“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 slu
nk 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.
Blanco was the soul of good nature and the only time he showed a gleam of anger was if he thought Mr. Bendelow was being threatened. This protectiveness was invaluable to the tailor because the set-up in that house was conducive to exasperation and I had heard a few blustering men and screeching women driven to distraction by the interminable delays. But the great white head and cold eyes appearing round the corner of the table had a wonderfully calming effect. Sometimes a little growl or a pointed sniffing round the customer’s ankles was required but I had never seen a failure.
In my musings I had often thought that Blanco was a vindication of my long-held theory that big dogs came from little houses and little dogs from big ones. In fact it seemed to me to be the ultimate corroboration because in the greatest of battlemented, multi-acred mansions you got down to Border terriers and Jack Russells while in tiny, one-up, one-down dwellings you found something like Blanco. A week later, ever optimistic, I returned to Mr. Bendelow’s establishment. He was in his usual place, cross-legged like a little gnome on his table.
Another customer, a disgruntled-looking farmer, was just about to leave, but he was giving the tailor a few parting words.
“Ah’m about fed up comin’ here every week after you’ve promised.” His voice took on an angry tone. “You don’t seem bothered, but it’s not good enough, you know.”
Mr. Bendelow gave the familiar gesture with his needle. “Next week…next week.”
“Aye, that’s what you always say,” barked the farmer, and I looked over the table at Blanco, stretched by the fire. This was the sort of thing that always brought him to his feet, but he showed no interest and didn’t move as the farmer, with a final snort, turned and left, banging the door behind him.
“Good morning, Mr. Bendelow,” I said briskly. “I’ve just dropped in for—”
“Now then, Mr. Herriot!” The little man stabbed his needle at me. “I was just goin’ to tell you summat about moneyed people when you left. Old Crowther, down Applegate. Left eighty thousand and when I patched his trousers for ’im he had to stay in bed. I’m not jokin’ nor jestin’, he had to stay in bed.”
“Talking about trousers, Mr. Bendelow…”
“He ’ad a housekeeper—Maud something was her name—she did everything for ’im. Got ’im in and out of bed, cooked for ’im, slaved for ’im for thirty years. But, do you know, he never left her a penny. She contested the will, you know, but she only got five hundred pounds. Money all went to some distant relatives.”
“Are my trousers ready? I do need them for—”
“And I could tell you a worse case than that, Mr. Herriot. When I was a lad, I worked for a farmer. That man was worth thousands, but he never went into a pub, never went to the pictures, never went anywhere. Saved every penny. Don’t know what ’e did with it all. Maybe kept it about the house. Oh, that reminds me of a story.”
I was about to utter another plea when a stout lady behind me burst out. “Now look ’ere, I don’t want to butt in, but I’m in a hurry. I want my dress now—you promised it for today.”
The tailor waved his needle. “Not ready. Been too busy. Come next week.”
“Too busy! Too busy chatterin’ is more like it.” She had a high, piercing delivery and she gave the tailor the full blast. I looked at Blanco, still motionless by the fire. His lack of interest was unusual.
Mr. Bendelow, too, seemed to miss his dog’s support because he was untypically abashed by the lady’s attack.
“Aye, well,” he mumbled. “You shall ’ave it next week definite.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “You, too, Mr. Herriot.”
When I called the following week, I stopped in the doorway, transfixed by the amazing sight. Mr. Bendelow was actually stitching. Up on his table, his head bent low over a jacket, his hand flashing over a lapel with wonderful deftness. And he wasn’t talking.
The talking was being done by a man and his wife who were submitting him to an aggressive barrage of complaints. The tailor, silent and unhappy, made no reply. And Blanco was still asleep by the fire.
In the quest for my trousers I called in a few times during my rounds but there was always a queue and I didn’t have time to wait. I did notice, however, that on each occasion Mr. Bendelow was working, silent and subdued, on his table, and his dog was motionless by the fire. The picture saddened me. Talking was the little man’s life, his hobby and solace in his bachelor existence. Something was far wrong.
I called round one evening and found Mr. Bendelow alone, still stitching.
I didn’t mention my trousers. “What’s wrong with Blanco?” I said.
He looked at me in surprise. “Nowt, as far as I know.”
“Is he eating all right?”
“Aye, he is.”
“Getting plenty of exercise?”
“Yes, a good walk night and mornin’. You know I look after me dog, Mr. Herriot.”
“Yes, of course you do. But…he’s not up round your table like he used to be. Not…er…interested in the customers.”
He nodded miserably. “Aye, that’s t’only thing. But he isn’t ill.”
“Let’s have a look at him,” I said. I went over to the fire and bent over the dog. “Come on, Blanco, old lad, let’s see you on your feet.”
I tapped him on the rump and he got up slowly. I looked at the tailor. “He seems a bit stiff.”
“Aye, maybe, but ’e soon works it off when I take him out.”
“Not really lame, though? No pins?”
“Nay, nay, ah can allus tell when he’s picked one up.”
“Hmm. Still, I’d better check on his paws.”
Whenever I lifted one of Blanco’s feet I had the same feeling as when I examined a horse’s hoof and, indeed, had to stop myself from saying, “Whoa, there, boy,” and tucking the paw between my knees.
I carefully inspected each foot, squeezing the pads, which were the usual sites for the dangerous pins, but all seemed normal. I took his temperature, auscultated his chest and palpated his abdomen without finding any clues. But as I looked down at the big animal I could not rid myself of the nagging certainty that there was something amiss.
Blanco, tiring of my attention, sat down, and he did so gingerly, lowering himself carefully onto the fireside rug.
That wasn’t right at all. “Get up, lad,” I said quickly.
There had to be some trouble at his rear end. Impacted anal glands, perhaps? No, they were all right. I passed my hands down the massive thighs and on the left side, as I felt my way down the musculature, the dog winced suddenly. There was a painful swelling there and as I clipped away the hair, all became clear. Deeply embedded in the flesh was one of his old enemies, a pin.
It was a moment’s work to extract it with my forceps and I turned to Mr. Bendelow. “Well, there it is. He must have sat on this when it got onto the rug. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been lame, but there’s a little abscess which has been upsetting him. An abscess is a depressing thing.”
“Aye…aye…but what can you do?” He looked at me with worried eyes.
“I’ll have to get him round to the surgery and drain the pus away. Then he’ll be fine.”
Blanco’s visit to Skeldale House passed off smoothly. I evacuated the abscess and filled up the cavity by squeezing a few of the ever-useful penicillin intramammary tubes into it.
I didn’t visit Mr. Bendelow for another week. I clung to the hope that he might have repaired my working trousers. My wardrobe was v
ery limited and I sorely needed them.
The scene was as always, the tailor on his table and Blanco stretched by the fire. And strangely, Mrs. Haw, the farmer’s wife I had seen at my first visit, was there.
She was having a kind of tug-of-war with her husband’s waistcoat, which Mr. Bendelow had apparently mended at last but was reluctant to release. His lips were moving rapidly with his quick-fire delivery. “And that’s what the feller said to me. You wouldn’t believe it, would you, and that’s not all…”
With a quick tug the lady managed to win possession of the waistcoat. “Thank ye very much, Mr. Bendelow. I’ll ’ave to go now…” She nodded, waved and scurried past me, looking exhausted but triumphant.
The tailor turned to me. “Ah, it’s you, Mr. Herriot.”
“Yes, Mr. Bendelow, I was wondering…”
“You’ll remember I was just goin’ to tell you that story about the rich man.”
“About my trousers…”
“He was an old farmer, he kept his brass in the house in buckets. His missus brought up a bucket and she said, ‘There’s fifteen hundred pounds in this bucket’ and the old chap said, ‘There’s summat wrong somewhere. There should be two thousand in that ’un.’ And do you know, that man and his wife used to pay separately for their own food. It’s true what I’m tellin’ you—she went out and bought hers and ’e did the same. And I’ll tell you summat else, Mr. Herriot…”
“Have you, by any chance, managed to… ?
“Just listen to this—”
“Hey, Bendy!” A big man had just come in and he was roaring over my shoulder. “I can ’ear you and ah’m not listenin’! I want my bloody jacket!”
It was Gobber Newhouse, hugely fat, notorious drunk and bully. Stale beer fumes billowed around him as he bellowed again. “Don’t give me any of your bloody excuses, Bendy, ah know you!”
Like a surfacing white whale, Blanco rose from the fireside and surged to the table. He seemed to know the kind of man he was dealing with and didn’t waste any frills on him. Reaching his mighty head high he opened his mouth wide and bayed with tremendous force into the red sweating face. “Whaaa! Whaaa!”