Pets on Parade (Prospect House 2) (2 page)

‘Bertie’s anal glands are giving him gyp again,’ said his owner, giving me a quizzical look. ‘Needs them emptying.’ Yippee. Just the fillip I needed!

I suppose I must have been about halfway through the morning’s list when the atmosphere suddenly changed in quite a dramatic fashion.

It was the appearance of Madam Mountjoy that did it. I saw from the details on the computer screen in the consulting room that she was a new client and was bringing in a cat named Antac. Good start. Made a change from all the Flossies, Cuddles, Blackies and Sooties. Cripes, this cynicism had really set in.

So in wafted Madam Mountjoy with her Antac. I use the word ‘wafted’ deliberately as this woman seemed to float into the consulting room and hover in front of the consulting table as if inches off the ground. Not that she had anything particularly angelic about her, and there was certainly nothing fairy-like. True, she was swathed in layers of calico in the form of a white kaftan which could have lent her a sylph-like appearance had she not been so fat that no amount of loose clothing could have concealed the mountains of flesh heaving beneath it. She resembled a large wedding cake whose tiered layers had collapsed and folded in on one another. Her hair was silver-grey, and haloed her face in a wild tangle to stream down over her shoulders. That face had an element of the moon about it. Full, white and cratered with acne scars. From her ear lobes dangled silver broomsticks, a silver pentangle hung between her breasts, while her wrists tinkled with the myriad of silver bangles that enclosed them. If all that wasn’t striking enough, she had the most disconcerting eyes. Huge, slanting eyes with troubling grey irises, surrounded by thick, black layers of mascara which could have out-kohled Cleopatra.

The look she gave me seemed to bore into me, as if wishing to strip me naked and expose my soul. Wow. This was suddenly intensely unnerving. Still, I had been moaning about how mundane the morning had been so far so I shouldn’t have been complaining if it was about to change, should I?

With difficulty, I averted my eyes from hers and turned my attention to her cat.

‘So this is Antac?’ I enquired as an opening gambit.

Even her cat had an air of the unreal about him. Not for him transportation in a routine cat basket. Nor, indeed, was he attached to a collar and lead like some cats presented to me in surgery. No, Antac was on Madam Mountjoy’s left shoulder, unrestrained, looking every bit an Egyptian pharaoh’s deity. Gleaming black fur … piercing yellow eyes … sitting bolt upright, motionless.

‘He’s not Egyptian,’ said Madam Mountjoy, as if she’d been reading my mind. Spooky. That’s when I learnt he was a reincarnation of an Inca emperor. The statement was made without her batting an eyelid, a feat which would have been difficult to achieve anyway due to the heavy encrustations of mascara that gummed up her lids.

‘Right … yes … well … So, what’s the problem with Antac?’

‘He needs his toenails cutting.’

‘Toenails?’

‘OK. Claws then.’ Madam Mountjoy shrugged and raised her eyebrows. ‘They keep digging into my shoulder. It’s upsetting my Akasha.’

‘Akasha?’

‘It’s the world’s energy source. It’s how I fuel my magic.’

‘No need for British Gas then,’ I was tempted to say, but resisted, as I suspected this lady considered herself some sort of witch or mystic and the last thing I needed was for her to suddenly magic up a wand from beneath her kaftan and turn me into a frog. Not that I thought of myself as a prince, charming as I might appear to be. Instead, I gave her a wan smile and explained that it would be best if the toenail … er … claw trimming was done on the table.

‘Did you hear that, Antac?’ said Madam Mountjoy, swivelling her head rapidly round to face the cat. For an instant, I was reminded of that possessed girl in
The Exorcist
and wondered if Madam Mountjoy was about to throw up. Instead, she spewed out the words, ‘You’re being summoned onto the table.’

I had picked up the nail clippers and was casually waving them in front of her, in cool dude mode. My heart sank as I heard her address the cat in that way. ‘Well, it would be easier all round,’ I said, my voice a touch whiny.

‘Antac quite understands, even though we’re not speaking in his native tongue,’ said Madam Mountjoy, sharply.

That unnerving feeling returned.

As she spoke, the cat sprang down onto the consulting table, sniffed the surface, his tail a ramrod, and then sat, his tail sweeping round to curl over his front paws.

‘He commands that you now proceed,’ said Madam Mountjoy.

‘I might need to restrain him,’ I warned, my voice still wavering a little.

Madam Mountjoy waved a dismissive hand. ‘He’s had to endure far greater ordeals in his past life, I can tell you.’

Not wishing her to embark on a tale of his heroics, I lifted Antac’s front left paw, squeezed it gently to unsheathe the claws and clipped each one back a fraction. To my amazement, the cat sat there impassively, with scarcely a twitch of his whiskers, and continued to do so as I tackled the claws on his other paws.

Once I’d finished, Antac got to his feet, turned and leapt back onto Madam Mountjoy’s shoulder, where he settled himself back into his former stance.

‘Ah, that feels much better,’ sighed Madam Mountjoy, rotating her shoulder, causing Antac to sway a bit although he managed to keep his balance. ‘Yes. I can now tune in more clearly, with no interference.’

Long wave or medium wave? I wondered. Now, now, Paul, don’t tempt fate.

Madam Mountjoy suddenly took a deep breath and crossed her bangled arms over her breasts. They shook … the bangles, that is. She closed those kohl-lined eyes of hers, the lashes whipping together, and began to emit a sing-songy sort of hum rather like a kettle starting to whistle. Oh Lord, was she falling into a trance? That could spell trouble, especially as she hadn’t paid for her consultation yet.

Then, in a falsetto whisper, she spoke. ‘The aura in here is very unpleasant.’ The silver broomsticks in her ears swivelled from side to side and her mouth dropped open, her tongue darting out to expose a silver stud embedded in its tip. ‘Very unpleasant. Very off-putting,’ she added, her tongue rattling back behind her teeth.

Hark who’s talking, I thought, rattled myself by her peculiar turn. Mind you, I had to admit there was quite an atmosphere in the consulting room. Quite pongy, in fact. But I put that down to the nervous Alsatian who’d earlier defaecated on the spot where Madam Mountjoy was now standing.

She fanned her long black nails in front of her face and her eyelids snapped open again. ‘It’s very strong,’ she added. ‘You should let me cast a spell. Cleanse the place.’

I didn’t know about casting spells or not. If anything, she could have put in a spell of cleaning, but I couldn’t see her knuckling down with her broomstick to give the place a clean sweep. Of course, I kept mum for fear of
frog-induced
repercussions.

It was at that point that Antac gave a loud miaow. I must admit, it made me jump a bit as he’d been so quiet up to then. Madam Mountjoy seemed unperturbed. She turned to him and bent her head down so that her ear was almost touching his nose. ‘What’s that, Antac?’ she asked. There was another, more muted miaow.

Madam Mountjoy straightened up and stared at me with those laser-like grey eyes of hers. Very unnerving. ‘Antac informs me that many feline spirits have departed from here. Posses of them are at this very moment circling above us. You need to be exorcised.’

Posses of pussies, eh? I bridled. What a nerve. OK, I might not be the most competent of vets and I admit the occasional cat had slipped beyond its ninth life through my fingers. But posses of them? Come on. I wasn’t that bad. This old crone was out of her head.

Suddenly realising Madam Mountjoy was getting inside mine, I hastily terminated the consultation and accompanied her through to reception, where, having paid her bill, she tapped Antac knowingly on the head, looked at me and uttered in a sombre voice, ‘You have been warned,’ before swirling out of the front door, broomsticks whirling, bangles clanging.

‘Crikey,’ declared Beryl, giving her departing figure the eye – her good one – ‘she’s enough to put the wind up anyone’s sails. Which reminds me, Mrs Jenkins wants some more of those charcoal granules for her Cleo’s flatulence.’

I thought I’d seen the last of Madam Mountjoy, but if I’d had the ability to see into the future – as she apparently could – I would have realised that wasn’t going to be the case.

It must have been about two weeks later, time enough for Beryl to have pushed the urinating Father Christmas to the back of her mind – at least I assumed she had, judging from her better mood – when she mentioned Madam Mountjoy. Beryl was standing in front of the electric heater in the office, the sleeves of her woolly, black cardigan hanging down her sides as usual – why she never put her arms in the sleeves, I’ll never know – rubbing her hands together having just returned, ‘freezing’ as she put it, from her morning cigarette, smoked by the open back door leading to the exercise run in the garden. Although smoking in Prospect House was strictly taboo and enforced rigorously by both partners, Crystal and Eric, a concession to Beryl’s addiction of the past 50 years had been made whereby she was allowed her daily quota of fags, to be smoked either out in the exercise yard or, if the weather was too inclement, on the back doorstep with the door open wide enough for her to exhale the smoke through the gap.

‘Yes, I remember her,’ I said at her mention of Madam Mountjoy’s name. ‘Seems I was under threat from the spirits of cats I’d bumped off. Or some such nonsense.’

‘Well, she’s been in touch,’ whispered Beryl, bringing her hand up to cover the side of her mouth. Always the dramatist, is Beryl.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

I smirked.

‘It’s not funny, Paul,’ she hissed, her glass eye fixed on me.

I swallowed hard. ‘No, of course not.’ 

‘She’s contacted me from the other side.’ Beryl gave an exaggerated wink of her good eye while the glass one swivelled wildly heavenwards.

‘You mean …’ I faltered, pointing upwards. ‘She’s passed on?’

‘No, no,’ said Beryl, tutting, still with her hand cupped over her mouth. ‘She’s been in touch from the other side of town. Teville Gate.’ Beryl must have seen my bewilderment, more induced by her glass eye swinging down to glare at my crotch rather than from learning that Madam Mountjoy lived over in Teville Gate, since she went on in an exasperated tone of voice. ‘She’s worried about Antac.’ Beryl glanced over both her shoulders and then over mine before continuing. ‘Apparently, he’s been in the wars.’

‘The Aztecs have got him, have they?’

‘Shhh … it’s no joke. Madam Mountjoy thinks he’s been possessed.’

I began to feel another smirk coming on.

‘It’s serious, Paul,’ she reprimanded.

I bit my lower lip. ‘Yes, of course, you’re right,’ I said, suppressing the bubble of laughter welling up in my throat. ‘You’d better get her to come in.’ I failed to stop the bubble of laughter from bursting out. ‘And let me see what’s got into him,’ I spluttered. ‘A Roman centurion? Or maybe a Benedictine monk?’

Beryl’s false eye stopped rotating and lined itself up with her good one to show her disapproval of my frivolous mood (that juvenile sense of humour again). She fixed me with a cold stare that brought me up straight. ‘I offered her an appointment but she turned it down. Apparently, that time she came in … she got spooked.’

‘Really?’

‘So she says. That’s why she insists you visit.’

‘Over at Teville Gate?’

Beryl nodded. ‘And it has to be you.’ Her voice dropped an octave. ‘Apparently, you are a kindred spirit with whom she can bond.’ Beryl nodded sagely. ‘So …’ She let her voice trail off. Ooo-er. Seemed I was in for a bit of hocus-pocus. Very tricky.

Madam Mountjoy’s place of spiritual bondage over at Teville Gate turned out to be at the end of a terrace, a corner shop called ‘The Olde Wiccan Shoppe’. It was a wet, dark, late January afternoon when I parked a few doors down from the shop and, turning the collar of my raincoat up, beat a rapid path to her shop door. Above it, there was a skull with glowing eyes and a skeletal finger beckoning me in. Creepy.

I half expected the shop to be full of witches on the spend, loading their wicker baskets with bags of frozen fingers and spare ribs, bundles of frogs’ legs and jars of newt jelly. But the place was empty. Yet it still felt claustrophobic on account of the dim lighting, the overpowering smell of incense, and being stuffed from floor to ceiling with shelves – on one side loaded down with wands, dowsing crystals, lucky flying witches and miniature cast-iron cauldrons; on the other side, shelves groaned under the weight of books of all shapes and sizes, catalogued by subject matter.
The Idiot’s Guide to Casting Spells
and
The Good Witch’s Guide to Wicked Ways
were two titles that caught my eye. The latter book was on the counter, open at a chapter on potent ways to get your man, and looked very well thumbed. I began to feel distinctly uneasy; this was not helped when I spotted a small occasional table over in one corner, on which was a bowl containing what looked like locks of hair, alongside a burning candle, a mantra of love inscribed on an embroidered card and, behind these items, a gold photo frame containing … I had to move closer and stoop down to make sure … yes, it was … a head-and-shoulders picture of me.

At that point, I thought it wise to beat a hasty retreat, but, as I turned to leave, a figure glided out from behind a rack of elves, pixies and plastic fauns at the back and moved rapidly across to block my exit.

‘Ah, Mr Mitchell,’ exclaimed Madam Mountjoy, in a low, seductive voice, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

To do what? I wondered, thinking of the love spell on the table.

‘Do come through to the kitchen, please.’ She curved a black-nailed forefinger at me and beckoned.

Oh dear, what was she brewing up? A heady love potion that she’d force me to swallow on pain of death? Something concocted to turn me into a horny demon?

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.