James Herriot (8 page)

His young master brought him in repeatedly and I went through the motions, trying at the same time to make it clear that it was all hopeless. The boy persisted doggedly, rushing about meanwhile with his paper deliveries and other jobs, insisting on paying though I didn’t want his money. Then one afternoon he called in.

“Ah couldn’t bring Duke,” he muttered. “Can’t walk now. Will you come and see ’im?”

We got into my car. It was a Sunday, about three o’clock and the streets were quiet. He led me up the cobbled yard and opened the door of one of the houses.

The stink of the place hit me as I went in. Country vets aren’t easily sickened but I felt my stomach turning. Mrs. Binks was very fat and a filthy dress hung shapelessly on her as she slumped, cigarette in mouth, over the kitchen table. She was absorbed in a magazine which lay in a clearing among mounds of dirty dishes and her curlers nodded as she looked up briefly at us.

On a couch under the window her husband sprawled asleep, open-mouthed, snoring out the reek of beer. The sink, which held a further supply of greasy dishes, was covered in a revolting green scum. Clothes, newspapers and nameless rubbish littered the floor and over everything a radio blasted away at full strength.

The only clean new thing was the dog basket in the corner. I went across and bent over the little animal. Duke was now prostrate and helpless, his body emaciated and jerking uncontrollably. The sunken eyes had filled up again with pus and gazed apathetically ahead.

“Wes,” I said. “You’ve got to let me put him to sleep.”

He didn’t answer, and as I tried to explain, the blaring radio drowned my words. I looked over at his mother.

“Do you mind turning the radio down?” I asked.

She jerked her head at the boy and he went over and turned the knob. In the ensuing silence I spoke to him again.

“It’s the only thing, believe me. You can’t let him die by inches like this.”

He didn’t look at me. All his attention was fixed desperately on his dog. Then he raised a hand and I heard his whisper.

“Awright.”

I hurried out to the car for the Nembutal.

“I promise you he’ll feel no pain,” I said as I filled the syringe. And indeed the little creature merely sighed before lying motionless, the fateful twitching stilled at last.

I put the syringe in my pocket. “Do you want me to take him away, Wes?”

He looked at me bewilderedly and his mother broke in.

“Aye, get ’im out. Ah never wanted t’bloody thing ’ere in t’first place.” She resumed her reading.

I quickly lifted the little body and went out. Wes followed me and watched as I opened the boot and laid Duke gently on top of my black working coat.

As I closed the lid he screwed his knuckles into his eyes and his body shook. I put my arm across his shoulders, and as he leaned against me for a moment and sobbed. I wondered if he had ever been able to cry like this—like a little boy with somebody to comfort him.

But soon he stood back and smeared the tears across the dirt on his cheeks.

“Are you going back into the house, Wes?” I asked.

He blinked and looked at me with a return of his tough expression.

“Naw!” he said and turned and walked away. He didn’t look back and I watched him cross the road, climb a wall and trail away across the fields towards the river.

And it has always seemed to me that at that moment Wes walked back into his old life. From then on there were no more odd jobs or useful activities. He never played any more tricks on me but in other ways he progressed into more serious misdemeanours. He set barns on fire, was up before the magistrates for theft and by the time he was thirteen he was stealing cars.

Finally he was sent to an approved school and then he disappeared from the district. Nobody knew where he went and most people forgot him. One person who didn’t was the police sergeant.

“That young Wesley Binks,” he said to me ruminatively. “He was a wrong ’un if ever I saw one. You know, I don’t think he ever cared a damn for anybody or any living thing in his life.”

“I know how you feel, sergeant,” I replied, “but you’re not entirely right. There was one living thing …”

T
RISTAN WOULD NEVER HAVE
won any prizes as an exponent of the haute cuisine.

We got better food in the RAF than most people in wartime Britain but it didn’t compare with the Darrowby fare. I suppose I had been spoiled; first by Mrs. Hall, then by Helen. There were only brief occasions at Skeldale House when we did not eat like kings and one of those was when Tristan was installed as temporary cook.

It began one morning at breakfast in the days when I was still a bachelor and Tristan and I were taking our places at the mahogany dining table. Siegfried bustled in, muttered a greeting and began to pour his coffee. He was unusually distrait as he buttered a slice of toast and cut into one of the rashers on his plate, then after a minute’s thoughtful chewing he brought down his hand on the table with a suddenness that made me jump.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

“Got what?” I enquired.

Siegfried put down his knife and fork and wagged a ringer at me. “Silly, really, I’ve been sitting here puzzling about what to do and it’s suddenly clear.”

“Why, what’s the trouble?”

“It’s Mrs. Hall,” he said. “She’s just told me her sister has been taken ill and she has to go and look after her. She thinks she’ll be away for a week and I’ve been wondering who I could get to look after the house.”

“I see.”

“Then it struck me.” He sliced a corner from a fried egg. “Tristan can do it”

“Eh?” His brother looked up, startled, from his
Daily Mirror.
“Me?”

“Yes, you! You spend a lot of time on your arse. A bit of useful activity would be good for you.”

Tristan looked at him warily. “What do you mean—useful activity?”

“Well, keeping the place straight,” Siegfried said. “I wouldn’t expect perfection but you could tidy up each day, and of course prepare the meals.”

“Meals?”

“That’s right” Siegfried gave him a level stare. “You can cook, can’t you?”

“Well, er, yes … I can cook sausage and mash.”

Siegfried waved an expansive hand. “There you are, you see, no problem. Push over those fried tomatoes, will you, James?”

I passed the dish silently. I had only half heard the conversation because part of my mind was far away. Just before breakfast I had had a phone call from Ken Billings, one of our best farmers, and his words were still echoing in my head.

“Mr. Herriot, that calf you saw yesterday is dead. That’s the third ’un I’ve lost in a week and I’m flummoxed. I want ye out here this mornin’ to have another look round.”

I sipped my coffee absently. He wasn’t the only one who was flummoxed. Three fine calves had shown symptoms of acute gastric pain, I had treated them and they had died. That was bad enough but what made it worse was that I hadn’t the faintest idea what was wrong with them.

I wiped my lips and got up quickly. “Siegfried, I’d like to go to Billings’ first Then I’ve got the rest of the round you gave me.”

“Fine, James, by all means.” My boss gave me a sweet and encouraging smile, balanced a mushroom on a piece of fried bread and conveyed it to his mouth. He wasn’t a big eater but he did love his breakfast.

On the way to the farm my mind beat about helplessly. What more could I do than I had already done? In these obscure cases one was driven to the conclusion that the animal had eaten something harmful. At times I had spent hours roaming around pastures looking for poisonous plants but that was pointless with Billings’s calves because they had never been out; they were mere babies of a month old.

I had carried out post mortem examinations of the dead animals but had found only a non-specific gastroenteritis. I had sent kidneys to the laboratory for lead estimation with negative result; like their owner, I was flummoxed.

Mr. Billings was waiting for me in his yard.

“Good job I rang you!” he said breathlessly. “There’s another ’un startin’.”

I rushed with him into the buildings and found what I expected and dreaded; a small calf kicking at its stomach, getting up and down, occasionally rolling on its straw bed. Typical abdominal pain. But why?

I went over it as with the others. Temperature normal, lungs clear, only rumenal atony and extreme tenderness as I palpated the abdomen.

As I was putting the thermometer back in its case the calf suddenly toppled over and went into a frothing convulsion. Hastily I injected sedatives, calcium, magnesium, but with a feeling of doom. I had done it all before.

“What the hell is it?” the farmer asked, voicing my thoughts.

I shrugged. “It’s acute gastritis, Mr. Billings, but I wish I knew the cause. I could swear this calf has eaten some irritant or corrosive poison.”

“Well, dang it, they’ve nobbut had milk and a few nuts.” The farmer spread his hands. “There’s nothing they can get to hurt them.”

Again, wearily, I went through the old routine; ferreting around in the calf pen, trying to find some clue. An old paint tin, a burst packet of sheep dip. It was amazing, the things you came across in the clutter of a farm building.

But not at Mr. Billings’s place. He was meticulously tidy, particularly with his calves, and the window sills and shelves were free from rubbish. It was the same with the milk buckets, scoured to spotless cleanliness after every feed.

Mr. Billings had a thing about his calves. His two teenage sons were fanatically keen on farming and he encouraged them in all the agricultural skills; but he fed the calves himself.

“Feeding them calves is t’most important job in stock rearing,” he used to say. “Get ’em over that first month and you’re halfway there.’’

And he knew what he was talking about His charges never suffered from the normal ailments of the young; no scour, no joint ill, no pneumonia. I had often marvelled at it, but it made the present disaster all the more unbearable.

“All right,” I said with false breeziness as I left. “Maybe this one won’t be so bad. Give me a ring in the morning.”

I did the rest of my round in a state of gloom and at lunch I was still so preoccupied that I wondered what had happened when Tristan served the meal. I had entirely forgotten about Mrs. Hall’s absence.

However, the sausage and mash wasn’t at all bad and Tristan was lavish with his helpings. The three of us cleaned our plates pretty thoroughly, because morning is the busiest working time in practice and I was always famished by midday.

My mind was still on Mr. Billings’s problem during the afternoon calls and when we sat down to supper I was only mildly surprised to find another offering of sausage and mash.

“Same again, eh?” Siegfried grunted, but he got through his plateful and left without further comment.

The next day started badly. I came into the dining room to find the table bare and Siegfried stamping around.

“Where the hell is our breakfast?” he burst out. “And where the hell is Tristan?”

He pounded along the passage and I heard his shouts in the kitchen, “Tristan! Tristan!”

I knew he was wasting his time. His brother often slept in and it was just more noticeable this morning.

My boss returned along the passage at a furious gallop and I steeled myself for some unpleasantness as the young man was rousted from his bed. But Tristan, as usual, was master of the situation. Siegfried had just begun to take the stairs three at a time when his brother descended from the landing, knotting his tie with perfect composure. It was uncanny. He always got more than his share of sleeping time but was rarely caught between the sheets.

“Sorry, chaps,” he murmured. “Afraid I overslept.”

“Yes, that’s all right!” shouted Siegfried. “But how about our bloody breakfast? I gave you a job to do!”

Tristan was contrite. “I really do apologise, but I was up late last night, peeling potatoes.”

His brother’s face flushed. “I know all about that!” he barked. “You didn’t start till after closing time at the Drovers’!”

“Well, that’s right” Tristan swallowed and his face assumed the familiar expression of pained dignity. “I did feel a bit dry last night. Think it must have been all the cleaning and dusting I did.”

Siegfried did not reply. He shot a single exasperated look at the young man then turned to me. “We’ll have to make do with bread and marmalade this morning, James. Come through to the kitchen and we’ll …”

The jangling telephone cut off his words. I lifted the receiver and listened and it must have been the expression on my face which stopped him in the doorway.

“What’s the matter, James?” he asked as I came away from the ’phone. “You look as though you’ve had a kick in the belly.”

I nodded. “That’s how I feel. That calf is nearly dead at Billings’s and there’s another one ill. I wish you’d come out there with me, Siegfried.”

My boss stood very still as he looked over the side of the pen at the little animal. It didn’t seem to know where to put itself, rising and lying down, kicking at some inward pain, writhing its hindquarters from side to side. As he watched it fell on its side and began to thrash around with all four limbs.

“James,” he said quietly. “That calf has been poisoned.”

“That’s what I thought but how?”

Mr. Billings broke in. “It’s no good talkin’ like that Mr. Farnon. We’ve been over this place time and time again and there’s nowt for them to get.”

“Well, we’ll go over it again.” Siegfried stalked around the calf house as I had done and when he returned his face was expressionless.

“Where do you get the nuts from?” he grunted, crumbling one of the cubes between his fingers.

Mr. Billings threw his arms wide. “From t’local mill. Ryders’ best. You can’t fault them, surely.”

Siegfried said nothing. Ryders were noted for their meticulous preparation of cattle food. He went over the sick calf with stethoscope and thermometer, digging his fingers into the hairy abdominal wall, staring impassively at the calf’s face to note its reaction. He did the same with my patient of yesterday whose glazing eyes and cold extremities told their grim tale. Then he gave the calves almost the same treatment as I had and we left.