Джеймс Хэрриот - Every Living Thing

“There’s one on your collar,” she muttered, then, “Ooo, it’s jumped!”

It had indeed jumped, right onto the middle of the white table-cloth. As I watched helplessly another one hopped out, then another.

The farmer and his wife, who were clearly on the point of starting a friendly conversation, stared in amazement at the leaping objects. There was a terrible silence, then the man spoke again.

“?h, there’s a table by the window, Eva,” he said, rising to his feet. “That’s where we usually sit. You’ll excuse us, won’t you.”

After they had gone we raced through our meal. I don’t know how many more of the flitting creatures appeared on the table. I was too stunned to count, and looking back now I have only the terrifying memory of the first few. We abandoned all idea of our dessert and instead of a happy discussion of the relative merits of ginger pudding and apple pie we called for our bill and fled.

We couldn’t wait to see Jean and Gordon. The bathroom at home was our only goal and as I drove at top speed, images of the little terrors on that table-cloth rose again and again in my mind. How could it possibly have happened? How had that second wave of fleas escaped all my precautions? To this day I have no answer, I only know it was so.

Back home it was the same thing again. The total submersion in the bath. Helen’s fingertip bearing away my contaminated clothing and a complete change.

It was fortunate that I had reserved my “good suit” for the concert because my limited wardrobe was running low. When I finally stood freshly arrayed and ready to go, I turned despairingly to my wife. “Surely I’ll be all right this time.”

“Oh, you must be. There can’t possibly be any of those things left now.”

I shifted gloomily under my fresh shirt. “That’s what we thought before.”

We had to pick up the Miss Whitlings, Harriet and Felicity, and we found them, as usual, bursting with vitality and good humour. They were in their late forties, large, busty ladies, and though some people might have called them fat I had always considered them extremely comely and had been mystified that neither of them was married.

The journey back to Brawton passed quickly aided by the non-stop conversation and, for me, the blissful knowledge that at last nothing was eating me alive. In the concert hall our two friends stationed themselves on either side of me, which I took as a compliment. In fact, I was tightly squeezed between them because they both overflowed their seats to some extent.

As I drank in the familiar sounds of the concert hall, the orchestra tuning, the expectant buzz of conversation with my two attractive neighbours chattering on either side, it came to me that after my traumatic day, things had taken an upturn. Life was pretty good.

I joined in the wave of applause that greeted the slight figure of Barbirolli as he almost tiptoed across the platform. The people of Yorkshire loved him as much as anybody and the clapping went on and on. As he finally mounted the rostrum and raised his baton in the sudden hush, I settled back in happy anticipation.

It was just as the first majestic bars of Coriolanus sounded that I felt the prickle on my right shoulder-blade. Oh, my God, no, it couldn’t be. But the growing irritation was only too familiar. I tried to ignore it but after a minute I had to lean hard against the back of my seat to try to relieve the itch, and then as it spread across my back I had to execute the slightest of wriggles to transfer my weight the other way.

I realised then, to my horror, that in my squashed-in situation even the slightest movement was transmitted instantly to one or other of my neighbours. As the maddening tickle mounted, I wanted to scratch, throw myself about, fight the thing in every way, but that was unthinkable. I had to accept the frightening reality that for the next several hours I would have to sit still.

This involved a supreme effort of will on my part but I would have had to be some sort of yogi to succeed. I did my best to concentrate on the music, but was forced to settle for short periods of inaction then a careful shifting of position, sometimes to brace my back against the seat or move my clothes against my skin by side-to-side shufflings.

I was convinced that there was only one flea at work now. After my experiences I had become an authority on the species and I was positive that I could track his progress over my person. As Beethoven thundered around me I had the feverish idea that I might trap him in the act and squash him, and whenever I felt a fresh bite I tried to exert a fierce pressure against the hard wood and move slowly from side to side.

These manoeuvres inevitably involved encroachment on my partners’ territory. I had expected during the evening to get to know the nice sisters better, to find out more about their personalities, but in fact I learned much more about their anatomies than anything else. Rounded arms, well-fleshed ribs, yielding hips—all were contacted and repeatedly explored in my helpless squirmings, but like the well-bred ladies that they were neither of them showed any outward reactions to my incursions beyond an occasional clearing of the throat or sharp intake of breath. However, when I found my right knee deeply buried in the softness of Harriet’s thigh, there was a definite withdrawal of the limb, and when my left elbow inadvertently but relentlessly nudged aside a weighty bosom, I saw Felicity’s eyebrows climb up her forehead.

I would rather say no more about that unhappy evening except that the pattern did not change. The divine Elgar Violin Concerto that, more than any other musical work, has the power to transport me to a perfect world, was only a background noise to my private battle. It was the same with the beloved Brahms’s First Symphony. All I wanted was to get home.

At the interval and as we bade them goodnight at the end, there were a lot of fixed smiles and darting glances from the Miss Whitlings, and the old saying about wanting the ground to swallow me was never so true.

And when it was all over and Helen and I were sitting on the edge of our bed going over the night’s events I still felt terrible.

“My God, what a night!” I groaned, and as I dredged through my embarrassments with the sisters yet again, Helen managed to keep a straight face, but I could see that it was costing her dearly. Twitchings of the mouth, fierce frowns and an occasional sinking of her face in her hands betrayed her inner struggle.

At the end of my recital of woe I threw out my hands in despair. “And, do you know, Helen, I am convinced that all that agony I went through tonight was caused by a single flea. Think of that! Just one flea!”

My wife suddenly dropped her chin on her chest, thrust out her lips and made a creditable attempt to sink her voice down a few octaves to basso-profundo pitch.

“A flea!” she intoned in true Chaliapin fashion. “Ha-ha-ha-haaa, a flea!”

“Ah, yes, very funny,” I replied. “But Mussorgsky would never have put all the laughter in that song if he had suffered like me.”

Two days later Mr. Colwell telephoned. “Roopy’s grand!” he cried in delight. “Runnin’ round, good as new, but ’e has a bit of broken nail sort of hangin’ from his paw, and it’s catchin’ on things. I wish you’d come and cut it off.”

I didn’t answer for a few seconds, “You…you couldn’t take it off yourself…just a little snip with scissors?”

“Nay, nay, I’m no good at that sort of thing. I’d be right grateful if you’d drop in if you’re out this way.”

“Right…right, Mr. Colwell. I’ll see you later this morning.”

“Helen,” I cried as I left the house. “There’s another call—the Colwells.”