In the yard at Holly Bush I got out of the car, nodded to the shadowy group of figures standing there, fumbled my bottle of antiseptic and calving ropes from the boot and marched determinedly into the byre. One of the men held an oil lamp over a cow lying on a deep bed of straw in one of the standings; from the vulva a calf’s foot protruded a few inches and as the cow strained a little muzzle showed momentarily then disappeared as she relaxed.
Far away inside me a stone cold sober veterinary surgeon murmured: “Only a leg back and a big roomy cow. Shouldn’t be much trouble.” I turned and looked at the Bamfords for the first time. I hadn’t met them before but it was easy to classify them; simple, kindly, anxious-to-please people—two middle-aged men, probably brothers, and two young men who would be the sons of one or the other. They were all staring at me in the dim light, their eyes expectant, their mouths slightly open as though ready to smile or laugh if given half a chance.
I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and said in a loud voice: “Would you please bring me a bucket of hot water, some soap and a towel.” Or at least that’s what I meant to say, because what actually issued from my lips was a torrent of something that sounded like Swahili. The Bamfords, poised, ready to spring into action to do my bidding, looked at me blankly. I cleared my throat, swallowed, took a few seconds’ rest and tried again. The result was the same—another volley of gibberish echoing uselessly round the cow house.
Clearly I had a problem. It was essential to communicate in some way, particularly since these people didn’t know me and were waiting for some action. I suppose I must have appeared a strange and enigmatic figure standing there, straight and solemn, surmounted and dominated by the vast cap. But through the mists a flash of insight showed me where I was going wrong. It was over-confidence. It wasn’t a bit of good trying to speak loudly like that. I tried again in the faintest of whispers.
“Could I have a bucket of hot water, some soap and a towel, please.” It came out beautifully though the oldest Mr. Bamford didn’t quite get it first time. He came close, cupped an ear with his hand and watched my lips intently. Then he nodded eagerly in comprehension, held up a forefinger at me, tiptoed across the floor like a tight rope walker to one of the sons and whispered in his ear. The young man turned and crept out noiselessly, closing the door behind him with the utmost care; he was back in less than a minute, padding over the cobbles daintily in his heavy boots and placing the bucket gingerly in front of me.
I managed to remove my jacket, tie and shirt quite efficiently and they were taken from me in silence and hung up on nails by the Bamfords who were moving around as though in church. I thought I was doing fine till I started to wash my arms. The soap kept shooting from my arms, slithering into the dung channel, disappearing into the dark corners of the byre with the Bamfords in hot pursuit. It was worse still when I tried to work up to the top of my arms. The soap flew over my shoulders like a live thing, at times cannoning off the walls, at others gliding down my back. The farmers never knew where the next shot was going and they took on the appearance of a really sharp fielding side crouching around me with arms outstretched waiting for a catch.
However I did finally work up a lather and was ready to start, but the cow refused firmly to get to her feet, so I had to stretch out behind her face down on the unyielding cobbles. It wasn’t till I had got down there that I felt the great cap dropping over my ears; I must have put it on again after removing my shirt though it was difficult to see what purpose it might serve.
Inserting a hand gently into the vagina I pushed along the calf’s neck, hoping to come upon a flexed knee or even a foot, but I was disappointed; the leg really was right back, stretching from the shoulder away flat against the calf’s side. Still, I would be all right—it just meant a longer reach.
And there was one reassuring feature; the calf was alive. As I lay, my face was almost touching the rear end of the cow and I had a close up of the nose which kept appearing every few seconds; it was good to see the little nostrils twitching as they sought the outside air. All I had to do was get that leg round.
But the snag was that as I reached forward the cow kept straining, squeezing my arm cruelly against her bony pelvis, making me groan and roll about in agony for a few seconds till the pressure went off. Quite often in these crises my cap fell on to the floor and each time gentle hands replaced it immediately on my head.
At last the foot was in my hand—there would be no need for ropes this time—and I began to pull it round. It took me longer than I thought and it seemed to me that the calf was beginning to lose patience with me because when its head was forced out by the cow’s contractions we were eye to eye and I fancied the little creature was giving me a disgusted “For heaven’s sake get on with it” look.
When the leg did come round it was with a rush and in an instant everything was laid as it should have been.
“Get hold of the feet,” I whispered to the Bamfords and after a hushed consultation they took up their places. In no time at all a fine heifer calf was wriggling on the cobbles shaking its head and snorting the placental fluid from its nostrils.
In response to my softly hissed instructions the farmers rubbed the little creature down with straw wisps and pulled it round for its mother to lick.
It was a happy ending to the most peaceful calving I have ever attended. Never a voice raised, everybody moving around on tiptoe. I got dressed in a cathedral silence, went out to the car, breathed a final goodnight and left with the Bamfords waving mutely.
To say I had a hangover next morning would be failing even to hint at the utter disintegration of my bodily economy and personality. Only somebody who had consumed two or three quarts of assorted home made wines at a sitting could have an inkling of the quaking nausea, the raging inferno within, the jangling nerves, the black despairing outlook.
Tristan had seen me in the bathroom running the cold tap on my tongue and had intuitively administered a raw egg, aspirins and brandy which, as I came downstairs, lay in a cold, unmoving blob in my outraged stomach.
“What are you walking like that for, James?” asked Siegfried in what sounded like a bull’s bellow as I came in on him at breakfast, “You look as though you’d pee’d yourself.”
“Oh it’s nothing much.” It was no good telling him I was treading warily across the carpet because I was convinced that if I let my heels down too suddenly it would jar my eyeballs from their sockets. “I had a few glasses of Mr. Crump’s wine last night and it seems to have upset me.”
“A few glasses! You ought to be more careful—that stuff’s dynamite. Could knock anybody over.” He crashed his cup into its saucer then began to clatter about with knife and fork as if trying to give a one man rendering of the Anvil Chorus. “I hope you weren’t any the worse to go to Bamford’s.”
I listlessly crumbled some dry toast on my plate. “Well I did the job all right, but I’d had a bit too much—no use denying it.”
Siegfried was in one of his encouraging moods. “By God, James, those Bamfords are very strict methodists. They’re grand chaps but absolutely dead nuts against drink—if they thought you were under the influence of alcohol they’d never have you on the place again.” He ruthlessly bisected an egg yolk. “I hope they didn’t notice anything. Do you think they knew?”
“Oh maybe not. No, I shouldn’t think so.” I closed my eyes and shivered as Siegfried pushed a forkful of sausage and fried bread into his mouth and began to chew briskly. My mind went back to the gentle hands replacing the monstrous cap on my head and I groaned inwardly.
Those Bamfords knew all right. Oh yes, they knew.
9
THE SILVER HAIRED OLD gentleman with the pleasant face didn’t look the type to be easily upset but his eyes glared at me angrily and his lips quivered with indignation.
“Mr. Herriot,” he said. “I have come to make a complaint. I strongly object to your allowing students to practise on my cat.”
“Students? What students?�
�� I was mystified.
“I think you know, Mr. Herriot. I brought my cat in a few days ago for a hysterectomy and I am referring to this operation.”
I nodded. “Yes, I remember it very well…but where do the students come in?”
“Well the operation wound was rather large and I have it on good authority that it was made by somebody who was just learning the job.” The old gentleman stuck out his chin fiercely.
“Right,” I said. “Let’s take one thing at a time. I did that operation myself and I had to enlarge the wound because your cat was in an advanced state of pregnancy. I couldn’t squeeze the foetuses through my original incision.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that.”
“Secondly, we have no students with us. They only come at holiday times and when they are here they certainly are not allowed to carry out operations.”
“Well this lady seemed to be absolutely sure of her facts. She was adamant about it. She took one look at the cat and pronounced that it was the work of a student.”
“Lady?”
“Yes,” said the old gentleman. “She is very clever with animals and she came round to see if she could help in my cat’s convalescence. She brought some excellent condition powders with her.”
“Ah!” A blinding shaft pierced the fog in my mind. All was suddenly clear. “It was Mrs. Donovan, wasn’t it?”
“Well…er, yes. That was her name.”
Old Mrs. Donovan was a woman who really got around. No matter what was going on in Darrowby—weddings, funerals, house-sales—you’d find the dumpy little figure and walnut face among the spectators, the darting, black-button eyes taking everything in. And always, on the end of its lead, her terrier dog.
When I say “old”, I’m only guessing, because she appeared ageless; she seemed to have been around a long time but she could have been anything between fifty five and seventy five. She certainly had the vitality of a young woman because she must have walked vast distances in her dedicated quest to keep abreast of events. Many people took an uncharitable view of her acute curiosity but whatever the motivation, her activities took her into almost every channel of life in the town. One of these channels was our veterinary practice.
Because Mrs. Donovan, among her other widely ranging interests, was an animal doctor. In fact I think it would be safe to say that this facet of her life transcended all the others.
She could talk at length on the ailments of small animals and she had a whole armoury of medicines and remedies at her command, her two specialties being her miracle working condition powders and a dog shampoo of unprecedented value for improving the coat. She had an uncanny ability to sniff out a sick animal and it was not uncommon when I was on my rounds to find Mrs. Donovan’s dark gipsy face poised intently over what I had thought was my patient while she administered calf’s foot jelly or one of her own patent nostrums.
I suffered more than Siegfried because I took a more active part in the small animal side of our practice. I was anxious to develop this aspect and to improve my image in this field and Mrs. Donovan didn’t help at all. “Young Mr. Herriot,” she would confide to my clients, “is all right with cattle and such like, but he don’t know nothing about dogs and cats.”
And of course they believed her and had implicit faith in her. She had the irresistible mystic appeal of the amateur and on top of that there was her habit, particularly endearing in Darrowby, of never charging for her advice, her medicines, her long periods of diligent nursing.
Older folk in the town told how her husband, an Irish farm worker, had died many years ago and how he must have had a “bit put away” because Mrs. Donovan had apparently been able to indulge all her interests over the years without financial strain. Since she inhabited the streets of Darrowby all day and every day I often encountered her and she always smiled up at me sweetly and told me how she had been sitting up all night with Mrs. So-and-so’s dog that I’d been treating. She felt sure she’d be able to pull it through.
There was no smile on her face, however, on the day when she rushed into the surgery while Siegfried and I were having tea.
“Mr. Herriot!” she gasped. “Can you come? My little dog’s been run over!”
I jumped up and ran out to the car with her. She sat in the passenger seat with her head bowed, her hands clasped tightly on her knees.
“He slipped his collar and ran in front of a car,” she murmured. “He’s lying in front of the school half way up Cliffend Road. Please hurry.”
I was there within three minutes but as I bent over the dusty little body stretched on the pavement I knew there was nothing I could do. The fast-glazing eyes, the faint, gasping respirations, the ghastly pallor of the mucous membranes all told the same story.
“I’ll take him back to the surgery and get some saline into him, Mrs. Donovan,” I said. “But I’m afraid he’s had a massive internal haemorrhage. Did you see what happened exactly?”
She gulped. “Yes, the wheel went right over him.”
Ruptured liver, for sure. I passed my hands under the little animal and began to lift him gently, but as I did so the breathing stopped and the eyes stared fixedly ahead.
Mrs. Donovan sank to her knees and for a few moments she gently stroked the rough hair of the head and chest “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered at last.
“I’m afraid he is,” I said.
She got slowly to her feet and stood bewilderedly among the little group of bystanders on the pavement. Her lips moved but she seemed unable to say any more.
I took her arm, led her over to the car and opened the door. “Get in and sit down,” I said. “I’ll run you home. Leave everything to me.”
I wrapped the dog in my calving overall and laid him in the boot before driving away. It wasn’t until we drew up outside Mrs. Donovan’s house that she began to weep silently. I sat there without speaking till she had finished. Then she wiped her eyes and turned to me.
“Do you think he suffered at all?”
“I’m certain he didn’t. It was all so quick—he wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
She tried to smile. “Poor little Rex, I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. We’ve travelled a few miles together, you know.”
“Yes, you have. He had a wonderful life, Mrs. Donovan. And let me give you a bit of advice—you must get another dog. You’d be lost without one.”
She shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. That little dog meant too much to me. I couldn’t let another take his place.”
“Well I know that’s how you feel just now but I wish you’d think about it. I don’t want to seem callous—I tell everybody this when they lose an animal and I know it’s good advice.”
“Mr. Herriot, I’ll never have another one.” She shook her head again, very decisively. “Rex was my faithful friend for many years and I just want to remember him. He’s the last dog I’ll ever have.”
I often saw Mrs. Donovan around the town after this and I was glad to see she was still as active as ever, though she looked strangely incomplete without the little dog on its lead. But it must have been over a month before I had the chance to speak to her.
It was on the afternoon that Inspector Halliday of the R.S.P.C.A. rang me.
“Mr. Herriot,” he said, “I’d like you to come and see an animal with me. A cruelty case.”
“Right, what is it?”
“A dog, and it’s pretty grim. A dreadful case of neglect.” He gave me the name of a row of old brick cottages down by the river and said he’d meet me there.
Halliday was waiting for me, smart and businesslike in his dark uniform, as I pulled up in the back lane behind the houses. He was a big, blond man with cheerful blue eyes but he didn’t smile as he came over to the car.
“He’s in here,” he said, and led the way towards one of the doors in the long, crumbling wall. A few curious people were hanging around and with a feeling of inevitability I recognised a gnome-like brown face. Trust Mrs. Donovan, I thought, t
o be among those present at a time like this.
We went through the door into the long garden. I had found that even the lowliest dwellings in Darrowby had long strips of land at the back as though the builders had taken it for granted that the country people who were going to live in them would want to occupy themselves with the pursuits of the soil; with vegetable and fruit growing, even stock keeping in a small way. You usually found a pig there, a few hens, often pretty beds of flowers.
But this garden was a wilderness. A chilling air of desolation hung over the few gnarled apple and plum trees standing among a tangle of rank grass as though the place had been forsaken by all living creatures.
Halliday went over to a ramshackle wooden shed with peeling paint and a rusted corrugated iron roof. He produced a key, unlocked the padlock and dragged the door partly open. There was no window and it wasn’t easy to identify the jumble inside: broken gardening tools, an ancient mangle, rows of flower pots and partly used paint tins. And right at the back, a dog sitting quietly.
I didn’t notice him immediately because of the gloom and because the smell in the shed started me coughing, but as I drew closer I saw that he was a big animal, sitting very upright, his collar secured by a chain to a ring in the wall. I had seen some thin dogs but this advanced emaciation reminded me of my text books on anatomy; nowhere else did the bones of pelvis, face and rib cage stand out with such horrifying clarity. A deep, smoothed out hollow in the earth floor showed where he had lain, moved about, in fact lived for a very long time.
The sight of the animal had a stupefying effect on me; I only half took in the rest of the scene—the filthy shreds of sacking scattered nearby, the bowl of scummy water.
“Look at his back end,” Halliday muttered.
I carefully raised the dog from his sitting position and realised that the stench in the place was not entirely due to the piles of excrement. The hindquarters were a welter of pressure sores which had turned gangrenous and strips of sloughing tissue hung down from them. There were similar sores along the sternum and ribs. The coat, which seemed to be a dull yellow, was matted and caked with dirt.
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