Джеймс Хэрриот - The Lord God Made Them All

My hand was still shaking as I raised the glass, and I had barely taken the first sip when the little animal got up from the basket and walked over to inspect her pups. Some eclampsias were slow to respond but others were spectacularly quick, and I was grateful for the sake of my nervous system that this was one of the quick ones.

In fact the recovery was almost uncanny because, after sniffing her family over, Myrtle walked across the table to greet me. Her eyes brimmed with friendliness and her tail waved high in the true beagle fashion.

I was stroking her ears when Humphrey broke into a throaty giggle. “You know, Jim, I’ve learned summat tonight.” His voice was a slow drawl but he was still in possession of his wits.

“What’s that, Humphrey?”

“I’ve learned … hee-hee-hee … I’ve learned what a silly feller I’ve been all these months.”

“How do you mean?”

He raised a forefinger and wagged it sagely. “Well, you’ve allus been tellin’ me that I got you out of your bed for nothin’ and I was imaginin’ things when I thought me dog was ill.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”

“And I never believed you, did I? I wouldn’t be told. Well, now I know you were right all the time. I’ve been nobbut a fool, and I’m right sorry for botherin’ you all those nights.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that, Humphrey.”

“Aye, but it’s not right.” He waved a hand towards his bright-faced, tail-wagging little dog. “Just look at her. Anybody can see there was never anythin’ wrong with Myrtle tonight.”

Chapter

3

THE HIGH MOORLAND ROAD was unfenced, and my car wheels ran easily from the strip of tarmac onto the turf, cropped to a velvet closeness by the sheep. I stopped the engine, got out and looked around me.

The road cut cleanly through the grass and heather before dipping into the valley beyond. This was one of the good places where I could see into two dales, the one I had left and the one in front. The whole land was spread beneath me; the soft fields in the valley floors, the grazing cattle, the rivers pebbled at their edges in places, thickly fringed with trees at others.

The brilliant green of the walled pastures pushed up the sides of the fells until the heather and the harsh moor grass began, and only the endless pattern of walls was left, climbing to the mottled summits, disappearing over the bare ridges that marked the beginning of the wild country.

I leaned back against the car and the wind blew the cold sweet air around me. I had been back in civilian life only a few weeks, and during my time in R.A.F. blue I had thought constantly of Yorkshire, but I had forgotten how beautiful it was. Just thinking from afar could not evoke the peace, the solitude, the sense of the nearness of the wild that makes the Dales thrilling and comforting at the same time. Among the crowds of men and the drabness and stale air of the towns, my imagination could not sufficiently conjure up a place where I could be quite alone on the wide green roof of England where every breath was filled with the grass scent.

I had had a disturbing morning. Everywhere I had gone I was reminded that I had come back to a world of change, and I did not like change. One old farmer saying, “It’s all t’needle now, Mr. Herriot,” as I injected his cow had made me look down almost with surprise at the syringe in my hand, realising suddenly that this was what I was doing most of the time now.

I knew what he meant. Only a few years ago I would more likely have “drenched” his cow. Grabbed it by the nose and poured a pint of medicine down its throat.

We still carried a special drenching bottle around with us—an empty wine bottle because it had no shoulders and allowed the liquid to run more easily. Often we would mix the medicine with black treacle from the barrel that stood in the corner of most cow byres.

All this was disappearing, and the farmer’s remark about “all t’needle” brought it home to me once more that things were never going to be the same again.

A revolution had begun in agriculture and in veterinary practice. Farming had become more scientific, and concepts cherished for generations were being abandoned, while in the veterinary world the first rivulets of the flood of new advances were being felt.

Previously undreamed-of surgical procedures were being carried out, the sulpha drugs were going full blast and, most exciting of all, the war, with its urgent need for better treatment of wounds, had given a tremendous impetus to the development of Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. This, the first of the antibiotics, was not yet in the hands of the profession except in the form of intramammary tubes for the treatment of mastitis, but it was the advance guard of the therapeutic army that was to sweep our old treatments into oblivion.

There were signs, too, that the small farmer was on the way out. These men, some with only six cows, a few pigs and poultry, still made up most of our practice and they were the truly rich characters, but they were beginning to wonder if they could make a living on this scale, and one or two had sold out to the bigger men. In our practice now, in the eighties, there are virtually no small farmers left. I can think of only a handful — old men doggedly doing the things they have always done for the sole reason that they have always done it. They are the last remnants of the men I cherished, living by the ancient values, speaking the old Yorkshire dialect that television and radio have swamped.

I took a last long breath and got into my car. The uncomfortable feeling of change was still with me but I looked through the window at the great fells thrusting their bald summits into the clouds, tier upon tier of them, timeless, indestructible, towering over the glories beneath, and I felt better immediately. The Dales had not changed at all.

I did one more call, then drove back to Skeldale House to see if there were any more visits before lunch.

All was new here, too. My partner, Siegfried, had married and was living a few miles outside Darrowby, and Helen and I with our little son, Jimmy, were installed in the practice headquarters. When I got out of the car I gazed up at the ivy climbing over the mellow brick to the little rooms that looked out from under the tiles to the hills. Helen and I had started our married life in those rooms but now we had the run of the whole house. It was too big for us, of course, but we were happy to be there because we both loved the old place, with its spaciousness and its Georgian elegance.

The house looked much the same as when I had first seen it those years ago. The only difference was that they had taken the iron railings away for scrap metal during the war, and our plates were now hanging on the wall.

Helen and I slept in the big room which I had occupied in my bachelor days, and Jimmy was in the dressing room where Siegfried’s student brother, Tristan, used to rest his head. Tristan, alas, had left us. When the war ended, he was Captain Farnon of the Royal Army veterinary corps. He married and joined the Ministry of Agriculture as an infertility investigation officer. He left a sad gap in our lives, but fortunately we still saw him and his wife regularly.

I opened the front door and in the passage, the fragrance of pulv aromat was strong. It was the aromatic powder we mixed with our medicaments, and it had an excitement for me. It always seemed to be hanging about the house. It was the smell of our trade.

Halfway along the passage I passed the doorway to the long high-walled garden and turned into the dispensary. This was a room whose significance was already on the wane. The rows of beautifully shaped glass bottles with their Latin titles engraved on them looked down at me— spiritus Aetheris Nitrosi, Liquor Ammonii Acetatis Fortis, Potassii Nitras, Sodii Salicylas. Noble names. My head was stuffed with hundreds of them, their properties, actions and uses, and their dosage in horse, ox, sheep, pig, dog and cat. But soon I would have to forget them all and concern myself only with how much of the latest antibiotic or steroid to administer.