James Herriot (23 page)

“Right in the privates, Mr. Herriot.”

L
ITTLE PICTURES KEPT FLOATING
up into my mind. Memories from the very early days at Skeldale House. Before the RAF, before Helen. …

Siegfried and I were at breakfast in the big dining room. My colleague looked up from a letter he was reading.

“James, do you remember Stewie Brannan?”

I smiled. “I could hardly forget. That was quite a day at Brawton races.” I would always carry a vivid recollection of Siegfried’s amiable college chum with me.

“Yes … yes, it was.” Siegfried nodded briefly. “Well I’ve got a letter from him here. He’s got six kids now, and though he doesn’t complain, I don’t think life is exactly a picnic working in a dump like Hensfield. Especially when he knocks a bare living out of it.” He pulled thoughtfully at the lobe of his ear. “You know, James, it would be rather nice if he could have a break. Would you be willing to go through there and run his practice for a couple of weeks so that he could take his family on holiday?’’

“Certainly. Glad to. But you’ll be a bit pushed here on your own, won’t you?”

Siegfried waved a hand. “It’ll do me good. Anyway it’s the quiet time for us. I’ll write back today.”

Stewie grasped the opportunity eagerly and within a few days I was on the road to Hensfield. Yorkshire is the biggest county in England and it must be the most varied. I could hardly believe it when, less than two hours after leaving the clean grassy fells and crystal air of Darrowby, I saw the forest of factory chimneys sprouting from the brown pall of grime.

This was the industrial West Riding and I drove past mills as dark and satanic as any I had dreamed of, past long rows of dreary featureless houses where the workers lived. Everything was black; houses, mills, walls, trees, even the surrounding hillsides, smeared and soiled from the smoke which drifted across the town from a hundred belching stacks.

Stewie’s surgery was tight in the heart of it, a gloomy edifice in a terrace of sooty stone. As I rang the bell I read the painted board: “Stewart Brannan MRCVS, Veterinary Surgeon and Canine Specialist.” I was wondering what the Royal College would think about the last part when the door opened and my colleague stood before me.

He seemed to fill the entrance. If anything he was fatter than before, but that was the only difference. Since it was August I couldn’t expect him to be wearing his navy nap overcoat; but otherwise he was as I remembered him in Darrowby; the big, meaty, good-natured face, the greasy black hair slicked across the brow which always seemed to carry a gentle dew of perspiration.

He reached out, grabbed my hand and pulled me delightedly through the doorway.

“Jim! Great to see you!” He put an arm round my shoulders as we crossed a dark hallway. It’s good of you to help me out like this. The family are thrilled—they’re all in the town shopping for the holiday. We’ve got fixed up in a flat at Blackpool.” His permanent smile widened.

We went into a room at the back where a rickety kitchen-type table stood on brown linoleum. I saw a sink in one corner, a few shelves with bottles and a white-painted cupboard. The atmosphere held a faint redolence of carbolic and cat’s urine.

“This is where I see the animals,” Stewie said contentedly. He looked at his watch. Twenty past five—I have a surgery at five thirty. I’ll show you round till then.”

It didn’t take long because there wasn’t much to see. I knew there was a more fashionable veterinary firm in Hensfleld and that Stewie made his living from the poor people of the town; the whole set-up was an illustration of practice on a shoestring. There didn’t seem to be more than one of anything—one straight suture needle, one curved needle, one pair of scissors, one syringe. There was a sparse selection of drugs and an extraordinary array of dispensing bottles and jars. These bottles were of many strange shapes—weird things which I had never seen in a dispensary before.

Stewie seemed to read my thoughts. “It’s nothing great, Jim. I haven’t a smart practice and I don’t make a lot, but we manage to clear the housekeeping and that’s the main thing.”

The phrase was familiar. “Clear the housekeeping”—that was how he had put it when I first met him at Brawton races. It seemed to be the lodestar of his life.

The end of the room was cut off by a curtain which my colleague drew to one side.

“This is what you might call the waiting room.” He smiled as I looked in some surprise at half a dozen wooden chairs arranged round the three walls. “No high-powered stuff, Jim, no queues into the streets, but we get by.”

Some of Stewie’s clients were already filing in; two little girls with a black dog, a cloth-capped old man with a terrier on a string, a teenage boy carrying a rabbit in a basket.

“Right,” the big man said. “We’ll get started.” He pulled on a white coat, opened the curtain and said, “First, please.”

The little girls put their dog on the table. He was a long-tailed mixture of breeds and he stood trembling with fear, rolling his eyes apprehensively at the white coat.

“All right lad,” Stewie murmured. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He stroked and patted the quivering head before turning to the girls. “What’s the trouble, then?”

“It’s ’is leg, ’e’s lame,” one of them replied.

As if in confirmation the little dog raised a fore leg and held it up with a pitiful expression. Stewie engulfed the limb with his great hand and palpated it with the utmost care. And it struck me immediately—the gentleness of this shambling bear of a man.

“There’s nothing broken,” he said. “He’s just sprained his shoulder. Try to rest it for a few days and rub this in night and morning.”

He poured some whitish liniment from a winchester bottle into one of the odd-shaped bottles and handed it over.

One of the little girls held out her hand and unclasped her fingers to reveal a shilling in her palm.

“Thanks,” said Stewie without surprise. “Goodbye.”

He saw several other cases, then as he was on his way to the curtain two grubby urchins appeared through the door at the other end of the room. They carried a clothes basket containing a widely varied assortment of glassware.

Stewie bent over the basket, lifting out HP sauce bottles, pickle jars, ketchup containers and examining them with the air of a connoisseur. At length he appeared to come to a decision.

“Threepence,” he said.

“Sixpence,” said the urchins in unison.

“Fourpence,” grunted Stewie.

“Sixpence,” chorused the urchins.

“Fivepence,” my colleague muttered doggedly.

“Sixpence!” There was a hint of triumph in the cry.

Stewie sighed. “Go on then.” He passed over the coin and began to stack the bottles under the sink.

“I just scrape off the labels and give them a good boil up, Jim.”

“I see.”

“It’s a big saving.”

“Yes, of course.” The mystery of the strangely shaped dispensing bottles was suddenly resolved.

It was six thirty when the last client came through the curtain. I had watched Stewie examining each animal carefully, taking his time and treating their conditions ably within the confines of his limited resources. His charges were all around a shilling or two shillings and it was easy to see why he only just cleared the housekeeping.

One other thing I noticed; the people all seemed to like him. He had no “front” but he was kind and concerned. I felt there was a lesson there.

The last arrival was a stout lady with a prim manner and a very correct manner of speech.

“My dog was bit last week,” she announced, “and I’m afraid the wound is goin’ antiseptic.”

“Ah yes.” Stewie nodded gravely. The banana fingers explored the tumefied area on the animal’s neck with a gossamer touch. “It’s quite nasty, really. He could have an abscess there if we’re not careful.”

He took a long time over clipping the hair away, swabbing out the deep puncture with peroxide of hydrogen. Then he puffed in some dusting powder, applied a pad of cotton wool and secured it with a bandage. He followed with an antistaphylococcal injection and finally handed over a sauce bottle filled to the rim with acriflavine solution.

“Use as directed on the label,” he said, then stood back as the lady opened her purse expectantly.

A long inward struggle showed in the occasional twitches of his cheeks and flickerings of his eyelids but finally he squared his shoulders.

“That,” he said resolutely, “will be three and sixpence.”

It was a vast fee by Stewie’s standards, but probably the minimum in other veterinary establishments, and I couldn’t see how he could make any profit from the transaction.

As the lady left, a sudden uproar broke out within the house. Stewie gave me a seraphic smile.

“That’ll be Meg and the kids. Come and meet them.”

We went out to the hall and into an incredible hub-bub. Children shouted, screamed and laughed, spades and pails clattered, a large ball thumped from wall to wall and above it all a baby bawled relentlessly.

Stewie moved into the mob and extracted a small woman.

‘This,” he murmured with quiet pride, “is my wife.” He gazed at her like a small boy admiring a film star.

“How do you do,” I said.

Meg Brannan took my hand and smiled. Any glamour about her existed only in her husband’s eye. A ravaged prettiness still remained but her face bore the traces of some tough years. I could imagine her life of mother, housewife, cook, secretary, receptionist and animal nurse.

“Oh, Mr. Herriot, it is good of you and Mr. Farnon to help us out like this. We’re so looking forward to going away.” Her eyes held a faintly desperate gleam but they were kind.

I shrugged. “Oh it’s a pleasure, Mrs. Brannan. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it and I hope you all have a marvellous holiday.” I really meant it—she looked as though she needed one.

I was introduced to the children but I never really got them sorted out. Apart from the baby, who yelled indefatigably from leather lungs, I think there were three little boys and two little girls, but I couldn’t be sure—they moved around too quickly.

The only time they were silent was for a brief period at supper when Meg fed them and us from a kind of cauldron in which floated chunks of mutton, potatoes and carrots. It was very good, too, and was followed by a vast blancmange with jam on top.

The tumult broke out again very soon as the youngsters raced through their meal and began to play in the room. One thing I found disconcerting was that the two biggest boys kept throwing a large, new, painted ball from one to the other across the table as we ate. The parents said nothing about it—Meg, I felt, because she had stopped caring, and Stewie because he never had cared.

Only once when the ball whizzed past my nose and almost carried away a poised spoonful of blancmange did their father remonstrate.

“Now then, now then,” he murmured absently, and the throwing was re-sited more towards the middle of the table.

Next morning I saw the family off. Stewie had changed his dilapidated Austin Seven for a large rust-encrusted Ford V Eight Seated at the wheel he waved and beamed through the cracked side windows with serene contentment. Meg, by his side, managed a harassed smile and at the other windows an assortment of dogs and children fought for a vantage point. As the car moved away a pram, several suitcases and a cot swayed perilously on the roof, the children yelled, the dogs barked, the baby bawled, then they were gone.

As I re-entered the house the unaccustomed silence settled around me, and with the silence came a faint unease. I had to look after this practice for two weeks and the memory of the thinly furnished surgery was not reassuring. I just didn’t have the tools to tackle any major problem.

But it was easy to comfort myself. From what I had seen this wasn’t the sort of place where dramatic things happened. Stewie had once said he made most of his living by castrating torn cats and I supposed if you threw in a few ear cankers and minor ailments that would be about it.

The morning surgery seemed to confirm this impression; a few humble folk led in nondescript pets with mild conditions and I happily dispensed a series of Bovril bottles and meat paste jars containing Stewie’s limited drug store.

I had only one difficulty and that was with the table, which kept collapsing when I lifted the animals on to it. For some obscure reason it had folding legs held by metal struts underneath and these were apt to disengage at crucial moments, causing the patient to slide abruptly to the floor. After a while I got the hang of the thing and kept one leg jammed against the struts throughout the examination.

It was about 10:30 a.m. when I finally parted the curtains and found the waiting room empty and only the distinctive cat-dog smell lingering on the air. As I locked the door it struck me that I had very little to do till the afternoon surgery. At Darrowby I would have been dashing out to start the long day’s driving round the countryside, but here almost all the work was done at the practice house.

I was wondering how I would put the time in after the single outside visit on the book when the door bell rang. Then it rang again followed by a frantic pounding on the wood. I hurried through the curtain and turned the handle. A well dressed young couple stood on the step. The man held a Golden Labrador in his arms and behind them a caravan drawn by a large gleaming car stood by the kerb.

“Are you the vet?” the girl gasped. She was in her twenties, auburn haired, extremely attractive, but her eyes were terrified.

I nodded. “Yes—yes, I am. What’s the trouble?”

“It’s our dog.” The young man’s voice was hoarse, his face deathly pale. “A car hit him.”

I glanced over the motionless yellow form. “Is he badly hurt?”

There were a few moments of silence then the girl spoke almost in a whisper. “Look at his hind leg.”

I stepped forward and as I peered into the crook of the man’s arm a freezing wave drove through me. The limb was hanging off at the hock. Not fractured but snapped through the joint and dangling from what looked like a mere shred of skin. In the bright morning sunshine the white ends of naked bones glittered with a sickening lustre.