Джеймс Хэрриот - All Things Wise and Wonderful

Mrs. Rumney looked at me in silence for a few moments and I saw in her face the dawning of relief and hope.

“You know, Mr. Harriot, I think that could work very well. But are you sure Con would take him?”

“I’d like to bet on it. An old bachelor like him must be lonely. There’s only one thing worries me. Normally they only meet outside and I wonder how it would be when they were indoors and Cedric started to … when the old trouble …”

“Oh, I think that would be all right,” Mrs. Rumney broke in quickly. “When I go on holiday Con always takes him for a week or two and he has never mentioned any … anything unusual … in that way.”

I got up to go. “Well, that’s fine. I should put it to the old man right away.”

Mrs. Rumney rang within a few days. Con had jumped at the chance of taking on Cedric and the pair had apparently settled in happily together. She had also taken my advice and acquired a poodle puppy.

I didn’t see the new dog till it was nearly six months old and its mistress asked me to call to treat it for a slight attack of eczema. As I sat in the graceful room looking at Mrs. Rumney, cool, poised, tranquil, with the little white creature resting on her knee I couldn’t help feeling how right and fitting the whole scene was. The lush carpet, the trailing velvet curtains, the fragile tables with their load of expensive china and framed miniatures. It was no place for Cedric.

Con Fenton’s cottage was less than half a mile away and on my way back to the surgery, on an impulse I pulled up at the door. The old man answered my knock and his big face split into a delighted grin when he saw me.

“Come in, young man!” he cried in his strange snuffly voice. “I’m right glad to see tha!”

I had hardly stepped into the tiny living room when a hairy form hurled itself upon me. Cedric hadn’t changed a bit and I had to battle my way to the broken armchair by the fireside. Con settled down opposite and when the Boxer leaped to lick his face he clumped him companionably on the head with his fist.

“Siddown, ye great daft bugger,” he murmured with affection. Cedric sank happily on to the tattered hearthrug at his feet and gazed up adoringly at his new master.

“Well, Mr. Herriot,” Con went on as he cut up some villainous-looking plug tobacco and began to stuff it into his pipe. “I’m right grateful to ye for gettin” me this grand dog. By gaw, he’s a topper and ah wouldn’t sell ’im for any money. No man could ask for a better friend.’’

“Well, that’s great, Con,” I said. “And I can see that the big chap is really happy here.”

The old man ignited his pipe and a cloud of acrid smoke rose to the low, blackened beams. “Aye, he’s ’ardly ever inside. A gurt strong dog like ’im wants to work ’is energy off, like.”

But just at that moment Cedric was obviously working something else off because the familiar pungency rose from him even above the billowings from the pipe. Con seemed oblivious of it but in the enclosed space I found it overpowering.

“Ah well,” I gasped. “I just looked in for a moment to see how you were getting on together. I must be on my way.” I rose hurriedly and stumbled towards the door but the redolence followed me in a wave. As I passed the table with the remains of the old man’s meal I saw what seemed to be the only form of ornament in the cottage, a cracked vase holding a magnificent bouquet of carnations. It was a way of escape and I buried my nose in their fragrance.

Con watched me approvingly. “Aye, they’re lovely flowers, aren’t they? T’missus at Laurels lets me bring ’ome what I want and I reckon them carnations is me favourite.”

“Yes, they’re a credit to you.” I still kept my nose among the blooms.

“There’s only one thing,” the old man said pensively. “Ah don’t get t’full benefit of ’em.”

“How’s that, Con?”

He pulled at his pipe a couple of times. “Well, you can hear ah speak a bit funny, like?”

“No … no … not really.”

“Oh aye, ye know ah do. I’ve been like it since I were a lad. I ’ad a operation for adenoids and summat went wrong.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Well, it’s nowt serious, but it’s left me lackin’ in one way.”

“You mean …?” A light was beginning to dawn in my mind, an elucidation of how man and dog had found each other, of why their relationship was so perfect, of the certainty of their happy future together. It seemed like fate.

“Aye,” the old man went on sadly. “I ’ave no sense of smell.”

CHAPTER 5

I THINK IT WAS when I saw the London policeman wagging a finger at a scowling urchin that I thought of Wesley Binks and the time he put the firework through the surgery letter box.

It was what they used to call a “banger” and it exploded at my feet as I hurried along the dark passage in answer to the door bell’s ring, making me leap into the air in terror.

I threw open the front door and looked into the street. It was empty, but at the corner where the lamplight was reflected in Robson’s shop window I had a brief impression of a fleeing form and a faint echo of laughter. I couldn’t do anything about it but I knew Wes was out there somewhere.

Wearily I trailed back into the house. Why did this lad persecute me? What could a ten-year-old boy possibly have against me? I had never done him any harm, yet I seemed to be the object of a deliberate campaign.

Or maybe it wasn’t personal. It could be that he felt I represented authority or the establishment in some way, or perhaps I was just convenient.

I was certainly the ideal subject for his little tricks of ringing the door bell and running away, because I dared not ignore the summons in case it might be a client, and also the consulting and operating rooms were such a long way from the front of the house. Sometimes I was dragged down from our bed-sitter under the tiles. Every trip to the door was an expedition and it was acutely exasperating to arrive there and see only a little figure in the distance dancing about and grimacing at me.

He varied this routine by pushing rubbish through the letter box, pulling the flowers from the tiny strip of garden we tried to cultivate between the flagstones and chalking rude messages on my car.

I knew I wasn’t the only victim because I had heard complaints from others; the fruiterer who saw his apples disappear from the box in front of the shop, the grocer who unwillingly supplied him with free biscuits.

He was the town naughty boy all right, and it was incongruous that he should have been named Wesley. There was not the slightest sign in his behaviour of any strict methodist upbringing. In fact I knew nothing of his family life—only that he came from the poorest part of the town, a row of “yards” containing tumbledown cottages, some of them evacuated because of their condition.

I often saw him wandering about in the fields and lanes or fishing in quiet reaches of the river when he should have been in school. When he spotted me on these occasions he invariably called out some mocking remark and if he happened to be with some of his cronies they all joined in the laughter at my expense. It was annoying but I used to tell myself that there was nothing personal in it. I was an adult and that was enough to make me a target.

Wes’s greatest triumph was undoubtedly the time he removed the grating from the coal cellar outside Skeldale House. It was on the left of the front steps and underneath it was a steep ramp down which the coalmen tipped their bags.

I don’t know whether it was inspired intuition but he pinched the grating on the day of the Darrowby Gala. The festivities started with a parade through the town led by the Houlton Silver Band and as I looked down from the windows of our bed-sitter I could see them all gathering in the street below.