All Things Wise and Wonderful

by James Herriot

  “Oh, she should’ve calved last night Must be summat amiss.” He began to pour his bucket of milk over the cooler into the churn.

  “Have you had a feel inside her?”

  “Nay, haven’t had time.” He turned harassed eyes towards me. “We’re a bit behind with milkin’ this mornin’. We can’t be late for t’milk man.”

  I knew what he meant. The drivers who collected the churns for the big dairy companies were a fierce body of men. Probably kind husbands and fathers at normal times but subject to violent outbursts of rage if they were kept waiting even for an instant. I couldn’t blame them, because they had a lot of territory to cover and many farms to visit, but I had seen them when provoked and their anger was frightening to behold.

  “All right,” I said. “Can I have some hot water, soap and a towel, please?”

  Mr. Blackburn jerked his head at the corner of the milk house. “You’ll ’ave to help yourself. There’s everythin’ there. Ah must get on.” He went off again at a brisk walk. Clearly he was more in fear of the milk man than he was of me.

  I filled a bucket, found a piece of soap and threw a towel over my shoulder. When I reached my patient I looked in vain for some sign of a name. So many of the cows of those days had their names printed above their stalls but there were no Marigolds, Alices or Snowdrops here, just numbers.

  Before taking off my jacket I looked casually in the ear where the tattoo marks stood out plainly against the creamy white surface. She was number eighty seven.

  I was in more trouble when I stripped off my shirt. In a modern byre like this there were no nails jutting from the walls to serve as hangers. I had to roll my clothes into a ball and carry them through to the milk house. There I found a sack which I tied round my middle with a length of binder twine.

  Still ignored by everybody, I returned, soaped my arm and inserted it into the cow. I had to go a long way in to reach the calf, which was strange considering the birth should have taken place last night. It was the top of the little creature’s head I touched first; the nose was tucked downwards instead of thrusting its way along the vagina towards the outside world, and the legs were similarly coiled under the body.

  And I noticed something else. The entry of my arm did not provoke any answering strain from the cow, nor did she try to rise to her feet. There was something else troubling Number Eighty Seven.

  Lying flat on the concrete, still buried to the shoulder in the cow, I raised my head and looked along the shaggy back with its speckle of light red and white hairs, and when I reached the neck I knew I need seek no further. The lateral kink was very obvious. Number Eighty Seven, slumped on her chest was gazing wearily and without interest at the wall in front of her but there was that funny little bend in her neck that told me everything.

  I got up, washed and dried my arm and looked for Mr. Blackburn. I found him bending by the side of a fat brown animal, pulling the cups from her teats. I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “She’s got milk fever,” I said.

  “Oh aye,” he replied, then he hoisted the bucket, brushed past me and made off down the byre.

  I kept pace with him. “That’s why she can’t strain. Her uterus has lost its tone. She’ll never calve till she gets some calcium.”

  “Right.” He still didn’t look at me. “Ye’ll give ’er some then?”

  “Yes,” I said to his retreating back.

  The snow still swirled in the outer darkness and I toyed with the idea of getting dressed. But I’d only have to strip again so I decided to make a dash for it. With the car boot open it seemed to take a long time to fish out the bottles and flutter valve with the flakes settling thickly on my naked flesh.

  Back in the byre I looked around for a spare man to help me but there was no lessening of the feverish activity. I would have to roll this cow onto her side and inject into her milk vein without assistance. It all depended on how comatose she was.

  And she must have been pretty far gone because when I braced my feet against the tubular steel and pushed both hands against her shoulder she flopped over without resistance. To keep her there I lay on top of her as I pushed in the needle and ran the calcium into the vein.

  One snag was that my sprawling position took me right underneath the neighbouring cow on the right, a skittish sort of animal who didn’t welcome the rubber-booted legs tangling with her hind feet. She expressed her disapproval by treading painfully on my ankles and giving me a few smart kicks on the thigh, but I daren’t move because the calcium was flowing in beautifully.

  When the bottle was empty I kneed my patient back onto her chest and ran another bottle of calcium magnesium and phosphorus under her skin. By the time I had finished and rubbed away the subcutaneous fluid Number Eighty Seven was looking decidedly happier.

  I didn’t hurry over cleaning and putting away my injection outfit and re-soaping my arms because I knew that every minute would bring back strength to my patient.

  The lightning response to intravenous calcium has always afforded me a simple pleasure and when I pushed my arm in again the difference was remarkable. The previously flaccid uterus gripped at my hand and as the cow went into a long expulsive effort she turned her head, looked back at me and opened her mouth in a muffled bellow. It was not a sound of pain but rather as though she was saying, “I’m back in business now.”

  “All right, my lass,” I replied. “I’ll stay with you till it’s all over.”

  At other times I might have been a little chary of being overheard conversing with a cow, but with the clamour of buckets and the nonstop blasting of the radio there was no chance of that happening.

  I knew that I had to guide the calf back into the correct position and that it would take time, but I had a strange sense of oneness with this animal because neither of us seemed to be of the slightest importance in the present setting. As I lay there face down on the concrete which grew harder all the time and with the milkers stumbling over my prostrate form I felt very much alone. There was just myself and Number Eighty Seven for it.

  Another thing I missed was the sense of occasion. There was a compensation in many an arduous calving in the feeling of a little drama being enacted; the worried farmer, attentive stockmen, the danger of losing the calf or even the mother—it was a gripping play and there was no doubt the vet was the leading man. He may even be the villain but he was number one. And here I was now, a scrabbling nonentity with hardly a mention in the cast. It was the shape of things to come.

  And yet … and yet … the job was still there. I lifted the calf’s lower jaw and as the cow gave a heave I eased it over the brim of the pelvis. Then I groped for the tiny legs and straightened them as another expulsive effort pushed the little creature towards me. He was definitely on his way now.

  I didn’t rush things—just lay there and let the cow get on with it. My worst moment was when one of the men came to put the milking machine on the temperamental animal on my right. As he tried to step up beside her she swung round, cocked her tail and sent a jet of feces cascading across my back.

  The man pushed her back into place, slipped on the teat cups then lifted the hose which was lying ready for swilling down the byre. A moment later I felt the icy flow of water playing from my shoulders to my hips then the application of a spare udder cloth as the helpful fellow cleaned me off.

  “Thanks very much,” I gasped. And I was really grateful. It was the only attention I had received all morning.

  Within half an hour the feet appeared at the vulva followed by a wet nose whose nostrils twitched reassuringly. But they were big feet—this would be a bull calf and his final entry into the world could be a tight squeeze.

  I got into a sitting position and gripped a slippery cloven hoof in each hand. Leaning back, feet against the dung channel, I addressed Number Eighty Seven again.

  “Come on, old lass. A couple of good shoves and we’re there.”

  She responded with a mighty inflation of the abdomen and the calf surged
towards me as I pulled, giving me a glimpse of a broad forehead and a pair of slightly puzzled eyes. For a moment I thought the ears were going to slip through but then the cow relaxed and the head disappeared back inside.

  “Once more, girl!” I pleaded, and this time it seemed that she had decided to stop playing around and get the job over with. She gave a prolonged strain which sent head and shoulders through, and as I hauled away I had only that momentary panic I always feel that the hips might jam in the pelvis. But this one didn’t stick and came sliding beautifully on to my lap.

  Puffing slightly, I got to my feet and parted the hind legs. Sure enough the little scrotum was there; he was a fine bull calf. I pulled some hay from the rack and dried him off and within minutes he was sitting up, sniffing and snorting, looking around him with interest.

  He wasn’t the only interested party. His mother, craning round in her neck chain, gazed fascinatedly at the new arrival before releasing a deafening bellow. I seized the front feet again and pulled the calf up to the front of the stall where the cow after a brief examination began to lick him from head to tail. Then as I watched, entranced, she suddenly rose to her feet so that she could reach some of the little creature’s more inaccessible corners.

  I smiled to myself. So that was that. She had got over the milk fever and had a nice live calf, too. All was well with Number Eighty Seven.

  Mr. Blackburn came up and stood by my side and I realised that the noise in the byre had subsided. The milking was finished.

  The farmer took off his white hat and wiped away the sweat from his brow. “By gaw, that was a rush. We were short-handed this mornin’ and I was sure we were goin’ to miss that milk feller. He’s a terror—won’t wait a minute, and I’ve had to chase after ’im in a tractor with the churns afore now.”

  As he finished speaking a hen leaped with a squawk from the rack. Mr. Blackburn reached forward and lifted a warm newlaid egg out of the hay.

  He inspected it for a moment then turned to me. “Have you ’ad your breakfast?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well tell your missus to put this in the fryin’ pan,” he said, handing me the egg.

  “Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Blackburn, I’ll enjoy that.”

  He nodded and continued to stand there, gazing at the cow and calf. Dairy farming is one of the hardest ways of making a living and this pre-dawn turmoil was an every day occurrence in his life. But I knew he was pleased with my efforts because he faced me suddenly and his weathered features broke into a delighted grin. Without warning he gave me a friendly thump on the chest.

  “Good old Jim!” he said, and walked away.

  I dressed, got into the car and placed my egg with the utmost care on the dash, then I eased myself gingerly on to the seat because that hosing had sent a pint or two of dirty water down into my underpants and sitting down was intensely uncomfortable.

  As I drove away the darkness was thinning into the grey beginning of a new day and around me the white bulk of the fells began to lift from the half light—massive, smooth and inexpressibly cold.

  I looked at the egg rocking gently on the dash, and smiled to myself. I could still see Mr. Blackburn’s sudden grin, still feel his punch on the chest, and my main sensation was of reassurance.

  Systems may be changing, but cows and calves and Yorkshire farmers were just the same.

  CHAPTER 37

  ON MY WAGE OF SEVEN and threepence a day, out of which was deducted maintenance for wife and child, I was unable to indulge in high living even if I had wanted to, but one evening in Windsor I decided to allow myself the luxury of one glass of beer, and as I pushed open the pub doorway the first thing I saw was a man sitting at the corner of the bar with a small dog under his chair.

  Little things like that could lift me effortlessly back to my old life, and I could almost hear George Wilks, the auctioneer, in the Drovers Arms at Darrowby.

  “I reckon that’s the best Pub Terrier I’ve ever seen.” He bent down from the bar counter and patted Theo’s shaggy head as it protruded from beneath his master’s stool.

  It struck me that “Pub Terrier” wasn’t a bad description. Theo was small and mainly white, though there were odd streaks of black on his flanks, and his muzzle had a bushy outgrowth of hair which made him undeniably attractive but still more mysterious.

  I warmed to a Scottish colleague recently who, when pressed by a lady client to diagnose her dog’s breed and lineage replied finally, “Madam, I think it would be best to call him a wee broon dug.”

  By the same token Theo could with safety be described as a wee white dug, but in Yorkshire the expression “Pub Terrier” would be more easily understood.

  His master, Paul Cotterell, looked down from his high perch.

  “What’s he saying about you, old chap?” he murmured languidly, and at the sound of his voice the little animal leaped, eager and wagging, from his retreat.

  Theo spent a considerable part of his life between the four metal legs of that stool, as did his master on the seat. And it often seemed to me to be a waste of time for both of them. I often took my own dog, Sam, into pubs and he would squat beneath my seat, but whereas it was an occasional thing with me—maybe once or twice a’ week—with Paul Cotterell it was an unvarying ritual. Every night from eight o’clock onwards he could be found sitting there at the end of the bar of the Drovers’ Arms, pint glass in front of him, little curly pipe drooping over his chin.

  For a young man like him—he was a bachelor in his late thirties—and a person of education and intelligence, it seemed a sterile existence.

  He turned to me as I approached the counter. “Hello, Jim, let me get you a drink.drink.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Paul,” I replied. “I’ll have a pint.”

  “Splendid.” He turned to the barmaid with easy courtesy. “Could I trouble you, Moyra?”

  We sipped our beer and we chatted. This time it was about the music festival at Brawton and then we got on to music in general. As with any other topic I had discussed with him he seemed to know a lot about it.

  “So you’re not all that keen on Bach?” he enquired lazily.

  “No, not really. Some of it, yes, but on the whole I like something a bit more emotional. Elgar, Beethoven, Mozart. Even Tchaikovsky—I suppose you highbrows look down your noses at him?”

  He shrugged, puffed his little pipe and regarded me with a half smile, one eyebrow raised. He often looked like that and it made me feel he ought to wear a monocle. But he didn’t enthuse about Bach, though it seemed he was his favourite composer. He never enthused about anything, and he listened with that funny look on his face while I rhapsodised about the Elgar violin concerto.

  Paul Cotterell was from the south of England, but the locals had long since forgiven him for that because he was likeable, amusing, and always ready to buy anybody a drink from his corner in the Drovers’. To me, he had a charm which was very English; casual, effortless. He never got excited, he was always polite and utterly self contained.

  “While you’re here, Jim,” he said. “I wonder if you’d have a look at Theo’s foot?”

  “Of course.” It is one of a vet’s occupational hazards that wherever he goes socially it is taken for granted that there is nothing he would rather do than dole out advice or listen to symptoms. “Let’s have him up.”

  “Here, boy, come on.” Paul patted his knee and the little dog jumped up and sat there, eyes sparkling with pleasure. And I thought as I always did that Theo should be in pictures. He was the perfect film dog with that extraordinarily fuzzy laughing face. People paid good money to see dogs just like him in cinemas all over the world.

  “All right, Theo,” I said, scooping him from his master’s knee. “Where’s the trouble?”

  Paul indicated the right fore foot with the stem of his pipe. “It’s that one. He’s been going a bit lame off and on for the last few days.”

  “I see.” I rolled the little animal on his back and th
en laughed. “Oh, he’s only got a broken claw. There’s a little bit hanging off here. He must have caught it on a stone. Hang on a minute.” I delved in my pocket for the scissors which always dwelt there. A quick snip and the job was done.

  “Is that all?” asked Paul

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  One eyebrow went up mockingly as he looked at Theo. “So that’s what you were making all the fuss about, eh? Silly old trout.” He snapped his fingers. “Back you go.”

  The little dog obediently leaped to the carpet and disappeared into his sanctuary beneath the stool. And at that moment I had a flash of intuition about Paul—about his charm which I had often admired and envied. He didn’t really care. He was fond of his dog, of course. He took him everywhere with him, exercised him regularly by the river, but there was none of the anxiety, the almost desperate concern which I had so often seen in the eyes of my clients when I dealt with even the most trivial of their ailments. They cared too much—as I have always done with my own animals.

  And of course he was right. It was an easier and more comfortable way to live. Caring made you vulnerable while Paul cruised along, impregnable. That attractive casualness, the nonchalant good manners, the imperturbability—they all had their roots in the fact that nothing touched him very deeply.

  And despite my snap diagnosis of his character I still envied him. I have always been blown around too easily by my emotions; it must be lovely to be like Paul. And the more I thought about it the more I realised how everything fitted in. He had never cared enough to get married. Even Bach, with his mathematical music, was part of the pattern.

  “I think that major operation deserves another pint, Jim.” He smiled his lop-sided smile. “Unless you demand a higher fee?”

  I laughed. I would always like him. We are all different and we have to act as we are made, but as I started my second glass I thought again of his carefree life. He had a good job in the government offices in Brawton, no domestic responsibilities, and every night he sat on that same stool drinking beer with his dog underneath. He hadn’t a worry in the world.