It's a Vet's Life: (34 page)

‘Alex, you’re upset.’ I’m crying again.

‘Of course I’m bloody upset.’ Alex hesitates.

‘Alex, will you hold me? Please …’ I sob, clutching blindly at his clothes. I sense he is torn. He lifts my hand and plants a cool kiss on my skin, making me feel more hopeful. He wants to go through everything again, as I have done with the police and Emma, because I was the last person to speak to Old Fox-Gifford. And I don’t really want to relive the scene, but I do it for him.

‘So what else did you say to him, exactly?’ Alex’s breath smells sour. ‘He was my father. I need to know what happened, Maz.’

‘I don’t know, Alex. He killed himself.’

‘Bloody hell, Maz. You were there.’ Alex steps back, his eyes dark with anger. ‘What did he say?’

‘He asked me to meet him at the surgery. I assumed he was going to have a go at me about reporting him to the police, which he did.’

‘And?’

‘He was going through the bills. He had the gun on the desk and Hal at his feet.’

‘Go on.’

‘He closed the gun and rested it on the journals so the muzzle was pointing towards him. Then he asked
me
to look after Hal. He’d tried to put Hal down himself – whether with the gun, or by injection, he didn’t say.’

‘Did he say why?’ Alex says. ‘Why did he decide to …?’

‘He didn’t explain, apart from showing me a letter from the Royal College with a date for a preliminary hearing over the ram vasectomy he missed. He said he couldn’t live with the shame of being struck off the register. I told him it wouldn’t come to that.’ I sigh deeply. ‘I tried to stop him, but when has he ever listened to me? When has he ever listened to anyone?’

I feel slightly drunk, my mouth furry and my tongue not moving with its usual synchronicity.

‘We talked about him having to give up his job, about the possibility of him adopting more of a consultancy position, rather than being hands on. It was my idea – I thought it would help.’

‘You what?’ Alex says. ‘You said what? What business is that of yours?’

‘You wouldn’t speak to him. What else could I do? Carry on watching you being ground down, losing clients, possibly losing the practice altogether because you couldn’t talk to him about giving up? You’re the coward, Alex.’

I wish I hadn’t said that. I wish I could take it back, but it’s too late.

‘Alex, I didn’t mean it,’ I say, in desperation. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I’ve got to get back to Mother,’ he says curtly, turning on his heels.

‘Oh, Alex … Don’t go. I’ll come with you. Let me be there for you, please.’

‘Goodnight,’ he says, cutting me short.

I watch him leave. He’s in control. He’s bolted, chained and padlocked his emotions in a metaphorical chest at the bottom of the ocean, and thrown away the key. I wonder how long it will be before he releases them, before he can start getting back to normal, whatever the new normal will be now that Old Fox-Gifford is gone.

Emma returns downstairs and pours me another vodka. We sit on the sofa until Emma is nodding off and I send her off to bed. I remain, not caring about the cold or the dark. I am numb like Alex, but not comfortably so.

All Creatures Great and Small

‘ALEX DIDN’T COME
home last night,’ I say to Emma when we’re in the staffroom at Otter House, during a break. I had a few days off before I came back to work. I could have taken longer, but Alex doesn’t need me – it seems as if he can’t bear me anywhere near him – and I’d rather keep busy. ‘He hasn’t slept at the Barn with me and George for three days. He says he doesn’t think his mother should be in the old house alone.’

‘I can understand that,’ Emma says.

‘I don’t mind, but …’

‘It’s early days, Maz.’

I know that Emma is right. I can’t help feeling hurt though that Alex hasn’t been over to spend an hour or so here and there with George, at least. George is a toddler. He doesn’t understand that his grandfather has died. For myself, I guess I’m yearning for some reassurance that everything will work out in the end, because our relationship hasn’t felt all that strong recently. Alex even made it clear that my presence wasn’t welcome when Old Fox-Gifford’s will was read.

‘I’d almost prefer it if Sophia stayed with us, in Lucie’s room.’

‘I expect she wants to be in her own home, with her memories of Old Fox-Gifford,’ Emma says. ‘How is she?’

‘Wretched.’

‘And the funeral arrangements?’ Emma lowers her voice. ‘Everyone’s expecting a fitting send-off.’

‘I’ve offered to help, but Alex and Sophia are making plans together. I believe Fifi has a hand in them as well. She’s been up to the Manor with quiches and salads, and jars of coffee. Ben has visited again, and it seems that the vicar can hardly keep away.’ I sit back on the sofa with Tripod on my lap. ‘Actually, everyone’s been really helpful and supportive.’

‘As they should be,’ Frances says, entering the staffroom with the phone. ‘Old Fox-Gifford was quite a character.’

I smile to myself at some of the double-edged tributes Old Fox-Gifford has received. For ‘character’, read ‘difficult old bugger’.

‘Frances, have you been eavesdropping?’ Emma says, amused.

‘You two, you speak so loudly …’ Frances hands me the phone and a note. ‘It’s Robert at Headlands Farm – he wants Alex to visit.’

‘I’ll call him.’ We’ve been fielding all the calls for Talyton Manor Vets during the day, and I’ve managed to provide advice for a couple of Alex’s clients, but Robert is definitely a special. I contact Alex on his mobile.

‘Hello, darling,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

‘How do you think?’ he says brusquely, making me wish I had been more tactful and not asked. I’m not
sure
where I stand with him at the moment. ‘What’s up?’

‘Robert wants a visit. I wondered if you wanted me to hand it over?’ When I say hand it over, I mean to the nearest large animal practice which has helped Alex and his father out in a crisis before.

‘I’ll go.’

‘But—’

‘I have to go. It’s what Father would have expected.’

‘Alex—’

‘I’d appreciate it if you came up to sit with Mother. Mrs P has gone out. It’s bridge night.’

‘I’ll have to get George from nursery on the way.’

‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘I wondered if it would help if Emma took your calls while she’s on duty tonight. She offered.’

‘Maz, leave it.’ Alex swears.

‘I’m only trying to help.’

‘I don’t need it. I can manage perfectly well myself. In fact, I’ll take the phones back now, thank you very much,’ he adds, dismissing me and cutting the call.

I stare at the phone, my eyes pricking with tears. Emma reaches over and takes it from me, resting it on the arm of the sofa. She pats my shoulder.

‘Don’t take it personally, Maz,’ she says. ‘Alex must be devastated. He’s been going out and about with his father since he was a boy, and he’s worked with him for years.’

‘It feels like he blames me.’

‘He’s taking it out on you because you’re the person he’s closest to. It’s no excuse, but it’s understandable.’ Emma pauses. The patting stops. I shift away from Emma’s touch. ‘You see, you’re pushing me away now,’ she goes on. ‘It’s a natural reaction.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Alex might have reacted very differently, if Old Fox-Gifford had had a stroke, or cancer. His father chose to die. I can’t imagine how Alex must be feeling.’

‘I know,’ I say quietly. I’m trying to be strong and hold it all together for George, but, like a sandcastle on the tideline, I’m preparing for the waves to overwhelm and wash me away, because I’m grieving too, for Alex.

Thanks to Old Fox-Gifford, I’m not sure that anything will be the same again.

‘I’d better go,’ I tell Emma.

I take George to the Manor. His presence does help, I think, because he’s someone to care for. He picks up on our sorrow, but it doesn’t impinge on him in the same way. Life goes on, I guess.

Sophia holds him, carries him to the window of the drawing room, and looks out into the darkness that is falling over the sweep of parkland beyond.

‘I’d better let the dogs out,’ she says out of the blue, her voice constrained. ‘He always let the dogs out at seven. And nine,’ she goes on. ‘He loved those dogs. They were his life. That’s why I don’t understand.’

Sophia doesn’t understand, and she was the person who was closest to him. I don’t say anything. I don’t know why he did it, although I am beginning to take comfort in the realisation that it wasn’t my fault. Old Fox-Gifford had many issues that could have triggered his decision to end it all.

‘You know, Maz,’ Sophia begins again, ‘I truly believe that he put those dogs before me. I’m not sure he ever loved me. He never said as much.’

‘He did say to me once when he was talking about the attributes of a good wife, that he couldn’t have
chosen
better … Yes, those were his words. “I couldn’t have chosen better.”’

Sophia turns towards me, touching her throat.

‘Did he really? That doesn’t sound like my husband.’

‘That’s what he said.’

Sophia raises one fist and shakes it. ‘Damn you, Fox-Gifford! If only the silly old man could have brought himself to tell me face to face. He never confided in me. Still, thank you, Maz. It’s a small comfort to me.’

‘That’s okay,’ I say.

‘It’s the way he was brought up. His mother –’ Sophia manages a smile – ‘well, Maz, you think you’re going to have trouble with the mother-in-law. Mine was the one from hell, and his father was a tartar. And then Old Fox-Gifford had years of public school education to teach him how to behave like an Englishman with a stiff upper lip.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I don’t know what to say.

‘I’m glad you’ve taken a stand over George’s schooling, Maz. Don’t let Alexander change your mind. A mother always knows best.’

I’m surprised at her stance. I don’t think she would have given me that opinion while her husband was alive.

Sophia glances towards the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘The dogs.’

‘Sophia, I’ll do it. I’ll let the dogs out.’ I haul Hal up by the collar from where he’s been lying in front of the fire, making the most of the meagre warmth from the smoking logs of damp apple-wood, and take the dogs outside, half expecting to meet Old Fox-Gifford, gun in hand, in the corridor to the kitchen.

*

Two weeks after Old Fox-Gifford’s passing, and immediately following the inquest into his death, we bury him in the churchyard on a wet October day. Apparently, there was no room in the family crypt, and, in spite of his sense of tradition, he left instructions that he wished to be interred outdoors because he didn’t want his grandchildren to suffer nightmares as he had when, as a small boy, his father had forced him to visit his dead grandfather underground. Sophia showed me part of the letter he’d left for her.

‘This had a profound effect on me,’ it read. ‘From those days forth, I discovered that, although I could control everything else, I could not exorcise the skeletons of my forebears from my mind. You cannot shoot a ghost, once raised.’

Talyton’s church is like a cathedral in miniature, built from local sandstone. The bells in the tower are tolling. The gargoyles’ mouths are pouring rainwater, creating dark stains down the stonework, and the churchyard is bordered by deep-green yews, adding to the sombre atmosphere.

The coffin arrives in a carriage drawn by a pair of black horses with plumes on their heads. Sophia waits with me and Fifi Green, as the bearers – Alex, Stewart, Chris, Guy, and two distant uncles of Alex’s who don’t appear tall enough or strong enough to share the weight – remove the coffin that’s made from oak with brass attachments.

The horses paw the ground, their iron shoes sparking against the metalled road outside the church. Sophia stands proud, cool and pale, dressed in black with her ghastly, moth-eaten fox fur around her neck.

‘I thought he would be the death of me,’ she mutters. ‘I thought he was indestructible.’

Fifi holds Sophia’s arm. ‘He lives on in your lovely son. How is Alexander?’

‘You can ask him yourself, not that you’ll get a satisfactory answer. He says he’s bearing up, that life goes on, but I can’t tell how he’s really feeling. Like his father before him, he keeps it to himself – unless he’s angry. You soon know about that, don’t you, Maz?’ Sophia turns to me. ‘Where are the children?’

‘They’re inside the church. Lynsey thought they’d get cold.’ There was some debate about whether or not the children should attend the funeral, but, in the end, we let them decide for themselves. Well, Lucie and Seb did, although I suspect their decision had something to do with them having to have a couple of days off school. George didn’t have any say in the matter.

‘You will walk with me,’ Sophia says.

‘Of course,’ I say. Fifi walks one side. I walk the other, and we follow Old Fox-Gifford’s coffin slowly into the church, where the organist is playing Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’ at speed. I notice how the vicar crosses the aisle to have a word. By the time we’re halfway to the altar, the organist has swapped to a more appropriate fugue by Bach.