James Herriot

by All Things Wise;Wonderful

In a little town like Darrowby you are soon out on the country roads where there are no lights and as I stumbled around peering vainly over invisible fields the utter pointlessness of the activity became more and more obvious.

  Occasionally I came within Tristan’s orbit and heard his despairing cries echoing over the empty landscape. “Haamiish! Haamiish! Haamiish …!”

  After half an hour we met at Skeldale House. Tristan faced me and as I shook my head he seemed to shrink within himself. His chest heaved as he fought for breath. Obviously he had been running while I had been walking and I suppose that was natural enough. We were both in an awkward situation but the final devastating blow would inevitably fall on him.

  “Well, we’d better get out on the road again,” he gasped, and as he spoke the front door bell rang again.

  The colour drained rapidly from his face and he clutched my arm. “That must be Miss Westerman this time. God almighty, she’s coming in!”

  Rapid footsteps sounded in the passage and the sitting room door opened. But it wasn’t Miss Westerman, it was Lydia again. She strode over to the sofa, reached underneath and extracted her handbag. She didn’t say anything but merely shrivelled Tristan with a sidelong glance before leaving.

  “What a night!” he moaned, putting a hand to his forehead. “I can’t stand much more of this.”

  Over the next hour we made innumerable sorties but we couldn’t find Hamish and nobody else seemed to have seen him. I came in to find Tristan collapsed in an armchair. His mouth hung open and he showed every sign of advanced exhaustion. I shook my head and he shook his, then I heard the telephone.

  I lifted the receiver, listened for a minute and turned to the young man. “I’ve got to go out, Triss. Mr. Drew’s old pony has colic again.”

  He reached out a hand from the depths of his chair. “You’re not going to leave me, Jim?”

  “Sorry, I must. But I won’t be long. It’s only a mile away.”

  “But what if Miss Westerman comes?”

  I shrugged. “You’ll just have to apologise. Hamish is bound to turn up—maybe in the morning.”

  “You make it sound easy …” He ran a hand inside his collar. “And another thing—how about Siegfried? What if he arrives and asks about the dog? What do I tell him?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,” I replied airily. “Just say you were too busy on the sofa with the Drovers’ barmaid to bother about such things. He’ll understand.”

  But my attempt at jocularity fell flat. The young man fixed me with a cold eye and ignited a quivering Woodbine. “I believe I’ve told you this before, Jim, but there’s a nasty cruel streak in you.”

  Mr. Drew’s pony had almost recovered when I got there but I gave it a mild sedative injection before turning for home. On the way back a thought struck me and I took a road round the edge of the town to the row of modern bungalows where Miss Westerman lived. I parked the car and walked up the path of number ten.

  And there was Hamish in the porch, coiled up comfortably on the mat, looking up at me with mild surprise as I hovered over him.

  “Come on, lad,” I said. “You’ve got more sense than we had. Why didn’t we think of this before?”

  I deposited him on the passenger seat and as I drove away he hoisted his paws on to the dash and gazed out interestedly at the road unfolding in the headlights. Truly a phlegmatic little hound.

  Outside Skeldale House I tucked him under my arm and was about to turn the handle of the front door when I paused. Tristan had notched up a long succession of successful pranks against me—fake telephone calls, the ghost in my bedroom and many others—and in fact, good friends as we were, he never neglected a chance to take the mickey out of me. In this situation, with the positions reversed, he would be merciless. Instead of walking straight in as I always did, I put my finger on the bell and leaned on it for several long seconds.

  For some time there was neither sound nor movement from within and I pictured the cowering figure mustering his courage before marching to his doom. Then the light came on in the passage and as I peered expectantly through the glass a nose appeared round the far corner followed very gingerly by a wary eye. By degrees the full face inched into view and when Tristan recognised my grinning countenance he unleashed a cry of rage and bounded along the passage with upraised fist.

  I really think that in his distraught state he would have attacked me, but the sight of Hamish banished all else. He grabbed the hairy creature and began to fondle him.

  “Good little dog, nice little dog,” he crooned as he trotted through to the sitting room. “What a beautiful thing you are.” He laid him lovingly in the basket, and Hamish, after a “heigh-ho, here we are again” glance around him, put his head along his side and promptly went to sleep.

  Tristan fell limply into the armchair and gazed at me with glazed eyes.

  “Well, we’re saved, Jim,” he whispered. “But. I’ll never be the same after tonight. I’ve run bloody miles and I’ve nearly lost my voice with shouting. I tell you I’m about knackered.”

  I too was vastly relieved, and the nearness of catastrophe was brought home to us when Miss Westerman arrived within ten minutes.

  “Oh, my darling!” she cried as Hamish leaped at her, mouth open, short tail wagging furiously. “I’ve been so worried about you all day.”

  She looked tentatively at the ear with its rows of buttons. “Oh, it does look a lot better without that horrid swelling—and what a nice neat job you have made. Thank you, Mr. Herriot, and thank you, too, young man.”

  Tristan, who had staggered to his feet, bowed slightly as I showed the lady out.

  “Bring him back in six weeks to have the stitches out,” I called to her as she left then I rushed back into the room.

  “Siegfried’s just pulled up outside! You’d better look as if you’ve been working.”

  He rushed to the book shelves, pulled down Gaiger and Davis’s Bacteriology and a notebook and dived into a chair. When his brother came in he was utterly engrossed.

  Siegfried moved over to the fire and warmed his hands. He looked pink and mellow.

  “I’ve just been speaking to Miss Westerman,” he said. “She’s really pleased. Well done, both of you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, but Tristan was too busy to reply, scanning the pages anxiously and scribbling repeatedly in the notebook.

  Siegfried walked behind the young man’s chair and looked down at the open volume.

  “Ah yes, Clostridium septique,” he murmured, smiling indulgently. “That’s a good one to study. Keeps coming up in exams.” He rested a hand briefly on his brother’s shoulder. “I’m glad to see you at work. You’ve been raking about too much lately and it’s getting you down. A night at your books will have been good for you.”

  “Am I not right, James?” he said to me across the room. ‘Tell him. Few more nights like this will put him right.”

  “Right.”

  “Put him just where he ought to be.”

  “Right.”

  “Quite.” And Siegfried went off to bed.

  CHAPTER 42

  WHEN I WAS DISCHARGED from hospital I expected to be posted straight overseas and I wondered if I would be able to catch up with my old flight and my friends.

  However, I learned with surprise that I had to go to a convalescent home for a fortnight before any further action could be taken. This was in Puddlestone, near Leominster—a lovely mansion house in acres of beautiful gardens. It was presided over by a delightful old matron with whom we fortunate airmen played sedate games of croquet or walked in the cool woods; it was easy to imagine there was no such thing as a war. Two weeks of this treatment left me feeling revitalised. It wouldn’t be long, I felt, before I was back on the job.

  From Puddlestone it was back to Manchester and Heaton Park again and this time it was strange to think that in all the great sprawl of huts and the crowding thousands of men in blue there wasn’t a soul who knew me.

  Except, of cour
se, the Wing Commander who had sent me to hospital in the first place. I had an interview with him on my arrival and he came straight to the point.

  “Herriot,” he said. “I’m afraid you can’t fly any more.”

  “But … I’ve had the operation … I’m a lot better.”

  “I know that, but you can no longer be classed as 100% fit. You have been officially downgraded and I’m sure you realise that pilots have to be grade one.”

  “Yes … of course.”

  He glanced at the file in his hand. “I see you are a veterinary surgeon. Mmm—this poses a problem. Normally when an aircrew man is grounded he remusters on the ground staff, but yours is a reserved occupation. You really can’t serve in any capacity but aircrew. Yes … yes … we’ll have to see.”

  It was all very impersonal and businesslike. Those few words coming from a man like him left no room for argument and they obliterated at a stroke every picture I had ever had of my future in the RAF.

  I was fairly certain that if my flying days were over I would be discharged from the service and as I left the Wing Commander’s office and walked slowly back to my hut at the other end of the park I pondered on my contribution to the war effort.

  I hadn’t fired a shot in anger. I had peeled mountains of potatoes, washed countless dishes, shovelled coke, mucked out pigs, marched for miles, drilled interminably, finally and magically learned to fly and now it was all for nothing. I passed the big dining hall and the RAF march blared out at me from the loudspeakers.

  The familiar sound reminded me of so many experiences, so many friends, and suddenly I felt intensely lonely and cut off. It was a new sensation for me, and there, in those unlikely surroundings, I began to think of old Mr. Potts from my veterinary days. He must have felt like that.

  “How are you, Mr. Herriot?”

  Ordinary words, but the eagerness, almost desperation in the old man’s voice made them urgent and meaningful.

  I saw him nearly every day. In my unpredictable life it was difficult to do anything regularly but I did like a stroll by the river before lunch and so did my beagle, Sam. That was when we met Mr. Potts and Nip, his elderly sheepdog—they seemed to have the same habits as we did. His house backed on to the riverside fields and he spent a lot of time just walking around with his dog.

  Many retired farmers kept a bit of land and a few stock to occupy their minds and ease the transition from their arduous existence to day-long leisure, but Mr. Potts had bought a little bungalow with a scrap of garden and it was obvious that time dragged.

  Probably his health had dictated this. As he faced me he leaned on his stick and his bluish cheeks rose and fell with his breathing. He was a heart case if ever I saw one.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Potts,” I replied. “And how are things with you?”

  “Nobbut middlin’, lad. Ah soon get short o’ wind.” He coughed a couple of times then asked the inevitable question.

  “And what have you been doin’ this mornin’?” That was when his eyes grew intent and wide. He really wanted to know.

  I thought for a moment “Well now, let’s see.” I always tried to give him a detailed answer because I knew it meant a lot to him and brought back the life he missed so much. “I’ve done a couple of cleansings, seen a lame bullock, treated two cows with mastitis and another with milk fever.”

  He nodded eagerly at every word.

  “By gaw!” he exclaimed. “It’s a beggar, that milk fever. When I were a lad, good cows used to die like flies with it. Allus good milkers after their third or fourth calf. Couldn’t get to their feet and we used to dose ’em with all sorts, but they died, every one of ’em.”

  “Yes,” I said. “It must have been heartbreaking in those days.”

  “But then.” He smiled delightedly, digging a forefinger into my chest. “Then we started blowin’ up their udders wi’ a bicycle pump, and d’you know—they jumped up and walked away. Like magic it were.” His eyes sparkled at the memory.

  “I know, Mr. Potts, I’ve blown up a few myself, only I didn’t use a bicycle pump—I had a special little inflation apparatus.”

  That black box with its shining cylinders and filter is now in my personal museum, and it is the best place for it. It had got me out of some difficult situations but in the background there had always been the gnawing dread of transmitting tuberculosis. I had heard of it happening and was glad that calcium borogluconate had arrived.

  As we spoke, Sam and Nip played on the grass beside us. I watched as the beagle frisked round the old animal while Nip pawed at him stiff-jointedly, his tail waving with pleasure. You could see that he enjoyed these meetings as much as his master and for a brief time the years fell away from him as he rolled on his back with Sam astride him, nibbling gently at his chest.

  I walked with the old farmer as far as the little wooden bridge, then I had to turn for home. I watched the two of them pottering slowly over the narrow strip of timber to the other side of the river. Sam and I had our work pressing, but they had nothing else to do.

  I used to see Mr. Potts at other times, too. Wandering aimlessly among the stalls on market days or standing on the fringe of the group of farmers who always gathered in front of the Drovers’ Arms to meet cattle dealers, cow feed merchants, or just to talk business among themselves.

  Or I saw him at the auction mart, leaning on his stick, listening to the rapid-fire chanting of the auctioneer, watching listlessly as the beasts were bought and sold. And all the time I knew there was an emptiness in him, because there were none of his cattle in the stalls, none of his sheep in the long rows of pens. He was out of it all, old and done.

  I saw him the day before he died. It was in the usual place and I was standing at the river’s edge watching a heron rising from a rush-lined island and flapping lazily away over the fields.

  The old man stopped as he came abreast of me and the two dogs began their friendly wrestling.

  “Well now, Mr. Herriot.” He paused and bowed his head over the stick which he had dug into the grass of his farm for half a century. “What have you been doin’ today?”

  Perhaps his cheeks were a deeper shade of blue and the breath whistled through his pursed lips as he exhaled, but I can’t recall that he looked any worse than usual.

  “I’ll tell you, Mr. Potts,I said. “I’m feeling a bit weary. I ran into a real snorter of a foaling this morning—took me over two hours and I ache all over.”

  “Foaling, eh? Foal would be laid wrong, I reckon?”

  “Yes, cross-ways on, and I had a struggle to turn it.”

  “By gaw, yes, it’s hard work is that.” He smiled reminiscently. “Doesta remember that Clydesdale mare you foaled at ma place? Must ’ave been one of your first jobs when you came to Darrowby.”

  “Of course I do,” I replied. And I remembered, too, how kind the old man had been. Seeing I was young and green and unsure of myself he had taken pains, in his quiet way, to put me at my ease and give me confidence. “Yes,” I went on. “It was late on a Sunday night and we had a right tussle with it. There was just the two of us but we managed, didn’t we?”

  He squared his shoulders and for a moment his eyes looked past me at something I couldn’t see. “Aye, that’s right We made a job of ’er, you and me. Ah could push and pull a bit then.”

  “You certainly could. There’s no doubt about that.”

  He sucked the air in with difficulty and blew it out again with that peculiar pursing of the lips. Then he turned to me with a strange dignity.

  “They were good days, Mr. Herriot, weren’t they?”

  “They were, Mr. Potts, they were indeed.”

  “Aye, aye.” He nodded slowly. “Ah’ve had a lot o’ them days. Hard but good.” He looked down at his dog. “And awd Nip shared ’em with me, didn’t ye, lad?”

  His words took me back to the very first time I had seen Mr. Potts. He was perched on a stool, milking one of his few cows, his cloth-capped head thrusting into the hairy flank, and as he p
ulled at the teats old Nip dropped a stone on the toe of his boot. The farmer reached down, lifted the stone between two fingers and flicked it out through the open door into the yard. Nip scurried delightedly after it and was back within seconds, dropping the stone on the boot and panting hopefully.

  He wasn’t disappointed. His master repeated the throw automatically as if it was something he did all the time, and as I watched it happening again and again I realised that this was a daily ritual between the two. I bad a piercing impression of infinite patience and devotion.

  “Right then, Mr. Herriot, we’ll be off,” Mr. Potts said, jerking me back to the present “Come on, Nip.” He waved his stick and I watched him till a low-hanging willow branch bid man and dog from my sight.

  That was the last time I saw him. Next day the man at the petrol pumps mumbled casually, “See old Mr. Potts got his time in, eh?”

  And that was it. There was no excitement and only a handful of his old friends turned up at the funeral.

  For me it was a stab of sorrow. Another familiar face gone, and I should miss him as my busy life went on. I knew our daily conversations had cheered him but I felt with a sad finality that there was nothing else I could do for Mr. Potts.

  It was about a fortnight later and as I opened the gate to let Sam into the riverside fields I glanced at my watch. Twelve thirty—plenty of time for our pre-lunch walk and the long stretch of green was empty. Then I noticed a single dog away on the left. It was Nip, and as I watched he got up, took a few indeterminate steps over the grass then turned and sat down again at the gate of his back garden.

  Instead of taking my usual route I cut along behind the houses till I reached the old dog. He had been looking around him aimlessly but when we came up to him he seemed to come to life, sniffing Sam over and wagging his tail at me.

  On the other side of the gate Mrs. Potts was doing a bit of weeding, bending painfully as she plied her trowel.

  “How are you, Mrs. Potts?” I said.

  With an effort she straightened up. “Oh, not too bad, thank you, Mr. Herriot.” She came over and leaned on the gate. “I see you’re lookin’ at the awd dog. My word, he’s missin’ his master.”