The Real James Herriot

by Jim Wight

  Something else in the practice was timeless – Donald Sinclair. Now that Alf was no longer dependent upon veterinary work for a living, he could take a more relaxed view of his partner’s eccentricities at 23 Kirkgate.

  One afternoon, during an unusually quiet day, Donald said to him, ‘Alfred, I don’t know why we pay all these young assistants. Life is not so hard as it used to be, and I could run this place single-handed.’

  Alf raised his eyebrows. He knew his partner well but this sounded something special. ‘Single-handed? Are you quite sure about that, Donald?’ he replied, well aware that veterinary practice was one of the most unpredictable of professions.

  ‘Absolutely, Alfred! There is certainly no need for you to come in tomorrow. Take a day off!’

  ‘Are you really sure?’

  ‘Yes, Alfred, go home!’

  The following morning, the practice of Sinclair and Wight was desperately short of staff. Early-morning emergencies had meant that the other two assistants and I were out on call, and to complete the picture, our secretary was off with flu. At ten minutes to nine, Donald Sinclair calmly walked into a quiet, empty veterinary surgery.

  The ‘single-handed’ vet was soon to have some company. Within minutes, the office of 23 Kirkgate was transformed into a maelstrom of activity, with a long succession of customers filing in through the door while, to add to the noise, the telephone roared into life as repeated emergencies flowed into the practice.

  We kept the diary of that day as a special memento and it makes interesting reading. In the space of about half an hour, over twenty telephone calls were logged, in addition to the several patients in the surgery needing urgent attention. The calls included lambings, broken legs, a horse to put down, a foal with a torn eye, several cases to stitch and, all the time, the office continued to fill with people and animals – one of which, a crazy Afghan dog, barked wildly and incessantly. The writing in the day-book becomes increasingly spidery and illegible as the pages are turned. The one-man show was under pressure.

  It was not long before the telephone rang in Alf’s house. He could almost sense the tension as he lifted the receiver.

  ‘Alfred?’ there was a desperate quality in his partner’s voice.

  ‘Yes, Donald?’ he replied.

  ‘Come down – now!’

  ‘Why, Donald? Is it busy down there?’ The sound of shouting and barking dogs could clearly be heard.

  ‘Busy?! The place is going mad!’

  ‘Are you alone? Is there no one to help you?’

  The voice rose to a shriek, ‘Not a bloody soul!’

  These were days of reflection for Alf. He was observing the gradual disappearance of veterinary practice as he used to know it. The small family farms were steadily going out of business, to be incorporated into larger estates, and the old stone houses bought up by wealthy people to be converted into fine, modernised homes. The old Yorkshire that he knew – the way of life he had preserved in print – was on the way to becoming history.

  One of Donald Sinclair’s stock phrases was ‘I do not like change’, but there was little that Alf and he could do about the march of progress within both the veterinary profession and the farming industry. They were especially sad to see the steady replacement of the old cow byres with modern milking parlours; more efficient perhaps, but cold and austere. Both men remembered with affection the delicious sensation of warmth on walking into a cow byre on a cold winter’s day, with the rows of contented cows, the gentle chink of the chains around their necks, and the sweet, delectable smell of hay. But Alf knew this was a nostalgic picture that was fast becoming a thing of the past.

  There were some timeless relics in the surgery that were soon to be destined for replacement. One day, while in the office at 23 Kirkgate, my wife Gill pointed towards the window. ‘Those curtains!’ she exclaimed in a loud voice.

  She was referring to the old ‘red’ velvet curtains that had hung beside the office window for almost forty years. They were tattered and frayed, with part of the fabric so thin that it was possible to see straight through them out onto the street beyond.

  My father was seated at the desk. ‘Curtains?’ he replied slowly.

  ‘Yes! They are utterly appalling!’

  ‘Oh?’ He gazed affectionately at them for a moment. He had spent so many years in their company that it seemed unthinkable to replace them. Her comments, however, had struck home and they were soon heading for the bonfire.

  He told me about this shortly afterwards. ‘Gill’s absolutely right, of course,’ he said. ‘They were pretty awful, but they were old friends to me. They were here when I first came to Thirsk all those years ago!’

  He paused a moment before pointing to our telephone exchange box on the shelf next to the desk. ‘It’s that thing over there that worries me far more than the old curtains!’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘It’s about three inches from my ear when I sit at the desk and I don’t trust it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It hums … and it’s hot!’

  The days of the telephone box, too, were numbered. The practice of Sinclair and Wight had begun to enter the modern age.

  His life in practice was changing by the day, but it was the passing of many of his old farming clients – men, women and their families, that he had come to know so well – that was especially saddening. As the years rolled by, it was easy to forget that he, too, was getting older.

  One day, he was standing outside the surgery with a farmer as a funeral procession passed by on its way to St Mary’s at the end of Kirkgate. ‘There goes poor old Tom! I’m sorry to see him go,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Aye,’ replied the farmer. He then turned gloomily towards my father and said, ‘They’re pickin’ ’em out of our pen now, Alf!’ Alf had always looked very young for his years, and had a youthful outlook upon life, but this chastening expression gave him food for thought.

  A less sombre reminder of the advancing years hit him shortly afterwards. One afternoon in 1982, a woman flagged him down as he was driving home through his village. He opened the car window. ‘Mr Wight,’ she said, ‘it’s about the old folks party in the village hall.’

  ‘Why, yes, of course,’ Alf responded, reaching into his pocket for some money. He had always supported this occasion. ‘Just hang on a minute and I’ll give you something towards it.’

  The woman produced two tickets. ‘Nay, I don’t want no money! These are for you. Enjoy the party!’

  Alf Wight had, for as long as I can remember, always referred to his parents and other elderly people as ‘the old folks’. Now, he was one of them.

  In general, Alf had enjoyed good health throughout his working life but, with the passing of time inevitably starting to assert itself, he began, when he was about sixty-two years old, to experience angina attacks. As several of his relatives had died of heart attacks, these symptoms were a source of considerable concern but, as it turned out, none of us need have worried; the angina was not to prove the threat we had imagined.

  A few years later, in the summer of 1981, he experienced the agony of renal colic. These attacks, initiated by the presence of large kidney stones, were the most excruciating experiences he had ever endured and, for a long time, a bottle of painkilling tablets was his constant companion. He suffered pain intermittently for about a year before the problem was eventually resolved.

  He spent a week in hospital at the time of his worst attacks, but he was always convinced that he cured it himself by flushing the stones from his system one evening in the Three Tuns Hotel in Thirsk – assisted by the intake of large volumes of McEwans Export ale.

  It was not only Alf’s health that was under siege in 1981. Both Donald and Brian were experiencing serious problems of their own and Donald’s was of his own doing; he stepped in front of a speeding motor cycle in Thirsk market place and suffered a severe fracture of the lower leg.

  He was admitted to the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton
where the sister in charge of the ward soon informed Alf that his partner was, without doubt, the worst patient she had ever had. Considering the chaos he engendered in the practice over the years, I can well believe that was true.

  I visited him one day in hospital. I had been beside his bed for no more than a minute before he said, ‘Thanks for coming, Jim. You can go home now! Goodbye!’

  True to his impatient nature, Donald discharged himself from the hospital very quickly. He purchased an automatic car, and stomped around the practice carrying an enormous plaster cast on his leg for almost a year. A simple thing like a broken leg was not going to prevent ‘Siegfried’ from enriching the atmosphere of 23 Kirkgate.

  If Donald’s experience had been inconvenient, Brian’s was far more serious. He began to lose weight in 1980 before eventually being admitted to hospital for tests, but he continued to deteriorate steadily throughout 1981. I visited him early in 1982 in St James’s Hospital in Leeds, and was appalled to see his condition. Gone were the chubby cheeks and the twinkling eyes; instead, I saw a gaunt, sunken-eyed skeleton – someone I barely recognised. As I drove home that day, I wondered whether I would ever see Uncle Brian again. The outlook was bleak; no one had been able to diagnose his condition and all treatment had failed. These were desperate times for his family; Brian’s wife, Sheila – like Brian, a very close friend of Alf and Joan – could only watch helplessly as her husband continued to waste away before her eyes.

  Donald, horrified, watching his brother visibly fading, was convinced that he was going to die. One morning, he strode purposefully into the surgery.

  ‘Alfred!’ he said. ‘I have had a word with Sheila and I’m going to Leeds to bring Brian home!’

  ‘Why?’ Alf asked.

  Donald was in sombre mood. He thought a great deal of his younger brother, and the past weeks had been an ordeal. ‘He’s getting no better, he’s going to die, and I want him to die at home … with dignity.’

  At that time, a consultant had been specially drafted in to help in the diagnosis of Brian’s illness. My father’s response was immediate. He, too, was deeply depressed by Brian’s dreadful condition but he felt that Donald was wrong.

  ‘He is your brother, Donald, and it is your decision, but I think you are making a mistake.’

  Donald paced around the floor, wrestling with his dilemma, but his mind was made up. ‘No, I can’t stand watching him going to nothing. He’s coming home!’

  Alf was never one to interfere, but the life of one of his greatest friends was at stake and he had to say more. ‘He’s only got one chance, Donald, and it is in that hospital. This new consultant just might come up with something. If Brian comes home, he will definitely die. Please leave him where he is. It’s his only hope.’

  Donald, racked with emotion, said no more and left the room.

  Donald Sinclair was a man with strong convictions – and was never one to listen readily to others. There was just one man, however, to whom he would sometimes listen, and that man was Alfred Wight. Having, from their very earliest days together, had a high regard for his partner’s opinions, he once again took his advice. Brian stayed where he was.

  No one really unravelled the mystery of Brian’s condition (thought to be an obscure pituitary gland disorder) but shortly after that conversation in the surgery, a broadside of drugs was thrown at him, following which, remarkably, he began to improve. The drugs were gradually withdrawn as he got better but he had to remain on steroids for the rest of his days – a small price to pay for several more happy years.

  Another of Alf’s great friends whose health had given cause for concern was Denton Pette. Having suffered a stroke in 1977, from which he never fully recovered, he died in July 1981. Eve and Denton were some of the first to be asked to the many dinners and celebrations following Alf’s success as a writer, Denton’s open and cheerful countenance being a vital contribution to their enjoyment. Both Alf and Joan felt his death keenly.

  Shortly before Denton was taken ill, he and Alf watched a fiercely contested football match between Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Being a fanatical supporter of Middlesbrough – and an equally dedicated hater of Alf’s club, Sunderland – we often wondered whether the excitement of that occasion had contributed towards his stroke.

  Denton was another of those great characters who crossed Alf’s life and, as Granville Bennett, will be remembered with great affection by many Herriot fans. Alf wrote of his great friend in the Veterinary Record, ‘He was a true friend to a host of people who will remember him with gratitude for the happiness he brought into their lives.’ He did, indeed, bring happiness and laughter into many people’s lives.

  In 1981, Alf’s regular visits to Glasgow drew to a close. For over ten years, he had spent either Christmas or New Year with his mother – and he and other members of the family visited her often at other times of the year. In the summer of that year, however, she was moved down to a nursing-home in Harrogate and was there until her peaceful death the following December. As Alf stood at her funeral, his mind swept back to myriad memories of his mother who had sacrificed so much to ensure that her son realised his ambition to become a veterinary surgeon. She had been a force to be reckoned with in her time but she left us all with memories of gratitude and respect.

  Her pride in the achievements of her son had led to many embarrassing moments. ‘Now, you know who I am?’ she would say to total strangers. ‘I am James Herriot’s mother! Let me introduce you to him. Alf … Alf …?’ Like his father before him, Alf would have quietly disappeared from the scene.

  It is beyond the scope of this book to describe the many hilarious episodes concerning my grandmother, but the old lady who looked after me so well during my university years is remembered by the whole family with great affection.

  Alf Wight may have been at the very height of his success in the early 1980s, but the loss of those close to him at that time, together with his own bout of ill-health and Brian’s serious illness, were a constant reminder that time was passing by. As he looked back over the previous ten years of achievement, he had reason to feel proud of what he had done; and as such a careful and compassionate man, he had – apart from the brief upset with Donald over the characterisation of Siegfried – managed to achieve his success without hurting the feelings of others in any way.

  From his very beginnings as a writer, Alf’s primary concern was that he should not upset his friends but, in 1981, he was reminded again that the trappings of fame can take on an unpleasant guise when he fell out with his old friend, Eddie Straiton.

  In the summer of 1981, Eddie was summoned to appear in front of the Disciplinary Committee of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons on a charge of bringing discredit on the profession. He had stated on BBC Radio’s ‘Jimmy Young Show’ that he had ‘raced’ his young assistants to see who could neuter a cat the fastest and that, during one race, he had inadvertently opened up one supposedly female cat only to discover that it was a tom.

  With Eddie having always been an extrovert character, this story was meant as a humorous aside but there were those who did not see the funny side of it. On 29 September 1981, he found himself, not for the first time, standing before the Disciplinary Committee. Some character witnesses would clearly have helped Eddie’s case and an obvious one was Alf Wight – one of Eddie’s oldest and most respected friends – but Alf had declined to appear on his behalf.

  In Graham Lord’s biography of James Herriot, it says that Eddie claims that the reason Alf did not support him was because he was due to be made a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons – an extremely high honour in the British veterinary profession – and that he did not want to jeopardise this in any way.

  I am greatly saddened that Eddie could think so poorly of one of his most loyal friends; one who had stood by him steadfastly through an eventful and sometimes controversial career. Not only was Alf not informed of his impending honour until two months after Eddie’s disciplinary hearing,
but he would never have sacrificed the interests of one of his friends for the purpose of adding yet another honour to his already impressive list.

  Alf, in fact, disapproved of Eddie’s remarks about the ‘spay race’. He considered that his friend – by asserting that he could neuter a cat with lightning speed – had demeaned the skills of his profession. Knowing well that spaying a cat is not always the simple and straightforward operation that many believe it to be, he felt that Eddie’s remarks had been in poor taste. However, Eddie Straiton had been a staunch supporter of the profession in the past, and Alf would have appeared on his behalf to stress his many admirable qualities had he not been, at that time, tormented with the pain of renal colic.

  Eddie, deeply upset over Alf’s hesitation in offering him his support, and under immense pressure not only from the impending disciplinary hearing but also from the imminent death of his wife from terminal cancer, allowed his feelings to spill over with the use of some very strong words. His impulsive and misguided accusations very sadly inflicted irreparable damage on a friendship that stretched back to their days together in Glasgow.

  I well remember the effect of Eddie’s words on my father. Through no fault of his own, Alf Wight was being accused of insensitivity and selfishness by one of his oldest friends. Feelings of intense hurt and disbelief were followed by anger and a determination that he would never have anything to do with Eddie again.