Every Living Thing (17 page)

It was the same when I introduced him to my family in the sitting room at Skeldale House. My children were making music, Rosie at the piano and Jimmy with his harmonica, when the tall, walrus-moustached figure came in with his wild animal. I had become a connoisseur of soaring eyebrows and open mouths, and Helen was typical, but the reaction of Jimmy and Rose was wide-eyed delight.

“Oh, how lovely!” “Can I stroke her?” “Where did you get her?” Their questions were endless and Calum, laughing and teasing, was just about as big a hit with the children as his hairy companion.

Everything was going with a bang when Dinah, our second beagle and successor to Sam, ran in from the garden.

“This is Dinah,” I said.

“Oh-ho. Oh-ho, little fat Dinah,” said Calum in a rumbling bass. It was not a complimentary remark, because my little dog was undoubtedly too fat, and an embarrassment to a vet who was constantly adjuring people to keep their dogs slim, but Dinah didn’t seem to mind. She wagged her whole back end till I thought she would tie herself in a knot. Her response was remarkable and she clearly found this new voice immensely attractive.

Calum bent down and she rolled on her back in ecstasy as he rubbed her tummy.

Helen laughed. “Gosh, she really likes you!”

We didn’t know it then, but her words were setting a scene that would be a familiar and intriguing one in the future. I was to find that all animals were attracted to Calum and that he had a rapport with them that was unique. They loved the very sound, sight and scent of him—a heaven-sent asset for a veterinary surgeon.

When the civilities were over with Marilyn scuttling merrily round the floor, happily accepting the petting of the children, Calum sat down on the piano stool and began to play. He was no Rubinstein, but he could knock out a rollicking tune with no trouble at all and the children clapped their hands in delight.

Jimmy held out his harmonica. “Can you play this, too?”

Calum took the instrument and held it to his mouth with his hands in a Larry Adler-like attitude, and after the first few notes you could see that he was in a different league from my son, whose concert piece was “God Save the Queen.” After a couple of minutes of Mozart my new assistant handed back the harmonica and roared with laughter.

The young people were enchanted. “I’m going for the concertina,” cried Jimmy.

He ran from the room and came back with one of the relics from my visits to house sales when Helen and I were first married. In those days I was often despatched to house sales to bring back essentials like tables and chairs and usually returned with ornamental inkstands, ships in bottles and, on one memorable occasion,
The Geography of the World
in twenty-four volumes. In this case it was the concertina. It was an ancient little instrument, six-sided, with carved wooden ends and leather straps worn and frayed with age. It raised images of a mariner playing sea-shanties on the deck of an old-time sailing ship and I had found it irresistible, but unfortunately nobody had been able to extract a tune from it and it had rested for years in the attic with many of my other purchases.

Calum lifted it from its wooden box and turned it over tenderly. “Oh nice, very nice.” He slipped his hands through the straps, his fingers felt their way over the little ivory buttons and in a moment the room was filled with melody of a piercing sweetness. It was “Shenandoah,” and as we listened, suddenly hushed, to the totally unexpected richness that came from the instrument I was back on the deck of the sailing ship I had dreamed of long ago.

I have many memories of Calum, but the one that lingers most hauntingly in my mind is of him sitting among my family, his dark eyes, unfathomable as they often were, fixed on somewhere high on the wall, while his fingers coaxed that plaintive music from our little squeeze-box.

When he finished there was a spontaneous burst of applause and the children jumped about, clapping their hands. Calum was fixed in their minds for ever as a wonder man. He had a badger, he could play anything, he could do anything.

Just then, we began to wonder about Marilyn. She had been wandering quietly around the room but now there was no sign of her. We peered under the sofa and tipped up the armchairs without success and were looking at each other bewilderedly when there was a rattling from the fireplace and the badger, abundantly clothed in soot, shot out from the chimney. She didn’t want to be caught and raced a few times round the room before Calum grabbed her and carried her outside.

Jimmy and Rosie were almost hysterical. They hadn’t had such fun for a long time, but Helen and I, looking at the devastation to our carpet and furniture, were not so amused.

It was a sudden come-down from inspirational heights to chaos, and in an intuitive moment a thought came to me. Was this the way it was always going to be with Calum…?

I
HAVE HEARD IT
said that all tailors used to sit cross-legged on a table to ply their trade, but the only one I ever saw in this position was Mr. Bendelow.

The cottage door opened straight from the street into the kitchen and the scene was so familiar. The cluttered little room with a thousand cloth clippings littering the floor, the sewing machine in the corner. Blanco, his enormous white dog, giving me a welcoming wag as he lay by the fire, and Mr. Bendelow, cross-legged on the table, talking to a customer, his needle poised above a tweed jacket.

It struck me, not for the first time, that Mr. Bendelow’s needle always seemed to be poised. I don’t think I had ever seen it actually dig into any fabric, because he was always too busy talking. He was at it now, chattering into the slightly bemused face of a farmer’s wife, “You’d hardly believe what I’ve been tellin’ you, would you, Mrs. Haw.”

“No, right enough, I wouldn’t, Mr. Bendelow, but I wonder if you’ve managed to do that waistcoat for me husband. You said…”

“But it all really happened all them years ago, sure as I’m sittin’ here. You wouldn’t credit the things…”

“I’d like to tek it with me if you’ve finished it. He wants it for a…”

Mr. Bendelow cackled. “Ah’m not an old man, nobbut fifty, but the things that went on in them days…I remember…”

“You’ve had that waistcoat for three months, you know, you promised it for…”

“Oh aye, ah knaw, ah knaw. I’ve that much on. Don’t know where to turn. But come back in a fortnight, love, you shall ’ave it then.”

“But ’e wants it for—”

“Best ah can do, love. Ta-ra.”

Mrs. Haw, empty-handed and doleful, passed me on the way out and I put on my best smile as I took her place.

“Now then, young man.” Mr. Bendelow’s thin, gypsy-like face did not change expression, but his eyes shot a sidelong glance of sheer hatred at the trousers I carried on my arm.

“Now what’s this you’ve got for me?” he grunted.

“Well, it’s these trouser bottoms, Mr. Bendelow. They’ve got a bit frayed and I thought…”

“Aye, ye thought I’d just mek ’em like new for you. No trouble at all. You’ll kill me, you know, you’ll kill me. I’m goin’ like ’ell with Christmas comin’ on. At it night and day—never a minute.”

“Well, it’s just the bottoms, Mr. Bendelow….”

“And then there’s me bad leg. How long have I had it? Oh, years. I went to Dr. Allinson. He said, ‘Have you had this before?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Well you’ve got it again.’ He gave me sixty tablets and when I’d had ’alf I was a lot better and when I’d ’ad the lot I was nearly cured. But the doctor ’ad planned that. ‘Mr. Bendelow,’ he said, ‘when you’ve had half of these tablets you’ll be much better and when you’ve had the other half you’ll think you’re cured. But you won’t be, you know, you won’t be. I know what you are and you won’t want to come back to me. But when you’ve had your sixty tablets I want to see you. On that very day.’

“So I goes back to ’im on the very day he said and he says, ‘Now then, Mr. Bendelow, you’re here then.’ And I said, ‘Yes, Doctor, right on the day you said.’ ‘And you’ve finished your sixty tablets?’ he says. And I says, ‘Yes, I’ve ’ad the lot.’ And ’e gives me another ’undred.”

“Well, that’s fine, Mr. Bendelow. My wife says if you would just take a look at these frayed bottoms…”

“And he says, ‘You’ve got to stop runnin’ up and down them stairs.’ And I says, ‘I can’t, Doctor. I can’t stop. I’m always workin’. I never cease.’ But listen to this, Mr. Herriot. I’m goin’ to tell you something now. I’ve never made a penny. And I’ll tell you something else. If you’ve never made a fortune before you’re forty you’ll never make one.”

“These bottoms are just a little bit frayed, as you can see…”

“Ah, yes, you can talk about makin’ a fortune on the football pools if you like, Mr. Herriot. I can tell you about Littlewoods. Just listen to this, now.”

As he leaned forward from the table, his face intent, the street door opened and a big man came in. I recognised Jeremy Boothby, son of one of the big landowners and a person of considerable presence.

“You’ll excuse me,” he boomed as he brushed past me. “I’ve called for my suit, Bendelow. I was in last week.”

The tailor didn’t even look at him. “Do you know that I used to win regular on Littlewoods? But allus on the four aways and the most I won was six bob. So I says to myself if you go for the big money then you’ll win the big money.”

“Do you hear me, Bendelow?” The great voice filled the room. “I’ve been in every week since October and—”

“So I fills up a perm on the treble chance and I had twenty-four points straight away. I was waitin’ for the big cheque for seventy-five thousand comin’, but it never came. Oh, no, I got a letter from one of the head men at Littlewoods.”

“Now look here, Bendelow!” Mr. Boothby’s shout made the windows rattle. “You’ve had that suit for a year now and…”

He hesitated in mid-flow. Blanco had strolled round from the fireside and was standing by the table looking up at him. He didn’t have all that far to look, because he must have been just about the biggest dog I had ever seen. Mr. Bendelow had described him to me as a Swedish mountain dog and I could remember his smug smile of superiority when I told him I had never heard of that breed. I was pretty sure Blanco was a cross but whatever he was he was magnificent—snow-white and vast. And now as he stood close to Mr. Boothby, quite motionless, the lion head poised, there was a menacing fixity in his gaze and a faint growl rolled from deep in his rib-cage.

As man and dog eyed each other the growl became louder and for a second Blanco’s lips fluttered upwards, giving a glimpse of a row of crocodilian teeth.

Boothby stepped back, then spoke in a softer tone. “Will you let me have my suit…? I…”

Mr. Bendelow, clearly irritated by the interruption, gestured with his needle. “Not ready yet—call next week.”

With a final glance at Blanco, the big man turned and left.

“A lovely letter of apology, it was,” continued the tailor. “He told me I had got the twenty-four points all right but he couldn’t give me the seventy-five thousand because of one little detail. Yes, I’m tellin’ you, one little detail. I’d put down sixteen matches instead of eight. It was a lovely letter and ’e sounded real sorry, but there was nothing he could do about it.”

“Well, well. What a shame. Could you possibly do these trousers for some time next week. I would be very…”

“But all that money would be no good to me. I could tell you something about moneyed people…”

I dropped the garments on the table, gave him a hurried farewell wave and fled.

As I walked slowly down the street, my head spinning with the barmy torrent of words, which thanks to contemporary note-taking I have reproduced here verbatim, I ruminated on the phenomenon of Mr. Bendelow. In time he did disgorge the work brought to him, so he must have done most of his sewing and cutting at night. He was, in fact, a fine tailor and I had seen suits of such perfect fit and neat hand-stitching that I realised why people like Boothby continued to patronise him. It was all a question of luck—occasionally he had surprised me by coming up with a repair or an alteration in reasonable time.

He had supreme confidence in his own ability and intellectual gifts. In fact, convinced as he was that he knew everything about everything, particularly in the realm of domestic finance, he considered it his bounden duty to impart his knowledge to anybody who crossed his path, and since he had never married, he had no other outlet than his customers. I had only once seen him at a loss. It had been some years ago, when he had measured Helen for a skirt and hadn’t given her a fitting until several months later.

When that day finally came, the skirt waist didn’t meet by a couple of inches. He stared in disbelief and tugged and pulled at the cloth a few times but it made no difference. Quickly he passed a tape measure round her middle, then consulted his notebook and measured again. From his kneeling position he looked up at us, totally baffled.

Helen smiled and relieved his agony. “I should have told you,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

He looked at her narrowly, but since he was responsible for the long delay he was in no position to complain. However, the unheard-of loss of face might have put a strain on our relations but for my long-standing rapport with Blanco, to whom he was devoted.

Blanco was around five years old and though he had been mainly healthy he had required my attention a few times, usually to extract pins embedded in his pads. He was the only tailor’s dog I knew and I had often thought that it was an occupational hazard, lying daily as he did among the debris of his master’s trade, but there was no doubt that those pins often got right in and had to be extracted by digging deep with forceps. Blanco was always delighted and grateful, in fact he was one of those dogs who actually enjoyed coming to my surgery. Some dogs crossed to the other side of the road when they entered Trengate and slunk past the surgery with their tails down, but Blanco nearly tugged Mr. Bendelow off his feet as he fought to drag him through our door.

He had been in for his annual distemper booster a week ago and he had come prancing along the passage, wagging furiously and poking his head sociably round the office door on his way to the consulting room. So different from a big yellow Labrador bitch who followed him and had to be sledged along on her bottom the entire length of the passage tiles, her face a mask of misery even though she was only going to have her paw bandaged.