Vets Might Fly

by James Herriot

  "And could an operation cure it?"

  yes, Ted, it's one of the most satisfying jobs a vet can do. I always

  feel I've done a dog a good turn when I've finished."

  ~Aye, ah bet you do. It must be a nice feel in'. But it'll be a

  costly job, ah reckon ?"

  I smiled wryly.

  "It depends how you look at it. It's a fiddly business and takes time

  We usually charge about a pound for it." A human surgeon would laugh

  at a sum like that, but it would still be too much for old Albert.

  For a few moments we were both silent, loo king across the room at the

  old man, at the threadbare coat, the long tatter of trouser bottoms

  falling over the broken boots. A pound was two weeks of the old age

  pension. It was a fortune.

  Ted got up suddenly.

  "Any road, somebody ought to tell 'im. Ah'll explain it to'im."

  He crossed the room.

  "Are ye ready for another, Albert?"

  The old shepherd glanced at him absently then indicated his glass,

  empty again.

  "Aye, ye can put a drop i' there, Ted."

  The cowman waved to Mr Waters then bent down.

  "Did ye understand what Mr Herriot was tell in' ye, Albert?" he

  shouted.

  "Aye . . aye . . . Mick's got a bit o'caud in 'is eyes."

  "Nay, 'e hasn't! it's nowt of t'soart! It's a en . . . a en . . .

  sum mat different."

  "Keeps get tin' caud in 'em." Albert mumbled, nose in glass.

  Ted yelled in exasperation.

  "Ye daft awd divil! Listen to what ah'm say in' ye' ve got to take

  care of 'im and . . ."

  But the old man was far away.

  "Ever sin 'e were a pup . . . all us been subjeck to it...."

  Though Mick took my mind off my own troubles at the time, the memory of

  those eyes haunted me for days. I yearned to get my hands on them. I

  knew an hour's work would transport the old dog into a world he perhaps

  had not known for years, and every instinct told me to rush back to Cop

  ton, throw him in the car and bear him back to Darrow by for surgery. I

  wasn't worried about the money but you just can't run a practice that

  way.

  I regularly saw lame dogs on farms, skinny cats on the streets and it

  would have been lovely to descend on each and every one and minister to

  them out of my knowledge. In fact I had tried a bit of it and it

  didn't work.

  It was Ted Dobson who put me out of my pain. He had come in to the

  town to see his sister for the evening and he stood leaning on his

  bicycle in the surgery doorway, his cheerful, scrubbed face gleaming as

  if it would light up the street.

  He came straight to the point.

  "Will ye do that operation on awd Mick, Mr Herriot ?"

  "Yes, of course, but . . . how about . . . ?"

  "Oh that'll be right. T'lads at Fox and Hounds are see in' to it.

  We're takin' it out of the club money."

  "Club money?"

  "Aye, we put in a bit every week for an out in' in "'summer. Trip to

  "'seaside or sum mat like."

  "Well it's extremely kind of you, Ted, but are you quite sure? Won't

  any of them mind?"

  Ted laughed.

  "Nay, it's nowt, we won't miss a quid. We drink ower much on them do's

  anyway." He paused.

  "All t'lads want this job done it's been get tin' on our bloody nerves

  watch in' ttawd dog ever since you told us about "Im."

  "Well, that's great," I said.

  "How will you get him down?"

  "Me boss is len din' me'is van. Wednesday night be all right?"

  "Fine." I watched him ride away then turned back along the passage. It

  may seem to modern eyes that a lot of fuss had been made over a pound

  but in those days it was a very substantial sum, and some idea may be

  gained from the fact that four pounds a week was my commencing salary

  as a veterinary surgeon.

  When Wednesday night arrived it was clear that Mick's operation had

  become something of a gala occasion. The little van was crammed with

  regulars from the Fox and Hounds and others rolled up on their

  bicycles.

  The old dog slunk fearfully down the passage to the operating room,

  nostrils twitching at the unfamiliar odours of ether and antiseptic.

  Behind him trooped the noisy throng of farm men, their heavy boots

  clattering on the tiles.

  Tristan, who was doing the anaesthesia, hoisted the dog on the table

  and I looked around at the unusual spectacle of rows of faces regarding

  me with keen anticipation Normally I am not in favour of lay people

  witnessing operations but since these men were sponsoring the whole

  thing they would have to stay.

  Under the lamp I got my first good look at Mick. He was a handsome,

  well-marked animal except for those dreadful eyes. As he sat there he

  opened them a fraction and peered at me for a painful moment before

  closing them against the bright light; that, I felt, was how he spent

  his life, squinting carefully and briefly at his surroundings. Giving

  him the intravenous barbiturate was like doing him a favour, ridding

  him of his torment for a while.

  And when he was stretched unconscious on his side I was able to carry

  out my first examination. I parted the lids, wincing at the matted

  lashes, awash with tears and discharge; there was a long standing

  keratitis and conjunctivitis but with a gush of relief I found that the

  cornea was not ulcerated.

  "You know," I said.

  "This is a mess, but I don't think there's any permanent damage."

  The farm men didn't exactly break into a cheer but they were enormously

  pleased. The carnival air was heightened as they chattered and laughed

  and when I poised my scalpel it struck me that I had never operated in

  such a noisy environment.

  But I felt almost gleeful as I made the first incision; I had been loo

  king forward so much to this moment. Starting with the left eye I cut

  along the full length parallel to the margin of the lid then made a

  semicircular sweep of the knife to include half an inch of the tissue

  above the eye. Seizing the skin with forceps I stripped it away, and

  as I drew the lips of the bleeding wound together with stitches I

  noticed with intense gratification how the lashes were pulled high and

  away from the corneal surface they had irritated, perhaps for years.

  I cut away less skin from the lower lid you never need to take so much

  there - then started on the right eye. I was slicing away happily when

  I realised that the noise had subsided; there were a few mutterings,

  but the chaff and laughter had died. I glanced up and saw big Ken

  Appleton, the horseman from Laurel Grove; it was natural that he should

  catch my eye, Because he was six feet four and built like the Shires he

  cared for.

  "By yaw, it'sot in 'ere," he whispered, and I could see he meant it

  because sweat was streaming down his face.

  I was engrossed in my work or I would have noticed that he wasn't only

  sweating but deadly pale. I was stripping the skin from the eyelid

  when I heard Tristan's yell.

  "Catch him!"

  The big man's surrounding friends supported him as he slid gently to

&
nbsp; the floor and he stayed there, sleeping peacefully, till I had inserted

  the last stitch.

  Then as Tristan and I cleaned up and put the instruments away he began

  to look around him and his companions helped him to his feet. Now that

  the cutting vies over the life had returned to the party and Ken came

  in for some leg pulling; but his was not the only white face.

  "I think you could do with a drop of whisky, Ken," Tristan said. He

  left the room and returned with a bottle which, with typical

  hospitality, he dispensed to all. Beakers, measuring glasses and test

  tubes were pressed into service and Soon there was a boisterous throng

  around the sleeping dog. When the van finally roared off into the

  night the last thing I heard was the sound of singing from the packed

  interior.

  They brought Mick back in ten days for removal of the stitches. The

  wounds had healed well but the keratitis had still not cleared and the

  old dog was still blinking painfully. I didn't see the final result of

  my work for another month.

  It was when I was again driving home through Cop ton from an evening

  call that the lighted doorway of the Fox and Hounds recalled me to the

  little operation which had been almost forgotten in the rush of new

  work. I went in and sat down among the familiar faces.

  Things were uncannily like before. Old Albert Close in his usual

  place, Mick stretched under the table, his twitching feet testifying to

  another vivid dream.

  I watched him closely until I could stand it no longer. As if drawn by

  a magnet I crossed the room and crouched by him.

  "Mick!" I said.

  "Hey, wake up, boy!"

  The quivering limbs stilled and there was a long moment when I held my

  breath as the shaggy head turned towards me. Then with a kind of

  blissful disbelief I found myself gazing into the wide, clear, bright

  eyes of a young dog.

  Warm wine flowed richly through my veins as he faced me, mouth open in

  a panting grin, tail swishing along the stone flags. There was no

  inflammation, no discharge, and the lashes, clean and dry, grew in a

  soft arc well clear of the corneal surface which they had chafed and

  rasped for so long. I stroked his head and as he began to look around

  him eagerly I felt a thrill of utter delight at the sight of the old

  animal exulting in his freedom, savouring the new world which had

  opened to him. I could see Ted Dobson and the other men smiling

  conspiratorially as I stood up.

  "Mr Close," I shouted.

  "Will you have a drink?"

  "Aye, you can put a drop i' there, young man."

  "Mick's eyes are a lot better."

  The old man raised his glass.

  "Good 'earth. Aye, i' were nob but a bit o' caud."

  "But Mr Close ...!"

  "Nasty thing, is caud in t'eyes. T'awd feller keeps lyin' in that

  door' ole and ah reckon he'll get it again. Ever since 'e were a pup

  'e's been subjeck . . ."

  Chapter Sixteen As I bent over the wash basin in the 'ablutions' and

  went into another violent paroxysm of coughing I had a growing and

  uncomfortable conviction that I was a mere pawn.

  The big difference between my present existence and my old life as a

  vet was that I used to make up my own mind as to how I would do things,

  whereas in the RAF all the decisions which affected me were made by

  other people. I didn't much like being a pawn because the lives of us

  lowly airmen were ruled by a.

  lot of notions and ideas dreamed up by individuals so exalted that we

  never knew them.

  And so many of these ideas seemed crazy to me.

  For instance, who decided that all our bedroom windows should be nailed

  open throughout a Yorkshire winter so that the healthy mist could swirl

  straight from the black ocean and settle icily on our beds as we slept?

  The result was an almost one hundred per cent incidence of bronchitis

  in our flight, and in the mornings the Grand Hotel sounded like a chest

  sanatorium with a harrowing chorus of barks and wheezes.

  The cough seized me again, racking my body, threatening to dislodge my

  eyeballs. It was a temptation to report sick but I hadn't done it yet.

  Most of the lads stuck it out till they had roaring fevers before going

  sick and by now, at the end of February, nearly all of them had spent a

  few days in hospital. I was one of the few who hadn't. Maybe there

  was a bit of bravado in my stand because most of them were eighteen- or

  nineteen-year-olds and I was a com paratively old man in my twenties

  but there were two other reasons. Firstly, it was very often after I

  had got dressed and been unable to eat breakfast that I felt really

  ill. But by then it was too late. You had to report sick before seven

  o'clock or suffer till next day.

  Another reason was that I didn't like the look of the sick parade. As

  I went out to the corridor with my towel round my shoulders a sergeant

  was reading a list and inflating his lungs at the same time.

  "Get on parade, the sick!" he shouted.

  "C'mon, c'mon, let's be 'avin' you!"

  From various doors an unhappy group of invalids began to appear,

  shuffling over the linoleum, each draped with his 'small kit',

  haversack containing pyjamas, canvas shoes, knife, fork, spoon, etc.

  The sergeant unleashed another bellow.

  "Get into line, there! Come on, you lot, hurry it up, look lively!"

  I looked at the young men huddled there, white-faced and trembling.

  Most of them were coughing and spluttering and one of them clutched his

  abdomen as though he had a ruptured appendix.

  "Parade!" bawled the sergeant.

  "Parade, at ten-shun! Parade stan'-at ease!

  At ten-shun! Le-eft turn! Qui-ick march!

  "Eft-'ight,"eft-'ight, 'eft-'ight, 'eft-'ight!"

  The hapless band trailed wearily off. They had a march of nearly a

  mile through the rain to the sick quarters in another hotel above the

  Spa, and as I turned into my room it was with a renewed resolve to hang

  on as long as possible.

  Another thing that frightened us all for a spell was the suggestion,

  drifting dOwn from somewhere on high, that it wasn't enough to go

  jugging around scar borough on our training runs; we ought to stop

  every now and then and do a bit of shadow boxing like fighters. This

  idea seemed too outrageous to be true but we had it from the sergeant

  himself, who came with us on our runs. Some VIP had passed it down,

  claiming that it would instill belligerence in us. We were thoroughly

  alarmed for a while, including the sergeant, who had no desire to be

  seen in charge of a bunch of apparent lunatics dancing around punching

  at the air. Mercifully, somebody had the strength to resist this one

  and the whole thing fell through.

  But of all these brilliant schemes the one I remember best was the one

  that decided we had to scream at the end of our physical training

  session. Apart from running miles all over the place, we had long

  periods of PT down on the rain-swept prom with the wind cutting in from

  the sea on our goose-pimpled limbs We became so good at these exercises

&
nbsp; that it was decided to put on a show for a visiting air marshal. Not

  only our flight but several squadrons all performing in unison in front

  of the Grand.

  We trained for months for the big day, doing the same movements over

  and over again till we were perfect. At first the barrel-chested PT

  sergeant shouted instructions at us all the time, then as we got better

  all he did was call out "Exercise three, commence'. And finally it all

  became so much a part of our being that he merely sounded a tiny peep

  on his whistle at the beginning of each exercise.

  By spring we were really impressive. Hundreds of men in shorts and

  sing lets swinging away as one out there on the square, with the PT

  sergeant up on the balcony above the doorway where he would stand with

  the air marshal on the day. The thing that made it so dramatic was the

  utter silence; the forest of waving limbs and swaying bodies with not a

  sound but the peep of the whistle.

  Everything was lovely till somebody had the idea of the screaming. Up

  till then we had marched silently from the square at the end of the

  session, but that was apparently not good enough. What we had to do

  now was count up to five at the end of the last exercise, then leap