If Only They Could Talk (27 page)

'Eccentric?' Ernest sniggered into his tea. 'Bloody daft, more like.'

'Ah, but not so daft, Ernest. Not daft enough to pay for 'is grub.'

'You 'ave a point there, Kenneth, a definite point.'

'You bet I have. He's enjoying a nice cup of Bovril on the house and if 'e hadn't mistimed his fumble he'd be at the sandwich too. Dora moved a bit sharpish for 'im there - another five seconds and he'd have had 'is choppers in the ham.'

'True, true,' mustered Ernest, seemingly content with his role of straight man.

Kenneth put away his match, sucked his teeth noisily and leaned back. 'There's another possibility we 'aven't considered. He could be on the run.'

'Escaped convict, you mean, Kenneth?'

'I do, Ernest, I do indeed.'

'But them fellers allus have arrows on their uniforms.'

'Ah, some of 'em do. But I 'eard somewhere that some of the prisons is going in for stripes now.'

I had had enough. Tipping the last searing drops of Bovril down my throat I made headlong for the door. As I stepped out into the early sunshine Kenneth's final pronouncement reached me.

'Prob'ly got away from a working party. Look at them Wellingtons...'

Postscript

I remember it was an afternoon when the sun blazed. I filled my car with Siegfried's dogs and drove to where an old mine track climbed green and inviting on the side of a steep hill. We walked a mile or two on the smooth turf then turned off and headed straight up the hillside through the hot bracken scent and the hum of flies to the very top where the wind was sweet and welcome and you could see nearly all of the Dale laid out there beneath, nearly all of it from the head where the great bare hills stood on the edge of the wild right down to the rich plain, chequered and hazy, at the foot.

I was sitting in the heather with the dogs in an expectant ring when the Dales smell came up on the breeze, the fragrance which the wind stole from the miles of warm grass and the shy flowers of the moorland. It had met me when I first stepped off the bus at Darrowby a year ago. And I realised that I had worked my way through the full cycle: I had travelled that magical first time round.

And it had all happened down there. Many of the farms in the practice were visible from where I sat; splashes of grey stone with their livestock, motionless dots from this distance, scattered in the fields around them. They were unrecognisable as the battle grounds of the past year, the scenes of my first struggles where everything had happened from heady success to abject failure. There were people down there who thought I was a pretty fair vet, some who regarded me as an amiable idiot, a few who were convinced I was a genius and one or two who would set their dogs on me if I put a foot inside their gates.

All this in a year. What would be the position in thirty years? Well, as it has turned out, very much the same.

And what of the animals around whom the whole little drama revolves?

It is a pity they cannot talk because it would be charming to have their views. There are a few things I would like to know. What do they think of their widely varying lives? What do they think of us? And do they manage to get a laugh out of it all?

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