All Things Bright and Beautiful (23 page)

“I reckon you’d last about a minute,” Harry said thoughtfully. “He’s a grand bull—all I ever expected—but by God he’s a mean ’un. I never trust him an inch.”

“And how,” I asked without enthusiasm, “am I supposed to get a sample of blood from him?”

“Oh I’ll trap his head in yon corner.” Harry pointed to a metal yoke above a trough in an opening into the yard at the far side of the box. “I’ll give him some meal to ’tice him in.” He went back down the passage and soon I could see him out in the yard scooping meal into the trough.

The bull at first took no notice and continued to prod at the wall with his horns, then he turned with awesome slowness, took a few unhurried steps across the box and put his nose down to the trough. Harry, out of sight in the yard, pulled the lever and the yoke crashed shut on the great neck.

“All right,” the farmer cried, hanging on to the lever, “I have ’im. You can go in now.”

I opened the door and entered the box and though the bull was held fast by the head there was still the uneasy awareness that he and I were alone in that small space together. And as I passed along the massive body and put my hand on the neck I sensed a quivering emanation of pent up power and rage. Digging my fingers into the jugular furrow I watched the vein rise up and poised my needle. It would take a good hard thrust to pierce that leathery skin.

The bull stiffened but did not move as I plunged the needle in and with relief I saw the blood flowing darkly into the syringe. Thank God I had hit the vein the first time and didn’t have to start poking around. I was withdrawing the needle and thinking that the job had been so simple after all when everything started to happen. The bull gave a tremendous bellow and whipped round at me with no trace of his former lethargy. I saw that he had got one horn out of the yoke and though he couldn’t reach me with his head his shoulder knocked me on my back with a terrifying revelation of unbelievable strength. I heard Harry shouting from outside and as I scrambled up and headed for the box door I saw that the madly plunging creature had almost got his second horn clear and when I reached the passage I heard the clang of the yoke as be finally freed himself.

Anybody who has travelled a narrow passage a few feet ahead of about a ton of snorting, pounding death will appreciate that I didn’t dawdle. I was spurred on by the certain knowledge that if Monty caught me he would plaster me against the wall as effortlessly as I would squash a ripe plum, and though I was clad in a long oilskin coat and Wellingtons I doubt whether an Olympic sprinter in full running kit would have bettered my time.

I made the door at the end with a foot to spare, dived through and crashed it shut. The first thing I saw was Harry Sumner running round from the outside of the box. He was very pale. I couldn’t see my face but it felt pale; even my lips were cold and numb.

“God, I’m sorry!” Harry said hoarsely. “The yoke couldn’t have closed properly—that bloody great neck of his. The lever just jerked out of my hand. Damn, I’m glad to see you—I thought you were a goner!”

I looked down at my hand. The blood-filled syringe was still tightly clutched there. “Well I’ve got my sample anyway, Harry. And it’s just as well, because it would take some fast talking to get me in there to try for another. I’m afraid you’ve just seen the end of a beautiful friendship.”

“Aye, the big sod!” Harry listened for a few moments to the thudding of Monty’s horns against the door. “And after all you did for him. That’s gratitude for you.”

P
ROBABLY THE MOST DRAMATIC
occurrence in the history of veterinary practice was the disappearance of the draught horse. It is an almost incredible fact that this glory and mainstay of the profession just melted quietly away within a few years. And I was one of those who were there to see it happen.

When I first came to Darrowby the tractor had already begun to take over, but tradition dies hard in the agricultural world and there were still a lot of horses around. Which was just as well because my veterinary education had been geared to things equine with everything else a poor second. It had been a good scientific education in many respects but at times I wondered if the people who designed it still had a mental picture of the horse doctor with his top hat and frock coat busying himself in a world of horse-drawn trams and brewers’ drays.

We learned the anatomy of the horse in great detail, than that of the other animals much more superficially. It was the same with the other subjects; from animal husbandry with such insistence on a thorough knowledge of shoeing that we developed into amateur blacksmiths—right up to medicine and surgery where it was much more important to know about glanders and strangles than canine distemper. Even as we were learning, we youngsters knew it was ridiculous, with the draught horse already cast as a museum piece and the obvious potential of cattle and small animal work.

Still, as I say, after we had absorbed a vast store of equine lore it was a certain comfort that there were still a lot of patients on which we could try it out. I should think in my first two years I treated farm horses nearly every day and though I never was and never will be an equine expert there was a strange thrill in meeting with the age-old conditions whose names rang down almost from mediaeval times. Quittor, fistulous withers, poll evil, thrush, shoulder slip—vets had been wrestling with them for hundreds of years using very much the same drugs and procedures as myself. Armed with my firing iron and box of blister I plunged determinedly into what had always been the surging mainstream of veterinary life.

And now, in less than three years the stream had dwindled, not exactly to a trickle but certainly to the stage where the final dry-up was in sight. This meant in a way, a lessening of the pressures on the veterinary surgeon because there is no doubt that horse work was the roughest and most arduous part of our life.

So that today, as I looked at the three year old gelding it occurred to me that this sort of thing wasn’t happening as often as it did. He had a long tear in his flank where he had caught himself on barbed wire and it gaped open whenever he moved. There was no getting away from the fact that it had to be stitched.

The horse was tied by the head in his stall, his right side against the tall wooden partition. One of the farm men, a hefty six footer, took a tight hold of the head collar and leaned back against the manger as I puffed some iodoform into the wound. The horse didn’t seem to mind, which was a comfort because he was a massive animal emanating an almost tangible vitality and power. I threaded my needle with a length of silk, lifted one of the lips of the wound and passed it through. This was going to be no trouble, I thought as I lifted the flap at the other side and pierced it, but as I was drawing the needle through, the gelding made a convulsive leap and I felt as though a great wind had whistled across the front of my body. Then, strangely, he was standing there against the wooden boards as if nothing had happened.

On the occasions when I have been kicked I have never seen it coming. It is surprising how quickly those great muscular legs can whip out. But there was no doubt he had had a good go at me because my needle and silk were nowhere to be seen, the big man at the head was staring at me with wide eyes in a chalk white face and the front of my clothing was in an extraordinary state. I was wearing a “gaberdine mac” and it looked as if somebody had taken a razor blade and painstakingly cut the material into narrow strips which hung down in ragged strips to ground level. The great iron-shod hoof had missed my legs by an inch or two but my mac was a write-off.

I was standing there looking around me in a kind of stupor when I heard a cheerful hail from the doorway.

“Now then, Mr. Herriot, what’s he done at you?” Cliff Tyreman, the old horseman, looked me up and down with a mixture of amusement and asperity.

“He’s nearly put me in hospital, Cliff,” I replied shakily. “About the closest near miss I’ve ever had. I just felt the wind of it.”

“What were you tryin’ to do?”

“Stitch that wound, but I’m not going to try any more. I’m off to the surgery to get a chloroform muzzle.”

The little man looked shocked. “You don’t need no chloroform. I’ll haul him and you’ll have no trouble.”

“I’m sorry, Cliff.” I began to put away my suture materials, scissors and powder. “You’re a good bloke, I know, but he’s had one go at me and he’s not getting another chance. I don’t want to be lame for the rest of my life.”

The horseman’s small, wiry frame seemed to bunch into a ball of aggression. He thrust forward his head in a characteristic posture and glared at me. “I’ve never heard owt as daft in me life.” Then he swung round on the big man who was still hanging on to the horse’s head, the ghastly pallor of his face now tinged with a delicate green. “Come on out o’ there, Bob! You’re that bloody scared you’re upsetting t’oss. Come on out of it and let me have ’im!”

Bob gratefully left the head and, grinning sheepishly moved with care along the side of the horse. He passed Cliff on the way and the little man’s head didn’t reach his shoulder.

Cliff seemed thoroughly insulted by the whole business. He took hold of the head collar and regarded the big animal with the disapproving stare of a schoolmaster at a naughty child. The horse, still in the mood for trouble, laid back his ears and began to plunge about the stall, his huge feet clattering ominously on the stone floor, but he came to rest quickly as the little man uppercutted him furiously in the ribs.

“Get stood up straight there, ye big bugger. What’s the matter with ye?” Cliff barked and again he planted his tiny fist against the swelling barrel of the chest, a puny blow which the animal could scarcely have felt but which reduced him to quivering submission. “Try to kick, would you, eh? I’ll bloody fettle you!” He shook the head collar and fixed the horse with a hypnotic stare as he spoke. Then he turned to me. “You can come and do your job, Mr. Herriot, he won’t hurt tha.”

I looked irresolutely at the huge, lethal animal. Stepping open-eyed into dangerous situations is something vets are called upon regularly to do and I suppose we all react differently. I know there were times when an over-vivid imagination made me acutely aware of the dire possibilities and now my mind seemed to be dwelling voluptuously on the frightful power in those enormous shining quarters, on the unyielding flintiness of the spatulate feet with their rim of metal. Cliff’s voice cut into my musings.

“Come on, Mr. Herriot, I tell ye he won’t hurt tha.”

I reopened my box and tremblingly threaded another needle. I didn’t seem to have much option; the little man wasn’t asking me, he was telling me. I’d have to try again.

I couldn’t have been a very impressive sight as I shuffled forwards, almost tripping over the tattered hula-hula skirt which dangled in front of me, my shaking hands reaching out once more for the wound, my heart thundering in my ears. But I needn’t have worried. It was just as the little man had said; he didn’t hurt me. In fact he never moved. He seemed to be listening attentively to the muttering which Cliff was directing into his face from a few inches’ range. I powdered and stitched and dipped as though working on an anatomical specimen. Chloroform couldn’t have done it any better.

As I retreated thankfully from the stall and began again to put away my instruments the monologue at the horse’s head began to change its character. The menacing growl was replaced by a wheedling, teasing chuckle.

“Well, ye see, you’re just a daft awd bugger, getting yourself all airigated over nowt. You’re a good lad, really, aren’t ye, a real good lad.” Cliffs hand ran caressingly over the neck and the towering animal began to nuzzle his cheek, as completely in his sway as any Labrador puppy.

When he had finished he came slowly from the stall, stroking the back, ribs, belly and quarters, even giving a playful tweak at the tail on parting while what had been a few minutes ago an explosive mountain of bone and muscle submitted happily.

I pulled a packet of Cold Flake from my pocket. “Cliff, you’re a marvel. Will you have a cigarette?”

“It ’ud be like givin’ a pig a strawberry,” the little man replied, then he thrust forth his tongue on which reposed a half-chewed gobbet of tobacco. “It’s allus there. Ah push it in fust thing every mornin’ soon as I get out of bed and there it stays. You’d never know, would you?”

I must have looked comically surprised because the dark eyes gleamed and the rugged little face split into a delighted grin. I looked at that grin—boyish, invincible—and reflected on the phenomenon that was Cliff Tyreman.

In a community in which toughness and durability was the norm he stood out as something exceptional. When I had first seen him nearly three years ago barging among cattle, grabbing their noses and hanging on effortlessly, I had put him down as an unusually fit middle-aged man; but he was in fact nearly seventy. There wasn’t much of him but he was formidable; with his long arms swinging, his stumping, pigeon-toed gait and his lowered head he seemed always to be butting his way through life.

“I didn’t expect to see you today,” I said. “I heard you had pneumonia.”

He shrugged. “Aye, summat of t’sort. First time I’ve ever been off work since I was a lad.”

“And you should be in your bed now, I should say.” I looked at the heaving chest and partly open mouth. “I could hear you wheezing away when you were at the horse’s head.”

“Nay, I can’t stick that nohow. I’ll be right in a day or two.” He seized a shovel and began busily clearing away the heap of manure behind the horse, his breathing loud and sterterous in the silence.

Harland Grange was a large, mainly arable farm in the low country at the foot of the Dale, and there had been a time when this stable had had a horse standing in every one of the long row of stalls. There had been over twenty with at least twelve regularly at work, but now there were only two, the young horse I had been treating and an ancient grey called Badger.

Cliff had been head horseman and when the revolution came he turned to tractoring and other jobs around the farm with no fuss at all. This was typical of the reaction of thousands of other farm workers throughout the country; they didn’t set up a howl at having to abandon the skills of a lifetime and start anew—they just got on with it. In fact, the younger men seized avidly upon the new machines and proved themselves natural mechanics.