The Real James Herriot (23 page)

Alf and Joan always enjoyed their food but their performance with the knife and fork was particularly impressive at that time. Thursdays opened, as usual, with a good breakfast, after which Alf built up an appetite around the practice in the morning while Joan whetted hers, scrubbing at the already clean Kirkgate stone floors. They then departed for Harrogate, stopping en route at the Red Lion at South Stainley, a famous inn noted for its good food. After a substantial three-course lunch, they drove on to Harrogate and spent the next couple of hours browsing around the shops, before hunger pains drew them through the doors of Betty's Café. What followed then was the effortless consumption of hors d'oeuvres, fish and chips and a tasty dessert. The clean and friendly café, with the smiling waitresses and the gentle chink of fine china, was a wonderfully relaxing
contrast to the rough and tumble of the cold Yorkshire farmyards.

The next stop was the cinema, after which, upon emerging from its dark interior, they were assailed by the irresistible aromas issuing from Louis, a nearby restaurant. Louis was a small, volatile Italian gentleman, a masterful chef who ran a small café that provided a satisfying end to the Wights' day as they swiftly put large plates of spaghetti, or other delicious Italian dishes, out of sight. Harrogate was a sweet retreat for Alf and Joan – a place where they could forget the clamour of 23 Kirkgate with its relentlessly ringing telephone. He writes affectionately in 1979 about the town in his factual book,
James Herriot's Yorkshire
: ‘I love my work but it is stressful, and the sense of escape as Helen and I roamed the streets of this lovely town was unbelievable. Even now, when I step from my car in Harrogate, I can feel myself relaxing, feel the tensions and the pressures growing less.'

One day, Alf and Joan were in Betty's when Alf was approached by a man who said to him, ‘Excuse me, but are you George Donaldson?'

‘No,' replied Alf. ‘Why do you ask?'

‘You look just like George Donaldson,' he replied. ‘He was at school with me at Strathallan.'

‘The only man I know of who comes from Strathallan is Gordon Rae, the vet from Boroughbridge,' continued Alf. ‘But I've never actually met him.'

‘Now you have,' said the man. ‘That's me!'

Gordon Rae began laughing – something that he and Alf would continue to do together for many years to come. This meeting began a lasting friendship between Gordon and his wife Jean, and Alf and Joan, during which time they would meet regularly in Harrogate almost every Thursday afternoon for the next twenty-five years.

If I had to count the very best friends of my father on the fingers of one hand, Gordon Rae would be among them. Originating from north-east Scotland, he ran the veterinary practice in the town of Boroughbridge, not far from Thirsk, and was just the sort of man that my father liked. Gordon was a man with no ‘side' to him – someone you felt that you knew well after a very short time in his company, with honesty and decency shining out of his friendly face.

Although in a far stronger financial situation than my father, he had little time for life's fineries. He was happiest spending hours tramping through the mountains and camping with his children. I have clear memories of Gordon, whistling tunelessly away to himself while throwing
his boots and rucksack into the back of the car, his smiling face a picture of contentment. Unlike my father, he had little interest in sport or music but, as well as sharing a sense of humour, they both loved the wild uplands of Britain, where they would spend many hours together walking and laughing. This cemented their friendship in such a way that Jean and Gordon, with their three sons, Alastair, Martin and Douglas, would spend several family holidays with us in the years to come.

With Gordon, like Alf, a slave to general practice in those days, he had many amusing tales to tell. It was an especial comfort to Alf, as he laughed at Gordon's stories of triumph and catastrophy, that his exacting life as a veterinary surgeon was one that was shared by so many of his colleagues. Alf Wight would never tire of the company of Gordon Rae.

In 1949, with the veterinary practice in Thirsk becoming impossibly busy for the two vets, Donald and Alf acquired their first employee, a retired railway clerk called Harold Wilson. Up until this time, Joan, as well as being on almost permanent telephone duty, had helped in keeping the practice books but, with her growing family and house to attend to, the work load had become too much for her. Some neat and tidy organisation was badly needed. Bits of paper covered with Donald's spidery writing littered the office, and spare cash bulged out of drawers and over the top of the old pint pot on the mantelpiece that James Herriot was to describe in his first book.

Harold Wilson who, unlike both of his employers, possessed a remarkable head for figures, soon had things in better shape but he had an uphill task in receiving full cooperation from Donald. In
If Only They Could Talk,
James Herriot describes the first secretary in the practice as a ‘Miss Harbottle' who had a running battle with Siegfried in trying to balance the practice books. This character was, in fact, based very loosely upon Harold Wilson, and is one example of Alf disguising the true origins of his characters by altering their sex.

The uneasy exchanges between Harold and Donald were many. Harold, who found his employer's shambolic approach to any semblance of organisation almost impossible to bear, in return irritated Donald by loudly clearing his throat to capture his attention, nearly always at a most inconvenient time. Donald was never noted for his patience and there were occasions when he responded vociferously, but despite these eruptions, Harold remained a valued and loyal employee of the practice for more than ten years.

Despite Harold Wilson's help with the office side of the practice, the veterinary workload became ever more demanding and it soon became apparent that it was too much for two men. An added burden for Alf was that Donald was branching out into other ways of earning money, spending increasing hours away from the practice.

Throughout his life, Donald Sinclair was a man with a multitude of interests. As well as shooting, fishing and hunting, he ran a pack of beagles, and later harriers, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.

One of his most enduring interests, in his later years, was pigeon racing. He maintained a very good loft of pigeons at Southwoods Hall, being acknowledged as an expert, with pigeon fanciers from all over the north of England asking him for advice. One day I asked him how he enjoyed his transition from horse specialist to a doctor of pigeons. ‘Very much,' he replied, ‘pigeons don't kick!'

As well as following these pastimes, he embarked on many different money-making schemes – some successful, some disastrous. His most successful was the growing of Christmas trees in the hilly land around Southwoods Hall which began more than thirty-five years ago and is still thriving today, years after his death.

His earlier business ventures, at the time when only he and Alf were in the practice, were less rewarding. In the late 1940s, with Audrey's help, he bought two farms, Bumper Castle and Low Cleaves near Thirlby, thus becoming a part-time farmer as well as a veterinary surgeon. His running of these farms was, characteristically, erratic and they both made losses. He would return to farming again in the 1970s, keeping a herd of suckler cows and calves at Southwoods, this time with a little more success.

In the late 1940s, as well as the running of the farms, he branched out with other more exotic ideas. One of these was the invention of an elaborate wire-mesh construction, designed to allow free-range hens access to a protected run where they would be secure from foxes. Donald's ingenious device, as well as barring the entrance of a predator, also prevented the hens from returning to the free-range areas outside. He dubbed his invention, of which he had high hopes, ‘Sinclair's Patent Pop Hole'.

To his delight, he received an order for a large number of these devices. Having obtained the help of a local engineering works in manufacturing them, he transported them all down to Thirsk market place one Monday morning to clinch the deal with the purchaser.
Donald paced impatiently around his towering stack of ironwork but, despite waiting several hours, his ‘customer' failed to arrive.

Alf remembered that day very well. It was late in the day when Donald, having reloaded his merchandise, drew up outside the door of 23 Kirkgate on his tractor with a mountainous pile of metalwork in the trailer.

‘My God, Alfred!' he shouted. ‘I've just about ruptured myself carting these bloody pop holes down here and the bugger hasn't even turned up for them! What am I supposed to do with all this lot now?'

The pop holes returned to Southwoods Hall where they rusted away gently over the course of many years. Undeterred, Donald was soon to try out some other ideas. One of these was the establishment of a mobile fish and chip shop, hopefully christened ‘Enterprise Fisheries'. This potentially lucrative business travelled around the villages in the Thirsk area but, unfortunately, it did not live up to its name. Donald made heavy losses while his employees running the business did far better; they realised the potential, pocketed the proceeds and disappeared. ‘Enterprise Fisheries', as with the quietly decomposing ‘pop holes', would soon be forgotten.

Many have said that the partnership of Donald Sinclair and Alf Wight was a well-balanced one. Donald was always full of ideas – some good, some crazy – with Alf always there to hone them down to sensible proportions. Alf, throughout his working life with Donald, derived enormous amusement from his partner's escapades, but it was not always so funny at the time, especially during the busy period in the late 1940s, when Donald was often absent from the practice, pursuing his various activities.

Help was needed and, in July 1951, it arrived. A young man called John Crooks was the first of a long line of veterinary assistants to walk through the doors of 23 Kirkgate.

‘It was rather wonderful to have an assistant, especially a good one like him. I had always liked him, but when I got a call to a calving heifer at three o'clock in the morning and was able to pass it on to him and turn over and go back to sleep, I could feel the liking deepening into a warm affection.'

These words, written by James Herriot in his final book,
Every Living Thing,
will have a special significance for many veterinary surgeons who have experienced the dubious privilege of leaving a warm bed to drive out to a cold farm in the early hours.

The arrival of John Crooks heralded a whole new meaning to Alf Wight's life. During his first ten years as a practising vet, he had had to be on call almost every night, and to be able to send someone else was a delightful and unbelievable experience. ‘For the first time in my life, I had someone working for me!'

John was not only a competent veterinary surgeon; he was a likeable man and was popular with the customers. For Alf, those years of the early 1950s were happy ones. He and John became great friends and an atmosphere of laughter and good humour pervaded the practice. It was a period of prosperity, with their profession undergoing massive change as agriculture prospered and farmers became more educated. From the veterinary surgeons' side, high standards were expected – an ideal situation for a young, keen man like John Crooks.

John stayed in Thirsk for almost three years. He left in May 1954 to set up his own practice in Beverley, eventually achieving the distinction of becoming President of the British Veterinary Association in 1983. From his exalted position within the profession, however, he never forgot his humble beginnings in Thirsk, looking back on those days with Alf and Donald as some of the happiest of his life. His two employers gave him sound advice and tremendous support, so vital to a young person taking the first difficult steps in his chosen career. He felt so strongly about his time in Thirsk that when he left, he took with him a bottle of ‘air' from 23 Kirkgate, hoping that it would infect his new practice with the refreshing and good-natured atmosphere he had enjoyed there.

John and his wife, Heather, remained great friends with the Wights, Alf becoming godfather to their first-born child, Annette. Many years later, when John became President of the BVA, he asked Alf to speak at the inaugural ceremony, at which Alf recalled his memories of John as t'yoong man', as he was called by the farmers. That was when Alf Wight, no longer the youngest man in the practice, suddenly realised that he was getting older.

The luxury of having an assistant transformed Alf's quality of life. Having savoured a taste of a more civilised existence, but still seeing his wife slaving in 23 Kirkgate, he became more determined than ever to get his family out of the big, cold house. On his many visits to the Yorkshire farms, he had been deeply impressed with the farm kitchens. They were not only warm, with fires or big cooking ranges dominating the room, but they seemed to be the nerve centre of the house where everything good seemed to happen. For a long time, he had dreamed of a comfortable house with a big, warm kitchen, he and his family seated cosily around the table. It was a vision so different from the spartan, icy surroundings they had endured for so long.

Although he had earned well for the past five years, Alf had saved very little. Quite apart from the cost of simply feeding and clothing his family, he had taken on additional financial responsibilities; I received private education at Ivy Dene Preparatory School while my mother had enjoyed the help of some busy little women in her uphill task of keeping the house in order. Having begun his professional career with no money behind him, Alf faced the task of looking for a new home with virtually no capital to his name.

Undeterred, he soon had his eye on a house in Stockton Road in Thirsk. Pleasantly situated and just the right size for the family, it was exactly what he was looking for. It was due to be auctioned in the Golden Fleece Hotel and, armed with positive thoughts and very little money, Alf attended the auction with a fierce determination that the house was going to be his. It was an experience he would never forget. The bidding rose to more than £3000, a sum he could only dream about, but with the sweat standing out on his forehead, he doggedly persisted in bidding, so desperate was he to get his family out of the cold, stone-flagged Kirkgate house. Finally, with the tension in the room rising by the second, and with only him and one other contestant left in the bidding, Alf could take no more. His iron resolve suddenly
evaporated and he conceded defeat. He left the Golden Fleece a drained and beaten man.

The experience left its mark on him. As he was leaving the hotel, he glanced in a mirror but hardly recognised the ghastly visage framed within it – a gaunt, pale shadow of the man who had strode into the auction with such high hopes. He felt one hundred years old. This incident remained so firmly in his memory that he recalled it in
Every Living Thing.
How would he have felt had he been able to look more than thirty years into the future, when the sum of £3000 would be small change to him?

The loss of that house, in fact, turned out to be providential. Very soon afterwards, and after many hours of bartering, he bought a plot of land in Topcliffe Road on which he had his own house built. This house, costing £1000 less than the other, was not only a better house, but was one built to his and Joan's specification. With his stronger standing in the practice having enabled him to obtain a mortgage for £2000, he could now look forward to some comfort for the family in the years ahead. He called his new house, into which we moved in the winter of 1953, Rowardennan, after a favoured and beautiful spot by the side of Loch Lomond. It would be our home for the next twenty-five years.

I remember the day we moved in, my overriding memory being one of draught-free rooms and wall-to-wall carpeting. There was no central heating but, compared to 23 Kirkgate, it was the warmest, cosiest nest imaginable. The kitchen was Alf's greatest joy and was dominated by an Aga cooker, an impressive, solid bank of warmth that he would worship for the next twenty-five years. Alf, the rumpled figure in his dressing-gown, as he clutched his morning cup of tea and his toast and Marmite, would have reason to bless that Aga for many winters to come.

1953 was a year of happiness and achievement for Alf. He now had his own house, both his children were being educated in an excellent primary school, and the practice was doing well enough to support an assistant. His quality of life had taken a turn for the better.

One sad incident, however, occurred shortly following the move to Rowardennan; our little dog, Danny, was killed on the main road outside the house. He was, by then, fourteen years old, with a hard body and a heart that beat with the regular, strong rhythm of that of a
young dog, but his one physical infirmity was deafness. He never heard the car that ended his life but his death was mercifully swift. We had regarded Danny as indestructible but the combination of unfamiliar surroundings and his inability to hear traffic was his undoing.

I remember my father coming into our bedroom to tell Rosie and me that Danny had met his end. We cried unashamedly. He had been regarded as a member of the family and it took us weeks to fully realise that our bushy little friend was no longer trotting by our sides.

Alf quickly realised that to travel to the farms without some canine company in the car was unthinkable, so he did what he always told his customers to do following the loss of a pet – he found another. Donald was running a pack of beagles at the time, in which there was one very small bitch that was regarded as the runt of the pack. As she had difficulty in keeping up with the rest, Donald was only too pleased to present his partner with a replacement for Danny. This appealing little creature, whom we called Dinah, thus became the second dog to travel the long miles at Alf's side.

Dinah was the opposite of her predecessor; her life revolved around the food bowl. After demolishing her meal within seconds, she was always ready for more and she utilised her greatest asset to get it. This irresistible little hound had a sweet face with liquid brown eyes which, once turned upon us, totally demolished our stern resolve not to overfeed her. She invariably joined us at mealtimes and, with my grandmother, Lal, being the most vulnerable to Dinah's charms, a steady supply of juicy titbits would drop down to the strategically positioned little dog. This high living resulted in Dinah becoming very fat, despite the regular exercise she received while out with Alf. He repeatedly exhorted his mother-in-law to stop feeding Dinah, but the old lady was completely under her spell, resulting in Alf Wight, the vet, having to live with the ignominy of owning one of the fattest dogs in Thirsk.

Dinah, who walked for miles with us, was regarded, like Danny, as a member of the family and we were terribly upset when she died in 1963 at the age of eleven, through inadvertently consuming some rat poison; her insatiable appetite had contributed to her downfall.

James Herriot wrote about his first canine passenger in his fourth book,
Vet in Harness,
referring to him as a beagle named Sam.

Having him with me added so much to the intermissions I granted myself on my daily rounds. Whereas in offices and factories they had tea breaks, I just
stopped the car and stepped out into the splendour which was always at hand and walked for a spell down hidden lanes, through woods, or as today, along one of the grassy tracks which ran over the high tops.

This thing which I had always done had a new meaning now. Anybody who has ever walked a dog knows the abiding satisfaction which comes from giving pleasure to a beloved animal and the sight of the little form trotting ahead of me lent a depth which had been missing before.

Sam the beagle is an example of James Herriot's habit of making a composite character out of one or two others. Sam is, in fact, Danny and Dinah rolled into one.

Such was his feeling for the canine race, Alf never understood how anyone could live without a dog, let alone walk without one. One day, he and I were exercising Dinah along the side of the Codbeck, a popular route with the dog walkers of Thirsk. A man whom neither of us recognised strode by, whereupon my father said to me, ‘That's a suspicious-looking character! I wonder what he's up to?'

‘Why do you say that?' I asked. The man looked fairly normal to me. ‘What's suspicious about him?'

He gave the retreating figure another glance and smiled. ‘He hasn't got a dog!'

All good things come to an end, and in the spring of 1954, Alf was very sorry to learn that John Crooks was leaving to establish his own practice in another part of Yorkshire. He would see John depart, to be replaced by another young veterinary surgeon – a pattern that would be repeated many times across the portals of 23 Kirkgate.

James Herriot talks about only three veterinary assistants in his books – John Crooks (to whom he gave his real name), Calum Buchanan (real name, Brian Nettleton) and Carmody (who is described as a student in the third book,
Let Sleeping Vets Lie
but who, in fact, was an assistant named Oliver Murphy). There were, of course, many others. Over a period of forty-eight years to the present day, upwards of thirty young people have worked as assistants in the practice – all providing a rich variety of personalities.

James Herriot writes about his sadness at the departure of John Crooks and how this was tempered by the arrival of the unforgettable Calum, complete with his badgers and an assorted menagerie. Brian Nettleton, the real Calum, did not actually arrive until 1957 and there
were, in fact, four other assistants in Thirsk in the meantime – men whom Alf never mentioned in his books.

The assistant who followed John was a young man called Jim Chad-wick. Had my father ever written another book, he may well have figured in it. While researching my father's life, I came across some work he had put on disk for future reference, among which there is a great deal of material about Jim.

Jim Chadwick was a handsome young man who soon became a great favourite with the ladies. He was not only handsome but charming, and turned out to be a real asset to the practice. He was a very good veterinary surgeon but in his first few weeks lacked confidence, continually appealing to Alf to extricate him from sticky situations. He told me, years later, how grateful he was for all the valuable support he received during those first uncertain weeks.

Alf did not mind; he preferred to have a young man who was willing to listen and learn. I remember another assistant who adopted a different attitude. Believing he knew everything, he refused to heed advice from his more experienced employers. The result was some disastrous mistakes on the farms which gave Alf and Donald many sleepless nights.

My father's old friend Eddie Straiton, for whom I worked for fifteen months, had little time for newly-qualified assistants who thought they knew it all. He had a forthright way of expressing his views. ‘I'll tell you what's wrong with such people,' he said to me one day. ‘They don't know enough to know they know bugger all!'