Part 16 (1/2)

WHEN I AWOKE ON the first morning after our move to Rowan Garth, I found myself in the usual mental state of acute readiness, like a sprinter on his blocks, ready to hurl on my clothes and take off on my daily gallop round the icy acres of Skeldale House. I was so much in the groove that when my alarm went my legs started twitching, ready for the off. It took me a minute or two to realise that such things as the sessions of fire-lighting, wrestling with the anthracite stove and running to keep warm were all in the past.

Everything was to hand. Almost effortlessly, I donned a dressing gown and meandered down the few stairs to the little hall and then into the kitchen, where a blissful warmth from the Aga cooker enveloped me. Dinah the beagle came wagging from her basket and as I patted her and exchanged the usual morning pleasantries I could discern an ”isn't this wonderful” expression in her eyes.

It was heaven. As in a trance, I slid the kettle onto the hotplate and dropped the tea into the teapot, and I hardly noticed the ascent as I sailed up with Helen's morning cup.

Back in the kitchen I poured tea for myself and stood for a few moments, imbibing the fragrant fluid, nestling up to the Aga as I looked out at the green fields and the hills and feeling like a sultan. Life, I thought, didn't have much more to offer.

It was all so clear now. My failures to buy those other houses had seemed at the time a black demolition of all my hopes, but in fact they had been blessed strokes of luck. I had a far better house now than either of them-modern, reasonably small, convenient...and warm. I gazed for a moment at the long-desired hatch: oh yes, it was the realisation of a dream.

Lulled by these thoughts, I sank gratefully into my chair, but rocketed up again instantly as a rasping sound exploded beneath me. My peace shattered, I lifted the cus.h.i.+on and found a whoopie device underneath. Shrill laughter came down from the top of the stairs as I threw open the door and saw Jimmy and Rosie hanging gleefully over the bannisters.

”You young blighters!” I yelled as I stormed upwards. ”The very first morning! I'm coming to get you!” But they had locked themselves in their bedrooms by the time I arrived and I hadn't time to go further into the matter.

Sitting down for the second time, I ruminated on the fact that I'd have to take extra care from now on. Playing jokes on Dad was a hobby of my children-imitation ink blots, buns that squeaked when bitten, envelopes that emitted a terrifying buzz when opened-particularly in the mornings when my defences were down. Every time we visited my parents in Glasgow they made a bee-line for Tam Shepherd's joke shop in Queen Street to lay in further supplies, and in this small house I was infinitely more accessible.

However it took only a few soothing draughts of tea before I slid back into my previous euphoria. I couldn't believe the warmth and comfort and the reeling that you could reach out and touch everything. Life was going to be so much easier for Helen.

The peace didn't last long. Within minutes of the children coming downstairs the kitchen was reverberating with deafening noise. Jimmy had rigged up an extension speaker on a shelf to play records from our beloved Murphy radiogram, which was now stationed in the dining room next door, and within minutes Elvis Presley was blasting his message into my ears.

I escaped for a few moments by taking up Helen's second cup. For a long time at Skeldale House it had been her only concession to my pleas to take things easier in the mornings and I was determined that this routine would continue in our new home. When I came downstairs I lifted the morning paper from the door, picked up my teacup and settled down again at the table.

Rosie, sitting next to me, was rocking back and forth in time with the music and she got so carried away that, on one of the ways down, she swivelled and the bottom of the chair leg crunched onto my slippered toe. She was a fat little girl at that time and very heavy, and I yelped in pain and my tea flew into the air and descended in a warm shower on my newspaper. As I leaped to my feet and hopped around in agony my son and daughter shrieked with laughter and Dinah set up a joyous barking to join in the fun.

Through my anguish I reflected that this was the second time within a few minutes that those two had had a good laugh at Dad's expense. A memorable day for them.

The music was to be a regular preschool routine every morning and at first it was torture because as a lifelong devotee of cla.s.sical music I found the pop scene bewildering. To me it was just a loud, unpleasant noise. But as the months pa.s.sed at Rowan Garth and each day I was subjected to ”Blue Suede Shoes,” ”Don't Be Cruel,” ”Jailhouse Rock” and others I developed something approaching affection for old Elvis, and now, more than thirty years later, any of his songs coming over the radio can transport me back to those mornings in the kitchen at Rowan Garth with the children at their cornflakes, my dog at my side and the whole world young and carefree.

And yet...there was at that time another pull on my emotions. Leaving Skeldale the day before had been a far greater wrench than I had ever imagined. After the van had taken the last of our things away I roamed through the empty rooms that had echoed to my children's laughter. The big sitting room where I had read the bedtime stories and where, before all that, Siegfried, Tristan and I had sprawled in bachelor contentment, seemed to reproach me with its ageless charm and grace. The handsome fireplace with its gla.s.s cupboard above, and the old pewter tankard that used to hold our cash still resting there, the French window opening onto the long, high-walled garden with its lawns, fruit trees, asparagus and strawberry beds-these things were part of a great surging ocean of memories.

I walked upstairs to the large alcoved room where Helen and I had slept, and to which we had brought our children as babies to sleep in the cot that had once stood in that corner. I clumped over the bare boards to the dressing room. Jimmy and Rosie had shared this chamber, and I could almost hear their giggles and teasings that were the beginning of each new day.

I climbed another flight to the little rooms under the eaves where Helen and I had started our married life. Here, a bench against the wall and a gas ring once served as our only cooking arrangements. I walked to the window and looked over the tumbled roofs of the little town to the green fells and swallowed a huge lump in my throat. Dear old Skeldale. I was so glad it was going to be kept on as the practice house and I would walk through its doors every day, but my family was leaving and I wondered if we could ever be as happy again as we had been here.

Chapter 24.

”CAN I SPEAK TO the vet wi' t'badger?”

As I handed the phone to our new a.s.sistant it struck me that this request was becoming common and it did me good to hear it. It meant that Calum was being accepted by the farmers. I didn't mind at all if some of them wanted him instead of me. What I dreaded was hearing ”Don't send that b.u.g.g.e.r!” which I had learned from the experiences of some of my neighbouring vets when they employed new a.s.sistants.

I had been so lucky with John Crooks, who had been an outstanding a.s.set to our practice, and it seemed to be asking too much of fate for a second top-cla.s.s man to come along. All the new graduates were better educated than I had been, but there were reasons why a few didn't make the grade. Some of them just couldn't face the long rough and tumble of general practice with its antisocial hours, others lacked the ability to get on with the clients, and one or two were academically bright but unpractical.

Calum, to my vast relief, seemed to be slotting into the job effortlessly, but, just as John and Tristan had been different from each other, so was he from them. Very different. His ever-present badger fascinated people, his tall, walrus-moustached appearance, eager friendliness and unusual outlook on life made him interesting to both farm and small-animal clients, but, most important of all, he knew his stuff. He was a fine vet.

Phin Calvert, one of the characters in our practice who always addressed me as ”Happy Harry” on my visits to his farm, had given me his opinion of Calum in his usual forthright way. ”That feller,” he said, ”is a vitnery!”

My colleague Calum put down the phone and turned to me. ”That was Eddie Coates. Said he had a beast 'a bit dowly.' I'm getting to be an expert with dowly beasts.”

I laughed. ”Good, Calum. You'd better get along, then.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then, ”Something I wanted to ask you, Jim. Could I change my hours a bit?”

”In what way? Different half-day?”

”No, I'd like to start at six o'clock every morning and finish at two in the afternoon.”

I stared at him in amazement. ”What's the idea of that?”

”It would give me more opportunities to get around the countryside-find out more about the wildlife and flora about here.”

”Well, I'm sorry, Calum. I know you're dead keen on that sort of thing, but those hours are just not practical. We can't do that-it wouldn't work.”

He shrugged philosophically, said ”Okay,” and turned to go.

”Just a minute, Calum,” I said. ”While we're talking, I'd like to mention something else to you. You're a bit elusive.”

”Eh?”

”Yes. Difficult to find when I want you. As you know, quite a few of the small farms aren't on the phone and sometimes the only time I have been able to get hold of an a.s.sistant was to catch him at mealtimes. But your eating habits are irregular and often you're in and out again without my knowing, and there might be something urgent waiting. So please give me a ring whenever you do come in.”

Calum gave me a mock salute. ”Very good, sir, I will unfailingly report.”

We went out together to the dispensary and in the pa.s.sage I was a.s.sailed by a dreadful stench. Sickly, horrible, it seemed to be coming from upstairs and I could see wisps of steam issuing from Calum's flat.

”h.e.l.l, Calum, that b.l.o.o.d.y awful stink! What's going on up there?”

He looked at me in mild surprise. ”Oh, I'm just boiling up some tripe for my animals.”

”Tripe! What sort of tripe?”

”Just ordinary cows' stomachs. Left-overs at the butcher's. He says he'll let me have any tripe that's gone off a bit whenever I want it.”

I put my handkerchief over my face and shouted through the folds. ”Off-colour tripe! You're not kidding! For G.o.d's sake get up there and take that pan off. And cancel your order at the butcher's!”

I reeled into the back garden and took a few deep breaths, and as I leaned against the wall, a little thought swam in my mind. I was sure I was going to have a happy relations.h.i.+p with Calum, but nothing in the world was ever quite perfect.

Later that day, when I came in to lunch it was confirmed that he had heeded my words of the morning. The phone rang and it was Calum's voice at the other end. ”Permission to eat, sir!”

”Granted, young man,” I replied, falling in gladly with his sally. I didn't know it then, but throughout the time he stayed with the practice I would hear those words every day. He never ever came in at mealtimes without checking, and now when I look back over the years and think of him I seem to hear those words.

”Permission to eat, sir!”