All Creatures Great and Small (41 page)

At least that was the opinion, frequently expressed, of the Sidlow family. In fact, when you came right down to it, just about the only person for miles around who knew how to treat sick beasts was Mr. Sidlow himself. If any of their cows or horses fell ill it was Mr. Sidlow who stepped forward with his armoury of sovereign remedies. He enjoyed a God-like prestige with his wife and large family and it was an article of their faith that father was infallible in these matters; the only other being who had ever approached his skill was long-dead Grandpa Sidlow from whom father had learned so many of his cures.

Mind you, Mr. Sidlow was a just and humane man. After maybe five or six days of dedicated nursing during which he would perhaps push half-a-pound of lard and raisins down the cow’s throat three times a day, rub its udder vigorously with turpentine or maybe cut a bit off the end of the tail to let the bad out, he always in the end called the vet. Not that it would do any good, but he liked to give the animal every chance. When the vet arrived he invariably found a sunken-eyed, dying creature and the despairing treatment he gave was like a figurative administration of the last rites. The animal always died so the Sidlows were repeatedly confirmed in their opinion—vets were useless.

The farm was situated outside the normal area of the practice and we were the third firm Mr. Sidlow had dealt with. He had been a client of Grier of Brawton but had found him wanting and moved to Wallace away over in Mansley. Wallace had disappointed him grievously so he had decided to try Darrowby. He had been with us for over a year but it was an uncomfortable relationship because Siegfried had offended him deeply on his very first visit. It was to a moribund horse, and Mr. Sidlow, describing the treatment to date, announced that he had been pushing raw onions up the horse’s rectum; he couldn’t understand why it was so uneasy on its legs. Siegfried had pointed out that if he were to insert a raw onion in Mr. Sidlow’s rectum, he, Mr. Sidlow, would undoubtedly be uneasy on his legs.

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.

However, the Sidlows were far from my mind on the Saturday morning when Siegfried asked me if I would go through and officiate at Brawton races.

“They’ve asked me to do it as Grier is on holiday,” he said. “But I’d already promised to go through to Casborough to help Dick Henley with a rig operation. I can’t let him down. There’s nothing much to the race job: the regular course vet will be there and he’ll keep you right.”

He hadn’t been gone more than a few minutes when there was a call from the racecourse. One of the horses had fallen while being unloaded from its box and had injured its knee. Would I come right away.

Even now I am no expert on racehorses; they form a little branch of practice all by itself, with its own stresses, its own mystique. In my short spell in Darrowby I had had very little to do with them as Siegfried was fascinated by anything equine and usually gobbled up anything in that line which came along. So my practical experience was negligible.

I wasn’t at all reassured when I saw my patient. The knee was a terrible mess. He had tripped at the bottom of the ramp and come down with his full weight on the stony ground. The lacerated skin hung down in bloody ribbons exposing the joint capsule over an area of about six inches and the extensor tendons gleamed through a tattered layer of fascia. The beautiful three-year-old held the limb up, trembling, with the toe just touching the ground; the ravaged knee made a violent contrast with the sleek, carefully groomed coat.

Examining the wound, gently feeling round the joint, I was immediately thankful for one thing—it was a quiet animal. Some light horses are so highly strung that the slightest touch sends them up in the air, but this one hardly moved as I tried to piece together the jigsaw of skin pieces Another lucky break—there was nothing missing.

I turned to the stable head lad, small, square, hands deep in his coat pockets who was standing watching. “I’ll clean up the wound and stitch it but he’ll need some expert care when you get him home. Can you tell me who will be treating him?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Brayley-Reynolds. He’ll have charge of ’im.”

I came bolt upright from my crouching position. The name was like a trumpet call echoing down from my student days. When you talked about horses you usually talked about Brayley-Reynolds sooner or later. I could imagine the great man inspecting my handiwork. “And who did you say treated this? Herriot …? Herriot …?”

I got down to the job again with my heart beating faster. Mercifully the joint capsule and tendon sheaths were undamaged—no escape of synovia. Using a solution of Chinosol, I swabbed out every last cranny of the wound till the ground around me was white with cotton wool pledgets, then I puffed in some iodoform powder and tacked down the loose shreds of fascia. Now the thing was to make a really good job of the skin to avoid disfigurement if possible. I chose some fine silk and a very small suture needle and squatted down again.

I must have stayed there for nearly an hour, pulling the flaps of skin carefully into position and fastening them down with innumerable tiny sutures. There is a fascination in repairing a ragged wound and I always took pains over it even without an imaginary Brayley-Reynolds peering over my shoulder. When I finally straightened up I did so slowly, like an old man, easing the kinks from neck and back. With shaking knees I looked down at the head lad almost without recognition. He was smiling.

“You’ve made a proper job of that,” he said. “It looks nearly as good as new. I want to thank you, sir—he’s one of my favourites, not just because he’s a good ’orse, but he’s kind.” He patted the three-year-old’s flank.

“Well, I hope he does all right.” I got out a packet of gauze and a bandage. “I’m just going to cover up the knee with this and then you can put on a stable bandage. I’ll give him a shot against tetanus and that’s it.”

I was packing my gear away in the car when the head lad hovered again at my side. “Do you back ’orses?”

I laughed. “No, hardly ever. Don’t know much about it.”

“Well never mind.” The little man looked around him and lowered his voice. “But I’ll tell you something to back this afternoon. Kemal in the first race. He’s one of ours and he’s going to win. You’ll get a nice price about him.”

“Well, thanks, it’ll give me something to do. I’ll have half-a-crown on him.”

The tough little face screwed up in disgust. “No, no, put a fiver on him. This is the goods, I mean it. Keep it to yourself but get a fiver on him.” He walked rapidly away.

I don’t know what madness took hold of me, but by the time I had got back to Darrowby I had decided to take his advice. There had been something compelling about that last hoarse whisper and the utter confidence in the black pebble eyes. The little chap was trying to do me a good turn. I had noticed him glancing at my old jacket and rumpled flannels, so different from the natty outfit of the typical horse vet; maybe he thought I needed the money.