Bees were at work among the flowers and the song of blackbirds and thrushes competed with the cawing of the rooks high up in the elms.
Life was full for me. There were so many things to find out and a lot I had to prove to myself. The days were quick and challenging and they pressed on me with their very newness. But it all stopped here in the garden. Everything seemed to have stopped here a long time ago. I looked back before going through the door into the yard and it was like suddenly coming across a picture in an old book; the empty, wild garden and the tall, silent house beyond. I could never quite believe it was there and that I was a part of it.
And the feeling was heightened when I went into the yard. It was square and cobbled and the grass grew in thick tufts between the stones. Buildings took up two sides; the two garages, once coach houses, a stable and saddle room, a loose box and a pigsty. Against the free wall a rusty iron pump hung over a stone water trough.
Above the stable was a hay loft and over one of the garages a dovecot. And there was old Boardman. He, too, seemed to have been left behind from grander days, hobbling round on his lame leg, doing nothing in particular.
He grunted good morning from his cubby hole where he kept a few tools and garden implements. Above his head his reminders of the war looked down; a row of coloured prints of Bruce Bairnsfather cartoons. He had stuck them up when he came home in 1918 and there they were still, dusty and curled at the edges but still speaking to him of Kaiser Bill and the shell holes and muddy trenches.
Boardman washed a car sometimes or did a little work in the garden, but he was content to earn a pound or two and get back to his yard. He spent a lot of time in the saddle room, just sitting. Sometimes he looked round the empty hooks where the harness used to hang and then he would make a rubbing movement with his fist against his palm.
He often talked to me of the great days. “I can see t’owd doctor now, standing on top step waiting for his carriage to come round. Big, smart-looking feller he was. Allus wore a top hat and frock coat, and I can remember him when I was a lad, standing there, pulling on ’is gloves and giving his hat a tilt while he waited.”
Boardman’s features seemed to soften and a light came into his eyes as though he were talking more to himself than to me. “The old house was different then. A housekeeper and six servants there were and everything just so. And a full-time gardener. There weren’t a blade of grass out of place in them days and the flowers all in rows and the trees pruned, tidy-like. And this yard—it were t’owd doctor’s favourite spot. He’d come and look over t’door at me sitting here polishing the harness and pass time o’ day, quiet like. He were a real gentleman but you couldn’t cross ’im. A few specks o’ dust anywhere down here and he’d go nearly mad.
“But the war finished it all. Everybody’s rushing about now. They don’t care about them things now. They’ve no time, no time at all.”
He would look round in disbelief at the overgrown cobbles, the peeling garage doors hanging crazily on their hinges. At the empty stable and the pump from which no water flowed.
He was always friendly with me in an absent way, but with Siegfried he seemed to step back into his former character, holding himself up smartly and saying “Very good, sir,” and saluting repeatedly with one finger. It was as though he recognised something there—something of the strength and authority of t’owd doctor—and reached out eagerly towards the lost days.
“Morning, Boardman,” I said, as I opened the garage door. “How are you today?”
“Oh, middlin’, lad, just middlin’.” He limped across and watched me get the starting handle and begin the next part of the daily routine. The car allotted to me was a tiny Austin of an almost forgotten vintage and one of Boardman’s voluntary duties was towing it off when it wouldn’t start. But this morning, surprisingly, the engine coughed into life after six turns.
As I drove round the corner of the back lane, I had the feeling, as I did every morning, that this was where things really got started. The problems and pressures of my job were waiting for me out there and at the moment I seemed to have plenty.
I had arrived in the Dales, I felt, at a bad time. The farmers, after a generation of neglect, had seen the coming of a prophet, the wonderful new vet, Mr. Farnon. He appeared like a comet, trailing his new ideas in his wake. He was able, energetic and charming and they received him as a maiden would a lover. And now, at the height of the honeymoon, I had to push my way into the act, and I just wasn’t wanted.
I was beginning to get used to the questions: “Where’s Mr. Farnon?”—“Is he ill or something?”—“I expected Mr. Farnon.” It was a bit daunting to watch their faces fall when they saw me walking on to their farms. Usually they looked past me hopefully and some even went and peered into the car to see if the man they really wanted was hiding in there.
And it was uphill work examining an animal when its owner was chafing in the background, wishing with all his heart that I was somebody else.
But I had to admit they were fair. I got no effusive welcomes and when I started to tell them what I thought about the case they listened with open scepticism, but I found that if I got my jacket off and really worked at the job they began to thaw a little. And they were hospitable. Even though they were disappointed at having me they asked me into their homes. “Come in and have a bit o’ dinner,” was a phrase I heard nearly every day. Sometimes I was glad to accept and I ate some memorable meals with them.
Often, too, they would slip half a dozen eggs or a pound of butter into the car as I was leaving. This hospitality was traditional in the Dales and I knew they would probably do the same for any visitor, but it showed the core of friendliness which lay under the often unsmiling surface of these people and it helped.
I was beginning to learn about the farmers and what I found I liked. They had a toughness and a philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against a wall were shrugged off with “Aye, well, these things happen.”
It looked like being another hot day and I wound down the car windows as far as they would go. I was on my way to do a tuberculin test; the national scheme was beginning to make its first impact in the Dales and the more progressive farmers were asking for survey tests.
And this was no ordinary herd. Mr. Copfield’s Galloway cattle were famous in their way. Siegfried had told me about them. “The toughest lot in this practice. There’s eighty-five of them and none has ever been tied up. In fact, they’ve scarcely been touched by hand. They live out on the fells, they calve and rear their calves outside. It isn’t often anybody goes near them so they’re practically wild animals.”
“What do you do when there’s anything wrong with them?” I had asked.
“Well, you have to depend on Frank and George—they’re the two Copfield sons. They’ve been reared with those cattle since they were babies—started tackling the little calves as soon as they could walk, then worked up to the big ones. They’re about as tough as the Galloways.”
Copfield’s place was one of the bleak ones. Looking across the sparse pastures to the bald heights with their spreading smudges of heather it was easy to see why the farmer had chosen a breed hardier than the local shorthorns. But this morning the grim outlines were softened by the sunshine and there was a desert peace in the endless greens and browns.
Frank and George were not as I expected. The durable men who helped me in my daily jobs tended to be dark and lean with stringy muscles but the Copfields were golden haired and smooth skinned. They were good-looking young men about my own age and their massive necks and wide spread of shoulder made their heads look small. Neither of them was tall but they looked formidable with their shirt sleeves rolled high to reveal wrestlers’ arms and their thick legs encased in cloth gaiters. Both wore clogs.
The cattle had been herded into the buildings and they just about filled all the available accommodation. There were about twenty-five in a long passage down the side of
the fold yard; I could see the ragged line of heads above the rails, the steam rising from their bodies. Twenty more occupied an old stable and two lots of twenty milled about in large loose boxes.
I looked at the black, untamed animals and they looked back at me, their reddish eyes glinting through the rough fringe of hair which fell over their faces. They kept up a menacing, bad-tempered swishing with their tails.
It wasn’t going to be easy to get an intradermal injection into every one of them. I turned to Frank.
“Can you catch these beggars?” I asked.
“We’ll ’ave a bloody good try,” he replied calmly, throwing a halter over his shoulder. He and his brother lit cigarettes before climbing into the passage where the biggest beasts were packed. I followed them and soon found that the tales I had heard about the Galloways hadn’t been exaggerated. If I approached them from the front they came at me with their great hairy heads and if I went behind them they kicked me as a matter of course.
But the brothers amazed me. One of them would drop a halter on a beast, get his fingers into its nose and then be carried away as the animal took off like a rocket. They were thrown about like dolls but they never let go; their fair heads bobbed about incongruously among the black backs; and the thing that fascinated me was that through all the contortions the cigarettes dangled undisturbed.
The heat increased till it was like an oven in the buildings and the animals, their bowels highly fluid with their grass diet, ejected greenish-brown muck like non-stop geysers.
The affair was conducted in the spirit of a game with encouragement shouted to the man in action: “Thou ’as ’im, Frank.” “Sniggle ’im, George.” In moments of stress the brothers cursed softly and without heat: “Get off ma bloody foot, thou awd bitch.” They both stopped work and laughed with sincere appreciation when a cow slashed me across the face with her sodden tail; and another little turn which was well received was when I was filling my syringe with both arms raised and a bullock, backing in alarm from the halter, crashed its craggy behind into my midriff. The wind shot out of me in a sharp hiccup, then the animal decided to turn round in the narrow passage, squashing me like a fly against the railings. I was pop-eyed as it scrambled round; I wondered whether the creaking was coming from my ribs or the wood behind me.
We finished up with the smallest calves and they were just about the most difficult to handle. The shaggy little creatures kicked, bucked, sprang into the air, ran through our legs and even hurtled straight up the walls. Often the brothers had to throw themselves on top of them and bear them to the ground before I could inject them and when the calves felt the needle they stuck out their tongues and bawled deafeningly; outside, the anxious mothers bellowed back in chorus.
It was midday when I reeled out of the buildings. I seemed to have been a month in there, in the suffocating heat, the continuous din, the fusillade of muck.
Frank and George produced a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush and gave me a rough clean-up before I left. A mile from the farm I drove off the unfenced road, got out of the car and dropped down on the cool fell-side. Throwing wide my arms I wriggled my shoulders and my sweat-soaked shirt into the tough grass and let the sweet breeze play over me. With the sun on my face I looked through half closed eyes at the hazy-blue sky.
My ribs ached and I could feel the bruises of a dozen kicks on my legs. I knew I didn’t smell so good either. I closed my eyes and grinned at the ridiculous thought that I had been conducting a diagnostic investigation for tuberculosis back there. A strange way to carry out a scientific procedure; a strange way, in fact, to earn a living.
But then I might have been in an office with the windows tight shut against the petrol fumes and the traffic noise, the desk light shining on the columns of figures, my bowler hat hanging on the wall.
Lazily I opened my eyes again and watched a cloud shadow riding over the face of the green hill across the valley. No, no … I wasn’t complaining.
EIGHT
I HARDLY NOTICED THE passage of the weeks as I rattled along the moorland roads on my daily rounds; but the district was beginning to take shape, the people to emerge as separate personalities. Most days I had a puncture. The tyres were through to the canvas on all wheels; it surprised me that they took me anywhere at all.
One of the few refinements on the car was a rusty “sunshine roof.” It grated dismally when I slid it back, but most of the time I kept it open and the windows too, and I drove in my shirt sleeves with the delicious air swirling about me. On wet days it didn’t help much to close the roof because the rain dripped through the joints and formed pools on my lap and the passenger seat.
I developed great skill in zig-zagging round puddles. To drive through was a mistake as the muddy water fountained up through the gaps in the floorboards.
But it was a fine summer and long days in the open gave me a tan which rivalled the farmers’. Even mending a puncture was no penance on the high, unfenced roads with the wheeling curlews for company and the wind bringing the scents of flowers and trees up from the valleys. And I could find other excuses to get out and sit on the crisp grass and look out over the airy roof of Yorkshire. It was like taking time out of life. Time to get things into perspective and assess my progress. Everything was so different that it confused me. This countryside after years of city streets, the sense of release from exams and study, the job with its daily challenge. And then there was my boss.
Siegfried Farnon charged round the practice with fierce energy from dawn till dark and I often wondered what drove him on. It wasn’t money because he treated it with scant respect. When the bills were paid, the cash went into the pint pot on the mantelpiece and he grabbed handfuls when he wanted it. I never saw him take out a wallet, but his pockets bulged with loose silver and balled-up notes. When he pulled out a thermometer they flew around him in a cloud.
After a week or two of headlong rush he would disappear; maybe for the evening, maybe overnight and often without saying where he was going. Mrs. Hall would serve a meal for two, but when she saw I was eating alone she would remove the food without comment.
He dashed off the list of calls each morning with such speed that I was quite often sent hurrying off to the wrong farm or to do the wrong thing. When I told him later of my embarrassment he would laugh heartily.
There was one time when he got involved himself. I had just taken a call from a Mr. Heaton of Bronsett about doing a P.M. on a dead sheep.
“I’d like you to come with me, James,” Siegfried said. “Things are quiet this morning and I believe they teach you blokes a pretty hot post-mortem procedure. I want to see you in action.”
We drove into the village of Bronsett and Siegfried swung the car left into a gated lane.
“Where are you going?” I said. “Heaton’s is at the other end of the village.”
“But you said Seaton’s.”
“No, I assure you …”
“Look, James, I was right by you when you were talking to the man. I distinctly heard you say the name.”
I opened my mouth to argue further but the car was hurtling down the lane and Siegfried’s jaw was jutting. I decided to let him find out for himself.
We arrived outside the farmhouse with a screaming of brakes. Siegfried had left his seat and was rummaging in the boot before the car had stopped shuddering. “Hell!” he shouted. “No post-mortem knife. Never mind, I’ll borrow something from the house.” He slammed down the lid and bustled over to the door.
The farmer’s wife answered and Siegfried beamed on her. “Good morning to you, Mrs. Seaton, have you a carving knife?”
The good lady raised her eyebrows. “What was that you said?”
“A carving knife, Mrs. Seaton, a carving knife, and a good sharp one, please.”
“You want a carving knife?”
“Yes, that’s right, a carving knife!” Siegfried cried, his scanty store of patience beginning to run out. “And I wonder if you’d mind hurrying. I haven’t much t
ime.”
The bewildered woman withdrew to the kitchen and I could hear whispering and muttering. Children’s heads peeped out at intervals to get a quick look at Siegfried stamping irritably on the step. After some delay, one of the daughters advanced timidly, holding out a long, dangerous-looking knife.
Siegfried snatched it from her hand and ran his thumb up and down the edge. “This is no damn good!” he shouted in exasperation. “Don’t you understand I want something really sharp? Fetch me a steel.”
The girl fled back into the kitchen and there was a low rumble of voices. It was some minutes before another young girl was pushed round the door. She inched her way up to Siegfried, gave him the steel at arm’s length and dashed back to safety.
Siegfried prided himself on his skill at sharpening a knife. It was something he enjoyed doing. As he stropped the knife on the steel, he warmed to his work and finally burst into song. There was no sound from the kitchen, only the ring of steel on steel backed by the tuneless singing; there were silent intervals when he carefully tested the edge, then the noise would start again.
When he had completed the job to his satisfaction he peered inside the door. “Where is your husband?” he called.
There was no reply so he strode into the kitchen, waving the gleaming blade in front of him. I followed him and saw Mrs. Seaton and her daughters cowering in the far corner, staring at Siegfried with large, frightened eyes.
He made a sweeping gesture at them with the knife. “Well, come on, I can get started now!”
“Started what?” the mother whispered, holding her family close to her.
“I want to P.M. this sheep. You have a dead sheep, haven’t you?”
Explanations and apologies followed.
Later, Siegfried remonstrated gravely with me for sending him to the wrong farm.
“You’ll have to be a bit more careful in future, James,” he said seriously. “Creates a very bad impression, that sort of thing.”
Another thing about my new life which interested me was the regular traffic of women through Skeldale House. They were all upper class, mostly beautiful and they had one thing in common—eagerness. They came for drinks, for tea, to dinner, but the real reason was to gaze at Siegfried like parched travellers in the desert sighting an oasis.
All Creatures Great and Small Page 6