The Inspector spoke again. “I don’t think he’s ever been out of here. He’s only a young dog—about a year old—but I understand he’s been in this shed since he was an eight week old pup. Somebody out in the lane heard a whimper or he’d never have been found.”
I felt a tightening of the throat and a sudden nausea which wasn’t due to the smell. It was the thought of this patient animal sitting starved and forgotten in the darkness and filth for a year. I looked again at the dog and saw in his eyes only a calm trust. Some dogs would have barked their heads off and soon been discovered, some would have become terrified and vicious, but this was one of the totally undemanding kind, the kind which had complete faith in people and accepted all their actions without complaint. Just an occasional whimper perhaps as he sat interminably in the empty blackness which had been his world and at times wondered what it was all about.
“Well, Inspector, I hope you’re going to throw the book at whoever’s responsible,” I said.
Halliday grunted. “Oh, there won’t be much done. It’s a case of diminished responsibility. The owner’s definitely simple. Lives with an aged mother who hardly knows what’s going on either. I’ve seen the fellow and it seems he threw in a bit of food when he felt like it and that’s about all he did. They’ll fine him and stop him keeping an animal in the future but nothing more than that.”
“I see.” I reached out and stroked the dog’s head and he immediately responded by resting a paw on my wrist. There was a pathetic dignity about the way he held himself erect, the calm eyes regarding me, friendly and unafraid. “Well, you’ll let me know if you want me in court.”
“Of course, and thank you for coming along.” Halliday hesitated for a moment. “And now I expect you’ll want to put this poor thing out of his misery right away.”
I continued to run my hand over the head and ears while I thought for a moment. “Yes…yes, I suppose so. We’d never find a home for him in this state. It’s the kindest thing to do. Anyway, push the door wide open will you so that I can get a proper look at him.”
In the improved light I examined him more thoroughly. Perfect teeth, well-proportioned limbs with a fringe of yellow hair. I put my stethoscope on his chest and as I listened to the slow, strong thudding of the heart the dog again put his paw on my hand.
I turned to Halliday. “You know, Inspector, inside this bag of bones there’s a lovely healthy Golden Retriever. I wish there was some way of letting him out.”
As I spoke I noticed there was more than one figure in the door opening. A pair of black pebble eyes were peering intently at the dog from behind the Inspector’s broad back. The other spectators had remained in the lane but Mrs. Donovan’s curiosity had been too much for her. I continued conversationally as though I hadn’t seen her.
“You know, what this dog needs first of all is a good shampoo to clean up his matted coat.”
“Huh?” said Halliday.
“Yes. And then he wants a long course of some really strong condition powders.”
“What’s that?” The Inspector looked startled.
“There’s no doubt about it.” I said. “It’s the only hope for him, but where are you going to find such things? Really powerful enough, I mean.” I sighed and straightened up. “Ah well, I suppose there’s nothing else for it. I’d better put him to sleep right away. I’ll get the things from my car.”
When I got back to the shed Mrs. Donovan was already inside examining the dog despite the feeble remonstrances of the big man.
“Look!” she said excitedly, pointing to a name roughly scratched on the collar. “His name’s Roy.” She smiled up at me. “It’s a bit like Rex, isn’t it, that name.”
“You know, Mrs. Donovan, now you mention it, it is. It’s very like Rex, the way it comes off your tongue.” I nodded seriously.
She stood silent for a few moments, obviously in the grip of a deep emotion, then she burst out.
“Can I have ’im? I can make him better, I know I can. Please, please let me have ’im!”
“Well I don’t know,” I said. “It’s really up to the Inspector. You’ll have to get his permission.”
Halliday looked at her in bewilderment, then he said: “Excuse me, Madam,” and drew me to one side. We walked a few yards through the long grass and stopped under a tree.
“Mr. Herriot,” he whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I can’t just pass over an animal in this condition to anybody who has a casual whim. The poor beggar’s had one bad break already—I think it’s enough. This woman doesn’t look a suitable person…”
I held up a hand. “Believe me, Inspector, you’ve nothing to worry about. She’s a funny old stick but she’s been sent from heaven today. If anybody in Darrowby can give this dog a new life it’s her.”
Halliday still looked very doubtful. “But I still don’t get it. What was all that stuff about him needing shampoos and condition powders?”
“Oh never mind about that. I’ll tell you some other time. What he needs is lots of good grub, care and affection and that’s just what he’ll get. You can take my word for it.”
“All right you seem very sure.” Halliday looked at me for a second or two then turned and walked over to the eager little figure by the shed.
I had never before been deliberately on the look out for Mrs. Donovan: she had just cropped up wherever I happened to be, but now I scanned the streets of Darrowby anxiously day by day without sighting her. I didn’t like it when Gobber Newhouse got drunk and drove his bicycle determinedly through a barrier into a ten foot hole where they were laying the new sewer and Mrs. Donovan was not in evidence among the happy crowd who watched the council workmen and two policemen trying to get him out; and when she was nowhere to be seen when they had to fetch the fire engine to the fish and chip shop the night the fat burst into flames, I became seriously worried.
Maybe I should have called round to see how she was getting on with that dog. Certainly I had trimmed off the necrotic tissue and dressed the sores before she took him away, but perhaps he needed something more than that. And yet at the time I had felt a strong conviction that the main thing was to get him out of there and clean him and feed him and nature would do the rest. And I had a lot of faith in Mrs. Donovan—far more than she had in me—when it came to animal doctoring; it was hard to believe I’d been completely wrong.
It must have been nearly three weeks and I was on the point of calling at her home when I noticed her stumping briskly along the far side of the market place, peering closely into every shop window exactly as before. The only difference was that she had a big yellow dog on the end of the lead.
I turned the wheel and sent my car bumping over the cobbles till I was abreast of her. When she saw me getting out she stopped and smiled impishly but she didn’t speak as I bent over Roy and examined him. He was still a skinny dog but he looked bright and happy, his wounds were healthy and granulating and there was not a speck of dirt in his coat or on his skin. I knew then what Mrs. Donovan had been doing all this time; she had been washing and combing and teasing at that filthy tangle till she had finally conquered it.
As I straightened up she seized my wrist in a grip of surprising strength and looked up into my eyes.
“Now Mr. Herriot,” she said. “Haven’t I made a difference to this dog!”
“You’ve done wonders, Mrs. Donovan,” I said. “And you’ve been at him with that marvellous shampoo of yours, haven’t you?”
She giggled and walked away and from that day I saw the two of them frequently but at a distance and something like two months went by before I had a chance to talk to her again. She was passing by the surgery as I was coming down the steps and again she grabbed my wrist.
“Mr. Herriot,” she said, just as she had done before. “Haven’t I made a difference to this dog!”
I looked down at Roy with something akin to awe. He had grown and filled out and his coat, no longer yellow but a rich gold, lay in luxuriant shinin
g swathes over the well-fleshed ribs and back. A new, brightly studded collar glittered on his neck and his tail, beautifully fringed, fanned the air gently. He was now a Golden Retriever in full magnificence. As I stared at him he reared up, plunked his fore paws on my chest and looked into my face, and in his eyes I read plainly the same calm affection and trust I had seen back in that black, noisome shed.
“Mrs. Donovan,” I said softly, “he’s the most beautiful dog in Yorkshire.” Then, because I knew she was waiting for it. “It’s those wonderful condition powders. Whatever do you put in them?”
“Ah, wouldn’t you like to know!” She bridled and smiled up at me coquettishly and indeed she was nearer being kissed at that moment than for many years.
I suppose you could say that that was the start of Roy’s second life. And as the years passed I often pondered on the beneficent providence which had decreed that an animal which had spent his first twelve months abandoned and unwanted, staring uncomprehendingly into that unchanging, stinking darkness, should be whisked in a moment into an existence of light and movement and love. Because I don’t think any dog had it quite so good as Roy from then on.
His diet changed dramatically from odd bread crusts to best stewing steak and biscuit, meaty bones and a bowl of warm milk every evening. And he never missed a thing. Garden fetes, school sports, evictions, gymkhanas—he’d be there. I was pleased to note that as time went on Mrs. Donovan seemed to be clocking up an even greater daily mileage. Her expenditure on shoe leather must have been phenomenal, but of course it was absolute pie for Roy—a busy round in the morning, home for a meal then straight out again; it was all go.
Mrs. Donovan didn’t confine her activities to the town centre; there was a big stretch of common land down by the river where there were seats, and people used to take their dogs for a gallop and she liked to get down there fairly regularly to check on the latest developments on the domestic scene. I often saw Roy loping majestically over the grass among a pack of assorted canines, and when he wasn’t doing that he was submitting to being stroked or patted or generally fussed over. He was handsome and he just liked people; it made him irresistible.
It was common knowledge that his mistress had bought a whole selection of brushes and combs of various sizes with which she laboured over his coat. Some people said she had a little brush for his teeth, too, and it might have been true, but he certainly wouldn’t need his nails clipped—his life on the roads would keep them down.
Mrs. Donovan, too, had her reward; she had a faithful companion by her side every hour of the day and night. But there was more to it than that; she had always had the compulsion to help and heal animals and the salvation of Roy was the high point of her life—a blazing triumph which never dimmed.
I know the memory of it was always fresh because many years later I was sitting on the sidelines at a cricket match and I saw the two of them; the old lady glancing keenly around her, Roy gazing placidly out at the field of play, apparently enjoying every ball. At the end of the match I watched them move away with the dispersing crowd; Roy would be about twelve then and heaven only knows how old Mrs. Donovan must have been, but the big golden animal was trotting along effortlessly and his mistress, a little more bent, perhaps, and her head rather nearer the ground, was going very well.
When she saw me she came over and I felt the familiar tight grip on my wrist.
“Mr. Herriot,” she said, and in the dark probing eyes the pride was still as warm, the triumph still as bursting new as if it had all happened yesterday.
“Mr. Herriot, haven’t I made a difference to this dog!”
10
THE THING THAT HAD changed everything was the tranquil basis of my home life. The vagaries of practice went on and would always go on but behind it all Helen’s presence was a warm infinity, a measureless peace. When I looked back at the time before she was my wife it was an uncertain world and events like the Darrowby Show seemed an eternity ago.
I remembered when Siegfried first asked me about it.
“How would you like to officiate at Darrowby Show, James?” He threw the letter he had been reading on to the desk and turned to me.
“I don’t mind, but I thought you always did it.”
“I do, but it says in that letter that they’ve changed the date this year and it happens I’m going to be away that weekend.”
“Oh well, fine. What do I have to do?”
Siegfried ran his eye down his list of calls. “It’s a sinecure, really. More a pleasant day out than anything else. You have to measure the ponies and be on call in case any animals are injured. That’s about all. Oh and they want you to judge the Family Pets.”
“Family Pets?”
“Yes, they run a proper dog show but they have an expert judge for that. This is just a bit of fun—all kinds of pets. You’ve got to find a first second and third.”
“Right,” I said. “I think I should just about be able to manage that.”
“Splendid.” Siegfried tipped up the envelope in which the letter had come. “Here are your car park and luncheon tickets for self and friend if you want to take somebody with you. Also your vet’s badge. O.K.?”
The Saturday of the show brought the kind of weather that must have had the organisers purring with pleasure; a sky of wide, unsullied blue, hardly a whiff of wind and the kind of torrid, brazen sunshine you don’t often find in North Yorkshire.
As I drove down towards the show ground I felt I was looking at a living breathing piece of old England; the group of tents and marquees vivid against the green of the riverside field, the women and children in their bright summer dresses, the cattle with their smocked attendants, a line of massive Shire horses parading in the ring.
I parked the car and made for the stewards’ tent with its flag hanging limply from the mast. Tristan parted from me there. With the impecunious student’s unerring eye for a little free food and entertainment he had taken up my spare tickets. He headed purposefully for the beer tent as I went in to report to the show secretary.
Leaving my measuring stick there I looked around for a while.
A country show is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Biding horses of all kinds from small ponies to hunters were being galloped up and down and in one ring the judges hovered around a group of mares and their beautiful little foals.
In a corner four men armed with buckets and brushes were washing and grooming a row of young bulls with great concentration, twiddling and crimping the fuzz over the rumps like society hairdressers.
Wandering through the marquees I examined the bewildering variety of produce from stalks of rhubarb to bunches of onions, the flower displays, embroidery, jams, cakes, pies. And the children’s section; a painting of “Beach at Scarborough” by Annie Heseltine, aged nine; rows of wobbling copperplate handwriting—“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever” Bernard Peacock, aged twelve.
Drawn by the occasional gusts of melody I strolled across the grass to where the Darrowby and Houlton Silver Band was rendering Poet and Peasant. The bandsmen were of all ages from seventies down to one or two boys of about fourteen and most of them had doffed their uniform tunics as they sweated in the hot sun. Pint pots reposed under many of the chairs and the musicians refreshed themselves frequently with leisurely swigs.
I was particularly fascinated by the conductor, a tiny frail man who looked about eighty. He alone had retained his full uniform, cap and all, and he stood apparently motionless in front of the crescent of bandsmen, chin sunk on chest, arms hanging limply by his sides. It wasn’t until I came right up to him that I realised his fingers were twitching in time with the music and that he was, in fact, conducting. And the more I watched him the more fitting it seemed that he should do it like that. The Yorkshire-man’s loathing of exhibitionism or indeed any outward show of emotion made it unthinkable that he should throw his arms about in the orthodox manner; no doubt he had spent weary hours rehearsing and coaching his players but here, when
the results of his labours were displayed to the public, he wasn’t going to swank about it. Even the almost imperceptible twitching of the finger-ends had something guilty about it as if the old man felt he was being caught out in something shameful.
But my attention was jerked away as a group of people walked across on the far side of the band. It was Helen with Richard Edmundson and behind them Mr. Alderson and Richard’s father deep in conversation. The young man walked very close to Helen, his shining, plastered-down fair hair hovering possessively over her dark head, his face animated as he talked and laughed.
There were no clouds in the sky but it was as if a dark hand had reached across and smudged away the brightness of the sunshine. I turned quickly and went in search of Tristan.
I soon picked out my colleague as I hurried into the marquee with “Refreshments” over the entrance. He was leaning with an elbow on the makeshift counter of boards and trestles chatting contentedly with a knot of cloth-capped locals, a Woodbine in one hand, a pint glass in the other. There was a general air of earthy bonhomie. Drinking of a more decorous kind would be taking place at the president’s bar behind the stewards’ headquarters with pink gins or sherry as the main tipple but here it was beer, bottled and draught, and the stout ladies behind the counter were working with the fierce concentration of people who knew they were in for a hard day.
“Yes, I saw her,” Tristan said when I gave him my news. “In fact there she is now.” He nodded in the direction of the family group as they strolled past the entrance. “I’ve had my eye on them for some time—I don’t miss much from in here you know, Jim.”
“Ah well.” I accepted a half of bitter from him. “It all looks pretty cosy. The two dads like blood brothers and Helen hanging on to that bloke’s arm.”
Tristan squinted over the top of his pint at the scene outside and shook his head. “Not exactly. He’s hanging on to HER arm.” He looked at me judicially. “There’s a difference, you know.”
All Things Bright and Beautiful Page 9