James Herriot (54 page)

“He’s independent, you see,” the farmer’s wife said as I stood at the kitchen sink. “He’s welcome to come in for a bit o’ dinner but he’d rather stay outside with his dog.”

I nodded. “Where does he sleep when he’s going round the farms like this.”

“Oh, anywhere,” she replied. “In hay barns or granaries or sometimes out in the open, but when he’s with us he sleeps upstairs in one of our rooms. Ah know for a fact any of the farmers would be willin’ to have him in the house because he allus keeps himself spotless clean.”

“I see.” I pulled the towel from behind the door. “He’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

She smiled ruminatively. “Aye, he certainly is. Just him and his dog!” She lifted a fragrant dishful of hot roast ham from the oven and set it on the table. “But I’ll tell you this. The feller’s all right. Everybody likes Roddy Travers—he’s a very nice man.”

Roddy stayed around the Darrowby district throughout the summer and I grew used to the sight of him on the farms or pushing his pram along the roads. When it was raining he wore a tattered over-long gaberdine coat, but at other times it was always the golf jacket and corduroys. I don’t know where he had accumulated his wardrobe. It was a safe bet he had never been on a golf course in his life and it was just another of the little mysteries about him.

I saw him early one morning on a hill path in early October. It had been a night of iron frost and the tussocky pastures beyond the walls were held in a pitiless white grip with every blade of grass stiffly ensheathed in rime.

I was muffled to the eyes and had been beating my gloved fingers against my knees to thaw them out, but when I pulled up and wound down the window the first thing I saw was the bare chest under the collarless unbuttoned shirt.

“Mornin’, Mr. Herriot,” he said. “Ah’m glad I’ve seen ye.” He paused and gave me his tranquil smile. “There’s a job along t’road for a couple of weeks, then I’m movin’ on.”

“I see.” I knew enough about him now not to ask where he was going. Instead I looked down at Jake who was sniffing the herbage. “I see he’s walking this morning.”

Roddy laughed. “Yes, sometimes ’e likes to walk, sometimes ’e likes to ride. He pleases ’imself.”

“Right, Roddy,” I said. “No doubt we’ll meet again. All the best to you.”

He waved and set off jauntily over the icebound road and I felt that a little vein of richness had gone from my life.

But I was wrong. That same evening about eight o’clock the front door bell rang. I answered it and found Roddy on the front door steps. Behind him, just visible in the frosty darkness, stood the ubiquitous pram.

“I want you to look at me dog, Mr. Herriot” he said.

“Why, what’s the trouble?”

“Ah don’t rightly know. He’s havin’ sort of … faintin’ fits.”

“Fainting fits? That doesn’t sound like Jake. Where is he, anyway?”

He pointed behind him. “In t’pram, under t’cover.”

“All right.” I threw the door wide. “Bring him in.”

Roddy adroitly manhandled the rusty old vehicle up the steps and pushed it, squeaking and rattling, along the passage to the consulting room. There, under the bright lights he snapped back the fasteners and threw off the cover to reveal Jake stretched beneath.

His head was pillowed on the familiar gaberdine coat and around him lay his master’s worldly goods; a string-tied bundle of spare shirt and socks, a packet of tea, a thermos, knife and spoon and an ex-army haversack.

The big dog looked up at me with terrified eyes and as I patted him I could feel his whole frame quivering.

“Let him lie there a minute, Roddy,” I said. “And tell me exactly what you’ve seen.”

He rubbed his palms together and his fingers trembled. “Well it only started this afternoon. He was right as rain, larkin’ about on the grass, then he went into a sort o’ fit.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just kind of seized up and toppled over on ’is side. He lay there for a bit gaspin’ and slaverin’. Ah’ll tell ye, I thought he was a goner.” His eyes widened and a corner of his mouth twitched at the memory.

“How long did that last?”

“Nobbut a few seconds. Then he got up and you’d say there was nowt wrong with ’im.”

“But he did it again?”

“Aye, time and time again. Drove me near daft. But in between ’e was normal. Normal, Mr. Herriot!”

It sounded ominously like the onset of epilepsy. “How old is he?” I asked.

“Five gone last February.”

Ah well, it was a bit old for that. I reached for a stethoscope and auscultated the heart. I listened intently but heard only the racing beat of a frightened animal. There was no abnormality. My thermometer showed no rise in temperature.

“Let’s have him on the table, Roddy. You take the back end.”

The big animal was limp in our arms as we hoisted him on to the smooth surface, but after lying there for a moment he looked timidly around him then sat up with a slow and careful movement. As we watched he reached out and licked his master’s face while his tail flickered between his legs.

“Look at that!” the man exclaimed. “He’s all right again. You’d think he didn’t ail a thing.”

And indeed Jake was recovering his confidence rapidly. He peered tentatively at the floor a few times then suddenly jumped down, trotted to his master and put his paws against his chest.

I looked at the dog standing there, tail wagging furiously. “Well, that’s a relief, anyway. I didn’t like the look of him just then, but whatever’s been troubling him seems to have righted itself. I’ll—”

My happy flow was cut off. I stared at the lurcher. His fore legs were on the floor again and his mouth was gaping as he fought for breath. Frantically he gasped and retched then he blundered across the floor, collided with the pram wheels and fell on his side.

“What the hell …! Quick, get him up again!” I grabbed the animal round the middle and we lifted him back on to the table.

I watched in disbelief as the huge form lay there. There was no fight for breath now—he wasn’t breathing at all, he was unconscious. I pushed my fingers inside his thigh and felt the pulse. It was still going, rapid and feeble, but yet he didn’t breathe.

He could die any moment and I stood there helpless, all my scientific training useless. Finally my frustration burst from me and I struck the dog on the ribs with the flat of my hand.

“Jake!” I yelled. “Jake, what’s the matter with you?”

As though in reply, the lurcher immediately started to take great wheezing breaths, his eyelids twitched back to consciousness and he began to look about him. But he was still mortally afraid and he lay prone as I gently stroked his head.

There was a long silence while the animal’s terror slowly subsided, then he sat up on the table and regarded us placidly.

“There you are,” Roddy said softly. “Same thing again. Ah can’t reckon it up and ah thought ah knew summat about dogs.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t reckon it up either, and I was supposed to be a veterinary surgeon.

I spoke at last. “Roddy, that wasn’t a fit. He was choking. Something was interfering with his air flow.” I took my hand torch from my breast pocket. “I’m going to have a look at his throat.”

I pushed Jake’s jaws apart, depressed his tongue with a forefinger and shone the light into the depths. He was the kind of good-natured dog who offered no resistance as I prodded around, but despite my floodlit view of the pharynx I could find nothing wrong. I had been hoping desperately to come across a bit of bone stuck there somewhere but I ranged feverishly over pink tongue, healthy tonsils and gleaming molars without success. Everything looked perfect.

I was tilting his head a little further when I felt him stiffen and heard Roddy’s cry.

“He’s goin’ again!”

And he was, too. I stared in horror as the brindled body slid away from me and lay prostrate once more on the table. And again the mouth strained wide and froth bubbled round the lips. As before, the breathing had stopped and the rib cage was motionless. As the seconds ticked away I beat on the chest with my hand but it didn’t work this time. I pulled the lower eyelid down from the staring orb—the conjunctiva was blue, Jake hadn’t long to live. The tragedy of the thing bore down on me. This wasn’t just a dog, he was this man’s family and I was watching him die.

It was at that moment that I heard the faint sound. It was a strangled cough which barely stirred the dog’s lips.

“Damn it!” I shouted. “He IS choking. There must be something down there.”

Again I seized the head and pushed my torch into the mouth and I shall always be thankful that at that very instant the dog coughed again, opening the cartilages of the larynx and giving me a glimpse of the cause of all the trouble. There, beyond the drooping epiglottis I saw for a fleeting moment a smooth round object no bigger than a pea.

“I think it’s a pebble,” I gasped. “Right inside his larynx.”

“You mean, in ’is Adam’s apple?”

“That’s right, and it’s acting like a ball valve, blocking his windpipe every now and then.” I shook the dog’s head. “You see, look, I’ve dislodged it for the moment. He’s coming round again.”

Once more Jake was reviving and breathing steadily.

Roddy ran his hand over the head, along the back and down the great muscles of the hind limbs. “But … but … it’ll happen again, won’t it?”

I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“And one of these times it isn’t goin’ to shift and that’ll be the end of ’im?” He had gone very pale.

“That’s about it, Roddy, I’ll have to get that pebble out.”

“But how …?”

“Cut into the larynx. And right now—it’s the only way.”

“All right.” He swallowed. “Let’s get on. I don’t think ah could stand it if he went down again.”

I knew what he meant. My knees had begun to shake, and I had a strong conviction that if Jake collapsed once more then so would I.

I seized a pair of scissors and clipped away the hair from the ventral surface of the larynx. I dared not use a general anaesthetic and infiltrated the area with local before swabbing with antiseptic. Mercifully there was a freshly boiled set of instruments lying in the steriliser and I lifted out the tray and set it on the trolley by the side of the table.

“Hold his head steady,” I said hoarsely, and gripped a scalpel.

I cut down through skin, fascia and the thin layers of the sterno-hyoid and omo-hyoid muscles till the ventral surface of the larynx was revealed. This was something I had never done to a live dog before, but desperation abolished any hesitancy and it took me only another few seconds to incise the thin membrane and peer into the interior.

And there it was. A pebble right enough—grey and glistening and tiny, but big enough to kill.

I had to fish it out quickly and cleanly without pushing it into the trachea. I leaned back and rummaged in the tray till I found some broad-bladed forceps then I poised them over the wound. Great surgeons’ hands, I felt sure, didn’t shake like this, nor did such men pant as I was doing. But I clenched my teeth, introduced the forceps and my hand magically steadied as I clamped them over the pebble.

I stopped panting, too. In fact I didn’t breathe at all as I bore the shining little object slowly and tenderly through the opening and dropped it with a gentle rat-tat on the table.

“Is that it?” asked Roddy, almost in a whisper.

“That’s it” I reached for needle and suture silk. “All is well now.”

The stitching took only a few minutes and by the end of it Jake was bright-eyed and alert, paws shifting impatiently, ready for anything. He seemed to know his troubles were over.

Roddy brought him back in ten days to have the stitches removed. It was, in fact, the very morning he was leaving the Darrowby district, and after I had picked the few loops of silk from the nicely healed wound I walked with him to the front door while Jake capered round our feet.

On the pavement outside Skeldale House the ancient pram stood in all its high, rusted dignity. Roddy pulled back the cover.

“Up, boy,” he murmured, and the big dog leaped effortlessly into his accustomed place.

Roddy took hold of the handle with both hands and as the autumn sunshine broke suddenly through the clouds it lit up a picture which had grown familiar and part of the daily scene. The golf jacket, the open shirt and brown chest, the handsome animal sitting up, looking around him with natural grace.

“Well, so long, Roddy,” I said. “I suppose you’ll be round these parts again.”

He turned and I saw that smile again. “Aye, reckon ah’ll be back.”

He gave a push and they were off, the strange vehicle creaking, Jake swaying gently as they went down the street. The memory came back to me of what I had seen under the cover that night in the surgery. The haversack, which would contain his razor, towel, soap and a few other things. The packet of tea and the thermos. And something else—a creased old photograph of a young woman which slipped from an envelope in the scuffle. It added a little more mystery to the man … and explained other things, too.

That farmer was right. All Roddy possessed was in that pram. And it seemed it was all he desired, too, because as he turned the corner and disappeared from my view I could hear him whistling.

I
HAVE NEVER BEEN
much good at small talk but as I sat in the stores day after day without seeing a friendly face I realised how much I used to enjoy chatting with the farmers during my veterinary calls.

It is one of the nicest things about country practice, but you have to keep your mind on the job at the same time or you could be in trouble. And at Mr. Duggleby’s I nearly landed in the biggest trouble of all. He was a small-holder who kept a few sows and reared the litters to pork weight in some ramshackle sheds behind the railway line outside Darrowby.

He was also a cricket fanatic, steeped in the lore and history of the game, and he would talk about it for hours on end. He never tired of it.

I was a willing listener because cricket has always fascinated me, even though I grew up in Scotland where it is little played. As I moved among the young pigs only part of my attention was focused on the little animals—most of me was out on the great green oval at Headingly with the Yorkshire heroes.