James Herriot (30 page)

Siegfried gave a few rapid chews and swallowed quickly. “Lashing about? What in God’s name has that got to do with it?”

“Quite a lot,” I replied. “I don’t like a whack across the face from a shitty tail, even if you do.”

There was a heavy-breathing lull then my colleague spoke in an ominously quiet voice. “Anything else about the tail?”

“Yes, there is. Some cows can whip a syringe out of your hand with their tails. The other day one caught my big fifty cc and smashed it against a wall. Broken glass everywhere.”

Siegfried flushed slightly and put down his knife and fork. “James, I don’t like to speak to you in these terms, but I am bound to tell you that you are talking the most unmitigated balls, bullshit and poppycock.”

I gave him a sullen glare. “That’s your opinion, is it?”

“It is indeed, James.”’

“Right.”

“Right.”

“Okay.”

“Very well.”

We continued our meal in silence.

But over the next few days my mind kept returning to the conversation. Siegfried has always had a persuasive way with him and the thought kept recurring that there might be a lot in what he said.

It was a week later that I paused, syringe in hand, before pushing between two cows. The animals, divining my intent as they usually did, swung their craggy hind ends together and blocked my way. Yes, by God, Siegfried had a point. Why should I fight my way in there when the other end was ready and waiting?

I came to a decision. “Hold the tail, please,” I said to the farmer and pushed my needle into the rump.

The cow never moved and as I completed the injection and pulled the needle out I was conscious of a faint sense of shame. That lovely pad of gluteal muscle, the easy availability of the site—my colleague had been dead right and I had been a pigheaded fool. I knew what to do in future.

The farmer laughed as he stepped back across the dung channel. “It’s a funny thing how you fellers all have your different ways.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Mr. Farnon was ’ere yesterday, injecting that cow over there.”

“He was?” A sudden light flashed in my mind. Could it be that Siegfried was not the only convincing talker in our practice …? “What about it?”

“Just that ’e had a different system from you. Had savage good arguments ’gainst goin’ near the rump. He injected into the neck.”

Something in my expression must have conveyed a message to him. “There now, Mr. Herriot, ye mustn’t let that bother ye.” He touched my arm sympathetically. “You’re still young. After all, Mr. Farnon is a man of experience.”

I
LEANED ON THE HANDLE
of my spade, wiped away the sweat which had begun to run into my eyes and gazed around me at the hundreds of men scattered over the dusty green.

We were still on our toughening course. At least that’s what they told us it was. I had a private suspicion that they just didn’t know what to do with all the aircrews under training and that somebody had devised this method of getting us out of the way.

Anyway, we were building a reservoir near a charming little Shropshire town and a whole village of tents had sprung up to house us. Nobody was quite sure about the reservoir but we were supposed to be building something. They issued us with denim suits and pick-axes and spades and for hour after hour we pecked desultorily at a rocky hillside.

But, hot as I was, I couldn’t help thinking that things could be a lot worse. The weather was wonderful and it was a treat to be in the open all day. I looked down the slope and away across the sweetly rolling countryside to where low hills rose in the blue distance; it was a gentler landscape than the stark fells and moors I had left behind in Yorkshire, but infinitely soothing.

And the roofs of the town showing above the trees held a rich promise. During the hours under the fierce sun, with the rock rust caking round our lips, we built up a gargantuan thirst which we nurtured carefully till the evening when we were allowed out of camp.

There, in cool taverns in the company of country folk, we slaked it with pints of glorious rough cider. I don’t suppose you would find any there now. It is mostly factory-made cider which is drunk in the South of England these days, but many of the pubs used to have their own presses, where they squeezed the juice from the local apples.

To me, there was something disturbing about sleeping in a tent. Each morning when I awoke with the early sun beating on the thin walls it was as if I were back in the hills above the Firth of Clyde long before the war was dreamed of. There was something very evocative about the tent smell of hot canvas and rubber groundsheet and crushed grass and the flies buzzing in a little cloud at the top of the pole. I was jerked back in an instant to Rosneath and when I opened my eyes I half expected to find Alex Taylor and Eddie Hutchison, the friends of my boyhood, lying there in their sleeping bags.

The three of us went camping at Rosneath every weekend from Easter to October, leaving the smoke and dirt of Glasgow behind us; and here in Shropshire, in the uncanny tent smell, when I closed my eyes I could see the little pine-wood behind the tent and the green hillside running down to the burn and, far below, the long blue mirror of the Gareloch glinting under the great mountains of Argyll. They have desecrated Rosneath and the Gareloch now, but to me, as a boy, it was a fairyland which led me into the full wonder and beauty of the world.

It was strange that I should dwell on that period when I was in my teens because Alex was in the Middle East, Eddie was in Burma and I was in another tent with a lot of different young men. And it was as though the time between had been rubbed away and Darrowby and Helen and all my struggles in veterinary practice had never happened. Yet those years in Darrowby had been the most important of my life. I used to sit up and shake myself, wondering at how my thoughts had been mixed up by the war.

But as I say, I quite enjoyed Shropshire. The only snag was that reservoir, or whatever it was that we were hacking out of the face of the hill. I could never get really involved with it. So that I pricked up my ears when our Flight Sergeant made an announcement one morning.

“Some of the local farmers want help with their harvest,” he called out at the early parade. “Are there any volunteers?”

My hand was the first up and after a few moments’ hesitation others followed, but none of my particular friends volunteered for the job. When everything had been sorted out I found I had been allotted to a farmer Edwards with three other airmen who were from a different flight and strangers to me.

Mr. Edwards arrived the following day and packed the four of us into a typical big old-fashioned farmer’s car. I sat in the front with him while the three others filled the back. He asked our names but nothing else; as though he felt that our station in civil life was none of his concern. He was about thirty-five with jet black hair above a sunburnt face in which his white teeth and clear blue eyes shone startlingly.

He looked us over with a good-humoured grin as we rolled into his farmyard.

“Well, here we are, lads,” he said. “This is where we’re going to put you through it.”

But I hardly heard him. I was looking around me at the scene which had been part of my life a few months ago. The cobbled yard, the rows of doors leading to cow byre, barn, pigsties and loose boxes. An old man was mucking out the byre and as the rich bovine smell drifted across, one of my companions wrinkled his nose. But I inhaled it like perfume.

The farmer led us all into the fields where a reaper and binder was at work, leaving the sheaves of corn lying in long golden swathes.

“Any of you ever done any stooking?” he asked.

We shook our heads dumbly.

“Never mind, you’ll soon learn. You come with me, Jim.”

We spaced ourselves out in the big field, each of my colleagues with an old man while Mr. Edwards took charge of me. It didn’t take me long to realise that I had got the tough section.

The farmer grabbed a sheaf in each hand, tucked them under his arms, walked a few steps and planted them on end, resting against each other. I did the same till there were eight sheaves making up a stook. He showed me how to dig the stalks into the ground so that they stood upright and sometimes he gave a nudge with his knee to keep them in the right alignment.

I did my best but often my sheaves would fall over and I had to dart back and replace them. And I noticed with some alarm that Mr. Edwards was going about twice as fast as the three old men. We had nearly finished the row while they were barely half way along, and my aching arms and back told me I was in for a testing time.

We went on like that for about two hours; bending, lifting, bending, lifting and shuffling forward without an instant’s respite. One of the strongest impressions I had gained when I first came into country practice was that farming was the hardest way of all of making a living, and now I was finding out for myself. I was about ready to throw myself down on the stubble when Mrs. Edwards came over the field with her young son and daughter. They carried baskets with the ingredients for our ten o’clock break; crusty apple tart and jugs of cider.

The farmer watched me quizzically as I sank gratefully down and began to drink like a parched traveller in the desert. The cider, from his own press, was superb, and I closed my eyes as I swallowed. The right thing, it seemed to me, would be to lie here in the sunshine for the rest of the day with about a gallon of this exquisite brew by my side, but Mr. Edwards had other ideas. I was still chewing at the solid crust when he grasped a fresh pair of sheaves.

“Right, lad, must get on,” he grunted, and I was back on the treadmill.

With a pause at lunchtime for bread, cheese and more cider we went on at breakneck speed all day. I have always been grateful to the RAF for what they did for my physical well-being. When I was called up there was no doubt I was going slightly to seed under Helen’s beneficent regime. Too much good cooking and the discovery of the charms of an armchair; I was getting fat. But the RAF changed all that and I don’t think I have ever slipped back.

After the six months at Scarborough I am certain I didn’t carry a surplus pound. Marching, drilling, PT, running—I could trot five miles along the beach and cliffs without trouble. When I arrived in Shropshire I was really fit. But I wasn’t as fit as Mr. Edwards.

He was a compact bundle of power. Not very big but with the wiry durability I remembered in the Yorkshire farmers. He seemed tireless, hardly breaking sweat as he moved along the rows, corded brown arms bulging from the sleeves of a faded collarless shirt, slightly-bowed legs stumping effortlessly.

The sensible thing would have been to tell him straight that I couldn’t go at his pace, but some demon of pride impelled me to keep up with him. I am quite sure he didn’t mean to rub it in. Like any other farmer he had a job to do and was anxious to get on with it. At the lunch break he looked at me with some commiseration as I stood there, shirt sticking to my back, mouth hanging open, ribs heaving.

“You’re doin’ fine, Jim,” he said, then, as if noticing my distress for the first time, he shifted his feet awkwardly. “I know you city lads ain’t used to this kind of work and … well … it’s not a question of strength, it’s just knowin’ how to do it.”

When we drove back to camp that night I could hear my companions groaning in the back of the car. They, too, had suffered, but not as badly as me.

After a few days I did begin to get the knack of the thing and though it still tested me to the utmost I was never on the border of collapse again.

Mr. Edwards noticed the improvement and slapped me playfully on the shoulder. “What did I tell you? It’s just knowin’ how to do it!”

But a new purgatory awaited me when we started to load the corn on to the stack. Forking the sheaves up on to the cart, roping them there then throwing them again, higher and higher as the stack grew in size, I realised with a jolt that stooking had been easy.

Mrs. Edwards joined in this part. She stood on the top of the stack with her husband, expertly turning the sheaves towards him while he arranged them as they should be. I had the unskilled job way below, toiling as never before, back breaking, the handle of the fork blistering my palms.

I just couldn’t go fast enough and Mr. Edwards had to hop down to help me, grasping a fork and hurling the sheaves up with easy flicks of the wrist.

He looked at me as before and spoke the encouraging words. “You’re comin’ along grand, Jim. It’s just knowin’ how to do it.”

But there were many compensations. The biggest was being among farming folk again. Mrs. Edwards in her undemonstrative way was obviously anxious to show hospitality to these four rather bewildered city boys far from home, and set us down to a splendid meal every evening. She was dark like her husband, with large eyes which joined in her quick smile and a figure which managed to be thin and shapely at the same time. She hadn’t much chance to get fat because she never stopped working. When she wasn’t outside throwing the corn around like any man she was cooking and baking, looking after her children and scouring her great barn of a farmhouse.

Those evening meals were something to look forward to and remember. Steaming rabbit pies with fresh green beans and potatoes from the garden. Bilberry tarts and apple crumble and a massive jug of thick cream to pour ad lib. Home-baked bread and farm cheese.

The four of us revelled in the change from the RAF fare. It was said the aircrews got the best food in the services and I believed it, but after a while it all began to taste the same. Maybe it was the bulk cooking but it palled in time.

Sitting at the farm table, looking at Mrs. Edwards serving us, at her husband eating stolidly and at the two children, a girl of ten whose dark eyes showed promise of her mother’s attractiveness and a sturdy, brown-limbed boy of eight, the thought recurred; they were good stock.

The clever economists who tell us that we don’t need British agriculture and that our farms should be turned into national parks seem to ignore the rather obvious snag that an unfriendly country could starve us into submission in a week. But to me a greater tragedy still would be the loss of a whole community of people like the Edwardses.