There was only one jarring note; it was the time of the horse. In the thirties there were still quite a lot of horses on the farms though the tractors had already sounded their warning knell. In the farms near the foot of the Dale where there was a fair amount of arable land the rows of stables were half empty but there were still enough horses to make May and June uncomfortable. This was when the castrations were done.
Before that came the foaling and it was a common enough thing to see a mare with her foal either trotting beside her or stretched flat on the ground as its mother nibbled at the grass. Nowadays the sight of a cart mare and foal in a field would make me pull up my car to have another look.
There was all the work connected with the foalings; cleansing the mares, docking the foals’ tails, treating the illnesses of the new born—joint ill, retained meconium. It was hard and interesting but as the weather grew warmer the farmers began to think of having the year-old colts castrated.
I didn’t like the job and since there might be up to a hundred to be done, it cast a shadow over this and many subsequent springs. For generations the operation had been done by casting the colt and tying him up very like a trussed chicken. It was a bit laborious but the animal was under complete restraint and it was possible to concentrate entirely on the job; but about the time I qualified, standing castration was coming very much to the fore. It consisted simply of applying a twitch to the colt’s upper lip, injecting a shot of local anaesthetic into each testicle and going straight ahead. There was no doubt it was a lot quicker.
The obvious disadvantage was that the danger of injury to the operator and his helpers was increased tenfold, but for all that the method rapidly became more popular. A local farmer called Kenny Bright who considered himself an advanced thinker took the step of introducing it to the district. He engaged Major Farley, the horse specialist, to give a demonstration on one of his colts, and a large gathering of farmers came to spectate. Kenny, smug and full of self-importance, was holding the twitch and beaming round the company as his protégé prepared to disinfect the operation site, but as soon as the major touched the scrotum with his antiseptic the colt reared and brought a forefoot crashing down on Kenny’s head. He was carried away on a gate with his skull fractured and spent a long time in hospital. The other farmers didn’t stop laughing for weeks but the example failed to deter them. Standing castration was in.
I said it was quicker. It was when everything went smoothly, but there were other times when the colt kicked or threw himself on top of us or just went generally mad. Out of ten jobs nine would be easy and the tenth would be a rodeo. I don’t know how much apprehension this state of affairs built up in other vets but I was undeniably tense on castration mornings.
Of course, one of the reasons was that I was not, am not and never will be a horseman. It is difficult to define the term but I am convinced that horsemen are either born or acquire the talent in early childhood. I knew it was no good my trying to start in my mid twenties. I had the knowledge of equine diseases, I believed I had the ability to treat sick horses efficiently but that power the real horseman had to soothe and quieten and mentally dominate an animal was beyond my reach. I didn’t even try to kid myself.
It was unfortunate because there is no doubt horses know. It is quite different with cows; they don’t care either way; if a cow feels like kicking you she will kick you; she doesn’t give a damn whether you are an expert or not. But horses know.
So on those mornings my morale was never very high as I drove out with my instruments rattling and rolling about on an enamel tray on the back seat. Would he be wild or quiet? How big would he be? I had heard my colleagues airily stating their preference for big horses—the two-year-olds were far easier, they said, you could get a better grip on the testicles. But there was never any doubt in my own mind. I liked them small; the smaller the better.
One morning when the season was at its height and I had had about enough of the equine race, Siegfried called to me as he was going out. “James, there’s a horse with a tumour on its belly at Wilkinson’s of White Cross. Get along and take it off—today if possible but otherwise fix your own time; I’ll leave it with you.”
Feeling a little disgruntled at fate having handed me something on top of the seasonal tasks, I boiled up a scalpel, tumour spoons and syringe and put them on my tray with local anaesthetic, iodine and tetanus antitoxin.
I drove to the farm with the tray rattling ominously behind me. That sound always had a connotation of doom for me. I wondered about the horse—maybe it was just a yearling; they did get those little dangling growths sometimes—nanberries, the farmers called them. Over the six miles I managed to build up a comfortable picture of a soft-eyed little colt with pendulous abdomen and overlong hair; it hadn’t done well over the winter and was probably full of worms—shaky on its legs with weakness, in fact.
At Wilkinson’s all was quiet. The yard was empty except for a lad of about ten who didn’t know where the boss was.
“Well, where is the horse?” I asked.
The lad pointed to the stable. “He’s in there.”
I went inside. At one end stood a high, open-topped loose box with a metal grill topping the wooden walls and from within I heard a deep-throated whinnying and snorting followed by a series of tremendous thuds against the sides of the box. A chill crept through me. That was no little colt in there.
I opened the top half door and there, looking down at me, was an enormous animal; I hadn’t realised horses ever came quite as big as this; a chestnut stallion with a proud arch to his neck and feet like manhole covers. Surging swathes of muscle shone on his shoulders and quarters and when he saw me he laid back his ears, showed the whites of his eyes and lashed out viciously against the wall. A foot-long splinter flew high in the air as the great hoof crashed against the boards.
“God almighty,” I breathed and closed the half door hurriedly. I leaned my back against the door and listened to my heart thumping.
I turned to the lad. “How old is that horse?”
“Over six years, sir.”
I tried a little calm thinking. How did you go about tackling a man-eater like this? I had never seen such a horse—he must weigh over a ton. I shook myself; I hadn’t even had a look at the tumour I was supposed to remove. I lifted the latch, opened the door about two inches and peeped inside. I could see it plainly dangling from the belly; probably a papilloma, about the size of a cricket ball, with a lobulated surface which made it look like a little cauliflower. It swung gently from side to side as the horse moved about.
No trouble to take it off. Nice narrow neck to it; a few c.c.’s of local in there and I could twist it off easily with the spoons.
But the snag was obvious. I would have to go under that shining barrel of an abdomen within easy reach of the great feet and stick a needle into those few inches of skin. Not a happy thought.
But I pulled my mind back to practical things; like a bucket of hot water, soap and a towel. And I’d need a good man on the twitch. I began to walk towards the house.
There was no answer to my knock. I tried again; still nothing—there was nobody at home. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to leave everything till another day; the idea of going round the buildings and fields till I found somebody never entered my head.
I almost broke into a gallop on my way to the car, backed it round with the tyres squealing and roared out of the yard.
Siegfried was surprised. “Nobody there? Well that’s a damn funny thing. I’m nearly sure they were expecting you today. But never mind, it’s in your hands, James. Give them a ring and fix it up again as soon as possible.”
I found it wonderfully easy to forget about the stallion over the days and weeks that followed; except when my defences were down. At least once a night it thundered through my dreams with gaping nostrils and flying mane and I developed an uncomfortable habit of coming bolt awake at five o’clock in the morning and starting immediately to operate on the ho
rse. On an average, I took that tumour off twenty times before breakfast each morning.
I told myself it would be a lot easier to fix the job up and get it over. What was I waiting for, anyway? Was there a subconscious hope that if I put it off long enough something would happen to get me off the hook? The tumour might fall off or shrink away and disappear, or the horse might drop down dead.
I could have passed the whole thing on to Siegfried—he was good with horses—but my confidence was low enough without that.
All my doubts were resolved one morning when Mr. Wilkinson came on the phone. He wasn’t in the least upset at the long delay but he made it quite clear that he could wait no longer. “You see, I want to sell this ’oss, young man, but I can’t let him go with that thing on him, can I?”
My journey to Wilkinson’s wasn’t enlivened by the familiar clatter of the tray on the back seat; it reminded me of the last time when I was wondering what was ahead of me. This time I knew.
Stepping out of the car, I felt almost disembodied. It was like walking a few inches above the ground. I was greeted by a reverberating din from the loose box; the same angry whinnies and splintering crashes I had heard before. I tried to twist my stiff face into a smile as the farmer came over.
“My chaps are getting a halter on him,” he said, but his words were cut short by an enraged squealing from the box and two tremendous blows against the wooden sides. I felt my mouth going dry.
The noise was coming nearer; then the stable doors flew open and the great horse catapulted out into the yard, dragging two big fellows along on the end of the halter shank. The cobbles struck sparks from the men’s boots as they slithered about but they were unable to stop the stallion backing and plunging. I imagined I could feel the ground shudder under my feet as the hooves crashed down.
At length, after much manoeuvring, the men got the horse standing with his off side against the wall of the barn. One of them looped the twitch on to the upper lip and tightened it expertly, the other took a firm grip on the halter and turned towards me. “Ready for you now, sir.”
I pierced the rubber cap on the bottle of cocaine, withdrew the plunger of the syringe and watched the clear fluid flow into the glass barrel. Seven, eight, ten c.c.’s. If I could get that in, the rest would be easy; but my hands were trembling.
Walking up to the horse was like watching an action from a film. It wasn’t really me doing this—the whole thing was unreal. The near-side eye flickered dangerously at me as I raised my left hand and passed it over the muscles of the neck, down the smooth, quivering flank and along the abdomen till I was able to grasp the tumour. I had the thing in my hand now, the lobulations firm and lumpy under my fingers. I pulled gently downwards, stretching the brown skin joining the growth to the body. I would put the local in there—a few good weals. It wasn’t going to be so bad. The stallion laid back his ears and gave a warning whicker.
I took a long, careful breath, brought up the syringe with my right hand, placed the needle against the skin then thrust it in.
The kick was so explosively quick that at first I felt only surprise that such a huge animal could move so swiftly. It was a lightning outward slash that I never even saw and the hoof struck the inside of my right thigh, spinning me round helplessly. When I hit the ground I lay still, feeling only a curious numbness. Then I tried to move and a stab of pain went through my leg.
When I opened my eyes Mr. Wilkinson was bending over me. “Are you all right, Mr. Herriot?” The voice was anxious.
“I don’t think so.” I was astonished at the matter-of-fact sound of my own words; but stranger still was the feeling of being at peace with myself for the first time for weeks. I was calm and completely in charge of the situation.
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Wilkinson. You’d better put the horse back in his box for now—we’ll have a go at him another day—and I wonder if you’d ring Mr. Farnon to come and pick me up. I don’t think I’ll be able to drive.”
My leg wasn’t broken but it developed a massive haematoma at the point of impact and then the whole limb blossomed into an unbelievable range of colours from delicate orange to deepest black. I was still hobbling like a Crimean veteran when, a fortnight later, Siegfried and I with a small army of helpers went back and roped the stallion, chloroformed him and removed that little growth.
I have a cavity in the muscle of my thigh to remind me of that day, but some good came out of the incident. I found that the fear is worse than the reality and horse work has never worried me as much since then.
TWENTY-SIX
THE FIRST TIME I saw Phin Calvert was in the street outside the surgery when I was talking to Brigadier Julian Coutts-Browne about his shooting dogs. The brigadier was almost a stage version of an English aristocrat; immensely tall with a pronounced stoop, hawk features and a high drawling voice. As he spoke, smoke from a narrow cigar trickled from his lips.
I turned my head at the clatter of heavy boots on the pavement. A thick set figure was stumping rapidly towards us, hands tucked behind his braces, ragged jacket pulled wide to display a curving expanse of collarless shirt, wisps of grizzled hair hanging in a fringe beneath a greasy cap. He was smiling widely at nobody in particular and he hummed busily to himself.
The brigadier glanced at him. “Morning, Calvert,” he grunted coldly.
Phineas threw up his head in pleased recognition. “Now then, Charlie, ’ow is ta?” he shouted.
The brigadier looked as though he had swallowed a swift pint of vinegar. He removed his cigar with a shaking hand and stared after the retreating back. “Impudent devil,” he muttered.
Looking at Phin, you would never have thought he was a prosperous farmer. I was called to his place a week later and was surprised to find a substantial house and buildings and a fine dairy herd grazing in the fields.
I could hear him even before I got out of the car.
“Hello, ’ello, ’ello! Who’s this we’ve got then? New chap eh? Now we’re going to learn summat!” He still had his hands inside his braces and was grinning wider than ever.
“My name is Herriot,” I said.
“Is it now?” Phin cocked his head and surveyed me, then he turned to three young men standing by. “Hasn’t he a nice smile, lads? He’s a real Happy Harry!”
He turned and began to lead the way across the yard. “Come on, then, and we’ll see what you’re made of. I ’ope you know a bit about calves because I’ve got some here that are right dowly.”
As he went into the calf house I was hoping I would be able to do something impressive—perhaps use some of the new drugs and sera I had in my car; it was going to take something special to make an impact here.
There were six well-grown young animals, almost stirk size, and three of them were behaving very strangely; grinding their teeth, frothing at the mouth and blundering about the pen as though they couldn’t see. As I watched, one of them walked straight into the wall and stood with its nose pressed against the stone.
Phin, apparently unconcerned, was humming to himself in a corner. When I started to take my thermometer from its case he burst into a noisy commentary. “Now what’s he doing? Ah, we’re off now, get up there!”
The half minute which my thermometer spends in an animal’s rectum is usually devoted to hectic thought. But this time I didn’t need the time to work out my diagnosis; the blindness made it easy. I began to look round the walls of the calf house; it was dark and I had to get my face close to the stone.
Phin gave tongue again. “Hey, what’s going on? You’re as bad as t’calves, nosing about there, dozy like. What d’you think you’re lookin’ for?”
“Paint, Mr. Calvert. I’m nearly sure your calves have got lead poisoning.”
Phin said what all farmers say at this juncture. “They can’t have. I’ve had calves in here for thirty years and they’ve never taken any harm before. There’s no paint in here, anyway.”
“How about this, then?” I peered into the darkest corner and pulled
at a piece of loose board.
“Oh, that’s nobbut a bit of wood I nailed down there last week to block up a hole. Came off an old hen house.”
I looked at the twenty-year-old paint hanging off in the loose flakes which calves find so irresistible. “This is what’s done the damage,” I said. “Look, you can see the tooth marks where they’ve been at it.”
Phin studied the board at close quarters and grunted doubtfully. “All right, what do we do now?”
“First thing is to get this painted board out of here and then give all the calves epsom salts. Have you got any?”
Phin gave a bark of laughter. “Aye, I’ve got a bloody great sack full, but can’t you do owt better than that? Aren’t you going to inject them?”
It was a little embarrassing. The specific antidotes to metal poisoning had not been discovered and the only thing which sometimes did a bit of good was magnesium sulphate which caused the precipitation of insoluble lead sulphate. The homely term for magnesium sulphate is, of course, epsom salts.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing I can inject that will help at all and I can’t even guarantee the salts will. But I’d like you to give the calves two heaped tablespoonfuls three times a day.”
“Oh ’ell, you’ll skitter the poor buggers to death!”
“Maybe so, but there’s nothing else for it,” I said.
Phin took a step towards me so that his face, dark-skinned and deeply wrinkled, was close to mine. The suddenly shrewd, mottled brown eyes regarded me steadily for a few seconds then he turned away quickly. “Right,” he said. “Come in and have a drink.”
Phin stumped into the farm kitchen ahead of me, threw back his head and let loose a bellow that shook the windows. “Mother! Feller ’ere wants a glass o’ beer. Come and meet Happy Harry!”
Mrs. Calvert appeared with magical speed and put down glasses and bottles. I glanced at the labels—“Smith’s Nutty Brown Ale,” and filled my glass. It was a historic moment though I didn’t know it then; it was the first of an incredible series of Nutty Browns I was to drink at that table.