Every Living Thing (26 page)

“Seven! That’s quite a family.”

“Aye, it is. And I suppose it’s one reason why I took him on. He seemed desperate for a place to live and we’ve got a good big cottage here. I felt a bit sorry for the chap.” He paused and looked thoughtfully across the yard. “As I said, he’s out of the ordinary.”

I was walking away when he called after me. “By the way, his name’s Basil Courtenay. That’s a bit different, too, isn’t it?”

In the cow house, I studied Basil with interest. Somewhere in the mid-thirties, I thought. Very slim, dark, almost Spanish looking. He greeted me with a wide grin. “Now then, vitnery, it’s nobbut cold today. It ’ud freeze your lugs off out in them fields.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “It’s really nippy.” I scrutinised him afresh. He didn’t sound like a schoolteacher. But there was a jaunty cheerfulness about him, a friendliness in the dark eyes. I liked him.

The cow was lame in the off hind foot, and as I bent down and put a finger between the cleats, she aimed a warning kick at me.

“Just hold her head, will you please,” I said.

Basil inclined his head graciously, gave a slight bow and moved into the stall. But he didn’t grab a horn and put his fingers in the nose as was usual. He wound his arms round the neck and hugged the head tightly to his chest. I had never seen it done that way, but it seemed to have the desired effect and the cow stood quietly as I lifted the foot.

By tapping the sole with the handle of my hoof knife I found a tender area.

“There’s a little abscess in there,” I said. “I’ll have to pare it out. It would be best to pull her leg up over that beam to do it. Can you fetch me a piece of rope, please?”

Again the little inclination of the head, the bow, and he went down the byre with long, graceful steps. When he returned he proffered the rope graciously, bending from the hips rather like a high-class tailor displaying his wares.

I tied it round the foot, threw the other end over the beam, and with Basil pulling cheerfully I began to pare the sole.

“I hear you’ve done a bit of teaching,” I said, as I scraped away at the hard tissue.

“Oh, aye, I ’ave. Ah’ve done a good bit o’ that in me time, ah can tell ye.”

“Really. What subjects did you teach?”

“Well now, a bit o’ this and a bit o’ that. There’s nowt ah couldn’t turn me ’and to, tha knows.”

“I see. And where did you teach? Which schools?”

“Oh, ’ere and there, ’ere and there. Ah got around a bit, like.” Basil shook his head and smiled as though the words raised happy memories.

As I worked on the foot he chattered away, and without being at all specific, he suggested that he had also taught in universities.

“You actually lectured?”

“Oh, aye, ah did, ah did.”

A feeling of unreality was beginning to envelop me, but I had to ask.

“Which universities?”

“Well…’ere and there, ’ere and there.”

The conversation was brought to a close by a trickle of pus appearing under my knife, a happy outcome to my paring.

“There it goes,” I said. “She’ll be fine now. I’ll give her a shot and she ought to be sound in a day or two. But I’ll want some hot water to wash my hands.”

Basil made an expansive gesture. “Ye can come into t’house and ’ave a proper wash.”

I followed him to the cottage next to the farm buildings and he threw open the door before ushering me ceremoniously inside.

A table ran down one side of the big kitchen and the entire family were at their Saturday dinner. Mrs. Cour-tenay, very fat, blonde and smiling, presided over an array of healthy-looking children who were attacking the heaped plates with relish. In the centre of the floor a sturdy infant was seated on a chamber-pot from whose interior a series of explosive poppings and splutterings accompanied the child’s expulsive efforts.

Basil waved a hand over the domestic scene. “This is ma wife and family, Mr. ’erriot, and we’re all right glad to meet ye.”

He did not exaggerate. There was an outburst of eager smiles and nods from the children as their father looked on proudly. A happy family indeed.

Basil led me to the kitchen sink, which was filled to overflowing with the unwashed debris of several meals. In fact it was difficult to get my hands under the tap until Basil cleared a small space for me, pushing greasy pans and dishes to one side, daintily picking pieces of congealed bacon and sausage from around the soap-dish.

As I washed, the toddler on the floor decided to vacate his seat on the chamber-pot. Basil went over, lifted the vessel and surveyed the interior with satisfaction. Then he strode to the coke-burning cooker against the wall, lifted the lid and hurled the contents of the pot into the depths. And even this movement was performed with a graceful sweep of the arm.

Mrs. Courtenay half rose from her seat. “You’ll ’ave a cup o’ tea, Mr. ’erriot?”

“No…er…no, thank you. I have a couple of visits waiting and I must get on. But thank you again, and it’s been nice meeting you.”

I had to visit the farm several times over the next few months and Basil seemed to be coping reasonably well with his job. But I always had the feeling that he was doing things differently from other stock-men I had known; his way of handling the animals was unusual, in fact his whole approach had something strange about it. On one occasion, in order to get a halter on a loose heifer he hung upside down from a beam—it was as though he had a smattering of the whole business but not a lot of experience.

During my visits, Basil was always full of chat and his conversation was interspersed with shadowy references to his amazingly varied past. Little snippets emerged of his involvement in the acting world, in architecture and many other things. It seemed, too, that at one time he had taught ballroom dancing. But all attempts to pin him down never got beyond the usual response of “’ere and there.”

I also saw Basil a few times in Darrowby. He wasn’t a big drinker but he liked to visit one of the local pubs on a Saturday evening, and when I first saw him there I was struck again by his distinctive behaviour. He was at a big table with a bunch of grinning farm men sitting behind tall pint glasses, but Basil wasn’t drinking beer. He was lying back in his chair, legs outstretched, and he was holding a glass of wine, cupped in his palm, the stem protruding beneath his fingers. I had seen people in films—foreign noblemen and the like—holding wineglasses in this way, but never anybody in a Yorkshire pub.

As always, he presented a picture of elegance and grace. Almost reclining in his seat, he was holding forth to his audience, waving a debonair hand to emphasize his points, sipping occasionally at his wine. And it was clear that the farm men were lapping it all up. The outbursts of laughter, the delighted nods, the expressions of amazement all testified to their enthralment in Basil’s recital.

He soon became a celebrity among these men and I gathered that, although he was an object of mystery to them, the facet that had most intrigued them was his vague allusions to his university experiences. They christened him “Professor Baz” and as such he was known throughout the agricultural community. The usual “ ’ere and there” was all anybody could elicit, but, though various theories about him were bandied around, one thing was universal—everybody seemed to like him.

During the month of March I began to see quite a lot of Basil. It is the time of year when the health of livestock is at its lowest ebb. The animals have been confined to the buildings through the long winter and their resistance to disease has worn very thin. Calves especially are vulnerable at this time and the ones under Basil’s care had been struck down by the dreaded scour—the highly fatal diarrhoea that has been one of the curses of calf rearing for generations, always lurking, always ready to strike. Any faults in feeding or environment bring trouble.

Fortunately, modern advances have put vastly improved weapons in the hands of the vets, and at that time I was having good results with a granular mixture of antibiotics and sulphonamides, but I wasn’t doing very well with these calves.

There were sixteen of them in a long row of pens and I looked at them with growing apprehension. They were miserable and depressed, many with whitish liquid faeces trickling down their tails, some prostrate in the straw.

“Basil,” I said, “are you sure you’re getting the right dose into them?”

“Oh, aye, Mr. ’erriot. Just exackly wot you said.”

“And you’re giving it to them last thing at night and first thing in the morning? That’s important.”

“Definitely. You don’t ’ave to worry about that.”

I dug my hands deeper into my pockets. “Well, I don’t understand it. They’re not responding. And the next thing’s going to be pneumonia. I don’t like the look of them at all.”

I administered vitamin injections to back up the medication and left, but I had a nasty feeling that something very unpleasant was just round the corner.

It had been bitterly cold all day and the wind had that piercing quality that usually precedes snow. I wasn’t surprised when, around eight o’clock, the big white flakes began to drift down and within an hour the countryside was blanketed in white. The snow stopped then and I was grateful, because a heavy fall made it almost impossible to reach some of the high farms. A shovel was essential equipment.

I was relieved that there had been no more snow next morning when I had a call at 7:00
A.M.
to a calving at a remote smallholding at the top of the dale. I had finished the job by nine o’clock and as I drove home, warm with the satisfaction that the delivery of a live calf has always given me, I marvelled at the new world around me. It was always beautiful up there, but the snow had made a magical change, adding a white stillness and peace.

I was looking at the delicate roadside drifts the wind had shaped so exquisitely in the night when I saw the gate to Mr. Whitehead’s farm. It was a good chance to check on those calves and I turned my car along the lane.

All was quiet when I reached the buildings and the first thing I noticed was that between Basil’s cottage and the calf house stretched a long expanse of unbroken snow.

I knocked at the door and Basil answered, as cheerful and full of bounce as ever.

“Come in, Mr. ’erriot! How ista this mornin’? Missus is upstairs makin’ the beds. Ah’ll shout ’er down and she’ll get ye a cup o’ tea.”

“No thanks,” I replied. “I just dropped in to see those calves. How are they this morning?”

“Oh, about t’same, ah reckon.”

“And you’ve given them the granules?”

“Oh, aye, I ’ave. Gave ’em before breakfast.”

I beckoned him to the kitchen window. “Come over here, Basil.”

Together we looked out and he stood very still as he gazed at the carpet of virgin snow.

“You’ve never been out there at all, have you?” I said. “And you weren’t out last night, either. That snow stopped at nine o’clock and you were to dose them just before bedtime.”

He didn’t say anything, but his head turned slowly towards me, and it was as though a mask had been stripped from his face. The jaunty smile had gone, leaving a terrible defencelessness. He looked at me with haunted eyes.

The transformation was so dramatic that my first anger dissolved. We stared at each other in silence for a few moments, then I spoke slowly.

“Now look, Basil, I’m not going to tell your boss about this, but you’ve let me down badly. Will you promise me you’ll do your job properly in the future?”

He nodded dumbly.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s get over to the calves now.”

He sat down and began to pull on his Wellingtons, then he looked up at me with a haggard expression.

“Ah tell ye, Mr. ’erriot, ah don’t mean no harm. Ah don’t want to neglect them calves, but it’s like me heart’s not in the job. Ah’m not a proper farm man—never will be.”

I didn’t say anything and he went on.

“Ah’ve spoken to t’boss about it and ah’ll be leavin’ soon.”

“Have you got another job to go to?”

“Aye…aye…ah’ve got summat in mind. But till ah go, you don’t ’ave to worry. Ah’ll look after them calves.”

He did, too. From that day the little creatures began to improve and on my final visit there was the warming sight of all sixteen of them, frisky and upright in their pens, poking their heads out into the passage as they looked for their food.

Shortly after this, Basil left the district, but the reputation of “Professor Baz” lingered on, and his departure was bemoaned among the farming community. One cowman expressed the general sentiment to me.

“By gaw, he was a rum feller,” he said, “but we ’ad some fun with ’im. You couldn’t help liking ’im.”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s how I feel. I wonder where he’s gone.”

The man laughed. “Nobody knows, but I expect it’ll be “ ’ere and there.’ ?

I thought I had seen the last of Basil, but I was wrong. One night, Helen and I drove through to Brawton to celebrate her birthday. We had booked for dinner at one of the fine hotels in the town and the festive feeling was strong in us as we sat in the pillared splendour of the dining room, lapped around by the Victorian opulence that is one of Brawton’s lasting charms.

It was a special treat for us and we enjoyed every bite of the meal, but as we sat over our coffee I noticed Helen staring intently across the vast room.

“That waiter, Jim, working right at the far end. You’ve had your back to him, but…”

I turned and looked. “My God!” I said. “It’s Basil!”

I shifted my seat so that I could observe properly and there was no doubt. Basil it was. He was unbelievably elegant in white tie and tails and as he bent to serve an elderly couple it struck me forcibly that with his dark good looks, his courtly manner and his natural grace he was everything that a waiter should be.

I watched, spellbound. He was turning to the lady now, proffering vegetables with that inclination of the head I knew so well, smiling and bowing as she made her choice. He was talking, too, and I could imagine the effortless flow that had entertained me so often in the cow house. The old couple were nodding and laughing, clearly captivated by him. I wondered what he was telling them. Was it about his colourful past? It looked very like it.