Джеймс Хэрриот - All Things Wise and Wonderful

He didn’t look at me. All his attention was fixed desperately on his dog. Then he raised a hand and I heard his whisper.

“Awright.”

I hurried out to the car for the Nembutal.

“I promise you he’ll feel no pain,” I said as I filled the syringe. And indeed the little creature merely sighed before lying motionless, the fateful twitching stilled at last.

I put the syringe in my pocket. “Do you want me to take him away, Wes?”

He looked at me bewilderedly and his mother broke in.

“Aye, get ’im out. Ah never wanted t’bloody thing ’ere in t’first place.” She resumed her reading.

I quickly lifted the little body and went out. Wes followed me and watched as I opened the boot and laid Duke gently on top of my black working coat.

As I closed the lid he screwed his knuckles into his eyes and his body shook. I put my arm across his shoulders, and as he leaned against me for a moment and sobbed. I wondered if he had ever been able to cry like this—like a little boy with somebody to comfort him.

But soon he stood back and smeared the tears across the dirt on his cheeks.

“Are you going back into the house, Wes?” I asked.

He blinked and looked at me with a return of his tough expression.

“Naw!” he said and turned and walked away. He didn’t look back and I watched him cross the road, climb a wall and trail away across the fields towards the river.

And it has always seemed to me that at that moment Wes walked back into his old life. From then on there were no more odd jobs or useful activities. He never played any more tricks on me but in other ways he progressed into more serious misdemeanours. He set barns on fire, was up before the magistrates for theft and by the time he was thirteen he was stealing cars.

Finally he was sent to an approved school and then he disappeared from the district. Nobody knew where he went and most people forgot him. One person who didn’t was the police sergeant.

“That young Wesley Binks,” he said to me ruminatively. “He was a wrong ’un if ever I saw one. You know, I don’t think he ever cared a damn for anybody or any living thing in his life.”

“I know how you feel, sergeant,” I replied, “but you’re not entirely right. There was one living thing …”

CHAPTER6

TRISTAN WOULD NEVER HAVE won any prizes as an exponent of the haute cuisine.

We got better food in the RAF than most people in wartime Britain but it didn’t compare with the Darrowby fare. I suppose I had been spoiled; first by Mrs. Hall, then by Helen. There were only brief occasions at Skeldale House when we did not eat like kings and one of those was when Tristan was installed as temporary cook.

It began one morning at breakfast in the days when I was still a bachelor and Tristan and I were taking our places at the mahogany dining table. Siegfried bustled in, muttered a greeting and began to pour his coffee. He was unusually distrait as he buttered a slice of toast and cut into one of the rashers on his plate, then after a minute’s thoughtful chewing he brought down his hand on the table with a suddenness that made me jump.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed.

“Got what?” I enquired.

Siegfried put down his knife and fork and wagged a ringer at me. “Silly, really, I’ve been sitting here puzzling about what to do and it’s suddenly clear.”

“Why, what’s the trouble?”

“It’s Mrs. Hall,” he said. “She’s just told me her sister has been taken ill and she has to go and look after her. She thinks she’ll be away for a week and I’ve been wondering who I could get to look after the house.”

“I see.”

“Then it struck me.” He sliced a corner from a fried egg. “Tristan can do it”

“Eh?” His brother looked up, startled, from his Daily Mirror. “Me?”

“Yes, you! You spend a lot of time on your arse. A bit of useful activity would be good for you.”

Tristan looked at him warily. “What do you mean—useful activity?”

“Well, keeping the place straight,” Siegfried said. “I wouldn’t expect perfection but you could tidy up each day, and of course prepare the meals.”

“Meals?”

“That’s right” Siegfried gave him a level stare. “You can cook, can’t you?”

“Well, er, yes … I can cook sausage and mash.”

Siegfried waved an expansive hand. “There you are, you see, no problem. Push over those fried tomatoes, will you, James?”

I passed the dish silently. I had only half heard the conversation because part of my mind was far away. Just before breakfast I had had a phone call from Ken Billings, one of our best farmers, and his words were still echoing in my head.

“Mr. Herriot, that calf you saw yesterday is dead. That’s the third ’un I’ve lost in a week and I’m flummoxed. I want ye out here this mornin’ to have another look round.”

I sipped my coffee absently. He wasn’t the only one who was flummoxed. Three fine calves had shown symptoms of acute gastric pain, I had treated them and they had died. That was bad enough but what made it worse was that I hadn’t the faintest idea what was wrong with them.

I wiped my lips and got up quickly. “Siegfried, I’d like to go to Billings’ first Then I’ve got the rest of the round you gave me.”

“Fine, James, by all means.” My boss gave me a sweet and encouraging smile, balanced a mushroom on a piece of fried bread and conveyed it to his mouth. He wasn’t a big eater but he did love his breakfast.

On the way to the farm my mind beat about helplessly. What more could I do than I had already done? In these obscure cases one was driven to the conclusion that the animal had eaten something harmful. At times I had spent hours roaming around pastures looking for poisonous plants but that was pointless with Billings’s calves because they had never been out; they were mere babies of a month old.

I had carried out post mortem examinations of the dead animals but had found only a non-specific gastroenteritis. I had sent kidneys to the laboratory for lead estimation with negative result; like their owner, I was flummoxed.

Mr. Billings was waiting for me in his yard.

“Good job I rang you!” he said breathlessly. “There’s another ’un startin’.”

I rushed with him into the buildings and found what I expected and dreaded; a small calf kicking at its stomach, getting up and down, occasionally rolling on its straw bed. Typical abdominal pain. But why?

I went over it as with the others. Temperature normal, lungs clear, only rumenal atony and extreme tenderness as I palpated the abdomen.

As I was putting the thermometer back in its case the calf suddenly toppled over and went into a frothing convulsion. Hastily I injected sedatives, calcium, magnesium, but with a feeling of doom. I had done it all before.

“What the hell is it?” the farmer asked, voicing my thoughts.

I shrugged. “It’s acute gastritis, Mr. Billings, but I wish I knew the cause. I could swear this calf has eaten some irritant or corrosive poison.”

“Well, dang it, they’ve nobbut had milk and a few nuts.” The farmer spread his hands. “There’s nothing they can get to hurt them.”

Again, wearily, I went through the old routine; ferreting around in the calf pen, trying to find some clue. An old paint tin, a burst packet of sheep dip. It was amazing, the things you came across in the clutter of a farm building.

But not at Mr. Billings’s place. He was meticulously tidy, particularly with his calves, and the window sills and shelves were free from rubbish. It was the same with the milk buckets, scoured to spotless cleanliness after every feed.

Mr. Billings had a thing about his calves. His two teenage sons were fanatically keen on farming and he encouraged them in all the agricultural skills; but he fed the calves himself.