“Yes…yes…I see…” My eyes were hunting desperately among the little animals trying to find some sort of clue. I had seen unthriftiness from parasitism but nothing like this.
“Have you kept a lot of cattle in these fields over the last year or two?” I asked.
She paused in thought for a moment. “No…no…I don’t think so. Billy used to let the milk cows graze up here now and then but that’s all.”
The grass wouldn’t be likely to be “sick” with worms, then. In any case it didn’t look like that. What it did look like was Johne’s disease, but how in God’s name could thirty five young things like this get Johne’s at the same time? Salmonella…? Coccidiosis…? Some form of poisoning, perhaps…this was the time of year when cattle ate strange plants. I walked slowly round the field, but there was nothing unusual to be seen; it took even the grass all its time to grow on these wind-blown hillsides and there was no great range of other herbage. I could see bracken higher up the fell but none down here; Billy would have cleared it years ago.
“Mrs. Dalby,” I said. “I think you’d better give these stirks another dose of the worm medicine just to be sure and in the meantime I’m going to take some samples of the manure for examination at the laboratory.”
I brought up some sterile jars from the car and went painstakingly round the pasture scooping up as wide a range as possible from the pools of faeces.
I took them to the lab myself and asked them to phone the results through. The call came within twenty four hours; negative for everything. I resisted the impulse to dash out to the farm immediately; there was nothing I could think of doing and it wouldn’t look so good for me to stand there gawping at the beasts and scratching my head. Better to wait till tomorrow to see if the second dose of worm medicine did any good. There was no reason why it should, because none of the samples showed a pathogenic worm burden.
In these cases I always hope that inspiration will come to me as I am driving around or even when I am examining other animals but this time as I climbed from the car outside Prospect House I was barren of ideas.
The young beasts were slightly worse. I had decided that if I still couldn’t think of anything I would give the worst ones vitamin injections more or less for the sake of doing something; so with Charlie holding the heads I inserted the hypodermic under the taunt skins of ten of the little creatures, trying at the same time to put away the feeling of utter futility. We didn’t have to drive them inside; they were easily caught in the open field and that was a bad sign in itself.
“Well you’ll let me know, Mrs. Dalby,” I said hoarsely as I got back into the car. “If that injection improves them I’ll do the lot.” I gave what I hoped was a confident wave and drove off.
I felt so bad that it had a numbing effect on me and over the next few days my mind seemed to shy away from the subject of the Dalby stirks as though by not thinking about them they would just go away. I was reminded that they were still very much there by a phone call from Mrs. Dalby.
“I’m afraid my cattle aren’t doing any good, Mr. Herriot.” Her voice was strained.
I grimaced into the receiver. “And the ones I injected…?”
“Just the same as the others.”
I had to face up to reality now and drove out to Prospect House immediately; but the feeling of cold emptiness, of having nothing to offer, made the journey a misery. I hadn’t the courage to go to the farm house and face Mrs. Dalby but hurried straight up through the fields to where the young beasts were gathered.
And when I walked among them and studied them at close range the apprehension I had felt oh the journey was nothing to the sick horror which rushed through me now. Another catastrophe was imminent here. The big follow-up blow which was all that was needed to knock the Dalby family out once and for all was on its way. These animals were going to die. Not just half of them like last year but all of them, because there was hardly any variation in their symptoms; there didn’t seem to be a single one of them which was fighting off the disease.
But what disease? God almighty, I was a veterinary surgeon! Maybe not steeped in experience but I wasn’t a new beginner any more. I should surely have some small inkling why a whole great batch of young beasts was sinking towards the knacker yard in front of my eyes.
I could see Mrs. Dalby coming up the field with little William striding in his tough, arm-swinging way by her side and Charlie following behind.
What the hell was I going to say to them? Shrug my shoulders with a light laugh and say I hadn’t a single clue in my head and that it would probably be best to phone Mallock now and ask them to shoot the lot of them straight away for dog meat? They wouldn’t have any cattle to bring on for next year but that wouldn’t matter because they would no longer be farming.
Stumbling among the stricken creatures I gazed at them in turn, almost choking as I looked at the drooping, sunken-eyed heads, the gaunt little bodies, the eternal trickle of that deadly scour. There was a curious immobility about the group, probably because they were too weak to walk about; in fact as I watched, one of them took a few steps, swayed and almost fell.
Charlie was pushing open the gate into the field just a hundred yards away. I turned and stared at the nearest animal, almost beseeching it to tell me what was wrong with it, where it felt the pain, how this thing had all started. But I got no response. The stirk, one of the smallest, only calf-size, with a very dark roan-coloured head showed not the slightest interest but gazed back at me incuriously through its spectacles. What was that…what was I thinking about…spectacles? Was my reason toppling…? But yes, by God, he did have spectacles…a ring of lighter hair surrounding each eye. And that other beast over there…he was the same. Oh glory be, now I knew! At last I knew!
Mrs. Dalby, panting slightly, had reached me.
“Good morning, Mr. Herriot,” she said, trying to smile. “What do you think, then?” She looked around the cattle with anxious eyes.
“Ah, good morning to you, Mrs. Dalby,” I replied expansively, fighting down the impulse to leap in the air and laugh and shout and perhaps do a few cartwheels. “Yes, I’ve had a look at them and it is pretty clear now what the trouble is.”
“Really? Then what…?”
“It’s copper deficiency.” I said it casually as though I had been turning such a thing over in my mind right from the beginning. “You can tell by the loss of the pigment in the coat, especially around the eyes. In fact when you look at them you can see that a lot of them are a bit paler than normal.” I waved an airy hand in the general direction of the stirks.
Charlie nodded. “Aye, by gaw, you’re right. Ah thowt they’d gone a funny colour.”
“Can we cure it?” Mrs. Dalby asked the inevitable question.
“Oh yes, I’m going straight back to the surgery now to make up a copper mixture and we’ll dose the lot. And you’ll have to repeat that every fortnight while they are out at grass. It’s a bit of a nuisance, I’m afraid, but there’s no other way. Can you do it?”
“Oh aye, we’ll do it,” Charlie said.
And “Oh aye, we’ll do it,” little William echoed, sticking out his chest and strutting around aggressively as though he wanted to start catching the beasts right away.
The treatment had a spectacular effect. I didn’t have the modern long-lasting copper injections at my disposal but the solution of copper sulphate which I concocted under the surgery tap at Skeldale House worked like magic. Within a few weeks that batch of stirks was capering, lively and fully fleshed, over those hillside fields. Not a single death, no lingering unthriftiness. It was as though the whole thing had never happened, as though the hand of doom had never hovered over, not only over the cattle, but the little family of humans.
It had been a close thing and, I realised, only a respite. That little woman had a long hard fight ahead of her still.
I have always abhorred change of any kind but it pleases me to come forward twenty years and spectate at another morning in the kitch
en at Prospect House. I was seated at the same little table picking a buttered scone from the same tray and wondering whether I should follow it with a piece of malt bread or one of the jam tarts.
Billy still smiled down from the mantelpiece and Mrs. Dalby, hands clasped in front of her, was watching me, her head a little on one side, the same half smile curving her lips. The years had not altered her much; there was some grey in her hair but the little red, weathered face and the bright eyes were as I had always known them.
I sipped my tea and looked across at the vast bulk of William sprawled in his father’s old chair, smiling his father’s smile at me. There were about fifteen stones of William and I had just been watching him in action as he held a fully grown bullock’s hind foot while I examined it. The animal had made a few attempts to kick but the discouragement on its face had been obvious as William’s great hands effortlessly engulfed its fetlock and a corner of his wide shoulder span dug into its abdomen.
No, I couldn’t expect William to be the same, nor Dennis and Michael clattering into the kitchen now in their heavy boots and moving over to the sink to wash their hands. They were six footers too with their father’s high-shouldered easy slouching walk but without William’s sheer bulk.
Their tiny mother glanced at them then up at the picture on the mantelpiece.
“It would have been our thirtieth anniversary today,” she said conversationally.
I looked up at her, surprised. She never spoke of such things and I didn’t know how to answer. I couldn’t very well say “congratulations” when she had spent twenty of those years alone. She had never said a word about her long fight; and it had been a winning fight. She had bought the neighbouring farm lower down the Dale when old Mr. Mason retired; it was a good farm with better land and William had lived there after his marriage and they ran the two places as one. Things were pretty good now with her three expert stocksmen sons eliminating the need for outside labour except old Charlie who still pottered around doing odd jobs.
“Yes, thirty years,” Mrs. Dalby said, looking slowly round the room as though she was seeing it for the first time. Then she turned back and bent over me, her face serious.
“Mr. Herriot,” she said, and I was sure that at last, on this special day, she was going to say something about the years of struggle, the nights of worry and tears, the grinding toil.
For a moment she rested her hand lightly on my shoulder and her eyes looked into mine.
“Mr. Herriot, are you quite sure that tea is to your liking?”
14
ONE OF THE THINGS Helen and I had to do was furnish our bed-sitter and kitchen. And when I say “furnish” I use the word in its most austere sense. We had no high-flown ideas about luxury; it was, after all a temporary arrangement and anyway we had no money to throw around.
My present to Helen at the time of our marriage was a modest gold watch and this had depleted my capital to the extent that a bank statement at the commencement of our married life revealed the sum of twenty five shillings standing to my credit. Admittedly I was a partner now but when you start from scratch it takes a long time to get your head above water.
But we did need the essentials like a table, chairs, cutlery, crockery, the odd rug and carpet, and Helen and I decided that it would be most sensible to pick up these things at house sales. Since I was constantly going round the district I was able to drop in at these events and the duty of acquiring our necessities had been delegated to me. But after a few weeks it was clear that I was falling down on the job.
I had never realised it before but I had a blind spot in these matters. I would go to a sale and come away with a pair of brass candlesticks and a stuffed owl. On another occasion I acquired an ornate inkwell with a carved metal figure of a dog on it together with a polished wooden box with unnumerable fascinating little drawers and compartments for keeping homeopathic prescriptions. I could go on for a long time about the things I bought but they were nearly all useless.
Helen was very nice about it.
“Jim,” she said one day when I was proudly showing her a model of a fully rigged sailing ship in a bottle which I had been lucky enough to pick up. “It’s lovely, but I don’t think we need it right now.”
I must have been a big disappointment to the poor girl and also to the local auctioneers who ran the sales. These gentlemen, when they saw me hovering around the back of the crowd would cheer up visibly. They, in common with most country folk, thought all vets were rich and that I would be bidding for some of the more expensive items. When a nice baby grand piano came up they would look over the heads at me with an expectant smile and their disappointment was evident when I finally went away with a cracked-faced barometer or a glove stretcher.
A sense of my failure began to seep through to me and when I had to take a sample through to the Leeds Laboratory I saw a chance to atone.
“Helen,” I said, “there’s a huge sale room right in the city centre. I’ll take an hour off and go in there. I’m bound to see something we need.”
“Oh good!” my wife replied. “That’s a great idea! There’ll be lots to choose from there. You haven’t had much chance to find anything at those little country sales.” Helen was always kind.
After my visit to the Leeds lab I asked the way to the sale rooms.
“Leave your car here,” one of the locals advised me. “You’ll never park in the main street and you can get a tram right to the door.”
I was glad I listened to him because when I arrived the traffic was surging both ways in a nonstop stream. The sale room was at the top of an extraordinarily long flight of smooth stone steps leading right to the top of the building. When I arrived, slightly out of breath, I thought immediately I had come to the right place, a vast enclosure strewn with furniture, cookers, gramophones, carets—everything you could possibly want in a house.
I wandered around fascinated for quite a long time then my attention centred on two tall piles of books quite near to where the auctioneer was selling. I lifted one of them. It was The Geography of the World. I had never seen such beautiful books; as big as encyclopaedias and with thick embossed covers and gold lettering. The pages, too, were edged with gold and the paper was of a delightfully smooth texture. Quite enthralled I turned the pages, marvelling at the handsome illustrations, the coloured pictures each with its covering transparent sheet They were a little old-fashioned, no doubt, and when I looked at the front I saw they were printed in 1858; but they were things of beauty.
Looking back, I feel that fate took a hand here because I had just reluctantly turned away when I heard the auctioneer’s voice.
“Now then, here’s a lovely set of books. The Geography of the World in Twenty Four Volumes. Just look at them. You don’t find books like them today. Who’ll give me a bid?”
I agreed with him. They were unique. But they must be worth pounds. I looked round the company but nobody said a word.
“Come on, ladies and gentlemen, surely somebody wants this wonderful addition to their library. Now, what do I hear?”
Again the silence then a seedy looking man in a soiled mackintosh spoke up.
“Arf a crown,” he said morosely.
I looked around expecting a burst of laughter at this sally, but nobody was amused. In fact the auctioneer didn’t seem surprised.
“I have a half a crown bid.” He glanced about him and raised his hammer. With a thudding of the heart I realised he was going to sell.
I heard my own voice, slightly breathless. “Three shillings.”
“I have a bid of three shillings for The Geography of the World in Twenty Four Volumes. Are you all done?” Bang went the hammer. “Sold to the gentleman over there.”
They were mine! I couldn’t believe my luck. This surely was the bargain to end all bargains. I paid my three shillings while one of the men tied a length of rough string round each pile. The first pause in my elation came when I tried to lift my purchases. Books are heavy things and these were massi
ve specimens; and there were twenty four of them.
With a hand under each string I heaved like a weight-lifter and, pop-eyed, veins standing out on my forehead, I managed to get them off the ground and began to stagger shakily to the exit.
The first string broke on the top step and twelve of my volumes cascaded downwards over the smooth stone. After the first moment of panic I decided that the best way was to transport the intact set down to the bottom and come back for the others. I did this but it took me some time and I began to perspire before I was all tied up again and poised on the kerb ready to cross the road.
The second string broke right in the middle of the tram lines as I attempted a stiff-legged dash through a break in the traffic. For about a year I scrabbled there in the middle of the road while horns hooted, tram bells clanged and an interested crowd watched from the sidewalks. I had just got the escaped volumes balanced in a column and was reknotting the string when the other lot burst from their binding and slithered gently along the metal rails; and it was when I was retrieving them that I noticed a large policeman, attracted by the din and the long line of vehicles, walking with measured strides in my direction.
In my mental turmoil I saw myself for the first time in the hands of the law. I could be done on several charges—Breach of the Peace, Obstructing Traffic to name only two—but I perceived that the officer was approaching very slowly and rightly or wrongly I feel that when a policeman strolls towards you like that he is a decent chap and is giving you a chance to get away. I took my chance. He was still several yards off when I had my two piles reassembled and I thrust my hands under the strings, tottered to the far kerb and lost myself in the crowd.
When I finally decided there was no longer any fear of feeling the dread grip on my shoulder I stopped in my headlong flight and rested in a shop doorway. I was puffing like a broken-winded horse and my hands hurt abominably. The sale room string was coarse, hairy and abrasive and already it threatened to take the skin off my fingers.
All Things Bright and Beautiful Page 13
