Out in the street he put a hand on my arm and his face became serious again. “Thank ye, Jim. Myrtle was right bad tonight and I’m grateful.”
Driving away, I realised that I had failed to convince him that there was nothing wrong with his dog. He was sure I had saved her life. It had been an unusual visit and as my 2 A.M. whisky burned in my stomach I decided that Humphrey Cobb was a very funny little man. But I liked him.
After that night I saw him quite frequently, exercising Myrtle in the fields. With his almost spherical build he seemed to bounce over the grass, but his manner was always self-contained and rational, except that he kept thanking me for pulling his dog back from the jaws of death.
Then quite suddenly I was back at the beginning again. It was shortly after midnight and as I lifted the bedside phone, I could hear the distraught weeping before the receiver touched my ear.
“Oooh … oooh … Jim, Jim. Myrtle’s in a terrible bad way. Will ye come?”
“What … what is it this time?”
“She’s twitchin’.”
“Twitching?”
“Aye, twitchin’ summat terrible. Oh, come on, Jim, lad, don’t keep me waiting. I’m worried to death. I’m sure she’s got distemper.” He broke down again.
My head began to reel. “She can’t have distemper, Humphrey. Not in a flash, like that.”
“I’m beggin’ you, Jim,” he went on as though he hadn’t heard. “Be a pal. Come and see Myrtle.”
“All right,” I said wearily. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Oh, you’re a good lad, Jim, you’re a good lad. …” The voice trailed away as I replaced the phone.
I dressed at normal speed with none of the panic of the first time. It sounded like a repetition, but why after midnight again? On my way to Cedar House I decided it must be another false alarm—but you never knew.
The same dizzying wave of whisky fumes enveloped me in the porch. Humphrey, sniffling and moaning, fell against me once or twice as he ushered me into the kitchen. He pointed to the basket in the corner.
“There she is,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I’ve just got back from Ripon and found ’er like this.”
“Racing again, eh?”
“Aye, gamblin’ on them ’osses and drinkin’ and leavin’ me poor dog pinin’ at home. I’m a rotter, Jim, that’s what I am.”
“Rubbish, Humphrey! I’ve told you before. You’re not doing her any harm by having a day out. Anyway, how about this twitching? She looks all right now.”
“Yes, she’s stopped doing it, but when I came in her back leg was goin’ like this.” He made a jerking movement with his hand.
I groaned inwardly. “But she could have been scratching or flicking away a fly.”
“Nay, there’s summat more than that. I can tell she’s sufferin’. Just look at them eyes.”
I could see what he meant. Myrtle’s beagle eyes were pools of emotion, and it was easy to read melting reproach in their depths.
With a feeling of futility I examined her. I knew what I would find—nothing. But when I tried to explain to the little man that his pet was normal, he wouldn’t have it.
“Oh, you’ll give her one of them wonderful tablets,” he pleaded. “It cured her last time.”
I felt I had to pacify him, so Myrtle received another installment of vitamins.
Humphrey was immensely relieved and weaved his way to the drawing room and the whisky bottle.
“I need a little pick-me-up after that shock,” he said. “You’ll ’ave one, too, won’t you, Jim, lad?”
This pantomime was enacted frequently over the next few months, always after race meetings and always between midnight and 1 A.M. I had ample opportunity to analyse the situation, and I came to a fairly obvious conclusion.
Most of the time Humphrey was a normal conscientious pet owner, but after a large intake of alcohol his affectionate feelings degenerated into glutinous sentimentality and guilt. I invariably went out when he called me because I knew that he would be deeply distressed if I refused. I was treating Humphrey, not Myrtle.
It amused me that not once did he accept my protestations that my visit was unnecessary. Each time he was sure that my magic tablets had saved his dog’s life.
Mind you, I did not discount the possibility that Myrtle was deliberately working on him with those eyes. The canine mind is quite capable of disapproval. I took my own dog almost everywhere with me, but if I left him at home to take Helen to the cinema he would lie under our bed, sulking, and, when he emerged, would studiously ignore us for an hour or two.
I quailed when Humphrey told me he had decided to have Myrtle mated because I knew that the ensuing pregnancy would be laden with harassment for me.
That was how it turned out. The little man flew into a series of alcoholic panics, all of them unfounded, and he discovered imaginary symptoms in Myrtle at regular intervals throughout the nine weeks.
I was vastly relieved when she gave birth to five healthy pups. Now, I thought, I would get some peace. The fact was that I was just about tired of Humphrey’s nocturnal nonsense. I have always made a point of never refusing to turn out at night, but Humphrey had stretched this principle to breaking point. One of these times he would have to be told.
The crunch came when the pups were a few weeks old. I had had a terrible day, starting with a prolapsed uterus in a cow at 5 A.M. and progressing through hours of road slogging, missed meals and a late-night wrestle with ministry forms, some of which I suspected I had filled up wrongly.
My clerical incompetence has always infuriated me and when I crawled, dog-tired, into bed, my mind was still buzzing with frustration. I lay for a long time, trying to put those forms away from me, and it was well after midnight when I fell asleep.
I have always had a silly fancy that our practice knew when I desperately wanted a full night’s sleep. It knew and gleefully stepped in. When the phone exploded in my ear, I wasn’t really surprised.
As I stretched a weary hand to the receiver, the luminous dial of the alarm clock read 1:15 A.M.
“Hello,” I grunted.
“Oooh … oooh … oooh!” The reply was only too familiar.
I clenched my teeth. This was just what I needed. “Humphrey! What is it this time?”
“Oh, Jim, Myrtle’s really dyin’, I know she is. Come quick, lad, come quick!”
“Dying?” I took a couple of rasping breaths. “How do you make that out?”
“Well … she’s stretched out on ’er side, tremblin’.”
“Anything else?”
“Aye, t’missus said Myrtle’s been lookin’ worried and walkin’ stiff when she let her out in the garden this afternoon. I’m not long back from Redcar, ye see.”
“So you’ve been to the races, eh?”
“That’s right … neglectin’ me dog. I’m a scamp, nothin’ but a scamp.”
I closed my eyes in the darkness. There was no end to Humphrey’s imaginary symptoms. Trembling, this time, looking worried, walking stiff. We’d had panting and twitching and head nodding and ear shaking—what would it be next?
But enough was enough. “Look, Humphrey,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with your dog. I’ve told you again and again …”
“Oh, Jim, lad, don’t be long. Oooh-hooo!”
“I’m not coming, Humphrey.”
“Nay, nay, don’t say that! She’s goin’ fast, I tell ye!”
“I really mean it. It’s just wasting my time and your money, so go to bed. Myrtle will be fine.”
As I lay quivering between the sheets, I realised that refusing to go out was an exhausting business. There was no doubt in my mind that it would have taken less out of me to get up and attend another charade at Cedar House than to say no for the first time in my life. But this couldn’t go on. I had to make a stand.
I was still tormented by remorse when I fell into an uneasy slumber, and it is a good thing that the subconscious mind works on during sleep because with the
alarm clock reading 2:30 A.M. I came suddenly wide awake.
“My God!” I cried, staring at the dark ceiling. “Myrtle’s got eclampsia!”
I scrambled from the bed and began to throw on my clothes. I must have made some commotion because I heard Helen’s sleepy voice.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Humphrey Cobb!” I gasped, tying a shoe lace.
“Humphrey … but you said there was never any hurry …”
“There is this time. His dog’s dying.” I glared again at the clock. “In fact, she could be dead now.” I lifted my tie, then hurled it back on the chair. “Damn it! I don’t need that!” I fled from the room.
Down the long garden and into the car with my brain spelling out the concise case history which Humphrey had given me. Small bitch nursing five puppies, signs of anxiety and stiff gait this afternoon, and now prostrate and trembling. Classical puerperal eclampsia. Rapidly fatal without treatment. And it was nearly an hour and a half since he had phoned. I couldn’t bear to think about it.
Humphrey was still up. He had obviously been consoling himself with the bottle because he could barely stand.
“You’ve come, Jim, lad,” he mumbled, blinking at me.
“Yes, how is she?”
“Just t’same …”
Clutching my calcium and my intravenous syringe, I rushed past him into the kitchen.
Myrtle’s sleek body was extended in a tetanic spasm. She was gasping for breath, quivering violently, and bubbles of saliva dripped from her mouth. Those eyes had lost their softness and were fixed in a frantic stare. She looked terrible, but she was alive … she was alive.
I lifted the squealing pups onto a rug nearby and quickly clipped and swabbed the area over the radial vein. I inserted the needle into the blood vessel and began to depress the plunger with infinite care and very slowly. Calcium was the cure for this condition but a quick blast would surely kill the patient.
I took several minutes to empty the syringe, then sat back on my heels and watched. Some of these cases needed narcotics as well as calcium, and I had nembutal and morphine ready to hand. But as the time passed, Myrtle’s breathing slowed down and the rigid muscles began to relax. When she started to swallow her saliva and look round at me, I knew she would live.
I was waiting for the last tremors to disappear from her limbs when I felt a tap on my shoulder. Humphrey was standing there with the whisky bottle in his hand.
“You’ll ’ave one, won’t you, Jim?”
I didn’t need much persuading. The knowledge that I had almost been responsible for Myrtle’s death had thrown me into a mild degree of shock.
My hand was still shaking as I raised the glass, and I had barely taken the first sip when the little animal got up from the basket and walked over to inspect her pups. Some eclampsias were slow to respond but others were spectacularly quick, and I was grateful for the sake of my nervous system that this was one of the quick ones.
In fact the recovery was almost uncanny because, after sniffing her family over, Myrtle walked across the table to greet me. Her eyes brimmed with friendliness and her tail waved high in the true beagle fashion.
I was stroking her ears when Humphrey broke into a throaty giggle. “You know, Jim, I’ve learned summat tonight.” His voice was a slow drawl but he was still in possession of his wits.
“What’s that, Humphrey?”
“I’ve learned … hee-hee-hee … I’ve learned what a silly feller I’ve been all these months.”
“How do you mean?”
He raised a forefinger and wagged it sagely. “Well, you’ve allus been tellin’ me that I got you out of your bed for nothin’ and I was imaginin’ things when I thought me dog was ill.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
“And I never believed you, did I? I wouldn’t be told. Well, now I know you were right all the time. I’ve been nobbut a fool, and I’m right sorry for botherin’ you all those nights.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that, Humphrey.”
“Aye, but it’s not right.” He waved a hand towards his bright-faced, tail-wagging little dog. “Just look at her. Anybody can see there was never anythin’ wrong with Myrtle tonight.”
Chapter
3
THE HIGH MOORLAND ROAD was unfenced, and my car wheels ran easily from the strip of tarmac onto the turf, cropped to a velvet closeness by the sheep. I stopped the engine, got out and looked around me.
The road cut cleanly through the grass and heather before dipping into the valley beyond. This was one of the good places where I could see into two dales, the one I had left and the one in front. The whole land was spread beneath me; the soft fields in the valley floors, the grazing cattle, the rivers pebbled at their edges in places, thickly fringed with trees at others.
The brilliant green of the walled pastures pushed up the sides of the fells until the heather and the harsh moor grass began, and only the endless pattern of walls was left, climbing to the mottled summits, disappearing over the bare ridges that marked the beginning of the wild country.
I leaned back against the car and the wind blew the cold sweet air around me. I had been back in civilian life only a few weeks, and during my time in R.A.F. blue I had thought constantly of Yorkshire, but I had forgotten how beautiful it was. Just thinking from afar could not evoke the peace, the solitude, the sense of the nearness of the wild that makes the Dales thrilling and comforting at the same time. Among the crowds of men and the drabness and stale air of the towns, my imagination could not sufficiently conjure up a place where I could be quite alone on the wide green roof of England where every breath was filled with the grass scent.
I had had a disturbing morning. Everywhere I had gone I was reminded that I had come back to a world of change, and I did not like change. One old farmer saying, “It’s all t’needle now, Mr. Herriot,” as I injected his cow had made me look down almost with surprise at the syringe in my hand, realising suddenly that this was what I was doing most of the time now.
I knew what he meant. Only a few years ago I would more likely have “drenched” his cow. Grabbed it by the nose and poured a pint of medicine down its throat.
We still carried a special drenching bottle around with us—an empty wine bottle because it had no shoulders and allowed the liquid to run more easily. Often we would mix the medicine with black treacle from the barrel that stood in the corner of most cow byres.
All this was disappearing, and the farmer’s remark about “all t’needle” brought it home to me once more that things were never going to be the same again.
A revolution had begun in agriculture and in veterinary practice. Farming had become more scientific, and concepts cherished for generations were being abandoned, while in the veterinary world the first rivulets of the flood of new advances were being felt.
Previously undreamed-of surgical procedures were being carried out, the sulpha drugs were going full blast and, most exciting of all, the war, with its urgent need for better treatment of wounds, had given a tremendous impetus to the development of Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. This, the first of the antibiotics, was not yet in the hands of the profession except in the form of intramammary tubes for the treatment of mastitis, but it was the advance guard of the therapeutic army that was to sweep our old treatments into oblivion.
There were signs, too, that the small farmer was on the way out. These men, some with only six cows, a few pigs and poultry, still made up most of our practice and they were the truly rich characters, but they were beginning to wonder if they could make a living on this scale, and one or two had sold out to the bigger men. In our practice now, in the eighties, there are virtually no small farmers left. I can think of only a handful — old men doggedly doing the things they have always done for the sole reason that they have always done it. They are the last remnants of the men I cherished, living by the ancient values, speaking the old Yorkshire dialect that television an
d radio have swamped.
I took a last long breath and got into my car. The uncomfortable feeling of change was still with me but I looked through the window at the great fells thrusting their bald summits into the clouds, tier upon tier of them, timeless, indestructible, towering over the glories beneath, and I felt better immediately. The Dales had not changed at all.
I did one more call, then drove back to Skeldale House to see if there were any more visits before lunch.
All was new here, too. My partner, Siegfried, had married and was living a few miles outside Darrowby, and Helen and I with our little son, Jimmy, were installed in the practice headquarters. When I got out of the car I gazed up at the ivy climbing over the mellow brick to the little rooms that looked out from under the tiles to the hills. Helen and I had started our married life in those rooms but now we had the run of the whole house. It was too big for us, of course, but we were happy to be there because we both loved the old place, with its spaciousness and its Georgian elegance.
The house looked much the same as when I had first seen it those years ago. The only difference was that they had taken the iron railings away for scrap metal during the war, and our plates were now hanging on the wall.
Helen and I slept in the big room which I had occupied in my bachelor days, and Jimmy was in the dressing room where Siegfried’s student brother, Tristan, used to rest his head. Tristan, alas, had left us. When the war ended, he was Captain Farnon of the Royal Army veterinary corps. He married and joined the Ministry of Agriculture as an infertility investigation officer. He left a sad gap in our lives, but fortunately we still saw him and his wife regularly.
I opened the front door and in the passage, the fragrance of pulv aromat was strong. It was the aromatic powder we mixed with our medicaments, and it had an excitement for me. It always seemed to be hanging about the house. It was the smell of our trade.
Halfway along the passage I passed the doorway to the long high-walled garden and turned into the dispensary. This was a room whose significance was already on the wane. The rows of beautifully shaped glass bottles with their Latin titles engraved on them looked down at me—spiritus Aetheris Nitrosi, Liquor Ammonii Acetatis Fortis, Potassii Nitras, Sodii Salicylas. Noble names. My head was stuffed with hundreds of them, their properties, actions and uses, and their dosage in horse, ox, sheep, pig, dog and cat. But soon I would have to forget them all and concern myself only with how much of the latest antibiotic or steroid to administer.