Джеймс Хэрриот - All Things Wise and Wonderful

I managed a smile. “Oh never mind, Lord Hulton, they seem to be getting them down the hill now and I’m not in such a panic this morning, anyway.”

“Oh splendid, splendid!” He attempted to ignite a towering mound of dark flake which spluttered feebly then toppled over the edge of his pipe. “And come and see this! I’ve been rigging up a crush. We’ll drive them in here and we’ll really have ’em. Remember we had a spot of bother last time, what?”

I nodded. I did remember. Lord Hulton had only about thirty suckling cows but it had taken a three-hour rodeo to test them. I looked doubtfully at the rickety structure of planks and corrugated iron. It would be interesting to see how it coped with the moorland cattle.

I didn’t mean to rub it in, but again I glanced unthinkingly at my watch and the little man winced as though he had received a blow.

“Dammit!” he burst out “What are they doing over there? Tell you what, I’ll go and give them a hand!” Distractedly, he began to change hammer, pouch, pipe and matches from hand to hand, dropping them and picking them up, before finally deciding to put the hammer down and stuff the rest into his pockets. He went off at a steady trot and I thought as I had done so often that there couldn’t be many noblemen in England like him.

If I had been a marquis, I felt, I would still have been in bed or perhaps just parting the curtains and peering out to see what kind of day it was. But Lord Hulton worked all the time, just about as hard as any of his men. One morning I arrived to find him at the supremely mundane task of “plugging muck,” standing on a manure heap, hurling steaming forkfuls on to a cart. And he always dressed in rags. I suppose he must have had more orthodox items in his wardrobe but I never saw them. Even his tobacco was the great smoke of the ordinary farmer—Redbreast Flake.

My musings were interrupted by the thunder of hooves and wild cries; the Hulton herd was approaching. Within minutes the fold yard was filled with milling creatures, steam rising in rolling clouds from their bodies.

The marquis appeared round the corner of the building at a gallop.

“Right, Charlie!” he yelled. “Let the first one into the crush!”

Panting with anticipation he stood by the nailed boards as the men inside opened the yard gate. He didn’t have to wait long. A shaggy red monster catapulted from the interior, appeared briefly in the narrow passage then emerged at about fifty miles an hour from the other end with portions of his lordship’s creation dangling from its horns and neck. The rest of the herd pounded close behind.

“Stop them! Stop them!” screamed the little peer, but it was of no avail. A hairy torrent flooded through the opening and in no time at all the herd was legging it back to the high land in a wild stampede. The men followed them and within a few moments Lord Hulton and I were standing there just as before watching the tiny figures on the skyline, listening to the distant “Haow, haow!” “Gerraway by!”

“I say,” he murmured despondently. “It didn’t work terribly well, did it?”

But he was made of stern stuff. Seizing his hammer he began to bang away with undiminished enthusiasm and by the time the beasts returned the crush was rebuilt and a stout iron bar pushed across the front to prevent further break-outs.

It seemed to solve the problem because the first cow, confronted by the bar, stood quietly and I was able to clip the hair on her neck through an opening between the planks. Lord Hulton, in high good humour, settled down on an upturned oil drum with my testing book on his knee.

“I’ll do the writing for you,” he cried. “Fire away, old chap!”

I poised my calipers. “Eight, eight.” He wrote it down and the next cow came in.

“Eight, eight,” I said, and he bowed his head again.

The third cow arrived: “Eight, eight.” And the fourth, “Eight, eight.”

His lordship looked up from the book and passed a weary hand across his forehead.

“Herriot, dear boy, can’t you vary it a bit? I’m beginning to lose interest.”

All went well until we saw the cow which had originally smashed the crush. She had sustained a slight scratch on her neck.

“I say, look at that!” cried the peer. “Will it be all right?”

“Oh yes, it’s nothing. Superficial.”

“Ah, good, but don’t you think we should have something to put on it? Some of that …”

I waited for it. Lord Hulton was a devotee of May and Baker’s Propamidine Cream and used it for all minor cuts and grazes in his cattle. He loved the stuff. But unfortunately he couldn’t say “Propamidine.” In fact nobody on the entire establishment could say it except Charlie the farm foreman and he only thought he could say it. He called it “Propopamide” but his lordship had the utmost faith in him.

“Charlie!” he bawled. “Are you there, Charlie?”

The foreman appeared from the pack in the yard and touched his cap, “Yes, m’lord.”

“Charlie, that wonderful stuff we get from Mr. Herriot—you know, for cut teats and things, Pro … Pero … what the hell do you call it again?”

Charlie paused. It was one of his big moments. “Propopamide, m’lord.”

The marquis, intensely gratified, slapped the knee of his dungarees. “That’s it, Propopamide! Damned if I can get my tongue round it. Well done, Charlie!”

Charlie inclined his head modestly.

The whole test was a vast improvement on last time and we were finished within an hour and a half. There was just one tragedy. About halfway through, one of the cows dropped down dead with an attack of hypomagnesaemia, a condition which often plagues sucklers. It was a sudden, painless collapse and I had no chance to do anything.

Lord Hulton looked down at the animal which had just stopped breathing. “Do you think we could salvage her for meat if we bled her?”

“Well, it’s typical hypomag. Nothing to harm anybody … you could try. It would depend on what the meat inspector says.”

The cow was bled, pulled into a van and the peer drove off to the abattoir. He came back just as we were finishing the test.

“How did you get on?” I asked him. “Did they accept her?”

He hesitated. “No … no, old chap,” he said sadly. “I’m afraid they didn’t.”

“Why? Did the meat inspector condemn the carcass?”

“Well … I never got as far as the meat inspector, actually just saw one of the slaughtermen.”

“And what did he say?”

“Just two words, Herriot.”

“Two words …?”

“Yes … ‘Bugger off!’ ”

I nodded. “I see.” It was easy to imagine the scene. The tough slaughterman viewing the small, unimpressive figure and deciding that he wasn’t going to be put out of his routine by some ragged farm man.

“Well, never mind, sir,” I said. “You can only try.”

“True … true, old chap.” He dropped a few matches as he fumbled disconsolately with his smoking equipment.

As I was getting into the car I remembered about the Propamidine. “Don’t forget to call down for that cream, will you?”

“By Jove, yes! I’ll come down for it after lunch. I have great faith in that Prom … Pram … Charlie! Damn and blast what is it?”

Charlie drew himself up proudly. “Propopamide, m’lord.”

“Ah yes, Propopamide!” The little man laughed, his good humour quite restored. “Good lad, Charlie, you’re a marvel!”

“Thank you, m’lord.” The foreman wore the smug expression of the expert as he drove the cattle back into the field.

It’s a funny thing, but when you see a client about something you very often see him soon again about something else. It was only a week later, with the district still in the iron grip of winter, that my bedside ’phone jangled me from slumber.