All Creatures Great and Small (53 page)

As I turned over the gloomy thoughts the three little girls went up to the pony. The biggest put her arms round his neck and laid her cheek against his shoulder while the others stroked the shivering flanks. There were no tears, no change in the blank expressions, but it was easy to see that that pony really meant something to them.

Before leaving I handed over a bottle of tincture of aconite mixture. “Get a dose of this down him every four hours, Mr. Myatt, and be sure to keep putting cold water on the feet. I’ll come and see him in the morning.”

I closed the car door and looked through the window again at the slow-rising smoke, the drifting snowflakes and the three children with their ragged dresses and uncombed hair still stroking the pony.

“Well you got the brass, James,” Siegfried said at lunch, carelessly stuffing the ten shilling note into a bulging pocket. “What was the trouble?”

“Worst case of laminitis I’ve ever seen. Couldn’t move the pony at all and he’s going through hell. I’ve done the usual things but I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to be enough.”

“Not a very bright prognosis, then?”

“Really black. Even if he gets over the acute stage he’ll have deformed feet, I’d like to bet. Grooved hooves, dropped soles, the lot. And he’s a grand little animal, lovely piebald. I wish to God there was something else I could do.”

Siegfried sawed two thick slices off the cold mutton and dropped them on my plate. He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment. “You’ve been a little distrait since you came back. These are rotten jobs, I know, but it’s no good worrying.”

“Ach, I’m not worrying, exactly, but I can’t get it off my mind. Maybe it’s those people—the Myatts. They were something new to me. Right out of the world. And three raggedy little girls absolutely crazy about that pony. They aren’t going to like it at all.”

As Siegfried chewed his mutton I could see the old glint coming into his eyes; it showed when the talk had anything to do with horses. I knew he wouldn’t push in but he was waiting for me to make the first move. I made it.

“I wish you’d come along and have a look with me. Maybe there’s something you could suggest Do you think there could be?”

Siegfried put down his knife and fork and stared in front of him for a few seconds, then he turned to me. “You know, James, there just might be. Quite obviously this is a right pig of a case and the ordinary remedies aren’t going to do any good. We have to pull something out of the bag and I’ve got an idea. There’s just one thing.” He gave me a crooked smile. “You may not like it.”

“Don’t bother about me,” I said. “You’re the horseman. If you can help this pony I don’t care what you do.”

“Right, eat up then and we’ll go into action together.” We finished our meal and he led me through to the instrument room. I was surprised when he opened the cupboard where old Mr. Grant’s instruments were kept. It was a kind of museum.

When Siegfried had bought the practice from the old vet who had worked on into his eighties these instruments had come with it and they lay there in rows, unused but undisturbed. It would have been logical to throw them out, but maybe Siegfried felt the same way about them as I did. The polished wooden boxes of shining, odd-shaped scalpels, the enema pumps and douches with their perished rubber and brass fittings, the seaton needles, the ancient firing irons—they were a silent testament to sixty years of struggle. I often used to open that cupboard door and try to picture the old man wrestling with the same problems as I had, travelling the same narrow roads as I did. He had done it absolutely on his own and for sixty years. I was only starting but I knew a little about the triumphs and disasters, the wondering and worrying, the hopes and disappointments—and the hard labour. Anyway, Mr. Grant was dead and gone, taking with him all the skills and knowledge I was doggedly trying to accumulate.

Siegfried reached to the back of the cupboard and pulled out a long flat box. He blew the dust from the leather covering and gingerly unfastened the clasp. Inside, a fleam, glittering on its bed of frayed velvet, lay by the side of a round, polished blood stick.

I looked at my employer in astonishment. “You’re going to bleed him, then?”

“Yes, my boy, I’m going to take you back to the Middle Ages.” He looked at my startled face and put a hand on my arm. “But don’t start beating me over the head with all the scientific arguments against blood-letting. I’ve no strong views either way.”

“But have you ever done it? I’ve never seen you use this outfit.”

“I’ve done it. And I’ve seen some funny things after it, too.” Siegfried turned away as if he wanted no more discussion. He cleaned the fleam thoroughly and dropped it into the steriliser. His face was expressionless as he stood listening to the hiss of the boiling water.

The gipsies were again hunched over the fire when we got there and Mr. Myatt, sensing that reinforcements had arrived, scrambled to his feet and shuffled forward, holding out another ten shilling note.

Siegfried waved it away. “Let’s see how we get on, Mr. Myatt,” he grunted. He strode across the grass to where the pony still trembled in his agonised crouch. There was no improvement; in fact the eyes stared more wildly and I could hear little groans as the piebald carefully eased himself from foot to foot.

Siegfried spoke softly without looking at me, “Poor beggar. You weren’t exaggerating, James. Bring that box from the car, will you?”

When I came back he was tying a choke rope round the base of the pony’s neck. “Pull it up tight,” he said. As the jugular rose up tense and turgid in its furrow he quickly clipped and disinfected a small area and inserted a plaque of local anaesthetic. Finally he opened the old leather-covered box and extracted the fleam, wrapped in sterile lint.

Everything seemed to start happening then. Siegfried placed the little blade of the fleam against the bulging vein and without hesitation gave it a confident smack with the stick. Immediately an alarming cascade of blood spouted from the hole and began to form a dark lake on the grass. Mr. Myatt gasped and the little girls set up a sudden chatter. I could understand how they felt. In fact I was wondering how long the pony could stand this tremendous outflow without dropping down.

It didn’t seem to be coming out fast enough for Siegfried, however, because he produced another stick from his pocket, thrust it into the pony’s mouth and began to work the jaws. And as the animal champed, the blood gushed more fiercely.

When at least a gallon had come away Siegfried seemed satisfied. “Slacken the rope, James,” he cried, then rapidly closed the wound on the neck with a pin suture. Next he trotted over the grass and looked over a gate in the roadside wall. “Thought so,” he shouted. “There’s a little beck in that field. We’ve got to get him over to it. Come on, lend a hand everybody!”

He was clearly enjoying himself and his presence was having its usual effect. The Myatts were spurred suddenly into action and began to run around aimlessly, bumping into each other. I was gripped by a sudden tension and preparedness and even the pony seemed to be taking an interest in his surroundings for the first time.

All five of the gipsies pulled at the halter, Siegfried and I looped our arms behind the pony’s thighs, everybody gave encouraging shouts and at last he began to move forward. It was a painful process but he kept going—through the gate and across the field to where the shallow stream wandered among its rushes. There were no banks to speak of and it was easy to push him out into the middle. As he stood there with the icy water rippling round his inflamed hooves I fancied I could read in his eyes a faint dawning of an idea that things were looking up at last.

“Now he must stand in there for an hour,” Siegfried said. “And then you’ll have to make him walk round the field. Then another hour in the beck. As he gets better you can give him more and more exercise but he must come back to the beck. There’s a lot of work for somebody here, so who’s going to do it?”

The three little girls came shyly round him and looked up, wide-eyed, into his face. Siegfried laughed. “You three want the job, do you? Right, I’ll tell you just what to do.”

He pulled out the bag of peppermint drops which was an ever-present among his widely-varied pocket luggage and I settled myself for a long wait. I had seen him in action with the children on the farms and when that bag of sweets came out, everything stopped. It was the one time Siegfried was never in a hurry.

The little girls each solemnly took a sweet, then Siegfried squatted on his heels and began to address them like a professor with his class. They soon began to thaw and put a word in for themselves. The smallest launched into a barely intelligible account of the remarkable things the pony had done when he was a foal and Siegfried listened intently, nodding his head gravely now and then. There was all the time in the world.

His words obviously went home because, over the next few days whenever I passed the gipsy camp I could see the three wild little figures either grouped around the pony in the beck or dragging him round the field on a long halter shank. I didn’t need to butt in—I could see he was improving all the time.

It was about a week later that I saw the Myatts on their way out of Darrowby, the red caravan rocking across the market place with Mr. Myatt up front wearing a black velvet cap, his wife by his side. Tethered to various parts of the caravan the family of horses clopped along and right at the rear was the piebald, a bit stiff perhaps, but going very well. He’d be all right.

The little girls were looking out of the back door and as they spotted me I waved. They looked back at me unsmilingly until they had almost turned the corner into Hallgate then one of them shyly lifted her hand. The others followed suit and my last sight was of them waving eagerly back.

I strolled into the Drovers and took a thoughtful half pint into a corner. Siegfried had done the trick there all right but I was wondering what to make of it because in veterinary practice it is difficult to draw definite conclusions even after spectacular results. Was it my imagination or did that pony seem to feel relief almost immediately after the blood-letting? Would we ever have got him moving without it? Was it really the right thing in these cases to bash a hole in the jugular and release about a bucketful of the precious fluid? I still don’t have the answers because I never dared try it for myself.

SIXTY

“C
OULD
M
R.
H
ERRIOT SEE
my dog, please?”

Familiar enough words coming from the waiting-room but it was the voice that brought me to a slithering halt just beyond the door.

It couldn’t be, no of course it couldn’t, but it sounded just like Helen. I tiptoed back and applied my eye without hesitation to the crack in the door. Tristan was standing there looking down at somebody just beyond my range of vision. All I could see was a hand resting on the head of a patient sheep dog, the hem of a tweed skirt and two silk stockinged legs.

They were nice legs—not skinny—and could easily belong to a big girl like Helen. My cogitations were cut short as a head bent over to speak to the dog and I had a close up in profile of the small straight nose and the dark hair falling across the milky smoothness of the cheek.

I was still peering, bemused, when Tristan shot out of the room and collided with me. Stifling an oath, he grabbed my arm and hauled me along the passage into the dispensary. He shut the door and spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“It’s her! The Alderson woman! And she wants to see you! Not Siegfried, not me, but you, Mr. Herriot himself!”

He looked at me wide-eyed for a few moments then, as I stood hesitating he opened the door and tried to propel me into the passage.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” he hissed.

“Well, it’s a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? After that dance, I mean. Last time she saw me I was a lovely sight—so pie-eyed I couldn’t even speak”

Tristan struck his forehead with his hand. “God help us! You worry about details, don’t you? She’s asked to see you—what more do you want? Go on, get in there!”

I was shuffling off irresolutely when he raised a hand. “Just a minute. Stay right there.” He trotted off and returned in a few seconds holding out a white lab coat.

“Just back from the laundry,” he said as he began to work my arms into the starched sleeves. “You’ll look marvellous in this, Jim—the immaculate young surgeon.”

I stood unresisting as he buttoned me into the garment but struck away his hand when he started to straighten my tie. As I left him he gave me a final encouraging wave before heading for the back stairs.

I didn’t give myself any more time to think but marched straight into the waiting-room. Helen looked up and smiled. And it was just the same smile. Nothing behind it. Just the same friendly, steady-eyed smile as when I first met her.

We faced each other in silence for some moments then when I didn’t say anything she looked down at the dog.

“It’s Dan in trouble this time,” she said. “He’s our sheep dog but we’re so fond of him that he’s more like one of the family.”

The dog wagged his tail furiously at the sound of his name but yelped as he came towards me. I bent down and patted his head. “I see he’s holding up a hind leg.”

“Yes, he jumped over a wall this morning and he’s been like that ever since. I think it’s something quite bad—he can’t put any weight on the leg.”

“Right, bring him through to the other room and I’ll have a look at him. But take him on in front of me, will you, and I’ll be able to watch how he walks.”

I held the door open and she went through ahead of me with the dog.

Watching how Helen walked distracted me over the first few yards, but it was a long passage and by the time we had reached the second bend I had managed to drag my attention back to my patient.

And glory be, it was a dislocated hip. It had to be with that shortening of the limb and the way he carried it underneath his body with the paw just brushing the ground.

My feelings were mixed. This was a major injury but on the other hand the chances were I could put it right quickly and look good in the process. Because I had found, in my brief experience, that one of the most spectacular procedures in practice was the reduction of a dislocated hip. Maybe I had been lucky, but with the few I had seen I had been able to convert an alarmingly lame animal into a completely sound one as though by magic.