He had laughed when I mentioned this. “Oh, my great grandfather came from these parts and I’ve always had a hankering to come back.”
As I came to know him better I was able to fill in the gaps in that simple statement. He had spent all his holidays up here as a small boy and though his father was a foreman in the steelworks and he himself had served his time at the trade the pull of the Dales had been like a siren song welling stronger till he had been unable to resist it any longer. He had worked on farms in his spare time, read all he could about agriculture and finally had thrown up his old life and rented the little place high in the fells at the end of a long, stony track.
With its primitive house and tumbledown buildings it seemed an unpromising place to make a living and in any case I hadn’t much faith in the ability of townspeople to suddenly turn to farming and make a go of it; in my short experience I had seen quite a few try and fail. But Frank Metcalfe had gone about the job as though he had been at it all his life, repairing the broken walls, improving the grassland, judiciously buying stock on his shoe-string budget; there was no sign of the bewilderment and despair I had seen in so many others.
I had mentioned this to a retired farmer in Darrowby and the old man chuckled. “Aye, you’ve got to have farmin’ inside you. There’s very few people as can succeed at it unless it’s in their blood. It matters nowt that young Metcalfe’s been brought up in a town, he’s still got it in ’im—he’s got it through the titty, don’t you see, through the titty.”
Maybe he was right, but whether Frank had it through the titty or through study and brains he had transformed the holding in a short time. When he wasn’t milking, feeding, mucking out, he was slaving at that little byre, chipping stones, mixing cement, sand and dust clinging to the sweat on his face. And now, as he said, he was ready to start.
As we came out of the dairy he pointed to another old building across the yard. “When I’m straightened out I aim to convert that into another byre. I’ve had to borrow a good bit but now I’m T.T. I should be able to clear it off in a couple of years. Sometime in the future if all goes well I might be able to get a bigger place altogether.”
He was about my own age and a natural friendship had sprung up between us. We used to sit under the low beams of his cramped living room with its single small window and sparse furniture and as his young wife poured cups of tea he liked to talk of his plans.
And, listening to him, I always felt that a man like him would do well not only for himself but for farming in general.
I looked at him now as he turned his head and gazed for a few moments round his domain. He didn’t have to say: “I love this place, I feel I belong here.” It was all there in his face, in the softening of his eyes as they moved over the huddle of grass fields cupped in a hollow of the fells. These fields, clawed by past generations from the rough hillside and fighting their age-old battle with heather and bracken, ran up to a ragged hem of cliff and scree and above you could just see the lip of the moor—a wild land of bog and peat hag. Below, the farm track disappeared round the bend of a wooded hill. The pastures were poor and knuckles of rock pushed out in places through the thin soil, but the clean, turf-scented air and the silence must have been like a deliverance after the roar and smoke of the steelworks.
“Well we’d better see that cow, Frank,” I said. “The new byre nearly made me forget what I came for.”
“Aye, it’s this red and white ’un. My latest purchase and she’s never been right since I got her. Hasn’t come on to her milk properly and she seems dosy, somehow.”
The temperature was a hundred and three and as I put the thermometer away I sniffed. “She smells a bit, doesn’t she?”
“Aye,” Frank said. “I’ve noticed that myself.”
“Better bring me some hot water, then. I’ll have a feel inside.”
The uterus was filled with a stinking exudate and as I withdrew my arm there was a gush of yellowish, necrotic material. “Surely she must have had a bit of a discharge,” I said.
Frank nodded. “Yes, she has had, but I didn’t pay much attention—a lot of them do it when they’re clearing up after calving.”
I drained the uterus by means of a rubber tube and irrigated it with antiseptic, then I pushed in a few acriflavine pessaries. “That’ll help to clean her up, and I think she’ll soon be a lot better in herself, but I’m going to take a blood sample from her.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well it may be nothing, but I don’t like the look of that yellow stuff. It consists of decayed cotyledone—you know, the berries on the calf bed—and when they’re that colour it’s a bit suspicious of Brucellosis.”
“Abortion, you mean?”
“It’s possible, Frank. She may have calved before her time or she may have calved normally but still been infected. Anyway the blood will tell us. Keep her isolated in the meantime.”
A few days later at breakfast time in Skeldale House I felt a quick stab of anxiety as I opened the lab report and read that the agglutination test on the blood had given a positive result. I hurried out to the farm.
“How long have you had this cow?” I asked.
“Just over three weeks,” the young farmer replied.
“And she’s been running in the same field as your other cows and the in-calf heifers?”
“Yes, all the time.”
I paused for a moment “Frank, I’d better tell you the implications. I know you’ll want to know what might happen. The source of infection in Brucellosis is the discharges of an infected cow and I’m afraid this animal of yours will have thoroughly contaminated that pasture. Any or all of your animals may have picked up the bug.”
“Does that mean they’ll abort?”
“Not necessarily. It varies tremendously. Many cows carry their calves through despite infection.” I was doing my best to sound optimistic.
Frank dug his hands deep into his pockets. His thin, dark-complexioned face was serious. “Damn, I wish I’d never seen the thing. I bought her at Houlton market—God knows where she came from, but it’s too late to talk like that now. What can we do about the job?”
“The main thing is to keep her isolated and away from the other stock. I wish there was some way to protect the others but there isn’t much we can do. There are only two types of vaccine—live ones which can only be given to empty cows and yours are all in-calf, and dead ones which aren’t reckoned to be of much use.”
“Well I’m the sort that doesn’t like to just sit back and wait. The dead vaccine won’t do any harm if it doesn’t do any good, will it?”
“No.”
“Right, let’s do ’em all with it and we’ll hope for the best.”
Hoping for the best was something vets did a lot in the thirties. I vaccinated the entire herd and we waited.
Nothing happened for a full eight weeks. Summer lengthened into autumn and the cattle were brought inside. The infected cow improved, her discharge cleared up and she began to milk a bit better. Then Frank rang early one morning.
“I’ve found a dead calf laid in the channel when I went in to milk. Will you come?”
It was a thinly-haired seven months foetus that I found. The cow looked sick and behind her dangled the inevitable retained placenta. Her udder which, if she had calved normally, would have been distended with milk, the precious milk which Frank depended on for his livelihood, was almost empty.
Obsessed by a feeling of helplessness I could only offer the same old advice; isolate, disinfect—and hope.
A fortnight later one of the in-calf heifers did it—she was a pretty little Jersey cross which Frank had hoped would push up his butter fat percentage—and a week after that one of the cows slipped a calf in her sixth month of pregnancy.
It was when I was visiting this third case that I met Mr. Bagley. Frank introduced him somewhat apologetically. “He says he has a cure for this trouble, Jim. He wants to talk to you about it.”
In every sticky situation t
here is always somebody who knows better than the vet. Subconsciously I suppose I had been waiting for a Mr. Bagley to turn up and I listened patiently.
He was very short with bandy legs in cloth leggings, and he looked up at me intently. “Young man, I’ve been through this on ma own farm and ah wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t found the remedy.”
“I see, and what was that, Mr. Bagley?”
“I have it ’ere.” The little man pulled a bottle from his jacket pocket. “It’s a bit mucky—it’s been stood in t’cow house window for a year or two.”
I read the label. “Professor Driscoll’s Abortion Cure. Give two tablespoonsful to each cow in the herd in a pint of water and repeat on the following day.” The professor’s face took up most of the label. He was an aggressive-looking, profusely whiskered man in a high Victorian collar and he glared out at me belligerently through a thick layer of dust. He wasn’t so daft, either, because lower down the bottle I read, “If an animal has aborted a dose of this mixture will prevent further trouble.” He knew as well as I did that they didn’t often do it more than once.
“Yes,” Mr. Bagley said. “That’s the stuff. Most of my cows did it on me but I kept goin’ with the medicine and they were right as a bobbin next time round.”
“But they would be in any case. They develop an immunity you see.”
Mr. Bagley put his head on one side and gave a gentle unbelieving smile. And who was I to argue, anyway? I hadn’t a thing to offer.
“O.K., Frank,” I said wearily. “Go ahead—like my vaccine, I don’t suppose it can do any harm.”
A fresh bottle of Driscoll’s cure was purchased and little Mr. Bagley supervised the dosing of the herd. He was cock-a-hoop when, three weeks later, one of the cows calved bang on time.
“Now then, what do you say, young man? Ma stuff’s working already, isn’t it?”
“Well I expected some of them to calve normally,” I replied and the little man pursed his lips as though he considered me a bad loser.
But I wasn’t really worried about what he thought; all I felt was an unhappy resignation. Because this sort of thing was always happening in those days before the modern drugs appeared. Quack medicines abounded on the farms and the vets couldn’t say a lot about them because their own range of pharmaceuticals was pitifully inadequate.
And in those diseases like abortion which had so far defeated all the efforts of the profession at control the harvest for the quack men was particularly rich. The farming press and country newspapers were filled with confident advertisements for red drenches, block draughts, pink powders which were positively guaranteed to produce results. Professor Driscoll had plenty of competition.
When shortly afterwards another cow calved to time Mr. Bagley was very nice about it. “We all ’ave to learn, young man, and you haven’t had much practical experience. You just hadn’t heard of my medicine and I’m not blaming you, but I think we’re on top of t’job now.”
I didn’t say anything. Frank was beginning to look like a man who could see a gleam of hope and I wasn’t going to extinguish it by voicing my doubts. Maybe the outbreak had run its course—these things were unpredictable.
But the next time I heard Frank on the phone all my gloomy forebodings were realised. “I want you to come out and cleanse three cows.”
“Three!”
“Aye, they did it one after the other—bang, bang, bang. And all before time. It’s an absolute bugger, Jim—I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
He met me as I got out of the car at the top of the track. He looked ten years older, his face pale and haggard as though he hadn’t slept. Mr. Bagley was there, too, digging a hole in front of the byre door.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
Frank looked down at his boots expressionlessly. “He’s burying one of the calves. He says it does a lot of good if you put it in front of the door.” He looked at me with an attempt at a smile. “Science can do nowt for me so we might as well try a bit of black magic.”
I felt a few years older myself as I picked my way round the deep grave Mr. Bagley was digging. The little man looked up at me as I passed, “This is a very old remedy,” he explained. “Ma medicine seems to be losing its power so well have to try summat stronger. The trouble is,” he added with some asperity, “I was called in on this case far too late.”
I removed the putrefying afterbirths from the three cows and got off the place as soon as possible. I felt such a deep sense of shame that I could hardly meet Frank’s eye. And it was even worse on my next visit a fortnight later because as I walked across the yard I was conscious of a strange smell polluting the sweet hill air. It was a penetrating, acrid stink and though it rang a bell somewhere I couldn’t quite identify it. As Frank came out of the house he saw me sniffing and looking round.
“Not very nice is it?” he said with a tired smile. “I don’t believe you’ve met our goat.”
“You’ve got a goat?”
“Well, we’ve got the loan of one—an old Billy. I don’t see him around right now but by God you can always smell him. Mr. Bagley dug ’im up somewhere—says he did one of his neighbours a world of good when he was having my trouble. Burying the calves wasn’t doing any good so he thought he’d better bring on the goat. It’s the smell that does the trick, he says.”
“Frank, I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s still going on, then?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Aye, two more since I saw you. But I’m past worrying now, Jim, and for God’s sake stop looking so bloody miserable yourself. You can’t do anything, I know that. Nobody can do anything.”
Driving home, I brooded on his words. Contagious Bovine Abortion has been recognised for centuries and I had read in old books of the filthy scourge which ravaged and ruined the ancient farmers just as it was doing to Frank Metcalfe today. The experts of those days said it was due to impure water, improper feeding, lack of exercise, sudden frights. They did note, however, that other cows which were allowed to sniff at the foetuses and afterbirths were likely to suffer the same fate themselves. But beyond that it was a black tunnel of ignorance.
We modern vets, on the other hand, knew all about it. We knew it was caused by a gram negative bacillus called Brucella abortus whose habits and attributes we had studied till we knew its every secret; but when it came to helping a farmer in Frank’s situation we were about as much use as our colleagues of old who wrote those quaint books. True, dedicated researchers were working to find a strain of the bacillus which would form a safe and efficient vaccine to immunise cattle in calfhood and as far back as 1930 a certain strain 19 had been developed from which much was hoped. But even now it was still in the experimental stage. If Frank had had the luck to be born twenty years later the chances are that those cows he bought would have all been vaccinated and protected by that same strain 19. Nowadays we even have an efficient dead vaccine for the pregnant cows.
Best of all there is now a scheme under way for the complete eradication of Brucellosis and this has brought the disease to the notice of the general public. People are naturally interested mainly in the public health aspect and they have learned about the vast spectrum of illnesses which the infected milk can cause in humans. But few townsmen know what Brucellosis can do to farmers.
The end of Frank’s story was not far away. Autumn was reaching into winter and the frost was sparkling on the steps of Skeldale House when he called one night to see me. We went into the big room and I opened a couple bottles of beer.
“I thought I’d come and tell you, Jim,” he said in a matter of fact tone. “I’m having to pack up.”
“Pack up?” Something in me refused to accept what he was saying.
“Aye, I’m going back to me old job in Middlesbrough. There’s nowt else to do.”
I looked at him helplessly. “It’s as bad as that, is it?”
“Well just think.” He smiled grimly. “I have three cows which calved normally out of the whole herd. The rest are a m
ucky, discharging, sickly lot with no milk worth talking about. I’ve got no calves to sell or keep as replacements. I’ve got nowt.”
I hesitated. “There’s no hope of raising the wind to get you over this?”
“No, Jim. If I sell up now I’ll just about be able to pay the bank what I owe them. The rest I borrowed from my old man and I’m not goin’ back to him for more. I promised him I’d return to the steelworks if this didn’t work out and that’s what I’m goin’ to do.”
“Oh hell, Frank,” I said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. You haven’t had a scrap of luck all the way through.”
He looked at me and smiled with no trace of self pity. “Aye well,” he said. “These things happen.”
I almost jumped at the words. “These things happen!” That’s what farmers always said after a disaster. That old man in Darrowby had been right. Frank really did have it through the titty.
And in truth he wasn’t the only man to be bankrupted in this way. What had hit Frank was called an “abortion storm” and the same sort of thing had driven a legion of good men to the wall. Some of them hung on, tightened their belts, spent their life savings and half starved till the storm abated and they could start again. But Frank had no savings to see him through; his venture had been a gamble from the beginning and he had lost.
I never heard of him again. At first I thought he might write, but then I realised that once the agonising break had been made it had to be complete.
From some parts of the northern Pennines you can see away over the great sprawl of Teesside and when the fierce glow from the blast furnaces set the night sky alight I used to think of Frank down there and wonder how he was getting on. He’d make a go of it all right, but how often did his mind turn to the high-blown green hollow where he had hoped to build something worth while and to live and bring up his children?
Some people called Peters bought the little farm at Bransett after he left. Strangely enough they were from Teesside, too, but Mr. Peters was a wealthy director of the I.C.I. and used the place only as a weekend retreat. It was ideal for the purpose because he had a young family all keen on riding and the fields were soon being grazed by an assortment of horses and ponies. In the summer Mrs. Peters used to spend months on end up there with the children. They were nice people who cared for their animals and I was a frequent visitor.