Lord God Made Them All (25 page)

“There’s nowt simple about it,” Dick said, “Just because we’ve never had a accident doesn’t mean that …” His words were cut off as the haltered beast went violently into reverse and its bony rump thudded into his midriff, crushing him with brutal force against the rough stones of the wall.

He sank down in the straw, completely winded, and sat motionless, holding his middle.

“Look at that!” George cried. “Just what I’ve been talking about! Yours is a dangerous trade. Anything could happen.”

“Aye, well, ’e’s all right,” Clem said doubtfully as his brother eased himself to his feet.

George’s eyes had the fanatical gleam of an insurance man who suddenly finds fate on his side. “Yes, yes, maybe he is all right this time, but he might have had an internal injury, mightn’t he? Could have been off work for ages, and then where would you be? You’d have to pay for extra labour, wouldn’t you? And with a nice little policy from me, you’d have the money to do it.”

The musical sound of the word “money” appeared to stir something in Clem. He gave the agent a sidelong glance. “How much?”

George became brisk and businesslike. “Now, then, I have just the thing for you here.” He pulled a sheaf of policies from his inside pocket. “For a premium of ten pounds per annum, you would receive twenty pounds a week in the case of incapacitating injuries. There are other benefits, of course; look here.”

Clem put on a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles and perused the document while Dick looked over his shoulder. I could hear mutterings.

“Twenty pun a week … lot o’ money … not bad.”

Twenty pounds was indeed a tidy sum in 1948 when the average weekly wage for a qualified veterinary assistant was around ten pounds.

Finally Clem looked up. “Reckon we might ’ave a go at that. Twenty pun a week would come in right handy.”

“Splendid, splendid.” George produced a silver pencil. “Just sign here, both of you. Thank you very much.”

He paused for a moment. “And of course there’s young Herbert who works for you.”

“Aye, he’s down t’fields,” Dick said. “What about ’im?”

“Well, you ought to have him covered, too.”

“But he’s nobbut a lad.”

“Okay.” George spread his hands. “He goes in cheaper. Five pounds a year. Same benefits.”

The brothers’ resistance seemed to have crumbled. “Awright, s’pose we might as well. We’ll do ’im, too.”

George tripped off to his car, whistling merrily, and we got on with the test.

It was about three weeks later that I met Clem in Darrowby market place. He was sauntering along, looking in the shop windows, and he was wearing a smart dark suit, obviously not his working clothes. It was late afternoon when he would normally have been bringing in his cows for milking, and I wondered at his presence in the town until he turned round and I saw that his arm was in a sling.

“What on earth have you been doing, Clem?” I asked.

He looked down at the bulky white cast. “Broke me arm. Slipped up on the cow-house floor. And would you believe it?” His eyes widened. “It was nubbut three days after I’d signed that insurance form. Ah’m gettin’ twenty pun a week, and the doctor reckons it’ll be another nine weeks afore I can start work. That’ll be more than two hundred quid I’ll have collected. All right, eh?”

“It certainly is. What a blessing you took George Forsyth’s advice. But you’ll be paying for somebody to help you?”

“Nay, nay, we’re managin’ grand as it is.” He walked away, chuckling.

Clem’s injury had healed by the time I had to visit the Hudson farm again to “cleanse” a cow. Clem brought me a bucket of hot water, and I was soaping my arms when Dick came in. I should say he hobbled in, because he was on crutches.

I stared at him, and an eerie sense of the workings of fate stirred in my mind. “Broken leg?”

“Aye,” Dick replied laconically. “Did it as easy as owt. Tryin’ to catch an awd ewe on top pasture and upskittled meself in a rabbit hole.”

“You’ll be out of action for a while, then?”

“Aye, plaster’s got to stay on for fourteen weeks. It’s a bloody nuisance, but all them twenty quids is very nice. Good job we signed that paper.”

I didn’t see him until he came into the surgery one market day to pay his veterinary bill. He had shed his cast but was still limping slightly.

“How is the leg, Dick?” I asked as I wrote in the receipt book.

He grimaced. “Nobbut middlin’. Aches like ’ell sometimes, but I think it’s gettin’ stronger.”

“Ah, well.” I handed him the receipted account. “You’ll just have to take things a bit easier till you’re back to normal.”

“Can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re short-handed as it is. Young Herbert’s had a accident.”

“What!”

“Aye, stuck a hay fork into ’is foot and got blood poisonin’. He’s well enough in ’imself, but Doctor says it’ll be a long time afore he can walk about.”

In fact, it was ten weeks before Herbert returned to work, but as Clem confided to me over a beer when I encountered him one night in the Drovers’ Arms, the two hundred pounds they collected from the insurance company had been something of a consolation.

“Remarkable thing,” I said. “George Forsyth must have been sent from heaven that morning. His company has been a tremendous help to you.”

Clem showed no enthusiasm but stared gloomily into his glass. “But ah’ll tell tha summat. They’re funny fellers, them insurance men. Would ye believe it, after all that talkin’ they don’t want us any more.”

“Really? How’s that?”

“Well, we got a letter from them sayin’, ‘We do not wish to renew your insurance.’ What d’you make of that?”

“That sometimes happens, Clem,” I said. Privately, I wasn’t surprised. For an outlay of twenty-five pounds, the Hudsons had received more than seven hundred pounds within a few months. I could imagine any company beating a hasty retreat.

“Any road,” he continued, “we got another lot to take us on at t’end of the year. We’ve shifted all our business to them—farm, car and t’lot.”

“And another accident policy, I suppose?”

Clem tipped up his glass and took a long swallow. “Oh, aye.” Then he turned to me with an injured expression. “But they’ve made us pay an extra pound each.”

It was some months later, shortly after the new company had shouldered the burden of the Hudsons’ insurance, that Dick fell into the bowels of the tractor. He could have been seriously injured but sustained only a fracture of the thumb, which kept him off work for eight weeks.

He told me about it himself when he had recovered and I was having a cup of tea in the farmhouse. “Another one hundred sixty pounds into the kitty,” he said philosophically, pushing a plateful of homemade scones towards me.

I must have looked bemused because he laughed. “And that’s not all, Mr. Herriot. I had a accident with the car.”

“No!”

“Aye, ah did. Ran into t’side of young Bessie Trenholm’s car and smashed me radiator and lights.”

“Well, that’s almost unbelievable. And another claim, eh?”

Dick gave me a wry smile. “Well, now, I’ll tell ye. There’s a bit of a story there. It was Bessie’s fault, all right—she came out of her farm gate with no warnin’—but ah’d only insured my car for third party, and I thought if it came to an argument wi’ only my word against hers, I’d have no chance because she’s a bonny young lass, is Bessie. So I decided not to claim, though ah did mention it to the agent.”

“So nothing doing this time?”

Dick’s smile widened. “That’s what ah thought, but the agent came to see me a few days after and told me they’d made a mistake at his office. They’d insured me car comprehensive.”

“Good Lord! So you collected again?”

“Aye, another one hundred fifty pounds. Not bad.” Dick cut a piece from a wedge of Wensleydale cheese, and his expression grew serious. “There’s only one thing we’re worried about. The agent acted a bit queer-like when ’e gave us the money. Didn’t seem ower pleased. We’re just hopin’ this company isn’t goin’ to give us t’push like the last one.”

“Yes,” I said. “I understand. That would be unfortunate.”

“It would ’an all.” Dick nodded gravely. “Clem and me’s big believers in insurance.”

November 3, 1961

I
CRAWLED INTO MY
bunk at 3
A.M.
, and it seemed that I had hardly fallen asleep before I was awakened by the ship leaping and bucking like a wild thing. I looked out of my window at a vast stretch of wind-tossed ocean.

Away in the distance, the lights of Klaipeda glimmered and faded. So the mate had been right; our captain was not to be deterred by a bit of bad weather.

For the rest of the night I remembered painfully the warnings I had heard about coming home against the wind. On the way to Klaipeda, the main motion had been a sideways rolling, which I had countered by jamming knees and elbows against the sides of the bunk, but this was a violent fore-and-aft movement, and it was ten times worse. Over and over again I slid from one end of the bunk to the other, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. From my weird changes of position, I could divine that the ship’s bows were high in the air one moment and pointing right down the next.

Outside, the gale howled, spray dashed against the windows and the cabin furniture and my worldly goods flew around the place unchecked. I let them get on with it. Tidying up, I felt, would be a fruitless and dangerous business.

Being thrown about constantly and listening to the medley of bangs and clatterings from all over the ship gave me small chance of sleep, and when dawn came I peered out at a dismal scene.

I discovered then the reason for one of the new sounds I had heard during the night. Whereas the ship had slid down the sides of the huge waves with the wind behind it, it now fell, keel first, into each green chasm, and when this happened, there was a jarring crash as though we had hit a rock. It was like a diver doing a belly flop, and the effect was alarming.

It seemed that after this terrible night my friends on the ship had decided that I would be prostrate and helpless this morning, because instead of the mess boy calling me at 8
A.M.
, Nielsen himself knocked and spoke through the door.

“You stay in bed, Mr. Herriot. I bring you a little breakfast.”

“No thanks,” I replied. “Come in.”

He opened the door and looked startled when he saw me trying to shave with my back jammed against one wall and my foot against another.

“You okay?” he asked disbelievingly.

I seized upon a momentary pause in the ship’s pitching to scrape another inch of soap from my face. “Yes, fine. What did you say about breakfast?”

“Well … we have kippers, fried eggs and some nice smoked sausage.”

“Sounds great. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

He gave me a final incredulous glance and left.

When I entered the mess room, only the mate was present. He was working among the assorted foodstuffs, and he raised his eyebrows and paused, fork halfway to his mouth, when he saw me start enthusiastically on my piled plate.

“Mr. Herriot,” he said solemnly, “you are the first landsman I have known who is not sick after last night.”

It made me feel good. As I have said, there is nothing clever about not being sick, but it was nice to know I had something special in the way of stomachs.

It is interesting to note that the only time I felt strange was when I struggled up to the deck for some fresh air and stood for some time looking out on the crazily swinging sea. After a while, as I hung onto a rail, I began to experience a sort of dizziness. It was a visual thing, brought on somehow by watching the constant lifting and falling of the world about me, but it wasn’t pleasant and I went back to my cabin.

In fact, I have stayed in my bunk most of the day. It is the only safe place. Since my sheep have gone I have nothing to do and, in any case, it is dangerous for an inexperienced sailor like me to move about. I have had one or two frights through being suddenly catapulted off my feet, and the danger of breaking a limb or splitting my head on a sharp projection is very real.

So it looks as though my life for the next few days is going to consist of lying on my back, reading paperback books and eating. This is all very fine, but I am used to an active existence, and I feel that a very bloated Herriot is going to roll back to Darrowby.

One hazard is that the faithful Nielsen now has me at his mercy. The galley is only a few yards away, and he keeps opening my door and sliding in a crate of lager or a tray with a mug of coffee and bread and jam.

Sometimes it is a more substantial offering, as when he marched into my cabin this afternoon, his body adjusting miraculously to the shifting slope of the floor. In one hand he held a plate and in the other a jug. On the plate rested a ring of mashed potatoes, into which he poured hot fat containing bacon and onions.

He laughed eagerly. “This is beeg food of the poor in Denmark. Is called Hot Love.”

He watched with deep satisfaction as I consumed this strange dish. I relished every morsel, though dieticians would frown on it. The same dieticians would be horrified if they knew that this was merely an interlude between a lunch of huge beefy things that looked like hamburgers followed by a chocolate soup with unpronounceable rusks broken into it, and a dinner consisting of a creation of sauerkraut cooked in butter, milk and flour and mixed with potatoes. I say nothing of the usual array of cold dishes always at my disposal to allay any lingering hunger pangs. Yes, there is no doubt about it. I am going to get fat.

If I was on this ship long enough, I would probably finish up like Carl Rasmussen, the plump little mate. He is the champion eater of the ship. He ploughs impassively through the official meal, then starts on the cold stuff, of which he consumes a vast quantity before finishing with slice after slice of bread and dripping. The captain often looks at him with his gentle smile and pats his stomach wonderingly.

I am not going to say that he has the biggest appetite I have ever seen because I have come across some mighty troughers on the Dales farms, but he is undoubtedly in the top flight. I myself have a modest reputation in this field—Tristan often refers to me as “the big eater from Darrowby”—but I am not in Carl’s class. He enthralls me.