Джеймс Хэрриот - All Things Wise and Wonderful

As I walked down the byre I looked again at the beautiful cows and then beyond, at the fold yard where I could see the young heifers and the tiny calves in their pens. All of them carrying the Bailey blood which had been produced and perfected by generations of careful breeding and selection. But a humane killer is no respecter of such things and if my fears were realised a quick series of bang-bangs would wipe out all this in an hour or two.

We went into the farm kitchen and Mrs. Bailey pointed to the door at the far end.

The ’phone’s through there in the front room,” she said.

I kicked off my Wellingtons and was padding across the floor in my stockinged feet when I almost fell over Giles, the lusty one year old baby of the family, as he waddled across my path. I bent to ease him out of the way and he looked up at me with an enormous cheesy grin.

His mother laughed. “Just look at him. Full of the devil, and he’s had such a painful arm since his smallpox vaccination.”

“Poor lad,” I said absently, patting his head as I opened the door, my mind already busy with the uncomfortable conversation ahead. I had taken a few strides over the carpet beyond, when I halted abruptly.

I turned and looked back into the kitchen. “Did you say smallpox vaccination?”

“Yes, all our other children have been done when they were this age but they’ve never reacted like this. I’ve had to change his dressing every day.”

“You changed his dressing … and you milked that cow?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

A great light beamed suddenly, spilling sunshine into my dark troubled world. I returned to the kitchen and closed the door behind me.

Mrs. Bailey looked at me for a moment in silence, then she spoke hesitantly. “Aren’t you going to use the phone?”

“No … no …” I replied. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“I see.” She raised her eyebrows and seemed at a loss for words. Then she smiled and lifted the kettle. “Well maybe you’ll have a cup of tea, then?”

“Thank you, that would be lovely.” I sank happily on to one of the hard wooden chairs.

Mrs. Bailey put the kettle on and turned to me. “By the way, you’ve never told me what’s wrong with that cow.”

“Oh yes, of course, I’m sorry,” I said airily as though I’d just forgotten to mention it “She’s got cow pox. In fact you gave it to her.”

“I gave it …? What do you mean?”

“Well, the vaccine they use for babies is made from the cow pox virus. You carried it on your hands from the baby to the cow.” I smiled, enjoying my big moment.

Her mouth fell open slightly, then she began to giggle. “Oh dear, I don’t know what my husband’s going to say. I’ve never heard of anything like that.” She wiggled her fingers in front of her eyes. “And I’m always so careful, too. But I’ve been a bit harassed with the poor little chap’s arm.”

“Oh well, it isn’t serious,” I said. “I’ve got some ointment in the car which will cure it quite quickly.”

I sipped my tea and watched Giles’s activities. In a short time he had spread chaos throughout the kitchen and at the moment was busily engaged in removing all the contents of a cupboard in the corner. Bent double, small bottom outthrust, he hurled pans, lids, brushes behind him with intense dedication till the cupboard was empty. Then, as he looked around for further employment, he spotted me and tacked towards me on straddled legs.

My stocking-clad toes seemed to fascinate him and as I wiggled them at him he grasped at them with fat little hands. When he had finally trapped my big toe he looked up at me with his huge grin in which four tiny teeth glittered.

I smiled back at him with sincere affection as the relief flowed through me. It wasn’t just that I was grateful to him—I really liked him. I still like Giles today. He is one of my clients, a burly farmer with a family of his own, a deep love and knowledge of pedigree cows and the same big grin, except that there are a few more teeth in it.

But he’ll never know how near his smallpox vaccination came to giving me heart failure.

CHAPTER 46

THEY HAD SENT ME to Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppy and I knew it was the last stop.

As I looked along the disorderly line of men I realised I wouldn’t be taking part in many more parades. And it came to me with a pang that at the Scarborough ITW this would not have been classed as a parade at all. I could remember the ranks of blue outside the Grand Hotel, straight as the Grenadier Guards and every man standing stiffly, looking neither to left nor right. Our boots gleaming, buttons shining like gold and not a movement anywhere as the flight sergeant led the officer round on morning inspection.

I had moaned as loudly as anybody at the rigid discipline, the “bull,” the scrubbing and polishing, marching and drilling, but now that it had all gone it seemed good and meaningful and I missed it.

Here the files of airmen lounged, chatted among themselves and occasionally took a surreptitious drag at a cigarette as a sergeant out in front called the names from a list and gave us our leisurely instructions for the day.

This particular morning he was taking a long time over it consulting sheaves of papers and making laboured notes with a pencil. A big Irishman on my right was becoming increasingly restive and finally he shouted testily:

“For—sake, sergeant get us off this—square. Me—feet’s killin’ me!”

The sergeant didn’t even look up. “Shut your mouth, Brady,” he replied. “You’ll get off the square when I say so and not before.”

It was like that at Eastchurch, the great filter tank of the RAF where what I had heard described as the “odds and sods” were finally sorted out. It was a big sprawling camp filled with a widely varied mixture of airmen who had one thing in common; they were all waiting—some of them for remuster, but most for discharge from the service.

There was a resigned air about the whole place, an acceptance of the fact that we were all just putting in time. There was a token discipline but it was of the most benign kind. And as I said, every man there was just waiting … waiting …

Little Ned Finch in his remote corner of the high Yorkshire Dales always seemed to me to be waiting, too. I could remember his boss yelling at him.

“For God’s sake, shape up to t’job! You’re not framin’ at all!” Mr. Daggett grabbed hold of a leaping calf and glared in exasperation.

Ned gazed back at him impassively. His face registered no particular emotion, but in the pale blue eyes I read the expression that was always there—as though he was waiting for something to happen, but without much hope. He made a tentative attempt to catch a calf but was brushed aside, then he put his arms round the neck of another one, a chunky little animal of three months, and was borne along a few yards before being deposited on his back in the straw.

“Oh, dang it, do this one, Mr. Herriot!” Mr. Daggett barked, turning the hairy neck towards me. “It looks as though I’ll have to catch ’em all myself.”

I injected the animal. I was inoculating a batch of twenty with preventive pneumonia vaccine and Ned was suffering. With his diminutive stature and skinny, small-boned limbs he had always seemed to me to be in the wrong job; but he had been a farm worker all his life and he was over sixty now, grizzled, balding and slightly bent, but still battling on.

Mr. Daggett reached out and as one of the shaggy creatures sped past he scooped the head into one of his great hands and seized the ear with the other. The little animal seemed to realise it was useless to struggle and stood unresisting as I inserted the needle. At the other end Ned put his knee against the calf’s rear and listlessly pushed it against the wall. He wasn’t doing much good and his boss gave him a withering glance.