Джеймс Хэрриот - All Things Wise and Wonderful

One last terror assailed me. What if it came out again? Quickly I seized needle and thread and began to insert a few sutures in the vulva.

“Here, hold this!” I barked, giving him the scissors.

Stitching with the help of Lord Hulton wasn’t easy. I kept pushing needle or scissors into his hands then demanding them back peremptorily, and it caused a certain amount of panic. Twice he passed me his pipe to cut the ends of my suture and on one occasion I found myself trying in the dim light to thread the silk through his reaming tool. His lordship suffered too, in his turn, because I heard the occasional stifled oath as he impaled a finger on the needle.

But at last it was done. I rose wearily to my feet and leaned against the wall, my mouth hanging open, sweat trickling into my eyes. The little man’s eyes were full of concern as they roved over my limply hanging arms and the caked blood and filth on my chest.

“Herriot, my dear old chap, you’re all in! And you’ll catch pneumonia or something if you stand around half naked. You need a hot drink. Tell you what—get yourself cleaned up and dressed and I’ll run down to the house for something.” He scurried swiftly away.

My aching muscles were slow to obey as I soaped and towelled myself and pulled on my shirt. Fastening my watch round my wrist I saw that it was after seven and I could hear the farm men clattering in the yard outside as they began their morning tasks.

I was buttoning my jacket when the little peer returned. He bore a tray with a pint mug of steaming coffee and two thick slices of bread and honey. He placed it on a bale of straw and pulled up an upturned bucket as a chair before hopping on to a meal bin where he sat like a pixie on a toadstool with his arms around his knees, regarding me with keen anticipation.

“The servants are still abed, old chap,” he said. “So I made this little bite for you myself.”

I sank on to the bucket and took a long pull at the coffee. It was black and scalding with a kick like a Galloway bullock and it spread like fire through my tired frame. Then I bit into the first slice of bread; home made, plastered thickly with farm butter and topped by a lavish layer of heather honey from the long row of hives I had often seen on the edge of the moor above. I closed my eyes in reverence as I chewed, then as I reached for the pint pot again I looked up at the small figure on the bin.

“May I say, sir, that this isn’t a bite, it’s a feast. It is all absolutely delicious.”

His face lit up with impish glee. “Well, dash it … do you really think so? I’m so pleased. And you’ve done nobly, dear boy. Can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

As I continued to eat ecstatically, feeling the strength ebbing back, he glanced uneasily into the pen.

“Herriot … those stitches. Don’t like the look of them much …”

“Oh yes,” I said. “They’re just a precaution. You can nick them out in a couple of days.”

“Splendid! But won’t they leave a wound? We’d better put something on there.”

I paused in mid chew. Here it was again. He only needed his Propamidine to complete his happiness.

“Yes, old chap, we must apply some of that Prip … Prom … oh hell and blast, it’s no good!” He threw back his head and bellowed, “Charlie!”

The foreman appeared in the entrance, touching his cap. “Morning, m’lord.”

“Morning, Charlie. See that this sow gets some of that wonderful cream on her. What the blazes d’you call it again?”

Charlie swallowed and squared his shoulders. “Propopamide, m’lord.”

The little man threw his arms high in delight. “Of course, of course! Propopamide! I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get that word out?” He looked admiringly at his foreman. “Charlie, you never fail—I don’t know how you do it.”

Charlie bowed gravely in acknowledgement.

Lord Hulton turned to me. “You’ll let us have some more Propopamide, won’t you, Herriot?”

“Certainly,” I replied. “I think I have some in the car.”

Sitting there on the bucket amid the mixed aromas of pig and barley meal and coffee I could almost feel the waves of pleasure beating on me. His lordship was clearly enchanted by the whole business, Charlie was wearing the superior smile which always accompanied his demonstrations of lingual dexterity, and as for myself I was experiencing a mounting euphoria.

I could see into the pen and the sight was rewarding. The little pigs who had been sheltered in a large box during the operation were back with their mother, side by side in a long pink row as their tiny mouths enclosed the teats. The sow seemed to be letting her milk down, too, because there was no frantic scramble for position, just a rapt concentration.

She was a fine pedigree pig and instead of lying on the butcher’s slab today she would be starting to bring up her family. As though reading my thoughts she gave a series of contented grunts and the old feeling began to bubble in me, the deep sense of fulfillment and satisfaction that comes from even the smallest triumph and makes our lives worthwhile.

And there was something else. A new thought stealing into my consciousness with a delicious fresh tingle about it. At this moment, who else in the length and breadth of Britain was eating a breakfast personally prepared and served by a marquis?

CHAPTER 3

I AM AFRAID OF DENTISTS.

I am particularly afraid of strange dentists, so before I went into the RAF I made sure my teeth were in order. Everybody told me they were very strict about the aircrews’ teeth and I didn’t want some unknown prodding around in my mouth. There had to be no holes anywhere or they would start to ache away up there in the sky, so they said.

So before my call-up I went to old Mr. Grover in Darrowby and he painstakingly did all that was necessary. He was good at his job and was always gentle and careful and didn’t strike the same terror into me as other dentists. All I felt when I went to his surgery was a dryness of the throat and a quivering at the knees, and providing I kept my eyes tightly shut all the time I managed to get through the visit fairly easily.

My fear of dentists dates back to my earliest experiences in the twenties. As a child I was taken to the dread Hector McDarroch in Glasgow and he did my dental work right up to my teens. Friends of my youth tell me that he inspired a similar lasting fear in them, too, and in fact there must be a whole generation of Glaswegians who feel the same.

Of course you couldn’t blame Hector entirely. The equipment in those days was primitive and a visit to any dental practitioner was an ordeal. But Hector, with his booming laugh, was so large and overpowering that he made it worse. Actually he was a very nice man, cheerful and good-natured, but the other side of him blotted it all out.

The electric drill had not yet been invented or if it had, it hadn’t reached Scotland, and Hector bored holes in teeth with a fearsome foot-operated machine. There was a great wheel driven by a leather belt and this powered the drill, and as you lay in the chair two things dominated the outlook; the wheel whirring by your ear and Hector’s huge knee pistoning almost into your face as he pedalled furiously.

He came from the far north and at the Highland games he used to array himself in kilt and sporran and throw cabers around like matchsticks. He was so big and strong that I always felt hopelessly trapped in that chair with his bulk over me and the wheel grinding and the pedal thumping. He didn’t exactly put his foot on my chest but he had me all right.

And it didn’t worry him when he got into the sensitive parts with his drill; my strangled cries were of no avail and he carried on remorselessly to the end. I had the impression that Hector thought it was sissy to feel pain, or maybe he was of the opinion that suffering was good for the soul.