James Herriot (17 page)

But I wasn’t such a hardened criminal as I thought, because as the days passed doubts began to creep in. The rules at ITW were rigidly strict. I would be in trouble if I was found out. But the prospect of a holiday with Helen blotted out all other considerations.

When the fateful day arrived my room mates and I were stretched on our beds after lunch when a great voice boomed along the corridor.

“AC2 Herriot! Come on, let’s have you, Herriot!”

My stomach lurched. Somehow I hadn’t reckoned on Flight Sergeant Blackett coming into this. I had thought maybe an LAC or a corporal, even one of the sergeants might have handled it, not the great man himself.

Flight Sergeant Blackett was an unsmiling martinet of immense natural presence which a gaunt six feet two inch frame, wide bony shoulders and a craggy countenance did nothing to diminish. It was usually the junior NCOs who dealt with our misdemeanours, but if Flight Sergeant Blackett ever took a hand it was a withering experience.

I heard it again. The same bull bellow which echoed over our heads on the square every morning.

“Herriot! Let’s be having you, Herriot!”

I was on my way at a brisk trot out of the room and along the polished surface of the corridor. I came to a halt stiffly in front of the tall figure.

“Yes, Flight Sergeant”

“You Herriot?”

“Yes, Flight Sergeant.”

The telegram between his fingers scuffed softly against the blue serge of his trousers as he swung his hand to and fro. My pulse rate accelerated painfully as I waited.

“Well now, lad, I’m pleased to tell you that your wife has had her baby safely.” He raised the telegram to his eyes. “It says ’ere, ‘A boy, both well. Nurse Brown.’ Let me be the first to congratulate you.” He held out his hand and as I took it he smiled. Suddenly he looked very like Gary Cooper.

“Now you’ll want to get off right away and see them both, eh?”

I nodded dumbly. He must have thought I was an unemotional character.

He put a hand on my shoulder and guided me into the orderly room.

“Come on, you lot, get movin’!” The organ tones rolled over the heads of the airmen seated at the tables. This is important. Got a brand new father ’ere. Leave pass, railway warrant, pay, double quick!”

“Right, Flight. Very good, Flight.” The typewriters began to tap.

The big man went over to a railway timetable on the wall. “You haven’t far to go, anyway. Let’s see—Darrowby, Darrowby … yes, there’s a train out of here for York at three twenty.” He looked at his watch. “You ought to make that if you get your skates on.”

A deepening sense of shame threatened to engulf me when he spoke again.

“Double back to your room and get packed. We’ll have your documents ready.”

I changed into my best blue, filled my kit bag and threw it over my shoulder, then hurried back to the orderly room.

The Flight Sergeant was waiting. He handed me a long envelope. “It’s all there, son, and you’ve got plenty of time.” He looked me up and down, walked round me and straightened the white flash in my cap. “Yes, very smart. We’ve got to have you lookin’ right for your missus, haven’t we?” He gave me the Gary Cooper smile again. He was a handsome, kind-eyed man and I’d never noticed it.

He strolled with me along the corridor. “This’ll be your first ’un, of course?”

“Yes, Flight.”

He nodded. “Well, it’s a great day for you. I’ve got three of ’em, meself. Getting big now but I miss ’em like hell with this ruddy war. I really envy you, walking in that door tonight and seeing your son for the very first time.”

Guilt drove through me in a searing flood and as we halted at the top of the stairs I was convinced my shifty eyes and furtive glances would betray me. But he wasn’t really looking at me.

“You know, lad,” he said softly, gazing somewhere over my head. “This is the best time of your life coming up.”

We weren’t allowed to use the main stairways and as I clattered down the narrow stone service stairs I heard the big voice again.

“Give my regards to them both.”

I had a wonderful time with Helen, walking for miles, discovering the delights of pram pushing, with little Jimmy miraculously improved in appearance. Everything was so much better than if I had taken my leave at the official time and there is no doubt my plan was a success.

But I was unable to gloat about it. The triumph was dimmed and to this day I have reservations about the whole thing.

Looking back I know this was one of the happiest little interludes in my entire life and I suppose it was silly to allow the niceness of Flight Sergeant Blackett to throw a tiny shadow over it.

“Y
OU MUST HAVE TO
be a bit of an idiot to be a country vet.” The young airman was laughing as he said it, but I felt there was some truth in his words. He had been telling me about his job in civil life and when I described my own working hours and conditions he had been incredulous.

There was one time I would have agreed with him wholeheartedly. It was nine o’clock on a filthy wet night and I was still at work. I gripped the steering wheel more tightly and shifted in my seat, groaning softly as my tired muscles complained.

Why had I entered this profession? I could have gone in for something easier and gentler—like coalmining or lumberjacking. I had started feeling sorry for myself three hours ago, driving across Darrowby market place on the way to a calving. The shops were shut and even through the wintry drizzle there was a suggestion of repose, of work done, of firesides and books and drifting tobacco smoke. I had all those things, plus Helen, back there in our bed-sitter.

I think the iron really entered when I saw the carload of young people setting off from the front of the Drovers; three girls and three young fellows, all dressed up and laughing and obviously on their way to a dance or party. Everybody was set for comfort and a good time; everybody except Herriot, rattling towards the cold wet hills and the certain prospect of ton.

And the case did nothing to raise my spirits. A skinny little heifer stretched on her side in a ramshackle open-fronted shed littered with old tin cans, half bricks and other junk; it was difficult to see what I was stumbling over since the only light came from a rusty oil lamp whose flame flickered and dipped in the wind.

I was two hours in that shed, easing out the calf inch by inch. It wasn’t a malpresentation, just a tight fit, but the heifer never rose to her feet and I spent the whole time on the floor, rolling among the bricks and tins, getting up only to shiver my way to the water bucket while the rain hurled itself icily against the shrinking flesh of my chest and back.

And now here I was, driving home frozen-faced with my skin chafing under my clothes and feeling as though a group of strong men had been kicking me enthusiastically from head to foot for most of the evening. I was almost drowning in self-pity when I turned into the tiny village of Copton. In the warm days of summer it was idyllic, reminding me always of a corner of Perthshire, with its single street hugging the lower slopes of a green hillside and a dark drift of trees spreading to the heathery uplands high above.

But tonight it was a dead black place with the rain sweeping across the headlights against the tight-shut houses; except for a faint glow right in the middle where the light from the village pub fell softly on the streaming roadway. I stopped the car under the swinging sign of the Fox and Hounds and on an impulse opened the door. A beer would do me good.

A pleasant warmth met me as I went into the pub. There was no bar counter, only high-backed settles and oak tables arranged under the whitewashed walls of what was simply a converted farm kitchen. At one end a wood fire crackled in an old black cooking range and above it the tick of a wall clock sounded above the murmur of voices. It wasn’t as lively as the modern places but it was peaceful.

“Now then, Mr. Herriot, you’ve been workin’,” my neighbour said as I sank into the settle.

“Yes, Ted, how did you know?”

The man glanced over my soiled mackintosh and the Wellingtons which I hadn’t bothered to change on the farm. “Well, that’s not your Sunday suit, there’s blood on your nose end and cow shit on your ear.” Ted Dobson was a burly cowman in his thirties and his white teeth showed suddenly in a wide grin.

I smiled too and plied my handkerchief. “It’s funny how you always want to scratch your nose at times like that.”

I looked around the room. There were about a dozen men drinking from pint glasses, some of them playing dominoes. They were all farm workers, the people I saw when I was called from my bed in the darkness before dawn; hunched figures they were then, shapeless in old greatcoats, cycling out to the farms, heads down against the wind and rain, accepting the facts of their hard existence. I often thought at those times that this happened to me only occasionally, but they did it every morning.

And they did it for thirty shillings a week; just seeing them here made me feel a little ashamed.

Mr. Waters, the landlord, whose name let him in for a certain amount of ribbing, filled my glass, holding his tall jug high to produce the professional froth.

“There y’are, Mr. Herriot, that’ll be sixpence. Cheap a ’alf the price.”

Every drop of beer was brought up in that jug from the wooden barrels in the cellar. It would have been totally impracticable in a busy establishment, but the Fox and Hounds was seldom bustling and Mr. Waters would never get rich as a publican. But he had four cows in the little byre adjoining this room, fifty hens pecked around in his long back garden and he reared a few litters of pigs every year from his two sows.

“Thank you, Mr. Waters.” I took a deep pull at the glass. I had lost some sweat despite the cold and my thirst welcomed the flow of rich nutty ale. I had been in here a few times before and the faces were all familiar. Especially old Albert Close, a retired shepherd who sat in the same place every night at the end of the settle hard against the fire.

He sat as always, his hands and chin resting on the tall crook which he had carried through his working days, his eyes blank. Stretched half under the seat, half under the table lay his dog, Mick, old and retired like his master. The animal was clearly in the middle of a vivid dream; his paws pedalled the air spasmodically, his lips and ears twitched and now and then he emitted a stifled bark.

Ted Dobson nudged me and laughed. “Ah reckon awd Mick’s still rounding up them sheep.”

I nodded. There was little doubt the dog was reliving the great days, crouching and darting, speeding in a wide arc round the perimeter of the field at his master’s whistle. And Albert himself. What lay behind those empty eyes? I could imagine him in his youth, striding the windy uplands, covering endless miles over moor and rock and beck, digging that same crook into the turf at every step. There were no fitter men than the Dales shepherds, living in the open in all weathers, throwing a sack over their shoulders in snow and rain.

And there was Albert now, a broken, arthritic old man gazing apathetically from beneath the ragged peak of an ancient tweed cap. I noticed he had just drained his glass and I walked across the room.

“Good evening, Mr. Close,” I said.

He cupped an ear with his hand and blinked up at me. “Eh?”

I raised my voice to a shout. “How are you, Mr. Close?”

“Can’t complain, young man,” he murmured. “Can’t complain.”

“Will you have a drink?”

“Aye, thank ye.” He directed a trembling finger at his glass. “You can put a drop i’ there, young man.”

I knew a drop meant a pint and beckoned to the landlord who plied his jug expertly. The old shepherd lifted the recharged glass and looked up at me.

“Good ’ealth,” he grunted.

“All the best,” I said and was about to return to my seat when the old dog sat up. My shouts at his master must have wakened him from his dream because he stretched sleepily, shook his head a couple of times and looked around him. And as he turned and faced me I felt a sudden sense of shock.

His eyes were terrible. In fact I could hardly see them as they winked painfully at me through a sodden fringe of pus-caked lashes. Rivulets of discharge showed dark and ugly against the white hair on either side of the nose.

I stretched my hand out to him and the dog wagged his tail briefly before closing his eyes and keeping them closed. It seemed he felt better that way.

I put my hand on Albert’s shoulder. “Mr. Close, how long has he been like this?”

“Eh?”

I increased my volume. “Mick’s eyes. They’re in a bad state.”

“Oh aye.” The old man nodded in comprehension. “He’s got a bit o’ caud in ’em. He’s allus been subjeck to it ever since ’e were a pup.”

“No, it’s more than cold, it’s his eyelids.”

“Eh?”

I took a deep breath and let go at the top of my voice.

“He’s got turned-in eyelids. It’s rather a serious thing.”

The old man nodded again. “Aye, ’e lies a lot wi’ his head at foot of t’door. It’s draughty there.”

“No, Mr. Close!” I bawled. “It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s a thing called entropion and it needs an operation to put it right.”

“That’s right young man.” He took a sip at his beer. “Just a bit o’ caud. Ever since he were a pup he’s been subjeck …”

I turned away wearily and returned to my seat. Ted Dobson looked at me enquiringly.

“What was that about?”

“Well, it’s a nasty thing, Ted. Entropion is when the eyelids are turned in and the lashes rub against the eyeball. Causes a lot of pain, sometimes ulceration or even blindness. Even a mild case is damned uncomfortable for a dog.”

“I see,” Ted said ruminatively. “Ah’ve noticed awd Mick’s had mucky eyes for a long time but they’ve got worse lately.”

“Yes, sometimes it happens like that but often it’s congenital. I should think Mick has had a touch of it all his life but for some reason it’s suddenly developed to this horrible state.” I turned again towards the old dog, sitting patiently under the table, eyes still tight shut.

“He’s sufferin’ then?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, you know what it’s like if you have a speck of dust in your eyes or even one lash turned in. I should say he feels pretty miserable.”