When Mr. Alderson was around, my visits were uncomfortable affairs. We always seemed to be looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes; whenever I glanced his way he was invariably in the act of averting his gaze, and I must admit that if he looked over at me suddenly I couldn’t help switching my eyes away.
It was a pity because I instinctively liked him. He had an amiable, completely inoffensive nature which was very appealing and under other conditions we would have got along very well. But there was no getting round the fact that he resented me. And it wasn’t because he wanted to hang on to Helen—he was an unselfish man and anyway, he had an excellent housekeeper in his sister who had been recently widowed and had come to live with the Aldersons. Auntie Lucy was a redoubtable character and was perfectly capable of running the household and looking after the two younger children. It was just that he had got used to the comfortable assumption that one day his daughter would marry the son of his old friend and have a life of untroubled affluence; and he had a stubborn streak which rebelled fiercely against any prospect of change.
So it was always a relief when I got out of the house with Helen. Everything was right then; we went to the little dances in the village institutes, we walked for miles along the old grassy mine tracks among the hills, or sometimes she came on my evening calls with me. There wasn’t anything spectacular to do in Darrowby but there was a complete lack of strain, a feeling of being self-sufficient in a warm existence of our own that made everything meaningful and worthwhile.
Things might have gone on like this indefinitely but for a conversation I had with Siegfried. We were sitting in the big room at Skeldale House as we often did before bedtime, talking over the day’s events, when he laughed and slapped his knee.
“I had old Harry Forster in tonight paying his bill. He was really funny—sat looking round the room and saying, ‘It’s a nice little nest you have here, Mr. Farnon, a nice little nest,’ and then, very sly, ‘It’s time there was a bird in this nest, you know, there should be a little bird in here.’ ”
I laughed too. “Well, you should be used to it by now. You’re the most eligible bachelor in Darrowby. People are always having a dig at you—they won’t be happy till they’ve got you married off.”
“Wait a minute, not so fast.” Siegfried eyed me thoughtfully. “I don’t think for a moment that Harry was talking about me; it was you he had in mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, just think. Didn’t you say you had run into the old boy one night when you were walking over his land with Helen? He’d be on to a thing like that in a flash. He thinks it’s time you were hitched up, that’s all.”
I lay back in my chair and gave myself over to laughter. “Me! Married! That’ll be the day. Can you imagine it? Poor old Harry.”
Siegfried leaned forward. “What are you laughing at, James? He’s quite right—it’s time you were married.”
“What’s that?” I looked at him incredulously. “What are you on about now?”
“It’s quite simple,” he said. “I’m saying you ought to get married, and soon.”
“Oh come on, Siegfried, you’re joking!”
“Why should I be?”
“Well, damn it, I’m only starting my career, I’ve no money, no nothing. I’ve never even thought about it.”
“You’ve never even … well tell me this, are you courting Helen Alderson or aren’t you?”
“Well I’m … I’ve been … oh I suppose you could call it that.”
Siegfried settled back comfortably on his chair, put his fingertips together and assumed a judicial expression. “Good, good. You admit you’re courting the girl. Now let us take it a step further. She is, from my own observation, extremely attractive—in fact she nearly causes a traffic pileup when she walks across the cobbles on market day. It’s common knowledge that she is intelligent, equable and an excellent cook. Perhaps you would agree with this?”
“Of course I would,” I said, nettled at his superior air. “But what’s this all about? Why are you going on like a high court judge?”
“I’m only trying to establish my point, James, which is that you seem to have an ideal wife lined up and you are doing nothing about it. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I wish you’d stop playing around and let us see a little action.”
“But it’s not as simple as that,” I said, my voice rising. “I’ve told you already I’d have to be a lot better off, and anyway, give me a chance, I’ve only been going to the house for a few weeks—surely you don’t start thinking of getting married as soon as that. And there’s another thing—her old man doesn’t like me.”
Siegfried put his head on one side and I gritted my teeth as a saintly expression began to settle on his face. “Now old lad, don’t get angry, but there’s something I have to tell you for your own good. Caution is often a virtue, but in your case you carry it too far. It’s a little flaw in your character and it shows in a multitude of ways. In your wary approach to problems in your work, for instance—you are always too apprehensive, proceeding fearfully step by step when you should be plunging boldly ahead. You keep seeing dangers when there aren’t any—you’ve got to learn to take a chance, to lash out a bit. As it is, you are confined to a narrow range of activity by your own doubts.”
“The original stick-in-the-mud in fact, eh?”
“Oh come now, James, I didn’t say that, but while we’re talking, there’s another small point I want to bring up. I know you won’t mind my saying this. Until you get married I’m afraid I shall fail to get the full benefit of your assistance in the practice because frankly you are becoming increasingly besotted and bemused to the extent that I’m sure you don’t know what you’re doing half the time.”
“What the devil are you talking about? I’ve never heard such …”
“Kindly hear me out, James. What I’m saying is perfectly true—you’re walking about like a man in a dream and you’ve developed a disturbing habit of staring into space when I’m talking to you. There’s only one cure, my boy.”
“And it’s a simple little cure, isn’t it!” I shouted. “No money, no home, but leap into matrimony with a happy cry. There’s not a thing to worry about!”
“Ah-ah, you see, there you go again, looking for difficulties.” He gave a light laugh and gazed at me with pitying affection. “No money, you say. Well one of these days you’ll be a partner here. Your plate will be out on those railings in front of the house, so you’ll never be short of your daily bread. And as regards a home—look at all the empty rooms in this house. You could set up a private suite upstairs without any trouble. So that’s just a piffling little detail.”
I ran my hand distractedly through my hair. My head was beginning to swim. “You make it all sound so easy.”
“But it IS easy!” Siegfried shot upright in his chair. “Go out and ask that girl without further delay and get her into church before the month is out!” He wagged a finger at me. “Learn to grasp the nettle of life, James. Throw off your hesitant ways and remember”—he clenched his fist and struck an attitude—“there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood …”
“O.K., O.K.,” I said, rising wearily from my chair, “that’s enough, I get the message. I’m going to bed now.”
I don’t suppose I am the first person to have had his life fundamentally influenced by one of Siegfried’s chance outbursts. I thought his opinions ridiculous at the time but he planted a seed which germinated and flowered almost overnight. There is no doubt he is responsible for the fact that I was the father of a grown-up family while I was still a young man, because when I brought the subject up with Helen she said yes, she’d like to marry me and we set our eyes on an early date. She seemed surprised at first—maybe she had the same opinion of me as Siegfried and expected it would take me a few years to get off the ground.
Anyway, before I had time to think much more about it everything was neatly settled and I found I had made a
magical transition from jeering at the whole idea to making plans for furnishing our prospective bedsitter at Skeldale House.
It was a blissful time with only one cloud on the horizon; but that cloud bulked large and forbidding. As I walked hand in hand with Helen, my thoughts in the air, she kept bringing me back to earth with an appealing look.
“You know, Jim, you’ll really have to speak to Dad. It’s time he knew.”
SIXTY-SIX
I HAD BEEN WARNED long before I qualified that country practice was a dirty, stinking job. I had accepted the fact and adjusted myself to it but there were times when this side of my life obtruded itself and became almost insupportable. Like now, when even after a long hot bath I still smelt.
As I hoisted myself from the steaming water I sniffed at my arm and there it was; the malodorous memory of that horrible cleansing at Tommy Dearlove’s striking triumphantly through all the soap and antiseptic, almost as fresh and pungent as it had been at four o’clock this afternoon. Nothing but time would remove it.
But something in me rebelled at the idea of crawling into bed in this state and I looked with something like desperation along the row of bottles on the bathroom shelf. I stopped at Mrs. Hall’s bath salts, shining violent pink in their big glass jar. This was something I’d never tried before and I tipped a small handful into the water round my feet. For a moment my head swam as the rising steam was suddenly charged with an aggressive sweetness then on an impulse I shook most of the jar’s contents into the bath and lowered myself once more under the surface.
For a long time I lay there smiling to myself in triumph as the oily liquid lapped around me. Not even Tommy Dearlove’s cleansing could survive this treatment.
The whole process had a stupefying effect on me and I was half asleep even as I sank back on the pillow. There followed a few moments of blissful floating before a delicious slumber claimed me. And when the bedside phone boomed in my ear the sense of injustice and personal affront was even stronger than usual. Blinking sleepily at the clock which said 1:15 a.m. I lifted the receiver and mumbled into it, but I was jerked suddenly wide awake when I recognised Mr. Alderson’s voice. Candy was calving and something was wrong. Would I come right away?
There has always been a “this is where I came in” feeling about a night call. And as my lights swept the cobbles of the deserted market place it was there again, a sense of returning to fundamentals, of really being me. The silent houses, the tight-drawn curtains, the long, empty street giving way to the stone walls of the country road flipping endlessly past on either side. At these times I was usually in a state of suspended animation, just sufficiently awake to steer the car in the right direction, but tonight I was fully alert, my mind ticking over anxiously.
Because Candy was something special. She was the house cow, a pretty little Jersey and Mr. Alderson’s particular pet. She was the sole member of her breed in the herd but whereas the milk from the shorthorns went into the churns to be collected by the big dairy, Candy’s rich yellow offering found its way on to the family porridge every morning or appeared heaped up on trifles and fruit pies or was made into butter, a golden creamy butter to make you dream.
But apart from all that, Mr. Alderson just liked the animal. He usually stopped opposite her on his way down the byre and began to hum to himself and gave her tall head a brief scratch as he passed. And I couldn’t blame him because I sometimes wish all cows were Jerseys: small, gentle, doe-eyed creatures you could push around without any trouble; with padded corners and fragile limbs. Even if they kicked you it was like a love tap compared with the clump from a craggy Friesian.
I just hoped it would be something simple with Candy, because my stock wasn’t high with Mr. Alderson and I had a nervous conviction that he wouldn’t react favourably if I started to make a ham-fisted job of calving his little favourite. I shrugged away my fears; obstetrics in the Jersey was usually easy.
Helen’s father was an efficient farmer. As I pulled up in the yard I could see into the lighted loose box where two buckets of water were steaming in readiness for me. A towel was draped over the half door and Stan and Bert, the two long-serving cowmen, were standing alongside their boss. Candy was lying comfortably in deep straw. She wasn’t straining and there was nothing visible at the vulva but the cow had a preoccupied, inward look as though all was not well with her.
I closed the door behind me. “Have you had a feel inside her, Mr. Alderson?”
“Aye, I’ve had me hand in and there’s nowt there.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not a thing. She’d been on for a few hours and not showing so I popped me hand in and there’s no head, no legs, nowt. And not much room, either. That’s when I rang you.”
This sounded very strange. I hung my jacket on a nail and began thoughtfully to unbutton my shirt. It was when I was pulling it over my head that I noticed Mr. Alderson’s nose wrinkling. The farm men, too, began to sniff and look at each other wonderingly. Mrs. Hall’s bath salts, imprisoned under my clothing, had burst from their bondage in a sickly wave, filling the enclosed space with their strident message. Hurriedly I began to wash my arms in the hope that the alien odour might pass away but it seemed to get worse, welling from my warm skin, competing incongruously with the honest smells of cow, hay and straw. Nobody said anything. These men weren’t the type to make the ribald remark which would have enabled me to laugh the thing off. There was no ambiguity about this scent; it was voluptuously feminine and Bert and Stan stared at me open-mouthed. Mr. Alderson, his mouth turned down at the corners, his nostrils still twitching, kept his eyes fixed on the far wall.
Cringing inwardly I knelt behind the cow and in a moment my embarrassment was forgotten. The vagina was empty; a smooth passage narrowing rapidly to a small, ridged opening just wide enough to admit my hand. Beyond I could feel the feet and head of a calf. My spirits plummeted. Torsion of the uterus. There was going to be no easy victory for me here.
I sat back on my heels and turned to the farmer. “She’s got a twisted calf bed. There’s a live calf in there all right but there’s no way out for it—I can barely get my hand through.”
“Aye, I thought it was something peculiar.” Mr. Alderson rubbed his chin and looked at me doubtfully. “What can we do about it, then?”
“We’ll have to try to correct the twist by rolling the cow over while I keep hold of the calf. It’s a good job there’s plenty of us here.”
“And that’ll put everything right, will it?”
I swallowed. I didn’t like these jobs. Sometimes rolling worked and sometimes it didn’t and in those days we hadn’t quite got round to performing caesareans on cows. If I was unsuccessful I had the prospect of telling Mr. Alderson to send Candy to the butcher. I banished the thought quickly.
“It’ll put everything right,” I said. It had to. I stationed Bert at the front legs, Stan at the hind and had the farmer holding the cow’s head on the floor. Then I stretched myself on the hard concrete, pushed in a hand and grasped the calf’s foot.
“Now roll her,” I gasped, and the men pulled the legs round in a clockwise direction. I held fiercely to the little foot as the cow flopped on to her other side. Nothing seemed to be happening inside.
“Push her on to her chest,” I panted.
Stan and Bert expertly tucked the legs under the cow and rolled her on to her brisket and as she settled there I gave a yell of pain.
“Get her back, quick! We’re going the wrong way!” The smooth band of tissue had tightened on my wrist in a numbing grip of frightening power. For a moment I had the panicky impression that I’d never get out of there again.
But the men worked like lightning. Within seconds Candy was stretched out on her original side, the pressure was off my arm and we were back where we started.
I gritted my teeth and took a fresh grip on the calf’s foot. “O.K., try her the other way.”
This time the roll was anti-clockwise and we went through 180 degrees without anyt
hing happening. I only just kept my grasp on the foot—the resistance this time was tremendous. Taking a breather for a few seconds I lay face down while the sweat sprang out on my back, sending out fresh exotic vapours from the bath salts.
“Right. One more go!” I cried and the men hauled the cow further over.
And oh it was beautiful to feel everything magically unravelling and my arm lying free in a wide uterus with all the room in the world and the calf already beginning to slide towards me.
Candy summed up the situation immediately and for the first time gave a determined heaving strain. Sensing victory just round the corner she followed up with another prolonged effort which popped the calf wet and wriggling into my arms.
“By gum, it was quick at t’finish,” Mr. Alderson murmured wonderingly. He seized a wisp of hay and began to dry off the little creature.
Thankfully I soaped my arms in one of the buckets. After every delivery there is a feeling of relief but in this case it was overwhelming. It no longer mattered that the loose box smelt like a ladies’ hairdressing salon, I just felt good. I said good night to Bert and Stan as they returned to their beds, giving a final incredulous sniff as they passed me. Mr. Alderson was pottering about, having a word with Candy, then starting again on the calf which he had already rubbed down several times. He seemed fascinated by it. And I couldn’t blame him because it was like something out of Disney; a pale gold fawn, unbelievably tiny with large dark limpid eyes and an expression of trusting innocence. It was a heifer, too.