James Herriot (51 page)

For a moment I stood there bewildered, trying to reorientate my thoughts. The sofa was drawn close to the bright fire, the atmosphere was heavy with cigarette smoke and the scent of perfume, but there was nobody to be seen.

The most striking feature was the long curtain over the french window. It was wafting slowly downwards as though some object had just hurtled through it at great speed. I trotted over the carpet and peered out into the dark garden. From somewhere in the gloom I heard a scuffling noise, a thud and a muffled cry, then there was a pitter-patter followed by a shrill yelping. I stood for some time listening, then as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I walked down the long path under the high brick wall to the yard at the foot. The yard door was open as were the big double doors into the back lane, but there was no sign of life.

Slowly I retraced my steps to the warm oblong of light at the foot of the tall old house. I was about to close the french window when I heard a stealthy movement and an urgent whisper.

“Is that you, Jim?”

Triss! Where the hell have you sprung from?”

The young man tiptoed past me into the room and looked around him anxiously. “It was you, then, not Siegfried?”

“Yes, I’ve just come in.”

He flopped on the sofa and sunk his head in his hands. “Oh damn! I was just lying here a few minutes ago with Lydia in my arms. At peace with the world. Everything was wonderful. Then I heard the front door open.”

“But you knew I was coming back.”

“Yes, and I’d have given you a shout, but for some reason I thought, ‘God help us, it’s Siegfried!’ It sounded like his step in the passage.”

Then what happened?”

He churned his hair around with his fingers. “Oh, I panicked. I was whispering lovely things into Lydia’s ear, then the next second I grabbed her, threw her off the couch and out of the french window.”

“I heard a thud …”

“Yes, that was Lydia falling into the rockery.”

“And then some sort of high-pitched cries …”

He sighed and closed his eyes. “That was Lydia in the rose bushes. She doesn’t know the geography of the place, poor lass.”

“Gosh, Triss,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have burst in on you like that I was thinking of something else.”

He rose wearily and put a hand on my shoulder. “Not your fault, Jim, not your fault. You did warn me.” He reached for his cigarettes. “I don’t know how I’m going to face that girl again. I just chucked her out into the lane and told her to beat it home with all speed. She must think I’m stone balmy.” He gave a hollow groan.

I tried to be cheerful. “Oh, you’ll get round her again. You’ll have a laugh about it later.”

But he wasn’t listening. His eyes, wide with horror, were staring past me. Slowly he raised a trembling finger and pointed towards the fireplace. His mouth worked for a few seconds before he spoke.

“Christ Jim, it’s gone!” he gasped.

For a moment I thought the shock had deranged him. “Gone …? What’s gone?”

“The bloody dog! He was there when I dashed outside. Right there!”

I looked down at the empty basket and a cold hand clutched at me. “Oh no! He must have got out through the open window. We’re in trouble.”

We rushed into the garden and searched in vain. We came back for torches and searched once more, prowling around the yard and back lane, shouting the little dog’s name with diminishing hope.

After ten minutes we trailed back to the brightly lit room and stared at each other.

Tristan was the first to voice our thoughts. “What do we tell Miss Westerman when she calls?”

I shook my head. My mind fled from the thought of informing that lady that we had lost her dog.

Just at that moment the front door bell pealed in the passage and Tristan almost leaped in the air.

“Oh God!” he quavered. “That’ll be her now. Go and see her, Jim. Tell her it was my fault—anything you like—but I daren’t face her.”

I squared my shoulders, marched over the long stretch of tiles and opened the door. It wasn’t Miss Westerman, it was a well-built platinum blonde and she glared at me angrily.

“Where’s Tristan?” she rasped in a voice which told me we had more than one tough female to deal with tonight

“Well, he’s—er—”

“Oh, I know he’s in there!” As she brushed past me I noticed she had a smear of soil on her cheek and her hair was sadly disarranged. I followed her into the room where she stalked up to my friend.

“Look at my bloody stockings!” she burst out. “They’re ruined!”

Tristan peered nervously at the shapely legs. “I’m sorry, Lydia. I’ll get you another pair. Honestly, love, I will.”

“You’d better, you bugger!” she replied. “And don’t ‘love’ me—I’ve never been so insulted in my life. What did you think you were playing at?”

“It was all a misunderstanding. Let me explain …” Tristan advanced on her with a brave attempt at a winning smile, but she backed away.

“Keep your distance,” she said frigidly. “I’ve had enough of you for one night”

She swept out and Tristan leaned his head against the mantelpiece. “The end of a lovely friendship, Jim.” Then he shook himself. “But we’ve got to find that dog. Come on.”

I set off in one direction and he went in the other. It was a moonless night of impenetrable darkness and we were looking for a jet black dog. I think we both knew it was hopeless but we had to try.

In a little town like Darrowby you are soon out on the country roads where there are no lights and as I stumbled around peering vainly over invisible fields the utter pointlessness of the activity became more and more obvious.

Occasionally I came within Tristan’s orbit and heard his despairing cries echoing over the empty landscape. “Haamiish! Haamiish! Haamiish …!”

After half an hour we met at Skeldale House. Tristan faced me and as I shook my head he seemed to shrink within himself. His chest heaved as he fought for breath. Obviously he had been running while I had been walking and I suppose that was natural enough. We were both in an awkward situation but the final devastating blow would inevitably fall on him.

“Well, we’d better get out on the road again,” he gasped, and as he spoke the front door bell rang again.

The colour drained rapidly from his face and he clutched my arm. “That must be Miss Westerman this time. God almighty, she’s coming in!”

Rapid footsteps sounded in the passage and the sitting room door opened. But it wasn’t Miss Westerman, it was Lydia again. She strode over to the sofa, reached underneath and extracted her handbag. She didn’t say anything but merely shrivelled Tristan with a sidelong glance before leaving.

“What a night!” he moaned, putting a hand to his forehead. “I can’t stand much more of this.”

Over the next hour we made innumerable sorties but we couldn’t find Hamish and nobody else seemed to have seen him. I came in to find Tristan collapsed in an armchair. His mouth hung open and he showed every sign of advanced exhaustion. I shook my head and he shook his, then I heard the telephone.

I lifted the receiver, listened for a minute and turned to the young man. “I’ve got to go out, Triss. Mr. Drew’s old pony has colic again.”

He reached out a hand from the depths of his chair. “You’re not going to leave me, Jim?”

“Sorry, I must. But I won’t be long. It’s only a mile away.”

“But what if Miss Westerman comes?”

I shrugged. “You’ll just have to apologise. Hamish is bound to turn up—maybe in the morning.”

“You make it sound easy …” He ran a hand inside his collar. “And another thing—how about Siegfried? What if he arrives and asks about the dog? What do I tell him?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” I replied airily. “Just say you were too busy on the sofa with the Drovers’ barmaid to bother about such things. He’ll understand.”

But my attempt at jocularity fell flat. The young man fixed me with a cold eye and ignited a quivering Woodbine. “I believe I’ve told you this before, Jim, but there’s a nasty cruel streak in you.”

Mr. Drew’s pony had almost recovered when I got there but I gave it a mild sedative injection before turning for home. On the way back a thought struck me and I took a road round the edge of the town to the row of modern bungalows where Miss Westerman lived. I parked the car and walked up the path of number ten.

And there was Hamish in the porch, coiled up comfortably on the mat, looking up at me with mild surprise as I hovered over him.

“Come on, lad,” I said. “You’ve got more sense than we had. Why didn’t we think of this before?”

I deposited him on the passenger seat and as I drove away he hoisted his paws on to the dash and gazed out interestedly at the road unfolding in the headlights. Truly a phlegmatic little hound.

Outside Skeldale House I tucked him under my arm and was about to turn the handle of the front door when I paused. Tristan had notched up a long succession of successful pranks against me—fake telephone calls, the ghost in my bedroom and many others—and in fact, good friends as we were, he never neglected a chance to take the mickey out of me. In this situation, with the positions reversed, he would be merciless. Instead of walking straight in as I always did, I put my finger on the bell and leaned on it for several long seconds.

For some time there was neither sound nor movement from within and I pictured the cowering figure mustering his courage before marching to his doom. Then the light came on in the passage and as I peered expectantly through the glass a nose appeared round the far corner followed very gingerly by a wary eye. By degrees the full face inched into view and when Tristan recognised my grinning countenance he unleashed a cry of rage and bounded along the passage with upraised fist.

I really think that in his distraught state he would have attacked me, but the sight of Hamish banished all else. He grabbed the hairy creature and began to fondle him.

“Good little dog, nice little dog,” he crooned as he trotted through to the sitting room. “What a beautiful thing you are.” He laid him lovingly in the basket, and Hamish, after a “heigh-ho, here we are again” glance around him, put his head along his side and promptly went to sleep.

Tristan fell limply into the armchair and gazed at me with glazed eyes.

“Well, we’re saved, Jim,” he whispered. “But. I’ll never be the same after tonight. I’ve run bloody miles and I’ve nearly lost my voice with shouting. I tell you I’m about knackered.”

I too was vastly relieved, and the nearness of catastrophe was brought home to us when Miss Westerman arrived within ten minutes.

“Oh, my darling!” she cried as Hamish leaped at her, mouth open, short tail wagging furiously. “I’ve been so worried about you all day.”

She looked tentatively at the ear with its rows of buttons. “Oh, it does look a lot better without that horrid swelling—and what a nice neat job you have made. Thank you, Mr. Herriot, and thank you, too, young man.”

Tristan, who had staggered to his feet, bowed slightly as I showed the lady out.

“Bring him back in six weeks to have the stitches out,” I called to her as she left then I rushed back into the room.

“Siegfried’s just pulled up outside! You’d better look as if you’ve been working.”

He rushed to the book shelves, pulled down Gaiger and Davis’s
Bacteriology
and a notebook and dived into a chair. When his brother came in he was utterly engrossed.

Siegfried moved over to the fire and warmed his hands. He looked pink and mellow.

“I’ve just been speaking to Miss Westerman,” he said. “She’s really pleased. Well done, both of you.”

“Thank you,” I said, but Tristan was too busy to reply, scanning the pages anxiously and scribbling repeatedly in the notebook.

Siegfried walked behind the young man’s chair and looked down at the open volume.

“Ah yes, Clostridium septique,” he murmured, smiling indulgently. “That’s a good one to study. Keeps coming up in exams.” He rested a hand briefly on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m glad to see you at work. You’ve been raking about too much lately and it’s getting you down. A night at your books will have been good for you.”

“Am I not right, James?” he said to me across the room. ‘Tell him. Few more nights like this will put him right.”

“Right.”

“Put him just where he ought to be.”

“Right.”

“Quite.” And Siegfried went off to bed.

W
HEN
I
WAS DISCHARGED
from hospital I expected to be posted straight overseas and I wondered if I would be able to catch up with my old flight and my friends.

However, I learned with surprise that I had to go to a convalescent home for a fortnight before any further action could be taken. This was in Puddlestone, near Leominster—a lovely mansion house in acres of beautiful gardens. It was presided over by a delightful old matron with whom we fortunate airmen played sedate games of croquet or walked in the cool woods; it was easy to imagine there was no such thing as a war. Two weeks of this treatment left me feeling revitalised. It wouldn’t be long, I felt, before I was back on the job.

From Puddlestone it was back to Manchester and Heaton Park again and this time it was strange to think that in all the great sprawl of huts and the crowding thousands of men in blue there wasn’t a soul who knew me.

Except, of course, the Wing Commander who had sent me to hospital in the first place. I had an interview with him on my arrival and he came straight to the point.

“Herriot,” he said. “I’m afraid you can’t fly any more.”

“But … I’ve had the operation … I’m a lot better.”

“I know that, but you can no longer be classed as 100% fit. You have been officially downgraded and I’m sure you realise that pilots have to be grade one.”

“Yes … of course.”

He glanced at the file in his hand. “I see you are a veterinary surgeon. Mmm—this poses a problem. Normally when an aircrew man is grounded he remusters on the ground staff, but yours is a reserved occupation. You really can’t serve in any capacity but aircrew. Yes … yes … we’ll have to see.”

It was all very impersonal and businesslike. Those few words coming from a man like him left no room for argument and they obliterated at a stroke every picture I had ever had of my future in the RAF.