Джеймс Хэрриот - All Creatures Great and Small

Tristan still looked unconvinced and it seemed to exasperate his brother. Siegfried’s face reddened. “And there’s another thing. How could we have an attractive young girl in here with somebody like you in the house? You’d never leave her alone.”

Tristan was nettled. “How about you?”

“I’m talking about you, not me!” Siegfried roared. I closed my eyes. The peace hadn’t lasted long. I decided to cut in. “All right, tell us about the new secretary.”

With an effort, he mastered his emotion. “Well, she’s in her fifties and she has retired after thirty years with Green and Moulton in Bradford. She was company secretary there and I’ve had the most wonderful reference from the firm. They say she is a model of efficiency and that’s what we want in this practice—efficiency. We’re far too slack. It’s just a stroke of luck for us that she decided to come and live in Darrowby. Anyway, you’ll be able to meet her in a few minutes—she’s coming at ten o’clock this morning.”

The church clock was chiming when the door bell rang. Siegfried hastened out to answer it and led his great discovery into the room in triumph. “Gentlemen, I want you to meet Miss Harbottle.”

She was a big, high-bosomed woman with a round healthy face and gold-rimmed spectacles. A mass of curls, incongruous and very dark, peeped from under her hat; they looked as if they might be dyed and they didn’t go with her severe clothes and brogue shoes.

It occurred to me that we wouldn’t have to worry about her rushing off to get married. It wasn’t that she was ugly, but she had a jutting chin and an air of effortless command that would send any man running for his life.

I shook hands and was astonished at the power of Miss Harbottle’s grip. We looked into each other’s eyes and had a friendly trial of strength for a few seconds, then she seemed happy to call it a draw and turned away. Tristan was entirely unprepared and a look of alarm spread over his face as his hand was engulfed; he was released only when his knees started to buckle.

She began a tour of the office while Siegfried hovered behind her, rubbing his hands and looking like a shopwalker with his favourite customer. She paused at the desk, heaped high with incoming and outgoing bills, Ministry of Agriculture forms, circulars from drug firms with here and there stray boxes of pills and tubes of udder ointment.

Stirring distastefully among the mess, she extracted the dog-eared old ledger and held it up between finger and thumb. “What’s this?”

Siegfried trotted forward. “Oh, that’s our ledger. We enter the visits into it from our day book which is here somewhere.” He scrabbled about on the desk. “Ah, here it is. This is where we write the calls as they come in.”

She studied the two books for a few minutes with an expression of amazement which gave way to a grim humour. “You gentlemen will have to learn to write if I am going to look after your books. There are three different hands here, but this one is by far the worst. Quite dreadful. Whose is it?”

She pointed to an entry which consisted of a long, broken line with an occasional undulation.

“That’s mine, actually,” said Siegfried, shuffling his feet. “Must have been in a hurry that day.”

“But it’s all like that, Mr. Farnon. Look here and here and here. It won’t do, you know.”

Siegfried put his hands behind his back and hung his head.

“I expect you keep your stationery and envelopes in here.” She pulled open a drawer in the desk. It appeared to be filled entirely with old seed packets, many of which had burst open. A few peas and french beans rolled gently from the top of the heap. The next drawer was crammed tightly with soiled calving ropes which somebody had forgotten to wash. They didn’t smell so good and Miss Harbottle drew back hurriedly; but she was not easily deterred and tugged hopefully at the third drawer. It came open with a musical clinking and she looked down on a dusty row of empty pale ale bottles.

She straightened up slowly and spoke patiently. “And where, may I ask, is your cash box?”

“Well, we just stuff it in there, you know.” Siegfried pointed to the pint pot on the corner of the mantelpiece. “Haven’t got what you’d call a proper cash box, but this does the job all right.”

Miss Harbottle looked at the pot with horror. “You just stuff …” Crumpled cheques and notes peeped over the brim at her; many of their companions had burst out on to the hearth below. “And you mean to say that you go out and leave that money there day after day?”

“Never seems to come to any harm,” Siegfried replied.

“And how about your petty cash?”

Siegfried gave an uneasy giggle. “All in there, you know. All cash—petty and otherwise.”

Miss Harbottle’s ruddy face had lost some of its colour. “Really, Mr. Farnon, this is too bad. I don’t know how you have gone on so long like this. I simply do not know. However, I’m confident I will be able to straighten things out very soon. There is obviously nothing complicated about your business—a simple card index system would be the thing for your accounts. The other little things”—she glanced back unbelievingly at the pot—“I will put right very quickly.”

“Fine, Miss Harbottle, fine.” Siegfried was rubbing his hands harder than ever. “We’ll expect you on Monday morning”

“Nine o’clock sharp, Mr. Farnon.”

After she had gone there was a silence. Tristan had enjoyed her visit and was smiling thoughtfully, but I felt uncertain.

“You know, Siegfried,” I said, “maybe she is a demon of efficiency but isn’t she just a bit tough?”

“Tough?” Siegfried gave a loud, rather cracked laugh. “Not a bit of it. You leave her to me. I can handle her.”

FIFTEEN

THERE WAS LITTLE FURNITURE in the dining-room but the noble lines and the very size of the place lent grace to the long sideboard and the modest mahogany table where Tristan and I sat at breakfast.

The single large window was patterned with frost and in the street outside, the footsteps of the passers-by crunched in the crisp snow. I looked up from my boiled egg as a car drew up. There was a stamping in the porch, the outer door banged shut and Siegfried burst into the room. Without a word he made for the fire and hung over it, leaning his elbows on the grey marble mantelpiece. He was muffled almost to the eyes in greatcoat and scarf but what you could see of his face was purplish blue.

He turned a pair of streaming eyes to the table. “A milk fever up at old Heseltine’s. One of the high buildings. God, it was cold up there. I could hardly breathe.”

As he pulled off his gloves and shook his numbed fingers in front of the flames, he darted sidelong glances at his brother. Tristan’s chair was nearest the fire and he was enjoying his breakfast as he enjoyed everything, slapping the butter happily on to his toast and whistling as he applied the marmalade. His Daily Mirror was balanced against the coffee pot. You could almost see the waves of comfort and contentment coming from him.

Siegfried dragged himself unwillingly from the fire and dropped into a chair. “I’ll just have a cup of coffee, James. Heseltine was very kind—asked me to sit down and have breakfast with him. He gave me a lovely slice of home fed bacon—a bit fat, maybe, but what a flavour! I can taste it now.”

He put down his cup with a clatter. “You know, there’s no reason why we should have to go to the grocer for our bacon and eggs. There’s a perfectly good hen house at the bottom of the garden and a pigsty in the yard with a boiler for the swill. All our household waste could go towards feeding a pig. We’d probably do it quite cheaply.”