I didn’t say anything and she went on. “He’s eating all right and I can give him plenty of good food, but what I can’t do is take ’im for walks.” She rubbed her back. “I’m plagued with rheumatics, Mr. Herriot, and it takes me all my time to get around the house and garden.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “And I don’t suppose he’ll walk by himself.”
“Nay, he won’t. There’s the path he went along every day.” She pointed to the winding strip of beaten earth among the grass. “But he won’t go more’n a few yards.”
“Ah well, dogs like a bit of company just the same as we do.” I bent and ran my hand over the old animal’s head and ears. “How would you like to come with us, Nip?”
I set off along the path and he followed unhesitatingly, trotting alongside Sam with swinging tail.
“Eee, look!” the old lady cried. “Isn’t that grand to see!”
I followed his usual route down to the river where the water ran dark and silent under the branches of the gnarled willows. Then we went over the bridge and in front of us the river widened into pebbly shallows and murmured and chattered among the stones.
It was peaceful down there with only the endless water sound and the piping of birds in my ears and the long curtain of leaves parting here and there to give glimpses of the green flanks of the fells.
I watched the two dogs frisking ahead of me and the decision came to me quite naturally; I would do this regularly. From that day I altered my route and went along behind the houses first. Nip was happy again, Sam loved the whole idea, and for me there was a strange comfort in the knowledge that there was still something I could do for Mr. Potts.
CHAPTER 43
I LOOKED AROUND ME at the heap of boots, the piled mounds of shirts, the rows of empty shelves and pigeon holes. I was employed in the stores at Heaton Park, living proof that the RAF was finding me something of a problem.
The big war machine was rumbling along pretty smoothly by this time, turning out pilots, navigators, air-gunners in a steady stream and slotting them into different jobs if they failed to make the grade. It ticked over like a well-oiled engine as long as nothing disturbed the rhythm.
I was like a speck of sand in the works, and I could tell from various interviews that I had caused the administrators a certain amount of puzzlement. I don’t suppose Mr. Churchill was losing any sleep over me but since I wasn’t allowed to fly and was ineligible for the ground staff I was obviously a bit of a nuisance. Nobody seemed to have come across a grounded vet before.
Of course it was inevitable that I would be sent back to my practice, but I could see that it was going to take some time for the RAF to regurgitate me into civil life. Apparently I had to go through the motions even though some of them were meaningless.
One of the interviews was with three officers. They were very nice and they sat behind a table, beaming, friendly, reassuring. Their task, apparently, was to find out what ground staff job might suit me. I think they were probably psychologists and they asked me all kinds of questions, nodding and smiling kindly all the time.
“Well now, Herriot,” the middle officer said. “We are going to put you through a series of aptitude tests. It will last two days, starting tomorrow, and by the end of it I think we’ll know all about you.” He laughed. “It’s nothing to worry about. You might rather enjoy it.”
I did enjoy it, in fact I filled up great long sheets with my answers, I drew diagrams, fitted odd-shaped pieces of wood into holes. It was fun.
I had to wait another two days before I was called before the tribunal again. The three were if anything more charming than before and I seemed to sense an air of subdued excitement about them this time. They were all smiling broadly as the middle one spoke.
“Herriot, we have really found out something about you,” he said.
“You have?”
“Yes, indeed. We have found that you have an outstanding mechanical aptitude.”
I stared at him. This was a facer, because if ever there was a mechanical idiot that man is J. Herriot. I have a loathing for engines, wheels, pistons, cylinders, cogs. I can’t mend anything and if a garage mechanic tries to explain something to me I just can’t take it in.
I told the officers this and the three smiles became rather fixed.
“But surely,” said the one on the left, “you drive a car in the course of your professional work?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I’ve driven one for years, but I still don’t know how it works and if I break down I have to scream for help.”
‘I see, I see.” The smiles were very thin now and the three heads came together for a whispered consultation.
Finally the middle one leaned across the table.
‘Tell you what, Herriot. How would you like to be a meteorologist?”
“Fine,” I replied.
I sympathised with them, because they were obviously kind men, but I’ve never had any faith in aptitude tests since then.
Of course there was never the slightest chance of my becoming a meteorologist and I suppose that’s how I landed in the stores. It was one of the bizarre periods of my life, mercifully brief but vivid. They had told me to report to corporal Weekes at the stores hut and I made my way through the maze of roads of a Heaton Park populated by strangers.
Corporal Weekes was fat and he gave me a quick look over with crafty eyes.
“Herriot, eh? Well you can make yourself useful around ’ere. Not much to do, really. This ain’t a main stores—we deal mainly wiv laundry and boot repairs.”
As he spoke a fair-haired young man came in.
“AC2 Morgan, corporal,” he said. “Come for my boots. They’ve been re-soled.”
Weekes jerked his head and I had my first sight of the boot mountain. “They’re in there. They’ll be labelled.”
The young man looked surprised but he came round behind the counter and began to delve among the hundreds of identical black objects. It took him nearly an hour to find his own pair during which the corporal puffed at cigarettes with a total lack of interest. When the boots were finally unearthed he wordlessly ticked off the name on a long list.
“This is the sort of thing you’ll be doin’,” he said to me. “Nothin’to it.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. There was nothing to life in those stores. It took me only a day or two to realise the sweet existence Weekes had carved out for himself. Store-bashing is an honourable trade but not the way he did it. The innumerable compartments, niches and alcoves around the big hut were all marked with letters or numbers and there is no doubt the incoming boots and shirts should have been tucked away in order for easy recovery. But that would have involved work and the corporal was clearly averse to that.
When the boots came in they were tipped out in the middle of the floor and the string-tied packages of laundry were stacked, shirts uppermost where they formed a blue tumulus reaching almost to the roof.
After three days I could stand it no longer.
“Look,” I said. “It would pass the time if I had something to do. Do you mind if I start putting all this stuff on the shelves? It would be a lot easier to hand out.”
Weekes continued to study his magazine—he was a big reader—and at first I thought he hadn’t heard me. Then he tongued his cigarette to the corner of his mouth and glanced at me through the smoke.
“Now just get this through your ’ead, mate,” he drawled. “If I want anything done, I’ll well tell you. I’m the boss in ’ere and I give the orders, awright?” He resumed his perusal of the magazine.
I subsided in my chair. Clearly I had offended my overseer and I would have to leave things as they were.
But overseer is a misnomer for Weekes because on the following day, after a final brain-washing that the procedure must remain unchanged, he disappeared and except for a few minutes each morning he left me on my own. I had nothing to do but sit there behind the wooden counter, ticking off the comings and goings of the boots and shirts and I h
ad the feeling that I was only one of many displaced persons who had fallen under his thrall.
I found it acutely embarrassing to watch the lads scrabbling for their belongings and the strongest impression left with me was of the infinite tolerance of the British race. Since I was in charge they thought I was responsible for the whole system but despite the fact that I was of lowly rank nobody attacked me physically. Most of them muttered and grumbled as they searched and one large chap came over to the counter and said, “You should be filing away these boots in their proper order instead of sitting there on your arse, you lazy sod!” But he didn’t punch me on the nose and I marvelled at it.
But still, the knowledge that great numbers of decent young men shared his opinion was uncomfortable and I found I was developing a permanently ingratiating smile.
The only time I came very near to being lynched was when a mob suddenly appeared one afternoon. An unexpected leave pass had been granted and there were hundreds of men miling around on the tarmac and grass outside the stores. They wanted their laundry—and quick, because they had trains to catch.
For a moment panic seized me. I couldn’t let them all inside to fight for their shirts. Then inspiration came. I grabbed an armful of the flat packets from the table and shouted the name on the label.
“Walters!” And from somewhere among the surging heads an eager voice replied, “Here!”
I located the source, held the packet between thumb and finger and with a back-handed flick sent it skimming over the crowd.
“Reilly!”
“Here!”
“McDonald!”
“Here!”
“Gibson!”
“Here!”
I was getting quite skilful at it, propelling the blue oblongs unerringly towards their owners, but it was a slow method of distribution. Also, there were occasional disasters when the strings broke in mid-air, sending a shower of collars on the upturned faces. Sometimes the shirts themselves burst free from their wrappings and plunged to earth.
It wasn’t long before the voices had turned from eager to angry. As my projectiles planed and glided, volleys of abuse came back at me.
“You’ve made me miss my train, you useless bugger!”
“Bloody skiver, you want locking up!”
Much of it was in stronger language which I would rather not record here, but I have a particularly vivid memory of one young man scraping up his laundry from the dusty ground and approaching me with rapid strides. He pushed his face to within inches of mine. Despite the rage which disfigured it I could see it was a gentle, good-natured face. He looked a well-bred lad, the type who didn’t even swear, but as he stared into my eyes his lips trembled and his cheeks twitched.
“This is a …” he stammered. This is a … a BASTARD system!”
He spat the words out and strode away.
I agreed entirely with him, of course, but continued to hurl the packets doggedly while somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice kept enquiring how James Herriot, Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and trainee pilot, had ever got into this.
After half an hour there was no appreciable diminution in the size of the multitude and I began to be aware of an increasing restlessness among the medley of waiting faces.
Suddenly there was a concerted movement and the packed mass of men surged at me in a great wave. I shrank back, clutching an armful of shirts, quite certain that this was when they rushed me and beat me up, but my fears were groundless. All they wanted was a speedier delivery and about a dozen of them swept past me behind the counter and began to follow my example.
Whereas there had been only a single missile winging over the heads the sky was now dark with the flying objects. Mid-air collisions were frequent. Collars sprayed, handkerchiefs fluttered, underpants parachuted gracefully, but after an unbearably long period of chaos the last airman had picked up his scattered laundry, given me a disgusted glance and departed.
I was left alone in the hut with the sad knowledge that my prestige was very low and the equally sad conviction that the RAF still did not know what to do with me.
CHAPTER 44
OCCASIONALLY MY PERIOD IN limbo was relieved when I was allowed out of camp into the city of Manchester. And I suppose it was the fact that I was a new-fangled parent that made me look at the various prams in the streets. Mostly the prams were pushed by women but now and then I saw a man doing the job.
I suppose it isn’t unusual to see a man pushing a pram in a town, but on a lonely moorland road the sight merits a second glance. Especially when the pram contains a large dog.
That was what I saw in the hills above Darrowby one morning and I slowed down as I drove past. I had noticed the strange combination before—on several occasions over the last few weeks—and it was clear that man and dog had recently moved into the district.
As the car drew abreast of him the man turned, smiled and raised his hand. It was a smile of rare sweetness in a very brown face. A forty year old face, I thought, above a brown neck which bore neither collar nor tie, and a faded striped shirt lying open over a bare chest despite the coldness of the day.
I couldn’t help wondering who or what he was. The outfit of scuffed suede golf jacket, corduroy trousers and sturdy boots didn’t give much clue. Some people might have put him down as an ordinary tramp, but there was a businesslike energetic look about him which didn’t fit the term.
I wound the window down and the thin wind of a Yorkshire March bit at my cheeks.
“Nippy this morning,” I said.
The man seemed surprised. “Aye,” he replied after a moment “Aye, reckon it is.”
I looked at the pram, ancient and rusty, and at the big animal sitting upright inside it. He was a lurcher, a cross-bred greyhound, and he gazed back at me with unruffled dignity.
“Nice dog,” I said.
“Aye, that’s Jake.” The man smiled again, showing good regular teeth. “He’s a grand ’un.”
I waved and drove on. In the mirror I could see the compact figure stepping out briskly, head up, shoulders squared, and, rising like a statue from the middle of the pram, the huge brindled form of Jake.
I didn’t have to wait long to meet the unlikely pair again. I was examining a carthorse’s teeth in a farmyard when on the hillside beyond the stable I saw a figure kneeling by a dry stone wall. And by his side, a pram and a big dog sitting patiently on the grass.
“Hey, just a minute.” I pointed at the hill. “Who is that?”
The farmer laughed. “That’s Roddy Travers. D’you ken ’im?”
“No, no I don’t. I had a word with him on the road the other day, that’s all.”
“Aye, on the road.” He nodded knowingly. “That’s where you’d see Roddy, right enough.”
“But what is he? Where does he come from?”
“He comes from somewhere in Yorkshire, but ah don’t rightly know where and ah don’t think anybody else does. But I’ll tell you this—he can turn ’is hand to anything.”
“Yes,” I said, watching the man expertly laying the flat slabs of stone as he repaired a gap in the wall. “There’s not many can do what he’s doing now.”
“That’s true. Wallin’ is a skilled job and it’s dying out, but Roddy’s a dab hand at it. But he can do owt—hedgin’, ditchin’, lookin’ after stock, it’s all the same to him.”
I lifted the tooth rasp and began to rub a few sharp corners off the horse’s molars. “And how long will he stay here?”
“Oh, when he’s finished that wall he’ll be off. Ah could do with ’im stoppin’ around for a bit but he never stays in one place for long.”
“But hasn’t he got a home anywhere?”
“Nay, nay.” The farmer laughed again. “Roddy’s got nowt. All ’e has in the world is in that there pram.”
Over the next weeks as the harsh spring began to soften and the sunshine brought a bright speckle of primroses on to the grassy banks I saw Roddy quite often, sometimes on t
he road, occasionally wielding a spade busily on the ditches around the fields. Jake was always there, either loping by his side or watching him at work. But we didn’t actually meet again till I was inoculating Mr. Pawson’s sheep for pulpy kidney.
There were three hundred to do and they drove them in batches into a small pen where Roddy caught and held them for me. And I could see he was an expert at this, too. The wild hill sheep whipped past him like bullets but he seized their fleece effortlessly, sometimes in mid-air, and held the fore leg up to expose that bare clean area of skin behind the elbow that nature seemed to provide for the veterinary surgeon’s needle.
Outside, on the windy slopes the big lurcher sat upright in typical pose, looking with mild interest at the farm dogs prowling intently around the pens, but not interfering in any way.
“You’ve got him well trained,” I said.
Roddy smiled. “Yes, ye’ll never find Jake dashin’ about, annoyin’ people. He knows ’e has to sit there till I’m finished and there he’ll sit.”
“And quite happy to do so, by the look of him.” I glanced again at the dog, a picture of contentment. “He must live a wonderful life, travelling everywhere with you.”
“You’re right there,” Mr. Pawson broke in as he ushered another bunch of sheep into the pen. “He hasn’t a care in t’world, just like his master.”
Roddy didn’t say anything, but as the sheep ran in he straightened up and took a long steady breath. He had been working hard and a little trickle of sweat ran down the side of his forehead but as he gazed over the wide sweep of moor and fell I could read utter serenity in his face. After a few moments he spoke.
“I reckon that’s true. We haven’t much to worry us, Jake and me.”
Mr. Pawson grinned mischievously. “By gaw, Roddy, you never spoke a truer word. No wife, no kids, no life insurance, no overdraft at t’bank—you must have a right peaceful existence.”
“Ah suppose so,” Roddy said. “But then ah’ve no money either.”
James Herriot Page 42