“Damn! I’ve never had this trouble,” he grunted, and began another exploration in the small abdomen. He had just pulled the wrong thing out again when the phone rang.
“Milk fever, flat out. Urgent. Afraid I’ve got to go, Calum, can you manage?”
“Of course, I’m okay. But where the hell is this uterus?”
I left him staring down at the little cat in exasperation.
When we met later in the day, he gave me a rueful grin. “I’m sorry I made a hash of my demonstration, Jim. You’d hardly got through the door before I found the uterus and finished the job in a few minutes. I did the other two cats after that on my own—no problem.”
I believed him. If ever there was a naturally gifted surgeon it was Calum. But that wasn’t the end of the story. A few days later, we admitted four more spays and since Calum was the only man around he anaesthetised them with Nembutal instead of using our oxygen and ether apparatus and did them himself. When I walked along to the operating room he was starting on the last one.
“I’m glad to see you, Jim,” he said. “I’ve just done those three,” pointing at the sleeping cats, “did ’em in double-quick time. Piece of cake. Anyway, I can show you what I mean now you’re here.”
He inserted his forceps in the incision and pulled out not the uterus but the same string-like filament as before. He stared at it for a moment and then he tried again and then a third time but with the same result.
“I don’t believe it!” he exploded. “It’s like black magic!”
I laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry I can’t wait, Calum. I just dashed along between jobs to see how you were getting on.”
“I was getting on fine till you came in,” he shouted as I went out.
When I look back, I realise it was one of the strange and unaccountable little episodes in my life, because on the third occasion, around a week later, when I walked into the operating room I found my colleague bent over a sleeping cat.
He looked up and gave me an eager smile. “Ah, here you are again, Jim. I’ve done a couple of spays like hot cakes and I’m just starting on this one. Now watch, and I’ll show you how to do it.”
Quickly and confidently he reached inside with his forceps and instead of the expected uterus there appeared the same fine cord of baffling origin. He pushed it back and tried again, and again and again without success.
“Bugger it!” he yelled. “What’s going on? When it happened before I thought it was because I was too cocky, but now I know. It’s you!” He stared at me, wild-eyed. “You’re a hoodoo! You put the evil eye on me every time!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Calum,” I said, fighting the giggles. “It’s just unfortunate—but anyway, what is that thing you keep pulling out? Has it got a name?”
“It has now,” my colleague growled. “It’s called Herriot’s duct.”
It passed into the language of the practice and, long after spaying had lost its novelty in the practice and become a regular, trouble-free routine, whenever that errant piece of tissue showed itself the cry went up.
“Hello, there goes Herriot’s duct again!”
Chapter 23
WHEN I AWOKE ON the first morning after our move to Rowan Garth, I found myself in the usual mental state of acute readiness, like a sprinter on his blocks, ready to hurl on my clothes and take off on my daily gallop round the icy acres of Skeldale House. I was so much in the groove that when my alarm went my legs started twitching, ready for the off. It took me a minute or two to realise that such things as the sessions of fire-lighting, wrestling with the anthracite stove and running to keep warm were all in the past.
Everything was to hand. Almost effortlessly, I donned a dressing gown and meandered down the few stairs to the little hall and then into the kitchen, where a blissful warmth from the Aga cooker enveloped me. Dinah the beagle came wagging from her basket and as I patted her and exchanged the usual morning pleasantries I could discern an “isn’t this wonderful” expression in her eyes.
It was heaven. As in a trance, I slid the kettle onto the hotplate and dropped the tea into the teapot, and I hardly noticed the ascent as I sailed up with Helen’s morning cup.
Back in the kitchen I poured tea for myself and stood for a few moments, imbibing the fragrant fluid, nestling up to the Aga as I looked out at the green fields and the hills and feeling like a sultan. Life, I thought, didn’t have much more to offer.
It was all so clear now. My failures to buy those other houses had seemed at the time a black demolition of all my hopes, but in fact they had been blessed strokes of luck. I had a far better house now than either of them—modern, reasonably small, convenient…and warm. I gazed for a moment at the long-desired hatch: oh yes, it was the realisation of a dream.
Lulled by these thoughts, I sank gratefully into my chair, but rocketed up again instantly as a rasping sound exploded beneath me. My peace shattered, I lifted the cushion and found a whoopie device underneath. Shrill laughter came down from the top of the stairs as I threw open the door and saw Jimmy and Rosie hanging gleefully over the bannisters.
“You young blighters!” I yelled as I stormed upwards. “The very first morning! I’m coming to get you!” But they had locked themselves in their bedrooms by the time I arrived and I hadn’t time to go further into the matter.
Sitting down for the second time, I ruminated on the fact that I’d have to take extra care from now on. Playing jokes on Dad was a hobby of my children—imitation ink blots, buns that squeaked when bitten, envelopes that emitted a terrifying buzz when opened—particularly in the mornings when my defences were down. Every time we visited my parents in Glasgow they made a bee-line for Tam Shepherd’s joke shop in Queen Street to lay in further supplies, and in this small house I was infinitely more accessible.
However it took only a few soothing draughts of tea before I slid back into my previous euphoria. I couldn’t believe the warmth and comfort and the reeling that you could reach out and touch everything. Life was going to be so much easier for Helen.
The peace didn’t last long. Within minutes of the children coming downstairs the kitchen was reverberating with deafening noise. Jimmy had rigged up an extension speaker on a shelf to play records from our beloved Murphy radiogram, which was now stationed in the dining room next door, and within minutes Elvis Presley was blasting his message into my ears.
I escaped for a few moments by taking up Helen’s second cup. For a long time at Skeldale House it had been her only concession to my pleas to take things easier in the mornings and I was determined that this routine would continue in our new home. When I came downstairs I lifted the morning paper from the door, picked up my teacup and settled down again at the table.
Rosie, sitting next to me, was rocking back and forth in time with the music and she got so carried away that, on one of the ways down, she swivelled and the bottom of the chair leg crunched onto my slippered toe. She was a fat little girl at that time and very heavy, and I yelped in pain and my tea flew into the air and descended in a warm shower on my newspaper. As I leaped to my feet and hopped around in agony my son and daughter shrieked with laughter and Dinah set up a joyous barking to join in the fun.
Through my anguish I reflected that this was the second time within a few minutes that those two had had a good laugh at Dad’s expense. A memorable day for them.
The music was to be a regular preschool routine every morning and at first it was torture because as a lifelong devotee of classical music I found the pop scene bewildering. To me it was just a loud, unpleasant noise. But as the months passed at Rowan Garth and each day I was subjected to “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Jailhouse Rock” and others I developed something approaching affection for old Elvis, and now, more than thirty years later, any of his songs coming over the radio can transport me back to those mornings in the kitchen at Rowan Garth with the children at their cornflakes, my dog at my side and the whole world young and carefree.
And yet…there was at that time another pull on my emotions. Leaving Skeldale the day before had been a far greater wrench than I had ever imagined. After the van had taken the last of our things away I roamed through the empty rooms that had echoed to my children’s laughter. The big sitting room where I had read the bedtime stories and where, before all that, Siegfried, Tristan and I had sprawled in bachelor contentment, seemed to reproach me with its ageless charm and grace. The handsome fireplace with its glass cupboard above, and the old pewter tankard that used to hold our cash still resting there, the French window opening onto the long, high-walled garden with its lawns, fruit trees, asparagus and strawberry beds—these things were part of a great surging ocean of memories.
I walked upstairs to the large alcoved room where Helen and I had slept, and to which we had brought our children as babies to sleep in the cot that had once stood in that corner. I clumped over the bare boards to the dressing room. Jimmy and Rosie had shared this chamber, and I could almost hear their giggles and teasings that were the beginning of each new day.
I climbed another flight to the little rooms under the eaves where Helen and I had started our married life. Here, a bench against the wall and a gas ring once served as our only cooking arrangements. I walked to the window and looked over the tumbled roofs of the little town to the green fells and swallowed a huge lump in my throat. Dear old Skeldale. I was so glad it was going to be kept on as the practice house and I would walk through its doors every day, but my family was leaving and I wondered if we could ever be as happy again as we had been here.
Chapter 24
“CAN I SPEAK TO the vet wi’ t’badger?”
As I handed the phone to our new assistant it struck me that this request was becoming common and it did me good to hear it. It meant that Calum was being accepted by the farmers. I didn’t mind at all if some of them wanted him instead of me. What I dreaded was hearing “Don’t send that bugger!” which I had learned from the experiences of some of my neighbouring vets when they employed new assistants.
I had been so lucky with John Crooks, who had been an outstanding asset to our practice, and it seemed to be asking too much of fate for a second top-class man to come along. All the new graduates were better educated than I had been, but there were reasons why a few didn’t make the grade. Some of them just couldn’t face the long rough and tumble of general practice with its antisocial hours, others lacked the ability to get on with the clients, and one or two were academically bright but unpractical.
Calum, to my vast relief, seemed to be slotting into the job effortlessly, but, just as John and Tristan had been different from each other, so was he from them. Very different. His ever-present badger fascinated people, his tall, walrus-moustached appearance, eager friendliness and unusual outlook on life made him interesting to both farm and small-animal clients, but, most important of all, he knew his stuff. He was a fine vet.
Phin Calvert, one of the characters in our practice who always addressed me as “Happy Harry” on my visits to his farm, had given me his opinion of Calum in his usual forthright way. “That feller,” he said, “is a vitnery!”
My colleague Calum put down the phone and turned to me. “That was Eddie Coates. Said he had a beast ‘a bit dowly.’ I’m getting to be an expert with dowly beasts.”
I laughed. “Good, Calum. You’d better get along, then.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, then, “Something I wanted to ask you, Jim. Could I change my hours a bit?”
“In what way? Different half-day?”
“No, I’d like to start at six o’clock every morning and finish at two in the afternoon.”
I stared at him in amazement. “What’s the idea of that?”
“It would give me more opportunities to get around the countryside—find out more about the wildlife and flora about here.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Calum. I know you’re dead keen on that sort of thing, but those hours are just not practical. We can’t do that—it wouldn’t work.”
He shrugged philosophically, said “Okay,” and turned to go.
“Just a minute, Calum,” I said. “While we’re talking, I’d like to mention something else to you. You’re a bit elusive.”
“Eh?”
“Yes. Difficult to find when I want you. As you know, quite a few of the small farms aren’t on the phone and sometimes the only time I have been able to get hold of an assistant was to catch him at mealtimes. But your eating habits are irregular and often you’re in and out again without my knowing, and there might be something urgent waiting. So please give me a ring whenever you do come in.”
Calum gave me a mock salute. “Very good, sir, I will unfailingly report.”
We went out together to the dispensary and in the passage I was assailed by a dreadful stench. Sickly, horrible, it seemed to be coming from upstairs and I could see wisps of steam issuing from Calum’s flat.
“Hell, Calum, that bloody awful stink! What’s going on up there?”
He looked at me in mild surprise. “Oh, I’m just boiling up some tripe for my animals.”
“Tripe! What sort of tripe?”
“Just ordinary cows’ stomachs. Left-overs at the butcher’s. He says he’ll let me have any tripe that’s gone off a bit whenever I want it.”
I put my handkerchief over my face and shouted through the folds. “Off-colour tripe! You’re not kidding! For God’s sake get up there and take that pan off. And cancel your order at the butcher’s!”
I reeled into the back garden and took a few deep breaths, and as I leaned against the wall, a little thought swam in my mind. I was sure I was going to have a happy relationship with Calum, but nothing in the world was ever quite perfect.
Later that day, when I came in to lunch it was confirmed that he had heeded my words of the morning. The phone rang and it was Calum’s voice at the other end. “Permission to eat, sir!”
“Granted, young man,” I replied, falling in gladly with his sally. I didn’t know it then, but throughout the time he stayed with the practice I would hear those words every day. He never ever came in at mealtimes without checking, and now when I look back over the years and think of him I seem to hear those words.
“Permission to eat, sir!”
Chapter 25
WHEN WE STARTED IN Rowan Garth, I felt again the stirrings of the urge that had sent me off to those house sales during our first days in Skeldale. As the provider, it was my job to see to the absolute essentials—like the concertina.
At Rowan Garth I had a different kind of blinding insight. I had to make a grass tennis-court in the back garden. It was for the children but also for Helen and me since we were keen players—when we could find the time.
After mapping out the court I realised that the big problem was to stop the balls from being knocked out of the garden and far away. Obviously a lot of high netting was required, and I thought my problem was solved when a fisherman came to the door selling off fishing nets. He had just gone out of business, he said, and he was selling off these superb nets at a giveaway price. I bought an enormous bundle of the things, tightly tied up with tarry rope, for £12 and proudly showed my purchase to Helen.
She was not impressed. “Are you sure you haven’t done something silly again, Jim? You know you are very easily taken in.”
I was indignant. “Taken in? Impossible! You could see that this fisherman was as honest as the day. He was from Fraserburgh and was wearing a navy blue jersey. Cheerful, red, open face, I could smell the tar and salt off him. He said these were the last of the nets and he was selling them off extra cheap to get rid of them so that he can get back home.”
“Hmm. I don’t like the sound of that, either,” Helen murmured. “Did you look in his van to see if he had any more?”
“Well, no…that was quite unnecessary. I assure you I’ve made a good buy this time. Come on, I’ll prove it to you.”
We went out to the lawn and I began to untie the vast bundles of nets. As I
opened them up my spirits began to sink. They were a mass of enormous holes, some of them several feet in diameter. Helen began to giggle, and as I unrolled one holey net after another she staggered around laughing helplessly.
“Oh dear,” she said, wiping away the tears. “It’s a good thing there’s one practical person in this family. Thank heaven I never do silly things like this.”
Badly discomfited, I looked glumly at the useless things. “I could maybe patch up those holes with string,” I said.
“Oh, stop it,” Helen said, beginning to fall about again. “Don’t start me off again. I feel weak.”
Those nets were a sore point and I kept away from the subject over the next few weeks, but I did, on several occasions, surreptitiously retire to the lawn when nobody was watching and have a go, unsuccessfully, at doing a bit of patching.
After this disaster I tried to win back a little credibility by thinking of some new ideas for the improvement of the garden. I noticed an advert in one of the Sunday papers for cloches to protect tender plants and it struck me that they would be an excellent thing in the harsh Yorkshire climate. The pictures showed the cloches standing in long trim rows, neat and functional, and they seemed extraordinarily cheap, too.
Without mentioning it to Helen I sent away for a substantial supply. I expected them to arrive in some enormous crate and was very surprised when the postman delivered a modest flat parcel. How could they possibly be the things I had seen in the picture?
The mystery was quickly solved because it turned out that what I had thought was rigid plastic was in fact ordinary floppy polythene sheeting. Not only that, but the rest of the outfit consisted of a mass of flimsy wires with ominous instructions to slide rod A into notch B and engage with flange C. I have never been any good with such things and spent maddening hours wrestling with the wires as Helen watched me curiously.
I was forced to confess my scheme to her and was irritated by the immediately sceptical reaction. She looked doubtfully at my tangled purchases and the corner of her mouth twitched as though she was fighting back a big grin. I fought on doggedly and at last had a row of the wires assembled and began to drape the polythene sheets over them.