Every Living Thing (29 page)

There was something in what he said. An air of quiet menace emanated from the Dobermanns, something unnerving in the way they stood motionless, tall and lean, looking thoughtfully from one strange man to the other. They gave me the impression that they could go into unpleasant action at any moment.

“This just isn’t good enough!” Siegfried was working up into full cry, waving a hand in Calum’s face, when the dogs, resenting the display of aggression, began to growl, softly but chillingly, their eyes fixed on my partner’s face, their lips quivering, showing a lot of white teeth.

“Quiet!” rapped Calum. “Sit!” Both dogs dropped immediately onto their haunches and looked up at him adoringly. Clearly, they, like all animals, were in his thrall.

“Well, there’s a cow down at Jack Skinner’s.” The young man consulted his list. “I’d better get on.” He turned and left with the two big creatures trotting at his heels.

Siegfried looked at me wearily. “Remember what I said? It’s started.”

The following week I was coming down the garden path from the yard to the back of the house when I heard the sounds—a loud barking and snarling accompanied by a man’s voice crying for help. There was a smaller yard immediately outside the operating room and they seemed to be coming from there. We didn’t use this little yard very much—it held the dustbins, an outhouse and an ancient outside toilet that had been there since the early days of the house.

There was a side door that led to the garden and I peered through. It was Siegfried’s voice raised in frantic appeal, coming from the old toilet whose door hung crazily on one hinge. To my horror I saw the two Dobermanns hurling themselves repeatedly at this flimsy bastion and baying for blood. My blood froze. My partner was in there and if that old door gave way something terrible was going to happen. There was nothing I could do. I am not afraid of dogs but I had a sure conviction that if I exposed myself to those two I wouldn’t last very long.

I rushed to the bottom of the garden and into the house. “Calum! Calum!” I yelled.

He came running down the stairs and when he heard the uproar he galloped through with me to the back of the house. “Maggie! Anna! You bad dogs! Come here at once!”

The noise was switched off immediately and the Dobermanns came slinking round Calum’s feet, looking up at him furtively, their faces fixed in ingratiating grins. “Get upstairs!” he shouted, and the dogs shot off into the house.

Wisely, Calum decided to follow them, leaving Siegfried to me. I dragged the broken door open to release one very cross veterinary surgeon. “By God, James,” he said, wild-eyed, “that was a near go! I was picking plums last night and I ate a few too many. Got caught short and had to make a dash for the nearest loo. I was just lowering myself onto the seat when those two man-eaters came roaring into the yard and I only just managed to jam the door with one foot against it. I’m bloody sure if I had moved that foot an inch they’d have had me! I’ve been stuck in there for ages!”

“Gosh. I’m sorry, Siegfried,” I said. I wasn’t just sorry. I was riddled with guilt. This was my fault. I was the one who had persuaded my partner against his better judgement and he had been so right. The menagerie was on its way.

E
IGHT O’CLOCK ON A
Saturday evening and as I prepared to visit a sick calf the phone rang.

“This is Mr. Birse, Number Ten, Ivy Street. I ’ave a dog bad, will you come?”

“What’s the trouble, Mr. Birse?”

“Don’t know. Won’t eat. Will you come?” The voice was surly and impatient. It sounded as though the man had other, more pressing affairs to attend to.

“All right. I’ll be along very soon.”

Bonk went the phone at the other end and I pondered not for the first time on the fact that vets often weren’t regarded as people. They had no interest in staying at home with their families on a Saturday night like others.

Number 10 was one of a long row of mean, brick-built dwellings and I rang the bell and waited. Nothing happened and I tried again. Still no result, yet I could tell by the light in the window that there was somebody at home. I must have rung and hammered on the door for five minutes before a fiftyish man in shirt and braces opened the door. He seemed in a big hurry and after beckoning hastily he turned and almost trotted along the passage and into the front room. He stabbed a finger at a dog basket in the corner before dropping into a chair to join the family, who were grouped around a blaring television set.

Not one of the intent faces, staring at the screen, showed the slightest interest in me and it was clear that I wasn’t going to get a case history from any of them, so I went over to the basket to inspect my patient. He was a big black Labrador dog, chin resting on the rim of the basket, looking at me with the kind eyes of his breed. As I knelt down, his tail thrashed against the bedding and he licked at my hand, but he turned away immediately and began a frantic scratching and worrying at his coat. I could see now that there were bald patches and sores all over his body. I lifted up his foreleg and then his hind and saw that the skin inflammation was most intense under elbow and thigh. Typical sarcoptic mange, but in this case neglected till the sheer misery of the irritation had put the poor animal off his food.

I was pretty sure of my diagnosis but decided to take the routine skin scraping. Nobody took any notice as I went out to the car for scalpel and slide, leaving the door ajar. Back inside I scraped a little of the inflamed tissue onto the glass slide and slipped it into an envelope as the dog gazed at me patiently and the television boomed.

When I had finished I went into the kitchen and washed my hands at a sink filled with dirty dishes to which congealed vegetables and Yorkshire pudding adhered. Back in the living room I looked round the unheeding group. Father, mother, and a son and daughter in their twenties all puffing cigarettes, all gaping wide-eyed at the bawling screen. I had to communicate somehow and I chose Father.

“Your dog has mange,” I shouted into his ear. For an instant his eyes flickered towards me, then, as the screen belched out a screech of brakes and a volley of shots, they resumed their hypnotic stare.

I held out two packets of my activated sulphur mange wash. More modern treatments for external parasites were coming onto the market, but I had always had great results with my beloved Number Three Wash, as we called it, and I remained faithful to it.

“Follow the directions on the packet,” I bellowed. “Give him a really thorough bath and be sure to get into every nook and cranny of his body. Repeat with the other pack in a week and then I’ll have another look at him.”

Father nodded, glassy-eyed. It didn’t seem as though I could do anything more, so I put the packets on the sideboard and let myself out.

In the dark street I leaned on my car for a moment. Strange things happened in veterinary practice, but this was really very strange. All that time in there without a word spoken and why, after they had let that nice dog get into such a state, which must have taken several weeks, had they decided to call assistance on a Saturday night? Ah well, part of the rich tapestry. I got into the car and drove away.

The sick calf was at Mr. Farrow’s farm, two miles outside Darrowby. I walked into the fold yard, where the farmer was forking straw to bed up a group of young heifers. When he saw me he put down his fork and opened his arms wide in delight. “Well, Mr. Herriot, well, well, well.”

He spoke the words slowly, almost reverently, and a delighted smile transfigured his face. “I’m sorry to bother ye on a Saturday night, but it is lovely to see you again. It’s been a long time!” His tall son went by with a sack of meal on his shoulder and he, too, grinned and waved.

I was about to turn into the calf house when Mr. Farrow held up a hand. “Nay, nay, you’ll ’ave to come and see t’missus first.” He hurried with me to the farm kitchen.

“Edith, Edith!” he called out eagerly. “Here’s Mr. Herriot come to see us again!”

Mrs. Farrow was a shy lady, but she got up from her chair and gave me a gentle smile as though she had been looking for me for a long time. “Well, Mr. Herriot, it’s a bit since you were here, You’re a sight for sore eyes. I’ll put t’kettle on and you’ll come in for a cup o’ tea when you’re done, won’t you?”

“Yes, thank you very much, I will.” I went out into the yard, feeling the cold air on my face but warmed inside by the welcome. The Farrows were always like that, but it was particularly sweet after my visit to the Birse household.

The difference in their concern for their animal, too, was marked. The calf was suffering from a congestion of the lungs that could easily have progressed into pneumonia, and after I had injected it the farmer and his son, without my telling them, began to thread binder twine through the corners of a thick sack and by the time I was ready to leave, the little creature’s chest was warmly wrapped. “That’s good to see,” I said. “With all these new sulpha drugs and antibiotics it’s easy to forget the nursing of animals, but it’s still so important.”

Back in the surgery I put my skin scraping under the microscope and the nasty little
Sarcoptes scabei
looked up at me. The unpleasant, bristly-legged mite was burrowing pitilessly into the skin of that nice dog and making his life a torment. However, it was better than the other horror, the cigar-shaped Demodex, which sounded the death knell of so many dogs.

Demodectic mange was so often incurable, but my trusty Number Three Wash would clear up this present case, bad as it was. And yet, over the weekend the thought kept recurring: would those Birses have done the job properly? Would they have done it at all? Somehow, the solicitude of the Farrows with their calf seemed to make the situation almost unbearable.

By Monday morning I couldn’t stand it any longer and I rang the doorbell at No. 10, Ivy Street. “Good morning, Mrs. Birse,” I said breezily. “I was just passing and thought I’d have another look at your dog.”

“Aye, well…” The lady seemed a little nonplussed, but as she hesitated I slipped past her and into the front room.

The big dog was still in his basket and my two white packets were on the sideboard where I had put them.

“We’ve been a bit busy,” she muttered. “We’ll get ’im done tonight.”

I looked at the dog. I have always thought that there is a special beauty in the lustrous coat of a black Labrador but this was a desecration. The ravaged skin looked even worse in the daylight and the hind legs moved convulsively in response to the constant itching.

“What’s his name?” I asked.

“Jet.”

I bent down and stroked the dog’s head. “Poor old Jet,” I said. “You are in a state.” And as the tail thumped and the tongue reached for my hand, I made up my mind.

“Give me a bucket of warm water, will you please, Mrs. Birse. I’ll give him his first treatment. It’ll only take a minute or two.”

“Come on, lad,” I said, and Jet trotted obediently after me into the back garden, where a few tired-looking Brussels sprouts stood among a jungle of weeds. I tipped the packet into the water and stirred the mixture rapidly, feeling an irrational compulsion to get at those mange mites. I felt a bit silly, too, because I had never done this on a client’s premises before, but I didn’t care and slapped the thick liquid onto Jet’s coat with a kind of savage joy.

As I rubbed the stuff into the dog’s skin, working it deeply into the clefts of thigh and elbow, he looked up at me happily, his tail waving. Dogs in my experience hated being bathed, but it seemed as though the big animal was only too pleased to have any sort of attention. He was enjoying the whole thing.

As I worked I became aware of a head watching me over the garden hedge. I looked up and an elderly man nodded cheerfully.

“Mornin’. You’ll be t’vitnery.”

“That’s right.”

He blew out his cheeks. “By gaw, you must be a busy feller goin’ round washin’ all them dogs all the time.”

I smiled at his idea of a veterinary surgeon’s life. “Oh, yes, it’s quite a job.”

I was aware of his intent gaze as I completed my shampoo and began a brisk towelling, happy in the knowledge that I had delivered the first blow against those malignant little beasties in the skin.

“Grand dog, that,” said the old man.

“He is indeed.”

The man lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Them folks don’t bother with ’im, tha knows. He’s in a ’ell of a state.”

I didn’t say anything, but the sight of Jet standing bedraggled and half bald like a canine scarecrow bore out his words.

“Can ye cure ’im?”

“I think so, but it’s going to take time and regular bathing with this stuff of mine. Every week until he’s right.”

“Next week for a start, eh?”

“That’s right. I’m going to ask Mrs. Birse to do it next Monday.”

“You’ll be lucky,” the old man grunted and his head moved away from the hedge.

In the kitchen I passed on my instructions to Mrs. Birse and she sniffed.

“Ah see you’ve been talkin’ to awd Howell. He’s a nosey awd bugger. Allus watchin’ ower that hedge.”

Nosey or not, I thought, he was a lot more concerned about her dog than she was. And as I took my leave with a last look back at Jet wagging cheerfully despite his plight, I knew that I’d be back at No. 10 next Monday.

And, feeling daft but determined, I was duly there on the day, ringing that bell. Mrs. Birse displayed her usual lack of enthusiasm and beckoned me unsmilingly into the house. She led me into the back garden and jerked her head in the direction of the hedge.

“Them next door’s doin’ ’im.” She turned and went back into the house.

I looked over the hedge. In the middle of a tidy little garden Jet was standing by a steaming bucket while Mr. Howell and his wife busily rubbed the mange wash into his coat.

The old man looked up at me and grinned. “Now then, vitnery, we’re doin’ your job. Them Birses would never bathe ’im every week like you said so I asked if we could have a go. We like this dog.”

“Well…that’s fine. You’re doing a good job, too.”

Jet looked up at me and though his face was thickly smeared with my concoction his eyes danced with pleasure and his tail lashed. This, he was telling me, is great. As the two old people worked they were talking to him all the time. “Now then, a bit more on ’ere, Jet, lad.” “Let’s have hold of that other leg, old feller.” The friendly murmurings went on, and the big dog was lapping up the unaccustomed affection.