The Real James Herriot (20 page)

Eddie Straiton's offer, too, worried him. Knowing Eddie well, he was aware of his machine-like work rate. How long could he keep pace with him? Some letters he received from Eddie in 1944 gave him food for thought.

‘I have been trying to get time to answer your letter, Alf, but this last fortnight has been something of a nightmare. Ten days ago between 7 and 8 a.m. one morning we received 14 phone calls – all large animal cases and three of them were calving cases.' In another letter, he wrote: ‘I have now finished my colts [castrations], thank goodness. I did seven last Sunday morning. I have been wanting to get a car with some power in it for you because this is a widespread area and these small horsepower cars just don't stand up to the work.' In yet another, he wrote: ‘My wife only sees me once per day at around 6–7 am. One man can only do so much but two men can attain three times as much.'

Eddie Straiton was extremely keen for Alf to join him. With his dream of forming a partnership of Straiton and Wight, he not only offered Alf an immediate and equal share of the practice profits, but
he was prepared to allow him an extended period of time over which to buy his share in the business. This was enough to sway Alf's decision. Despite fully realising that he would be plunging into a fermenting cauldron of work, he could not refuse this opportunity to establish himself in a practice with enormous potential. In the spring of 1944, he accepted Eddie's offer. Never one to be frightened of hard work, he made preparations to join his workaholic chum in Stafford.

Having informed Donald of his decision, he assured him that he would stay on until an assistant was appointed to take his place. Several weeks elapsed before one arrived and it was Alf who had arranged it. While in the Air Force in Scarborough, he had met a fellow veterinary surgeon called Jim Hancock. The two of them had worked together in the Grand Hotel's basement where Jim had remarked that it was an unusual sight to see two qualified vets shovelling mountains of coke. The Air Force authorities must have considered them a good team as they were promoted to mucking out stinking piggeries together later in their RAF careers.

Alf and Jim Hancock had become friends, and when it was agreed that he was leaving Thirsk, Alf contacted Jim, suggesting that there may be a job for him there. Jim accepted and arrived in July 1944.

It was then that all Alf's plans were, quite suddenly, blown clean away; the deal with Eddie Straiton fell through. Eddie wrote to Alf with some disturbing information. With the war still in progress, he said that, despite veterinary surgeons being in a ‘reserved occupation', he had been informed that should Alf join him as a partner in the Stafford practice, there existed the possibility of one of them being called up into the armed forces.

This unexpected turn of events presented the two young veterinary surgeons with a very serious situation. Eddie, having built up his practice through months of unbelievably hard work, could not take the chance of being called up; the effects on his thriving, but still young, practice could have been catastrophic. With a heavy heart, he wrote to Alf suggesting that their plans would have to be shelved until after the end of the war – an unknown period of time. Eddie's letters to Alf at that time display genuine, deep-felt sorrow, but he had no alternative.

Alf, now unemployed, with little money and a wife and child to support, had to find work somewhere – and fast. But he was not too downhearted. British agriculture was in a healthy state which meant that there were well-paid jobs available. He began to study the
Veterinary
Record
for vacancies, but could see little that really appealed to him. Despite the problems over a partnership with Donald, he really wanted to remain in Thirsk. He saw little chance of achieving this but, to his astonishment, he was wrong.

Within days, the opportunity arose to restart his career in the town he felt was home, and it was his friend, Jim Hancock, who was largely responsible for providing it. Jim had worked in Thirsk for only a week or two before he realised that such a life was not for him. Not only did he find it impossible to adjust to Donald Sinclair's erratic running of the practice, but he nurtured an ambition to enter the world of teaching and research. When he learned about Alf's predicament and understood that Donald would accept Alf back into the practice readily – the two men were still friends despite the difficulties of the preceding few months – he generously offered to leave quickly, thus providing Alf with the opportunity to start again in Thirsk.

This unselfish and providential gesture from Jim Hancock marked a turning point in Alf Wight's fortunes. From that time on, he established a toehold on the ladder of financial security and consolidated his position through years of hard work and common sense. He was to have periods of financial worry ahead of him but never again would he stand in front of his family as a man who owned… nothing.

After Jim Hancock's departure, Alf felt that the finger of fate was pointing to his future in Thirsk. He still could not acquire a full partnership with Donald but, with every passing day, his love of the Thirsk area grew and, with it, the realisation that this was where he wanted to make his home and bring up his family.

Donald was someone he still could not help liking. He had come to know him well and could see beyond his awkward side, discerning qualities he considered vitally important in a colleague – a sense of humour and not so much as a trace of underhand behaviour. The only remaining problem lay in persuading Donald to accept him as a full partner.

Donald's lifestyle, through his marriage to Audrey Adamson, had undergone a remarkable transformation. Audrey, who came from a wealthy shipbuilding family, bought a fine, elegant country house, Southwoods Hall, and she and Donald moved there in 1945. Having married into money, he could indulge in some pleasurable pastimes – shooting, hunting, fishing and walking around his country estate which was finely situated in the hills a few miles east of Thirsk. With the
persistent nudge of financial worries no longer being felt by Donald, he did not really have to put in too many hours at 23 Kirkgate. It helped, too, that in Alf Wight he had a willing worker as a colleague.

As 1945 progressed, however, Alf decided, in his own words, ‘to be a sucker no longer'. With his standing in the farming community now much stronger, and feeling in a solid position to demand a fairer deal from Donald, he approached him again.

This time, Donald, although still refusing to grant him a full partnership, agreed to Alf having an equal share of the practice profits from 1946 onwards, resulting in a tremendous boost to Alf's finances. He had received a total of £464, about £9 per week in 1945 but, after sharing the profits equally with Donald, he grossed £1229 at the end of the financial year in 1946, a leap of 265%. He had to work like a Trojan to earn it but he didn't mind. He was on his way.

A lot of nonsense has been talked about the exploitation of Alf Wight throughout his years as a veterinary surgeon, describing his earnings as paltry and his attitude to his senior partner as one of a mixture of fear and servility. His earnings in 1945 of around £9 per week were certainly not those of a poor man, while to receive well over £20 per week in 1946, placed him in the bracket of a high earner. In 1946, at the time when Alf was earning £20, a fully qualified chartered accountant, for example, was earning less than half that amount.

On 2 May 1949, Alf Wight's roots in Thirsk were finally anchored when he received a full partnership from Donald. He did not have to pay a single penny for this but he had to earn his share of the partnership in other ways, as one part of the agreement reveals: ‘Para. 11. The said James Alfred Wight shall devote his whole time and employ himself diligently in the business of the partnership and use his utmost endeavours to promote the interests thereof and the said Donald Vaughan Sinclair shall give such time as he may desire to the partnership affairs.'

Donald, quite obviously, had no intention of working his fingers to the bone, but the next paragraph reveals that the partnership was not quite so one-sided after all: ‘Para. 12. The said Donald Vaughan Sinclair shall be entitled to two-thirds of the fees paid to him or the partnership in respect of professional services rendered by him in connection with the said practice or one-third of the net profits of the said practice whichever shall be the lesser amount and the said James Alfred Wight shall be entitled to receive the balance of the net profits of the partnership.'

This meant that Alfred Wight was to earn more than Donald Sinclair – and so it would turn out to be for the rest of their professional lives. Alf would always work harder in the practice than Donald but, in return, he would earn more. He had displayed patience and determination in achieving his goal of a partnership – two qualities that were to resurface more than twenty years later in his pursuit of success in a very different field.

The arrangement must have been broadly agreeable to both parties as they remained friends and partners for another forty years.

Alf always considered himself fortunate to have known such a fascinating man as Donald Sinclair but Donald, in return, was blessed throughout his professional career with an honest and hard-working colleague. Alf was to be a selfless and loyal partner for Donald and later, as James Herriot, he would be equally generous in his portrayal of Donald as the unforgettable Siegfried Farnon.

When Donald and Audrey Sinclair moved out of 23 Kirkgate in the summer of 1945 to live in Southwoods Hall, Alf and his family moved from Blakey View in Sowerby to live, once again, in the old house in Thirsk, staying for the next eight years. Alf's mother-in-law, Laura Danbury, accompanied them. His father-in-law, Horace Danbury, had died in January of that year and Laura did not want to continue living alone at Blakey View. ‘Lal', as she was always known, was to live with us for the next thirty years.

Lal was not the typical ‘music hall' mother-in-law. She was a quiet, sweet-natured lady with whom we never had a cross word. She was no trouble – in fact, she was a great asset since she was always a willing baby-sitter when Alf and Joan wanted to go out. She was also of great assistance to Joan in the big house, helping her daughter with both the housework and the cooking.

Despite Lal's help, Joan found the burden of keeping 23 Kirkgate clean an exhausting one. Alf worried constantly as he saw his wife slaving day and night in the big rambling house. Through her obsession with housework, she fought stubbornly to keep everything sparkling and geometrically neat and tidy. ‘For God's sake, Joan! Stop scrubbing these stone floors, will you?!' was a cry that we heard almost every day. Aware that his pleas were falling on deaf ears, he realised that the only way to stop his wife destroying herself with work was to find another home and leave 23 Kirkgate. My mother's ‘domestomania' would be a major factor in our eventual departure from the old house in 1953.

All three storeys of the house were available to the family. The top storey, which had been Alf and Joan's first home, was little used. There were three bedrooms and a bathroom on the middle floor, while downstairs were the sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen and scullery.

In those days, with very little dog and cat work, the waiting-rooms and consulting-rooms were virtually non-existent. People just marched in to have their animals attended to on a little wooden table – either in the drug store or just in the old passageway – very often by the veterinary surgeon in Wellington boots.

The extensive and well-stocked surgeries shown in the television series and films of the Herriot books were greatly exaggerated. The real ‘Skeldale House' never looked so impressive, with the family rooms doubling up as rudimentary consulting-rooms and waiting areas. The house certainly had plenty of charm with its long winding corridors and the fine walled garden, but it was really quite basic. It was also extremely cold.

The modern large animal veterinary surgeons still have a demanding life, and have to wrestle with difficult cases in cold conditions, but at least they usually return to warm, centrally-heated premises. This luxury was not available to the young Alf Wight. He returned to 23 Kirkgate. We spent many happy years there, but the old house certainly did not wrap us in comfort. The winter winds probed its every corner, with draughts blasting up and down the long stone-flagged corridor. As I spent my youth attired in short trousers, I frequently complained of the cold, whereupon my father used to say, ‘Run, Jimmy, run!', and I would hurtle up and down the length of the house to keep warm.

The winters in Yorkshire nowadays are positively tropical in comparison to the iron-hard days we endured when I was a boy. Snow fell regularly throughout the winter months, while huge icicles hung from the gutters for weeks. With the windows often white with frost, my most vivid memories of 23 Kirkgate are of the beautiful wintry patterns on the glass – something we rarely see today in our warm, centrally-heated homes. The only sources of heat in the entire house were two coal fires downstairs and an infuriatingly temperamental anthracite stove in the office.

Most things were done at high speed; to linger resulted in severe hypothermia. On winter mornings, my father, having leapt out of bed into the freezing air of the bedroom, would run downstairs and along the passageway into the kitchen to light the fire. He could never even loosely be described as a handyman and was virtually useless at performing household tasks. His attempts at putting a picture up on the wall would invariably result in its crashing to the floor within minutes; to ask him to change an electric plug was followed by what seemed hours of intense concentration, followed by sparks and the house invariably being plunged into darkness. The job of lighting fires came no easier to him and there was little comfort to his family when they came into the kitchen in their search for warmth each morning. My overriding memories of his tiny fires are of black, smoking mounds
from the depths of which occasionally appeared a small, white flame that quivered and spluttered for a few seconds before disappearing as suddenly as it had arrived.

My mother's fires in the living-room were a different proposition. She could have a roaring inferno going within minutes and we sat round this oasis of warmth in high-backed chairs and sofas, the perpetually moving curtains bearing testimony to the draughts coursing around the room.

Although I will never forget the cold of 23 Kirkgate, those days of frost and snow were ones that instil warm and nostalgic memories. Snow has always fascinated children and I was no exception. My father felt somewhat differently about it. Snow meant sledging and snowball fights to me but it spelt trouble for him, preventing his reaching many of the outlying farms. The massive snowfall of 1947, when it snowed almost every day from January until April, often confining him to the house for days, meant a loss of revenue that he could ill afford.

If Alf had little comfort in his home, he had even less in his car. The smooth, modern motor cars of today, with their warm and comfortable interiors, bear scant resemblance to the harsh little machines that Alf drove. Lengthy journeys to farms during those winter days and nights were ones of sheer endurance. The cars had no heaters and, in the severest of weather, with the windscreen white with frost, he would travel with his head out of the window to make sure he was still on the road. With virtually non-existent brakes, and tyres as smooth as glass, these journeys were not only uncomfortable, they were dangerous. Mercifully, there was far less traffic on the road than today.

As a very young boy, I have painful memories of winter journeys in my father's cars in which I used to suffer agonies of cold. I was always a rather noisy little boy and, in response to my cries of discomfort, he would urge me to wiggle my toes in my Wellingtons or clap my hands to get the circulation going.

The lack of a heated windscreen was an enormous handicap but, one day, I remember my father proudly showing me his latest acquisition. It was a piece of wire that attached to the windscreen inside the car with two rubber suckers. The ends of the wires led from the car battery and after flicking a switch, an area of melted frost, about six inches square, eventually appeared on the windscreen. ‘Look, Jimmy!' he said, peering forward through the tiny field of vision. ‘I can see! Isn't it wonderful!'

It was not only the discomfort of his early cars that Alf had to contend with; it was their lack of power. His old Austin Seven had a top speed of around 50–55 miles per hour but to approach such a speed resulted in a colossal noise accompanied by stupendous vibration. At 50 miles per hour, he felt as though he were breaking the sound barrier.

These small horsepower engines were a great disadvantage for anyone working in a hilly district. One of the worst hills in the practice was Sutton Bank, a steep gradient of 1 in 4 that presented a formidable barrier to anyone needing to reach the high ground of the Hambleton Hills. The modern motor car sails up the bank in high gear but, all those years ago, it was a feat of engineering to reach the top. Alf's little cars just could not cope with Sutton Bank but he soon developed a technique to overcome this difficulty. The small, rear-wheeled cars – like his old Austin Seven – were lower geared in reverse so, on approaching the foot of the hill, he used to perform a three-point turn in the road before crawling up backwards.

Although life at 23 Kirkgate could never be called comfortable, Alf was happy; he was working in a part of the country that he loved, and in a practice that he could call his own.

Alf's happiness was enhanced in 1946 when his oldest friend, Alex Taylor, returned from the war and came to live in Thirsk. Having spent the war years in the African desert and the mountains of Italy, he had left the forces without a job, hoping to find employment near to his old friend in Yorkshire. He was engaged to an American girl, Lynne, whom he had met in Rome, and who was soon to join him in Thirsk.

Alf was delighted to see Alex again. He had always had a special affection for his great friend from Glasgow. He wrote to him in Africa at the time of my birth in 1943, asking him to become my godfather. I was christened James Alexander, after the man whom he regarded as his oldest and dearest friend.

When he returned to Britain, Alex was young, fit, about to be married, and was ready to embark on a new life back home. There were only two minor problems; he was completely broke and had not the slightest idea what he was going to do. At this point, Alf stepped in to help him. Alex stayed at 23 Kirkgate for several weeks, during which time he accompanied Alf on his farm visits. He enjoyed the open-air life so much that he decided to make a career for himself in farming.

Alf contacted one or two local farmers, and Alex and Lynne, who married in May of that year, were soon in lodgings with Tommy Banks of Oldstead, a fine and well-respected farmer with a good herd of dairy cows. Farm workers were very poorly paid but Alex received his keep as well as gaining some invaluable practical experience.

At the time before mechanisation, with many tasks having to be performed by hand, every farm employed large numbers of men. Such jobs as hay making, harvesting and mucking out the fold yards were completed by hours of hard physical labour. The old term ‘farm labourer' meant just that. The men developed bodies as tough as teak and although Alex reckoned that he was fit and strong – during his five years in the army, he had trekked countless miles through the mountains of Italy – he was ill-prepared for the Yorkshire farmer's typical working day.

One of his first jobs at Tommy Banks's farm was to carry 16-stone sacks of corn up the granary steps. Tommy's sons, Fred and Arthur, could run up the steps with the sacks on their shoulders but when the first sack was put on Alex's shoulders, his knees buckled and he collapsed on the floor, his arms and legs thrashing beneath the huge sack like a stranded beetle. It was a welcome piece of light entertainment for the farm lads.

After leaving Banks's farm, Alex and Lynne found lodgings in Thirsk where they remained for three years. Alf was able to find more work for Alex with a number of farmers who were good customers of the veterinary practice.

Following his time with Tommy Banks, his next job was with Bertram Bosomworth, and it was no easier there than it had been at Oldstead. It was harder. In his heyday, Bert – who is still alive to this day – was the epitome of the rugged Yorkshire farmer, a man whose life was one of work. He worked ‘all the hours God sent' and expected his men to do the same. A hard but fair man.

Alex remembers wryly how, during the biting winter, he would set out at six o'clock in the morning to ride the three miles to Bert's farm on Joan's old rusty bicycle. Here, as well as the regular back-breaking chores of milking the cows, feeding and mucking out, he would pick frozen sugar beet out of the iron-hard ground for hours. He returned home each night in a state of complete exhaustion. He would stagger into the house and collapse onto a chair, his head bowed and his arms dangling by his sides. As Alf looked at the limp form with its cracked
and bleeding fingers, he often wondered whether he had done his friend a good turn in introducing him to the life of a farmer.

Bert Bosomworth said to Alf one day when he was making a farm visit: ‘Aye, I do like Alex. He's a grand bloke. You know, I don't think of him as a worker, he's a companion!' Alex Taylor, Bert's ‘companion', laughs heartily when we talk about those old days now, but he wasn't laughing fifty years ago.

There is an old proverb, ‘hard work never killed anyone'. This is debatable. Many farmers and veterinary surgeons were crippled by hard labour but men such as Bert Bosomworth are, perhaps, testimony to some truth in the old saying. There is little wonder that my father respected the Yorkshire farmers of his day; some of these men seemed to him to be almost indestructible.

Although the sapping work on the Yorkshire farms almost destroyed Alex Taylor, it provided the first step on the young man's road to a successful career in estate management that was to take him all over the United Kingdom. He would never forget the help he received from his friend Alf Wight during those tough, unrelenting days in Thirsk.

9 May 1947 was a memorable day for Alf and Joan. It was the day they became parents for the second time as their daughter, Rosie, came into the world. Alf, Donald, Alex and several other friends decided to celebrate the birth in style. This they did in the Black Horse in Thirsk (a public house, like many others in the town, that no longer exists) and Alf was later to write about the riotous evening in his seventh book,
The Lord God Made Them All.