Джеймс Хэрриот - Every Living Thing

We telephoned round among his school friends without result, then I began a tour of Darrowby, exploring the little winding “yards,” calling in at people we knew and getting the same reply, “No, I’m sorry, we haven’t seen him.” My attempt at a cheerful rejoinder, “Oh, thanks very much, sorry to trouble you,” became increasingly difficult as a cold hand began to grip at my heart.

When I got back to Skeldale House, Helen was on the verge of tears. “He hasn’t come back, Jim. Where on earth can he have got to? It’s pitch black out there. He can’t be playing.”

“Oh, he’ll turn up. There’ll be some simple explanation, don’t worry.” I hoped I sounded airy but I didn’t tell Helen that I had been dredging the water trough at the bottom of the garden.

I was beginning to feel the unmistakable symptoms of panic when I had a thought. “Wait a minute, didn’t he say he’d go round to Tim Suggett’s one day after school to learn to milk?”

The smallholding was actually in Darrowby itself and I was there in minutes. A soft light shone above the half-door of the little cow house and as I looked inside there was my son, crouched on a stool, bucket between his knees, head against a patient cow.

“Hello, Dad,” he said cheerfully. “Look here!” He displayed his bucket, which contained a few pints of milk. “I can do it now! Mr. Suggett’s been showing me. You don’t pull the teats at all. You just make your fingers go like this.”

Glorious relief flooded through me. I wanted to grab Jimmy and kiss him, kiss Mr. Suggert, kiss the cow, but I took a couple of deep breaths and restrained myself.

“It’s very good of you to have him, Tim. I hope he hasn’t been any bother.”

The old man chuckled. “Nay, lad, nay. We’ve had a bit o’ fun, and t’young man’s cottoned on right sharp. I’ve been tellin’ him if he’s goin’ to be a vitnery he’ll have to know how to get the milk out of a cow.”

It is one of my vivid memories, that night when Jimmy learned how to get the milk out of a cow, so that he could diagnose mastitis and put one over on his old man.

To this day I often wonder if I did the right thing in talking Rosie out of her ambition. Maybe I was wrong, but back in the forties and fifties life in veterinary practice was so different from now. Our practice was 90 per cent large animal and though I loved the work I was always being kicked, knocked about and splashed with various kinds of filth. With all its charms and rewards it was a dirty, dangerous job. Several times I was called to help out in neighbouring practices when the vet had sustained a broken limb, and I had myself been lame for weeks after a huge cart-horse whacked my thigh with his iron-shod hoof.

Quite often I didn’t smell so good because no amount of bathing in antiseptics could wholly banish the redolence of delivering decomposing calves and the removal of afterbirths. I was used to people wrinkling their noses when I came too near.

Sometimes after prolonged calvings and foalings, often lasting for hours, every muscle in my body ached for days as though I had been beaten by a heavy stick.

It is all so different now. We have long plastic gloves to protect us when we are doing the smelly jobs, there are the metal crushes to hold the big beasts instead of having to plunge among them as they were driven into a passage on the farm, and the Caesarean operation has eliminated the rough side of obstetrics. Also, the gentler small-animal work has expanded beyond all expectations till it now makes up more than half our work.

When I entered the veterinary college there was only one girl in our class—a tremendous novelty—but now young women make up at least 50 per cent of the students at the veterinary schools, and in fact excellent woman veterinary surgeons have worked in our practice.

I didn’t know all this forty years ago and though I could imagine tough little Jimmy living my life I couldn’t bear the thought of Rosie doing it. Unfairly at times, I used every wile I could to put her off veterinary work and to persuade her to become a doctor of humans instead of animals.

She is a happy doctor, too, but as I say, I still wonder….

Chapter 8

“NOT TO PUT TOO fine a point on it, Herriot, I think you are dishonest.”

“What!” I had been called a few things in my time, but never that and it hit me hard, especially coming from a tall, patrician veterinary surgeon, looking down his nose at me. “What the devil do you mean? How can you possibly say that?”

Hugo Mottram’s imperious blue eyes regarded me with distaste. “I say it only because I am forced to no other conclusion. I consider unethical behaviour to be a type of dishonesty and you have certainly been guilty of that. Also, your attempts to justify your actions seem to me to be sheer prevarication.”

This was really nice, I thought, particularly here in Brawton where I was trying to enjoy my precious half-day. I had been browsing happily in Smith’s bookshop, and spotted Mottram walking along by the shelves, and in fact had been regarding him with some envy, wishing that I looked a bit like him. He was the perfect picture of my idea of a country vet; check cap, immaculate hacking jacket, knee breeches, stockings and brogues together with a commanding presence and hawk-like, handsome features. He was in his fifties, but as he paced among the books, head high, chin jutting, he had the look of a fit young man.

I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “Mr. Mottram, what you have just said is insulting, and I think you should apologise. Surely you realise that neither my partner nor I have any designs on your clients—it was just an unfortunate combination of events. There was nothing else we could have done in the circumstances and if only you would just think about it…”

The tall man stuck out his chin even more. “I have thought about it and I mean what I say. I have no desire to waste any more time in discussing this matter, and my hope is that I shall have no further contact with you in the future.”

He turned quickly and strode from the shop, leaving me fuming. I stood there, staring at my boots. Helen would be joining me any minute now—she had been having her hair done—and then our happy programme would start: shopping, tea, then the cinema and a late meal with a lot of good conversation, all with my pal, Gordon Rae, the vet from Boroughbridge, and his wife, Jean. It was a simple sequence, but a blessed escape from the hard work and we looked forward to it all week. And now it was in ruins, shattered.

This thing with Mottram had started a few weeks previously. I was examining a spaniel with a skin eruption in our surgery when the lady owner suddenly said, “Mr. Mottram of Scanton has been treating this dog for some time. Says it’s eczema, but it’s not improving and I think it must be something else. I want a second opinion.”

I looked at the lady. “I wish you’d mentioned that at the beginning. Really, I should have asked Mr. Mottram’s permission before I looked at your dog.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Well, yes, that’s how it is, and I’m afraid I’ll have to speak to him before I do any more.”

I excused myself and went through to the telephone in the office.

“Mottram here.” The voice was as I remembered. Deep, assured, cool. As a neighbouring veterinary surgeon I had met him a few times and found I couldn’t get very near him. His aristocratic haughtiness was, to me, decidedly off-putting. But I had to try to be friendly.

“Oh, hello, this is Herriot, Darrowby. How are you?”

“I am quite well, Herriot. I trust you are the same.” Damn, he still sounded patronising.

“Well now, I have one of your clients, a Mrs. Hickson, here with her dog—I see it has a skin condition. She’s asking for a second opinion.”