shapeless blur. My stomach heaved and tossed.
Then I heard somebody say "Good evening'. It was a woman's voice and
very close. There were two figures looking at us with interest. They
seemed to have just come through the door.
I concentrated fiercely on them and they swam into focus for a few
seconds. It was Helen and a man. His pink, scrubbed-looking face, the
shining fair hair plastered sideways across the top of his head was in
keeping with the spotless British warm overcoat. He was staring at me
distastefully. They went out of focus again and there was only Helen's
voice. "We thought we would just look in for a few moments to see how
the dance was going. Are you enjoying it."
Then, unexpectedly, I could see her clearly. She was smiling her kind
smile but her eyes were strained as she looked from me to Connie and
back again. I couldn't speak but stood gazing at her dully, seeing only
her calm beauty in the crush and noise. It seemed, for a moment, that it
would be the most natural thing in the world to throw my arms around her
but I discarded the idea and, instead, just nodded stupidly.
"Well then, we must be off," she said and smiled again. "Good night."
The fair haired man gave me a cold nod and they went out.
Chapter Twenty-seven.
1
.s 1 1
1 l It looked as though I was going to make it back to the road all
right. And I was thankful for it because seven o'clock in the morning
with the wintry dawn only just beginning to lighten the eastern rim of
the moor was no time to be digging my car out of the snow.
This narrow, unfenced road skirted a high tableland and gave on to a few
lonely farms at the end of even narrower tracks. It hadn't actually been
snowing on my way out to this early call - a uterine haemorrhage in a
cow - but the wind had been rising steadily and whipping the top surface
from the white blanket which had covered the fell-tops for weeks. My
headlights had picked _ _
out the creeping drifts;`pretty, pointed fingers feeling their way inch
by inch across the strip of tarmac.
This was how all blocked roads began, and at the farm as I injected
pituitrin and packed the bleeding cervix with a clean sheet I could hear
the wind buffeting the byre door and wondered if I would win the race
home.
On the way back the drifts had stopped being pretty and lay across the
road like white bolsters; but my little car had managed to cleave
through them, veering crazily at times, wheels spinning, and now I could
see the main road a few hundred yards ahead, reassuringly black in the
pale light.
But just over there on the left, a field away, was Cote House. I was
treating a bullock there - he had eaten some frozen turnips - and a
visit was fixed for today. I didn't fancy trailing back up here if I
could avoid it and there was a light in the kitchen window. The family
were up, anyway. I turned and drove down into the yard.
The farmhouse door lay within a small porch and the wind had driven the
snow inside forming a smooth, two-foot heap against the timbers. As I
leaned across to knock:, the surface of the heap trembled a little, then
began to heave. There was something in there, something quite big. It
was eerie standing in the half light watching the snow parting to reveal
a furry body. Some creature of the wild must have strayed in, searching
for warmth - but it was bigger than a fox or anything else I could think
of.
Just then the door opened and the light from the kitchen streamed out.
Peter Trenholm beckoned me inside and his wife smiled at me from the
bright interior. They were a cheerful young couple.
"What's that?" I gasped, pointing at the animal which was shaking the
snow vigorously from its coat.
"That?" Peter grinned, "That's awd Tip."
"Tip? Your dog? But what's he doing under a pile of snow."
"Just blew in on him, I reckon. That's where he sleeps, you know, just
outside back door."
I stared at the farmer. "You mean he sleeps there, out in the open,
every night ."
"Aye, allus. Summer and winter. But don't look at me like that Mr.
Herriot - it's his own choice. The other dogs have a warm bed in the cow
house but Tip won't entertain it. He's fifteen now and he's been
sleeping out there since he were a pup. I remember when me father was
alive he tried all ways to get t'awd feller to sleep inside but it was
no good."
I looked at the old dog in amazement. I could see him more clearly now;
he wasn't the typical sheep dog type, he was bigger boned, longer in the
hair, and he projected a bursting vitality that didn't go with his
fifteen years. It was difficult to believe that any animal living in
these bleak uplands should choose to sleep outside - and thrive on it. I
had to look closely to see any sign of his great age. There was the
slightest stiffness in his gait as he moved around, perhaps a fleshless
look about his head and face and of course the tell-tale lens opacity in
the depths of his eyes. But the general impression was of an
unquenchable jauntiness.
He shook the last of the snow from his coat, pranced jerkily up to the
farmer and gave a couple of reedy barks. Peter Trenholm laughed. "You
see he's ready to be off - he's a beggar for work is Tip." He led the
way towards the buildings and I followed, stumbling over the frozen
ruts, like iron under the snow, and bending my head against the
knife-like wind. It was a relief to open the byre door and escape into
the sweet bovine warmth.
There was a fair mixture of animals in the long building. The dairy cows
took up most of the length, then there were a few young heifers, some
bullocks ..;
~,.
l and finally, in an empty stall deeply bedded with straw, the other
farm dogs. The cats were there too, so it had to be warm. No animal is a
better judge of comfort than a cat and they were just visible as furry
balls in the straw. They had the best place, up against the wooden
partition where the warmth came through from the big animals.
Tip strode confidently among his colleagues - a young dog and a bitch
with three half-grown pups. You could see he was boss.
One of the bullocks was my patient and he was looking a bit better. When
I had seen him yesterday his rumen (the big first stomach) had been
completely static and atonic following an over eager consumption of
frozen turnips. He had been slightly bloated and groaning with
discomfort. But today as I leaned with my ear against his left side I
could hear the beginnings of the surge and rumble of the normal rumen
instead of the deathly silence of yesterday. My gastric ravage had
undoubtedly tickled things up and I felt that another of the same would
just about put him right. Almost lovingly I got together the ingredients
of one of my favourite treatments, long since washed away in the flood
of progress; the ounce of formalin, the half pound of common salt, the
can of black treacle from the barrel which you used to find in most cow
&nbs
p; houses, all mixed up in a bucket with two gallons of hot water.
I jammed the wooden gag into the bullock's mouth and buckled it behind
the horns, then as Peter held the handles I passed the stomach tube down
into the rumen and pumped in the mixture. When I had finished the
bullock opened his eyes wide in surprise and began to paddle his hind
legs. Listening again at his side, I could hear the reassuring bubbling
of the stomach contents. I smiled to myself in satisfaction. It worked
it always worked.
Wiping down the tube I could hear the hiss-hiss as Peter's brother got
on with the morning's milking, and as I prepared to leave he came down
the byre with a full bucket on the way to the cooler. As he passed the
dogs' stall he tipped a few pints of the warm milk into their dishes and
Tip strolled forward casually for his breakfast. While he was drinking,
the young dog tried to push his way in but a soundless snap from Tip's
jaws missed his nose by a fraction and he retired to another dish. I
noticed, however, that the old dog made no protest as the bitch and pups
joined him. The cats, black and white, tortoise-shell, tabby grey,
appeared, stretching, from the straw and advanced in a watchful ring.
Their turn would come.
Mrs. Trenholm called me in for a cup of tea and when I came out it was
full daylight. But the sky was a burdened grey and the sparse trees near
the house strained their bare branches against the wind which drove in
long, icy gusts over the white empty miles of moor. It was what the
Yorkshiremen called a 'thin wind' or sometimes a 'lazy wind' - the kind
that couldn't be bothered to blow round you but went straight through
instead. It made me feel that the best place on earth was by the side of
that bright fire in the farmhouse kitchen.
Most people would have felt like that, but not old Tip. He was capering
around as Peter loaded a flat cart with some hay bales for the young
cattle in the outside barns; and as Peter shook the reins and the cob
set off over the fields, he leapt on to the back of the cart.
As I threw my tackle into the boot I looked back at the old dog, legs
braced against the uneven motion, tail waving, barking defiance at the
cold world. I carried away the memory of Tip who scorned the softer
things and slept in what he considered the place of honour - at his
master's door.
A little incident like this has always been able to brighten my day and
fortunately I have the kind of job where things of this kind happened.
And sometimes it isn't even a happening - just a single luminous phrase.
As when I was examining a cow one morning while its neighbour was being
milked. The milker was an old man and he was having trouble. He was
sitting well into the cow, his cloth-capped head buried in her flank,
the bucket gripped tightly between his knees, but the stool kept rocking
about as the cow fidgeted and weaved. Twice she kicked the bucket over
and she had an additional little trick of anointing her tail with
particularly liquid faeces than lashing the old man across the face with
it.
Finally he could stand it no longer. Leaping to his feet he dealt a puny
blow at the cow's craggy back and emitted an exasperated shout.
"Stand still, thou shittin' awd bovril."
Or the day when I had to visit Luke Benson at his smallholding in Hillom
village. Luke was a powerful man of about sixty and had the unusual
characteristic of speaking always through his clenched teeth. He
literally articulated every word by moving only his lips, showing the
rows of square, horse-like incisors clamped tightly together. It leant a
peculiar intensity to his simplest utterance; and as he spoke, his eyes
glared.
Most of his conversation consisted of scathing remarks about the other
inhabitants of Hillom. In fact he seemed to harbour a cordial dislike of
the human race in general. Yet strangely enough I found him a very
reasonable man to deal with; he accepted my diagnoses of his animal."
ailments without question and appeared to be trying to be friendly by
addressing me repeatedly as "Jems', which was the nearest he could get
to my name with his teeth together.
His fiercest hatred was reserved for his neighbour and fellow
smallholder, a little lame man called Gill to whom Luke referred
invariably and unkindly as "Yon 'oppin youth'. A bitter feud had raged
between them for many years and I had seen Luke smile on only two
occasions - once when Mr. Gill's sow lost its litter and again when he
had a stall; burnt down.
When Mr. Gill's wife ran away with a man who came round the farm selling
brushes it caused a sensation. Nothing like that had ever happened in
Hillom before and a wave of delighted horror swept through the village.
This, I thought, would be the high point of Luke Benson's life and when
I had to visit a heifer of his I expected to find him jubilant. But Luke
was gloomy.
As I examined and treated his animal he remained silent and it wasn't
until I went into the kitchen to wash my hands that he spoke. He glanced
round warily at his wife, a gaunt, grim-faced woman who was applying
blacklead to the grate.
"You'll have heard about yon 'oppin youth's missus rumlin'off?" he said.
"Yes," I replied. "I did hear about it." I waited for Luke to gloat but
he seemed strangely ill at ease. He fidgeted until I had finished drying
my hands then he glared at me and bared his strong teeth.
"Ah'll tell you something, Jems," he ground out. "Ah wish somebody would
tek MA bugger."
And there was that letter from the Bramleys - that really made me feel
good. You don't find people like the Bramleys now; radio, television and
the motorcar have carried the outside world into the most isolated
places so that the simple people you used to meet on the lonely farms
are rapidly becoming like people anywhere else. There are still a few
left, of course - old folk who cling to the ways of their fathers and
when I come across any of them I like to make some excuse to sit down
and talk with them and listen to the old Yorkshire words and expressions
which have almost disappeared.
But even in the thirties when there were many places still untouched by
the flood of progress the Bramleys were in some ways unique. There were
four of them; three brothers, all middle-aged bachelors, and an older
sister, also unmarried, and their farm lay in a wide, shallow depression
in the hills. You could just see the ancient tiles of Scar House through
the top branches of the sheltering trees if you stood outside the pub in
Drewburn village and in the summer it was possible to drive down over
the fields to the farm. I had done it a few times, the bottles in the
boot jingling and crashing as the car bounced over the rig and furrow.
The other approach to the place was right on the other side through Mr.
Broom's stackyard and then along a track with ruts so deep that only a
tractor could negotiate it.
There was, in fact, no road to the farm, but that didn't bother the
Bramleys becau
se the outside world held no great attraction for them.
Miss Bramley made occasional trips to Darrowby on market days for
provisions and Herbert, the middle brother, had come into town in the
spring of 1929 to have a tooth out, but apart from that they stayed
contentedly at home.
A call to Scar House always came as rather a jolt because it meant that
at least two hours had been removed from the working day. In all but the
driest weather it was safer to leave the car at Mr. Broom's and make the
journey on foot. One February night at about eight o'clock I was
splashing my way along the track, feeling the mud sucking at my
wellingtons; it was to see a horse with colic and my pockets were
stuffed with the things I might need - arecoline, phials of morphia, a
bottle of Paraphyroxia. My eyes were half closed against the steady
drizzle but about half a mile ahead I could see the lights of the house
winking among the trees.
After twenty minutes of slithering in and out of the unseen puddles and
opening a series of broken, string-tied gates, I reached the farm yard
and crossed over to the back door. I was about to knock when I stopped
with my hand poised. I found I was looking through the kitchen window
and in the interior, dimly lit by an oil lamp, the Bramleys were sitting
in a row.
They weren't grouped round the fire but were jammed tightly on a long,
high-backed wooden settle which stood against the far wall. The strange
thing was the almost exact similarity of their attitudes; all four had
their arms folded, chins resting on their chests, feet stretched out in
front of them. The men had removed their heavy boots and were
stocking-footed, but Miss Bramley wore an old pair of carpet slippers.
I stared, fascinated by the curious immobility of the group. They were
not asleep, not talking or reading or listening to the radio - in fact
they didn't have one - they were just sitting.
I had never seen people just sitting before and I stood there for some
minutes to see if they would make a move or do anything at all, but
nothing happened. It occurred to me that this was probably a typical
evening; they worked hard all day, had their meal, then they just sat
till bedtime.
A month or two later I discovered another unsuspected side of the
Bramleys when they started having trouble with their cats. I knew they
were fond of cats by the number and variety which swarmed over the place
and perched confidently on my car bonnet on cold days with their
unerring instinct for a warm place. But I was unprepared for the
family's utter desolation when the cats started to die. Miss Bramley was
on the doorstep of Skeldale House nearly every day carrying an egg
basket with another pitiful patient - a cat or sometimes a few tiny
kittens - huddling miserably inside.
Even today with the full range of modern antibiotics, the treatment of
feline enteritis is unrewarding and I had little success with my
salicylates and nonspecific injections I did my best. I even took some
of the cats in and kept them at the surgery so that I could attend them
several times a day, but the mortality rate was high.
The Bramleys were stricken as they saw their cats diminishing. I was
surprised at their grief because most farmers look on cats as pest
killers and nothing more. But when Miss Bramley came in one morning with
a fresh consignment of invalids she was in a sorry state. She stared at
me across the surgery table and her rough fingers clasped and unclasped
on the handle of the egg basket:
"Is it going to go through 'em all?" she quavered.
"Well, it's very infectious and it looks as though most of your young
cats will get it anyway."
For a moment Miss Bramley seemed to be struggling with herself, then her