“A chicken bone! Don’t you know you should never give a dog chicken bones?”
“Aye, ah know, ah know, everybody knows that, but we’d had a bird for our dinner and she pinched the frame out of the dustbin, the little beggar. She had a good crunch at it afore I spotted ’er, and now she’s goin’ to choke!” He glared at me, lips quivering. He was on the verge of tears.
“Now just calm down,” I said. “I don’t think Venus is choking. By the way she’s pawing, I should say there’s something stuck in her mouth.”
I grabbed the little animal’s jaws with finger and thumb and forced them apart. And I saw with a surge of relief the sight familiar to all vets—a long spicule of bone jammed tightly between the back molars and forming a bar across the roof of the mouth.
As I say, it is a common occurrence in practice and a happy one because it is harmless and easily relieved by a flick of the forceps. Recovery is instantaneous, skill minimal and the kudos most warming. I loved it.
I put my hand on the barber’s shoulder. “You can stop worrying, Mr. Anderson, it’s just a bone stuck in her teeth. Come through to the consulting room and I’ll have it out in a jiffy.”
I could see the man relaxing as we walked along the passage to the back of the house. “Oh, thank God for that, Mr. Herriot. I thought she’d had it, honest, I did. And we’ve grown right fond of the little thing. I couldn’t bear to lose ’er.”
I gave a light laugh, put the dog on the table and reached for a strong pair of forceps. “No question of that, I assure you. This won’t take a minute.”
Jimmy, aged five, had left his tea and trailed after us. He watched with mild interest as I poised the instrument. Even at his age, he had seen this sort of thing many a time and it wasn’t very exciting. But you never knew in veterinary practice; it was worth hanging around because funny things could happen. He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels, whistling softly as he watched me.
Usually it is simply a matter of opening the mouth, clamping the forceps on the bone and removing it. But Venus recoiled from the gleaming metal and so did the barber. The tenor in the dog’s eyes was reproduced fourfold in those of its owner.
I tried to be soothing. “This is nothing, Mr. Anderson. I’m not going to hurt her in the least, but you’ll just have to hold her head firmly for a moment.”
The little man took a deep breath, grasped the dog’s neck, screwed his eyes tight shut and turned his head as far away as he could.
“Now, little Venus,” I cooed, “I’m going to make you better.”
Venus clearly didn’t believe me. She struggled violently, pawing at my hand, to the accompaniment of strange moaning sounds from her owner. When I did get the forceps into her mouth, she locked her front teeth on the instrument and hung on fiercely. And as I began to grapple with her, Mr. Anderson could stand it no longer and let go.
The little dog leaped to the floor and resumed her inner battle there while Jimmy watched appreciatively.
I looked at the barber more in sorrow than in anger. This was just not his thing. He was manually ham-fisted, as his hairdressing proved, and he seemed quite incapable of holding a wriggling dog.
“Let’s have another go,” I said cheerfully. “We’ll try it on the floor this time. Maybe she’s frightened of the table. It’s a trifling little job, really.”
The little man, lips tight, eyes like slits, bent and extended trembling hands towards his dog, but each time he touched her she slithered away from him until, with a great shuddering sigh, he flopped facedown on the tiles. Jimmy giggled. Things were looking up.
I helped the barber to his feet. “I tell you what, Mr. Anderson, I’ll give her a short-acting anaesthetic. That will cut out all this fighting and struggling.”
Josh’s face paled. “An anaesthetic? Put her to sleep, you mean?” Anxiety flickered in his eyes. “Will she be all right?”
“Of course, of course. Just leave her to me and come back for her in about an hour. She’ll be able to walk, then.” I began to steer him through the door into the passage.
“Are you sure?” He glanced back pitifully at his pet. “We’re doing the right thing?”
“Without a doubt. We’ll only upset her if we go on this way.”
“Very well, then, I’ll go along to me brother’s for an hour.”
“Splendid.” I waited till I heard the front door close behind him, then quickly made up a dose of pentothal.
Dogs do not put on such a tough front when their owners are not present and I scooped Venus easily from the floor onto the table. But her jaws were still clamped tight and her front feet at the ready. She wasn’t going to stand for any more messing with her mouth.
“Okay, old girl, have it your own way,” I said. I gripped her leg above the elbow and clipped an area from the raised radial vein. In those days, Siegfried or myself were often left to anaesthetise dogs without assistance. It is wonderful what you can do when you have to.
Venus didn’t seem to care what I was about as long as I kept away from her face. I slid the needle into the vein, depressed the plunger and within seconds her fighting pose relaxed, her head dropped and her whole body sagged onto the table. I rolled her over. She was fast asleep.
“No trouble now, Jimmy, lad,” I said. I pushed the teeth apart effortlessly with finger and thumb, gripped the bone with the forceps and lifted it from the mouth. “Nothing left in there—lovely. All done.”
I dropped the piece of chicken bone into the waste bin. “Yes, that’s how to do it, my boy. No undignified scrambling. That’s the professional way.”
My son nodded briefly. Events had gone dull again. He had been hoping for great things when Mr. Anderson draped himself along the surgery floor, but this was tame stuff. He had stopped smiling.
My own satisfied smile, too, had become a little fixed. I was watching Venus carefully, and she wasn’t breathing. I tried to ignore the lurch in my stomach, because I have always been a nervous anaesthetist and am not very proud of it. Even now, when I come upon one of my younger colleagues operating, I have a nasty habit of placing my hand on the patient’s chest wall over the heart and standing wide-eyed and rigid for a few seconds. I know the young surgeons hate to have me spreading alarm and despondency, and one day I am going to be told to get out in sharp terms, but I can’t help it.
As I watched Venus, I told myself as always that there was no danger. She had received the correct dose and anyway, you often did get this period of apnoea with pentothal. Everything was normal, but just the same I wished to God she would start breathing.
The heart was still going all right. I depressed the ribs a few times—nothing. I touched the unseeing eyeball—no corneal reflex. I began to rap my fingers on the table and stare closely at the little animal, and I could see that Jimmy was watching me just as keenly. His deep interest in veterinary practice was built upon a fascination for animals, farmers and the open air, but it was given extra colour by something else; he never knew when his father might do something funny or something funny might happen to him.
The unpredictable mishaps of the daily round were all good for a laugh and my son, with his unerring instinct, had a feeling that something of the sort was going to happen now.
His hunch was proved right when I suddenly lifted Venus from the table, shook her vainly a few times above my head, then set off at full gallop along the passage. I could hear the eager shuffle of the little slippers just behind me.
I threw open the side door and shot into the back garden. I halted at the narrow part—no, there wasn’t enough room there —and continued my headlong rush till I reached the big lawn.
Here I dropped the little dog onto the grass and fell down on my knees by her side in an attitude of prayer. I waited and watched as my heart hammered, but those ribs were not moving and the eyes stared sightlessly ahead.
Oh, this just couldn’t happen! I seized Venus by a hind leg in either hand and began to whirl her round and round my he
ad. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but attaining a remarkable speed as I put all my strength into the swing. This method of resuscitation seems to have gone out of fashion now, but it was very much in vogue then. It certainly met with the full approval of my son. He laughed so much that he fell down and sprawled on the grass.
When I stopped and glared at the still immobile ribs, he cried, “Again, Daddy, again.” And he didn’t have to wait more than a few seconds before Daddy was in full action once more, with Venus swooping through the air like a bird on the wing.
It exceeded all Jimmy’s expectations. He probably had wondered about leaving his jam sandwiches to see the old man perform, but how gloriously he had been rewarded. To this day the whole thing is so vivid: my tension and misery lest my patient should die for no reason at all; and, in the background, the helpless, high-pitched laughter of my son.
I don’t know how many times I stopped, dropped the inert form on the grass, then recommenced my whirling, but at last, at one of the intervals, the chest wall gave a heave and the eyes blinked.
With a gasp of relief I collapsed facedown on the cool turf, peering through the green blades as the breathing became regular and Venus began to lick her lips and look around her.
I dared not get up immediately because the old brick walls of the garden were still dancing around me and I am sure I would have fallen.
Jimmy was disappointed. “Aren’t you going to do any more, Daddy?”
“No, son, no.” I sat up and dragged Venus onto my lap. “It’s all over now.”
“Well, that was funny. Why did you do it?”
“To make the dog breathe.”
“Do you always do that to make them breathe?”
“No, thank heaven, not often.” I got slowly to my feet and carried the little animal back to the consulting room.
By the time Josh Anderson arrived, his pet was looking almost normal.
“She’s still a little unsteady from the anaesthetic,” I said. “But that won’t last long.”
“Eee, isn’t that grand! And that nasty bone, is it …?”
“All gone, Mr. Anderson.”
He shrank back as I opened the mouth. “You see?” I said. “Not a thing.”
He smiled happily. “Did ye have any bother with her?”
Well, my parents brought me up to be honest rather than clever, and the whole story almost bubbled out of me. But why should I worry this sensitive little man? To tell him that his dog had been almost dead for a considerable time would not cheer him, nor would it bolster his faith in me.
I swallowed. “Not a bit, Mr. Anderson. A quite uneventful operation.” The whitest of lies, but it nearly choked me, and the aftertaste of guilt was strong.
“Wonderful, wonderful. I am grateful, Mr. Herriot.” He bent over the dog, and again I noticed the strange rolling of the strands of hair between his fingers.
“Have ye been floatin’ through the air, Venus?” he murmured absently.
The back of my neck prickled. “What … what makes you say that?”
He turned his eyes up to me, those eyes with their unworldly depths. “Well … I reckon she’d think she was floatin’ while she was asleep. Just a funny feeling I had.”
“Ah, yes, well, er … right.” I had a very funny feeling myself. “You’d better take her home now and keep her quiet for the rest of the day.”
I was very thoughtful as I finished my tea. Floating … floating.
A fortnight later I was again seated in Josh’s barber’s chair, bracing myself for the ordeal. To my alarm he started straight in with the dread clippers. Usually he began with the scissors and worked up gradually, but he was throwing me in at the deep end this time.
In an attempt to alleviate the pain, I began to chatter with an edge of hysteria in my voice.
“How is—ouch—Venus going on?”
“Oh fine, fine.” Josh smiled at me tenderly in the mirror. “She was neither up nor down after that job.”
“Well—ooh, aah—I really didn’t expect any trouble. As I said, it was—ow—just a trifling thing.”
The barber whipped out another tuft with that inimitable flick of his. “The thing is, Mr. Herriot, it’s grand to ’ave faith in your vet. I knew our little pet was in good ’ands.”
“Well, thank you very much, Mr. Anderson, it’s—aaah—very nice to hear that.” I was gratified, but that guilt feeling was still there.
I got tired of trying to speak while watching my twitching features in the mirror, so I tried to concentrate on something else. It is a trick I adopt at the dentist’s and it doesn’t work very well, but as the little man tugged away, I thought as hard as I could about my garden at Skeldale House.
The lawns really did want mowing, and there were all those weeds to get at when I had a minute to spare. I had got round to considering whether it was time to put some fertiliser on my outdoor tomatoes when Josh laid down the clippers and lifted his scissors.
I sighed and relaxed. The next part was only mildly uncomfortable, and, who knew, he might have had the scissors sharpened since last time. My mind was wandering over the fascinating subject of tomatoes when the barber’s voice pulled me back to reality.
“Mr. Herriot.” He was twiddling away at a wisp of my hair with his fingers. “I like gardening, too.”
I almost jumped from the chair. “That’s remarkable. I was just thinking about my garden.”
“Aye, ah know.” There was a faraway look in his eyes as he rolled and rolled with finger and thumb. “It comes through the hair, ye know.”
“Eh?”
“Your thoughts. They come through to me.”
“What!”
“Yes, just think about it. Them hairs go right down into your head, and they catch summat from your brain and send it up to me.”
“Oh, really, you’re kidding me.” I gave a loud laugh that nevertheless had a hollow ring.
Josh shook his head. “I’m not jokin’ nor jestin’, Mr. Herriot. I’ve been at this game for nearly forty years, and it keeps happenin’ to me. You’d be flabbergasted if I told ye some of the thoughts that’s come up. Couldn’t repeat ’em, I tell ye.”
I slumped lower in my white sheet. Absolute rubbish and nonsense, of course, but I made a firm resolve never to think of Venus’s anaesthetic during a haircut.
Chapter
14
November 1, 1961
WHEN I AWOKE THIS morning everything was wonderfully still. It was a blessed relief because last night was as the others, and I was thrown about in my bunk like a rag doll.
I went up on deck and found we were anchored in the mouth of a river or inlet. A few hundred yards away I could see the Russian port of Klaipeda.
I couldn’t believe the calm—only a gentle swell rocked the ship—but half a mile back, the great sea waves still dashed themselves against the entrance to the harbour.
Up on the bridge I found the captain, pale and unshaven. He told me he had had a terrible job bringing the ship between the concrete walls at the entrance to the harbour. He had signalled repeatedly for a pilot but none had come, and finally he was forced to bring the ship in himself. Doing this, in the dark, in unfamiliar waters and during a storm, must have been a great strain.
He said we were waiting now for a pilot to take us through the great concrete breakwaters to a berth at the quayside. At length one arrived, a little stubbly-chinned man of about thirty-five, in a very Russian-looking overcoat a couple of sizes too big for him and a large peaked cap.
He was very nervous as he guided us in. He kept hopping about the bridge, peering here and there, and then dashing to have a look over the ship’s side. I was astonished to hear that he gave his commands in English and it was strange to hear him cry, “Starrboard,” and the big Dane at the wheel reply, “Starrboard,” then, “Meedsheeps,” followed by the answering call, “Meedsheeps.”
Up in the bows, the mate and a sailor were gazing down into the water and signalling back to the bridge—appare
ntly testing the depth and looking for obstructions.
To my untutored eyes it seemed that the captain brought the ship in himself. He was as always, calm and self-contained, and as we approached another ship or part of the breakwater, he would say, “Perhaps a little astern, Mr. Pilot,” or, “Port side, perhaps, Mr. Pilot,” in a quiet voice while the little man rushed about the bridge in a panic.
On either side of the estuary, the banks were thickly clothed in pine trees, and further ahead I could see tenement buildings, and then the cranes and quays of the port.
Once we had been moored by the quayside, I looked eagerly ashore, almost into the eyes of a young Russian soldier. There were two of them standing by the gangway of the Iris Clausen, and at least two guarding each of the other ships in the port.
They all had automatic guns slung on their backs and were wearing long, greenish coats, crinkly, Wellington-type boots and furry hats turned up at the front and sides.
Leaning over the rail of our little ship, I was only a few yards away from my soldier. I raised my hand and gave him a wave.
“Good morning,” I cried cheerfully.
His expression never changed. He looked back at me with a completely impassive, dead countenance.
I moved along the rail and tried his colleague. “Hello,” I called, waving again.
The response was exactly the same. A blank, unsmiling stare.
Just then it started to rain, and they both reached back and pulled hoods over their heads.
I felt it was not a happy start, and I looked past them at a sight that was not much more cheering: a network of railway lines with wagons; a forest of huge cranes; and, around the perimeter, tall watch towers, each with its armed soldier looking down at us. Beyond the port itself rose an assortment of dilapidated houses.
Klaipeda is, of course, the old Lithuanian port of Memel, and I have previously read that when the Russians took over, a proportion of the native population was deported and replaced by Russians. I am unable to ascertain the extent of this, and since Klaipeda is now part of the Soviet Union, I shall refer to all the people I meet as Russians.