Джеймс Хэрриот - All Creatures Great and Small

“Mr. Herriot,” he whispered. “Isn’t that a beautiful sight?”

He pointed to the little pigs who were lying motionless in a layered heap, sprawled over each other without plan or pattern, eyes tightly closed, stomachs bloated with Marigold’s bountiful fluid.

“It is indeed,” I said, prodding the sleeping mass with my finger but getting no response beyond the lazy opening of an eye. “You’d have to go a long way to beat it.”

And I did share his pleasure; it was one of the satisfying little jobs. Climbing into the car I felt that the nocturnal visit had been worth while even though I had been effortlessly duped into buying a round with no hope of reciprocation. Not that I wanted to drink any more—my stomach wasn’t used to receiving pints of ale at 2 a.m. and a few whimpers of surprise and indignation were already coming up—but I was just a bit ruffled by the offhand, professional way those gentlemen in the tap room had handled me.

But, winding my way home through the empty, moonlit roads, I was unaware that the hand of retribution was hovering over that happy band. This was, in fact, a fateful night, because ten minutes after I had left, Mr. Worley’s pub was raided. Perhaps that is a rather dramatic word, but it happened that it was the constable’s annual holiday and the relief man, a young policeman who did not share Mr. Dalloway’s liberal views, had come up on his bicycle and pinched everybody in the place.

The account of the court proceedings in the Darrowby and Houlton Times made good reading. Gobber Newhouse and company were all fined £2 each and warned as to their future conduct. The magistrates, obviously a heartless lot, had remained unmoved by Gobber’s passionate protestations that the beer in the glasses had all been purchased before closing time and that he and his friends had been lingering over it in light conversation for the subsequent four hours.

Mr. Worley was fined £15 but I don’t think he really minded; Marigold and her litter were doing well.

THIRTY-NINE

THIS WAS THE LAST gate. I got out to open it since Tristan was driving, and looked back at the farm, a long way below us now, and at the marks our tyres had made on the steep, grassy slopes. Strange places, some of these Dales farms; this one had no road to it—not even a track. From down there you just drove across the fields from gate to gate till you got to the main road above the valley. And this was the last one; ten minutes’ driving and we’d be home.

Tristan was acting as my chauffeur, as my left hand had been infected after a bad calving and I had my arm in a sling. He didn’t drive up through the gate but got out of the car, leaned his back against the gate post and lit a Woodbine.

Obviously he wasn’t in any rush to leave. And with the sun warm on the back of his neck and the two bottles of Whitbread’s nestling comfortably in his stomach I could divine that he felt pretty good. Come to think of it, it had been all right back there. He had taken some warts off a heifer’s teats and the farmer had said he shaped well for a young ’un, (‘Aye, you really framed at t’job, lad’) and asked us in for a bottle of beer since it was so hot. Impressed by the ecstatic speed with which Tristan had consumed his, he had given him another.

Yes, it had been all right, and I could see Tristan thought so too. With a smile of utter content he took a long, deep gulp of moorland air and Woodbine smoke and closed his eyes.

He opened them quickly as a grinding noise came from the car. “Christ! She’s off, Jim!” he shouted.

The little Austin was moving gently backwards down the slope—it must have slipped out of gear and it had no brakes to speak of. We both leaped after it. Tristan was nearest and he just managed to touch the bonnet with one finger; the speed was too much for him. We gave it up and watched.

The hillside was steep and the little car rapidly gathered momentum, bouncing crazily over the uneven ground. I glanced at Tristan; his mind invariably worked quickly and clearly in a crisis and I had a good idea what he was thinking. It was only a fortnight since he had turned the Hillman over, taking a girl home from a dance. It had been a complete write-off and the insurance people had been rather nasty about it; and of course Siegfried had gone nearly berserk and had finished by sacking him finally, once and for all—never wanted to see his face in the place again.

But he had been sacked so often; he knew he had only to keep out of his way for a bit and his brother would forget. And he had been lucky this time because Siegfried had talked his bank manager into letting him buy a beautiful new Rover and this had blotted everything else from his mind.

It was distinctly unfortunate that this should happen when he, as driver, was technically in charge of the Austin. The car appeared now to be doing about 70 m.p.h. hurtling terrifyingly down the long, green hill. One by one the doors burst open till all four flapped wildly and the car swooped downwards looking like a huge, ungainly bird.

From the open doors, bottles, instruments, bandages, cotton wool cascaded out onto the turf, leaving a long, broken trail. Now and again a packet of nux vomica and bicarb stomach powder would fly out and burst like a bomb, splashing vivid white against the green.

Tristan threw up his arms. “Look! The bloody thing’s going straight for that hut.” He drew harder on his Woodbine.

There was indeed only one obstruction on the bare hillside—a small building near the foot where the land levelled out and the Austin, as if drawn by a magnet, was thundering straight towards it.

I couldn’t bear to watch. Just before the impact I turned away and focused my attention on the end of Tristan’s cigarette which was glowing bright red when the crash came. When I looked back down the hill the building was no longer there. It had been completely flattened and everything I had ever heard about houses of cards surged into my mind. On top of the shattered timbers the little car lay peacefully on its side, its wheels still turning lazily.

As we galloped down the hill it was easy to guess Tristan’s thoughts. He wouldn’t be looking forward to telling Siegfried he had wrecked the Austin; in fact it was something the mind almost refused to contemplate. But as we neared the scene of devastation, passing on our way syringes, scalpels, bottles of vaccine, it was difficult to see any other outcome.

Arriving at the car, we made an anxious inspection. The body had been so bashed and dented before that it wasn’t easy to identify any new marks. Certainly the rear end was pretty well caved in but it didn’t show up very much. The only obvious damage was a smashed rear light. Our hopes rising, we set off for the farm for help.

The farmer greeted us amiably. “Now then, you lads, hasta come back for more beer?”

“It wouldn’t come amiss,” Tristan replied. “We’ve had a bit of an accident.”

We went into the house and the hospitable man opened some more bottles. He didn’t seem disturbed when he heard of the demolition of the hut. “Nay, that’s not mine. Belongs to t’golf club—it’s t’club house.”

Tristan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh no! Don’t say we’ve flattened the headquarters of the Darrowby Golf Club!”

“Aye, lad, you must have. It’s t’only wooden building in them fields. I rent that part of my land to the club and they’ve made a little nine hole course. Don’t worry, hardly anybody plays on it—mainly t’bank manager and ah don’t like that feller.”

Mr. Prescott got a horse out of the stable and we went back to the car and pulled it upright again. Trembling a little, Tristan climbed in and pressed the starter. The sturdy little engine burst into a confident roar immediately and he drove carefully over the prostrate wooden walls on to the grass.