Джеймс Хэрриот - All Creatures Great and Small

He interpreted his role rather differently from his brother and, while resident in Darrowby, he devoted a considerable amount of his acute intelligence to the cause of doing as little as possible. Tristan did, in fact, spend much of his time sleeping in a chair. When he was left behind to dispense when we went out on our rounds he followed an unvarying procedure. He half filled a sixteen-ounce bottle with water, added a few drachms of chlorodyne and a little ipecacuanha, pushed the cork in and took it through to the sitting-room to stand by his favourite chair. It was a wonderful chair for his purpose; old fashioned and high backed with wings to support the head.

He would get out his Daily Mirror, light a Woodbine and settle down till sleep overcame him. If Siegfried rushed in on him he grabbed the bottle and started to shake it madly, inspecting the contents at intervals. Then he went through to the dispensary, filled up the bottle and labelled it.

It was a sound, workable system but it had one big snag. He never knew whether it was Siegfried or not when the door opened and often I walked in and found him half lying in his chair, staring up with startled, sleep-blurred eyes while he agitated his bottle.

Most evenings found him sitting on a high stool at the bar counter of the Drovers’ Arms, conversing effortlessly with the barmaid. At other times he would be out with one of the young nurses from the local hospital which he seemed to regard as an agency to provide him with female company. All in all, he managed to lead a fairly full life.

Saturday night, 10:30 p.m. and I was writing up my visits when the phone rang. I swore, crossed my fingers and lifted the receiver.

“Hello, Herriot speaking.”

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” growled a dour voice in broadest Yorkshire. “Well, ah want Mr. Farnon.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Farnon is out. Can I help you?”

“Well, I ’ope so, but I’d far raither ’ave your boss. This is Sims of Beal Close.”

(Oh no, please no, not Beal Close on a Saturday night. Miles up in the hills at the end of a rough lane with about eight gates.)

“Yes, Mr. Sims, and what is the trouble?”

“Ah’ll tell you, there is some trouble an’ all. I ’ave a grand big show ’oss here. All of seventeen hands. He’s cut ’isself badly on the hind leg, just above the hock. I want him stitched immediately.”

(Glory be! Above the hock! What a charming place to have to stitch a horse. Unless he’s very quiet, this is going to be a real picnic.)

“How big is the wound, Mr. Sims?”

“Big? It’s a gurt big thing about a foot long and bleedin’ like ’ell. And this ’oss is as wick as an eel. Could kick a fly’s eye out. Ah can’t get near ’im nohow. Goes straight up wall when he sees anybody. By gaw, I tell you I had ’im to t’blacksmith t’other day and feller was dead scared of ’im. Twiltin’ gurt ’oss ’e is.”

(Damn you, Mr. Sims, damn Beal Close and damn your twiltin’ gurt ’oss.)

“Well, I’ll be along straight away. Try to have some men handy just in case we have to throw him.”

“Throw ’im? Throw ’im? You’d never throw this ’oss. He’d kill yer first. Anyways, I ’ave no men here so you’ll ’ave to manage on your own. Ah know Mr. Farnon wouldn’t want a lot of men to help ’im.”

(Oh lovely, lovely. This is going to be one for the diary.)

“Very well, I’m leaving now, Mr. Sims.”

“Oh, ah nearly forgot. My road got washed away in the floods yesterday. You’ll ’ave to walk the last mile and a half. So get a move on and don’t keep me waiting all night.”

(This is just a bit much.)

“Look here, Mr. Sims, I don’t like your tone. I said I would leave now and I will get there just as soon as I can.”

“You don’t like ma tone, eh? Well, ah don’t like useless young apprentices practising on my good stock, so ah don’t want no cheek from you. You know nowt about t’damn job, any road.”

(That finally does it.)

“Now just listen to me, Sims. If it wasn’t for the sake of the horse I’d refuse to come out at all. Who do you think you are, anyway? If you ever try to speak to me like that again …”

“Now, now, Jim, get a grip on yourself. Take it easy, old boy. You’ll burst a blood vessel if you go on like this.”

“Who the devil …?”

“Ah, ah, Jim, calm yourself now. That temper of yours, you know. You’ll really have to watch it.”

“Tristan! Where the hell are you speaking from?”

“The kiosk outside the Drovers. Five pints inside me and feeling a bit puckish. Thought I’d give you a ring.”

“By God, I’ll murder you one of these days if you don’t stop this game. It’s putting years on me. Now and again isn’t so bad, but this is the third time this week.”

“Ah, but this was by far the best, Jim. It was really wonderful. When you started drawing yourself up to your full height—it nearly killed me. Oh God, I wish you could have heard yourself.” He trailed off into helpless laughter.

And then my feeble attempts at retaliation; creeping, trembling, into some lonely phone box.

“Is that young Mr. Farnon?” in a guttural croak. “Well, this is Tilson of High Woods. Ah want you to come out here immediately. I ’ave a terrible case of …”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Jim, but is there something the matter with your tonsils? Oh, good. Well, go on with what you were saying, old lad. Sounds very interesting.”

There was only one time when I was not on the receiving end. It was Tuesday—my half day—and at 11:30 a.m. a call came in. An eversion of the uterus in a cow. This is the tough job in country practice and I felt the usual chill.

It happens when the cow, after calving, continues to strain until it pushes the entire uterus out and it hangs down as far as the animal’s hocks. It is a vast organ and desperately difficult to replace, mainly because the cow, having once got rid of it, doesn’t want it back. And in a straightforward contest between man and beast the odds were very much on the cow.

The old practitioners, in an effort to even things up a bit, used to sling the cow up by its hind limbs and the more inventive among them came up with all sorts of contraptions like the uterine valise which was supposed to squeeze the organ into smaller bulk. But the result was usually the same—hours of back-breaking work.

The introduction of the epidural anaesthetic made everything easier by removing sensation from the uterus and preventing the cow from straining but, for all that, the words “calf bed out” coming over the line were guaranteed to wipe the smile off any vet’s face.

I decided to take Tristan in case I needed a few pounds of extra push. He came along but showed little enthusiasm for the idea. He showed still less when he saw the patient, a very fat shorthorn lying, quite unconcerned, in her stall. Behind her, a bloody mass of uterus, afterbirth, muck and straw spilled over into the channel.

She wasn’t at all keen to get up, but after we had done a bit of shouting and pushing at her shoulder she rose to her feet, looking bored.

The epidural space was difficult to find among the rolls of fat and I wasn’t sure if I had injected all the anaesthetic into the right place. I removed the afterbirth, cleaned the uterus and placed it on a clean sheet held by the farmer and his brother. They were frail men and it was all they could do to keep the sheet level. I wouldn’t be able to count on them to help me much.

I nodded to Tristan; we stripped off our shirts, tied clean sacks round our waists and gathered the uterus in our arms.

It was badly engorged and swollen and it took us just an hour to get it back. There was a long spell at the beginning when we made no progress at all and the whole idea of pushing the enormous organ through a small hole seemed ludicrous, like trying to thread a needle with a sausage. Then there were a few minutes when we thought we were doing famously only to find we were feeding the thing down through a tear in the sheet (Siegfried once told me he had spent half a morning trying to stuff a uterus up a cow’s rectum. What really worried him, he said, was that he nearly succeeded) and at the end when hope was fading, there was the blissful moment when the whole thing began to slip inside and incredibly disappeared from sight.