John Halkin - Squelch

‘Bernie! Oh thank God!’ Ginny was running towards him even before the car had stopped. ‘Bernie — oh, something crazy has happened! It’s Les, she’s hurt!’

Bernie examined his wife briefly before agreeing that they should move her into the house. He kept very calm, every inch the professional doctor, but Ginny could see that his eyes were troubled. Phuong unfastened the seat-belt, leaning across the driving seat to reach it; then he lifted Lesley up in his arms and carried her in through the front door.

‘Ginny, can you fetch my bag? It’s on the seat of my car. D’you mind?’

By the time she got back with it, Lesley lay face-down on the surgery couch. Bernie, now alone, was timing her pulse. He opened the bag and took out his stethoscope.

‘Phuong has gone back to keep an eye on the children, so you’ll have to help if I need it. Suppose you tell me what happened exactly. Did you put the dressing on her foot?’

Somehow, now Bernie was back Ginny felt stronger again. Better able to cope, at any rate. She gave him the bare facts, though it seemed such a bald, unconvincing account after the tension of actually experiencing it all.

‘A caterpillar — it’s so ridiculous!’ she ended.

‘I’m afraid it isn’t,’ Bernie told her grimly as he removed the dressing and began to examine the wound on Lesley’s foot. ‘One of the apprentices on Bottom Reach Farm was attacked in the same way. A long green caterpillar, was it? About six or eight inches, with a yellow stripe underneath?’

‘That’s right. And hairy.’

‘In the case of this poor lad it wasn’t his foot. He was fooling around with the caterpillar, making it walk up his arm. Not a nice business.’

Painstakingly he cleaned the wound as he talked, from time to time glancing up at Lesley’s face. Her eyes were closed now and she was breathing regularly.

‘What I don’t understand is this fever,’ he commented, worried. ‘And her bloodshot eyes.’

‘How bad is the apprentice?’

Instead of answering, Bernie looked pointedly at Ginny’s bare legs and at the scanty mules on her feet. ‘I’d feel a lot happier if you’d cover yourself up while these things are around.’

‘I’ve got my jeans in the car. I’ll put them on. Is the boy all right?’

‘He died. Already dead by the time I got there. By all accounts he had the caterpillar on his forearm only inches from his face. His friends were looking on. One took a photograph. Then somehow it moved and landed on his throat. Bit into the jugular. Or chewed into it would be more accurate.’

‘He bled to death?’ She felt sick in the stomach even thinking about it.

‘That’s about the size of it. As I said, not a nice business.’ He applied a fresh dressing to Lesley’s foot, bandaging it clumsily. ‘Let’s hope that ambulance isn’t too long coming. I’m tempted to take Les in the car, but —’

He changed the subject abruptly.

‘Ginny, do me another favour. You’ll find Phuong by the summer house at the end of the garden. If you could warn her about the caterpillars, I’d be grateful. I don’t suppose there are a lot of them about, but she could keep her eyes open. But try not to alarm the children, if possible.’

‘I’ll go now.’

‘And if you could —’ He stopped and regarded her intently. ‘I’m afraid I’m being rather selfish, aren’t I? How are you feeling? Did it do anything to you? No bites?’

‘I was lucky. It did nothing, apart from being a bit prickly on my tummy.’

‘Let me see.’

She pulled up her T-shirt. There were a few slight marks on her skin where she thought the caterpillar had rested, but they could just as easily have been heat rash.

‘Are they itchy?’

‘No.’

‘Well, let me know if there’s any change. Now I think I’ll phone the ambulance service to find out what’s happening.’

Ginny fetched her jeans from the Mini and also put on some fashion boots of Lesley’s before venturing down the garden to find Phuong. The grass was cut very short and the summer house where the children were playing was well clear of the trees. Even so, Ginny could not help feeling uneasy.

When the ambulance came, Ginny’s first thought was to accompany her sister to the hospital, but Bernie begged her to stay with Phuong and the children. At the sight of his worried expression she agreed without argument, saying she would do whatever he thought best. She helped him post a notice on the side door cancelling surgery for that evening.

She waited until the ambulance had left before venturing down the garden again to suggest that they might like to play in the house for a change, and in any case wasn’t it time for tea? She found them this time inside the summer house. Phuong was entertaining them with a story-cum-game from Vietnam and they protested vigorously at Ginny’s interruption.

The truth was, while Ginny was fond of her three nieces she had never felt completely at ease with children. Wendy, the youngest, she found the most difficult to manage; she was a lively, highly intelligent, stubborn two-and-a-half who demanded long explanations before she would consent to do anything. Caroline, aged four, was the dreamy one and easier to control, while six-year-old Frankie listened bright-eyed to Ginny’s news that their Mummy had gone away for the night and immediately wanted to know if she was going to get a divorce.

‘No, of course not!’ Ginny laughed. ‘What a ridiculous idea!’

‘Susie’s Mummy left like that without saying goodbye and she’s getting a divorce. Susie told me. Everybody gets a divorce sometimes.’

‘What’s a divorce?’ asked Wendy. ‘Can I have one?’

But at last they were all in bed and asleep. Phuong went to her room, while Ginny stayed in the lounge with the television on, though hardly watching it, waiting for a phone call from Bernie.

It was then she found herself thinking about the giant moths once more, wondering uneasily what connection there might be between them and these new killer caterpillars. Those moths — her moths — had seemed so elegant and gentle, yet…

‘Killed by what? A caterpillar? You must be joking!’ He was standing up against the bar, wide-legged, as though he owned the place. His face was redder than it used to be and he had a bald patch. He turned and saw her. ‘D’you hear that, Liz? Eh, Lizzie Kinley! Why are you sitting there in the corner? Come up here an’ be sociable.’

She took another sup of Guinness and ignored him. That Harry Smith always did have a loud voice and a laugh to match, the noisy bugger. Remembered him from way back when they both went to the same school, only he hadn’t got that beer gut then. Had the voice though. When he’d whispered to her that time on the back row, the whole village heard it. But he was a Red Lion man usually, so what was he doing here in the Bull?

‘Beer gone off in the Red Lion, then?’ She emptied her glass and banged it down on the little round table. ‘Can’t say you’re welcome in here. Keeps a decent house, does Charlie.’

‘Did you hear what he just told me?’ Another deep laugh rumbled out of him. ‘No, Charlie, you’re having me on! Go on, pull the other one!’

‘Kid o’ nineteen,’ the landlord confirmed. He was polishing the glasses he’d just washed: a burly, slow-moving man who prided himself on his glasses, which was one reason she always came in here, the other being that the Red Lion refused to serve her these days. ‘They’ve got these agricultural apprentices down that place, an’ it was one o’ those lads. A caterpillar bite!’

‘Sure it wasn’t a wasp?’

‘No, the other lads saw it. A long green caterpillar, they said. Long as your hand.’