James Herriot (48 page)

I thought for a moment. “It seems a bit silly, but the first thing that comes to my mind is rabies. This is the most dreadful dog disease of all, but thank heaven we’ve managed to keep it out of this country so far by strict quarantine regulations. But at college it was hammered into us so forcibly that it is always at the back of my mind even though I don’t really expect to see it. But this case of the dalmatian could be anything. I only hope she hasn’t turned savage because that’s the sort of thing that leads to a dog being put down and I hate that.”

Mr. Rington’s opening remark didn’t cheer me.

“Tessa’s become really fierce lately, Mr. Herriot. Started moping about and growling a few days ago and frankly I daren’t trust her with strangers now. She nailed the postman by the ankle this morning. Most embarrassing.”

My spirits sank lower. “Actually bit somebody!” Mr. Rington went on. “It’s unbelievable—she’s such a softie. I’ve always been able to do anything with her.”

“I know, I know,” he muttered. “She’s marvellous with children, too. I can’t understand it. But come and have a look at her.”

The dalmatian was sitting in a corner of the lounge and she glanced up sulkily as we entered. She was a favourite patient and I approached her confidently.

“Hello, Tessa,” I said, and held out my hand. I usually had a tail-lashing, tongue-lolling welcome from this animal but today she froze into complete immobility and her lips withdrew silently from her teeth. It wasn’t an ordinary snarl—it was as though the upper lip was operated by strings and there was something unnerving about it.

“What’s the matter, old girl?” I enquired, and again the gleaming incisors were soundlessly exposed. And as I stared uncomprehendingly I could see that the eyes were glaring at me with blazing primitive hatred. Tessa was unrecognizable.

“Mr. Herriot.” Her owner looked at me apprehensively. “I don’t think I’d go any nearer if I were you.”

I withdrew a pace. “Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you. I don’t think she’d cooperate if I tried to examine her. But never mind, tell me all about her.”

“Well, there’s really nothing more to tell,” Mr. Kington said helplessly. “She’s just different—like this.”

“Appetite good?”

“Yes, fine. Eats everything in front of her.”

“No unusual symptoms at all?”

“None, apart from the altered temperament. The family can handle her, but quite frankly I think she’d bite any stranger who came too near.”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “Any change in family circumstances? New baby? Different domestic help? Unusual people coming to the house?”

“No, nothing like that. There’s been no change.”

“I ask because animals sometimes act like this put of jealousy or disapproval.”

“Sorry.” Mr. Rington shrugged his shoulders. “Everything is just as it’s always been. Only this morning my wife was wondering if Tessa was still cross with us because we kept her indoors for three weeks while she was in season. But that was a long time ago—about two months now.”

I whipped round and faced him. “Two months?”

“Yes, about that.”

Surely not again! I gestured to the owner. “Would you please lift her up so that she’s standing on her hind legs?”

“Like this?” He put his arms round the dalmatian’s chest and hoisted till she was in the upright position with her abdomen facing me.

And it was as if I knew beforehand. Because I felt not the slightest surprise when I saw the twin row of engorged teats. It was unnecessary, but I leaned forward, grasped a little nipple and sent a white jet spurting.

“She’s bulging with milk,” I said.

“Milk?”

“Yes, she’s got false pregnancy. This is one of the more unusual side effects, but I’ll give you some tablets and she’ll soon be the docile Tessa again.”

As we got back into the car I had a good idea what the schoolboy was thinking. He would be wondering where the chemistry, physics and biology came in.

“Sorry about that, David,” I said. “I’ve been telling you all about the constant variety of a vet’s life and the first two cases you see are the same condition. But we are going out to the farms now and as I said, you’ll find it very different. I mean, those two cases were really psychological things. You don’t get that in country practice. It’s a bit rough but it’s real and down to earth.”

As we drove into the farmyard I saw the farmer carrying a bag of meal over the cobbles.

I got out of the car with David. “You’ve got a pig ill, Mr. Fisher?”

“Aye, a big sow. She’s in ’ere.” He led the way into a pen and pointed to a huge white pig lying on her side.

“She’s been off it for a few days,” he said. “Hardly eats owt—just picks at her food. And she just lays there all t’time. Ah don’t think she’s got strength to get to her feet.”

My thermometer had been in the pig’s rectum as he spoke and I fished it out and read the temperature. It was 102.2—dead normal. I auscultated the chest and palpated the abdomen with growing puzzlement. Nothing wrong. I looked over at the trough nearby. It was filled to the brim with fresh meal and water—untouched. And pigs do love their food.

I nudged her thigh with my fist. “Come on, lass, get up.” And I followed it with a brisk slap across the rump. A healthy pig would have leaped to her feet but the sow never moved.

I tried not to scratch my head. There was something very funny here. “Has she ever been ill before, Mr. Fisher?”

“Nay, never ailed a thing and she’s allus been a real lively pig, too. Ah can’t reckon it up.”

Nor could I. “What beats me,” I said, “is that she doesn’t look like a sick animal. She’s not trembling or anxious, she’s lying there as if she hadn’t a care in the world.”

“Aye, you’re right, Mr. Herriot. She’s as ’appy as Larry, but she’ll neither move nor eat. It’s a rum ’un, isn’t it?”

It was very rum indeed. I squatted on my heels, watching the big sow. She reached forward and pushed gently with her snout at the straw bedding round her head. Sick pigs never did that. It was a gesture of well-being. And those little grunts which issued from deep in her chest. They were grunts of deep contentment and there was something familiar about the sound of them … something lurking at the back of my mind which wouldn’t come forward. It was the same with the way the sow eased herself further on to her side, pushing the great stretch of abdomen outward as though in offering.

I had heard and seen it so many times before—the happy sounds, the careful movements. Then I remembered. Of course! She was like a sow with a litter, only there was no litter.

A wave of disbelief flowed over me. Oh no, no, please not a third time! It was dark in the pen and I couldn’t get a clear view of the mammary glands.

I turned to the farmer. “Open the door a little, will you, please.”

As the sunshine flooded in everything was obvious. It was mere routine to reach out to the long tumefied udder and squirt the milk against the wall.

I straightened up wearily and was about to make my now commonplace announcement when David did it for me.

“False pregnancy?” he said.

I nodded dumbly.

“What was that?” enquired Mr. Fisher.,

“Well your sow has got it into her head that she is pregnant,” I said. “Not only that, but she thinks she has given birth to a litter and she’s suckling the imaginary piglets now. You can see it, can’t you?”

The farmer gave a long soft whistle. “Aye … aye … you’re right. That’s what she’s doin’ … enjoyin’ it, too.” He took off his cap, rubbed the top of his head and put the cap on again. “Well, there’s allus summat new, isn’t there?”

It wasn’t new to David, of course. Old stuff, in fact, and I didn’t want to bore him further with a lengthy dissertation.

“Nothing to worry about, Mr. Fisher,” I said hastily. “Call down to the surgery and I’ll give you something to put in her food. She’ll soon be back to normal.”

As I left the pen the sow gave a deep sigh of utter fulfillment and moved her position with the utmost care to avoid crushing her phantom family. I looked back at her and I could almost see the long pink row of piglets sucking busily. I shook my head to dispel the vision and went out to the car.

I was opening the door when the farmer’s wife trotted towards me. “I’ve just had a phone call from your surgery, Mr. Herriot. They want you to go to Mr. Rogers of East Farm. There’s a cow calving.”

An emergency like this in the middle of a round was usually an irritant, but today the news came as a relief. I had promised this schoolboy some genuine-country practice and I was beginning to feel embarrassed.

“Well, David,” I said with a light laugh as we drove away. “You must be thinking all my patients are neurotic. But you’re going to see a bit of the real thing now—there’s nothing airy-fairy about a calving cow. This is where the hard work of our job comes in. It’s often pretty tough fighting against a big straining cow, because you must remember the vet only sees the difficult cases. Where the calf is laid wrong.”

The situation of East Farm seemed to add weight to my words. We were bumping up the fellside along a narrow track which was never meant for motor cars and I winced as the exhaust grated against the jutting rocks.

The farm was perched almost on the edge of the hilltop and behind it the sparse fields, stolen from the moorland, rolled away to the skyline. The crumbling stonework and broken roof tiles testified to the age of the squat grey house.

I pointed to some figures, faintly visible on the massive stone lintel above the front door. “What does that date mean to you, David?”

“Sixteen sixty-six, the great fire of London,” he replied promptly.

“Well done. Strange to think they were building this place in the same year as old London burned down.”

Mr. Rogers appeared, carrying a steaming bucket and a towel. “She’s out in t’field, Mr. Herriot, but she’s a quiet cow and easy to catch.”

“All right.” I followed him through the gate. It was another little annoyance when the farmer didn’t have the cow inside for me but again I felt that if David wanted to be a vet he ought to know that a lot of our work was carried out in the open, often in the cold and rain.

Even now on this July morning a cool breeze whipped round my chest and back as I pulled off my shirt. It was never very warm in the high country of the Dales but I felt at home here. With the cow standing patiently as the farmer held her halter, the bucket perched among the tufts of wiry grass, and only a few stunted wind-bent trees breaking the harsh sweep of green, it seemed that at last this boy was seeing me in my proper place.

I soaped my arms to the shoulder. “Hold the tail, will you, David. This is where I find out what kind of job it’s going to be.”

As I slipped my hand into the cow it struck me that it would be no bad thing if it was a hard calving. If the lad saw me losing a bit of sweat it would give
him
a truer picture of the life in front of him.

“Sometimes these jobs take an hour or more,” I said. “But you have the reward of delivering a new living creature. Seeing a calf wriggling on the ground at the end of it is the biggest thrill in practice.”

I reached forward, my mind alive with the possibilities. Posterior? Head back? Breech? But as I groped through the open cervix into the uterus I felt a growing astonishment. There was nothing there.

I withdrew my arm and leaned for a moment on the hairy rump. The day’s events were taking on a dreamlike quality. Then I looked up at the farmer.

“There’s no calf in this cow, Mr. Rogers.”

“Eh?”

“She’s empty. She’s calved already.”

The farmer gazed around him, scanning the acres of bare grass. “Well where the hangment is the thing? This cow was messin’ about last night and I thought she’d calve, but there was nowt to find this mornin’.”

His attention was caught by a cry from the right.

“Hey, Willie! Just a minute, Willie!” It was Bob Sellars from the next farm. He was leaning over the drystone wall about twenty yards away.

“What’s matter, Bob?”

“Ah thowt ah’d better tell ye. Ah saw that cow bidin’ her calf this mornin’.”

“Hidin’ …? What are ye on about?”

“Ah’m not jokin’ nor jestin’, Willie. She hid it in yon gutter over there and every time t’calf tried to get out she pushed it back in again.”

“But … nay, nay, I can’t ’ave that. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Have you, Mr. Herriot?”

I shook my head, but the whole thing seemed to fit in with the air of fantasy which had begun to pervade the day’s work.

Bob Sellars began to climb over the wall. “Awright if ye won’t believe me I’ll show ye.”

He led the way to the far end of the field where a dry ditch ran along the base of the wall. “There ’e is!” he said triumphantly.

And there indeed he was. A tiny red and white calf half concealed by the long herbage. He was curled comfortably in his grassy bed, his nose resting on his fore legs.

When the little creature saw his mother he staggered to his feet and clambered shakily up the side of the ditch, but no sooner had he gained the level of the field than the big cow, released now from her halter, lowered her head and gently nudged him back in again.

Bob waved his arm. “There y’are, she’s hiding it isn’t she?”

Mr. Rogers said nothing and I merely shrugged my shoulders, but twice more the calf managed to scramble from the ditch and twice more his mother returned him firmly with her head.

“Well it teks a bit o’ believin’,” the farmer murmured, half to himself. “She’s had five calves afore this and we’ve taken ’em straight away from ’er as we allus do. Maybe she wants to keep this ’un for ‘erself? I dunno … I dunno …” His voice trailed away.

Later, as we rattled down the stony track, David turned to me. “Do you think that cow really hid her calf … so that she could keep it for herself?”

I stared helplessly through the glass of the windscreen. “Well, anybody would tell you it’s impossible, but you saw what happened. I’m like Mr. Rogers, I just don’t know.” I paused as the car dipped into a deep rut and sent us bobbing about. “But you see some funny things at our job.”

The schoolboy nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it seems to me that yours is a funny life altogether.”