James Herriot (22 page)

She took Georgina from me with a cry of joy but gasped in horror when she saw the shaven area and the two stitches on the cat’s flank.

“Oooh, my darlin’! What ’ave those nasty men been doin’ to you?” She hugged the animal to her and glared at me.

“She’s all right, Mrs. Beck, she’s fine,” I said. “You can give her a little milk tonight and some solid food tomorrow. There’s nothing to worry about.”

She pouted. “Oh, very well. And now …” She gave me a sidelong glance. “I suppose you’ll want your money?”

“Well, er …”

“Wait there, then. I’ll get it.” She turned and went into the house.

Standing there, leaning against the reeking car, feeling the sting of the scratches on my hands and nose and examining the long tear on my jacket elbow I felt physically and emotionally spent. All I had done this afternoon was spay a cat but I had nothing more to offer.

Apathetically I watched the lady coming down the path. She was carrying a purse. At the gate she stopped and faced me.

“Ten shillin’s, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

She rummaged in the purse for some time before pulling out a ten-shilling note which was regarded sadly.

“Oh Georgina, Georgina, you are an expensive pussy,” she soliloquised.

Tentatively I began to extend my hand but she pulled the note away. “Just a minute, I’m forgettin’. You ’ave to take the stitches out, don’t you?”

“Yes, in ten days.”

She set her lips firmly. “Well there’s plenty of time to pay ye then—ye’ll be here again.”

“Here again …? But you can’t expect …”

“I allus think it’s unlucky to pay afore a job’s finished,” she said. “Summat terrible might happen to Georgina.”

“But … but …”

“Nay, ah’ve made up me mind,” she said. She replaced the money and snapped the purse shut with an air of finality before turning towards the house. Halfway up the path she looked over her shoulder and smiled.

“Aye, that’ll be the best way. Ye can collect your full fee on your final visit.”

W
E WERE READY TO
march away from Scarborough. And it was ironical that we were leaving just when the place was beginning to smile on us.

In the May sunshine we stood on parade outside the Grand at 7 a.m. as we had done throughout the Yorkshire winter, mostly in darkness, often with the icy rain blowing in our faces. But now I felt a pang of regret as I looked over the heads at the wide beautiful bay stretching beneath its cliffs to the far headland, the sand clean-washed and inviting, the great blue expanse of sea shimmering and glittering and over everything the delicious sea-smell of salt and seaweed, raising memories of holidays and happy things lost in the war.

“Atten-shun!” Flight Sergeant Blackett’s bellow rolled over us as we stiffened in our ranks, every man carrying full kit, our packs braced with sheets of cardboard to give the sharp, rectangular look, hair cut short, boots gleaming, buttons shining like gold. Without our knowing, No. 10 ITW had moulded us into a smart, disciplined unit, very different from the shambling, half-baked crew of six months ago. We had all passed our exams and were no longer AC2s but Leading Aircraftsmen, and as LAC Herriot my wage had rocketed from three shillings to a dizzying seven and threepence a day.

“Right turn!” Again the roar. “By the left qui-ick march!”

Arms high, moving as one, we swung past the front of the Grand for the last time. I shot a parting glance at the great building—like a dignified Victorian lady stripped of her finery—and I made a resolve. I would come back some day, when the war was over, and see the Grand Hotel as it should be.

And I did, too. Years later, Helen and I sat in deep armchairs in the lounge where the SPs had barked. Waiters padded over the thick carpets with tea and muffins while a string orchestra played selections from
Rose Marie.

And in the evening we dined in the elegant room with its long unbroken line of window looking down on the sea. This room had been the cold open terrace where I learned to read the Aldis lamp flickering from the lighthouse, but now we sat in luxurious warmth eating grilled sole and watching the lights of the harbour and town beginning to wink in the gathering dusk.

But that was very much in the future as the tramping feet echoed along Huntriss Row on the way to the station and the long lines of blue left the emptying square. We didn’t know where we were going, everything was uncertain.

Black’s
Veterinary Dictionary
dug into my back through the layer of cardboard. It was an unwieldy article but it reminded me of good days and gave me hope of more to come.

“I
T’S THE SAME THE
whole world over, it’s the poor wot gets the blame. It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure …”

We were on a “toughening course,” living under canvas in the depths of Shropshire, and this was one of the occasions when we were all gathered together—hundreds of sunburned men—in a huge marquee waiting to be addressed by a visiting air commodore.

Before the great man arrived the platform was occupied by a lascivious sergeant who was whittling away the time by leading us in a succession of bawdy ditties accompanied by gestures. “It’s the rich wot gets the …,” but instead of “pleasure” he made a series of violent pumping movements with his forearm.

I was intrigued by the reaction of the airman on my right. He was a slim, pink-faced lad of about nineteen and his lank fair hair fell over his face as he jumped up and down. He was really throwing himself into it, bawling out the indelicate words, duplicating the sergeant’s gesticulations with maniacal glee. He was, I had recently learned, the son of a bishop.

We had been joined on this course by the Oxford University Air Squadron. They were a group of superior and delicately nurtured young men and since I had spent three full days peeling potatoes with them I had come to know most of them very well. “Spud bashing” is an unequalled method of becoming familiar with one’s fellow men and as, hour after hour, we filled countless bins with our produce, the barriers crumbled steadily until at the end of three days we didn’t have many secrets from each other.

The bishop’s son had found something hilarious in the idea of a qualified veterinary surgeon leaving his practice to succour his country by removing the skins from thousands of tubers. And I, on the other hand, derived some reward from watching his antics. He was a charming and likeable lad but he seized avidly on anything with the faintest salacious slant. They say parsons’ sons are a bit wild when let off the leash, and I suppose an escapee from a bishop’s palace is even more susceptible to the blandishments of the big world.

I looked at him again. All around him men were yelling their heads off, but his voice, mouthing the four-letter words with relish, rang above the rest and he followed the actions of the conducting sergeant like a devoted acolyte.

It was all so different from Darrowby. My early days in the RAF with all the swearing and uninhibited conversation made me realise, perhaps for the first time, what kind of community I had left behind me. Because I often think that one of the least permissive societies in the history of mankind was the agricultural community of rural Yorkshire in the thirties. Among the farmers anything to do with sex or the natural functions was unmentionable.

It made my work more difficult because if the animal’s ailment had the slightest sexual connotation its owner would refuse to go into details if Helen or our secretary Miss Harbottle answered the ’phone. “I want the vet to come and see a cow,” was as far as they would go.

Today’s case was typical and I looked at Mr. Hopps with some irritation.

“Why didn’t you say your cow wasn’t coming into season? There’s a new injection for that now but I haven’t got it with me. I can’t carry everything in my car, you know.”

The farmer studied his feet. “Well, it was a lady on t’phone and I didn’t like to tell ’er that Snowdrop wasn’t bullin’.” He looked up at me sheepishly. “Can’t you do owt about it, then?”

I sighed. “Maybe I can. Bring me a bucket of hot water and some soap.”

As I lathered my arm I felt a twinge of disappointment. I’d have liked to try that new Prolan injection. But on the other hand there was a certain interest in these rectal examinations.

“Hold her tail, please,” I said, and began to work my hand carefully past the anal ring.

We were doing a lot of this lately. The profession had awakened quite suddenly to the fact that bovine infertility was no longer an impenetrable mystery. We were carrying out more and more of these examinations, and as I say, they had a strange fascination.

Siegfried put it with his usual succinctness one morning.

“James,” he said. “There is more to be learned up a cow’s arse than in many an encyclopedia.”

And, groping my way into this animal, I could see what he meant. Through the rectal wall I gripped the uterine cervix, then I worked along the right horn. It felt perfectly normal, as did the fallopian tube when I reached it. In another moment the ovary rested between my fingers like a walnut; but it was a walnut with a significant bulge and I smiled to myself. That swelling was the corpus luteum, the “yellow body” which was exerting its influence on the ovary and preventing the initiation of the normal oestral cycle.

I squeezed gently on the base of the bulge and felt it part from the ovary and swim off into space. That was lovely—just what was required—and I looked happily along the cow’s back at the farmer.

“I think I’ve put things right, Mr. Hopps. She should come on within the next day or two and you can get her served right away.”

I withdrew my arm, smeared with filth almost to the shoulder, and began to swill it with the warm water. This was the moment when young people with dewy-eyed ambitions to be veterinary surgeons usually decided to be lawyers or nurses instead. A lot of teenagers came round with me to see practice and it seemed to me that the sooner they witnessed the realities of the job the better it would be for them. A morning’s pregnancy diagnoses or something similar had a salutary effect in sorting out the sheep from the goats.

As I left the farm I had the satisfied feeling that I had really done something, and a sensation of relief that Mr. Hopps’ delicacy hadn’t resulted in an abortive visit.

And when little Mr. Gilby crashed moaning on the cobbles of his byre floor, my first thought was that it was unfair that it should happen to him of all people.

Because the natural delicacy and reticence of the times were embodied in him to an extreme degree. Even his physical make-up had something ethereal about it; nine stones or tiny bones, taut skin with no fat and a gentle, innocent face, almost child-like despite his fifty years. Nobody had ever heard Mr. Gilby swear or use a vulgar expression; in fact he was the only farmer I have ever known who talked about cow’s “manure.”

Besides, as a strict methodist he didn’t drink or indulge in worldly pleasures and had never been known to tell a lie. Altogether he was so good that I would have regarded him with deep suspicion if he had been anybody else. But I had come to know Mr. Gilby. He was a nice little man, he was as honest as the day. I would have trusted him with my life.

That was why I was so sad to see him lying there. It had happened so quickly. We had only just come into the byre and he had pointed to a black Angus Cross cow almost opposite the door.

“That’s ’er. Got a touch o’cold, I think.” He knew I would want to take the temperature and grasped the tail before putting one foot across the channel so that he could slide between the cow and her neighbour. That was when it happened; when his legs were wide apart in the worst possible position.

In a way I wasn’t surprised because that tail had been swishing bad-temperedly as we came in, and I am always a bit wary of black cows anyway. She didn’t seem to like our sudden entry and lashed out with her right hind foot with the speed of light, catching him with her flinty hoof full in the crutch as his legs were splayed. He was wearing only frayed, much-washed overall trousers and the protection was nil.

I winced as the foot went home with an appalling thud, but Mr. Gilby showed no emotion at all. He dropped as though on the receiving end of a firing squad and lay motionless on the hard stones, his hands clutched between his legs. It was only after several seconds that he began to moan softly.

As I hurried to his aid I felt it was wrong that I should be witnessing this disintegration of his modest facade. The little farmer, I was sure, would rather have died than be caught in this inelegant position, grovelling on the floor gripping frantically at an unmentionable area. I kneeled on the cobbles and patted his shoulder while he fought his inner battle with his agony.

After a while he felt well enough to sit up and I put my arm around him and supported him while perspiration bedewed the greenish pallor of his face. That was when the embarrassment began to creep in, because though he had removed his hands from their compromising position he was clearly deeply ashamed at being caught in a coarse attitude.

I felt strangely helpless. The little man couldn’t relieve his feelings in the usual way by cursing the animal and fate in general, nor could I help him to laugh the thing off with a few earthy remarks. This sort of thing happens now and then in the present day and usually gives rise to a certain amount of ripe comment, often embracing the possible effect on the victim’s future sex life. It all helps.

But here in Mr. Gilby’s byre there was only an uncomfortable silence. After a time the colour began to return to his cheeks and the little man struggled slowly to his feet. He took a couple of deep breaths then looked at me unhappily. Obviously he thought he owed me some explanation, even apology, for his tasteless behaviour.

As the minutes passed the tension rose. Mr. Gilby’s mouth twitched once or twice as though he were about to speak but he seemed unable to find the words. At length he appeared to come to a decision. He cleared his throat, looked around him carefully then put his lips close to my ear. He clarified the whole situation by one hoarsely whispered, deeply confidential sentence.