All Creatures Great and Small (40 page)

Returning to my crate I produced the dreadful instrument and with it a Haussman’s gag which I inserted on the incisors and opened on its ratchet till the mouth gaped wide. Everything was easy to see then and, of course, there it was—a great prong at the other side of the mouth exactly like the first. Great, great, now I had two to chop off.

The old horse stood patiently, eyes almost closed, as though he had seen it all and nothing in the world was going to bother him. I went through the motions with my toes curling and when the sharp crack came, the white-bordered eyes opened wide, but only in mild surprise. He never even moved. When I did the other side he paid no attention at all; in fact, with the gag prising his jaws apart he looked exactly as though he was yawning with boredom.

As I bundled the tools away, John picked up the bony spicules from the grass and studied them with interest. “Well, poor awd beggar. Good job I got you along, young man. Reckon he’ll feel a lot better now.”

On the way back, old John, relieved of his bale, was able to go twice as fast and he stumped his way up the hill at a furious pace, using the fork as a staff. I panted along in the rear, changing the box from hand to hand every few minutes.

About half way up, the thing slipped out of my grasp and it gave me a chance to stop for a breather. As the old man muttered impatiently I looked back and could just see the two horses; they had returned to the shallows and were playing together, chasing each other jerkily, their feet splashing in the water. The cliff made a dark backcloth to the picture—the shining river, the trees glowing bronze and gold and the sweet green of the grass.

Back in the farm yard, John paused awkwardly. He nodded once or twice, said “Thank ye, young man,” then turned abruptly and walked away.

I was dumping the box thankfully into the boot when I saw the man who had spoken to us on the way down. He was sitting, cheerful as ever, in a sunny corner, back against a pile of sacks, pulling his dinner packet from an old army satchel.

“You’ve been down to see t’pensioners, then? By gaw, awd John should know the way.”

“Regular visitor, is he?”

“Regular? Every day God sends you’ll see t’awd feller ploddin’ down there. Rain, snow or blow, never misses. And allus has summat with him—bag o’ corn, straw for their bedding.”

“And he’s done that for twelve years?”

The man unscrewed his thermos flask and poured himself a cup of black tea. “Aye, them ’osses haven’t done a stroke o’ work all that time and he could’ve got good money for them from the horse flesh merchants. Rum ’un, isn’t it?”

“You’re right,” I said, “it is a rum ’un.”

Just how rum it was occupied my thoughts on the way back to the surgery. I went back to my conversation with Siegfried that morning; we had just about decided that the man with a lot of animals couldn’t be expected to feel affection for individuals among them. But those buildings back there were full of John Skipton’s animals—he must have hundreds.

Yet what made him trail down that hillside every day in all weathers? Why had he filled the last years of those two old horses with peace and beauty? Why had he given them a final ease and comfort which he had withheld from himself?

It could only be love.

FORTY-SIX

T
HE LONGER
I
WORKED
in Darrowby the more the charms of the Dales beguiled me. And there was one solid advantage of which I became more aware every day—the Dales farmers were all stocksmen. They really knew how to handle animals, and to a vet whose patients are constantly trying to thwart him or injure him it was a particular blessing.

So this morning I looked with satisfaction at the two men holding the cow. It wasn’t a difficult job—just an intravenous injection of magnesium lactate—but still it was reassuring to have two such sturdy fellows to help me. Maurice Bennison, medium sized but as tough as one of his own hill beasts, had a horn in his right hand while the fingers of his left gripped the nose; I had the comfortable impression that the cow wouldn’t jump very far when I pushed the needle in. His brother George whose job it was to raise the vein, held the choke rope limply in enormous hands like bunches of carrots. He grinned down at me amiably from his six feet four inches.

“Right, George,” I said. “Tighten up that rope and lean against the cow to stop her coming round on me.” I pushed my way between the cow and her neighbour, past George’s unyielding bulk and bent over the jugular vein. It was standing out very nicely. I poised the needle, feeling the big man’s elbow on me as he peered over my shoulder, and thrust quickly into the vein.

“Lovely!” I cried as the dark blood fountained out and spattered thickly on the straw bedding beneath. “Slacken your rope, George.” I fumbled in my pocket for the flutter valve. “And for God’s sake, get your weight off me!”

Because George had apparently decided to rest his full fourteen stones on me instead of the cow, and as I tried desperately to connect the tube to the needle I felt my knees giving way. I shouted again, despairingly, but he was inert, his chin resting on my shoulder, his breathing stertorous in my ear.

There could only be one end to it. I fell flat on my face and lay there writhing under the motionless body. My cries went unheeded; George was unconscious.

Mr. Bennison, attracted by the commotion, came in to the byre just in time to see me crawling out from beneath his eldest son. “Get him out, quick!” I gasped, “before the cows trample on him.” Wordlessly, Maurice and his father took an ankle apiece and hauled away in unison. George shot out from under the cows, his head beating a brisk tattoo on the cobbles, traversed the dung channel, then resumed his sleep on the byre floor.

Mr. Bennison moved back to the cow and waited for me to continue with my injection but I found the presence of the sprawled body distracting. “Look, couldn’t we sit him up against the wall and put his head, between his legs?” I suggested apologetically. The others glanced at each other then, as though deciding to humour me, grabbed George’s shoulders and trundled him over the floor with the expertise of men used to throwing around bags of fertiliser and potatoes. But even propped against the rough stones, his head slumped forward and his great long arms hanging loosely, the poor fellow still didn’t look so good.

I couldn’t help feeling a bit responsible. “Don’t you think we might give him a drink?”

But Mr. Bennison had had enough. “Nay, nay, he’ll be right,” he muttered testily. “Let’s get on with t’job.” Evidently he felt he had pampered George too much already.

The incident started me thinking about this question of people’s reactions to the sight of blood and other disturbing realities. Even though it was only my second year of practice I had already formulated certain rules about this and one was that it was always the biggest men who went down. (I had, by this time, worked out a few other, perhaps unscientific theories, e.g. big dogs were kept by people who lived in little houses and vice versa. Clients who said “spare no expense” never paid their bills, ever. When I asked my way in the Dales and was told “you can’t miss it,” I knew I’d soon be hopelessly lost.)

I had begun to wonder if perhaps country folk, despite their closer contact with fundamental things, were perhaps more susceptible than city people. Ever since Sid Blenkhom had staggered into Skeldale House one evening. His face was ghastly white and he had obviously passed through a shattering experience. “Have you got a drop o’ whisky handy, Jim?” he quavered, and when I had guided him to a chair and Siegfried had put a glass in his hand he told us he had been at a first aid lecture given by Dr. Allinson, a few doors down the street. “He was talking about veins and arteries and things,” groaned Sid, passing a hand across his forehead. “God, it was awful!” Apparently Fred Ellison the fishmonger had been carried out unconscious after only ten minutes and Sid himself had only just made it to the door. It had been a shambles.

I was interested because this sort of thing, I had found, was always just round the corner. I suppose we must have more trouble in this way than the doctors because in most cases when our medical colleagues have any cutting or carving to do they send their patients to hospital while the vets just have to get their jackets off and operate on the spot. It means that the owners and attendants of the animals are pulled in as helpers and are subjected to some unusual sights.

So, even in my short experience, I had become a fair authority on the various manifestations of “coming over queer.” I suppose it was a bit early to start compiling statistics but I had never seen a woman or a little man pass out even though they might exhibit various shadings of the squeamish spectrum. The big chap was the best bet every time, especially the boisterous, super-confident type.

I have a vivid recollection of a summer evening when I had to carry out a rumenotomy on a cow. As a rule I was inclined to play for time when I suspected a foreign body—there were so many other conditions with similar symptoms that I was never in a hurry to make a hole in the animal’s side. But this time diagnosis was easy; the sudden fall in milk yield, loss of cudding; grunting, and the rigid, sunken-eyed appearance of the cow. And to clinch it the farmer told me he had been repairing a hen house in the cow pasture—nailing up loose boards. I knew where one of the nails had gone.

The farm, right on the main street of the village, was a favourite meeting place for the local lads. As I laid out my instruments on a clean towel draped over a straw bale a row of grinning faces watched from above the half door of the box; not only watched but encouraged me with ribald shouts. When I was about ready to start it occurred to me that an extra pair of hands would be helpful and I turned to the door. “How would one of you lads like to be my assistant?” There was even more shouting for a minute or two, then the door was opened and a huge young man with a shock of red hair ambled into the box; he was a magnificent sight with his vast shoulders and the column of sunburned neck rising from the open shirt. It needed only the bright blue eyes and the ruddy, high-cheekboned face to remind me that the Norsemen had been around the Dales a thousand years ago. This was a Viking.

I had him roll up his sleeves and scrub his hands in a bucket of warm water and antiseptic while I infiltrated the cow’s flank with local anaesthetic. When I gave him artery forceps and scissors to hold he pranced around, making stabbing motions at the cow and roaring with laughter.

“Maybe you’d like to do the job yourself?” I asked. The Viking squared his great shoulders. “Aye, I’ll ’ave a go,” and the heads above the door cheered lustily.

As I finally poised my Bard Parker scalpel with its new razor-sharp blade over the cow, the air was thick with earthy witticisms. I had decided that this time I really would make the bold incision recommended in the surgery books; it was about time I advanced beyond the stage of pecking nervously at the skin. “A veritable blow,” was how one learned author had described it. Well, that was how it was going to be.

I touched the blade down on the clipped area of the flank and with a quick motion of the wrist laid open a ten-inch wound. I stood back for a few seconds admiring the clean-cut edges of the skin with only a few capillaries spurting on to the glistening, twitching abdominal muscles. At the same time I noticed that the laughter and shouting from the heads had been switched off and was replaced by an eerie silence broken only by a heavy, thudding sound from behind me.

“Forceps please,” I said, extending my hand back. But nothing happened. I looked round; the top of the half door was bare—not a head in sight. There was only the Viking spreadeagled in the middle of the floor, arms and legs flung wide, chin pointing to the roof. The attitude was so theatrical that I thought he was still acting the fool, but a closer examination erased all doubts: the Viking was out cold. He must have gone straight over backwards like a stricken oak.

The farmer, a bent little man who couldn’t have scaled much more than eight stones, had been steadying the cow’s head. He looked at me with the faintest flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Looks like you and me for it, then, guvnor.” He tied the halter to a ring on the wall, washed his hands methodically and took up his place at my side. Throughout the operation, he passed me my instruments, swabbed away the seeping blood and clipped the sutures, whistling tunelessly through his teeth in a bored manner; the only time he showed any real emotion was when I produced the offending nail from the depths of the reticulum. He raised his eyebrows slightly, said “ ’ello, ’ello,” then started whistling again.

We were too busy to do anything for the Viking. Halfway through, he sat up, shook himself a few times then got to his feet and strolled with elaborate nonchalance out of the box. The poor fellow seemed to be hoping that perhaps we had noticed nothing unusual.

I don’t suppose we could have done much to bring him round anyway. There was only one time I discovered a means of immediate resuscitation and that was by accident.

It was when Henry Dickson asked me to show him how to castrate a ruptured pig without leaving a swelling. Henry was going in for pigs in a big way and had a burning ambition to equip himself with veterinary skills.

When he showed me the young pig with the gross scrotal swelling I demurred. “I really think this is a vet’s job, Henry. Castrate your normal pigs by all means but I don’t think you could make a proper job of this sort of thing.”

“How’s that, then?”

“Well, there’s the local anaesthetic, danger of infection—and you really need a knowledge of anatomy to know what you’re doing.”

All the frustrated surgeon in Henry showed in his eyes. “Gaw, I’d like to know how to do it.”

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “How about if I do this one as a demonstration and you can make up your own mind. I’ll give him a general anaesthetic so you don’t have to hold him.”

“Right, that’s a good idea.” Henry thought for a moment. “What’ll you charge me to do ’im?”

“Seven and six.”

“Well I suppose you have to have your pound of flesh. Get on.”