Every Living Thing (19 page)

I hooked my forefinger into the eye socket—my favourite trick, there was nothing else to get hold of except the lower jaw, which was dangerously fragile—and began to pull with infinite care. The ewe strained, crushing my hand against the pelvic bones—not as bad as in a cow but painful, and my mouth opened wide as I eased and twisted and pulled until, with a blessed surge, the head slipped through the bony pelvic opening.

It wasn’t long, then, until feet, legs and nose appeared at the vulva and I brought the little creature out onto the grass. He lay still for a moment, snuffling at the cold world he had entered, then he shook his head vigorously. I smiled. That was the best sign of all.

I had another wrestle with the morsel of soap, then the farmer wordlessly handed me a piece of sacking to dry my arms. This was quite common in those days. Towels were scarce commodities on the farms and I couldn’t blame the farmers’ wives for hesitating to send out a clean towel to a man who had just had his arms up the back end of an animal. An old soiled one was the usual and if not, the hessian sack was always at hand. I couldn’t rub my painful arms with the coarse material and contented myself with a careful patting, before pushing them, still damp, into the sleeves of my jacket.

The ewe, hearing a high-pitched call from her lamb, began to talk back with the soft deep baa I knew so well, and as she got up and began an intensive licking of the little creature I stood there, forgetful of the cold, listening to their conversation, enthralled as ever by the miracle of birth. When the lamb, apparently feeling he was wasting time, struggled to his feet and tottered unsteadily round to the milk bar I grinned in satisfaction and turned on the way back to the car.

After breakfast my next call was to a “cleansing,” the removal of the afterbirth from a cow, and again, after a struggle with a rock-hard marble of soap, I was offered a sack to dry myself, only this time it had recently contained potatoes and I found I was powdering my chapped arms with soil. Later in the morning, after a rectal examination for pregnancy diagnosis, I had the choice of a truly filthy “cow house towel” which must have had an astronomical bacterial count and declined it in favour of yet another piece of hessian.

My arms were red-hot inside my sleeves when I drove into the Birrell farmyard, but I knew better things awaited me here. Wonderful things, in fact.

I never knew what George Birrell’s attitude to towels might be or that of his wife, but his mother, old Grandma Birrell, had very clear views on the matter. When I had finished stitching a tear on the cow’s udder I stood on the cobbles, blood-spattered and expectant, waiting for the old lady. Right on cue, she came into the byre hand in hand with four-year-old Lucy, the youngest of her grandchildren. She set down a milking stool and laid out in a perfectly folded oblong a newly laundered towel of a snowy whiteness and on top of this she placed a tablet of expensive lavender toilet soap in its wrappings, virgin and unopened. A brightly scoured aluminium bucket of steaming water completed the picture, as pretty a one as ever I had seen.

Reverently I peeled the paper from the soap—it was always a new tablet—and as I dipped into the water and spread the rich lather on my burning arms, inhaling the fragrance of the lavender, I almost crooned with ecstasy. The farmer stood by impassively with perhaps the faintest twitch of amusement round his mouth, but Grandma
Birrell and Lucy watched my ablutions with rapt enjoy-ment.

It was always like this at the Birrells’ and I loved it but I could never quite understand why it happened. Maybe Siegfried had a point when he said that old ladies liked me, and he was always pulling my leg about my “harem” of over-seventies who insisted on my services for their dogs. Anyway, whatever the cause, I revelled in the patronage of Grandma Birrell. In her eyes, everything had to be right for me. Nothing was too good for Mr. Herriot.

It was a Saturday morning in the office when Siegfried pushed the
Darrowb? and Houlton Times
across the desk to me.

“Bit of sad news for you, I’m afraid, James,” he murmured, pointing to an entry.

It was in the deaths column. “Mrs. Marjorie Birrell, aged 78, dearly beloved wife of the late Herbert Birrell…”I read it through with a growing sense of loss, a rising wistfulness at the feeling of something good coming to an end.

Siegfried gave me a lop-sided smile, “Your old clean towel friend, eh?”

“That’s right.” Her clean towels were her expression of friendship and it was as a friend I would always remember her. In my mind’s eye I could see her plainly in her flowered apron standing by the milking stool with Lucy. She was of the farming generation that had come through the tough times before the war, and her gaunt, slightly bowed frame and lined face bore testimony to the hard years. It was the kind of face I had seen on so many of the old Yorkshire folk—grim, but kindly. I knew I was going to miss her.

Just how much I would miss her came to me forcibly on my next visit to the Birrell farm. As I finished my job I looked at my soiled hands with the renewed pang of realisation that the old lady wouldn’t be coming through that door. I knew George Birrell wouldn’t offer me a sack, but what was going to happen?

As I pondered, the half-door was pushed open and little Lucy came into the byre, staggering slightly as she carried the familiar shining bucket of hot water. Then from under her arm she produced a towel and soap and laid them on a milking stool. And it was the same spotless, geometrically folded towel and the same pristine toilet soap as before.

Slightly flushed, the little girl looked up at me. “Gran said I had to look after you,” she said breathlessly. “She told me what to do.”

I swallowed a big lump. “Well, Lucy…that’s wonderful. And you’ve done everything just right.”

She nodded, well pleased, and I stole a look at her father, standing there, leaning on a cow. But George’s face was inscrutable.

I peeled the wrapper from the soap and began to wash and as the scent of the lavender rose around me I was carried back to all the other days.

I lathered my hands in silence, then the little girl spoke again. “Mr. Herriot, the only thing is, I’m five now and I’ll soon be goin’ to school, I don’t know how you’re goin’ to manage.”

An overwhelming flood of
déjà vu
washed over me. My own daughter, Rosie, at that same age had been consumed with worry at how I was going to carry on my life without her and had consoled me with the reassurance that she’d still be available at weekends.

I didn’t know what to say, but her father broke in.

“Don’t worry, luv,” he said, “I’ll do me best if you’ll teach me how, and anyway, from now on I’m goin’ to try to call Mr. Herriot out only on Saturdays.”

I
FELT A LITTLE
breathless as I lifted the phone.

“I’m sorry, Lord Hulton,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ll be a little late in visiting your horse this morning. My house blew down last night.”

There was a silence at the other end and I could sense the amiable peer having some difficulty in absorbing my announcement. I felt I should explain further.

“As you know, there was a gale during the night—ninety miles per hour, I understand—and the house I am having built had just got to roof height. I’ve been along to have a look as I usually do each morning, and as I say, it’s blown down. Piles of bricks everywhere and masses of twisted scaffolding. I have a few arrangements I must make.”

There was another silence, quite a long one, then just two words.

“Oh, crumbs.”

It was a traumatic moment in my life and I have never forgotten that brief riposte from the eccentric but endearing Marquis of Hulton. Those two words in his habitual exquisitely modulated tones conveyed all the shock and compassion the little man so clearly felt.

This event marked one more step in my efforts to move my family to a more suitable dwelling, and they had started quite soon after my abortive attempt to buy Mrs. Dryden’s house.

It took me quite a while to recover from that bidding battle in the Drovers’ Arms. I had built my hopes so high and the sense of failure hung heavily on me as I had to watch my wife still slogging away in the wide reaches of Skeldale House. Helen herself, undoubtedly a better adjusted character than I, just laughed the whole thing off.

“Something else will turn up,” she said as she scrubbed and polished happily. That was the maddening thing about it—she didn’t mind. But I did and my obsession remained. Somehow I would get her out of Skeldale.

There was a sudden gleam of light when I spotted the notice in the
Darrowby and Houlton Times.

“Look at this, Helen!” I said eagerly, pointing to a picture among the estate agents’ advertisements on the front page. “I know that house. It’s a very nice place.”

She peered over my shoulder. “Oh, yes, along the Dennaby road. I’ve seen it—very attractive.” Then she gave me a questioning glance. “But it’s a detached house, not too big, I know, but not like Mrs. Dryden’s little semi. It will take a lot of money.”

“Oh, old Bootland and I between us pushed up the price of Mrs. Dryden’s. That little place was only worth about two thousand pounds. This one will go for its right price—around three thousand. I think the building society would lend me that much.”

I came in for lunch that day, flushed with success. The man at the society had been very accommodating—the mortgage would be okay.

“Things are looking up, Helen,” I said. “Really it’s a good job we didn’t get the other house. This one is just right. A bit bigger, but compact and a nice-sized garden with an orchard and a lovely view down the dale. The auction is next Friday so we haven’t long to wait. This is it, Helen—I know it is!”

My wife gazed at me thoughtfully. “Jim, I’ll only agree to this if you promise to keep calm at the sale.”

“Calm? What do you mean?”

“Well, you know very well that you got all worked up and bid way past the price we could afford. All I’m asking is for you to keep calm and not get yourself into a state like last time.”

“Calm…state…? I don’t understand you,” I said haughtily.

Her smile was patient. “Oh, you must remember. You were white, like a ghost, and shaking all over at the end of it. I wondered if you’d ever be able to get up and walk out.”

“You’re exaggerating,” I replied with dignity. “I was under a certain amount of pressure, that’s all.”

Helen’s smile suddenly turned to a grin. “Oh, I know, but I’m not going with you unless you promise to go as far as that three thousand and not a penny more. I mean it, Jim.”

“Right…right…I promise, of course. I wouldn’t do anything so silly, anyway.”

This little contretemps vanished quickly from my mind and I was soon back in my old fantasy—imagining Helen floating around effortlessly in the new house, the children climbing the trees and picking the fruit in the garden. On my rounds I kept changing my route so that I could go along the Dennaby road and feast my eyes on the place. Helen and I had had a look round and it was perfect. And soon, very soon, it would be mine.

I didn’t come off my cloud till the Friday afternoon when we walked across the market-place to the Drovers’. When we went into the crowded room where the auction was to be held I felt a sudden lurch at my stomach. It was all horribly reminiscent of last time. Same room, same rows of heads, same auctioneer on the platform drumming his fingers on the table in front of him and looking over the throng with a pleased smile. By the time we had squeezed into a place and sat down, my heart was thumping.

Soon the auctioneer started his preamble, telling us all the nice things I already knew about the house. As he went on, Helen, squashed tightly against me and possibly sensing some slight quivering in my limbs, gripped my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine.

“Just relax, Jim,” she whispered.

I sniffed. “I’m perfectly relaxed, I assure you,” I mumbled, trying to ignore the thudding in my ears as the bidding started. I did feel, however, that a few deep breaths would help in a situation like this.

It was at about the third deep breath that I heard the words “And now I have two thousand nine hundred” from the auctioneer. He seemed to have arrived at the figure unexpectedly quickly and I shot up my hand. Other hands rose all around me and I heard “I have three thousand.”

At that moment Helen’s grip on my hand tightened fiercely. She was a big strong woman and it came to me with certainty that if I pursued this matter further she would reduce my fingers to a pulp.

It would have made no difference anyway because the whole business was raging away out of my control. “Three thousand one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, three thousand four hundred…” Then in no time at all, as I sat mute, he was over four thousand with forests of bids going in. There was a slight slowing down in the late four thousands, but before I had finished my deep breathing exercise I heard the hammer going down on the table—sold to Mr. Somebody-or-other for five thousand pounds. It was all over and I hadn’t even had a look in.

As we rose and began to shuffle out with the crowd I saw a grey-haired man shaking hands with the auctioneer and laughing in what I thought was an insufferably smug manner, then we were outside, walking over the cobbles of the market-place.

The deflated feeling was the same as before. Helen was still holding my hand and I managed to work up a smile.

“Well, it’s happened again,” I murmured. “But maybe I’m not as white this time?”

My wife studied my face for a moment. “No…a bit pale perhaps, but nothing like last time.” Then she laughed. “Poor old lad, you never had the chance to get really white. It was over in a flash. Anyway, never mind—I often think that so many things happen for the best.”

“Still, it’s another disappointment,” I said. “Last time we had Mrs. Dryden to console us a bit, but there’s nobody today.”

As I spoke, I felt a tug at my sleeve. I turned and saw Bert Rawlings, whose smallholding’s fields bordered the house that had just been sold.

“Hullo, Bert,” I said. “Been to the sale?”

“Aye, I ’ave, Mr. Herriot, and I’m right glad you didn’t get that ’ouse.”