Again I seized the head and pushed my torch into the mouth and I shall
al ways be thankful that at that very instant the dog coughed again,
opening the cartilages of the larynx and giving me a glimpse of the
cause of all the trouble.
There, beyond the drooping epiglottis I saw for a fleeting moment a
smooth round object no bigger than a pea.
"I think it's a pebble," I gasped.
"Right inside his larynx."
"You mean, in 'is Adam's apple?"
"That's right, and it's acting like a ball valve, blocking his windpipe
every now and then." I shook the dog's head.
"You see, look, I've dislodged it for the moment. He's coming round
again."
Once more Jake was reviving and breathing~ steadily.
Roddy ran his hand over the head, along the back and down the great
muscles of the hind limbs.
"But . . . but . . . it'll happen again, won't it?"
I nodded.
"I'm afraid so."
"And one of these times it isn't goin' to shift and that'll be the end
of 'im?"
He had gone very pale.
"That's about it, Roddy, I'll have to get that pebble out."
"But how ...?"
"Cut into the larynx. And right now it's the only way."
"All right." He swallowed.
"Let's get on. I don't think ah could stand it if he went down
again."
I knew what he meant. My knees had begun to shake, and I had a strong
conviction that if Jake collapsed once more then so would I.
I seized a pair of scissors and clipped away the hair from the ventral
surface of the larynx. I dared not use a general anaesthetic and
infiltrated the area with local before swabbing with antiseptic.
Mercifully there was a freshly boiled set of instruments Iying in the
steriliser and I lifted out the tray and set it on thc trolley by the
side of the table.
"Hold his head steady," I said hoarsely, and gripped a scalpel.
I cut down through skin, fascia and the thin layers of the sterno-hyoid
and omo-hyoid muscles till the ventral surface of the larynx was
revealed. This was something I had never done to a live dog before,
but desperation abolished any hesitancy and it took me only another few
seconds to incise the thin membrane and peer into the interior.
And there it was. A pebble right enough big enough to kill.
I had to fish it out quickly and cleanly without pushing it into the
trachea.
I leaned back and rummaged in the tray till I found some broad-bladed
forceps then I poised them over the wound. Great surgeons' hands, I
felt sure, didn't shake like this, nor did such men pant as I was
doing. But I clenched my teeth, introduced the forceps and my hand
magically steadied as I clamped them over the pebble.
I stopped panting, too. In fact I didn't breathe at all as I bore the
shining little object slowly and tenderly through the opening and
dropped it with a gentle rat-tat on the table.
"Is that it?" asked Roddy, almost in a whisper.
"That's it." I reached for needle and suture silk.
"All is well now."
The stitching took only a few minutes and by the end of it Jake was
bright-eyed and alert, paws shifting impatiently, ready for anything.
He seemed to know his troubles were over.
- grey and glistening and tiny, but Roddy brought him back in ten days
to have the stitches removed. It was, in fact, the very morning he was
leaving the Darrow by district, and after I had picked the few loops of
silk from the nicely healed wound I walked with him to the front door
while Jake capered round our feet.
On the pavement outside Skeldale House the ancient pram stood in all
its high, rusted dignity. Roddy pulled back the cover.
"Up, boy," he murmured, and the big dog leaped effortlessly into his
accustomed place.
Roddy took hold of the handle with both hands and as the autumn
sunshine broke suddenly through the clouds it lit up a picture which
had grown familiar and part of the daily scene. The golf jacket, the
open shirt and brown chest, the handsome animal sit ting up, loo king
around him with natural grace.
"Well, so long, Roddy," I said.
"I suppose you'll be round these parts again."
He turned and I saw that smile again.
"Aye, reckon ah'll be back."
He gave a push and they were off, the st range vehicle creaking, Jake
swaying gently as they went down the street. The memory came back to
me of what I had seen under the cover that night in the surgery. The
haversack, which would contain his razor, towel, soap and a few other
things. The packet of tea and the thermos. And something else a tiny
dog collar. Could it have belonged to Jake as a pup or to another
loved animal? It added a little more mystery to the man . . . and
explained other things, too. That farmer had been right all Roddy
possessed was in that pram.
And it seemed it was all he desired, too, because as he turned the
corner and disappeared from my view I could hear him whistling.
Chapter Twenty-one They had sent me to East church on the Isle of
Sheppey and I knew it was the last stop.
As I looked along the disorderly line of men I realised I wouldn't be
taking part in many more parades. And it came to me with a pang that
at the Scar borough Initial Training Wing this would not have been
classed as a parade at all. I could remember the ranks of blue outside
the Grand Hotel, straight as the Grenadier Guards and every man stan
ding stiffly, loo king neither to left nor right. Our boots gleaming,
buttons shining like gold and not a movement anywhere as the flight
sergeant led the officer round on morning inspection.
I had moaned as loudly as anybody at the rigid discipline, the 'bull',
the scrubbing and polishing, marching and drilling, but now that it had
all gone it seemed good and meaningful and I missed it.
Here the files of airmen lounged, chatted among themselves and
occasionally took a surreptitious drag at a cigarette as a sergeant out
in front called the names from a list and gave us our leisurely
instructions for the day.
This particular morning he was taking a long time over it, consulting
sheaves of papers and ma king laboured notes with a pencil. A big
Irishman on my right was becoming increasingly restive and finally he
shouted testily: "For sake, sergeant, get us oflf this square. Me
feet's kill in ' me!"
The sergeant didn't even look up.
"Shut your mouth, Brady," he replied.
"You'll get off the square when I say so and not before."
It was like that at East church, the great filter tank of the RAF,
where what I had heard described as the 'odds and sods' were finally
sorted out. It was a big sprawling camp filled with a widely varied
mixture of airmen who had one thing in common; they were all waiting
some of them for re muster, but most for discharge from the service.
There was a resigned air about the whole place, an acceptance of the
fact that we were all just put ting in time. There was a token
>
discipline but it was of the most benign kind. And as I said, every
man there was just waiting . . . waiting Little Ned Finch in his
remote corner of the high Yorkshire Dales al ways seemed to me to be
waiting, too. I could remember his boss yelling at him.
"For God's sake, shape up to t'job! You're not farm in' at all!" Mr
Daggdt grabbed hold of a leaping calf and glared in exasperation.
Ned gazed back at him impassively. His face registered no particular
emotion' ~- i in the pale blue eyes I read the expression that was al
ways there as though vas waiting for something to happen, but without
much hope. He made a five attempt to catch a calf but was brushed
aside, then he put his arm the neck of another one, a chunky little
animal of three months, and we' long a few yards before being deposited
on his back in the straw.
'any it, do this one, Mr Herriot!" Mr Daggett barked, turning the
hairl rds me.
"It looks as though I'll have to catch 'em all myself."
' I injected the animal. I was inoculating a batch of twenty with
preventive pneumonia vaccine and Ned was suffering. With his
diminutive stature and skinny, small-boned limbs he had al ways seemed
to me to be in the wrong job: but he had been a farm worker all his
life and he was over sixty now, grizzled balding and slightly bent, but
still battling on.
Mr Daggett reached out and as one of the shaggy creatures sped past he
scooped the head into one of his great hands and seized the ear with
the other.
The little animal seemed to realise it was useless to struggle and
stood unresisting as I inserted the needle. At the other end Ned put
his knee against the calf's rear and listlessly pushed it against the
wall. He wasn't doing much good and his boss gave him a withering
glance.
We finished the bunch with hardly any help from the little man, and as
we left the pen and came out into the yard Mr Daggett wiped his brow.
It was a raw November day but he was sweating profusely and for a
moment he leaned his gaunt six foot frame against the wall as the wind
from the bare moorland blew over him.
"By yaw, he's a useless little beggar is that," he grunted.
"Ah don't know how ah put up with 'im." He muttered to himself for a
few moments then gave tongue again. "Hey, Ned!"
The little man who had been trailing aimlessly over the cobbles turned
his pinched face and looked at him with his submissive but strangely
expectant eyes.
"Get them bags o' corn up into the granary!" his boss ordered.
Wordlessly Ned went over to the cart and with an effort shouldered a
sack of corn. As he painfully mounted the stone steps to the granary
his frail little legs trembled and bent under the weight.
Mr Daggett shook his head and turned to me. His long cadaverous face
was set in its usual cast of melancholy.
"You know what's wrong wiNed?" he murmured confidentially.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you know why 'e can't catch them calves?"
My own view was that Ned wasn't big enough or strong enough and anyway
he was naturally inefl~ectual, but I shook my head.
"No," I said.
"Why is it?"
"Well I'll tell ye." Mr Daggett glanced furtively across the yard then
spoke from behind his hand.
"He's ower fond of "'bright lights."
"Eh ?"
"Ah'm tell in' ye he's crazed over "'bright lights."
"Bright . . . what . . . where . . .?"
Mr Daggett leaned closer.
"He gets over to Bris ton every night."
"Brix ton . . . ?" I looked across from the isolated farm to the
village three miles away on the other side of the Dale. It was the
only settlement in that bleak vista - a straggle of ancient houses dark
and silent against the green fell side. I could recall that at night
the oil lamps made yellow flickers of light in the windows but they
weren't very bright.
"I don't understand."
"Well . . . 'e gets into t'pub."
"Ah, the pub."
Mr Daggett nodded slowly and portentously but I was still puzzled. The
Hulton Arms was a square kitchen where you could get a glass of beer
and where a few old men played dominoes of an evening. It wasn't my
idea of a den of vice.
"Does he get drunk there?" I asked.
r
U`J7
"Nay, nay." The farmer shook his head.
"It's not that. It's the hours 'e keeps."
"Comes back late, eh?"
"Aye, that 'e does!" The eyes widened in their cavernous sockets.
"Sometimes ~ ~laughed uproariously at every statement and occurrence;
in fact she laughed at 'e doesn't get back till 'elf past nine or ten
o'clock!" " the things she said herself.
"Gosh, is that so?"~ ~ "Come in, Mr Herriot, ha-ha-ha," she said.
"It's been a bit nippy today, he "Sure as ah'm stan din' here. And
there's another thing. He can't get out of.~ ' he, but I think it'll
get out this afternoon, ho-ho-ho."
'is bed next day. Ah've done half a day's work before 'e starts." He
paused and~: i All the mirth may have seemed somewhat unnecessary, and
indeed, it made glanced again across the yard.
"You can believe me or believe me not, but her rather difficult to
understand, but the general effect was cheering. She led sometimes 'e
isn't on the job till seven o'clock in "'morning!"i me into the drawing
room and her mistress rose with some difficulty from her "Good heavens!
"chair.
He shrugged wearily.
"Aye well, you see how it is. Come into "'house, you'llMiss Tremayne
was elderly and half crippled with arthritis but bore her want to wash
your hands."~ affliction without fuss.
In the huge flagged kitchen I bent low over the brown earthenware
sink.
Scar" Ah, Mr Herriot," she said.
"How good of you to come." She put her head on Farm was four hundred
years old and the various tenants hadn't altered it much~ one side and
beamed at me as though I was the most delightful thing she had since
the days of Henry the Eighth. Gnarled beams, rough whitewashed walls
seen for a long time.
and hard wooden chairs. But comfort had never been important to Mr
Daggett~ She, too, had a bubbling, happy personality, and since she
owned three dogs, or his wife who was ladling hot water from the
primitive boiler by the side of two cats and an elderly donkey I had
come to know her very well in her six the fire and pouring it into her
scrubbing bucket.i months' residence in the Dale.
She cropped around over the flags in her clogs, hair pulled back
tightly from My visit was to dress the donkey's overgrown hooves, and a
pair of clippers her weathered face into a bun, a coarse sacking apron
tied round her waist.
She and a blacksmith's knife dangled from my right hand.
had no children but her life was one of constant activity; indoors or
outside, she" Oh, put those grisly instruments down over there," she
said.
"Elsie's bringing worked all the time. some tea I'm
sure you've time
for a cup."
At one end of the room wooden steps led up through a hole in the
ceiling toI sank willingly into one of the brightly covered armchairs
and was loo king a loft where Ned slept. That had been the little
man's room for nearly fifty round the comfortable room when Elsie
reappeared, gliding over the carpet as years ever since he had come to
work for Mr Daggett's father as a boy from though on wheels. She put
the tray on the table by my side.
school. And in all that time he had never travelled further than
Darrow by, "There's yer tea," she said, and went into a paroxysm so
hearty that she had never done anything outside his daily routine.
Wifeless, friendless, he plodded to lean on the back of my chair. She
had no visible neck and the laughter caused through his life, endlessly
milking, feeding and mucking out, and waiting, Ithe fat little body to
shake all over.
suspected with diminishing hope, for something to happen. When she had
recovered she rolled back into the kitchen and I heard her With my hand
on the car door I looked back at Scar Farm, at the sagging roof
clattering about with pans. Despite her idiosyncrasies she was a
wonderful cook tiles, the great stone lintel over the door. It
typified the harshness of the lives of and very efficient in all she
did.
the people within. Little Ned was no bargain as a stocks man, and his
boss'sI spent a pleasant ten minutes with Miss Tremayne and the tea,
then I went exasperation was understandable. Mr Daggett was not a
cruel or an unjust outside and attended to the donkey. When I had
finished I made my way round man. He and his wife had been hardened
and squeezed dry by the pitiless the back of the house and as I was
passing the kitchen I saw Elsie at the open austerity of their
existence in this lonely corner of the high Pen nines.
window.
There was no softness up here, no frills. The stone walls, sparse
grass and" Many thanks for the tea, Elsie," I said.
stunted trees; the narrow road with its smears~ of cow muck.
Everything was The little woman gripped the sides of the sink to steady
herself.
"Ha-ha-ha down to fundamentals, and it was a miracle to me that most of
the Dalesmenthat's all right. That's, he-he, quite all right,
ha-ha-ho-ho-ho."
were not like the Daggetts but cheerful and humorous. Wonderingly I
got into the car and as I drove away, the disturbing thought But as I
drove away, the sombre beauty of the place overwhelmed me. The came to
me that one day I might say something really witty to Elsie and cause
lowering hillsides burst magically into life as a shaft of sunshine
stabbed through her to do herself an injury.
the clouds, flooding the bare flanks with warm gold. Suddenly I was
aware of the delicate shadings of green, the rich glowing bronze of the
dead brackenI was called back to Mr Daggett's quite soon afterwards to
see a cow which spilling from the high tops, the whole peaceful majesty
of my work-a-day world. wouldn't get up. The farmer thought she was
paralysed.
I hadn't far to drive to my next call just about a mile and it was in a
vastlyI drove there in a thin drizzle and the light was fading at about
four o'clock diflferent atmosphere. Miss Tremayne, a rich lady from
the south, had bought.
in the afternoon when I arrived at Scar Farm.
a tumbledown manor house and spent many thousands of pounds in
converting When I examined the cow I was convinced she had just got
herself into an it into a luxury home. As my feet crunched on the
gravel I looked up at the large awkward position in the stall with her
Vet in a Spin Page 23