All Things Wise and Wonderful

  We finished the bunch with hardly any help from the little man, and as we left the pen and came out into the yard Mr. Daggett wiped his brow. It was a raw November day but he was sweating profusely and for a moment he leaned his gaunt six foot frame against the wall as the wind from the bare moorland blew over him.

  “By gaw, he’s a useless little beggar is that,” he grunted. “Ah don’t know how ah put up with ’im.” He muttered to himself for a few moments then gave tongue again. “Hey, Ned!”

  The little man who had been trailing aimlessly over the cobbles turned his pinched face and looked at him with his submissive but strangely expectant eyes.

  “Get them bags o’ corn up into the granary!” his boss ordered.

  Wordlessly Ned went over to a cart and with an effort shouldered a sack of corn. As he painfully mounted the stone steps to the granary his frail little legs trembled and bent under the weight.

  Mr. Daggett shook his head and turned to me. His long cadaverous face was set in its usual cast of melancholy.

  “You know what’s wrong wi’ Ned?” he murmured confidentially.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know why ’e can’t catch them calves?”

  My own view was that Ned wasn’t big enough or strong enough and anyway he was naturally ineffectual, but I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “Why is it?”

  “Well I’ll tell ye.” Mr. Daggett glanced furtively across the yard then spoke from behind his hand. “He’s ower fond of t’bright lights.”

  “Eh?”

  “Ah’m tellin’ ye, he’s crazed over t’bright lights.”

  “Bright … what … where …?”

  Mr. Daggett leaned closer. “He gets over to Briston every night.”

  “Briston …?” I looked across from the isolated farm to the village three miles away on the other side of the Dale. It was the only settlement in that bleak vista—a straggle of ancient houses dark and silent against the green fellside. I could recall that at night the oil lamps made yellow flickers of light in the windows but they weren’t very bright. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well … ’e gets into t’pub.”

  “Ah, the pub.”

  Mr. Daggett nodded slowly and portentously but I was still puzzled. The Hulton Arms was a square kitchen where you could get a glass of beer and where a few old men played dominoes of an evening. It wasn’t my idea of a den of vice.

  “Does he get drunk there?” I asked.

  “Nay, nay.” The farmer shook his head. It’s not that. It’s the hours ’e keeps.”

  “Comes back late, eh?”

  “Aye, that ’e does!” The eyes widened in their cavernous sockets. “Sometimes ’e doesn’t get back till ’alf past nine or ten o’clock!”

  “Gosh, is that so?”

  “Sure as ah’m standin’ here. And there’s another thing. He can’t get out of ’is bed next day. Ah’ve done half a day’s work before ’e starts.” He paused and glanced again across the yard. “You can believe me or believe me not, but sometimes ’e isn’t on the job till seven o’clock in t’morning!”

  “Good heavens!”

  He shrugged wearily. “Aye well, you see how it is. Come into t’house, you’ll want to wash your hands.”

  In the huge flagged kitchen I bent low over the brown earthenware sink. Scar Farm was four hundred years old and the various tenants hadn’t altered it much since the days of Henry the Eighth. Gnarled beams, rough white-washed walls and hard wooden chairs. But comfort had never been important to Mr. Daggett or his wife who was ladling hot water from the primitive boiler by the side of the fire and pouring it into her scrubbing bucket.

  She clopped around over the flags in her clogs, hair pulled back tightly from her weathered face into a bun, a coarse sacking apron tied round her waist. She had no children but her life was one of constant activity; indoors or outside, she worked all the time.

  At one end of the room wooden steps led up through a hole in the ceiling to a loft where Ned slept. That had been the little man’s room for nearly fifty years ever since he had come to work for Mr. Daggett’s father as a boy from school. And in all that time he had never travelled further than Darrowby, never done anything outside his daily routine. Wifeless, friendless, he plodded through his life, endlessly milking, feeding and mucking out, and waiting, I suspected with diminishing hope for something to happen.

  With my handle on the car door I looked back at Scar Farm, at the sagging roof tiles, the great stone lintel over the door. It typified the harshness of the lives of the people within. Little Ned was no bargain as a stockman, and his boss’s exasperation was understandable. Mr. Daggett was not a cruel or an unjust man. He and his wife had been hardened and squeezed dry by the pitiless austerity of their existence in this lonely corner of the high Pennines.

  There was no softness up here, no frills. The stone walls, sparse grass and stunted trees; the narrow road with its smears of cow muck. Everything was down to fundamentals, and it was a miracle to me that most of the Dalesmen were not like the Daggetts but cheerful and humourous.

  But as I drove away, the sombre beauty of the place overwhelmed me. The lowering hillsides burst magically into life as a shaft of sunshine stabbed through the clouds, flooding the bare flanks with warm gold. Suddenly I was aware of the delicate shadings of green, the rich glowing bronze of the dead bracken spilling from the high tops, the whole peaceful majesty of my work-a-day world.

  I hadn’t far to drive to my next call—just about a mile—and it was in a vastly different atmosphere. Miss Tremayne, a rich lady from the south, had bought a tumbledown manor house and spent many thousands of pounds in converting it into a luxury home. As my feet crunched on the gravel I looked up at the large windows with their leaded panes, at the smooth, freshly-painted stones.

  Elsie opened the door to me. She was Miss Tremayne’s cook-housekeeper, and one of my favourite people. Aged about fifty, no more than five feet high and as round as a ball with short bandy legs sticking out from beneath a tight black dress.

  “Good morning, Elsie,” I said, and she burst into a peal of laughter. This, more man her remarkable physical appearance, was what delighted me. She laughed uproariously at every statement and occurrence; in fact she laughed at the things she said herself.

  “Come in, Mr. Herriot, ha-ha-ha,” she said. “It’s been a bit nippy today, he-he, but I think it’ll get out this afternoon, ho-ho-ho.”

  All the mirth may have seemed somewhat unnecessary, and indeed, it made her rather difficult to understand, but the general effect was cheering. She led me into the drawing room and her mistress rose with some difficulty from her chair.

  Miss Tremayne was elderly and half crippled with arthritis but bore her affliction without fuss.

  “Ah, Mr. Herriot,” she said. “How good of you to come.” She put her head on one side and beamed at me as though I was the most delightful thing she had seen for a long time.

  She, too, had a bubbling, happy personality, and since she owned three dogs, two cats and an elderly donkey I had come to know her very well in her six months’ residence in the Dale.

  My visit was to dress the donkey’s overgrown hooves, and a pair of clippers and a blacksmith’s knife dangled from my right hand.

  “Oh, put those grisly instruments down over there,” she said. “Elsie’s bringing some tea—I’m sure you’ve time for a cup.”

  I sank willingly into one of the brightly covered armchairs and was looking round the comfortable room when Elsie reappeared, gliding over the carpet as though on wheels. She put the tray on the table by my side.

  “There’s yer tea,” she said, and went into a paroxysm so hearty that she had to lean on the back of my chair. She had no visible neck and the laughter caused the fat little body to shake all over.

  When she had recovered she rolled back into the kitchen and I heard her clattering about with pans. Despite her idiosyncrasies she was a wonderful cook and very effi
cient in all she did.

  I spent a pleasant ten minutes with Miss Tremayne and the tea, then I went outside and attended to the donkey. When I had finished I made my way round the back of the house and as I was passing the kitchen I saw Elsie at the open window.

  “Many thanks for the tea, Elsie,” I said.

  The little woman gripped the sides of the sink to steady herself. “Ha-ha-ha, that’s all right. That’s, he-he, quite all right, ha-ha-ho-ho-ho.”

  Wonderingly I got into the car and as I drove away, the disturbing thought came to me that one day I might say something really witty to Elsie and cause her to do herself an injury.

  I was called back to Mr. Daggett’s quite soon afterwards to see a cow which wouldn’t get up. The farmer thought she was paralysed.

  I drove there in a thin drizzle and the light was fading at about four o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived at Scar Farm.

  When I examined the cow I was convinced she had just got herself into an awkward position in the stall with her legs jammed under the broken timbers of the partition.

  “I think she’s sulking, Mr. Daggett,” I said. “She’s had a few goes at rising and now she’s decided not to try any more. Some cows are like that.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” the farmer replied. “She’s allus been a stupid bitch.”

  “And she’s a big one, too. She’ll take a bit of moving.” I lifted a rope from the byre wall and tied it round the hocks. “I’ll push the feet from the other side while you and Ned pull the legs round.”

  “Pull?” Mr. Daggett gave the little man a sour look. “He couldn’t pull the skin off a rice puddin’.”

  Ned said nothing, just gazed dully to his front, arms hanging limp. He looked as though he didn’t care, wasn’t even there with us. His mind was certainly elsewhere if his thoughts were mirrored in his eyes—vacant, unheeding, but as always, expectant.

  I went behind the partition and thrust steadily at the feet while the men pulled. At least Mr. Daggett pulled, mouth open, gasping with effort, while Ned leaned languidly on the rope.

  Inch by inch the big animal came round till she was lying almost in the middle of the stall, but as I was about to call a halt the rope broke and Mr. Daggett flew backwards on to the hard cobbles. Ned of course did not fall down because he hadn’t been trying, and his employer, stretched flat, glared up at him with frustrated rage.

  “Ye little bugger, ye let me do that all by meself! Ah don’t know why ah bother with you, you’re bloody useless.”

  At that moment the cow, as I had expected, rose to her feet, and the farmer gesticulated at the little man. “Well, go on, dang ye, get some straw and rub her legs! They’ll be numb.”

  Meekly Ned twisted some straw into a wisp and began to do a bit of massage. Mr. Daggett got up stiffly, felt gingerly along his back then walked up beside the cow to make sure the chain hadn’t tightened round her neck. He was on his way back when the big animal swung round suddenly and brought her cloven hoof down solidly on the farmer’s toe.

  If he had been wearing heavy boots it wouldn’t have been so bad, but his feet were encased in ancient cracked Wellingtons which offered no protection.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” yelled Mr. Daggett, beating on the hairy back with his fists. “Gerroff, ye awd bitch!” He heaved, pushed and writhed but the ten hundredweight of beef ground down inexorably.

  The farmer was only released when the cow slid off his foot, and I know from experience that that sliding is the worst part.

  Mr. Daggett hopped around on one leg, nursing the bruised extremity in his hands. “Bloody ’ell,” he moaned. “Oh, bloody ’ell.”

  Just then I happened to glance towards Ned and was amazed to see the apathetic little face crinkle suddenly into a wide grin of unholy glee. I couldn’t recall him even smiling before, and my astonishment must have shown in my face because his boss whipped round suddenly and stared at him. As if by magic the sad mask slipped back into place and he went on with his rubbing.

  Mr. Daggett hobbled out to the car with me and as I was about to leave he nudged me.

  “Look at ’im,” he whispered.

  Ned, milk pail in hand, was bustling along the byre with unwonted energy.

  His employer gave a bitter smile. “It’s t’only time ’e ever hurries. Can’t wait to get out to t’pub.”

  “Oh well, you say he doesn’t get drunk. There can’t be any harm in it.”

  The deep sunk eyes held me. “Don’t you believe it. He’ll come tiv a bad end gaddin’ about the way ’e does.”

  “But surely the odd glass of beer …”

  “Ah but there’s more than that to it” He glanced around him. “There’s women!”

  I laughed incredulously. “Oh come now, Mr. Daggett, what women?”

  “Over at t’pub,” he muttered. “Them Bradley lasses.”

  “The landlord’s daughters? Oh really, I can’t believe …”

  “All right, ye can say what ye like. He’s got ’is eye on ’em. Ah knaw—ah’ve only been in that pub once but ah’ve seen for meself.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but in any case I had no opportunity because he turned and strode into the house.

  Alone in the cold darkness I looked at the gaunt silhouette of the old farmhouse above me. In the dying light of the November day the rain streamed down the rough stones and the wind caught at the thin tendril of smoke from the chimney, hurling it in ragged streamers across the slate blue pallor of the western sky. The fell hung over everything, a black featureless bulk, oppressive and menacing.

  Through the kitchen window I could see the old lamp casting its dim light over the bare table, the cheerless hearth with its tiny flicker of fire. In the shadows at the far end the steps rose into Ned’s loft and I could imagine the little figure clambering up to get changed and escape to Briston.

  Across the valley the single street of the village was a broken grey thread in the gloom but in the cottage windows the lamps winked faintly. These were Ned Finch’s bright lights and I could understand how he felt. After Scar Farm, Briston would be like Monte Carlo.

  The image stayed in my mind so vividly that after two more calls that evening I decided to go a few miles out of my way as I returned homeward. I cut across the Dale and it was about half past eight when I drove into Briston. It was difficult to find the Hulton Arms because there was no lighted entrance, no attempt to advertise its presence, but I persevered because I had to find out what was behind Mr. Daggett’s tale of debauchery.

  I located it at last. Just like the door of an ordinary house with a faded wooden sign hanging above it. Inside, the usual domino game was in progress, a few farmers sat chatting quietly. The Misses Bradley, plain but pleasant-faced women in their forties, sat on either side of the fire, and sure enough there was Ned with a half pint glass in front of him.

  I sat down by his side. “Hello, Ned.”

  “Now then, Mr. Herriot,” he murmured absently, glancing at me with his strange expectant eyes.

  One of the Bradley ladies put down her knitting and came over.

  “Pint of bitter, please,” I said. “What will you have, Ned?”

  “Nay, thank ye, Mr. Herriot. This’ll do for me. It’s me second and ah’m not a big drinker, tha knows.”

  Miss Bradley laughed. “Yes, he nobbut has ’is two glasses a night, but he enjoys them, don’t you, Ned?”

  “That’s right, ah do.” He looked up at her and she smiled kindly down at him before going for my beer.

  He took a sip at his glass. “Ah really come for company, Mr. Herriot.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said. I knew what he meant. He probably sat on his own most of the time, but around him was warmth and comfort and friendliness. A great log sent flames crackling up to the wide chimney, there was electric light and shining mirrors with whisky slogans painted on their surface. It wasn’t anything like Scar Farm.

  The little man said very little. He spun out his drink for another hour, looking around hi
m as the dominoes clicked and I lowered another contemplative pint. The Misses Bradley knitted and brewed tea in a big black kettle over the fire and when they had to get up to serve their customers they occasionally patted Ned playfully on the cheek as they passed.

  By the time he tipped down the last drop and rose to go it was a quarter to ten and he still had to cycle across to the other side of the Dale. Another late night for Ned.

  It was a Tuesday lunchtime in early spring. Helen always cooked steak and kidney pie on Tuesdays and I used to think about it all morning on my rounds. My thoughts that morning had been particularly evocative because lambing had started and I had spent most of the time in my shirt sleeves in the biting wind as my hunger grew and grew.

  Helen cut into her blissful creation and began to scoop the fragrant contents on to my plate.

  “I met Miss Tremayne in the market place this morning, Jim.’“

  “Oh yes?” I was almost drooling as my wife stopped shovelling out the pie, sliced open some jacket potatoes and dropped pats of farm butter on to the steaming surfaces.

  “Yes, she wants you to go out there this afternoon and put some canker drops in Wilberforce’s ears if you have time.”

  “Oh I have time for that,” I said. Wilberforce was Miss Tremayne’s ancient tabby cat and it was just the kind of job I wanted after my arm-aching morning.

  I was raising a luscious forkful when Helen spoke again. “Oh, and she had an interesting item of news.”

  “Really?” But I had begun to chew and my thoughts were distant.

  “It’s about the little woman who works for her—Elsie. You know her?”

  I nodded and took another mouthful. “Of course, of course.”

  “Well it’s quite unexpected, I suppose, but Elsie’s getting married.”

  I choked on my pie. “What!”

  “It’s true. And maybe you know the bridegroom.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He works on one of the neighbouring farms. His name is Ned Finch.”

  This time my breath was cut off completely and Helen had to beat me on the back as I spluttered and retched. It wasn’t until an occluding morsel of potato skin had shot down my nose that I was able to utter a weak croak. “Ned Finch?”