James Herriot (35 page)

“Yaas, yaas, goot efening, howdy do. Vat you vant, huh?”

I could just hear a deep rumble from the other end of the line and Tristan suddenly snapped upright in his chair. His
Daily Mirror
and cigarettes slithered to the floor.

“Yes, Mr. Mount,” he said smartly. “No, Mr. Mount. Yes, indeed, Mr. Mount, I shall pass on your message immediately. Thank you very much, goodbye.”

He fell back in the chair and blew out his cheeks. “That was Mr. Mount.”

“So I gathered. And he certainly wiped the smile off your face, Triss.”

“Yes … yes … just a little unexpected.” He recovered his Woodbines and lit one thoughtfully.

“Quite,” I said. “What did he ring for, anyway?”

“Oh, he has a cart horse to see tomorrow morning. Something wrong with its hind feet.”

I made a note on the pad and turned back to the young man. “I don’t know how you find the time in your hectic love life, but you’re running around with that chap’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Tristan took the cigarette from his mouth and studied the glowing end. “Yes, as a matter of fact I have taken Deborah Mount out a few times. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no particular reason. Her old man seems a bit formidable, that’s all.”

I could picture Mr. Mount the last time I saw him. He was well named; a veritable massif of a man towering several inches over six feet. From shoulders like the great buttresses of the fell which overhung his farm rose a beetling cliff of head with craggy outcrops of jaw and cheek and brow. He had the biggest hands I had ever seen—approximately three times the size of my own.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tristan said. “He’s not a bad sort.”

“I agree, I’ve nothing against him.” Mr. Mount was deeply religious and had the reputation of being hard but fair. “It’s just that I wouldn’t like him to come up to me and ask if I was trifling with his daughter’s affections.”

Tristan swallowed, and anxiety flitted briefly in his eyes. “Oh, that’s ridiculous. Deborah and I have a friendly relationship, that’s all.”

“Well I’m glad to hear it” I said. “I’ve been told her father is very protective about her and I’d hate to feel those big hands round my throat.”

Tristan gave me a cold stare. “You’re a sadistic bugger at times, Jim. Just because I occasionally enjoy a little female company …”

“Oh, forget it, Triss, I’m only kidding. You’ve nothing to worry about. When I see old Mount tomorrow I promise I won’t mention that Deborah is one of your harem.” I dodged a flying cushion and went through to the dispensary to stock up for the next day’s round.

But I realised next morning that my joke was barbed when I saw Mr. Mount coming out of the farm house. For a moment his bulk filled the doorway then he advanced with measured tread over the cobbles till he loomed over me, blocking out the sunshine, throwing a large area around me into shade.

“That young man, Tristan,” he said without preamble. “He was speakin’ a bit funny like on the phone last night. What sort of a feller is he?”

I looked up at the great head poised above me, at the unwavering grey eyes probing into mine from beneath a bristling overhang of brow. “Tristan?” I answered shakily. “Oh, he’s a splendid chap. A really fine type.”

“Mmm.” The huge man continued to look at me and one banana-like finger rubbed doubtfully along his chin. “Does he drink?”

Mr. Mount was renowned for his rigid antagonism to alcohol and I thought it unwise to reply that Tristan was a popular and esteemed figure at most of the local hostelries.

“Oh, er—” I said. “Hardly at all … in the strictest moderation …”

At that moment Deborah came out of the house and began to walk across the yard.

She was wearing a flowered cotton dress. About nineteen, shining golden hair falling below her shoulders, she radiated the healthy buxom beauty of the country girl. As she went by. she flashed a smile at me and I had a heartlifting glimpse of white teeth and warm brown eyes. It was in the early days before I had met Helen and I had as sharp an interest in a pretty lass as anybody. I found myself studying her legs appreciatively after she had passed.

It was then that I had an almost palpable awareness of her father’s gaze upon me. I turned and saw a new expression there—a harsh disapproval which chilled me and left a deep conviction in my mind. Deborah was a little smasher all right, and she looked nice, too, but no … no … never. Tristan had more courage than I had.

Mr. Mount turned away abruptly. “This ’oss is in the stable,” he grunted.

In those late thirties the tractor had driven a lot of the draught horses from the land but most of the farmers kept a few around, perhaps because they had always worked horses and it was part of their way of life and maybe because of the sheer proud beauty of animals like the one which stood before me now.

It was a magnificent Shire gelding, standing all of eighteen hands. He was a picture of massively muscled power but when his master spoke, the great white-blazed face which turned to us was utterly docile.

The farmer slapped him on the rump. “He’s a good sort is Bobby and I think a bit about ’im. What ah noticed first was a strange smell about his hind feet and then ah had a look for meself. I’ve never seen owt like it.”

I bent and seized a handful of the long feathered hair behind the horse’s pastern. Bobby did not resist as I lifted the huge spatulate foot and rested it on my knee. It seemed to occupy most of my lap but it was not the size which astonished me. Mr. Mount had never seen owt like it and neither had I. The sole was a ragged, sodden mass with a stinking exudation oozing from the underrun horn, but what really bewildered me was the series of growths sprouting from every crevice.

They were like nightmare toadstools—long papillae with horny caps growing from the diseased surface. I had read about them in the books; they were called ergots, but I had never imagined them in such profusion. My thoughts raced as I moved behind the horse and lifted the other foot. It was just the same. Just as bad.

I had been qualified only a few months and was still trying to gain the confidence of the Darrowby farmers. This was just the sort of thing I didn’t want.

“What is it?” Mr. Mount asked, and again I felt that unwinking gaze piercing me.

I straightened up and rubbed my hands. “It’s canker, but a very bad case.” I knew all about the theory of the thing, in fact I was bursting with theory, but putting it into practice with this animal was a bit different.

“How are you going to cure it?” Mr. Mount had an uncomfortable habit of going straight to the heart of things.

“Well, you see, all that loose horn and those growths will have to be cut away and then the surface dressed with caustic,” I replied, and it sounded easy when I said it.

“It won’t get better on its own, then?”

“No, if you leave it the sole will disintegrate and the pedal bone will come through. Also the discharge will work up under the wall of the hoof and cause separation.”

The farmer nodded. “So he’d never walk again, and that would be the end of Bobby.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Right, then.” Mr. Mount threw up his head with a decisive gesture. “When are you going to do it?”

It was a nasty question, because I was preoccupied at that moment not so much with when I would do it but how I would do it.

“Well now, let’s see,” I said huskily. “Would it be …”

The farmer broke in. “We’re busy hay-makin’ all this week, and you’ll be wantin’ some men to help you. How about Monday next week?”

A wave of relief surged through me. Thank heavens he hadn’t said tomorrow. I had a bit of time to think now.

“Very well, Mr. Mount. That suits me fine. Don’t feed him on the Sunday because he’ll have to have an anaesthetic.”

Driving from the farm, a sense of doom oppressed me. Was I going to ruin that beautiful animal in my ignorance? Canker of the foot was unpleasant at any time and was not uncommon in the days of the draught horse, but this was something away out of the ordinary. No doubt many of my contemporaries have seen feet like Bobby’s, but to the modern young veterinary surgeon it must be like a page from an ancient manual of farriery.

As is my wont when I have a worrying case I started mulling it over right away. As I drove, I rehearsed various procedures. Would that enormous horse go down with a chloroform muzzle? Or would I have to collect all Mr. Mount’s men and rope him and pull him down? But it would be like trying to pull down St. Paul’s cathedral. And then how long would it take me to hack away all that horn—all those dreadful vegetations?

Within ten minutes my palms were sweating and I was tempted to throw the whole lot over to Siegfried. But I was restrained by the knowledge that I had to establish myself not only with the farmers but with my new boss. He wasn’t going to think much of an assistant who couldn’t handle a thing on his own.

I did what I usually did when I was worried; drove off the unfenced road, got out of the car and followed a track across the moor. The track wound beneath the brow of the fell which overlooked the Mount farm and when I had left the road far behind I flopped on the grass and looked down on the sunlit valley floor a thousand feet below.

In most places you could hear something—the call of a bird, a car in the distance—but here there was a silence which was absolute, except when the wind sighed over the hill top, rustling the bracken around me.

The farm lay in one of the soft places in a harsh countryside; lush flat fields where cattle grazed in comfort and the cut hay lay in long even swathes.

It was a placid scene, but it was up here in the airy heights that you found true serenity. Peace dwelt here in the high moorland, stealing across the empty miles, breathing from the silence and the tufted grass and the black, peaty earth.

The heady fragrance of the hay rose in the warm summer air and as always I felt my troubles dissolving. Even now, after all the years, I still count myself lucky that I can so often find tranquillity of mind in the high places.

As I rose to go I filled with a calm resolve. I would do the job somehow. Surely I could manage the thing without troubling Siegfried.

In any case Siegfried had other things on his mind when I met him over the lunch table.

“I looked in at Granville Bennett’s surgery at Harrington this morning,” he said, helping himself to some new potatoes which had been picked that morning from the garden. “And I must say I was very impressed with his waiting room. All those magazines. I know we don’t have the numbers to cater for, but there’s often a lot of farmers in there.” He poured gravy on to a corner of his plate. “Tristan, I’ll give you the job. Slip round to Garlow’s and order a few suitable things to be delivered every week, will you?”

“Okay,” his student brother replied. “I’ll do it this afternoon.”

“Splendid.” Siegfried chewed happily. “We must keep progressing in every way. Do have some more of these potatoes, James, they really are very good.”

Tristan went into action right away and within two days the table and shelves in our waiting room carried a tasteful selection of periodicals, the
Illustrated London News,
the
Farmer’s Weekly,
the
Farmer and Stockbreeder, Punch.
But as usual he had to embroider the situation.

“Look at this, Jim,” he whispered one afternoon, guiding me through the door. “I’ve been having a little harmless sport.”

“What do you mean?” I looked around me uncomprehendingly.

Tristan said nothing, but pointed to one of the shelves. There, among the innocent journals, was a German naturist magazine displaying a startling frontispiece of full frontal nudity. Even in these permissive days it would have caused a raised eyebrow but in rural Yorkshire in the thirties it was cataclysmic.

“Where the devil did you get this?” I gasped, leafing through it hurriedly. It was just the same inside. “And what’s the idea, anyway?”

Tristan repressed a giggle. “A fellow at college gave it to me. And it’s rather a lark to sneak in quietly and find some solid citizen having a peek when he thinks nobody’s looking. I’ve had some very successful incursions. My best bags so far have been a town councillor, a Justice of the Peace and a lay preacher.”

I shook my head. “I think you’re sticking your neck out. What if Siegfried comes across it?”

“No fear of that,” he said. “He rarely comes in here and he’s always in too much of a hurry. Anyway, it’s well out of the way.”

I shrugged. Tristan had been blessed with an agile intelligence which I envied, but so much of it was misapplied. However, at the moment I hadn’t time for his tricks. My mind was feverishly preoccupied.

Mentally I had cast that horse by innumerable methods and operated on his feet a thousand times by night and day. In daylight, riding around in the car, it wasn’t so bad, but the operations I carried out in bed were truly bizarre. All the time I had the feeling that something was wrong, that there was some fatal flaw in the picture of myself carving away those hideous growths in one session. Finally I buried my pride.

“Siegfried,” I said, one afternoon when the practice was slack. “I have rather a weird horse case.”

My boss’s eyes glinted and the mouth beneath the small sandy moustache crooked into a smile. The word “horse” usually had this effect.

“Really, James? Tell me.”

I told him.

“Yes … yes...,” he murmured. “Maybe we’d better have a look together.”

The Mount farm was deserted when we arrived. Everybody was in the hayfields working frantically while the sunshine lasted.

“Where is he?” Siegfried asked.

“In here.” I led the way to the stable.

My boss lifted a hind foot and whistled softly. Then he moved round and examined the other one. For a full minute he gazed down at the obscene fungi thrusting from the tattered stinking horn. When he stood up he looked at me expressionlessly.

It was a few seconds before he spoke. “And you were just going to pop round here on Monday, tip this big fellow on to the grass and do the job?”

“Yes,” I replied. “That was the idea.”

A strange smile spread over my employer’s face. It held something of wonder, sympathy, amusement and a tinge of admiration. Finally he laughed and shook his head.