“She is that,” Jack said. “I’m glad we persevered with ’er.” (It was nice of him to say “we.”) “Ah’ve had ’er served, and she should be calvin’ just right for Darrowby show.”
“Well, that will be interesting. She’s certainly a show animal.”
And there was no doubt that Bramble had developed into a classical Dairy Shorthorn with all the delicacy and grace of that now-lost breed—the beautifully straight back, the neat tail-head and the makings of a fine udder. She was a picture.
She was even more of a picture a few months later as she stood in the centre of the show ring with the August sun glinting on her rich, dark coat. She had recently produced a calf, and her udder, tight and flat-based, with a small teat thrusting proudly from each corner, bulged between the back limbs.
She would take some beating, and it was a pleasant thought that the seemingly doomed little creature of two and a half years ago might be just about to win a championship trophy.
However, Bramble was in pretty hot company. The judge, Brigadier Rowan, had narrowed the field down to three after much cogitation, and the other two contestants, a red-and-white and a light roan, were beautiful animals. It would be a close thing.
Brigadier Rowan himself was a splendid sight. He was a distinguished soldier, a gentleman farmer and an unrivalled judge of dairy cattle in the district.
His dress and general bearing were fully in keeping with his position. That tall, lean figure would have been aristocratic and impressive enough without the beautifully cut check suit, yellow waistcoat, cravat and bowler hat. The fact that he was one of the few people I have ever seen wearing a monocle added the final touch.
The brigadier strolled up and down the little row of cattle, shoulders high, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally screwing the glass tighter into his eye as he bent to inspect a particular point. Clearly, he was having difficulty in deciding.
His normally pink face was bright red, not, I felt, from the sunshine, but from the long succession of brandies and sodas I had seen him consuming in the president’s tent. He pursed his lips and approached Bramble, who stood patiently at the end of the row nearest to me with her head held by Jack Scott on a halter.
The brigadier leaned forward and peered into the animal’s face as though to examine the eyes. Something happened then. I was standing behind Bramble and could not see her face, but my suspicion is that she gave the little twitch which had startled me. In any case, something undoubtedly pierced the brigadier’s patrician calm. His eyebrows shot up and the monocle dropped to the end of its cord, where it dangled for a few seconds before he retrieved it, gave it a thorough polish and returned it to his eye.
He again studied Bramble fixedly for quite a long time, and even after he had moved away, he glanced back at her once or twice. I could read his mind. Had he really seen that, or was it the brandy?
As he came slowly back down the row, he had the look of a man who was definitely going to make up his mind this time, even though he was confronted by three superb animals. He finished up in front of Bramble, and as he gave her a final appraising stare, he flinched suddenly, and I had a strong conviction that she had done her trick again.
The brigadier kept a grip on himself this time, but though the monocle remained in position, the man was obviously shaken. It seemed, however, to remove all doubts from his mind. He immediately placed Bramble first, the red-and-white second and the light roan third.
The brigadier, having made his decision, strode straight as a cadet, albeit a red-faced one, to the edge of the ring where he was greeted by a beaming Jack.
“A bonny lass, ’ant she, Brigadier? Almost human, ye might say.
“Quite,” said the brigadier, adjusting his monocle. “Actually, she reminded me of someone I used to know … briefly.”
Chapter
28
“DISASTER! DISASTER! DISASTER!”
The voice at the other end was so shrill and panic-stricken that I almost dropped the telephone. “Who … who is that?” “It’s Mrs. Derrick! Oh, such a disaster!” “Yes, Mrs. Derrick, what on earth has happened?” “It’s my goat, Mr. Harriot! It’s really terrible!” The Derricks were a young couple who had recently come to live in one of the villages near Darrowby. They were in their early thirties, and Ronald Derrick was a businessman who commuted daily to Brawton. His wife was extremely attractive and a pleasant young woman in every way, but she was slightly scatterbrained, and I had felt misgivings in the first place when she told me she had bought a goat. I gripped the receiver tightly. “Has the goat had an accident?” “No, no, it’s not the goat I’m worried about. It’s the tomatoes!”
“Tomatoes?”
“Yes, the wretched thing has eaten all my husband’s tomatoes. I left the greenhouse door open by mistake.”
A chill swept through me. Ronald Derrick loved his tomatoes dearly and since I, too, found them fascinating things, I had been very interested when he had shown me his plants.
Like many people coming to live in a country district, he and his wife had been seized with a passion for the country things, like growing all sorts of vegetables in the big garden behind the house and keeping livestock. They had a few hens, ponies for their children and, of course, the goat. But with Ronald, the tomatoes were his great joy.
There was a little greenhouse in the garden, and on my last visit there he had shown me the twelve plants with justifiable pride. It was early July, and the young fruits were still green and small but obviously thriving.
“Magnificent trusses,” I remembered saying. “You are going to have a wonderful crop.” I could recall the smile of gratification on his face as his wife continued on the phone.
“He counts them every morning, Mr. Herriot. In fact, before he left for the office today, he told me there were two hundred and ninety-three. Do please come. I’m afraid that when he gets home he’ll kill the goat and me!” There was a pause. “I think I can see him through the window. Oh, yes, my God, here he is now!”
There was a thud in my ear as she crashed the receiver down, and I found I was shaking slightly. What was I supposed to do? Act as peacemaker? Prevent a murder? Anyway, Ronald Derrick was a gentle, good-humoured man who would certainly not resort to violence. But, by heck, he was going to be annoyed—and maybe the goat would be ill after that feast. I dashed out to the car.
I was at the scene of the catastrophe within ten minutes. The Derricks’ home was a gracious old manor house with an open drive at one side leading to the garden. I roared down there, leaped from my car and the whole sad spectacle lay before me.
Mrs. Derrick, still very attractive despite the tears which trickled down her cheeks, was standing on a strip of lawn, twisting a sodden handkerchief in her fingers.
“Darling,” she was saying, “I just went in for a moment to get the watering can. I can’t think why I forgot to close the door.”
Her husband did not answer, and I could see that his was a bereavement too deep for words. He was leaning against the open doorway, gazing into the greenhouse. He was quite motionless, and plainly he had not moved since his arrival because he was like a business executive who had been frozen to the spot: dark-suited, bowler-hatted, briefcase dangling from one hand.
I stepped forward and looked over his shoulder, and the sight was even more bizarre than I had expected. The tastes and eating habits of goats are often unfathomable, but this one had, for some reason, consumed all the tomatoes and leaves and left the slender green stalks, naked and pathetic, still neatly tied to the canes that led up to the glass roof.
As a fellow tomato lover, I felt for him deeply, but there was nothing I could do. I patted him on the shoulder and murmured a few words of sympathy, but still he continued to stare at the row of stalks.
I could see the goat on its tether at the other end of the garden. That was another point—how had it got free to wreak this devastation? But I wasn’t going to add more tension to the situation by bringing that up.
&nbs
p; I went over and had a look at the animal. It was bright-eyed and cheerful and clearly didn’t require my services in any way. In fact, as I watched it began to nibble at a cabbage with obvious relish. As I say, I was sad for the Derricks, but I could not but look with admiration at any creature whose appetite was not satisfied by the consumption of two hundred and ninety-three tomatoes.
A large part of the veterinary life seems to be made up of these little incidents. Trivial, perhaps, but rewarding. I recall a visit I made to test the herd of Rupe and Will Rowney. Rupe and Will just didn’t get on. They were bachelor brothers who had run a dairy farm for many years together, but they didn’t seem to be able to agree about anything.
Visits there could be embarrassing as the brothers argued continually and criticised each other’s every move, but on this particular day I found they had forgotten to keep the cows in for me.
I stood to one side as they castigated each other.
“Ah told ye the postcard said today.”
“Naw, ye didn’t, ye said Tuesday. It was me as said today.”
“Well, fetch the bloody card from t’house and let’s ’ave another look at it.”
“How can I? Ye burned it, ye daft bugger!”
I let the debate go on for a few minutes, then intervened tactfully.
“It’s all right,” I said. “There’s no harm done. The cows are just there in the field. It shouldn’t take long to get them in.”
Rupe gave his brother a final glare and turned to me. “Nay, it won’t take long, Mr. Herriot. The byre door’s open. Ah’ll soon call ’em in.”
He inflated his lungs and began a series of shrill cries. “Come on, Spotty Nose, come on, Big Lugs, come on, Mucky Tail, come on, Fat Tits, come on, Fuzzy Top!”
Will, nettled at being upstaged, broke in with his own shout. “Come on, Long Legs! Come on, Slow Coach!”
Rupe froze him with a stare, then bent towards me. “Ye’ll have to excuse me brother, Mr. Herriot,” he said in a confidential whisper. “Ah’ve tried to tell ’im many a time, but he will call the cows them daft names.”
Contrasts in people always intrigue me. I was called to see a bullock with a swollen foot. The owner was one of the new breed of young farmer who had been to agricultural college and was steeped in modern science. He was a nice lad, but like many of his kind, he gave me the uncomfortable feeling that he knew about as much as I did.
He showed me the animal.
“Bit of infection there,” he said. “Bacteria must have gained entry through that abrasion. I should think he needs about twenty c.c.’s of long-acting procaine penicillin intramuscularly.”
He was right, of course, and I duly injected the dose into the animal’s rump.
It happened that my next call, just a mile along the road, was to a similar case, but this time the farmer was old Ted Buckle, one of the fast-disappearing old characters and a great favourite of mine.
“Now, then, Mr. Herriot,” he said and led me into the fold yard. He pointed to the lame bullock standing in a corner. “There’s a youth ower there wants a jab in t’arse.”
Then there was Mr. Bogg whose tight-fistedness was a byword in a community where thrift was the norm. I had heard many tales of his parsimony, but I have a few experiences of my own that I cherish.
He owned a herd of good Ayrshire cows and ran a few turkeys and chickens on the side. He certainly would not be short of money.
His turkeys were frequently afflicted with blackhead, and he used to come to us for Stovarsol tablets, which were the popular treatment at that time.
One afternoon he approached me in the surgery.
“Look,” he said. “Ah keep comin’ here for fifty or a hundred of them little tablets, and it’s a flippin’ nuisance. I’d rather buy a whole tinful—it ’ud save a lot of journeys.”
“Yes, Mr. Bogg, you’re right,” I replied. “It would be a much better idea. I’ll get you some now.”
When I returned from the dispensary, I held up the tin. “This contains a thousand tablets, and as it happens, it’s the only one we have in stock. It has been opened and a few have been taken out, but it is virtually a new tin.”
“A few … taken out …?” I could read the alarm in his eyes at the idea of paying for the full thousand when he was getting less than that.
“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “There’s maybe something like a dozen tablets short—no more.”
My words clearly failed to reassure him, and as he left the surgery he looked gloomy and preoccupied.
He was back again that same evening. He rang the bell at about eight o’clock, and I faced him on the front doorstep.
“I’ve just come in to tell ye,” he said. “I’ve been counting them tablets, and there’s nine hundred and eighty-seven.”
On another occasion I went to buy some eggs from Mr. Bogg. I got a dozen from him most weeks because his farm was on the outskirts of the town. When I returned home with this particular batch I found that there were only eleven eggs in the bag, so when I saw him a week later I mentioned the fact.
“Mr. Bogg,” I said. “There were only eleven eggs in last week’s lot.”
“Aye, ah know,” he replied, fixing me with a steady eye. “But one of ’em was a double-yolked ’un.”
I have a dear memory, too, of the time—the only time—I did a farm round in shorts.
I had just got back from the family holiday in Scotland. The weather had been perfect, and after spending a fortnight in shirt and shorts, I rebelled at the idea of climbing into workaday clothes.
Looking from our bedroom window at the sun blazing from a clear sky, I made a sudden decision. I pulled on the shorts. And as I walked down the long garden to get my car, the air played round my legs, and I half-closed my eyes at the sensation of coolness and freedom. I was still on holiday, still striding the hills around Ullapool.
The conviction that I had done the right thing was strengthened when I got out at the first farm. The day was going to be really hot, and the whole green landscape shimmered in the morning haze. Yes, this was the right garb for country practice in the summer.
The place was a smallholding, and old Mrs. Meynell answered my knock. At first she did not reply to my cheerful greeting but stared in silent fascination at my exposed knees. After a few seconds I repeated my query.
“Is your husband in, Mrs. Meynell?”
“Nay … nay …” She still had difficulty in dragging her eyes away from my legs. “He’s over t’field, mendin’ a wall.” At last she looked up at my face. “I’m sorry, Mr. Herriot, but when I peeped through the window, I thought it was a boy scout comin’ to see us.”
Slightly abashed, I opened the gate to the pasture and headed over the long stretch of green to where the farmer was resetting the stones on the wall.
He did not hear my approach, and I spoke to his back. “Good morning, Mr. Meynell, it’s a lovely day.”
The old man turned round, and his reaction was very like his wife’s. He did not speak but directed a prolonged, unsmiling gaze at my knees until I began to feel uncomfortable.
At length, I broke the silence. “I believe you have a sick calf.”
He nodded slowly, still staring downwards.
I cleared my throat. “Touch of scour, is it?”
“Aye … aye … that’s right.” There was no change in his attitude, and I felt we weren’t getting anywhere.
“Well,” I said. “Will we go and have a look at him?”
Without warning, the old man dropped into the sprint starting position, one knee on the turf, fingers outsplayed.
He looked up at me eagerly. “Come on, then, I’ll race ye back to the house.”
Chapter
29
AGAIN I STEP FORWARD in time from the postwar years. It was 1963, and John Crooks was visiting me once more. He lay back in his chair and laughed.
“You know, Jim, I often think about your Russian trip, and honestly, it doesn’t sound as though you had a very comf
ortable time. Force nine gales, only just avoiding being thrown into jail, nearly savaged by a killer dog—not my idea of pleasure. In fact, I feel a bit guilty about sending you out there.”
“Please don’t feel like that, John,” I said. “I loved it. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
He sat up. “I’ve been thinking. You deserve a bit of luxury and relaxation after that, and I’ve got just the thing for you.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I’ll tell you.” He leaned closer, his eyes eager. John’s natural enthusiasm and eloquence had pushed him to the top in veterinary practice and like most people, I fell easily under his spell. “Last spring I had the most wonderful voyage to Istanbul with a cargo of Jersey cows. How would you like that?”
“Istanbul?” Immediately my mind was full of the mysterious East. Mosques, minarets, blue skies, tranquil seas, exotic perfumes, Scheherazade …
“Yes, Jim, and it was memorable. We sailed from Hull to Jersey, picked up the cattle from there and came right round to Gibraltar. After that, it was just a beautiful Mediterranean cruise. The cows never ailed a thing, and all I did was eat lovely food, bask out on the deck and sleep in a super cabin. The sea hardly rippled, the sun shone all the time and I saw places I’d only dreamed about: the Creek Islands, the coast of Asia and, of course, Istanbul itself.”
“Fascinating city, they say.”
“It certainly is,” John said. “And really, you have to see it for yourself. You can’t describe it—it’s magic.”
“Did you have some spare time to look around?”
“Oh yes, the whole trip took seventeen days, and I had a full two days to explore. The cattle were unloaded as soon as we arrived, and after that my time was my own. The Export Company put me up in a five-star hotel, too—luxury room, gourmet food—I tell you, it was terrific. Talk about living like a sultan!”
“And you got paid for that?”