Siegfried's veterinary friend who always took a pint sample from the
healthiest udder he could find to go with his lunchtime sandwiches.
I labelled the bottle and put it into the car. We had a little electric
centrifuge at Skeldale House and tonight I would spin this milk and
examine the sediment on a slide after staining by Zichl-Neelsen.
Probably I would find nothing but at times there was the strange
excitement of peering down the microscope at a clump of bright red,
iridescent TB bacilli. When that happened the cow was immediately
slaughtered and there was always the thought that I might have lifted
the death sentence from some child - the meningitis, the spinal and lung
infections which were so common in those days.
Returning to the byre I finished the inspection by examining the wall in
front of each cow.
!
The farmer watched me dourly. "What you on with now."
"Well, if a cow has a cough you can often find some spit on the wall." I
had, in truth, found more tuberculous cows this way than any other - by
scraping a little sputum on to a glass slide and then staining it as for
the milk.
The modern young vet just about never sees a TB cow, thank heavens, but
'screws' were all too common thirty years ago. There were very few in
the high Pennines but in the low country on the plain you found them;
the cows that 'weren't doing right', the ones with the soft, careful
cough and slightly accelerated breathing. Often they were good milkers
and ate well, but they were killers and I was learning to spot them. And
there were the others, the big, fat, sleek animals which could still be
riddled with the disease. They were killers of a more insidious kind and
nobody could pick them out. It took the tuberculin test to do that.
At the next four places I visited, the farmers had got tired of waiting
for me and had turned their cows out. They had all to be brought in from
the field and they came slowly and reluctantly; there was nothing like
the rodeo I had had with Mr. Kay's heifers but a lot more time was lost.
The animals kept trying to turn back to the field while I sped around
their flanks like a demented sheep dog; and as I panted to and fro each
farmer told me the same thing - that cows only liked to come in at
milking time.
Milking time did eventually come and I caught three of my herds while
they were being milked, but it was after six when I came tired and
hungry to my second last inspection. A hush hung over the place and
after shouting my way round the buildings without finding anybody I
walked over to the house.
"Is your husband in, Mrs. Bell?" I asked.
"No, he's had to go into "'village to get the horse shod but he won't be
long before he's back. He's left cows in for you," the farmer's wife
replied.
That was fine. I'd soon get through this lot. I almost ran into the byre
and started the old routine, feeling sick to death of the sight and
smell of cows and fed up with pawing at their udders. I was working
along almost automatically when I came to a thin, rangy cow with a
narrow red and white face; she could be a crossed Shorthorn-Ayrshire. I
had barely touched her udder when she lashed out with the speed of light
and caught me just above the kneecap.
I hopped round the byre on one leg, groaning and swearing in my agony.
It was some time before I was able to limp back to have another try and
this time I scratched her back and cush-cushed her in a wheedling tone
before sliding my hand gingerly between her legs. The same thing
happened again only this time the sharp-edged cloven foot smacked
slightly higher up my leg.
Crashing back against the wall, I huddled there, almost weeping with
pain and rage. After a few minutes I reached a decision. To hell with
her. If she didn't want to be examined she could take her luck. I had
had enough for one day - I was in no mood for heroics.
Ignoring her, I proceeded down the byre till I had inspected the others.
But I had to pass her on my way back and paused to have another look;
and whether it was sheer stubbornness or whether I imagined she was
laughing at me, I don't know, but I decided to have just one more go.
Maybe she didn't like me coming from behind. Perhaps if I worked from
the side she wouldn't mind so much.
Carefully I squeezed my way between her and her neighbour, gasping as
the craggy pelvic bones dug into my ribs. Once in the space beyond, I
thought, I would be free to do my job; and that was my big mistake.
Because as soon as I had got there the cow went to work on me in
earnest. Switching her back end round quickly to cut off my way of
escape, she began to kick me systematically from head to foot. She
kicked forward, reaching at times high on my chest as I strained back
against the wall.
Since then I have been kicked by an endless variety of cows in all sorts
of situations but never by such an expert as this one. There must be
very few really venomous bovines and when one of them uses her feet it
is usually an instinctive reaction to being hurt or frightened; and they
kick blindly. But this cow measured me up before each blow and her
judgement of distance was beautiful. And as she drove me further towards
her head she was able to hook me in the back with her horns by way of
variety. I am convinced she hated the human race.
My plight was desperate. I was completely trapped and it didn't help
when the apparently docile cow next door began to get into the act by
prodding me off with her horns as I pressed against her.
I don't know what made me look up, but there, in the thick wall of the
byre was a hole about two feet square where some of the crumbling stone
had fallen out. I pulled myself up with an agility that amazed me and as
I crawled through head first a sweet fragrance came up to me. I was
looking into a hay barn and seeing a deep bed of finest clover just
below I launched myself into space and did a very creditable roll in the
air before landing safely on my back.
Lying there, bruised and breathless, with the front of my coat thickly
patterned with claw marks I finally abandoned any lingering illusions I
had had that Ministry work was a soft touch.
I was rising painfully to my feet when Mr. Bell strolled in. "Sorry ah
had to go out," he said, looking me over with interest, "But I'd just
about given you up. You're 'ellish late."
I dusted myself down and picked a few strands of hay from my hair. "Yes
sorry about that. But never mind, I managed to get the job done."
"But ... were you havin' a bit of a kip, then."
"No, not exactly. I had some trouble with one of your cows." There
wasn't much point in standing on my dignity. I told him the story.
Even the friendliest farmer seems to derive pleasure from a vet's
discomfiture and Mr. Bell listened with an ever-widening grin of
delight. By the time I had finished he was doubled up, beating his
breeches knees with his hands.
"I can just imagine it. That Ayrshire cross! She's a right bitch. Picked
her up cheap at market last spring and thought ah'd got a bargain, but
ah soon found out. Took us a fortnight to get bugger tied up."
"Well, I just wish I'd known," I said rather tight lipped.
The farmer looked up at the hole in the wall. "And you crawled through .
.." he went into another convulsion which lasted some time, then he took
off his cap and wiped his eyes with the lining.
"Oh dear, oh dear," he murmured weakly. "By yaw, I wish I'd been here."
My last call was just outside Darrowby and I could hear the church clock
striking a quarter past seven as I got stiffly out of the car. After my
easy day in the service of the government I felt broken in mind and
body; I had to suppress a scream when I saw yet another long line of
cows' backsides awaiting me. The sun was low, and dark thunder clouds
piling up in the west had thrown the countryside into an eerie darkness;
and in the old-fashioned, slit-windowed byre the animals looked
shapeless and ill-defined in the gloom.
Right, no messing about. I was going to make a quick job of this and get
off home; home to some food and an armchair. I had no further ambitions.
So left hand on the root of the tail, right hand between the hind legs,
a quick feel around and on to the next one. Eyes half closed, my mind
numb, I moved from cow to cow going through the motions like a robot
with the far end of the byre seeming like the promised land.
And finally here it was, the very last one up against the wall. Left
hand on tail, right hand between.legs ... At first my tired brain didn't
take in the fact that there was something different here, but there was
... something vastly different. A lot of space and instead of the udder
a deeply cleft, pendulous something with no teats anywhere.
I came awake suddenly and looked along the animal's side. A huge woolly
head was turned towards me and two wide-set eyes regarded me
enquiringly. In the dull light I could just see the gleam of the copper
ring in the nose.
The farmer who had watched me in silence, spoke up.
"You're wasting your time there, young man. There's nowt wrong wi' HIS
bag."
Chapter Twelve.
The card dangled above the old lady's bed. It read "God is Near' but it
wasn't like the usual religious text. It didn't have a frame or ornate
printing. It was just a strip of cardboard about eight inches long with
plain lettering which might have-said "No smoking' or "Exit' and it was
looped carelessly over an old gas bracket so that Miss Stubbs from where
she lay could look up at it and read "God is Near' in square black
capitals.
There wasn't much more Miss Stubbs could see; perhaps a few feet of
privet hedge through the frayed curtains but mainly it was just the
cluttered little room which had been her world for so many years.
The room was on the ground floor and in the front of the cottage, and as
I came up through the wilderness which had once been a garden I could
see the dogs watching me from where they had jumped on to the old lady's
bed. And when I knocked on the door the place almost erupted with their
barking. It was always like this. I had been visiting regularly for over
a year and the pattern never changed; the furious barking, then Mrs.
Broadwith who looked after Miss Stubbs would push all the animals but my
patient into the back kitchen and open the door and I would go in and
see Miss Stubbs in the corner in her bed with the card hanging over it.
She had been there for a long time and would never get up again. But she
never mentioned her illness and pain to me; all her concern was for her
three dogs and two cats.
Today it was old Prince and I was worried about him. It was his heart
just about the most spectacular valvular incompetence I had ever heard.
He was waiting for me as I came in, pleased as ever to see me, his long,
fringed tail waving gently.
The sight of that tail used to make me think there must be a lot of
Irish Setter in Prince but I was inclined to change my mind as I worked
my way forward over the bulging black and white body to the shaggy head
and upstanding Alsatian ears. Miss Stubbs often used to call him "Mr.
Heinz' and though he may not have had 57 varieties in him his hybrid
vigour had stood him in good stead. With his heart he should have been
dead long ago.
"I thought I'd best give you a ring, Mr. Herriot," Mrs. Broadwith said.
She was a comfortable, elderly widow with a square, ruddy face
contrasting sharply with the pinched features on the pillow. "He's been
coughing right bad this week and this morning he was a bit staggery.
Still eats well, though."
"I bet he does' I ran my hands over the rolls of fat on the ribs. "It
would take something really drastic to put old Prince off his grub."
Miss Stubbs laughed from the bed and the old dog, his mouth wide, eyes
dancing, seemed to be joining in the joke. I put my stethoscope over his
heart and listened, knowing well what I was going to hear. They say the
heart is supposed to go "Lub-dup, lub-dup', but Prince's went
'swish-swoosh, swishswoosh'. There seemed to be nearly as much blood
leaking back as was being pumped into the circulatory system. And
another thing, the 'swish-swoosh' was a good bit faster than last time;
he was on oral digitalis but it wasn't quite doing its job.
Gloomily I moved the stethoscope over the rest of the chest. Like all
old dogs with a chronic heart weakness he had an ever-present bronchitis
and I listened without enthusiasm to the symphony of whistles, rales,
squeaks and bubbles which signalled the workings of Prince's lungs. The
old dog stood very erect and proud, his tail still waving slowly. He
always took it as a tremendous compliment when I examined him and there
was no doubt he was enjoying himself now. Fortunately his was not a very
painful ailment.
Straightening up, I patted his head and he responded immediately by
trying to put his paws on my chest. He didn't quite make it and even
that slight exertion started his ribs heaving and his tongue lolling. I
gave him an intramuscular injection of digitalin and another of morphine
hydrochloride which he accepted with apparent pleasure as part of the
game.
"I hope that will steady his heart and breathing, Miss Stubbs. You'll
find he'll be a bit dopey for the rest of the day and that will help,
too. Carry on with the tablets, and I'm going to leave you some more
medicine for his bronchitis." I handed over a bottle of my old standby
mixture of ipecacuanha and ammonium acetate.
The next stage of the visit began now as Mrs. Broadwith brought in a cup
of tea and the rest of the animals were let out of the kitchen. There
were Ben, a Sealyham, and Sally, a Cocker Spaniel, and they started a
deafening barking contest with Prince. They were closely followed by the
cats, Arthur and Susie, who stalked in gracefully and began to rub
themselves against my trouser legs.
It was the usual scenario for the many cups of tea I had drunk with Miss
Stubbs under the little card whic
h dangled above her bed.
"How are you today?" I asked.
"Oh, much better," she replied and immediately, as always, changed the
subject.
Mostly she liked to talk about her pets and the ones she had known right
back to her girlhood. She spoke a lot, too, about the days when her
family were alive. She loved to describe the escapades of her three
brothers and today she showed me a photograph which Mrs. Broadwith had
found at the bottom of a drawer.
I took it from her and three young men in the knee breeches and little
round caps of the nineties smiled up at me from the yellowed old print;
they all held long church warden pipes and the impish humour in their
expressions came down undimmed over the years.
"My word, they look really bright lads, Miss Stubbs," I said.
"Oh, they were young rips!" she exclaimed. She threw back her head and
laughed and for a moment her face was radiant, transfigured by her
memories.
The things I had heard in the village came back to me; about the
prosperous father and his family who lived in the big house many years
ago. Then the foreign investments which crashed and the sudden change in
circumstances.
|
"When t'owd feller died he was about skint," one old man had said.
"There's not much brass there now."
Probably just enough brass to keep Miss Stubbs and her animals alive and
to pay Mrs. Broadwith. Not enough to keep the garden dug or the house
painted or for any of the normal little luxuries.
And, sitting there, drinking my tea, with the dogs in a row by the
bedside and the cats making themselves comfortable on the bed itself, I
felt as I had often felt before - a bit afraid of the responsibility I
had. The one thing which brought some light into the life of the brave
old woman was the transparent devotion of this shaggy bunch whose eyes
were never far from her face. And the snag was that they were all
elderly.
There had, in fact, been four dogs originally, but one of them, a truly
ancient golden Labrador, had died a few months previously. And now I had
the rest of them to look after and none of them less than ten years old.
They were perky enough but all showing some of the signs of old age;
Prince with his heart, Sally beginning to drink a lot of water which
made me wonder if she was starting with a pyometra. Ben growing steadily
thinner with his nephritis. I couldn't give him new kidneys and I hadn't
much faith in the hexamine tablets I had prescribed. Another peculiar
thing about Ben was that I was always having to clip his claws; they
grew at an extraordinary rate.
The cats were better, though Susie was a bit scraggy and I kept up a
morbid kneading of her furry abdomen for signs of lymphosarcoma. Arthur
was the best of the bunch; he never seemed to ail anything beyond a
tendency for his teeth to tartar up.
This must have been in Miss Stubbs' mind because, when I had finished my
tea, she asked me to look at him. I hauled him across the bedspread and
opened his mouth.
"Yes, there's a bit of the old trouble there. Might as well fix it while
I'm here."
Arthur was a huge, grey, neutered Tom, a living denial of all those
theories that cats are cold-natured, selfish and the rest. His fine
eyes, framed in the widest cat face I have ever seen, looked out on the
world with an all-embracing benevolence and tolerance. His every
movement was marked by immense dignity.
As I started to scrape his teeth his chest echoed with a booming purr
like a distant outboard motor. There was no need for anybody to hold
him; he sat there placidly and moved only once - when I was using
forceps to crack off a tough piece of tartar from a back tooth and
accidentally nicked his gum. He casually raised-a massive paw as if to