All Creatures Great and Small (52 page)

There was, in fact, no road to the farm, but that didn’t bother the Bramleys because the outside world held no great attraction for them. Miss Bramley made occasional trips to Darrowby on market days for provisions and Herbert, the middle brother, had come into town in the spring of 1929 to have a tooth out, but apart from that they stayed contentedly at home.

A call to Scar House always came as rather a jolt because it meant that at least two hours had been removed from the working day. In all but the driest weather it was safer to leave the car at Mr. Broom’s and make the journey on foot. One February night at about eight o’clock I was splashing my way along the track, feeling the mud sucking at my Wellingtons; it was to see a horse with colic and my pockets were stuffed with the things I might need—arecoline, phials of morphia, a bottle of Paraphyroxia. My eyes were half closed against the steady drizzle but about half a mile ahead I could see the lights of the house winking among the trees.

After twenty minutes of slithering in and out of the unseen puddles and opening a series of broken, string-tied gates, I reached the farm yard and crossed over to the back door. I was about to knock when I stopped with my hand poised. I found I was looking through the kitchen window and in the interior, dimly lit by an oil lamp, the Bramleys were sitting in a row.

They weren’t grouped round the fire but were jammed tightly on a long, high-backed wooden settle which stood against the far wall. The strange thing was the almost exact similarity of their attitudes; all four had their arms folded, chins resting on their chests, feet stretched out in front of them. The men had removed their heavy boots and were stocking-footed, but Miss Bramley wore an old pair of carpet slippers.

I stared, fascinated by the curious immobility of the group. They were not asleep, not talking or reading or listening to the radio—in fact they didn’t have one—they were just sitting.

I had never seen people just sitting before and I stood there for some minutes to see if they would make a move or do anything at all, but nothing happened. It occurred to me that this was probably a typical evening; they worked hard all day, had their meal, then they just sat till bedtime.

A month or two later I discovered another unsuspected side of the Bramleys when they started having trouble with their cats. I knew they were fond of cats by the number and variety which swarmed over the place and perched confidently on my car bonnet on cold days with their unerring instinct for a warm place. But I was unprepared for the family’s utter desolation when the cats started to die. Miss Bramley was on the doorstep at Skeldale House nearly every day carrying an egg basket with another pitiful patient—a cat or sometimes a few tiny kittens—huddling miserably inside.

Even today with the full range of modern antibiotics, the treatment of feline enteritis is unrewarding and I had little success with my salicylates and non-specific injections. I did my best. I even took some of the cats in and kept them at the surgery so that I could attend them several times a day, but the mortality rate was high.

The Bramleys were stricken as they saw their cats diminishing. I was surprised at their grief because most farmers look on cats as pest killers and nothing more. But when Miss Bramley came in one morning with a fresh consignment of invalids she was in a sorry state. She stared at me across the surgery table and her rough fingers clasped and unclasped on the handle of the egg basket.

“Is it going to go through ’em all?” she quavered.

“Well, it’s very infectious and it looks as though most of your young cats will get it anyway.”

For a moment Miss Bramley seemed to be struggling with herself, then her chin began to jerk and her whole face twitched uncontrollably. She didn’t actually break down but her eyes brimmed and a couple of tears wandered among the network of wrinkles on her cheeks. I looked at her helplessly as she stood there, wisps of grey hair straggling untidily from under the incongruous black beret which she wore pulled tightly over her ears.

“It’s Topsy’s kittens I’m worried about,” she gasped out at length. “There’s five of ’em and they’re the best we’ve got.”

I rubbed my chin. I had heard a lot about Topsy, one of a strain of incomparable ratters and mousers. Her last family were only about ten weeks old and it would be a crushing blow to the Bramleys if anything happened to them. But what the devil could I do? There was, as yet, no protective vaccine against the disease—or wait a minute, was there? I remembered that I’d heard a rumour that Burroughs Wellcome were working on one.

I pulled out a chair. “Just sit down a few minutes, Miss Bramley. I’m going to make a phone call.” I was soon through to the Wellcome Laboratory and half expected a sarcastic reply. But they were kind and co-operative. They had had encouraging results with the new vaccine and would be glad to let me have five doses if I would inform them of the result.

I hurried back to Miss Bramley. “I’ve ordered something for your kittens. I can’t guarantee anything but there’s nothing else to do. Have them down here on Tuesday morning.”

The vaccine arrived promptly and as I injected the tiny creatures Miss Bramley extolled the virtues of the Topsy line. “Look at the size of them ears! Did you ever see bigger ’uns on kittens?”

I had to admit that I hadn’t. The ears were enormous, sail-like and they made the ravishingly pretty little faces look even smaller.

Miss Bramley nodded and smiled with satisfaction. “Aye, you can allus tell. It’s the sure sign of a good mouser.”

The injection was repeated a week later. The kittens were still looking well.

“Well that’s it,” I said. “We’ll just have to wait now. But remember I want to know the outcome of this, so please don’t forget to let me know.”

I didn’t hear from the Bramleys for several months and had almost forgotten about the little experiment when I came upon a grubby envelope which had apparently been pushed under the surgery door. It was the promised report and was, in its way, a model of conciseness. It communicated all the information I required without frills or verbiage.

It was in a careful, spidery scrawl and said simply: “Dere Sir, Them kittens is now big cats. Yrs trly, R. Bramley.”

A
S
I
STOPPED MY
car by the group of gipsies I felt I was looking at something which should have been captured by a camera. The grass verge was wide on this loop of the road and there were five of them squatting round the fire; it seemed like the mother and father and three little girls. They sat very still, regarding me blankly through the drifting smoke while a few big snowflakes floated across the scene and settled lazily on the tangled hair of the children. Some unreal quality in the wild tableau kept me motionless in my seat, staring through the glass, forgetful of the reason for my being here. Then I wound down the window and spoke to the man.

“Are you Mr. Myatt? I believe you have a sick pony.” The man nodded. “Aye, that’s right. He’s over here.” It was a strange accent with no trace of Yorkshire in it. He got up from the fire, a thin, dark-skinned unshaven little figure, and came over to the car holding out something in his hand. It was a ten shilling note and I recognised it as a gesture of good faith.

The gipsies who occasionally wandered into Darrowby were always regarded with a certain amount of suspicion. They came, unlike the Myatts, mainly in the summer to camp down by the river and sell their horses and we had been caught out once or twice before. A lot of them seemed to be called Smith and it wasn’t uncommon to go back on the second day and find that patient and owner had gone. In fact Siegfried had shouted to me as I left the house this morning: “Get the brass if you can.” But he needn’t have worried—Mr. Myatt was on the up and up.

I got out of the car and followed him over the grass, past the shabby, ornate caravan and the lurcher dog tied to the wheel to where a few horses and ponies were tethered. My patient was easy to find; a handsome piebald of about thirteen hands with good, clean legs and a look of class about him. But he was in a sorry state. While the other animals moved around on their tethers, watching us with interest, the piebald stood as though carved from stone.

Even from a distance I could tell what was wrong with him. Only acute laminitis could produce that crouching posture and as I moved nearer I could see that all four feet were probably affected because the pony had his hind feet right under his body in a desperate attempt to take his full weight on his heels.

I pushed my thermometer into the rectum. “Has he been getting any extra food, Mr. Myatt?”

“Aye, he getten into a bag of oats last night.” The little man showed me the big, half empty sack in the back of the caravan. It was difficult to understand him but he managed to convey that the pony had broken loose and gorged himself on the oats. And he had given him a dose of castor oil—he called it “casta ile.”

The thermometer read 104 and the pulse was rapid and bounding. I passed my hand over the smooth, trembling hooves, feeling the abnormal heat, then I looked at the taut face, the dilated nostrils and terrified eyes. Anybody who has had an infection under a finger-nail can have an inkling of the agony a horse goes through when the sensitive laminae of the foot are inflamed and throbbing against the unyielding wall of the hoof.

“Can you get him to move?” I asked.

The man caught hold of the head collar and pulled, but the pony refused to budge.

I took the other side of the collar. “Come on, it’s always better if they can get moving.”

We pulled together and Mrs. Myatt slapped the pony’s rump. He took a couple of stumbling steps but it was as though the ground was red hot and he groaned as his feet came down. Within seconds he was crouching again with his weight on his heels.

“It seems he just won’t have it.” I turned and went back to the car. I’d have to do what I could to give him relief and the first thing was to get rid of as much as possible of that bellyful of oats. I fished out the bottle of arecoline and gave an injection into the muscle of the neck, then I showed the little man how to tie cloths round the hooves so that he could keep soaking them with cold water.

Afterwards I stood back and looked again at the pony. He was salivating freely from the arecoline and he had cocked his tail and evacuated his bowel; but his pain was undiminished and it would stay like that until the tremendous inflammation subsided—if it ever did. I had seen cases like this where serum had started to ooze from the coronet; that usually meant shedding of the hooves—even death.

As I turned over the gloomy thoughts the three little girls went up to the pony. The biggest put her arms round his neck and laid her cheek against his shoulder while the others stroked the shivering flanks. There were no tears, no change in the blank expressions, but it was easy to see that that pony really meant something to them.

Before leaving I handed over a bottle of tincture of aconite mixture. “Get a dose of this down him every four hours, Mr. Myatt, and be sure to keep putting cold water on the feet. I’ll come and see him in the morning.”

I closed the car door and looked through the window again at the slow-rising smoke, the drifting snowflakes and the three children with their ragged dresses and uncombed hair still stroking the pony.

“Well you got the brass, James,” Siegfried said at lunch, carelessly stuffing the ten shilling note into a bulging pocket. “What was the trouble?”

“Worst case of laminitis I’ve ever seen. Couldn’t move the pony at all and he’s going through hell. I’ve done the usual things but I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to be enough.”

“Not a very bright prognosis, then?”

“Really black. Even if he gets over the acute stage he’ll have deformed feet, I’d like to bet. Grooved hooves, dropped soles, the lot. And he’s a grand little animal, lovely piebald. I wish to God there was something else I could do.”

Siegfried sawed two thick slices off the cold mutton and dropped them on my plate. He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment. “You’ve been a little distrait since you came back. These are rotten jobs, I know, but it’s no good worrying.”

“Ach, I’m not worrying, exactly, but I can’t get it off my mind. Maybe it’s those people—the Myatts. They were something new to me. Right out of the world. And three raggedy little girls absolutely crazy about that pony. They aren’t going to like it at all.”

As Siegfried chewed his mutton I could see the old glint coming into his eyes; it showed when the talk had anything to do with horses. I knew he wouldn’t push in but he was waiting for me to make the first move. I made it.

“I wish you’d come along and have a look with me. Maybe there’s something you could suggest Do you think there could be?”

Siegfried put down his knife and fork and stared in front of him for a few seconds, then he turned to me. “You know, James, there just might be. Quite obviously this is a right pig of a case and the ordinary remedies aren’t going to do any good. We have to pull something out of the bag and I’ve got an idea. There’s just one thing.” He gave me a crooked smile. “You may not like it.”

“Don’t bother about me,” I said. “You’re the horseman. If you can help this pony I don’t care what you do.”

“Right, eat up then and we’ll go into action together.” We finished our meal and he led me through to the instrument room. I was surprised when he opened the cupboard where old Mr. Grant’s instruments were kept. It was a kind of museum.

When Siegfried had bought the practice from the old vet who had worked on into his eighties these instruments had come with it and they lay there in rows, unused but undisturbed. It would have been logical to throw them out, but maybe Siegfried felt the same way about them as I did. The polished wooden boxes of shining, odd-shaped scalpels, the enema pumps and douches with their perished rubber and brass fittings, the seaton needles, the ancient firing irons—they were a silent testament to sixty years of struggle. I often used to open that cupboard door and try to picture the old man wrestling with the same problems as I had, travelling the same narrow roads as I did. He had done it absolutely on his own and for sixty years. I was only starting but I knew a little about the triumphs and disasters, the wondering and worrying, the hopes and disappointments—and the hard labour. Anyway, Mr. Grant was dead and gone, taking with him all the skills and knowledge I was doggedly trying to accumulate.