All Things Bright and Beautiful (21 page)

In some alarm I watched the barman ply his handle and attacked my second pint resolutely. I surprised myself by forcing it over my tonsils then, breathing heavily, I got hold of the third one just as Bennett spoke again.

“We’ll just have one for the road, Jim,” he said pleasantly. “Would you be so kind, Fred?”

This was ridiculous but I didn’t want to appear a piker at our first meeting. With something akin to desperation I raised the third drink and began to suck feebly at it. When my glass was empty I almost collapsed against the counter. My stomach was agonisingly distended and a light perspiration had broken out on my brow. As I almost lay there I saw my colleague moving across the carpet towards the door.

“Time we were off, Jim,” he said. “Drink up.”

It’s wonderful what the human frame can tolerate when put to the test. I would have taken bets that it was impossible for me to drink that fourth pint without at least half an hour’s rest, preferably in the prone position, but as Bennett’s shoe tapped impatiently I tipped the beer a little at a time into my mouth, feeling it wash around my back teeth before incredibly disappearing down my gullet. I believe the water torture was a favourite with the Spanish Inquisition and as the pressure inside me increased I knew just how their victims felt.

When I at last blindly replaced my glass and splashed my way from the bar the big man was holding the door open. Outside in the street he placed an arm across my shoulder.

“The old Spaniel won’t be out of it yet,” he said. “We’ll just slip to my house and have a bite—I’m a little peckish.”

Sunk in the deep upholstery of the Bentley, cradling my swollen abdomen in my arms I watched the shop fronts flicker past the windows and give way to the darkness of the open countryside. We drew up outside a fine grey stone house in a typical Yorkshire village and Bennett ushered me inside.

He pushed me towards a leather armchair. “Make yourself at home, laddie. Zoe’s out at the moment but I’ll get some grub.” He bustled through to the kitchen and reappeared in seconds with a deep bowl which he placed on a table by my side.

“You know, Jim,” he said, rubbing his hands. “There’s nothing better after beer than a few pickled onions.”

I cast a timorous glance into the bowl. Everything in this man’s life seemed to be larger than life, even the onions. They were bigger than golf balls, brownish-white, glistening.

“Well thanks Mr. Ben…Granville.” I took one of them, held it between finger and thumb and stared at it helplessly. The beer hadn’t even begun to sort itself out inside me; the idea of starting on this potent-looking vegetable was unthinkable.

Granville reached into the bowl, popped an onion into his mouth, crunched it quickly, swallowed and sank his teeth into a second. “By God, that’s good. You know, my little wife’s a marvellous cook. She even makes pickled onions better man anyone.”

Munching happily he moved over to the sideboard and clinked around for a few moments before placing in my hand a heavy cut glass tumbler about two thirds full of neat whisky. I couldn’t say anything because I had taken the plunge and put the onion in my mouth; and as I bit boldly into it the fumes rolled in a volatile wave into my nasal passages, making me splutter. I took a gulp at the whisky and looked up at Granville with watering eyes.

He was holding out the onion bowl again and when I declined he regarded it for a moment with hurt in his eyes. “It’s funny you don’t like them, I always thought Zoe did them marvellously.”

“Oh you’re wrong, Granville, they’re delicious. I just haven’t finished this one.”

He didn’t reply but continued to look at the bowl with gentle sorrow. I realised there was nothing else for it; I took another onion.

Immensely gratified, Granville hurried through to the kitchen again. This time when he came back he bore a tray with an enormous cold roast, a loaf of bread, butter and mustard.

“I think a beef sandwich would go down rather nicely, Jim,” he murmured as he stropped his carving knife on a steel. Then he noticed my glass of whisky still half full.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” he said with some asperity, “You’re not touching your drink.” He watched me benevolently as I drained the glass then he refilled it to its old level. “That’s better. And have another onion.”

I stretched my legs out and rested my head on the back of the chair in an attempt to ease my internal turmoil. My stomach was a lake of volcanic lava bubbling and popping fiercely in its crater with each additional piece of onion, every sip of whisky setting up a fresh violent reaction. Watching Granville at work, a great wave of nausea swept over me. He was sawing busily at the roast, carving off slices which looked to be an inch thick, slapping mustard on them and enclosing them in the bread. He hummed with contentment as the pile grew. Every now and then he had another onion.

“Now then, laddie,” he cried at length, putting a heaped plate at my elbow. “Get yourself round that lot.” He took his own supply and collapsed with a sigh into another chair.

He took a gargantuan bite and spoke as he chewed. “You know, Jim, this is something I enjoy—a nice little snack. Zoe always leaves me plenty to go at when she pops out.” He engulfed a further few inches of sandwich. “And I’ll tell you something, though I say it myself, these are bloody good, don’t you think so?”

“Yes indeed.” Squaring my shoulders I bit, swallowed and held my breath as another unwanted foreign body slid down to the ferment below.

Just then I heard the front door open.

“Ah, that’ll be Zoe,” Granville said and was about to rise when a disgracefully fat Staffordshire Bull Terrier burst into the room, waddled across the carpet and leaped into his lap.

“Phoebles, my dear, come to daddykins!” he shouted. “Have you had nice walkies with mummy?”

The Staffordshire was closely followed by a Yorkshire Terrier which was also enthusiastically greeted by Granville.

“Yoo-hoo, Victoria, Yoo-hoo!”

The Yorkie, an obvious smiler, did not jump up but contented herself with sitting at her master’s feet, baring her teeth ingratiatingly every few seconds.

I smiled through my pain. Another myth exploded; the one about these specialist small animal vets not being fond of dogs themselves. The big man crooned over the two little animals. The fact that he called Phoebe “Phoebles” was symptomatic.

I heard light footsteps in the hall and looked up expectantly. I had Granville’s wife typed neatly in my mind; domesticated, devoted, homely; many of these dynamic types had wives like that, willing slaves content to lurk in the background. I waited confidently for the entrance of a plain little hausfrau.

When the door opened I almost let my vast sandwich fall. Zoe Bennett was a glowing warm beauty who would make any man alive stop for another look. A lot of soft brown hair, large grey-green friendly eyes, a tweed suit sitting sweetly on a slim but not too slim figure; and something else, a wholesomeness, an inner fight which made me wish suddenly that I was a better man or at least that I looked better than I did.

In an instant I was acutely conscious of the fact that my shoes were dirty, that my old jacket and corduroy trousers were out of place here. I hadn’t troubled to change but had rushed straight out in my working clothes, and they were different from Granville’s because I couldn’t go round the farms in a suit like his.

“My love, my love!” he carolled joyously as his wife bent over and kissed him fondly. “Let me introduce Jim Herriot from Darrowby.”

The beautiful eyes turned on me.

“How d’you do, Mr. Herriot!” she looked as pleased to see me as her husband had done and again I had the desperate wish that I was more presentable; that my hair was combed, that I didn’t have this mounting conviction that I was going to explode into a thousand pieces at any moment.

“I’m going to have a cup of tea, Mr. Herriot. Would you like one?”

“No-no, no, no, thank you very much but no, no, not at the moment.” I backed away slightly.

“Ah well, I see you’ve got one of Granville’s little sandwiches.” She giggled and went to get her tea.

When she came back she handed a parcel to her husband. “I’ve been shopping today, darling. Picked up some of those shirts you like so much.”

“My sweet! How kind of you!” He began to tear at the brown paper like a schoolboy and produced three elegant shirts in cellophane covers. “They’re marvellous, my pet, you spoil me.” He looked up at me. “Jim! These are the most wonderful shirts, you must have one.” He flicked a shining package across the room on to my lap.

I looked down at it in amazement. “No, really, I can’t…”

“Of course you can. You keep it.”

“But Granville, not a shirt…it’s too…”

“It’s a very good shirt.” He was beginning to look hurt again.

I subsided.

They were both so kind. Zoe sat right by me with her tea cup, chatting pleasantly while Granville beamed at me from his chair as he finished the last of the sandwiches and started again on the onions.

The proximity of the attractive woman was agreeable but embarrassing. My corduroys in the warmth of the room had begun to give off the unmistakable bouquet of the farmyard where they spent most of their time. And though it was one of my favourite scents there was no doubt it didn’t go with these elegant surroundings.

And worse still, I had started a series of internal rumblings and musical tinklings which resounded only too audibly during every lull in the conversation. The only other time I have heard such sounds was in a cow with an advanced case of displacement of the abomasum. My companions delicately feigned deafness even when I produced a shameful, explosive belch which made the little fat dog start up in alarm, but when another of these mighty borborygmi escaped me and almost made the windows rattle I thought it time to go.

In any case I wasn’t contributing much else. The alcohol had taken hold and I was increasingly conscious that I was just sitting there with a stupid leer on my face. In striking contrast to Granville who looked just the same as when I first met him back at the surgery. He was cool and possessed, his massive urbanity unimpaired. It was a little hard.

So, with the tin of tobacco bumping against my hip and the shirt tucked under my arm I took my leave.

Back at the hospital I looked down at Dinah. The old dog had come through wonderfully well and she lifted her head and gazed at me sleepily. Her colour was good and her pulse strong. The operative shock had been dramatically minimised by my colleague’s skilful speedy technique and by the intravenous drip.

I knelt down and stroked her ears. “You know, I’m sure she’s going to make it, Granville.”

Above me the great pipe nodded with majestic confidence.

“Of course, laddie, of course.”

And he was right Dinah was rejuvenated by her hysterectomy and lived to delight her mistress for many more years.

On the way home that night she lay by my side on the passenger seat, her nose poking from a blanket. Now and then she rested her chin on my hand as it gripped the gear lever and occasionally she licked me lazily.

I could see she felt better than I did.

B
EN
A
SHBY THE CATTLE
dealer looked over the gate with his habitual deadpan expression. It always seemed to me that after a lifetime of buying cows from farmers he had developed a terror of showing any emotion which might be construed as enthusiasm. When he looked at a beast his face registered nothing beyond, occasionally, a gentle sorrow.

This was how it was this morning as he leaned on the top spar and directed a gloomy stare at Harry Sumner’s heifer. After a few moments he turned to the farmer.

“I wish you’d had her in for me, Harry. She’s too far away. I’m going to have to get over the top.” He began to climb stiffly upwards and it was then that he spotted Monty. The bull hadn’t been so easy to see before as he cropped the grass among the group of heifers but suddenly the great head rose high above the others, the nose ring gleamed, and an ominous, strangled bellow sounded across the grass. And as he gazed at us he pulled absently at the turf with a fore foot.

Ben Ashby stopped climbing, hesitated for a second then returned to ground level.

“Aye well,” he muttered, still without changing expression. “It’s not that far away. I reckon I can see all right from here.”

Monty had changed a lot since the first day I saw him about two years ago. He had been a fortnight old then, a skinny, knock-kneed little creature, his head deep in a calf bucket.

“Well, what do you think of me new bull?” Harry Sumner had asked, laughing. “Not much for a hundred quid is he?”

I whistled. “As much as that?”

“Aye, it’s a lot for a new-dropped calf, isn’t it? But I can’t think of any other way of getting into the Newton strain. I haven’t the brass to buy a big ’un.”

Not all the farmers of those days were as far-seeing as Harry and some of them would use any type of male bovine to get their cows in calf.

One such man produced a gaunt animal for Siegfried’s inspection and asked him what he thought of his bull. Siegfried’s reply of “All horns and balls” didn’t please the owner but I still treasure it as the most graphic description of the typical scrub bull of that period.

Harry was a bright boy. He had inherited a little place of about a hundred acres on his father’s death and with his young wife had set about making it go. He was in his early twenties and when I first saw him I had been deceived by his almost delicate appearance into thinking that he wouldn’t be up to the job; the pallid face, the large, sensitive eyes and slender frame didn’t seem fitted for the seven days a week milking, feeding, mucking-out slog that was dairy farming. But I had been wrong.

The fearless way he plunged in and grabbed at the hind feet of kicking cows for me to examine and his clenched-teeth determination as he hung on to the noses of the big loose beasts at testing time made me change my mind in a hurry. He worked endlessly and tirelessly and it was natural that his drive should have taken him to the south of Scotland to find a bull.

Harry’s was an Ayrshire herd—unusual among the almost universal shorthorns in the Dales—and there was no doubt an injection of the famous Newton blood would be a sure way of improving his stock.