Джеймс Хэрриот - The Lord God Made Them All

Lionel nodded in quiet satisfaction. He was a vague man, but kind, and all his animals were comfortable and well fed in their eccentric dwelling. Deep straw abounded, and the hayracks and troughs were well supplied.

I felt in my pockets. They were bulging with bottles and syringes. I had brought everything I might possibly need. On this establishment, it wasn’t easy to slip back to the car as an afterthought.

After the injection I turned to the roadman. “I’ll look in tomorrow morning. It’s Sunday, so you won’t be working, eh?”

“That’s right. Thank ye, Mr. Herriot.” He turned and began to lead me back through the obstacle course.

On the following day I found the calf greatly improved. “Temperature normal, Lionel,” I said. “And he’s on his feet now. That’s a good sign.”

The roadman nodded abstractedly, and I could see that his mind was elsewhere. “Aye, well, that’s grand … ah’m right pleased.” His eyes looked past me vacantly for a few moments, then he suddenly seemed to come back to the world.

“Mr. Herriot!” His voice took on an unaccustomed urgency. “There’s summat I want to ask ye.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Aye, I’ll tell you what it is.” He looked at me eagerly. “Ah fancy goin’ in for pigs in a big way.”

“You mean … keep a lot of pigs?”

“That’s right. Just pigs and nowt else, and keep ’em in a proper place.”

“But that would mean building a piggery.”

He thumped a fist into his palm. “You’ve just said it. That’s what I fancy. I’ve allus liked pigs, and I’d like to do the job proper. Ah could build the piggery out there in t’field.”

I looked at him in surprise. “But Lionel, these things cost a lot. There’s the question of. . .”

“Money? Oh, ah’ve got t’money. Remember, me awd uncle died a bit back? Lived with us for years. Well, ‘e left me a little legacy. Not a fortune, tha knows, but I could branch out a bit now.”

“Well, it’s up to you, of course,” I said. “But are you sure it’s what you really want? You’ve always seemed to be happy with your bit of stock here, and you’re not a youngster—you’ll be fifty-odd, won’t you?”

“Aye, I’m fifty-six, but they say you’re never too old to have a go at something new.”

I smiled. “Oh, I’m a strong believer in that. I’m all for it— providing you’re happy doing it.”

He looked very thoughtful and scratched his cheek a few times. I suppose, like most happy men, he didn’t realise the fact. “Get bye, duck!” he grunted with a flash of irritation and nudged the Muscovy with his toe as it tried to march between his legs. Still deep in thought, he bent and lifted a hen’s egg from the straw in the corner and put it in his pocket.

“Nay, ah’ve thought it over for a bit now, and me mind’s made up. I’ve got to have a go.”

“Okay, Lionel,” I said. “Have at it, and the best of luck.”

With a speed unusual in the Dales, the piggery took shape in the field. Rows of concrete pens with a covered yard appeared, and within a few weeks, sows and a boar were installed in the pens and a solid bunch of porkers grunted among the straw in the yard.

To me, this modern structure looked out of place, with the ancient dry-stone walls encircling its green setting and the smooth bulk of the fell rising to the stark moorland above, but I hoped it would bring Lionel the satisfaction he craved.

He still carried on with his road work. He had to get up earlier in the morning to feed and clean out his pigs, but he was a fit man and seemed to be enjoying it.

His vet bills went up, of course, but there was nothing serious, and everything I treated went on well—an occasional sow with mastitis, a farrowing, a few piglets with joint ill. He accepted these things without complaint because the old adage, “Where there’s stock there’s trouble,” was as familiar to him as to anybody else.

The only thing that bothered me a little was that, whereas, before, he spent a lot of time just leaning on his various partitions looking at his animals and smoking his pipe, he now had no time for that, He was always bustling about, pushing wheelbarrows, filling up troughs, mucking out, and it seemed to me that all this was foreign to his nature.

He certainly wasn’t as relaxed as he had been. He was happy enough, caring for his fine new charges, but there was a tautness in his expression, a slight anxiety that had not been there before.

There was anxiety in his voice, too, when he rang up one evening. “Just got back from work, Mr. Herriot, and there’s some young pigs here I don’t like t’look of.”

“What symptoms are they showing, Lionel?”

“Well, they haven’t been doin’ right for a bit. Not thrivin’ like the others. But they’ve been eatin’ and not really off it, like, so I haven’t bothered you.”

“But how about now?”

There was a pause. “They look different now. They’re kind o’ crambly on their back legs, and they’re scourin’ a bit … and there’s one dead. Ah’m a bit worried.”

I was worried, too. Instantly and profoundly. It sounded horribly like swine fever. In my early days those two words were burned into my soul, and yet, to the modern young vet, they don’t mean a thing.

For around twenty years I was literally haunted by swine fever. Whenever I did a postmortem on a dead pig, I feared I might come across the dreaded button ulcers and haemorrhages. And what I feared still more was that I might fail to spot the disease and be responsible for its spread.

It wasn’t as bad as foot-and-mouth in that respect, but the same principles held good. If I didn’t recognise the symptoms, pigs might go from that farm to a market and be sold to places scattered over many miles. And every pig would carry its own load of infection and would spread the incurable disease among its healthy neighbours. Then the Ministry of Agriculture would be called in, and they would painstakingly trace the thing right back to Herriot, the man who had made the original unforgivable blunder.

It was a recurring nightmare, because, unlike foot-and-mouth, the disease was a common one, waiting round the corner all the time. I often used to think I would be blissfully happy if only there were no such thing as swine fever. In fact, when I look back at all the worry it caused me and my contemporaries, I feel that the present-day veterinarians should leap happily from their beds each morning and dance around the room crying out, “Hurrah, hurrah, there’s no swine fever now!”

At the farm, Lionel led me to a pen at the far end of the yard.

“They’re in there,” he said gloomily.

I leaned over the wall, and a wave of misery flowed through me. There were about a dozen young pigs in the pen—around sixteen weeks old—and they were nearly all showing the same symptoms.

They were thin and had a scruffy, unthrifty look, the backs of their ears were a dark purple-red, they staggered slightly as they walked and a thin diarrhea ran down the limp-hanging tails. I took a few temperatures. They were around 106.

It was classical—straight out of the book—but I didn’t tell Lionel right away. In fact, I wasn’t allowed to until I had gone through all the ritual.

“Where did you get this lot?” I asked.

“Haverton market. They were a right-good level bunch when they came, but by gaw they’ve gone down.” He pushed at a little corpse with his Wellington. “And now ah’ve got this dead ’un.”

“Yes … well, I’ll have to open him up and look inside him, Lionel.” My voice sounded weary. I was starting again on the agonising merry-go-round. “I’ll get my knife from the car.”

I came back with the postmortem knife, rolled the dead pig on its back and slit open the abdomen. How often had I done this with just the same feeling of taut apprehension?