Lord God Made Them All (46 page)

I could see he thought I was raving but he helped me to raise the sow to her feet, and we supported her on either side as she tottered up to the long metal trough that bounded one side of the yard. She took a few gulps at the water, then collapsed.

Lionel took a few panting breaths. “She hasn’t had much.”

“No, and that’s a good thing. Too much makes them worse. Let’s try this other pig. She’s lying very still.”

“Makes ’em worse?” He began to help me to lift. “How the ’ell’s that?”

“Never mind,” I puffed. “It just does.” I couldn’t very well tell him that I didn’t know myself, that I had never seen salt poisoning before and that I was only going by the book.

He groaned as we pushed the second pig towards the trough. “God ’elp us. This is a bloody funny carry-on. I’ve never seen owt like this.”

Neither have I, I thought. And I only hoped all those things I was taught at college were true.

We spent a busy hour, assisting the stricken animals to the water or carefully dosing them when they were unable to move. We did this by pushing a Wellington boot with the toe cut off into the mouths and pouring the water down the leg of the boot. A pig would certainly crunch the neck off a glass bottle.

The animals with the most powerful convulsions I injected with a sedative to control the spasms.

When we had finished, I looked round the piggery. All the animals had got some water into them and were lying within easy reach of the troughs. As I watched, several of them got up, took a few swallows, then lay down. That was just what I wanted.

“Well,” I said wearily, “we can’t do anymore.”

He shrugged. “Right, come in and ‘ave a cup o’ tea.”

As I followed him to the house, I could tell by the droop of his shoulders that he had lost hope. He had a defeated look, and I couldn’t blame him. My words and actions must have seemed crazy to him. They did even to me.

When the bedside phone rang at seven o’clock in the morning, I reached for it with half-closed eyes, expecting the usual calving or milk fever, but it was Lionel.

“I’m just off to me work, Mr. Herriot, but I thowt you’d like to know about them pigs first.”

I snapped wide awake. “Yes, I would. How are they?”

“They’re awright.”

“How do you mean, all right? Are they all alive?”

“Aye, every one.”

“Are they ill in any way?”

“Nay, nay, every one of ’em shoutin’ for their breakfast just like they were yesterday mornin’.”

I fell back on the pillow, still grasping the phone, and my sigh of relief must have been audible at the other end because Lionel chuckled.

“Aye, that’s how ah feel, too, Mr. Herriot. By gaw, it’s a miracle. I thought ye’d gone round the bend yesterday with all that salt talk, but you were right, lad. Talk about savin’ ma bacon —ye really did it, didn’t ye?”

I laughed. “I suppose I did. In more ways than one.”

Over my forty years in practice, I have seen only about half a dozen cases of salt poisoning or water deprivation or whatever you like to call it. I don’t suppose it is all that common. But the one at Lionel’s stays in my mind as the most exciting and the happiest.

I thought this unexpected triumph would settle the roadman down for good as a pig keeper, but I was wrong again. It was several weeks before I was on his place, and just as I was leaving, a young man rode up on a bicycle.

Lionel introduced him. “This is Billy Fothergill, Mr. Herriot.” I shook hands with a smiling lad of about twenty-two.

“Billy’s takin’ over ma place next month.”

“What?”

“It’s right. Ah’ve sold ’im the pigs, and he’s goin’ to rent the building’s from me. In fact, he’s doin’ all t’work now.”

“Well, I’m surprised, Lionel,” I said. “I thought you were doing what you wanted to do.”

He looked at me quizzically. “So did I, for a bit. But ah’ll tell ye, that salt job really gave me a shock. I thowt I was ruined, and that’s a nasty feelin’ at my time of life. Billy’s been pigman for Sir Thomas Rowe for three years, and he’s just got married. Feels like branchin’ out for ’imself, like.”

I looked at the young man. He wasn’t tall, but the bullet head, muscular shoulders and slightly bowed legs gave the impression of great power. He looked as though he could run through a brick wall.

“Ah know it’s for t’best,” Lionel went on. “That piggery was all right, but it was allus just a bit on top o’ me. Sort of a worry, like. I reckon Billy’ll manage the job better than me.”

I looked again at Billy’s stubby features, at the brown skin, the unclouded eyes and the confident grin.

“Oh yes,” I said. “He’ll manage all right.”

As the roadman walked back towards my car with me, I tapped his elbow. “But Lionel, aren’t you going to miss your livestock? It was your great hobby, wasn’t it?”

“By gaw, you’re right. It was and it still is. Ah couldn’t do without some stock to look after. I’ve filled up t’awd hut again. Come and have a look.”

We walked over to the hut and opened the door, and it was like turning back the clock—a cow, three calves, two goats, two pigs and some assorted poultry, all sectioned off with outlandish partitions. I could see the bed frames and wire netting with loops of binder twine hanging from every comer. The only difference was that he had moved the dining table to a position immediately inside the door, and a grand-piano lid stood proudly by the side of the cow.

He pointed out the various animals and gave me a brief history of each, and as he spoke there was a contentment in his face that had been absent for some time.

“Only two pigs, eh, Lionel?” I said.

He nodded slowly. “Aye, it’s enough.”

I left him there and went over to the car, and as I opened the door I looked back across the field. From this angle I could shut out the garish new piggery so that I saw only the stone cottage with its sheltering trees and the old hut nearby. The roadman was leaning against the upended dining table, and as he gazed in at his mixed charges, the smoke from his pipe rose high against the back-cloth of the hills. The whole picture looked just right, and I smiled to myself.

That was Lionel’s kind of farming.

I
T WAS A
S
UNDAY
morning in June, and I was washing my hands in the sink in Matt Clarke’s kitchen. The sun was bright, with a brisk wind scouring the fell-sides, so that through the window I could see every cleft and gully lying sharp and clear on the green flanks as the cloud shadows drove across them.

I glanced back beyond the stone flags at the white head of Grandma Clarke bent over her knitting. The radio on the dresser was tuned to the morning service and, as I watched, the old lady looked up from her work and listened intently to some words of the sermon for a few moments before starting her needles clicking again.

In that brief time I had a profound impression of serenity and unquestioning faith that has remained with me to this day. It is a strange thing, but over the years whenever I have heard discussions and arguments on religion, on the varying beliefs and doctrines, on the sincerity or otherwise of some pious individuals, there still rises before me the seamed old face and calm eyes of Grandma Clarke. She knew and was secure. Goodness seemed to flow from her.

She was in her late eighties and always dressed in black with a little black neckband. She had come through the hard times of farming and could look back on a long life of toil, in the fields as well as in the home.

As I reached for the towel, the farmer led Rosie into the kitchen.

“Mr. Clarke’s been showing me some baby chicks, Daddy,” she said.

Grandma looked up again. “Is that your little lass, Mr. Her-riot?”

“Yes, Mrs. Clarke,” I replied. “This is Rosie.”

“Aye, of course. I’ve seen her before, many a time.” The old lady put down her knitting and rose stiffly from her chair. She shuffled over to a cupboard, brought out a gaily coloured tin and extracted a bar of chocolate.

“How old are ye now, Rosie?” she asked as she presented the chocolate.

“Thank you, I’m six,” my daughter replied.

Grandma looked down at the smiling face, at the sturdy, tanned legs in their blue shorts and sandals. “Well, you’re a grand little lass.” For a moment she rested her work-roughened hand against the little girl’s cheek, then she returned to her chair. They didn’t make much of a fuss, those old Yorkshire folk, but to me the gesture was like a benediction.

The old lady picked up her knitting again. “And how’s that lad o’ yours? How’s Jimmy?”

“Oh, he’s fine thank you. Ten years old now. He’s out with some of his pals this morning.”

‘Ten, eh? Ten and six… ten and six …” For a few seconds her thoughts seemed far away as she plied her needles, then she looked at me again. “Maybe ye don’t know it, Mr. Herriot, but this is the best time of your life.”

“Do you think so?”

“Aye, there’s no doubt about it. When your children are young and growin’ up around ye—that’s when it’s best. It’s the same for everybody, only a lot o’ folk don’t know it and a lot find out when it’s too late. It doesn’t last long, you know.”

“I believe I’ve always realised that, Mrs. Clarke, without thinking about it very much.”

“Reckon you have, young man.” She gave me a sideways smile. “You allus seem to have one or t’other of your bairns with you on your calls.”

As I drove away from the farm, the old lady’s words stayed in my mind. They are still in my mind, all these years later, when Helen and I are soon about to celebrate our Ruby Wedding of forty years of marriage. Life has been good to us and is still good to us. We are lucky—we have had so many good times—but I think we both agree that Grandma Clarke was right about the very best time of all.

When I got back to Skeldale House that summer morning, I found Siegfried replenishing the store of drugs in his car boot. His children, Alan and Janet, were helping him. Like me, he usually took his family around with him.

He banged down the lid of the boot. “Right, that’s that for another few days.” He glanced at me and smiled. “There are no more calls at the moment, James; let’s have a walk down the back.”

With the children running ahead of us, we went through the passage and out into the long garden behind the house. Here the sunshine was imprisoned between the high old walls, with the wind banished to the upper air and ruffling the top leaves of the apple trees.

When we reached the big lawn, Siegfried flopped on the turf and rested on his elbow. I sat down by his side.

My partner pulled a piece of grass and chewed it contemplatively.

“Pity about the acacia,” he murmured.

I looked at him in surprise. It was many years since the beautiful tree, which had once soared from the middle of the lawn, had blown down in a gale.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It was magnificent.” I paused for a moment. “Remember, I fell asleep against it the first day I came here to apply for a job? We first met right on this spot.”

Siegfried laughed. “I do remember.” He looked around him at the mellow brick and stone copings of the walls, at the rockery and rose bed, the children playing in the old henhouse at the far end. “My word, James, when you think about it, we’ve come through a few things together since then. A lot of water, as they say, has flown under the bridge.”

We were both silent for a while, and my thoughts went back over the struggles and the laughter of those years. Almost unconsciously I lay back on the grass and closed my eyes, feeling the sun warm on my face, hearing the hum of the bees among the flowers, the croaking of the rooks in the great elms that overhung the yard.

My colleague’s voice seemed to come from afar. “Hey, you’re not going to do the same trick again, are you? Going to sleep in front of me?”

I sat up, blinking. “Gosh, I’m sorry, Siegfried, I nearly did. I was out at a farrowing at five o’clock this morning and it’s just catching up with me.”

“Ah, well,” he said, smiling. “You won’t need your book tonight.”

I laughed. “No, I won’t Not tonight.”

Neither Siegfried nor I suffered from insomnia, but on the rare occasions when sleep would not come we had recourse to our particular books. Mine was
The Brothers Karamazov,
a great novel, but to me, soporific in its names. Even at the beginning I felt those names lulling me. “Alexey Fyodorovich Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov.” Then, by the time I had encountered Grigory Kutuzov, Yefim Petrovich Pole-nov, Stepanida Bedryagina and a few others, I was floating away.

With Siegfried, it was a book on the physiology of the eye which he kept by his bedside. There was one passage that never failed to start him nodding. He showed it to me once: “The first ciliary muscle is inserted into the ciliary body and by its contraction pulls the ciliary body forward and so slackens the tension on the suspensory ligament, while the second ciliary muscle is a circular muscle embedded in the ciliary body and by its contraction drags the ciliary body towards the crystalline lens.” He had never managed to get much further than that.

“No,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I won’t need any encouragement tonight.” I rolled onto my side. “By the way, I was at Matt Clarke’s this morning.” I told him what Grandma had said.

Siegfried selected a fresh piece of grass and resumed his chewing.

“Well, she’s a wise old lady and she’s seen it all. If she’s right we’ll have no regrets in the future, because we have both enjoyed our children and been with them from the beginning.”

I was beginning to feel sleepy again when my partner startled me by sitting up abruptly.

“Do you know, James,” he said, “I’m convinced that the same thing applies to our job. We’re going through the best time there, too.”

“Do you think so?”

“Sure of it. Look at all the new advances since the war—drugs and procedures we never dreamed of. We can look after our animals in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago, and the farmers realise this. You’ve seen them crowding into the surgery on market day to ask advice—they’ve gained a new respect for the profession and they know it pays to call in the vet now.”