Джеймс Хэрриот - All Creatures Great and Small

It was a bad start but there were really no other available vets left. He was stuck with us.

I had been uncannily lucky in that I had been at Darrowby for more than a year and had never had to visit this farm. Mr. Sidlow rarely called us up during normal working hours as, after wrestling with his conscience for a few days, he always seemed to lose the battle around eleven o’clock at night (he made exceptions in the case of the occasional Sunday afternoon) and it had always landed on Siegfried’s duty nights. It was Siegfried who had trailed out, swearing quietly, and returned, slightly pop-eyed in the small hours.

So when it did finally come round to my turn I didn’t rush out with any great enthusiasm, even though the case was just a choking bullock and should present no difficulties. (This was when a beast got a piece of turnip or a potato stuck in its gullet, preventing regurgitation of gases and causing bloating which can be fatal. We usually either relieved the bloat by puncturing the stomach or we carefully pushed the obstruction down into the stomach by means of a long flexible leather instrument called a probang.) Anyway, they had realised they couldn’t wait for days this time and by way of a change it was only four o’clock in the afternoon.

The farm was nearer Brawton than Darrowby and lay in the low country down on the Plain of York. I didn’t like the look of the place; there was something depressing about the dilapidated brick buildings in the dreary setting of ploughing land with only the occasional mound of a potato clamp to relieve the flatness.

My first sight of Mr. Sidlow reminded me that he and his family were members of a fanatically narrow religious sect. I had seen that gaunt, blue-jowled face with the tortured eyes staring at me from the pages of history books long ago. I had the feeling that Mr. Sidlow would have burnt me at the stake without a qualm.

The bullock was in a gloomy box off the fold yard. Several of the family had filed in with us; two young men in their twenties and three teenage girls, all good-looking in a dark gipsy way, but all with the same taut, unsmiling look as their father. As I moved around, examining the animal, I noticed another peculiarity—they all looked at me, the bullock, each other, with quick sideways glances without any head movement. Nobody said anything.

I would have liked to break the silence but couldn’t think of anything cheerful to say. This beast didn’t have the look of an ordinary choke. I could feel the potato quite distinctly from the outside, half-way down the oesophagus but all around was an oedematous mass extending up and down the left side of the neck. Not only that, but there was a bloody foam dripping from the mouth. There was something funny here.

A thought struck me. “Have you been trying to push the potato down with something?”

I could almost feel the battery of flitting glances, and the muscles of Mr. Sidlow’s clenched jaw stood out in a twitching ridge. He swallowed carefully. “Aye, we’ve tried a bit.”

“What did you use?”

Again the rippling jaw muscles under the dark skin. “Broom handle and a bit of hose pipe. Same as usual.”

That was enough; a sense of doom enveloped me. It would have been nice to be the first vet to make a good impression here but it wasn’t to be. I turned to the farmer. “I’m afraid you’ve ruptured the gullet. It’s a very delicate tube, you know, and you only have to push a bit too hard and you’re through. You can see the fluid collection round the rupture.”

A quivering silence answered me. I ploughed on. “I’ve seen this happen before. It’s a pretty black outlook.”

“All right,” Mr. Sidlow ground out. “What are you going to do about it?”

Well, we were at it now. What was I going to do about it? Maybe now, thirty years later, I might have tried to repair the gullet, packed the wound with antibiotic powder and given a course of penicillin injections. But there, in that cheerless place, looking at the patient animal gulping painfully, coughing up the gouts of blood, I knew I was whacked. A ruptured oesophagus was as near hopeless as anything could be. I searched my mind for a suitable speech.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sidlow, but I can’t do anything about it.” The glances crackled around me and the farmer breathed in sharply through his nose. I didn’t need to be told what they were all thinking—another no-good, useless vet. I took a deep breath and continued. “Even if I shifted the potato the wound would get contaminated when the beast tried to eat. He’d have gangrene in no time and that means a painful death. He’s in pretty good condition—if I were you I’d have him slaughtered immediately.”

The only reply was a virtuoso display from the jaw muscles. I tried another tack. “I’ll give you a certificate. I’m sure the meat will pass for the butcher.”

No cries of joy greeted this remark. If anything, Mr. Sidlow’s expression became still more bleak.

“That beast isn’t ready for killin’ yet,” he whispered.

“No, but you’d be sending him in before long—another month, maybe. I’m sure you won’t lose much. I tell you what,” with a ghastly attempt at heartiness, “if I can come into the house I’ll write you this chit now and we’ll get the job over. There’s really nothing else for it.”

I turned and headed across the fold yard for the farm kitchen. Mr. Sidlow followed wordlessly with the family. I wrote the certificate quickly, waves of disapproval washing around me in the silent room. As I folded the paper I had the sudden conviction that Mr. Sidlow wasn’t going to pay the slightest attention to my advice. He was going to wait a day or two to see how things turned out. The picture of the big, uncomprehending animal trying vainly to swallow as his hunger and thirst increased was too strong for me. I walked over to the phone on the window sill.

“I’ll just give Harry Norman a ring at the abattoir. I know he’ll come straight up if I ask him.” I made the arrangements, hung up the receiver and started for the door, addressing Mr. Sidlow’s profile as I left. “It’s fixed. Harry will be along within half-an-hour. Much better to get it done immediately.”

Going across the yard, I had to fight the impulse to break into a gallop. As I got into the car I recalled Siegfried’s advice: “In sticky situations always get your car backed round before you examine the animal. Leave the engine running if necessary. The quick getaway is essential.” He was right, it took a long time reversing and manoeuvring under the battery of unseen eyes. I don’t blush easily but my face was burning as I finally left the farm.

That was my first visit to the Sidlows and I prayed that it might be my last. But my luck had run out. From then on, every time they sent for us it just happened to be me on duty. I would rather not say anything about the cases I treated there except to record that something went wrong every time. The very name Sidlow became like a jinx. Try as I might I couldn’t do a thing right on that farm so that within a short time I was firmly established with the family as the greatest menace to the animal population they had ever encountered. They didn’t think much of vets as a whole and they’d met some real beauties in their time, but I was by far the worst. My position as the biggest nincompoop of them all was unassailable.

It got so bad that if I saw any Sidlows in the town I would dive down an alley to avoid them and one day in the market place I had the unnerving experience of seeing the entire family, somehow jammed into a large old car, passing within a few feet of me. Every face looked rigidly to the front but every eye, I knew, was trained balefully on me. Fortunately I was just outside the Drovers’ Arms, so I was able to reel inside and steady myself with a half-pint of Younger’s Special Heavy.