I looked up ruefully at the farmer and he burst into a roar of laughter. “It looks like t’apprentice knows more than the boss. Who taught you that, son?”
“Dad did. He said you could often be caught out that way.”
“And he was, wasn’t he!” The farmer slapped his thigh.
“Okay, okay,” I said, and as I went out to the car for the penicillin tubes I wondered how many other little wrinkles my son had absorbed in his journeys with me.
Later, as we drove back along the gated roads, I congratulated him.
“Well done, old lad. You know a lot more than I think!”
Jimmy grinned. “Yes, and remember when I couldn’t even milk a cow?”
I nodded. Milking-machines were universal among the bigger farms, but many of the smallholders still milked by hand and it seemed to fascinate my son to watch them. I could remember him standing by the side of old Tim Suggett as he milked one of his six cows. Crouched on the stool, head against the cow’s flank, the farmer effortlessly sent the white jets hissing and frothing into the bucket held between his knees.
He looked up and caught the boy’s eager gaze.
“Does tha want to ’ave a go, young man?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, please!”
“Awright, here’s a fresh bucket. See if ye can fill it.”
Jimmy squatted, grasped a teat in each hand and began to pull away lustily. Nothing happened. He tried two other teats with the same result.
“There’s nothing coming,” he cried plaintively. “Not a drop.”
Tim Suggett laughed. “Aye, it’s not as easy as it looks, is it? I reckon it ’ud take you a long time to milk ma six cows.”
My son looked crestfallen, and the old man put a hand on his head. “Come round sometime and I’ll teach ye. I’ll soon make a milker out of ye.”
A few weeks later, I returned from my round one afternoon to find Helen standing worriedly on the doorstep of Skeldale House.
“Jimmy hasn’t come back from school,” she said. “Did he tell you he was going to any of his friends?”
I thought for a moment. “No, not that I can remember. But maybe he’s just playing somewhere.”
Helen looked out at the gathering dusk. “It’s strange, though. He usually comes home to tell us first.”
We telephoned round among his school friends without result, then I began a tour of Darrowby, exploring the little winding “yards,” calling in at people we knew and getting the same reply, “No, I’m sorry, we haven’t seen him.” My attempt at a cheerful rejoinder, “Oh, thanks very much, sorry to trouble you,” became increasingly difficult as a cold hand began to grip at my heart.
When I got back to Skeldale House, Helen was on the verge of tears. “He hasn’t come back, Jim. Where on earth can he have got to? It’s pitch black out there. He can’t be playing.”
“Oh, he’ll turn up. There’ll be some simple explanation, don’t worry.” I hoped I sounded airy but I didn’t tell Helen that I had been dredging the water trough at the bottom of the garden.
I was beginning to feel the unmistakable symptoms of panic when I had a thought. “Wait a minute, didn’t he say he’d go round to Tim Suggett’s one day after school to learn to milk?”
The smallholding was actually in Darrowby itself and I was there in minutes. A soft light shone above the half-door of the little cow house and as I looked inside there was my son, crouched on a stool, bucket between his knees, head against a patient cow.
“Hello, Dad,” he said cheerfully. “Look here!” He displayed his bucket, which contained a few pints of milk. “I can do it now! Mr. Suggett’s been showing me. You don’t pull the teats at all. You just make your fingers go like this.”
Glorious relief flooded through me. I wanted to grab Jimmy and kiss him, kiss Mr. Suggert, kiss the cow, but I took a couple of deep breaths and restrained myself.
“It’s very good of you to have him, Tim. I hope he hasn’t been any bother.”
The old man chuckled. “Nay, lad, nay. We’ve had a bit o’ fun, and t’young man’s cottoned on right sharp. I’ve been tellin’ him if he’s goin’ to be a vitnery he’ll have to know how to get the milk out of a cow.”
It is one of my vivid memories, that night when Jimmy learned how to get the milk out of a cow, so that he could diagnose mastitis and put one over on his old man.
To this day I often wonder if I did the right thing in talking Rosie out of her ambition. Maybe I was wrong, but back in the forties and fifties life in veterinary practice was so different from now. Our practice was 90 per cent large animal and though I loved the work I was always being kicked, knocked about and splashed with various kinds of filth. With all its charms and rewards it was a dirty, dangerous job. Several times I was called to help out in neighbouring practices when the vet had sustained a broken limb, and I had myself been lame for weeks after a huge cart-horse whacked my thigh with his iron-shod hoof.
Quite often I didn’t smell so good because no amount of bathing in antiseptics could wholly banish the redolence of delivering decomposing calves and the removal of afterbirths. I was used to people wrinkling their noses when I came too near.
Sometimes after prolonged calvings and foalings, often lasting for hours, every muscle in my body ached for days as though I had been beaten by a heavy stick.
It is all so different now. We have long plastic gloves to protect us when we are doing the smelly jobs, there are the metal crushes to hold the big beasts instead of having to plunge among them as they were driven into a passage on the farm, and the Caesarean operation has eliminated the rough side of obstetrics. Also, the gentler small-animal work has expanded beyond all expectations till it now makes up more than half our work.
When I entered the veterinary college there was only one girl in our class—a tremendous novelty—but now young women make up at least 50 per cent of the students at the veterinary schools, and in fact excellent woman veterinary surgeons have worked in our practice.
I didn’t know all this forty years ago and though I could imagine tough little Jimmy living my life I couldn’t bear the thought of Rosie doing it. Unfairly at times, I used every wile I could to put her off veterinary work and to persuade her to become a doctor of humans instead of animals.
She is a happy doctor, too, but as I say, I still wonder….
Chapter 8
“NOT TO PUT TOO fine a point on it, Herriot, I think you are dishonest.”
“What!” I had been called a few things in my time, but never that and it hit me hard, especially coming from a tall, patrician veterinary surgeon, looking down his nose at me. “What the devil do you mean? How can you possibly say that?”
Hugo Mottram’s imperious blue eyes regarded me with distaste. “I say it only because I am forced to no other conclusion. I consider unethical behaviour to be a type of dishonesty and you have certainly been guilty of that. Also, your attempts to justify your actions seem to me to be sheer prevarication.”
This was really nice, I thought, particularly here in Brawton where I was trying to enjoy my precious half-day. I had been browsing happily in Smith’s bookshop, and spotted Mottram walking along by the shelves, and in fact had been regarding him with some envy, wishing that I looked a bit like him. He was the perfect picture of my idea of a country vet; check cap, immaculate hacking jacket, knee breeches, stockings and brogues together with a commanding presence and hawk-like, handsome features. He was in his fifties, but as he paced among the books, head high, chin jutting, he had the look of a fit young man.
I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “Mr. Mottram, what you have just said is insulting, and I think you should apologise. Surely you realise that neither my partner nor I have any designs on your clients—it was just an unfortunate combination of events. There was nothing else we could have done in the circumstances and if only you would just think about it…”
The tall man stuck out his chin even more. “I have thought about it and I mean what I sa
y. I have no desire to waste any more time in discussing this matter, and my hope is that I shall have no further contact with you in the future.”
He turned quickly and strode from the shop, leaving me fuming. I stood there, staring at my boots. Helen would be joining me any minute now—she had been having her hair done—and then our happy programme would start: shopping, tea, then the cinema and a late meal with a lot of good conversation, all with my pal, Gordon Rae, the vet from Boroughbridge, and his wife, Jean. It was a simple sequence, but a blessed escape from the hard work and we looked forward to it all week. And now it was in ruins, shattered.
This thing with Mottram had started a few weeks previously. I was examining a spaniel with a skin eruption in our surgery when the lady owner suddenly said, “Mr. Mottram of Scanton has been treating this dog for some time. Says it’s eczema, but it’s not improving and I think it must be something else. I want a second opinion.”
I looked at the lady. “I wish you’d mentioned that at the beginning. Really, I should have asked Mr. Mottram’s permission before I looked at your dog.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, yes, that’s how it is, and I’m afraid I’ll have to speak to him before I do any more.”
I excused myself and went through to the telephone in the office.
“Mottram here.” The voice was as I remembered. Deep, assured, cool. As a neighbouring veterinary surgeon I had met him a few times and found I couldn’t get very near him. His aristocratic haughtiness was, to me, decidedly off-putting. But I had to try to be friendly.
“Oh, hello, this is Herriot, Darrowby. How are you?”
“I am quite well, Herriot. I trust you are the same.” Damn, he still sounded patronising.
“Well now, I have one of your clients, a Mrs. Hickson, here with her dog—I see it has a skin condition. She’s asking for a second opinion.”
The voice became suddenly glacial. “You’ve seen the animal? I think you might have consulted me first.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get the chance. Mrs. Hickson didn’t tell me till I had the dog on the table. I do apologise, and I wonder if I might have your permission to carry on.”
There was a long pause, then again the icy tones. “Well, I suppose if you must, you must.” The phone went down with a bonk.
My face was hot with embarrassment. What was the matter with the chap? This sort of thing happened all the time in veterinary practice. I’d had to approach other neighbouring practitioners and sometimes they’d had to approach me. The response on both sides had always been, “Oh, yes, of course, carry on by all means. I’d be glad to know what you think.” And followed by a description of the treatment to date.
None of that with Mottram, and I wasn’t going to phone him again. I’d have to find out the past treatment from the owner if I could.
I told Siegfried later.
“Snooty bugger,” he grunted. “Remember when I asked him to dinner a long time ago? He said that he felt that vets should have an honourable association with their neighbours in opposition, but he didn’t believe in their socialising with each other.”
“Yes, I do remember.”
“Okay, I respect his views, but there’s no need for this stupid touchiness.”
A couple of weeks later I had a feeling of impending doom when I was feeling my way over the hind leg of a lame dog and the owner, a nice old man, chirped up, “Oh, by the way, I should have told you. Mr. Mottram over at Scanton has been treating him, but I can see no improvement at all and I’d like your opinion.”
My toes began to curl, but there was nothing else for it. I rang up our neighbour again.
“Mottram here.” That same discouraging voice.
I told him what had happened, and asked his permission.
Again that long pause, then a disdainful, “So you’re at it again?”
“At it…? What do you mean? I’m not at anything, I’m merely asking your permission to do as your client has requested.”
“Oh, do what you damn well like.” And I heard the familiar thud of the phone at the other end.
I began to sense the eerie workings of fate when Siegfried came in a few days later, looking thoughtful.
“You won’t believe this, James. I was called to one of Mottram’s clients this morning. Bollands by name, and he was in a state. He had a horse with a broken leg and couldn’t get hold of Mottram. Phoned me in desperation. I rang the Scanton practice but he was on his rounds and I had to dash out to Bollands’s place. It was a ghastly thing—a horrible compound fracture with the poor creature in agony. No possibility of treatment. There was simply nothing for it but to shoot the poor thing immediately. I couldn’t let him suffer. But it would be Mottram—I’ve tried to contact him again now, but he’s still not around.”
I had to help Siegfried to clean out a dog’s cankered ears and we were clearing up when, to our complete astonishment, Mottram appeared in the doorway of the operating room. He was immaculate as usual, clearly in a rage, but in cold control of himself.
“Ah, you’re both here.” That superior voice again. “It’s just as well, because what I have to say applies to both of you. This latest escapade at Bollands’s is really too much, Farnon. I can only conclude that you are conducting a campaign to steal my clients.”
Siegfried flushed. “Now look here, Mottram, that is ridiculous. We have absolutely no desire to poach your clients. As to Bollands’s horse, I tried in vain to get in touch with you, but—”
Mottram held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear any more. You can say what you like, but I believe in honourable relations. Now that this has happened I am glad I stuck to my principles about that ‘out to dinner together’ nonsense.” He nodded down to each of us from his great height and left.
Siegfried turned to me ruefully. “Well, that’s finally torn it. I want to be friends with all my neighbours but we’re finished there.”
As I stood in the bookshop in Brawton, recalling the sequence of events, I felt that I hadn’t needed this final onslaught from Mottram. Standing there among the wreckage of my half-day, looking at his retreating back, I knew that he had washed his hands of me.
Like my partner, I was unhappy about it, but I put it out of my mind until my bedside phone rang at 1:00 A.M. about a month later. I reached out a sleepy arm.
The voice at the other end was agitated. “This is Lumsden, Scanton. Mr. Mottram’s assistant. I’m treating his horse with a bad colic, but I’m beat with it. I need help.”
Suddenly I was wide awake. “Where’s Mottram?”
“He’s on holiday in the north of Scotland.” The young man’s voice began to quaver. “Oh, this would happen when he’s away. He adores this horse—it’s his favourite, he rides it every day. But I’ve tried everything and it looks like it’s dying. I don’t know how I’m going to face him when he gets back.” There was a pause. “Actually, I was hoping to speak to Mr. Farnon. He’s good with horses, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” I said. In the darkness, I rested the receiver on my chest and looked at the ceiling as Helen stirred uneasily at my side. Then I spoke again. “Look, Lumsden, I’ll have a word with my partner. It’s his night off, but I’ll see what he says. Anyway, I promise you one of us at least will be out to give you a hand.”
I cut short his thanks and dialled Siegfried’s number. I told him the story and could sense him snapping awake at the other end. “Oh, my God! Mottram!”
“Yes. What d’you think?”
I listened to a long sigh, then, “I’ve got to go, James.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Of course. It’s my night on, anyway, and I might be able to help.”
On the way to Scanton we didn’t say much, but Siegfried voiced our thoughts. “You know, this is uncanny. It sounds as though we’re on a hiding to nothing here and Mottram is going to love us even more when he finds we’ve been in at the death of his beloved
horse. Colics are nasty things at any time, always dangerous, even the straightforward ones, and I’d like to bet that this one will have some complications.”
The house was just outside Scanton and our headlights picked out an avenue of chestnut trees leading to an impressive bulk with a fine pillared doorway. We drove round the back and found Lumsden waving us with his torch into a cobbled courtyard. As we drew up he turned and ran quickly into a lighted loose box in the corner of the yard. When we followed him we could see the reason for his haste. And it was a frightening sight. My stomach lurched and I heard a soft “Oh, dear God!” from Siegfried. A big chestnut horse, head hanging, staring-eyed and lathered in sweat, was stumbling round the box, buckling at the knees, doing his best to throw himself down and roll, which, as any vet knows, can cause torsion of the bowel and inevitable death. The young man was hanging on desperately to the halter shank and urging the animal to keep walking round the box.
Lumsden looked about sixteen, but as a qualified veterinarian he had to be nearly ten years older than that. He was slightly built and his naturally boyish face was pale and exhausted.
“Very good of you to come,” he gasped. “I hate to get you out of bed, but I’ve been fighting on with this job all day yesterday and all day today, and I’m getting nowhere. The horse is worse if anything and I’m about knackered.”
“That’s quite all right, old chap,” Siegfried said soothingly. “James will hold the horse for a minute while you tell me what you’ve done.”
“Well, I’ve been giving Istin as a laxative, chloral hydrate, to relieve the pain. Largactil, and a few small shots of arecoline, but I’m frightened to give any more arecoline because there’s a hell of an impaction in there and I don’t want to rupture the bowel. If only he’d pass a bit of muck, but there’s been nothing through him for over forty-eight hours.”
“Never mind, my boy, you’ve done nothing wrong, so don’t worry about that.” Siegfried slipped a hand behind the animal’s elbow and felt the pulse. Then as the horse staggered around he reflected the eyelid and examined the conjunctiva. He looked at it thoughtfully before taking the temperature.
Every Living Thing Page 6