All Things Bright and Beautiful (24 page)

But to the old experts like Cliff, something had gone. He would say: “It’s a bloody sight easier sitting on a tractor—it used to play ’ell with me feet walking up and down them fields all day.” But he couldn’t lose his love of horses; the fellow feeling between working man and working beast which had grown in him since childhood and was in his blood forever.

My next visit to the farm was to see a fat bullock with a piece of turnip stuck in his throat but while I was there, the farmer, Mr. Gilling, asked me to have a look at old Badger.

“He’s had a bit of a cough lately. Maybe it’s just his age, but see what you think.”

The old horse was the sole occupant of the stable now. “I’ve sold the three year old,” Mr. Gilling said. “But I’ll still keep the old ’un—he’ll be useful for a bit of light carting.”

I glanced sideways at the farmer’s granite features. He looked the least sentimental of men but I knew why he was keeping the old horse. It was for Cliff.

“Cliff will be pleased, anyway,” I said.

Mr. Gilling nodded. “Aye, I never knew such a feller for ’osses. He was never happier than when he was with them.” He gave a short laugh. “Do you know, I can remember years ago when he used to fall out with his missus he’d come down to this stable of a night and sit among his ’osses. Just sit here for hours on end looking at ’em and smoking. That was before he started chewing tobacco.”

“And did you have Badger in those days?”

“Aye, we bred him. Cliff helped at his foaling—I remember the little beggar came arse first and we had a bit of a job pullin’ him out.” He smiled again. “Maybe that’s why he was always Cliff’s favourite. He always worked Badger himself—year in year out—and he was that proud of ’im that if he had to take him into the town for any reason he’d plait ribbons into his mane and hang all his brasses on him first.” He shook his head reminiscently.

The old horse looked round with mild interest as I went up to him. He was in his late twenties and everything about him suggested serene old age; the gaunt projection of the pelvic bones, the whiteness of face and muzzle, the sunken eye with its benign expression. As I was about to take his temperature he gave a sharp, barking cough and it gave me the first clue to his ailment. I watched the rise and fall of his breathing for a minute or two and the second clue was there to be seen; further examination was unnecessary.

“He’s broken winded, Mr. Gilling,” I said. “Or he’s got pulmonary emphysema to give it its proper name. Do you see that double lift of the abdomen as he breathes out? That’s because his lungs have lost their elasticity and need an extra effort to force the air out.”

“What’s caused it then?”

“Well it’s to do with his age, but he’s got a bit of cold on him at the moment and that’s brought it out.”

“Will he get rid of it in time?” the farmer asked.

“He’ll be a bit better when he gets over his cold, but I’m afraid he’ll never be quite right. I’ll give you some medicine to put in his drinking water which will alleviate his symptoms.” I went out to the car for a bottle of the arsenical expectorant mixture which we used then.

It was about six weeks later that I heard from Mr. Gilling again. He rang me about seven o’clock one evening.

“I’d like you to come out and have a look at old Badger,” he said.

“What’s wrong? Is it his broken wind again?”

“No, it’s not that. He’s still got the cough but it doesn’t seem to bother him much. No, I think he’s got a touch of colic. I’ve got to go out but Cliff will attend to you.”

The little man was waiting for me in the yard. He was carrying an oil lamp. As I came up to him I exclaimed in horror.

“Good God, Cliff, what have you been doing to yourself?” His face was a patchwork of cuts and scratches and his nose, almost without skin, jutted from between two black eyes.

He grinned through the wounds, his eyes dancing with merriment. “Came off me bike t’other day. Hit a stone and went right over handlebars, arse over tip.” He burst out laughing at the very thought.

“But damn it, man, haven’t you been to a doctor? You’re not fit to be out in that state.”

“Doctor? Nay, there’s no need to bother them fellers. It’s nowt much.” He fingered a gash on his jaw. “Ah lapped me chin up for a day in a bit o’ bandage, but it’s right enough now.”

I shook my head as I followed him into the stable. He hung up the oil lamp then went over to the horse.

“Can’t reckon t’awd feller up,” he said. “You’d think there wasn’t much ailing him but there’s summat.”

There were no signs of violent pain but the animal kept transferring his weight from one hind foot to the other as if he did have a little abdominal discomfort. His temperature was normal and he didn’t show symptoms of anything else.

I looked at him doubtfully. “Maybe he has a bit of colic. There’s nothing else to see, anyway. I’ll give him an injection to settle him down.”

“Right you are, maister, that’s good.” Cliff watched me get my syringe out then he looked around him into the shadows at the far end of the stable.

“Funny seeing only one ’oss standing here. I remember when there was a great long row of ’em and the barfins and bridles hangin’ there on the stalls and the rest of the harness behind them all shinin’ on t’wall.” He transferred his plug of tobacco to the other side of his mouth and smiled. “By gaw, I were in here at six o’clock every morning feedin’ them and gettin’ them ready for work and ah’ll tell you it was a sight to see us all goin’ off ploughing at the start o’ the day. Maybe six pairs of ’osses setting off with their harness jinglin’ and the ploughmen sittin’ sideways on their backs. Like a regular procession it was.”

I smiled. “It was an early start, Cliff.”

“Aye, by Gaw, and a late finish. We’d bring the ’osses home at night and give ’em a right feed and take their harness off, then we’d go and have our own teas and we’d be back ’ere again afterwards, curry-combing and dandy-brushin’ all the sweat and dirt off ’em. Then we’d give them a right good stiff feed of chop and oats and hay to set ’em up for the next day.”

“There wouldn’t be much left of the evening then, was there?”

“Nay, there wasn’t. It was about like work and bed, I reckon, but it never bothered us.”

I stepped forward to give Badger the injection, then paused. The old horse had undergone a slight spasm, a barely perceptible stiffening of the muscles, and as I looked at him he cocked his tail for a second then lowered it.

“There’s something else here,” I said. “Will you bring him out of his stall, Cliff, and let me see him walk across the yard.”

And watching him clop over the cobbles I saw it again; the stiffness, the raising of the tail. Something clicked in my mind. I walked over and rapped him under the chin and as the membrana nictitans flicked across his eye then slid slowly back I knew.

I paused for a moment. My casual little visit had suddenly become charged with doom.

“Cliff,” I said. “I’m afraid he’s got tetanus.”

“Lockjaw, you mean?”

“That’s right. I’m sorry, but there’s no doubt about it. Has he had any wounds lately—especially in his feet?”

“Well he were dead lame about a fortnight ago and blacksmith let some matter out of his hoof. Made a right big ’ole.”

There it was. “It’s a pity he didn’t get an antitetanus shot at the time,” I said. I put my hand into the animal’s mouth and tried to prise it open but the jaws were clamped tightly together. “I don’t suppose he’s been able to eat today.”

“He had a bit this morning but nowt tonight. What’s the lookout for him, Mr. Herriot?”

What indeed? If Cliff had asked me the same question today I would have been just as troubled to give him an answer. The facts are that seventy to eighty per cent of tetanus cases die and whatever you do to them in the way of treatment doesn’t seem to make a whit of difference to those figures. But I didn’t want to sound entirely defeatist.

“It’s a very serious condition as you know, Cliff, but I’ll do all I can. I’ve got some antitoxin in the car and I’ll inject that into his vein and if the spasms get very bad I’ll give him a sedative. As long as he can drink there’s a chance for him because he’ll have to five on fluids—gruel would be fine.”

For a few days Badger didn’t get any worse and I began to hope. I’ve seen tetanus horses recover and it is a wonderful experience to come in one day and find that the jaws have relaxed and the hungry animal can once more draw food into its mouth.

But it didn’t happen with Badger. They had got the old horse into a big loose box where he could move around in comfort and each day as I looked over the half door I felt myself willing him to show some little sign of improvement; but instead, after that first few days he began to deteriorate. A sudden movement or the approach of any person would throw him into a violent spasm so that he would stagger stiff-legged round the box like a big wooden toy, his eyes terrified, saliva drooling from between his fiercely clenched teeth. One morning I was sure he would fall and I suggested putting him in slings. I had to go back to the surgery for the slings and it was just as I was entering Skeldale House that the phone rang.

It was Mr. Gilling. “He’s beat us to it I’m afraid. He’s flat out on the floor and I doubt it’s a bad job, Mr. Herriot. We’ll have to put him down, won’t we?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“There’s just one thing. Mallock will be taking him away but old Cliff says he doesn’t want Mallock to shoot ’im. Wants you to do it. Will you come?”

I got out the humane killer and drove back to the farm, wondering at the fact that the old man should find the idea of my bullet less repugnant than the knacker man’s. Mr. Gilling was waiting in the box and by his side Cliff, shoulders hunched, hands deep in his pockets. He turned to me with a strange smile.

“I was just saying to t’boss how grand t’awd lad used to look when I got ’im up for a show. By Gaw you should have seen him with ’is coat polished and the feathers on his legs scrubbed as white as snow and a big blue ribbon round his tail.”

“I can imagine it, Cliff,” I said. “Nobody could have looked after him better.”

He took his hands from his pockets, crouched by the prostrate animal and for a few minutes stroked the white-flecked neck and pulled at the ears while the old sunken eye looked at him impassively.

He began to speak softly to the old horse but his voice was steady, almost conversational, as though he was chatting to a friend.

“Many’s the thousand miles I’ve walked after you, awd lad, and many’s the talk we’ve had together. But I didn’t have to say much to tha, did I? I reckon you knew every move I made, everything I said. Just one little word and you always did what ah wanted you to do.”

He rose to his feet “I’ll get on with me work now, boss,” he said firmly, and strode out of the box.

I waited awhile so that he would not hear the bang which signaled the end of Badger, the end of the horses of Harland Grange and the end of the sweet core of Cliff Tyreman’s life.

As I was leaving I saw the little man again. He was mounting the iron seat of a roaring tractor and I shouted to him above the noise.

“The boss says he’s going to get some sheep in and you’ll be doing a bit of shepherding. I think you’ll enjoy that.”

Cliff’s undefeated grin flashed out as he called back to me.

“Aye, I don’t mind learnin’ summat new. I’m nobbut a lad yet!”

T
HIS WAS A DIFFERENT
land of ringing. I had gone to sleep as the great bells in the church tower down the street pealed for the Christmas midnight mass, but this was a sharper, shriller sound.

It was difficult at first to shake off the mantle of unreality in which I had wrapped myself last night. Last night—Christmas Eve. It had been like a culmination of all the ideas I had ever held about Christmas—a flowering of emotions I had never experienced before. It had been growing in me since the afternoon call to a tiny village where the snow lay deep on the single street and on the walls and on the ledges of the windows where the lights on the tinseled trees glowed red and blue and gold; and as I left it in the dusk I drove beneath the laden branches of a group of dark spruce as motionless as though they had been sketched against the white background of the fields. And when I reached Darrowby it was dark and around the market place the little shops were bright with decorations and the light from their windows fell in a soft yellow wash over the trodden snow of the cobbles. People, anonymously muffled, were hurrying about, doing their last minute shopping, their feet slithering over the rounded stones.

I had known many Christmases in Scotland but they had taken second place to the New Year celebrations; there had been none of this air of subdued excitement which started days before with folks shouting good wishes and coloured lights winking on the lonely fellsides and the farmers’ wives plucking the fat geese, the feathers piled deep around their feet. And for fully two weeks you heard the children piping carols in the street then knocking on the door for sixpences. And best of all, last night the methodist choir had sung out there, filling the night air with rich, thrilling harmony.

Before going to bed and just as the church bells began I closed the door of Skeldale House behind me and walked again into the market place. Nothing stirred now in the white square stretching smooth and cold and empty under the moon, and there was a Dickens look about the ring of houses and shops put together long before anybody thought of town planning; tall and short, fat and thin, squashed in crazily around the cobbles, their snow-burdened roofs jagged and uneven against the frosty sky.

As I walked back, the snow crunching under my feet, the bells clanging, the sharp air tingling in my nostrils, the wonder and mystery of Christmas enveloped me in a great wave. Peace on earth, goodwill towards men; the words became meaningful as never before and I saw myself suddenly as a tiny particle in the scheme of things; Darrowby, the farmers, the animals and me seemed for the first time like a warm, comfortable entity. I hadn’t been drinking but I almost floated up the stairs to our bed-sitter.

Helen was still asleep and as I crawled between the sheets beside her I was still wallowing in my Yuletide euphoria. There wouldn’t be much work tomorrow; we’d have a long lie—maybe till nine—and then a lazy day, a glorious hiatus in our busy life. As I drifted into sleep it was as though I was surrounded by the smiling faces of my clients looking down at me with an all-embracing benevolence; and strangely I fancied I could hear singing, sweet and haunting, just like the methodist choir—God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen…