Every Living Thing (7 page)

“Mm, I saw. Dedication, I’d call it.”

“That’s it, dedication. Good to see in somebody his age.” There was another pause, then, “Y’know, Henry, there was something else about that young fella.”

“What was that, George?”

“Knows his clothes. Splendid suit. Rather envy him his tailor.”

“L
OOK AT THAT LITTLE
lad!”

Farmer Dugdale was amused as he watched Jimmy directing his torch beam as I calved the cow. My son, ten years old, was taking his duty very seriously. It was quite dark in the loose box and he solemnly followed my every movement with his beam, shining on the cow’s rear end as I worked, then on the bucket of hot water each time I resoaped my arms or dipped the ropes in the disinfectant.

“Yes,” I said, “he loves night work.”

Jimmy, in fact, loved all veterinary work, but if I was called out in the evening before his bedtime it was his particular delight to come with me, sitting by me, quite absorbed, as the headlights picked out the twists and turns of the country lanes.

And tonight when we arrived he had been into the boot before me, picking out the different coloured ropes to go on the calf’s head and feet, busily tipping the right amount of disinfectant into the bucket.

“You’ve got the red rope on the head, Dad?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well behind the ears?”

“That’s right.”

He nodded. Partly he was seeking information but he was also keeping me right, making sure I didn’t make any silly mistakes.

It was a source of wonder to me that both my children were fascinated by my job. I often thought that the sight of their father rushing around all hours of the day and night, missing meals, working on Saturdays and Sundays while my non-veterinary friends played golf, would be enough to turn them away from my profession for life, but instead of that their greatest pleasure was to come with me on my rounds, taking in every detail of my diagnostic efforts and treatments.

I suppose the simple explanation was that, like me, like Helen, they were besotted with animals. To be able to work with these appealing creatures made everything worthwhile, and there was no doubt in the minds of both my children; they wanted to be vets.

It struck me now that Jimmy at the age of ten was halfway there already. As the calf slipped out onto the loose-box floor he quickly wiped away the mucus from the little animal’s nostrils and mouth, seized a handful of hay and began to administer a brisk rub-down.

“It’s a heifer, Dad,” he said, after an expert glance between the hind legs. “That’s good, Mr. Dugdale, isn’t it?”

The farmer laughed. “Aye, it is. We want plenty of heifers. That ’un you’re rubbing will maybe be a good milk cow one day.”

The following day was a Saturday with no school, and after breakfast both children were lined up, ready for action. In fact they had already started. They had the lid of the car boot up and were throwing out the empty bottles and cartons, checking up to see that I had everything I might need.

“You’re getting a bit short of calcium, Dad,” Rosie said. She was six now and had been doing the rounds since she was two, so she was very familiar with the contents of the big slotted box that a friend had made for me to hold my drugs and instruments.

“Right, my pet,” I replied. “You’d better go and get some. Calcium is one thing we can’t do without.”

Flushed with importance, she ran inside to the stock room, and I wondered, as often before, why it was that, at home and on the farms, she always ran to get things for me, while Jimmy invariably walked.

Often, in the middle of a case, I’d say, “Fetch me another syringe, Jimmy,” and my son would stroll out to the car, often whistling, perfectly relaxed. No matter how interested he was in what was happening he never hurried. And I have often noticed that today, when he is a highly experienced veterinary surgeon, he still doesn’t hurry. This is probably a good thing, because ours can be a stressful occupation and going about things calmly must be the best way.

When all was ready we drove out into the hills. It was a bright morning with the bleak outlines of fell and moorland softened by the sunshine. There had been rain in the night and all the scents of the countryside drifted through the open windows.

The first farm was approached by a lane with several gates, and Rosie was delighted because this was her job.

As we drew up at the first one she was out of the car in a flash. Red-faced and serious, she opened the gate and I drove through.

“Lucky I was with you this morning, Dad,” she said. “There’s two more up ahead. I can see them.”

I nodded. “It is indeed, sweetheart. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s gates.”

My little daughter sat back, well pleased. In the days before she started school she used to be really worried.

“What are you going to do without me?” she would say. “I’ve got to go to school soon, and Jimmy’s there already. You’ll be all alone.”

Jimmy always seemed to be reasonably confident that I’d manage to struggle round on my own, but Rosie had grave doubts. Weekends for her were not just a time to play, but a blessed opportunity to look after her father. And for me it was a wonderful time and I marvelled at my luck. So many men with high-pressure jobs see very little of their families but I had it both ways with my little son and daughter so often at my side as I worked.

And there was no doubt about it, it was an absolute boon to have the gates opened for me. Rosie stood stiffly to attention as I drove through the last one. Her hand was on the latch and her face registered the satisfaction of a job well done.

A few minutes later I was in the cow byre, scratching my head in puzzlement. My patient had a temperature of 106° F but my first confident diagnosis of mastitis was eliminated when I found that the milk was white and clear.

“This is a funny one,” I said to the farmer. “Her lungs are okay, stomach working well, yet she’s got this high fever, and you say she’s not eating?”

“Aye, that’s right. She hasn’t touched her hay or cake this morning. And look how she’s shakin’.”

I pulled the cow’s head round and was looking for possible symptoms when my son’s voice piped up from behind me.

“I think it is mastitis, Dad.”

He was squatting by the udder pulling streams of milk onto the palm of his hand. “The milk’s really hot in this quarter.”

I went round the teats again and sure enough, Jimmy was right. The milk in one quarter looked perfect, but it was decidedly warmer than the others and when I pulled a few more jets onto my hand I could feel flakes, still invisible, striking my palm.

I looked up ruefully at the farmer and he burst into a roar of laughter. “It looks like t’apprentice knows more than the boss. Who taught you that, son?”

“Dad did. He said you could often be caught out that way.”

“And he was, wasn’t he!” The farmer slapped his thigh.

“Okay, okay,” I said, and as I went out to the car for the penicillin tubes I wondered how many other little wrinkles my son had absorbed in his journeys with me.

Later, as we drove back along the gated roads, I congratulated him.

“Well done, old lad. You know a lot more than I think!”

Jimmy grinned. “Yes, and remember when I couldn’t even milk a cow?”

I nodded. Milking-machines were universal among the bigger farms, but many of the smallholders still milked by hand and it seemed to fascinate my son to watch them. I could remember him standing by the side of old Tim Suggett as he milked one of his six cows. Crouched on the stool, head against the cow’s flank, the farmer effortlessly sent the white jets hissing and frothing into the bucket held between his knees.

He looked up and caught the boy’s eager gaze.

“Does tha want to ’ave a go, young man?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, please!”

“Awright, here’s a fresh bucket. See if ye can fill it.”

Jimmy squatted, grasped a teat in each hand and began to pull away lustily. Nothing happened. He tried two other teats with the same result.

“There’s nothing coming,” he cried plaintively. “Not a drop.”

Tim Suggett laughed. “Aye, it’s not as easy as it looks, is it? I reckon it ’ud take you a long time to milk ma six cows.”

My son looked crestfallen, and the old man put a hand on his head. “Come round sometime and I’ll teach ye. I’ll soon make a milker out of ye.”

A few weeks later, I returned from my round one afternoon to find Helen standing worriedly on the doorstep of Skeldale House.

“Jimmy hasn’t come back from school,” she said. “Did he tell you he was going to any of his friends?”

I thought for a moment. “No, not that I can remember. But maybe he’s just playing somewhere.”

Helen looked out at the gathering dusk. “It’s strange, though. He usually comes home to tell us first.”

We telephoned round among his school friends without result, then I began a tour of Darrowby, exploring the little winding “yards,” calling in at people we knew and getting the same reply, “No, I’m sorry, we haven’t seen him.” My attempt at a cheerful rejoinder, “Oh, thanks very much, sorry to trouble you,” became increasingly difficult as a cold hand began to grip at my heart.

When I got back to Skeldale House, Helen was on the verge of tears. “He hasn’t come back, Jim. Where on earth can he have got to? It’s pitch black out there. He can’t be playing.”

“Oh, he’ll turn up. There’ll be some simple explanation, don’t worry.” I hoped I sounded airy but I didn’t tell Helen that I had been dredging the water trough at the bottom of the garden.

I was beginning to feel the unmistakable symptoms of panic when I had a thought. “Wait a minute, didn’t he say he’d go round to Tim Suggett’s one day after school to learn to milk?”

The smallholding was actually in Darrowby itself and I was there in minutes. A soft light shone above the half-door of the little cow house and as I looked inside there was my son, crouched on a stool, bucket between his knees, head against a patient cow.

“Hello, Dad,” he said cheerfully. “Look here!” He displayed his bucket, which contained a few pints of milk. “I can do it now! Mr. Suggett’s been showing me. You don’t pull the teats at all. You just make your fingers go like this.”

Glorious relief flooded through me. I wanted to grab Jimmy and kiss him, kiss Mr. Suggert, kiss the cow, but I took a couple of deep breaths and restrained myself.

“It’s very good of you to have him, Tim. I hope he hasn’t been any bother.”

The old man chuckled. “Nay, lad, nay. We’ve had a bit o’ fun, and t’young man’s cottoned on right sharp. I’ve been tellin’ him if he’s goin’ to be a vitnery he’ll have to know how to get the milk out of a cow.”

It is one of my vivid memories, that night when Jimmy learned how to get the milk out of a cow, so that he could diagnose mastitis and put one over on his old man.

To this day I often wonder if I did the right thing in talking Rosie out of her ambition. Maybe I was wrong, but back in the forties and fifties life in veterinary practice was so different from now. Our practice was 90 per cent large animal and though I loved the work I was always being kicked, knocked about and splashed with various kinds of filth. With all its charms and rewards it was a dirty, dangerous job. Several times I was called to help out in neighbouring practices when the vet had sustained a broken limb, and I had myself been lame for weeks after a huge cart-horse whacked my thigh with his iron-shod hoof.

Quite often I didn’t smell so good because no amount of bathing in antiseptics could wholly banish the redolence of delivering decomposing calves and the removal of afterbirths. I was used to people wrinkling their noses when I came too near.

Sometimes after prolonged calvings and foalings, often lasting for hours, every muscle in my body ached for days as though I had been beaten by a heavy stick.

It is all so different now. We have long plastic gloves to protect us when we are doing the smelly jobs, there are the metal crushes to hold the big beasts instead of having to plunge among them as they were driven into a passage on the farm, and the Caesarean operation has eliminated the rough side of obstetrics. Also, the gentler small-animal work has expanded beyond all expectations till it now makes up more than half our work.

When I entered the veterinary college there was only one girl in our class—a tremendous novelty—but now young women make up at least 50 per cent of the students at the veterinary schools, and in fact excellent woman veterinary surgeons have worked in our practice.

I didn’t know all this forty years ago and though I could imagine tough little Jimmy living my life I couldn’t bear the thought of Rosie doing it. Unfairly at times, I used every wile I could to put her off veterinary work and to persuade her to become a doctor of humans instead of animals.

She is a happy doctor, too, but as I say, I still wonder….

“N
OT TO PUT TOO
fine a point on it, Herriot, I think you are dishonest.”

“What!” I had been called a few things in my time, but never that and it hit me hard, especially coming from a tall, patrician veterinary surgeon, looking down his nose at me. “What the devil do you mean? How can you possibly say that?”

Hugo Mottram’s imperious blue eyes regarded me with distaste. “I say it only because I am forced to no other conclusion. I consider unethical behaviour to be a type of dishonesty and you have certainly been guilty of that. Also, your attempts to justify your actions seem to me to be sheer prevarication.”

This was really nice, I thought, particularly here in Brawton where I was trying to enjoy my precious half-day. I had been browsing happily in Smith’s bookshop, and spotted Mottram walking along by the shelves, and in fact had been regarding him with some envy, wishing that I looked a bit like him. He was the perfect picture of my idea of a country vet; check cap, immaculate hacking jacket, knee breeches, stockings and brogues together with a commanding presence and hawk-like, handsome features. He was in his fifties, but as he paced among the books, head high, chin jutting, he had the look of a fit young man.

I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “Mr. Mottram, what you have just said is insulting, and I think you should apologise. Surely you realise that neither my partner nor I have any designs on your clients—it was just an unfortunate combination of events. There was nothing else we could have done in the circumstances and if only you would just think about it…”