All Creatures Great and Small (55 page)

I saw Tim Alton coming across the yard. There had been no need to lay down concrete or cobbles here; they had just swept away the thin soil and there, between house and buildings was a sloping stretch of fissured rock. It was more than a durable surface—it was everlasting.

“It’s your pig this time, then, Tim,” I said and the farmer nodded seriously.

“Aye, right as owt yesterday and laid flat like a dead ’un this morning. Never looked up when I filled his trough and by gaw when a pig won’t tackle his grub there’s summat far wrong.” Tim dug his hands inside the broad leather belt which encircled his oversized trousers and which always seemed to be about to nip his narrow frame in two and led the way gloomily into the sty. Despite the bitter poverty of his existence he was a man who took misfortune cheerfully. I had never seen him look like this and I thought I knew the reason; there is something personal about the family pig.

Smallholders like Tim Alton made their meagre living from a few cows; they sold their milk to the big dairies or made butter. And they killed a pig or two each year and cured it themselves for home consumption. On the poorer places it seemed to me that they ate little else; whatever meal I happened to stumble in on, the cooking smell was always the same—roasting fat bacon.

It appeared to be a matter of pride to make the pig as fat as possible; in fact, on these little wind-blown farms where the people and the cows and the dogs were lean and spare, the pig was about the only fat thing to be seen.

I had seen the Alton pig before. I had been stitching a cow’s torn teat about a fortnight ago and Tim had patted me on the shoulder and whispered: “Now come along wi’ me, Mr. Herriot and I’ll show tha summat.” We had looked into the sty at a twenty-five-stone monster effortlessly emptying a huge trough of wet meal. I could remember the pride in the farmer’s eyes and the way he listened to the smacking and slobbering as if to great music.

It was different today. The pig looked, if possible, even more enormous as it lay on its side, eyes closed, filling the entire floor of the sty like a beached whale. Tim splashed a stick among the untouched meal in the trough and made encouraging noises but the animal never stirred. The farmer looked at me with haggard eyes.

“He’s bad, Mr. Herriot. It’s serious whatever it is.”

I had been taking the temperature and when I read the thermometer I whistled. “A hundred and seven. That’s some fever.”

The colour drained from Tim’s face. “Oh ’ell! A hundred and seven! It’s hopeless, then. It’s ower with him.”

I had been feeling along the animal’s side and I smiled reassuringly. “No, don’t worry, Tim. I think he’s going to be all right. He’s got erysipelas. Here, put your fingers along his back. You can feel a lot of flat swellings on his skin—those are the diamonds. He’ll have a beautiful rash within a few hours but at the moment you can’t see it, you can only feel it.”

“And you can make him better?”

“I’m nearly sure I can. I’ll give him a whacking dose of serum and I’d like to bet you he’ll have his nose in that trough in a couple of days. Most of them get over it all right.”

“Well that’s a bit o’ good news, any road,” said Tim, a smile flooding over his face. “You had me worried there with your hundred and seven, dang you!”

I laughed. “Sorry, Tim, didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m often happier to see a high temperature than a low one. But it’s a funny time for erysipelas. We usually see it in late summer.”

“All right, I’ll let ye off this time. Come in and wash your hands.”

In the kitchen I ducked my head but couldn’t avoid bumping the massive side of bacon hanging from the beamed ceiling. The heavy mass rocked gently on its hooks; it was about eight inches thick in parts—all pure white fat. Only by close inspection was it possible to discern a thin strip of lean meat.

Mrs. Alton produced a cup of tea and as I sipped I looked across at Tim who had fallen back into a chair and lay with his hands hanging down; for a moment he closed his eyes and his face became a mask of weariness. I thought for the hundredth time about the endless labour which made up the lives of these little farmers. Alton was only forty but his body was already bent and ravaged by the constant demands he made on it; you could read his story in the corded forearm, the rough, work-swollen fingers. He told me once that the last time he missed a milking was twelve years ago and that was for his father’s funeral.

I was taking my leave when I saw Jennie. She was the Altons’ eldest child and was pumping vigorously at the tyre of her bicycle which was leaning against the wall just outside the kitchen door.

“Going somewhere?” I asked and the girl straightened up quickly, pushing back a few strands of dark hair from her forehead. She was about eighteen with delicate features and large, expressive eyes; in her wild, pinched prettiness there was something of the wheeling curlews, the wind and sun, the wide emptiness of the moors.

“I’m going down to t’village.” She stole a glance into the kitchen. “I’m going to get a bottle of Guinness for dad.”

“The village! It’s a long way to go for a bottle of Guinness. It must be two miles and then you’ve got to push back up this hill. Are you going all that way just for one bottle?”

“Ay, just one,” she whispered, counting out a sixpence and some coppers into her palm with calm absorption. “Dad’s been up all night waiting for a heifer to calve—he’s tired out. I won’t be long and he can have his Guinness with his dinner. That’s what he likes.” She looked up at me conspiratorially. “It’ll be a surprise for him.”

As she spoke, her father, still sprawled in the chair, turned his head and looked at her; he smiled and for a moment I saw a serenity in the steady eyes, a nobility in the seamed face.

Jennie looked at him for a few seconds, a happy secret look from under her lowered brows; then she turned quickly, mounted her bicycle and began to pedal down the track at surprising speed.

I followed her more slowly, the car, in second gear, bumping and swaying over the stones. I stared straight ahead, lost in thought. I couldn’t stop my mind roaming between the two houses I had visited; between the gracious mansion by the river and the crumbling farmhouse I had just left; from Henry Tavener with his beautiful clothes, his well-kept hands, his rows of books and pictures and clocks to Tim Alton with his worn, chest-high trousers nipped in by that great belt, his daily, monthly, yearly grind to stay alive on that unrelenting hilltop.

But I kept coming back to the daughters; to the contempt in Julia Tavener’s eyes when she looked at her father and the shining tenderness in Jennie Alton’s.

It wasn’t so easy to work out as it seemed; in fact it became increasingly difficult to decide who was getting the most out of their different lives. But as I guided the car over the last few yards of the track and pulled on to the smooth tarmac of the road it came to me with unexpected clarity. Taking it all in all, if I had the choice to make, I’d settle for the Guinness.

SIXTY-TWO

T
RISTAN WAS UNPACKING THE
U.C.M.’s.
These bottles contained a rich red fluid which constituted our last line of defence in the battle with animal disease. Its full name, Universal Cattle Medicine, was proclaimed on the label in big black type and underneath it pointed out that it was highly efficacious for coughs, chills, scours, garget, milk fever, pneumonia, felon and bloat. It finished off on a confident note with the assurance: “Never Fails to Give Relief” and we had read the label so often that we half believed it.

It was a pity it didn’t do any good because there was something compelling about its ruby depths when you held it up to the light and about the solid camphor-ammonia jolt when you sniffed at it and which made the farmers blink and shake their heads and say “By gaw, that’s powerful stuff,” with deep respect. But our specific remedies were so few and the possibilities of error so plentiful that it was comforting in cases of doubt to be able to hand over a bottle of the old standby. Whenever an entry of Siegfried’s or mine appeared in the day book stating “Visit attend cow, advice, 1 U.C.M.” it was a pretty fair bet we didn’t know what was wrong with the animal.

The bottles were tall and shapely and they came in elegant white cartons, so much more impressive than the unobtrusive containers of the antibiotics and steroids which we use today. Tristan was lifting them out of the tea chest and stacking them on the shelves in deep rows. When he saw me he ceased his labours, sat on the chest and pulled out a packet of Woodbines. He lit one, pulled the smoke a long way down then fixed me with a noncommittal stare.

“You’re taking her to the pictures then?”

Feeling vaguely uneasy under his eye, I tipped a pocketful of assorted empties into the waste basket. “Yes, that’s right. In about an hour.”

“Mm.” He narrowed his eyes against the slowly escaping smoke. “Mm I see.”

“Well what are you looking like that for?” I said defensively. “Anything wrong with going to the pictures?”

“No-no. No-no-no. Nothing at all, Jim. Nothing, nothing. A very wholesome pursuit.”

“But you don’t think I should be taking Helen there.”

“I never said that. No, I’m sure you’ll have a nice time. It’s just that …” He scratched his head. “I thought you might have gone in for something a bit more … well … enterprising.”

I gave a bitter laugh. “Look, I tried enterprise at the Reniston. Oh, I’m not blaming you, Triss, you meant well, but as you know it was a complete shambles. I just don’t want anything to go wrong tonight I’m playing safe.”

“Well, I won’t argue with you there,” Tristan said. “You couldn’t get much safer than the Darrowby Plaza.”

And later, shivering in the tub in the vast, draughty bathroom, I couldn’t keep out the thought that Tristan was right. Taking Helen to the local cinema was a form of cowardice, a shrinking away from reality into what I hoped would be a safe, dark intimacy. But as I towelled myself, hopping about to keep warm, and looked out through the fringe of wistaria at the darkening garden there was comfort in the thought that it was another beginning, even though a small one.

And as I closed the door of Skeldale House and looked along the street to where the first lights of the shops beckoned in the dusk I felt a lifting of the heart. It was as though a breath from the near-by hills had touched me. A fleeting fragrance which said winter had gone. It was still cold—it was always cold in Darrowby until well into May—but the promise was there, of sunshine and warm grass and softer days.

You had to look closely or you could easily miss the Plaza, tucked in as it was between Pickersgills the ironmongers and Howarths the chemists. There had never been much attempt at grandeur in its architecture and the entrance was hardly wider than the average shop front. But what puzzled me as I approached was that the place was in darkness. I was in good time but the show was due to start in ten minutes or so and there was no sign of life.

I hadn’t dared tell Tristan that my precautions had extended as far as arranging to meet Helen here. With a car like mine there was always an element of doubt about arriving anywhere in time or indeed at all and I had drought it prudent to eliminate all transport hazards.

“Meet you outside the cinema.” My God, it wasn’t very bright was it? It took me back to my childhood, to the very first time I had taken a girl out. I was just fourteen and on my way to meet her I tendered my only half-crown to a bloody-minded Glasgow tram conductor and asked for a penny fare. He vented his spleen on me by ransacking his bag and giving me my change entirely in halfpennies. So when the cinema queue reached the pay box I had to stand there with my little partner and everybody else watching while I paid for our shilling tickets with great handfuls of copper. The shame of it left a scar—it was another four years before I took out a girl again.

But the black thoughts were dispelled when I saw Helen picking her way across the market-place cobbles. She smiled and waved cheerfully as if being taken to the Darrowby Plaza was the biggest treat a girl could wish for, and when she came right up to me there was a soft blush on her cheeks and her eyes were bright.

Everything was suddenly absolutely right. I felt a surging conviction that this was going to be a good night—nothing was going to spoil it. After we had said hello she told me that Dan was running about like a puppy with no trace of a limp and the news was another wave on the high tide of my euphoria.

The only thing that troubled me was the blank, uninhabited appearance of the cinema entrance.

“Strange there’s nobody here,” I said. “It’s nearly starting time. I suppose the place is open?”

“Must be,” Helen said. “It’s open every night but Sunday. Anyway, I’m sure these people are waiting too.”

I looked around. There was no queue as such but little groups were standing here and there; a few couples, mostly middle-aged, a bunch of small boys rolling and fighting on the pavement. Nobody seemed worried.

And indeed there was no cause. Exactly two minutes before the picture was due to start a figure in a mackintosh coat pedalled furiously round the corner of the street, head down, legs pistoning, the bicycle lying over at a perilous angle with the ground. He came to a screeching halt outside the entrance, inserted a key in the lock and threw wide the doors. Reaching inside, he flicked a switch and a single neon strip flickered fitfully above our heads and went out. It did this a few times and seemed bent on mischief till he stood on tiptoe and beat it into submission with a masterful blow of his fist. Then he whipped off the mackintosh revealing faultless evening-dress. The manager had arrived.

While this was going on a very fat lady appeared from nowhere and wedged herself into the pay box. The show was ready to roll.

We all began to shuffle inside. The little boys put down their ninepences and punched each other as they passed through a curtain into the stalls, while the rest of us proceeded decorously upstairs to the one-and-sixpenny seats in the balcony. The manager, his white shirt front and silk lapels gleaming, smiled and bowed with great courtesy as we passed.