All Things Bright and Beautiful (41 page)

There was a chorus of delighted cries from the Dimmocks and they turned and looked at me with undisguised admiration. Clearly they considered that I had plucked Bonzo from the jaws of death. Mr. Dimmock stepped forward from the mass.

“You’ll send me a bill, won’t you,” he said with the dignity that was peculiar to him.

My first glance last night had decided me that this was a no-charging job and I hadn’t even written it in the book, but I nodded solemnly.

“Very well, Mr. Dimmock, I’ll do that.”

And throughout our long association though no money ever changed hands he always said the same thing—“You’ll send me a bill, won’t you.”

This was the beginning of my close relationship with the Dimmocks. Obviously they had taken a fancy to me and wanted to see as much as possible of me. Over the succeeding weeks and months they brought in a varied selection of dogs, cats, budgies, rabbits at frequent intervals, and when they found that my services were free they stepped up the number of visits; and when one came they all came. I was anxiously trying to expand the small animal side of the practice and increasingly my hopes were raised momentarily then dashed when I opened the door and saw a packed waiting room.

And it increased the congestion when they started bringing their auntie, Mrs. Pounder, from down the road with them to see what a nice chap I was. Mrs. Pounder, a fat lady who always wore a greasy velour hat perched on an untidy mound of hair, evidently shared the family tendency to fertility and usually brought a few of her own ample brood with her.

That is how it was this particular morning. I swept the assembled company with my eye but could discern only beaming Dimmocks and Pounders; and this time I couldn’t even pick out my patient. Then the assembly parted and spread out as though by a prearranged signal and I saw little Nellie Dimmock with a tiny puppy on her knee.

Nellie was my favourite. Mind you, I liked all the family; in fact they were such nice people that I always enjoyed their visits after that first disappointment. Mum and Dad were always courteous and cheerful and the children, though boisterous, were never ill-mannered; they were happy and friendly and if they saw me in the street they would wave madly and go on waving till I was out of sight. And I saw them often because they were continually scurrying around the town doing odd jobs—delivering milk or papers. Best of all, they loved their animals and were kind to them.

But as I say, Nellie was my favourite. She was about nine and had suffered an attack of “infantile paralysis” as it used to be called when very young. It had left her with a pronounced limp and a frailty which set her apart from her robust brothers and sisters. Her painfully thin legs seemed almost too fragile to carry her around but above the pinched face her hair, the colour of ripe corn, flowed to her shoulders and her eyes, though slightly crossed, gazed out calm and limpid blue through steel-rimmed spectacles.

“What’s that you’ve got, Nellie?” I asked.

“It’s a little dog,” she almost whispered. “’e’s mine.”

“You mean he’s your very own?”

She nodded proudly. “Aye, ’e’s mine.”

“He doesn’t belong to your brothers and sisters, too?”

“Naw, ’e’s mine.”

Rows of Dimmock and Pounder heads nodded in eager acquiescence as Nellie lifted the puppy to her cheek and looked up at me with a smile of a strange sweetness. It was a smile that always tugged at my heart; full of a child’s artless happiness and trust but with something else which was poignant and maybe had to do with the way Nellie was.

“Well, he looks a fine dog to me,” I said. “He’s a Spaniel, isn’t he?”

She ran a hand over the little head. “Aye, a Cocker. Mr. Brown said ’e was a Cocker.”

There was a slight disturbance at the back and Mr. Dimmock appeared from the crush. He gave a respectful cough.

“He’s a proper pure bred, Mr. Herriot,” he said. “Mr. Brown from the bank’s bitch had a litter and ’e gave this ’un to Nellie.” He tucked his stick under his arm and pulled a long envelope from an inside pocket. He handed it to me with a flourish. “That’s ’is pedigree.”

I read it through and whistled softly. “He’s a real blue-blooded hound, all right, and I see he’s got a big long name. Darrowby Tobias the third. My word, that sounds great.”

I looked down at the little girl again. “And what do YOU call him, Nellie?”

“Toby,” she said softly. “I calls ’im Toby.”

I laughed. “All right, then. What’s the matter with Toby anyway. Why have you brought him?”

“He’s been sick, Mr. Herriot.” Mrs. Dimmock spoke from somewhere among the heads. “He can’t keep nothin’ down.”

“Well I know what that’ll be. Has he been wormed?”

“No, don’t think so.”

“I should think he just needs a pill,” I said. “But bring him through and I’ll have a look at him.”

Other clients were usually content to send one representative through with their animals but the Dimmocks all had to come. I marched along with the crowd behind me filling the passage from wall to wall. Our consulting cum operating room was quite small and I watched with some apprehension as the procession filed in after me. But they all got in, Mrs. Pounder, her velour hat slightly askew, squeezing herself in with some difficulty at the rear.

My examination of the puppy took longer than usual as I had to fight my way to the thermometer on the trolley then struggle in the other direction to get the stethoscope from its hook on the wall. But I finished at last.

“Well I can’t find anything wrong with him,” I said. “So I’m pretty sure he just has a tummy full of worms. I’ll give you a pill now and you must give it to him first thing tomorrow morning.”

Like a football match turning out, the mass of people surged along the passage and into the street and another Dimmock visit had come to an end.

I forgot the incident immediately because there was nothing unusual about it. The pot-bellied appearance of the puppy made my diagnosis a formality; I didn’t expect to see him again.

But I was wrong. A week later my surgery was once more overflowing and I had another squashed-in session with Toby in the little back room. My pill had evacuated a few worms but he was still vomiting, still distended.

“Are you giving him five very small meals a day as I told you?” I asked.

I received an emphatic affirmative and I believed them. The Dimmocks really took care of their animals. There was something else here, yet I couldn’t find it. Temperature normal, lungs clear, abdomen negative on palpation; I couldn’t make it out I dispensed a bottle of our antacid mixture with a feeling of defeat. A young puppy like this shouldn’t need such a thing.

This was the beginning of a frustrating period. There would be a span of two or three weeks when I would think the trouble had righted itself then without warning the place would be full of Dimmocks and Pounders and I’d be back where I started.

And all the time Toby was growing thinner.

I tried everything; gastric sedatives, variations of diet, quack remedies. I interrogated the Dimmocks repeatedly about the character of the vomiting—how long after eating, what were the intervals between, and I received varying replies. Sometimes he brought his food straight back, at others he retained it for several hours. I got nowhere.

It must have been over eight weeks later—Toby would be about four months old—when I again viewed the assembled Dimmocks with a sinking heart. Their visits had become depressing affairs and I could not foresee anything better today as I opened the waiting room door and allowed myself to be almost carried along the passage. This time it was Dad who was the last to wedge himself into the consulting room then Nellie placed the little dog on the table.

I felt an inward lurch of sheer misery. Toby had grown despite his disability and was now a grim caricature of a Cocker Spaniel, the long silky ears drooping from an almost fleshless skull, the spindly legs pathetically feathered. I had thought Nellie was thin but her pet had outdone her. And he wasn’t just thin, he was trembling slightly as he stood arch-backed on the smooth surface, and his face had the dull inward look of an animal which has lost interest.

The little girl ran her hand along the jutting ribs and the pale, squinting eyes looked up at me through the steel spectacles with that smile which pulled at me more painfully than ever before. She didn’t seem worried. Probably she had no idea how things were, but whether she had or not I knew I’d never be able to tell her that her dog was slowly dying.

I rubbed my eyes wearily. “What has he had to eat today?”

Nellie answered herself. “He’s ’ad some bread and milk.”

“How long ago was that?” I asked, but before anybody could reply the little dog vomited, sending the half digested stomach contents soaring in a graceful arc to land two feet away on the table.

I swung round on Mrs. Dimmock. “Does he always do it like that?”

“Aye he mostly does—sends it flying out, like.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?”

The poor lady looked flustered. “Well…I don’t know…I…”

I held up a hand. “That’s all right, Mrs. Dimmock, never mind.” It occurred to me that all the way through my totally ineffectual treatment of this dog not a single Dimmock or Pounder had uttered a word of criticism so why should I start to complain now?

But I knew what Toby’s trouble was now. At last, at long last I knew.

And in case my present day colleagues reading this may think I had been more than usually thick-headed in my handling of the case I would like to offer in my defence that such limited text books as there were in those days made only a cursory reference to pyloric stenosis (narrowing of the exit of the stomach where it joins the small intestine) and if they did they said nothing about treatment.

But surely, I thought, somebody in England was ahead of the books. There must be people who were actually doing this operation…and if there were I had a feeling one might not be too far away…

I worked my way through the crush and trotted along the passage to the phone.

“Is that you Granville?”

“JIM.” A bellow of pure unalloyed joy. “How are you laddie?”

“Very well, how are you?”

“Ab-so-lutely tip top, old son! Never better!”

“Granville, I’ve got a four month old spaniel pup I’d like to bring through to you. It’s got pyloric stenosis.”

“Oh lovely!”

“I’m afraid the little thing’s just about on its last legs—a bag of bones.”

“Splendid, splendid!”

“This is because I’ve been mucking about for weeks in ignorance.”

“Fine, just fine!”

“And the owners are a very poor family. They can’t pay anything I’m afraid.”

“Wonderful!”

I hesitated a moment. “Granville, you do…er…you have…operated on these cases before?”

“Did five yesterday.”

“What!”

A deep rumble of laughter. “I do but jest, old son, but you needn’t worry, I’ve done a few. And it isn’t such a bad job.”

“Well that’s great.” I looked at my watch. “It’s half past nine now, I’ll get Siegfried to take over my morning round and I’ll see you before eleven.”

G
RANVILLE HAD BEEN CALLED
out when I arrived and I hung around his surgery till I heard the expensive sound of the Bentley purring into the yard. Through the window I saw yet another magnificent pipe glinting behind the wheel then my colleague, in an impeccable pin-striped suit which made him look like the Director of the Bank of England, paced majestically towards the side door.

“Good to see you, Jim!” he exclaimed, wringing my hand warmly. Then before removing his jacket he took his pipe from his mouth and regarded it with a trace of anxiety for a second before giving it a polish with his yellow cloth and placing it tenderly in a drawer.

It wasn’t long before I was under the lamp in the operating room bending over Toby’s small outstretched form while Granville—the other Granville Bennett—worked with fierce concentration inside the abdomen of the little animal.

“You see the gross gastric dilatation,” he murmured. “Classical lesion.” He gripped the pylorus and poised his scalpel. “Now I’m going through the serous coat.” A quick deft incision. “A bit of blunt dissection here for the muscle fibers…down…down…a little more…ah there it is, can you see it—the mucosa bulging into the cleft. Yes…yes…just right. That’s what you’ve got to arrive at.”

I peered down at the tiny tube which had been the site of all Toby’s troubles. “Is that all, then?”

“That’s all, laddie.” He stepped back with a grin. “The obstruction is relieved now and you can take bets that this little chap will start to put weight on now.”

“That’s wonderful, Granville. I’m really grateful.”

“Nonsense, Jim, it was a pleasure. You can do the next one yourself now, eh?” He laughed, seized needle and sutures and sewed up the abdominal muscles and skin at an impossible pace.

A few minutes later he was in his office pulling on his jacket, then as he filled his pipe he turned to me.

“I’ve got a little plan for the rest of the morning, laddie.”

I shrank away from him and threw up a protective hand. “Well now, er…it’s kind of you, Granville, but I really…I honestly must get back…we’re very busy, you know…can’t leave Siegfried too long…work’ll be piling up…” I stopped because I felt I was beginning to gibber.

My colleague looked wounded. “All I meant, old son, was that we want you to come to lunch. Zoe is expecting you.”

“Oh…oh, I see. Well that’s very kind. We’re not going…anywhere else, then?”

“Anywhere else?” He blew out his cheeks and spread his arms wide. “Of course not I just have to call in at my branch surgery on the way.”

“Branch surgery? I didn’t know you had one.”

“Oh yes, just a stone’s throw from my house.” He put an arm round my shoulders. “Well let’s go, shall we?”

As I lay back, cradled in the Bentley’s luxury, I dwelt happily on the thought that at last I was going to meet Zoe Bennett when I was my normal self. She would learn this time that I wasn’t a perpetually drunken oaf. In fact the next hour or two seemed full of rosy promise; an excellent lunch illumined by my witty conversation and polished manners, then back with Toby, magically resuscitated, to Darrowby.