James Herriot (15 page)

There was something like an appeal in his eyes as we gazed at each other. I laughed suddenly and his expression relaxed. It was an indescribable satisfaction for me to hear voiced the conviction I had always held.

“I’m glad to hear somebody say that at last,” I said, and drove away.

I
WAS ON GUARD
outside the Grand. It was after midnight, with a biting wind swirling across the empty square, and I was so cold and bored that it was a relief even to slap the butt of my rifle in salute as a solitary officer went by.

Wryly I wondered how, after my romantic ideas of training to be a pilot, I came to be defending the Grand Hotel at Scarborough against all comers. In a baleful way it seemed comic, and as I tramped frigidly round my short guard route, I kept telling myself, right, keep your sense of humour about it. On my right was a wall almost as tall as I was, and as I passed it continually, grimly trying to focus on how funny this all was, the wall reminded me of Mr. Bailes’ dog Shep. Now there was a creature with a sense of humour. I should think on him for a bit.

Mr. Bailes’ little place was situated about half way along Highburn Village and to get into the farmyard you had to walk twenty yards or so between five-foot walls. On the left was the neighbouring house, on the right the front garden of the farm. In this garden Shep lurked for most of the day.

He was a huge dog, much larger than the average collie. In fact I am convinced he was part Alsatian because though he had a luxuriant black and white coat there was something significant in the massive limbs and in the noble brown-shaded head with its upstanding ears. He was quite different from the stringy little animals I saw on my daily round.

As I walked between the walls my mind was already in the byre, just visible at the far end of the yard. Because one of the Bailes’ cows, Rose by name, had the kind of obscure digestive ailment which interferes with veterinary surgeons’ sleep. They are so difficult to diagnose. This animal had begun to grunt and go off her milk two days ago and when I had seen her yesterday I had flitted from one possibility to the other. Could be a wire. But the fourth stomach was contracting well and there were plenty of rumenal sounds. Also she was eating a little hay in a half-hearted way.

Could it be impaction …? Or a partial torsion of the gut …? There was abdominal pain without a doubt and that nagging temperature of 102.5°—that was damn like a wire. Of course I could settle the whole thing by opening the cow up, but Mr. Bailes was an old-fashioned type and didn’t like the idea of my diving into his animal unless I was certain of my diagnosis. And I wasn’t—there was no getting away from that.

Anyway, I had built her up at the front end so that she was standing with her fore feet on a half door and had given her a strong oily purgative. “Keep the bowels open and trust in God,” an elderly colleague had once told me. There was a lot in that.

I was half way down the alley between the walls with the hope bright before me that my patient would be improved when from nowhere an appalling explosion of sound blasted into my right ear. It was Shep again.

The wall was just the right height for the dog to make a leap and bark into the ear of the passerby. It was a favourite gambit of his and I had been caught before; but never so successfully as now. My attention had been so far away and the dog had timed his jump to a split second so that his bark came at the highest point his teeth only inches from my face. And his voice befitted his size, a great bull bellow surging from the depths of his powerful chest and booming from his gaping jaws.

I rose several inches into the air and when I descended, heart thumping, head singing, I glared over the wall. But as usual all I saw was the hairy form bounding away out of sight round the corner of the house.

That was what puzzled me. Why did he do it? Was he a savage creature with evil designs on me or was it his idea of a joke? I never got near enough to him to find out.

I wasn’t in the best of shape to receive bad news and that was what awaited me in the byre. I had only to look at the farmer’s face to know that the cow was worse.

“Ah reckon she’s got a stoppage,” Mr. Bailes muttered gloomily.

I gritted my teeth. The entire spectrum of abdominal disorders were lumped as “stoppages” by the older race of farmers. “The oil hasn’t worked, then?”

“Nay, she’s nobbut passin’ little hard bits. It’s a proper stoppage, ah tell you.”

“Right, Mr. Bailes,” I said with a twisted smile. “We’ll have to try something stronger.” I brought in from my car the gastric lavage outfit I loved so well and which has so sadly disappeared from my life. The long rubber stomach tube, the wooden gag with its leather straps to buckle behind the horns. As I pumped in the two gallons of warm water rich in formalin and sodium chloride I felt like Napoleon sending in the Old Guard at Waterloo. If this didn’t work nothing would.

And yet I didn’t feel my usual confidence. There was something different here. But I had to try. I had to do something to start this cow’s insides functioning because I did not like the look of her today. The soft grunt was still there and her eyes had begun to retreat into her head—the worst sign of all in bovines. And she had stopped eating altogether.

Next morning I was driving down the single village street when I saw Mrs. Bailes coming out of the shop. I drew up and pushed my head out of the window.

“How’s Rose this morning, Mrs. Bailes?”

She rested her basket on the ground and looked down at me gravely. “Oh, she’s bad, Mr. Herriot. Me husband thinks she’s goin’ down fast. If you want to find him you’ll have to go across the field there. He’s mendin’ the door in that little barn.”

A sudden misery enveloped me as I drove over to the gate leading into the field. I left the car in the road and lifted the latch.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” I muttered as I trailed across the green. I had a nasty feeling that a little tragedy was building up here. If this animal died it would be a sickening blow to a small farmer with ten cows and a few pigs. I should be able to do something about it and it was a depressing thought that I was getting nowhere.

And yet, despite it all, I felt peace stealing into my soul. It was a large field and I could see the barn at the far end as I walked with the tall grass brushing my knees. It was a meadow ready for cutting and suddenly I realised that it was high summer, the sun was hot and that every step brought the fragrance of clover and warm grass rising about me into the crystal freshness of the air. Somewhere nearby a field of broad beans was in full flower and as the exotic scent drifted across I found myself inhaling with half-closed eyes as though straining to discern the ingredients of the glorious melange.

And then there was the silence; it was the most soothing thing of all. That and the feeling of being alone. I looked drowsily around at the empty green miles sleeping under the sunshine. Nothing stirred, there was no sound.

Then without warning the ground at my feet erupted in an incredible blast of noise. For a dreadful moment the blue sky was obscured by an enormous hairy form and a red mouth went “WAAAHH!” in my face. Almost screaming, I staggered back and as I glared wildly I saw Shep disappearing at top speed towards the gate. Concealed in the deep herbage right in the middle of the field he had waited till he saw the whites of my eyes before making his assault.

Whether he had been there by accident or whether he had spotted me arriving and slunk into position I shall never know, but from his point of view the result must have been eminently satisfactory because it was certainly the worst fright I have ever had. I live a life which is well larded with scares and alarms, but this great dog rising bellowing from that empty landscape was something on its own. I have heard of cases where sudden terror and stress has caused involuntary evacuation of the bowels and I know without question that this was the occasion when I came nearest to suffering that unhappy fate.

I was still trembling when I reached the barn and hardly said a word as Mr. Bailes led me back across the road to the farm.

And it was like rubbing it in when I saw my patient. The flesh had melted from her and she stared at the wall apathetically from sunken eyes. The doom-laden grunt was louder.

“She must have a wire!” I muttered. “Let her loose for a minute, will you?”

Mr. Bailes undid the chain and Rose walked along the byre. At the end she turned and almost trotted back to her stall, jumping quite freely over the gutter. My Bible in those days was Udall’s
Practice of Veterinary Medicine
and the great man stated therein that if a cow moved freely she was unlikely to have a foreign body in her reticulum. I pinched her withers and she didn’t complain … it had to be something else.

“It’s worst stoppage ah’ve seen for a bit,” said Mr. Bailes. “Ah gave her a dose of some right powerful stuff this mornin’ but it’s done no good.”

I passed a weary hand over my brow. “What was that, Mr. Bailes?” It was always a bad sign when the client started using his own medicine.

The farmer reached to the cluttered windowsill and handed me a bottle. “Doctor Hornibrook’s Stomach Elixir. A sovereign remedy for all diseases of cattle.” The Doctor, in top hat and frock coat, looked confidently out at me from the label as I pulled out the cork and took a sniff. I blinked and staggered back with watering eyes. It smelt like pure ammonia but I was in no position to be superior about it.

“That dang grunt!” The farmer hunched his shoulders. “What’s cause of it?”

It was no good my saying it sounded like a circumscribed area of peritonitis because I didn’t know what was behind it.

I decided to have one last go with the lavage. It was still the strongest weapon in my armoury but this time I added two pounds of black treacle to the mixture. Nearly every farmer had a barrel of the stuff in his cow house in those days and I had only to go into the corner and turn the tap.

I often mourn the passing of the treacle barrel because molasses was a good medicine for cattle, but I had no great hopes this time. The clinical instinct I was beginning to develop told me that something inside this animal was fundamentally awry.

It was not till the following afternoon that I drove into Highburn. I left the car outside the farm and was about to walk between the walls when I paused and stared at a cow in the field on the other side of the road. It was a pasture next to the hayfield of yesterday and that cow was Rose. There could be no mistake—she was a fine deep red with a distinctive white mark like a football on her left flank.

I opened the gate and within seconds my cares dropped from me. She was wonderfully, miraculously improved, in fact she looked like a normal animal. I walked up to her and scratched the root of her tail. She was a docile creature and merely looked round at me as she cropped the grass; and her eyes were no longer sunken but bright and full.

She seemed to take a fancy to a green patch further into the field and began to amble slowly towards it. I followed, entranced, as she moved along, shaking her head impatiently against the flies, eager for more of the delicious herbage. The grunt had disappeared and her udder hung heavy and turgid between her legs. The difference since yesterday was incredible.

As the wave of relief flooded through me I saw Mr. Bailes climbing over the wall from the next field. He would still be mending that barn door.

As he approached I felt a pang of commiseration. I had to guard against any display of triumph. He must be feeling just a bit silly at the moment after showing his lack of faith in me yesterday with his home remedies and his general attitude. But after all the poor chap had been worried—I couldn’t blame him. No, it wouldn’t do to preen myself unduly.

“Ah, good morning to you, Mr. Bailes,” I said expansively. “Rose looks fine today, doesn’t she?”

The farmer took off his cap and wiped his brow. “Aye, she’s a different cow, all right.”

“I don’t think she needs any more treatment,” I said. I hesitated. Perhaps one little dig would do no harm. “But it’s a good thing I gave her that extra lavage yesterday.”

“Yon pumpin’ job?” Mr. Bailes raised his eyebrows. “Oh that had nowt to do with it.”

“What … what do you mean? It cured her, surely.”

“Nay, lad, nay, Jim Oakley cured her.”

“Jim … what on earth …?”

“Aye, Jim was round ’ere last night. He often comes in of an evenin’ and he took one look at the cow and told me what to do. Ah’ll tell you she was like dyin’—that pumpin’ job hadn’t done no good at all. He told me to give her a bloody good gallop round t’field.”

“What!”

“Aye, that’s what he said. He’d seen ’em like that afore and a good gallop put ’em right. So we got Rose out here and did as he said and by gaw it did the trick. She looked better right away.”

I drew myself up. “And who,” I asked frigidly, “is Jim Oakley?”

“He’s t’postman, of course.”

“The postman!”

“Aye, but he used to keep a few beasts years ago. He’s a very clever man wi’ stock, is Jim.”

“No doubt, but I assure you, Mr. Bailes …”

The farmer raised a hand. “Say no more, lad. Jim put ’er right and there’s no denyin’ it. I wish you’d seen ’im chasin’ ’er round. He’s as awd as me, but by gaw ’e did go. He can run like ’ell, can Jim.” He chuckled reminiscently.

I had had about enough. During the farmer’s eulogy I had been distractedly scratching the cow’s tail and had soiled my hand in the process. Mustering the remains of my dignity I nodded to Mr. Bailes.

“Well, I must be on my way. Do you mind if I go into the house to wash my hands?”

“You go right in,” he replied. “T’missus will get you some hot water.”

Walking back down the field the cruel injustice of the thing bore down on me increasingly. I wandered as in a dream through the gate and across the road. Before entering the alley between the walls I glanced into the garden. It was empty. Shuffling beside the rough stones I sank deeper into my misery. There was no doubt I had emerged from that episode as a complete Charlie. No matter where I looked I couldn’t see a gleam of light.