All Creatures Great and Small (58 page)

“I thought,” said Stewie. “If we put the sacks on top of the boxes …”

The general didn’t let him finish. “Dammit, is this supposed to be a joke?” His face was brick red and the veins on his neck were swelling dangerously. “Are you tryin’ to insult me friend and these ladies? You want horsewhippin’ for this afternoon’s work, Farnon. That’s what you want—horsewhippin’!”

He was halted by a sudden roar from the Rover’s engine. The colonel, a man of resource as befitted his rank, had shorted the ignition. Fortunately the doors were not locked.

The ladies took their places in the back with the colonel and I slunk miserably on to my little seat. The general had regained control of himself. “Get in! I’ll drive!” he barked at Siegfried as though addressing an erring lance corporal.

But Siegfried held up a restraining hand. “Just one moment,” he slurred. “The windscreen is very dirty. I’ll give it a rub for you.”

The ladies watched him silently as he weaved round to the back of the car and began to rummage in the boot. The love light had died from their eyes. I don’t know why he took the trouble; possibly it was because, through the whisky mists, he felt he must re-establish himself as a competent and helpful member of the party.

But the effort fell flat; the effect was entirely spoiled. He was polishing the glass with a dead hen.

It was a couple of weeks later, again at the breakfast table that Siegfried, reading the morning paper with his third cup of coffee, called out to me.

“Ah, I see Herbert Jarvis M.R.C.V.S., one time Captain R.A.V.C., has been appointed to the North West Circuit as supervisory veterinary surgeon. I know Jarvis. Nice chap. Just the man for the job.”

I looked across at my boss for some sign of disappointment or regret. I saw none.

Siegfried put down his cup, wiped his lips on his napkin and sighed contentedly. “You know, James, everything happens for the best. Old Stewie was sent by providence or heaven or anything you like. I was never meant to get that job and I’d have been as miserable as hell if I had got it. Come on, lad, let’s get off into those hills.”

A
FTER MY NIGHT AT
the cinema with Helen I just seemed to drift naturally into the habit of dropping in to see her on an occasional evening. And before I knew what was happening I had developed a pattern; around eight o’clock my feet began to make of their own accord for Heston Grange. Of course I fought the impulse—I didn’t go every night; there was my work which often occupied me round the clock, there was a feeling of propriety, and there was Mr. Alderson.

Helen’s father was a vague little man who had withdrawn into himself to a great extent since his wife’s death a few years ago. He was an expert stocksman and his farm could compare with the best, but a good part of his mind often seemed to be elsewhere. And he had acquired some little peculiarities; when things weren’t going well he carried on long muttered conversations with himself, but when he was particularly pleased about something he was inclined to break into a loud, tuneless humming. It was a penetrating sound and on my professional visits I could often locate him by tracking down this characteristic droning among the farm buildings.

At first when I came to see Helen I’m sure he never even noticed me—I was just one of the crowd of young men who hung around his daughter; but as time went on and my visits became more frequent he suddenly seemed to become conscious of me, and began to regard me with an interest which deepened rapidly into alarm. I couldn’t blame him, really. He was devoted to Helen and it was natural that he should desire a grand match for her. And there was at least one such in the offing—young Richard Edmundson, whose father was an old friend of the Aldersons and farmed nearly a thousand acres. They were rich, powerful people and Richard was very keen indeed. Compared with him, an unknown, impecunious young vet was a poor bargain.

When Mr. Alderson was around, my visits were uncomfortable affairs. We always seemed to be looking at each other out of the corners of our eyes; whenever I glanced his way he was invariably in the act of averting his gaze, and I must admit that if he looked over at me suddenly I couldn’t help switching my eyes away.

It was a pity because I instinctively liked him. He had an amiable, completely inoffensive nature which was very appealing and under other conditions we would have got along very well. But there was no getting round the fact that he resented me. And it wasn’t because he wanted to hang on to Helen—he was an unselfish man and anyway, he had an excellent housekeeper in his sister who had been recently widowed and had come to live with the Aldersons. Auntie Lucy was a redoubtable character and was perfectly capable of running the household and looking after the two younger children. It was just that he had got used to the comfortable assumption that one day his daughter would marry the son of his old friend and have a life of untroubled affluence; and he had a stubborn streak which rebelled fiercely against any prospect of change.

So it was always a relief when I got out of the house with Helen. Everything was right then; we went to the little dances in the village institutes, we walked for miles along the old grassy mine tracks among the hills, or sometimes she came on my evening calls with me. There wasn’t anything spectacular to do in Darrowby but there was a complete lack of strain, a feeling of being self-sufficient in a warm existence of our own that made everything meaningful and worthwhile.

Things might have gone on like this indefinitely but for a conversation I had with Siegfried. We were sitting in the big room at Skeldale House as we often did before bedtime, talking over the day’s events, when he laughed and slapped his knee.

“I had old Harry Forster in tonight paying his bill. He was really funny—sat looking round the room and saying, ‘It’s a nice little nest you have here, Mr. Farnon, a nice little nest,’ and then, very sly, ‘It’s time there was a bird in this nest, you know, there should be a little bird in here.’ ”

I laughed too. “Well, you should be used to it by now. You’re the most eligible bachelor in Darrowby. People are always having a dig at you—they won’t be happy till they’ve got you married off.”

“Wait a minute, not so fast.” Siegfried eyed me thoughtfully. “I don’t think for a moment that Harry was talking about me; it was you he had in mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, just think. Didn’t you say you had run into the old boy one night when you were walking over his land with Helen? He’d be on to a thing like that in a flash. He thinks it’s time you were hitched up, that’s all.”

I lay back in my chair and gave myself over to laughter. “Me! Married! That’ll be the day. Can you imagine it? Poor old Harry.”

Siegfried leaned forward. “What are you laughing at, James? He’s quite right—it’s time you were married.”

“What’s that?” I looked at him incredulously. “What are you on about now?”

“It’s quite simple,” he said. “I’m saying you ought to get married, and soon.”

“Oh come on, Siegfried, you’re joking!”

“Why should I be?”

“Well, damn it, I’m only starting my career, I’ve no money, no nothing. I’ve never even thought about it.”

“You’ve never even … well tell me this, are you courting Helen Alderson or aren’t you?”

“Well I’m … I’ve been … oh I suppose you could call it that.”

Siegfried settled back comfortably on his chair, put his fingertips together and assumed a judicial expression. “Good, good. You admit you’re courting the girl. Now let us take it a step further. She is, from my own observation, extremely attractive—in fact she nearly causes a traffic pileup when she walks across the cobbles on market day. It’s common knowledge that she is intelligent, equable and an excellent cook. Perhaps you would agree with this?”

“Of course I would,” I said, nettled at his superior air. “But what’s this all about? Why are you going on like a high court judge?”

“I’m only trying to establish my point, James, which is that you seem to have an ideal wife lined up and you are doing nothing about it. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I wish you’d stop playing around and let us see a little action.”

“But it’s not as simple as that,” I said, my voice rising. “I’ve told you already I’d have to be a lot better off, and anyway, give me a chance, I’ve only been going to the house for a few weeks—surely you don’t start thinking of getting married as soon as that. And there’s another thing—her old man doesn’t like me.”

Siegfried put his head on one side and I gritted my teeth as a saintly expression began to settle on his face. “Now old lad, don’t get angry, but there’s something I have to tell you for your own good. Caution is often a virtue, but in your case you carry it too far. It’s a little flaw in your character and it shows in a multitude of ways. In your wary approach to problems in your work, for instance—you are always too apprehensive, proceeding fearfully step by step when you should be plunging boldly ahead. You keep seeing dangers when there aren’t any—you’ve got to learn to take a chance, to lash out a bit. As it is, you are confined to a narrow range of activity by your own doubts.”

“The original stick-in-the-mud in fact, eh?”

“Oh come now, James, I didn’t say that, but while we’re talking, there’s another small point I want to bring up. I know you won’t mind my saying this. Until you get married I’m afraid I shall fail to get the full benefit of your assistance in the practice because frankly you are becoming increasingly besotted and bemused to the extent that I’m sure you don’t know what you’re doing half the time.”

“What the devil are you talking about? I’ve never heard such …”

“Kindly hear me out, James. What I’m saying is perfectly true—you’re walking about like a man in a dream and you’ve developed a disturbing habit of staring into space when I’m talking to you. There’s only one cure, my boy.”

“And it’s a simple little cure, isn’t it!” I shouted. “No money, no home, but leap into matrimony with a happy cry. There’s not a thing to worry about!”

“Ah-ah, you see, there you go again, looking for difficulties.” He gave a light laugh and gazed at me with pitying affection. “No money, you say. Well one of these days you’ll be a partner here. Your plate will be out on those railings in front of the house, so you’ll never be short of your daily bread. And as regards a home—look at all the empty rooms in this house. You could set up a private suite upstairs without any trouble. So that’s just a piffling little detail.”

I ran my hand distractedly through my hair. My head was beginning to swim. “You make it all sound so easy.”

“But it IS easy!” Siegfried shot upright in his chair. “Go out and ask that girl without further delay and get her into church before the month is out!” He wagged a finger at me. “Learn to grasp the nettle of life, James. Throw off your hesitant ways and remember”—he clenched his fist and struck an attitude—“there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood …”

“O.K., O.K.,” I said, rising wearily from my chair, “that’s enough, I get the message. I’m going to bed now.”

I don’t suppose I am the first person to have had his life fundamentally influenced by one of Siegfried’s chance outbursts. I thought his opinions ridiculous at the time but he planted a seed which germinated and flowered almost overnight. There is no doubt he is responsible for the fact that I was the father of a grown-up family while I was still a young man, because when I brought the subject up with Helen she said yes, she’d like to marry me and we set our eyes on an early date. She seemed surprised at first—maybe she had the same opinion of me as Siegfried and expected it would take me a few years to get off the ground.

Anyway, before I had time to think much more about it everything was neatly settled and I found I had made a magical transition from jeering at the whole idea to making plans for furnishing our prospective bedsitter at Skeldale House.

It was a blissful time with only one cloud on the horizon; but that cloud bulked large and forbidding. As I walked hand in hand with Helen, my thoughts in the air, she kept bringing me back to earth with an appealing look.

“You know, Jim, you’ll really have to speak to Dad. It’s time he knew.”

I
HAD BEEN WARNED
long before I qualified that country practice was a dirty, stinking job. I had accepted the fact and adjusted myself to it but there were times when this side of my life obtruded itself and became almost insupportable. Like now, when even after a long hot bath I still smelt.

As I hoisted myself from the steaming water I sniffed at my arm and there it was; the malodorous memory of that horrible cleansing at Tommy Dearlove’s striking triumphantly through all the soap and antiseptic, almost as fresh and pungent as it had been at four o’clock this afternoon. Nothing but time would remove it.

But something in me rebelled at the idea of crawling into bed in this state and I looked with something like desperation along the row of bottles on the bathroom shelf. I stopped at Mrs. Hall’s bath salts, shining violent pink in their big glass jar. This was something I’d never tried before and I tipped a small handful into the water round my feet. For a moment my head swam as the rising steam was suddenly charged with an aggressive sweetness then on an impulse I shook most of the jar’s contents into the bath and lowered myself once more under the surface.

For a long time I lay there smiling to myself in triumph as the oily liquid lapped around me. Not even Tommy Dearlove’s cleansing could survive this treatment.

The whole process had a stupefying effect on me and I was half asleep even as I sank back on the pillow. There followed a few moments of blissful floating before a delicious slumber claimed me. And when the bedside phone boomed in my ear the sense of injustice and personal affront was even stronger than usual. Blinking sleepily at the clock which said 1:15 a.m. I lifted the receiver and mumbled into it, but I was jerked suddenly wide awake when I recognised Mr. Alderson’s voice. Candy was calving and something was wrong. Would I come right away?

There has always been a “this is where I came in” feeling about a night call. And as my lights swept the cobbles of the deserted market place it was there again, a sense of returning to fundamentals, of really being me. The silent houses, the tight-drawn curtains, the long, empty street giving way to the stone walls of the country road flipping endlessly past on either side. At these times I was usually in a state of suspended animation, just sufficiently awake to steer the car in the right direction, but tonight I was fully alert, my mind ticking over anxiously.