Paul Gallico - Thomasina

Geordie stood his ground bravely. Patently, inside the box there was a green frog with heaving sides. The boy explained: “There’s something wrong with his foot. And he cannot hop. I found him by the side of the lochan. He was trying very hard to hop but he couldn’t at all. Will you make him better, please, so that he can be hopping again?”

The waves of old bitterness had a way of rolling up inside Andrew MacDhui at the oddest and most ill-timed moments, causing him to do and say things that he did not mean to at all. Here he was in his waiting-room full of clients and it suddenly came over him as he stood bent over and looking down into the box – “ Doctor to a frog with a broken leg, that’s what you are, my great, fine fellow— ”

And thereupon the old angers and regrets returned to plague and irritate him. Had there been justice in the world, all of these people in the room, yes, and the child too, would have been there to consult him about ailing hearts, or lungs or throats or livers, aches and pains and mysterious cramps, sicknesses and diseases, which he would combat for them and put to rights. And there they were instead with their pampered, snuffling, mewing and whining little pets kept for their own flattery’s sake or because they had been too lazy or selfish to bring into the world a child on whom to lavish their affection.

The ailing Yorkie was quite near to him and MacDhui, his nostrils already flaring with disgust of himself and all humanity, caught a whiff of the perfume with which his mistress had scented him. He therefore replied to Geordie McNabb out of the black cloud of anger enveloping him: “I have no time for such foolishness. Cannot you see that I am busy with a room full of people? Go put the frog back by the pond again and leave it be. Off with you now.”

Into the dark, round eyes of Geordie came that expression reserved to children who have been hurt by and disappointed in their grown-ups. “But he’s sick,” he said, “he’s not well. Will he not die?”

MacDhui, not less unkindly this time, steered the child towards the door and gave him a farewell pat on the behind. “Off you go, boy. Put it back where you found it. Nature will look after it. Now, then, if you like, Mrs Sanderson –”

If it is family you go by, then you will certainly be impressed with mine, for I am a relative of that Jennie – Jennie Baldrin of Glasgow – about whose life and times and adventures in London, aboard ship and elsewhere, a whole book has been written and published. fn1

We are Edinburgh on one side of my family, several of my forbears not only having been employed at the University in the usual capacity of hunters, but one or two are said to have contributed to scientific knowledge and advance. We are Glasgow on the other, the Jennie Baldrin side.

Jennie was my great-aunt and she was most distinguished and Egyptian-looking with a small, rather narrow head, long muzzle, slanting eyes and good-sized, rounded, well-upstanding ears, and in this I am said to resemble her closely, though, of course, our colouring is quite different. I mention this with excusable pride since it shows that we trace our ancestry back to the days when people had the good sense to recognise us as gods.

That false gods are worshipped today – well, more’s the pity, for in Egypt, in the old days when members of our family were venerated in temples, times were better and people, by and large, seemed happier. That, however, is neither here nor there and does not concern what I have to tell. Yet, if you know that once you were a god, no matter how long ago – well, it is bound to show somewhat in your demeanour.

Nor does Jennie play any part at all in what is to follow, except that I suppose I inherited something of her independence, courage and poise, not to mention elegance, and I brought in her name only as a possible point of interest to you should you happen to be familiar with her story.

I too have had a most curious adventure and experience, one of the most interesting and marvellous things that ever happened, at least that part which concerns myself.

I will not keep you in suspense. It has to do with a murder.

But what makes this story different from any you ever read is that the one who is murdered is – ME.

The name I bear, Thomasina, came about through one of those ridiculous and inexcusable errors committed by so many people who attempt to determine our sex when we are very young. I was originally christened Thomas when I came to live at the home of the MacDhuis in Glasgow to be the pet of Mary Ruadh, then aged three. When the error became obvious the name was simply feminised to Thomasina by Mrs McKenzie, our housekeeper, whether I liked it or not and without so much as a by your leave.

I do not know why people are quite so stupid at determining our sex when we are young. The difference is easy enough to see if you will just look instead of guess, and take a little trouble, for with boys, things are apart, and with girls they are near together, and that’s the rule, no matter how small they might be.

Mr Andrew MacDhui might have told at a glance, no doubt, since he was a veterinary surgeon. But he was a most queer man to follow the profession of doctor to animals, since he had little love for and no sentimental interest in them whatsoever, and hence never paid the slightest attention to me from the moment I came into the house, which I cannot say disturbed me. The disregard was mutual.

We lived in a large, rather gloomy house in Dunearn Street, which Mr MacDhui had inherited from his father, who was also a veterinary, when he died. The two lower floors were given over to the offices, surgery and animal hospital, and we lived on the two upper ones, Mr MacDhui, his wife and Mary Ruadh. They all had red hair. I have too, or rather ginger-coloured with a white blaze on my chest. But what people really seem to find irresistible about me is that I have four white feet, and the very tip of my tail is white to match. I am quite used to receiving compliments upon my looks and bearing.

Although I was then only six months old myself, I remember Mary Ruadh’s mother, Anne. She was beautiful and her hair was the colour of copper pots by the fireside. She was very gay and always singing about the house, which made it less dark and gloomy, even on rainy days. She was forever cuddling and spoiling Mary Ruadh and they would often spend time “giving one another whispers”, which was a kind of love-making. It was not an unhappy household in spite of Mr MacDhui. But it did not last long, for soon after I came Mrs MacDhui contracted a disease from a parrot that was being kept in the hospital and died.

That was a bad time for me, I can tell you, and if it had not been for Mrs McKenzie I do not know what would have happened to me, for Mr MacDhui half went out of his mind, they said, and it certainly sounded like it, the manner in which he raged and carried on, and the love he had had for his wife he now transferred to his daughter, and half frightened her to death with it, and me too, I can assure you. He kept staying away from home and would not go near his animal hospital for days on end and things were getting in a bad state when he received a visit from an old friend of his from the country, a minister by the name of Mr Peddie, and after that things got a little better and soon we had a great change.

It seems that Mr Peddie and Mr MacDhui had known one another when they were both students at Edinburgh University – they might even have known some of my family there – and Mr Peddie told Mr MacDhui that there was a practice for sale in the town where he lived and advised him to go there.

So, Mr MacDhui sold out his practice in Glasgow and the house on Dunearn Street where he was brought up and we all moved to Inveranoch on the west bank of Loch Fyne in Argyll where my tragedy happened to me.