All Things Bright and Beautiful (6 page)

I read the prescription in the fine copperplate writing. Camphor, eucalyptus, zinc oxide—a long list of the old familiar names. I couldn’t help feeling a kind of affection for them but it was tempered by a growing disillusion. I was about to say that I didn’t think rubbing anything on the udder would make the slightest difference when the farmer groaned loudly.

The action of reaching into his hip pocket had brought on a twinge of his lumbago and he sat very upright, grimacing with pain.

“This bloody old back of mine! By gaw, it does give me some stick, and doctor can’t do nowt about it. I’ve had enough pills to make me rattle but ah get no relief.”

I’m not brilliant but I do get the odd blinding flash and I had one now.

“Mr. Pickersgill,” I said solemnly, “You’ve suffered from that lumbago ever since I’ve known you and I’ve just thought of something. I believe I know how to cure it.”

The farmer’s eyes widened and he stared at me with a childlike trust in which there was no trace of scepticism. This could be expected, because just as people place more reliance on the words of knacker men and meal travellers than their vets’ when their animals are concerned it was natural that they would believe the vet rather than their doctor with their own ailments.

“You know how to put me right?” he said faintly.

“I think so, and it has nothing to do with medicine. You’ll have to stop milking.”

“Stop milking! What the ’ell…?”

“Of course. Don’t you see, it’s sitting crouched on that little stool night and morning every day of the week that’s doing it. You’re a big chap and you’ve got to bend to get down there—I’m sure it’s bad for you.”

Mr. Pickersgill gazed into space as though he had seen a vision. “You really think…”

“Yes, I do. You ought to give it a try, anyway. Olive can do the milking. She’s always saying she ought to do it all.”

“That’s right, Dad,” Olive chimed in. “I like milking, you know I do, and it’s time you gave it up—you’ve done it ever since you were a lad.”

“Dang it, young man, I believe you’re right! I’ll pack it in, now—I’ve made my decision!” Mr. Pickersgill threw up his fine head, looked imperiously around him and crashed his fist on the table as though he had just concluded a merger between two oil companies.

I stood up. “Fine, fine. I’ll take this prescription with me and make up the udder salve. It’ll be ready for you tonight and I should start using it immediately.”

It was about a month later that I saw Mr. Pickersgill. He was on a bicycle, pedalling majestically across the market place and he dismounted when he saw me.

“Now then, Mr. Herriot,” he said, puffing slightly. “I’m glad I’ve met you. I’ve been meaning to come and tell you that we don’t have no flakes in the milk now. Ever since we started with t’salve they began to disappear and milk’s as clear as it can be now.”

“Oh, great. And how’s your lumbago?”

“Well I’ll tell you, you’ve really capped it and I’m grateful. Ah’ve never milked since that day and I hardly get a twinge now.” He paused and smiled indulgently. “You gave me some good advice for me back, but we had to go back to awd Professor Malleson to cure them masticks, didn’t we?”

My next encounter with Mr. Pickersgill was on the telephone.

“I’m speaking from the cossack,” he said in a subdued shout.

“From the what?”

“The cossack, the telephone cossack in t’village.”

“Yes indeed,” I said, “And what can I do for you?”

“I want you to come out as soon as possible, to treat a calf for semolina.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I ’ave a calf with semolina.”

“Semolina?”

“Aye, that’s right. A feller was on about it on t’wireless the other morning.”

“Oh! Ah yes, I see.” I too had heard a bit of the farming talk on Salmonella infection in calves. “What makes you think you’ve got this trouble?”

“Well it’s just like that feller said. Me calf’s bleeding from the rectrum.”

“From the…? Yes, yes, of course. Well I’d better have a look at him—I won’t be long.”

The calf was pretty ill when I saw him and he did have rectal bleeding, but it wasn’t like Salmonella.

“There’s no diarrhoea, you see, Mr. Pickersgill,” I said. “In fact, he seems to be constipated. This is almost pure blood coming away from him. And he hasn’t got a very high temperature.”

The farmer seemed a little disappointed. “Dang, I thowt it was just same as that feller was talking about. He said you could send samples off to the labrador.”

“Eh? To the what?”

“The investigation labrador—you know.”

“Oh yes, quite, but I don’t think the lab would be of any help in this case.”

“Aye well, what’s wrong with him, then? Is something the matter with his rectrum?”

“No, no,” I said. “But there seems to be some obstruction high up his bowel which is causing this haemorrhage.” I looked at the little animal standing motionless with his back up. He was totally preoccupied with some internal discomfort and now and then he strained and grunted softly.

And of course I should have known straight away—it was so obvious. But I suppose we all have blind spells when we can’t see what is pushed in front of our eyes, and for a few days I played around with that calf in a haze of ignorance, giving it this and that medicine which I’d rather not talk about.

But I was lucky. He recovered in spite of my treatment. It wasn’t until Mr. Pickersgill showed me the little roll of necrotic tissue which the calf had passed that the thing dawned on me.

I turned, shame-faced, to the farmer. “This is a bit of dead bowel all telescoped together—an intussusception. It’s usually a fatal condition but fortunately in this case the obstruction has sloughed away and your calf should be all right now.”

“What was it you called it?”

“An intussusception.”

Mr. Pickersgill’s lips moved tentatively and for a moment I thought he was going to have a shot at it. But he apparently decided against it “Oh,” he said. “That’s what it was, was it?”

“Yes, and it’s difficult to say just what caused it.”

The farmer sniffed. “I’ll bet I know what was behind it. I always said this one ’ud be a weakly calf. When he was born he bled a lot from his biblical cord.”

Mr. Pickersgill hadn’t finished with me yet. It was only a week later that I heard him on the phone again.

“Get out here, quick. There’s one of me pigs going bezique.”

“Bezique?” With an effort I put away from me a mental picture of two porkers facing each other over a green baize table. “I’m afraid I don’t quite…”

“Aye, ah gave him a dose of worm medicine and he started jumpin’ about and rollin’ on his back. I tell you he’s going proper bezique.”

“Ah! Yes, yes I see, right. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

The pig had quieted down a bit when I arrived but was still in considerable pain, getting up, lying down, trotting in spurts round the pen. I gave him half a grain of morphine hydrochloride as a sedative and within a few minutes he began to relax and finally curled up in the straw.

“Looks as though he’s going to be all right,” I said. “But what’s this worm medicine you gave him?”

Mr. Pickersgill produced the bottle sheepishly.

“Bloke was coming round sellin’ them. Said it would shift any worms you cared to name.”

“It nearly shifted your pig, didn’t it?” I sniffed at the mixture. “And no wonder. It smells almost like pure turpentine.”

“Turpentine! Well by gaw is that all it is? And bloke said it was summat new. Charged me an absorbent price for it too.”

I gave him back the bottle. “Well never mind, I don’t think there’s any harm done, but I think the dustbin’s the best place for that.”

As I was getting into my car I looked up at the farmer. “You must be about sick of the sight of me. First the mastitis, then the calf and now your pig. You’ve had a bad run.”

Mr. Pickersgill squared his shoulders and gazed at me with massive composure. Again I was conscious of the sheer presence of the man.

“Young feller,” he said. “That don’t bother me. When there’s stock there’s trouble and ah know from experience that trouble allus comes in cyclones.”

I
KNEW
I
SHOULDN’T
do it, but the old Drovers’ Road beckoned to me irresistibly. I ought to be hurrying back to the surgery after my morning call but the broad green path wound beguilingly over the moor top between its crumbling walls and almost before I knew, I was out of the car and treading the wiry grass.

The wall skirted the hill’s edge and as I looked across and away to where Darrowby huddled far below between its folding green fells the wind thundered in my ears; but when I squatted in the shelter of the grey stones the wind was only a whisper and the spring sunshine hot on my face. The best kind of sunshine—not heavy or cloying but clear and bright and clean as you find it down behind a wall in Yorkshire with the wind singing over the top.

I slid lower till I was stretched on the turf, gazing with half closed eyes into the bright sky, luxuriating in the sensation of being detached from the world and its problems.

This form of self-indulgence had become part of my life and still is; a reluctance to come down from the high country; a penchant for stepping out of the stream of life and loitering on the brink for a few minutes as an uninvolved spectator.

And it was easy to escape, lying up here quite alone with no sound but the wind sighing and gusting over the empty miles and, far up in the wide blue, the endless brave trilling of the larks.

Not that there was anything unpleasant about going back down the hill to Darrowby even before I was married. I had worked there for two years before Helen arrived, and Skeldale House had become home and the two bright minds in it my friends. It didn’t bother me that both the brothers were cleverer than I was. Siegfried—unpredictable, explosive, generous; I had been lucky to have him as a partner. As a city bred youth trying to tell expert stock farmers how to treat their animals I had needed all his skill and guidance behind me. And Tristan; a rum lad as they said, but very sound. His humour and zest for life had lightened my days.

And all the time I was adding practical experience to my theory. The mass of facts I had learned at college were all coming to life, and there was the growing realisation, deep and warm, that this was for me. There was nothing else I’d rather do.

It must have been fifteen minutes later when I finally rose, stretched pleasurably, took a last deep gulp of the crisp air and pottered slowly back to the car for the six mile journey back down the hill to Darrowby.

When I drew up by the railings with Siegfried’s brass plate hanging lopsidedly atop mine by the fine Georgian doorway I looked up at the tall old house with the ivy swarming untidily over the weathered brick. The white paint on windows and doors was flaking and that ivy needed trimming but the whole place had style, a serene unchangeable grace.

But I had other things on my mind at the moment. I went inside, stepping quietly over the coloured tiles which covered the floor of the long passage till I reached the long offshoot at the back of the house. And I felt as I always did the subdued excitement as I breathed the smell of our trade which always hung there; ether, carbolic and pulv aromat. The latter was the spicy powder which we mixed with the cattle medicines to make them more palatable and it had a distinctive bouquet which even now can take me back thirty years with a single sniff.

And today the thrill was stronger than usual because my visit was of a surreptitious nature. I almost tiptoed along the last stretch of passage, dodged quickly round the corner and into the dispensary. Gingerly I opened the cupboard door at one end and pulled out a little drawer. I was pretty sure Siegfried had a spare hoof knife hidden away within and I had to suppress a cackle of triumph when I saw it lying there; almost brand new with a nicely turned gleaming blade and a polished wooden handle.

My hand was outstretched to remove it when a cry of anger exploded in my right ear.

“Caught in the act! Bloody red-handed, by God!” Siegfried, who had apparently shot up through the floorboards, was breathing fire into my face.

The shock was so tremendous that the instrument dropped from my trembling fingers and I cowered back against a row of bottles of formalin bloat mixture.

“Oh hello, Siegfried,” I said with a ghastly attempt at nonchalance. “Just on my way to that horse of Thompson’s. You know—the one with the pus in the foot. I seem to have mislaid my knife so I thought I’d borrow this one.”

“Thought you’d nick it, you mean! My spare hoof knife! By heaven, is nothing sacred, James?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Oh you’re wrong. I’d have given it back to you straight away.”

“A likely story!” Siegfried said with a bitter smile. “I’d never have seen it again and you know damn well I wouldn’t. Anyway, where’s your own knife? You’ve left it on some farm, haven’t you?”

“Well as a matter of fact I laid it down at Willie Denholm’s place after I’d finished trimming his cow’s overgrown foot and I must have forgotten to pick it up.” I gave a light laugh.

“But God help us, James, you’re always forgetting to pick things up. And you’re always making up the deficiency by purloining my equipment.” He stuck his chin out. “Have you any idea how much all this is costing me?”

“Oh but I’m sure Mr. Denholm will drop the knife in at the surgery the first time he’s in town.”

Siegfried nodded gravely. “He may, I’ll admit that, he may. But on the other hand he might think it is the ideal tool for cutting up his plug tobacco. Remember when you left your calving overall at old Fred Dobson’s place? The next time I saw it was six months later and Fred was wearing it. He said it was the best thing he’d ever found for stooking corn in wet weather.”

“Yes, I remember. I’m really sorry about it all.” I fell silent, breathing in the pungency of the pulv aromat. Somebody had let a bagful burst on the floor and the smell was stronger than ever.

My partner kept his fiery gaze fixed on me for a few moments more then he shrugged his shoulders. “Ah well, there’s none of us perfect, James. And I’m sorry I shouted at you. But you know I’m deeply attached to that knife and this business of leaving things around is getting under my skin.” He took down a Winchester of his favourite colic draught and polished it with his handkerchief before replacing it carefully on its shelf. “I tell you what, let’s go and sit down for a few minutes and talk about this problem.”