Page 14 of Christmas at the Home Farm Vets
They caught Dorothy up inside the barn, waiting next to a pen below a loft heavy with last summer’s store of precious hay. Erin spotted their patient, a beautiful Golden Guernsey goat, who on first inspection seemed quite comfortable on a thick bed of straw and nibbling from hay in a low wooden rack on the wall.
‘Suspect it’s mastitis,’ Dorothy announced, staring at Oli as though he’d just sicked up something on her carpet. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘Well, let’s have a look, shall we,’ he said smoothly, opening the gate and stepping into the pen. In a flash the goat lowered her head and charged, and he shrieked as she butted him very firmly on the thigh. He slammed the gate just before she followed him out to give chase.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Dorothy roared. ‘Nearly caught her head in the door!’
‘What am I doing?’ he said incredulously, shooting Erin a plaintive look and clearly hoping for support she didn’t plan on giving, not where Dorothy was concerned. ‘Didn’t you see what happened? If I hadn’t got out of the way pretty smartly it would’ve butted me somewhere a lot more painful than my leg.’
‘Too attached to your balls, that’s the problem with you lot. Better off without ’em, like m’bull.’
Erin just managed to direct a snort into her hand and caught the wink Dorothy gave her, pressing her lips together so hard they hurt. First the donkey and now Dorothy. This day just got better and better, and she loved her job so much. Right now she very nearly loved Dorothy as well.
‘You’ll have to be made of sterner stuff if you’re going to treat my animals, laddie.’ Dorothy glared at him over her glasses as she opened the door to the pen and spoke quietly to the goat, who submitted to her gentle touch. ‘I s’pose you want another go.’
‘Not especially,’ Oli muttered. He entered the pen more warily this time and she consented to hold the goat so he could examine its udders while he asked Dorothy a few routine health questions. Once he’d decided it was mastitis and she’d told him any fool could see that, he outlined a course of treatment and advised her to dispose of any milk the nanny produced. Erin returned to the pickup to fetch the appropriate medication.
‘Well, lovely to meet you,’ Oli said to Dorothy, checking for any lurking danger as they trooped back into the yard. He held out a hand and she stared at it for a long moment, and eventually he let it fall away.
‘Not done yet,’ she told him with a glower. ‘Got to make use of you whilst you’re here.’
‘You what?’ He shot Erin a worried glance and she shrugged. This was perfectly normal, and as long as there were no other pressing appointments, she was always happy to examine more of Dorothy’s menagerie while she was here.
An hour later, they were done, and Oli settled back in the pickup with a weary grunt as Erin pulled out of the yard onto the track, trying to avoid deep ruts full of muddy rainwater.
‘Shit, that was brutal,’ he said when they’d bounced their way back onto a meandering lane made darker by tall beech hedging on either side. He was sporting a nasty scratch he’d received on his hand after mistaking a feral kitten for a pet one and had undergone a nerve-wracking introduction to Hugo, the allegedly docile and very large Hereford bull, while examining him for a skin condition. Even Erin, after years of practice with cattle on Carys’s farm in Wales during the holidays, wasn’t certain that Dorothy’s method of separating Hugo from his beloved girls in the herd with a short length of blue pipe and a few choice bellows was ideal. He’d ambled into a pen eventually and Oli was able to prescribe a new course of treatment from the right side of stout metal bars.
He’d also dosed a sturdy Rhode Island Red cockerel with a syringe of olive oil to help with an impacted crop, but not before the bird had flown at him with a screech of rage and a vicious-looking beak. Dorothy had grabbed it just in time and wedged it firmly under her arm. She’d informed Oli that the cockerel wasn’t especially enamoured of men, but beggars couldn’t be choosers if they were going to gorge themselves on too much long grass in the orchard.
‘How the hell do you put up with her?’
‘Because she adores her animals, and she’d do anything for them. Plus she’s Gil’s aunt, and they’re very fond of each other. As is Harriet, Gil’s stepdaughter. She and Dorothy get on like a house on fire and she’s often here, helping out after school and at weekends.’
‘So it’s just other people Dorothy can’t stand?’
‘Not people, per se. Men, mostly. Elaine said something about her having a partner once but apparently they lived in a caravan in the yard because the two of them couldn’t get along in the same house.’
‘You don’t say,’ Oli muttered, closing his eyes. ‘Well, at least she’s not going to let me back in the yard seeing as I nearly chinned her goat. Small mercies.’
‘Don’t bet on it. If she’d really taken a dislike to you, you’d never have been allowed near anything else. At least the alpacas didn’t spit on you.’
‘This time last week I was in Costa Rica,’ he mused, staring out of the window again. ‘Sunshine and surfing and blue skies. Not like this.’
‘Mmm.’ Erin had no desire to learn more about his time away or with whom he might have spent it. His Instagram consisted of his travels or animals, and both garnered him plenty of likes. ‘Maybe you should go back and volunteer again.’ She realised her mistake too late.
‘How do you know I was volunteering?’
‘It was just a guess. I saw your CV and that you’ve done it before.’
‘Either that or you’ve been checking out my Instagram.’ He shot her a smile and she ignored it, trying to focus on the drive in such heavy rain. ‘So you were interested.’
‘Not especially.’
Erin was relieved to return to the practice, but she wasn’t expecting lunch to be laid on as well. The staff wanted to know how the morning had gone and what Oli made of Dorothy. Gil arrived soon after and the two men shook hands while Erin helped herself to a mug of tea before joining them.
‘Erin, hey.’ Gil welcomed her with a grin. His dark blond hair was untidy and his blue eyes were bright against a face lined by a life lived outdoors. ‘Oli was just telling me about the castration. Sorry about passing it on to you. The meeting at the gallery was brought forward and Pippa needed me there as I’m on the board.’
‘It was fine. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.’ Erin was smiling at Gil, but her thoughts were lingering on Oli skidding around in the mud as they’d tried to catch the donkey, his determination not to give in, the easy and instinctive way they’d rediscovered their old rhythm of working together and putting the patient first, established during that final year of rotations at Catz. She caught his own gaze on hers, the faint smile as she wondered distractedly if he was thinking the same.
