All Things Bright and Beautiful (34 page)

The pigman slipped a noose into the sow’s mouth and drew it tight over the snout and behind the canine teeth. This common method of restraint isn’t at all painful but the sow was one of those who didn’t like any form of mucking about. She was a huge animal and as soon as she felt the rope she opened her mouth wide in a long-drawn, resentful scream.

The volume of sound was incredible and she kept it up effortlessly without any apparent need to draw breath. Conversation from then on was out of the question and I watched in the appalling din as Carmody put an elastic tourniquet at the base of the sow’s ear, swabbed the surface with spirit and then poked with his needle at the small blood vessel. Nothing happened. He tried again but the syringe remained obstinately empty. He had a few more attempts then, as I felt the top of my head was going to come loose, I wandered from the pen into the peace of the yard.

I took a leisurely stroll round the outside of the piggery, pausing for a minute or two to look at the view at the far end where the noise was comparatively faint. When I returned to the pen the screaming hit me again like a pneumatic drill and Carmody, sweating and slightly pop-eyed, looked up from the ear where he was still jabbing fruitlessly. It seemed to me that everybody had had enough. Using sign language I indicated to the student that I’d like to have a go and by a happy chance my first effort brought a dark welling of blood into the syringe. I waved to the pigman to remove the rope and the moment he did so the big sow switched off the noise magically and began to nose, quite unperturbed, among the straw.

“Nothing very exciting at the next place.” I kept the triumph out of my voice as we drove away. “Just a bullock with a tumour on his jaw. But it’s an interesting herd—all Galloways, and this group we’re going to see have been wintered outside. They’re the toughest animals in the district.”

Carmody nodded. Nothing I said seemed to rouse much enthusiasm in him. For myself this herd of untamed black cattle always held a certain fascination; contacts with them were always coloured by a degree of uncertainty—sometimes you could catch them to examine them, sometimes you couldn’t.

As we approached the farm I could see a bunch of about thirty bullocks streaming down the scrubby hillside on our right. The farm men were driving them down through the scattered gorse bushes and the sparse groups of trees to where the stone walls met in a rough V at the front

One of them waved to me. “We’re going to try to get a rope on ’im down in the corner while he’s among his mates. He’s a wick bugger—you’d never get near him in t’field.”

After a lot of shouting and waving and running about the bullocks were finally cornered and they stood in a tight, uneasy pack, their shaggy black polls bobbing among the steam rising from their bodies.

“There he is! You can see the thing on his face.” A man pointed to a big beast about the middle of the bunch and began to push his way towards him. My admiration for the Yorkshire farm worker rose another notch as I watched him squeezing between the plunging, kicking animals. “When I get the rope on his head you’ll all have to get on t’other end—one man’ll never hold ’im.” He gasped as he fought his way forward.

He was obviously an expert because as soon as he got within reach he dropped the halter on to the bullock’s head with practised skill. “Right!” he shouted. “Give me a hand with him. We have ’im now.”

But as he spoke the beast gave a great bellow and began to charge from the pack. The man cried out despairingly and disappeared among the hairy bodies. The rope whipped free out of reach of everybody. Except Carmody. As the bullock shot past him he grabbed the trailing, rope with a reflex action and hung on.

I watched, fascinated, as man and beast careered across the field. They were travelling away from me towards the far slope, the animal head down, legs pistoning, going like a racehorse, the student also at full speed but very upright, both hands on the rope in front of him, a picture of resolution.

The men and I were helpless spectators and we stood in a silent group as the beast turned left suddenly and disappeared behind a clump of low trees.

It was gone for only a few moments but it seemed a long time and when it reappeared it was going faster than ever, hurtling over the turf like a black thunderbolt. Carmody, incredibly, was still there on the end of the rope and still very upright but his strides had increased to an impossible length till he seemed to be touching the ground only every twenty feet or so.

I marvelled at his tenacity but obviously the end was near. He took a last few soaring, swooping steps then he was down on his face. But he didn’t let go. The bullock, going better than ever, had turned towards us now, dragging the inert form apparently without effort, and I winced as I saw it was headed straight for a long row of cow pats.

It was when Carmody was skidding face down through the third heap of muck that I suddenly began to like him. And when he finally did have to release his hold and lay for a moment motionless on the grass I hurried over to help him up. He thanked me briefly then looked calmly across the field at a sight which is familiar to every veterinary surgeon—his patient thundering out of sight across the far horizon.

The student was almost unrecognisable. His clothes and face were plastered with filth except where the saffron streaks of the Istin showed up like war paint, he smelt abominably, he had been bitten in the backside, nothing had really gone right for him all day yet he was curiously undefeated. I smiled to myself. It was no good judging this bloke by ordinary standards; I could recognise the seeds of greatness when I saw them.

Carmody stayed with us for two weeks and after that first day I got on with him not so badly. Of course it wasn’t the same relationship as with other students; there was always a barrier of reserve. He spent a lot of time squinting down the practice microscope at blood films, skin scrapings, milk smears, and by the end of each day he had collected a fresh supply of samples from the cases he had seen. He would come and drink a polite beer with me after an evening call but there was none of the giggling over the day’s events as with the other young lads. I had the feeling always that he would rather have been writing up his case book and working out his findings.

But I didn’t mind. I found an interest in being in contact with a truly scientific mind. He was as far removed as he could be from the traditional studious swot—his was a cold, superior intellect and there was something rewarding in watching him at work.

I didn’t see Carmody again for over twenty years. I picked out his name in the Record when he qualified with top marks then he disappeared into the great world of research for a while to emerge with a Ph.D. and over the years he added a string of further degrees and qualifications. Every now and then an unintelligible article would appear in the professional journals under his name and it became commonplace when reading scientific papers to see references to what Dr. Carmody had said on the subject.

When I finally did see him he was the guest of honour at a professional banquet, an international celebrity heavy with honours. From where I was sitting at the far end of one of the side tables I listened to his masterly speech with a feeling of inevitability; the wide grasp of his subject, the brilliant exposition—I had seen it all coming those many years ago.

Afterwards when we had left the tables he moved among us and I gazed with something like awe at the majestic figure approaching. Carmody had always been big, but with the tail coat tight across the massive shoulders and the vast expanse of gleaming shirt front stretched over the curving abdomen he was almost overpowering. As he passed he stopped and looked at me.

“It’s Herriot, isn’t it?” the handsome, high-coloured face still had that look of calm power.

“Yes, it is. It’s good to see you again.”

We shook hands. “And how is the practice at Darrowby?”

“Oh, as usual,” I replied. “Bit too busy at times. We could do with some help if ever you felt like it.”

Carmody nodded gravely. “I’d like that very much. It would be good for me.”

He was about to move on when he paused. “Perhaps you’d let me know any time you want a pig bled.” For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes and I saw a small flame flicker briefly in the frosty blue. Then he was gone.

As I looked at the retreating back a hand gripped my arm. It was Brian Miller, a happily obscure practitioner like myself.

“Come on, Jim, I’ll buy you a drink,” he said.

We went into the bar and ordered two beers.

“That Carmody!” Brian said. “The man’s got a tremendous brain, but by God he’s a cold fish.”

I sipped at the beer and looked thoughtfully into my glass for a few seconds.

“Oh I don’t know,” I said. “He certainly gives that impression, but Carmody’s all right.”

N
O VET LIKES TO
have his job made more difficult and as I worked inside the ewe I fought a rising tide of irritation.

“You know, Mr. Kitson,” I said testily, “you should have got me out sooner. How long have you been trying to lamb this ewe?”

The big man grunted and shrugged his shoulders. “Oh for a bit—not ower long.”

“Half an hour—an hour?”

“Nay, nay, nobbut a few minutes.” Mr. Kitson regarded me gloomily along his pointed nose. It was his habitual expression, in fact I had never seen him smile and the idea of a laugh ever disturbing those pendulous cheeks was unthinkable.

I gritted my teeth and decided to say no more about it, but I knew it had taken more than a few minutes to cause the swelling of the vaginal wall, this sandpaper dryness of the little creatures inside. And it was a simple enough presentation—biggish twins, one anterior the other posterior, but of course as often happens the hind legs of one were laid alongside the head of the other giving the illusion that they belonged to the same lamb. I’d like to bet that Mr. Kitson had been guddling for ages inside here with his big rough hands in a dogged attempt to bring that head and those legs out together.

If I had been there at the start it would have been the work of a few moments but instead here I was without an inch of space, trying to push things around with one finger instead of my full hand and getting nowhere.

Fortunately the present day farmer doesn’t often play this trick on us. The usual thing I hear at a lambing is “Nay, I just had a quick feel and I knew it wasn’t a job for me,” or something I heard from a farmer the other day, “Two men at one ewe’s no good,” and I think that says it very well.

But Mr. Kitson was of the old school. He didn’t believe in getting the vet out until every other avenue had been explored and when he did finally have to fall back on our services he was usually dissatisfied with the result.

“This is no good,” I said, withdrawing my hand and swilling it quickly in the bucket. “I’ll have to do something about this dryness.”

I walked the length of the old stable which had been converted into temporary lambing pens and lifted a tube of lubricating cream from the car boot. Coming in again I heard a faint sound from my left. The stable was dimly lit and an ancient door had been placed across the darkest corner to make a small enclosure. I looked inside and in the gloom could just discern a ewe lying on her chest, head outstretched. Her ribs rose and fell with the typical quick distressed respirations of a sheep in pain. Occasionally she moaned softly.

“What’s the trouble here?” I asked.

Mr. Kitson regarded me impassively from the other end of the building. “She ’ad a roughish time lambin’ yesterday.”

“How do you mean, roughish?”

“Well…a big single lamb wi’ a leg back and I couldn’t fetch it round.”

“So you just pulled it out as it was…with the leg back?”

“Aye, nowt else ah could do.”

I leaned over the door and lifted the ewe’s tail, filthy with faeces and discharge. I winced as I saw the tumefied, discoloured vulva and perineum.

“She could do with a bit of attention, Mr. Kitson.”

The farmer looked startled. “Nay, nay, I don’t want none o’ that. It’s ower with her—there’s nowt you can do.”

“You mean she’s dying?”

“That’s right.”

I put my hand on the sheep’s head, feeling the coldness of the ears and lips. “He could be right.”

“Well have you rung Mallock to come and pick her up? She really should be put out of her pain as soon as possible.”

“Aye…ah’ll do that.” Mr. Kitson shuffled his feet and looked away.

I knew what the situation was. He was going to let the ewe “take her chance.” The lambing season was always a rewarding and fulfilling time for me but this was the other side of the coin. It was a hectic time in the farming year, a sudden onslaught of extra work on top of the routine jobs and in some ways it overwhelmed the resources of farmers and vets alike. The flood of new life left a pathetic debris behind it; a flotsam and jetsam of broken creatures; ewes too old to stand a further pregnancy, some debilitated by diseases like liver fluke and toxaemia, others with infected arthritic joints and others who had just had a “roughish time.” You were inclined to find them lying half forgotten in dark corners like the one in this stable. They had been left there to “take their chance.”

I returned in silence to my original patient. My lubricating cream made a great difference and I was able to use more than one finger to explore. I had to make up my mind whether to repel the posterior or anterior presentation and since the head was well into the vagina I decided to bring out the anterior first.

With the farmer’s help I raised the ewe’s hindquarters till they were resting on a straw bale. I could work downhill now and gently pushed the two hind limbs away into the depths of the uterus. In the space which this left I was able to hook a finger round the fore limbs which were laid back along the ribs of the anterior lamb and bring them into the passage. I only needed another application of the cream and a few moments’ careful traction and the lamb was delivered.

But it was all too late. The tiny creature was quite dead and the knell of disappointment sounded in me as it always did at the sight of the perfectly formed body which lacked only the spark of life.