Page 8 of Carry Me Home

Through the open windows there’s the distinct sound of a bark – well, not quite a bark, too exhausted for that. It’s more a declaration of continued existence under difficult circumstances. Bringing the Land Rover to a stop, I unbuckle and jump out, not bothering to shut the door – I don’t want to make any loud noises. The gorse rips through my hand with sharp claws as I pull it to the left, so I can see inside its dense spikes, to find a small wire-haired terrier cross. It’s dirty, with tan patches that I reckon might be white under the dirt and encrusted sand. It’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. Ribs showing. One back leg held clear of the ground – not dangling, not broken, just not trusting the surface. It looks at me with eyes that want to tell me a tale about the very bad time it’s been having.

My heart aches. Literally aches.

I probably shouldn’t have become a vet, for this very reason; animal suffering pulls wicked strings inside of me. It was Isla Quinn’s gran who told me that this was the very reason why I should follow in my father’s footsteps, not run away from them.

I crouch down. Hold out a hand. Wait.

I know this part can’t be hurried. Fear doesn’t respond well to being rushed. You stay still, you breathe, you make yourself small and unthreatening, and you let the animal reach its own conclusion at its own pace. You give it somewhere to go.

The sea rushes and crashes below us. A gull passes overhead, giving a little squawk to remind all those who might be around of its existence. The gorse creaks in the wind.

The dog watches me.

I watch the dog.

A minute passes, maybe more, and then the dog steps forward and sniffs. I still don’t move, although my heart is squeezing and all I want to do is grab it, hold it tight, and tell it everything will be okay. It sniffs for a while. Then it sits down directly on my boot and stays there.

I look down at it.

It looks up at me.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Okay then.’

I lift it carefully – I’m guessing around six kilos of matted fur and tentative trust – and settle it against my chest. The leg is a sprain, I’m fairly sure. Not a break. The rest is manageable. Dehydration, some malnutrition, the aftermath of a hard few days. Nothing that can’t be sorted with time and attention and a consistent approach.

The dog tucks its chin over my forearm and exhales. A full-body release, like it’s been holding it while waiting for me to find it under the gorse.

‘It’s okay, little buddy, I’ve got you,’ I whisper into its fur, but then move back because, cute and frightened as it is, it stinks. ‘Painkillers, water, food, and a bath,’ I tell it, heading back to my car. I don’t put it on the passenger seat, worried it might slip off, and I don’t have a crate with me. Some vet I am. So I tuck it up on my lap, and drive down the hill to the village while it trembles and whimpers the entire way down.

It’s past six by the time I’m done. The dog is clean, treated, fed, and installed in the recovery kennel with all the dignity it can muster. I scanned for a microchip, top to tail, but there wasn’t one, which means no registered owner. I’ll put the word out tomorrow – the Facebook group, a poster on Dot’s board, the standard channels. Someone will know something. Or they won’t, and I’ll deal with that when it comes.

I turn off the surgery lights and lock up.

The evening is warm and still. High summer a month away, but the light refusing to behave appropriately, lingering in that long Cornish way like it can’t quite be bothered to leave. The car park at the top of the hill is emptying. The tourist tide pulling back. The village resettling into its own shape.

The harbour lane is quiet. Someone’s cooking – garlic and butter, probably The Ship starting service. A pair of second-homers are coming up from the beach with two sun-tired children. A lobster pot has fallen off a stack outside the boat shed and not yet been replaced. These are the things that constitute a summer evening in Sea Salt Bay and they are enough. They are more than enough. They require nothing additional.

I stop in front of the Lavender Café.

The shutters are down. The fuchsia in the left-hand basket has gone over entirely, trailing against the painted wood. The blackboard still has the spring menu on it, Nina’s handwriting in yellow chalk, the letters running slightly downhill on the right-hand side the way they always do because she has the spatial awareness, as she once told me with no apparent concern, of a golden retriever.

Lavender lemonade – freshly made, obviously, I’m not an animal.

Cinnamon buns – ask Maisie, she’ll tell you they’re the best on the coast. She’s right.

Soup of the day – today’s is leek and potato.

This soup of the day was weeks ago.

I don’t know how long I stand there, which is unlike me. I’m not a standing-and-staring sort of person. I have things to do. A dog in the surgery. Paperwork. The whole apparatus of a functional life that I have built specifically so I don’t end up standing outside closed cafés at dusk like a man in a French film.

And yet.

The chalk menu hasn’t changed in three weeks. The fuchsia trails in the evening air.

Back soon. Be good. x

That note was on the door the morning I drove past and found the shutters down. Everyone has been saying the same thing since. Dot. Mum. Meg, in between being unbearable.