Every Living Thing

by James Herriot

  With a wistful feeling that my sudden popularity would be soon exploded I took the coupon and, using the cow’s back as a desk, I did as they asked.

  It was a winner and, during the week, Danny appeared at my surgery. “We’ve got thirty bob apiece, Mr. Herriot. It’s never happened before and t’lads are over the moon. Will ye do t’same again?”

  “Certainly,” I replied airily and put my crosses in the little squares. It won again, and this time all four of the men turned up at the surgery, smiling and triumphant. “Another thirty bob each, Mr. Herriot! It’s champion! We’re goin’ to put a bit more on this week.”

  I felt that things were getting out of hand. “Look, chaps, I’d really rather not do this again. I don’t want to lose you a lot of money and you will if you start putting on bigger stakes. Anyway, I’m no expert at this—I was only kidding when I gave you the idea that I won every week.”

  A hush fell upon the room and four pairs of eyes narrowed to slits. They didn’t believe a word.

  Helplessly I looked from one to the other, but they stood there as though carved from stone, waiting for me to make my move.

  “I tell you what,” I said at length. “I’ll do your coupon this week, but it will be for the last time. All right?”

  There were nods all round. “Aye, that’ll do us fine,” Danny said.

  “Just this week and never n’more.”

  Once more I entered the crosses in the squares and as I handed over the coupon I made my final appeal. “And you’ll never ask me to do this again?”

  Danny raised a hand. “Nay, never n’more, Mr. Herriot. That’s a promise.”

  For the third successive week, their coupon was a winner. Even as I write, I feel I can hardly ask anybody to believe it, but it is a true story. And a growing sensation of the eerie workings of fate was strengthened when I myself had my biggest-ever win—seventy-seven pounds, four shillings and eleven pence—on the treble chance. The sum is engraved on my memory till the end of time.

  That evening I showed the postal order tremblingly to my partner. “Look at this, Siegfried. All this money! And if I had had just one more draw I’d have won the first prize—sixteen thousand pounds!” Siegfried whistled as he studied the postal order. “James, this calls for a celebration. Let’s get over to the Drovers’.”

  In the bar, Siegfried bustled to the counter. “Two large whiskies, Betty,” he cried. “Mr. Herriot’s just won sixteen thousand pounds on the pools!”

  “No, no…” I protested, trying to restrain my ebullient colleague. “It wasn’t as much as that…”

  But it was too late. The barmaid’s eyes popped, the other occupants nearly choked on their beer and the damage was done. The news swept through Darrowby like a prairie fire.

  Sixteen thousand pounds was a vast fortune in those days and wherever I went over the next few weeks I was greeted with secret smiles and knowing winks. It happened nearly forty years ago, but to this day there are many people in our little town who are convinced that Herriot became rich on the pools.

  The next time I had to visit Lord Gresham’s farm was to carry out the tuberculin test on the cattle. I didn’t have to do anything clever to the beasts—just clip a couple of inches of hair from the necks and inject into the skin, but there was a different atmosphere altogether from the previous occasions when I was pulling off miracle cures, saving animals’ lives with my veterinary skill. The four men seemed to hang on my every word, treating my requests with the greatest deference. “Yes, Mr. Herriot.” “Right you are, Mr. Herriot.” And, whereas before they had always acted as though I wasn’t there, today they watched my smallest move with the greatest concentration. It became clear to me that I was forever enshrined in their minds as the one man to whom the mysteries of the football pools were an open book, to be manipulated as the fancy took me, and as I looked round the four men I could read something in their eyes I had never seen before.

  It was respect—deep, abiding respect.

  Chapter 38

  I WAS IN A familiar position. Lying flat on my face on a hard cobbled floor with my arm up to the shoulder inside a straining heifer. I had been doing this for over an hour and was beginning to despair. There was a huge live calf in there and the only thing stopping the delivery was that there was a leg back—normally a simple malpresentation and easily corrected. That was the cause of my frustration—I couldn’t believe that such a thing could beat me, but the trouble was that this was a very small heifer and there was no room to work. Time and again I had managed to reach the calf’s foot but I could only get a couple of fingers round it and as soon as I tried to pull, it slipped away from me. And on top of this the heifer was giving me hell with her expulsive efforts, trapping my hand painfully between the calf’s head and the pelvic bones.

  With all my soul I wished that my arm had been a few inches longer. If only I could get my fingers beyond the smooth wall of the hoof and grasp the hairy leg, the job would be over in minutes, but this was what I had been trying to do for that long hour and my arm was becoming paralysed and useless.

  In these situations I would often get a big farm lad to strip off and try to reach inaccessible places for me, but Mr. Kilding and his son were stocky, short-armed chaps—they wouldn’t get as far as I had.

  Suddenly I remembered something. Calum was doing a tuberculin test on a farm less than a mile away. If I could get hold of him, my troubles would be over because among his many attributes Calum had very long arms.

  “Mr. Kilding,” I said, “would you phone the Ellertons and ask Mr. Buchanan to come round and give me a hand? I’m afraid I need a bit of help.”

  “Buchanan? Vet wi’ t’badger?”

  I smiled. Calum was known as such not only in our own practice but for many miles beyond, “Yes, that’s the man.”

  The farmer hurried off and returned quickly. “Aye, he’s just finished the test. Says ’e’ll be round in a minute or two.” He was a nice man, and wasn’t complaining at my long, unproductive rolling about on his byre floor, but he couldn’t hide his anxiety. “I ’ope you’ll be able to do summat, Mr. Herriot, I’ve been really lookin’ forward to getting this calf.”

  As he spoke, Calum strode into the byre. He looked down at the prostrate animal and grinned. “Having a little trouble, Jim?” His manner, as always, was breezy.

  I explained the situation and he quickly whipped off his shirt. We lay down together on those cobbles, which had been getting steadily harder. I inserted my left arm until I could feel the calf’s muzzle against the palm of my hand and Calum pushed in his right arm alongside mine.

  “Right,” I said, “I’ll push the head back while you try to get hold of that foot.”

  “Okay,” he replied. “Fire away.”

  I pushed and just as the head moved away, making the vital room we needed, the heifer gave a mighty strain and pushed it back at me. Calum yelped as his fingers were trapped. “Ouch, that hurt! You’ll have to do a bit better than that.”

  I gritted my teeth and tried again, bracing my arm desperately against the heifer’s expulsive efforts.

  “I’m nearly there,” grunted Calum. “Nearly…nearly…push, you’re not pushing!”

  “I am pushing, dammit!” I gasped. “But she’s stronger than I am, and I’ve been doing this for an hour, you know. My arm’s like spaghetti.”

  We tried again, several times, groaning and panting, then Calum let his head slump onto his shoulder. “I know. Let’s have a rest for a few seconds.”

  I was all for that and I relaxed, feeling the calf’s rough tongue licking at my palm. He was still alive, anyway.

  As we lay there, practically cheek to cheek, arms still inside the heifer, my colleague put on a bright smile. “Well, now, what shall we talk about while we’re resting?”

  I didn’t feel like light conversation, but I tried to fall in with his sally. “Oh, I don’t know. Have you any interesting news?”

  “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I have. I’m go
ing to get married.”

  “What!”

  “I said I’m going to get married.”

  “Oh, you’re joking!”

  “No, I assure you. I am.”

  “When?”

  “Next week.”

  “Well…well…Anybody I know?”

  “No, no. Girl who works in the surgery department at the London College. I met her there while I was taking the course.”

  I lay there, thunderstruck. I found it difficult to take in. I had never imagined that a chap like Calum would ever entertain dreams of domestic bliss. I was still trying to sort out my thoughts when he brought me back to reality. “Come on, let’s have another go.”

  And it seemed as though the shock to my system had brought a surge of adrenaline with it, because this time I gave a great, pop-eyed heave and was able to hold the head back till I heard Calum’s triumphant cry, “I’ve got it!”

  And having got it he wasn’t going to let go. Eyes closed, teeth bared, he pulled until the elusive foot appeared at the vulva. His sweating face broke into a delighted grin. “That’s a lovely sight!”

  It was indeed. We had two legs and a head now, although nearly everything was still inside. I slapped the heifer’s rump. “Come on, old girl. This is when we need you. You can push as much as you like now.”

  As if in reply, the heifer gave us enthusiastic help as we pulled on the legs and soon the muzzle appeared, nostrils twitching, the big, wide brow and the eyes—which, I imagined, held a glimmer of disapproval at the delay—then the rest of the head and body till we had a fine calf wriggling on the straw.

  I felt good—I always did, but on this occasion something else was crowding in my mind—Calum’s bombshell about his impending nuptials.

  I could hardly wait to see what kind of girl Calum would bring back. He was such an unusual chap, with ideas far different from the ordinary man, that the new woman could be anything—plain, eccentric, fat, skinny—my mind played restlessly with the possibilities.

  I was put out of my pain quite soon. I opened the sitting room door one afternoon and my young colleague was there with a girl at his side. “This is Dierdre,” he said.

  She was quite tall, and the first words that came to me were “kind” and “motherly.” But I would like to banish any thought that being kind and motherly meant that she wasn’t attractive. Dierdre was very attractive indeed and now, nearly forty years later, when I think of her wonderful family of six young Buchanans I feel I deserve full marks for intuition.

  As we shook hands, her smile was wide and warm, her voice gentle, and it struck me that Calum had done it again—with all his funny ways he seemed to get the fundamental things right, and now, when it came to choosing a wife, he had found the kind of girl any young man would be glad to see first thing every morning.

  Any notion we may have harboured of celebrating an exciting wedding was soon quashed, and in a way that I realised was typical of them. They slipped away quietly to Keeler church and the ceremony was carried out there without fuss.

  I have never in my travels through Britain seen anything quite like Keeler. It is an ancient church of great beauty built by the Normans around 1100, standing quite alone among surrounding fields. There is a farm nearby but the nearest village is two miles away. It is on the borders of our practice area, but it can be clearly seen from the main road, and whenever I drive past I always slow down to look yet again at that lovely building, solitary among the fields with the hills rising behind. To me, it is a romantic, thrilling sight.

  Throughout the centuries, services have been conducted regularly there with a small congregation drawn from the surrounding farms and nearby villages, so that the church has been preserved in all its glory. Its beauty is a stark beauty of massive stone with nothing like the traceried battlements and buttresses of Darrowby’s splendid church, which is famed to such an extent that it is often referred to as a little cathedral. Helen and I were married there and have never ceased to be enthralled by its sheer magnificence.

  However, Calum and Dierdre went to Keeler in its wild and lonely setting and I could understand that its appeal would reach out to them. There was a brief honeymoon and that was all.

  Whenever I pass the old church standing in its solitary dignity, looking over the empty fields and the long line of hills as it has done for nine centuries, I think again how fitting it was that those young Buchanans should pledge their future life within its walls.

  I had the good feeling that Dierdre would add the woman’s touch to Calum’s flat—introduce a little more comfort in the way of her own individual furniture and decorations— but it was not to be. Dierdre didn’t care any more about that side of life than Calum—her interests were all outside. Like his, in the creatures, the plants and flowers of north Yorkshire.

  The flat stayed spartan—no chintz covers on the furniture or anything like that—but she seemed perfectly happy as she padded around up there, very often in slacks and bare feet, her mind completely in tune with her new husband’s.

  When they had time off together they spent it in rambling and observation in the woods and hills, and if Calum’s work prevented him from doing something important in his world of exploration Dierdre would happily stand in for him. I saw an example of this one balmy summer evening around dusk when I had to send the young man to a call.

  “Calum,” I said, “there’s a colic at Steve Holdsworth’s— will you get there as soon as you can?”

  “Certainly,” he replied. “Just give me a few minutes to put Dierdre up a tree and then I’ll be on my way.”

  Chapter 39

  IT WAS AROUND THE time when Calum’s third badger arrived that an uncanny sense of the inevitable began to settle on me.

  The new badger was called Bill and Calum didn’t say much about his unheralded advent. He did mention it in an off-hand way to me, but prudently failed to take Siegfried into his confidence. I think he realised that there wasn’t much point in upsetting my partner further—it seemed only reasonable to assume that Siegfried was getting a little punch-drunk with the assorted creatures milling around and wouldn’t even notice.

  I was discussing the day’s work with my colleagues in the doorway of the dispensary when Siegfried ducked his head. “What the hell was that?” he exclaimed as a large feathery body whizzed past, just missing our heads.

  “Oh, it’s Calum’s owl,” I said.

  Siegfried stared at me. “That owl? I thought it was supposed to be ill.” He turned to our assistant. “Calum, what’s that owl doing here? You brought it in days ago and it looks fit enough now, so get it back where it came from. I like birds, as you know, but not rocketing round in our surgery like bloody eagles—could frighten the life out of the clients.”

  The young man nodded. “Yes…yes…she’s almost recovered. I expect to take her back to the wood very soon.” He pocketed his list of visits and left.

  I didn’t say anything, but it seemed certain to me that once Calum had got his hands on an owl of his very own he wasn’t going to part with it in a hurry. I foresaw some uncomfortable incidents.

  “And listen to those fox cubs!” Siegfried went on. “What a racket they’re making!” The yapping, snarling and barking echoed along the passage from the back of the house. There was no doubt they were noisy little things. “What does Calum want them in here for?”

  “I’m not sure… he did say something, but I can’t quite recall…”

  “Well,” Siegfried grunted, “I just hope he’ll remove them as soon as the problem is over. It’s like living in a bloody zoo.”

  Later in the day, Siegfried and I were setting a dog’s fractured radius when Calum walked into the operating room. Marilyn, as usual, was on his shoulder, but today she had company; seated comfortably in the crook of the young man’s arm was a little monkey.

  Siegfried looked up from his work. He stopped winding the plaster of Paris bandage and his mouth fell open. “Oh, my God, no! This is too much! Not a bloody monkey now!�
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  “Yes,” replied Calum with a pleased smile. “His name is Mortimer.”

  “Never mind his name! What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t a pet—in a way, he’s a patient.”

  Siegfried’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean—in a way? Is he ill?”

  “Well, not exactly…Diana Thurston has asked me to look after him while she’s away on holiday.”

  “And you said yes, of course! No hesitation! That’s just what we need here—bloody monkeys roaming the place on top of everything else!”

  Calum looked at him gravely. “Well, you know, I was in a difficult position. Colonel Thurston is a very nice man and one of our biggest clients—large farm, hunting horses and umpteen dogs. I couldn’t very well refuse.”

  My partner recommenced his winding. The plaster was setting and I could see he wanted time to think. “Well, I see your point,” he said after a few moments. “It wouldn’t have looked so good.” He glanced up at Calum. “But it’s definitely just while Diana’s on holiday?”

  “Oh, absolutely, I promise you.” The young man nodded vigorously. “She’s devoted to the little chap and she’ll pick him up as soon as she returns.”

  “Oh, well, I suppose it’ll be all right.” Siegfried shot a hunted look at the monkey, which, open-mouthed, teeth bared and chattering, was apparently laughing at him.

  We lifted the sleeping dog from the table and carried him to one of the recovery kennels. My partner seemed indisposed to speak and I didn’t break the silence. I had no desire to discuss Calum’s latest acquisition because I happened to know that Diana Thurston wasn’t just going to Scarborough for a fortnight—she was off to Australia for six months.

  I had a call that evening and went to the surgery for extra drugs. As I walked along the passage, I could hear a babel of animal sounds from the end of the house, and on opening the door to the back room I found Calum among his friends. The three badgers were nosing around the food bowls, the owl flapped lazily onto a high shelf. Storm, vast and amiable, waved his tail in welcome, while the Dober-manns regarded me contemplatively. Mortimer the monkey, clearly already under Calum’s spell, leaped from a table into the young man’s arms and grinned at me. In a corner the fox cubs kept up their strange yapping and growling and I noticed two cages containing a couple of rabbits and a hare—apparently new arrivals.