word as I cleaned and disinfected the area, puffed iodoform into every crevice and began to stitch. I stitched interminably, pulling together shattered tendons, torn joint capsule and fascia. It was a warm morning and as the sun beat on the surgery window the sweat broke out on my forehead. By the time I had sutured the skin a little river was flowing down my nose and dripping from the tip. Next, more iodoform, then the lint and finally two of the plaster bandages, making a firm cast above the hock down over the foot.

  I straightened up and faced the young couple. They had never moved from their uncomfortable postures as they held the table upright but I gazed at them as though seeing them for the first time.

  I mopped my brow and drew a long breath. “Well, that’s it. I’d be inclined to leave it as it is for a week, then wherever you are let a vet have a look at it.”

  They were silent for a moment then the girl spoke. “I would rather you saw it yourself.” Her husband nodded agreement.

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