Part 1 (2/2)
I drove away from the farm and pulled up my car in the lee of a dry-stone wall. A great weariness had descended upon me. This sort of thing wasn't good for me. I was getting on in years now-well into my thirties-and I couldn't stand these shocks like I used to. I tipped the driving mirror down and had a look at myself. I was a bit pale, but not as ghastly white as I felt. Still, the feeling of guilt and bewilderment persisted, and with it the recurring thought that there must be easier ways of earning a living than as a country veterinary surgeon. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, rough, dirty and peppered with traumatic incidents like that near catastrophe back there. I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.
When I opened them a few minutes later, the sun had broken through the clouds, bringing the green hillsides and the sparkling ridges of snow to vivid life, painting the rocky outcrops with gold. I wound the window down and breathed in the cold, clean air, drifting down, fresh and tangy, from the moorland high above. A curlew cried, breaking the enveloping silence, and on the gra.s.sy bank by the roadside I saw the first primroses of spring.
Peace began to steal through me. Maybe I hadn't done anything wrong with Mr. Kettlewell's horse. Maybe antihistamines did sometimes cause these reactions. Anyway, as I started the engine and drove away, the old feeling began to well up in me and within minutes it was running strong; it was good to be able to work with animals in this thrilling countryside; I was lucky to be a vet in the Yorks.h.i.+re Dales.
Chapter 2.
THERE IS NO DOUBT that a shock to the system heightens the perception, because as I drove away from Mr. Kettlewell's with my heart still fluttering to begin the rest of my morning round it was as though I was seeing everything for the first time. In my daily work I was always aware of the beauty around me and had never lost the sense of wonder that had filled me when I had my first sight of Yorks.h.i.+re, but this morning the magic of the Dales was stronger than ever.
My eyes strayed again and again over the towering flanks of the fells, taking in the pattern of walled green fields won from the yellow moorland gra.s.s, and I gazed up at the high tops with the thrill of excitement that always came down to me from that untrodden land.
After visiting one isolated farm I couldn't resist pulling my car off the unfenced road and climbing with my beagle, Dinah, to the high country that beckoned me. The snow had disappeared almost overnight, leaving only runnels of white lying behind the walls, and it was as though all the scents of the earth and growing things had been imprisoned and were released now by the spring suns.h.i.+ne in waves of a piercing sweetness. When I reached the summit I was breathless and gulped the crystal air greedily as though I could never get enough of it.
Here there was no evidence of the hand of man, and I walked with my dog among miles of heather, peat hags and bog pools with the black waters rippling and the tufts of rushes bending and swaying in the eternal wind.
As the cloud shadows, racing on the wind, flew over me, trailing ribbons of shade and brightness over the endless browns and greens, I felt a rising exhilaration at just being up there on the roof of Yorks.h.i.+re. It was an empty landscape where no creature stirred and all was silent except for the cry of a distant bird, and yet I felt a further surge of excitement in the solitude, a tingling sense of the nearness of all creation.
As always, the siren song of the lonely uplands tempted me to stay, but the morning was wearing on and I had several more farms to visit.
It was with a lingering feeling of fulfilment that I finished my last call and headed for my town of Darrowby. Its square church tower pushed above the tumbled roofs of the little town as I came down the dale and soon I was driving through the cobbled market-place with the square of fretted roofs above the shops and pubs that served its three thousand inhabitants.
In the far corner I turned down Trengate, the street of our surgery, and drew up at the three storeys of mellow brick and climbing ivy of Skeldale House, my work place and happy home where my wife, Helen, and I had brought up our children.
The memories came back of the unforgettable times when my partner, Siegfried, and his inimitable brother, Tristan, had lived and laughed there with me in our bachelor days, but now they were both married and with their families in their own homes. Tristan had joined the Ministry of Agriculture, but Siegfried was still my partner, and for the thousandth time I thanked heaven that both the brothers were still my close friends.
My son, Jimmy, was ten now and daughter, Rosie, six, and they were at school, but Siegfried was coming down the steps, stuffing bottles into his pockets.
”Ah, James,” he cried. ”I've just taken a message for you. One of your most esteemed clients-Mrs. Bartram. Puppy is in need of your services.” He was grinning as he spoke.
I smiled ruefully in reply. ”Oh, fine. You didn't fancy going there yourself, did you?”
”No, no, my boy. Wouldn't dream of depriving you of the pleasure.” He waved cheerfully and climbed into his car.
I looked at my watch. I still had half an hour before lunch and Puppy was only walking distance away. I got my bag and set off.
The heavenly aroma of fish and chips drifted out on the spring air and I felt a quick stab of hunger as I looked through the shop window at the white-coated figures with their wire scoops, lifting out the crisply battered haddocks and laying them out to drain by the golden mounds of chips, those enticing morsels lovingly known in America as ”French-fried potatoes.”
The lunch-time trade was brisk and the queue moved steadily round the shop, gathering up the newspaper-wrapped parcels, some customers hurrying home with them, others shaking on salt and vinegar before an alfresco meal in the street.
I always had my gastric juices t.i.tillated when I visited Mrs. Bartram's dog in the flat above the fish and chip shop, and I took another rewarding breath as I went down the alley and climbed the stairs.
Mrs. Bartram was in her usual chair in the kitchen; fat, ma.s.sive, deadpan, the invariable cigarette dangling from her lips. She was throwing chips from a bag in her lap to her dog, Puppy, sitting opposite. He caught them expertly one after the other.
Puppy belied his name. He was an enormous, s.h.a.ggy creature of doubtful ancestry and with a short temper. I always treated him with respect.
”He's still rather fat, Mrs. Bartram,” I said. ”Haven't you tried to change his diet as I advised? Remember I said he shouldn't really be fed solely on fish and chips.”
She shrugged and a light shower of ash fell on her blouse. ”Oh, aye, ah did for a bit. I cut out the chips and just gave 'im fish every day, but he didn't like it. Loves his chips, 'e does.”
”I see.” I couldn't say too much about the diet because I had the feeling that Mrs. Bartram herself ate very little else and it would have been tactless to point out that big chunks of battered fried fish didn't const.i.tute a slimming regime, because her figure, like her dog's, bore witness to the fact.
In fact, as I looked at the two, they had a great similarity sitting there, bolt upright, facing each other. Both huge, immobile, but giving an impression of latent power.
Often fat dogs were lazy and good-natured, but a long succession of postmen, newsboys and door-to-door salesmen had had to take desperate evasive action as Puppy turned suddenly into a monster baying at their heels, and I had one vivid memory of a brush vendor cycling unhurriedly down the alley with his wares dangling from the handlebars, slowing down outside the flat, then, when Puppy catapulted into the street, taking off like the winner of the Tour de France.
”Well, what's the trouble, Mrs. Bartram?” I asked, changing the subject.
”It's 'is eye. Keeps runnin'.”
”Ah, yes, I see.” The big dog's left eye was almost completely closed, and a trickle of discharge made a dark track down the hair of his face. It made his appearance even more sinister. ”There's some irritation there, probably an infection.”
It would have been nice to find the cause. There could be a foreign body in there or just a spot of conjunctivitis. I reached out my hand to pull the eyelid down but Puppy, without moving, fixed me with his good eye and drew his lips back from a row of formidable teeth.
I withdrew my hand. ”Yes...yes...I'll have to give you some antibiotic ointment and you must squeeze a little into his eye three times a day. You'll be able to do that, won't you?”
”Course I will. He's as gentle as an awd sheep.” Expressionlessly she lit another cigarette from the old one and drew the smoke down deeply. ”Ah can do anything with 'im.”
”Good, good.” As I rummaged in my bag for the ointment I had the old feeling of defeat, but there was nothing else for it. It was always long-range treatment with Puppy. I had never tried anything silly like taking his temperature, in fact I'd never laid a finger on him in my life.
I heard from Mrs. Bartram again two weeks later. Puppy's eye was no better, in fact it was worse.
I hurried round to the flat, inhaling the delicious vapours from the shop as I went down the alley. Puppy was in the same position as before, upright, facing his mistress, and there was no doubt there was an increased discharge from the eye. But this time I fancied I could see something else and I leaned forward, peering closely into the dog's face as a faint but menacing growl warned me not to take any more liberties. And it was there, all right, the cause of the trouble. A tiny papilloma growing from the margin of the eyelid and rubbing on the cornea.
I turned to Mrs. Bartram. ”He's got a little growth in there. It's irritating his eye and causing the discharge.”
”Growth?” The lady's face seldom registered any emotion, but one eyebrow twitched upwards and the cigarette trembled briefly in her mouth. ”Ah don't like the sound o' that.”
”Oh, it's quite benign,” I said. ”Nothing to worry about. I'll be able to remove it easily and he'll be perfectly all right afterwards.”
I spoke lightly because indeed these things were quite common and a little injection of local anaesthetic and a quick snip with a pair of curved scissors did the trick effortlessly, but as I looked at the big dog regarding me coldly with his one eye I felt a twinge of anxiety. Things might not be so easy with Puppy.
My misgivings proved to be well founded when Mrs. Bartram brought him round to the surgery next morning and left him in the small consulting room. He would obviously have to be sedated before we could do anything, and among the rush of new drugs were excellent tranquillisers such as acetylpromazine. There was, however, the small matter of one of us grasping that leonine head while the other lifted a fold of skin and inserted the needle. Puppy made it very clear that such things were not on the agenda. Being on strange ground and feeling threatened he came roaring, open-mouthed, at Siegfried and me as soon as we tried to enter the room. We retreated hastily and locked the door.
”Dog catcher?” suggested Siegfried without conviction.
I shook my head. The dog catcher was a snare of soft flex on the end of a long pole and was a handy instrument to slip over a difficult dog's head and steady it while the injection was made, but with Puppy it would be like trying to la.s.so a grizzly bear. If we ever managed to get the loop over his head it would be the prelude to a fearsome wrestling match.
However, we'd had tough dogs before and we had a little trick in reserve.
<script>