But on this particular afternoon I wasn’t thinking about Duke Skelton, in fact I wasn’t thinking about anything much as I sprawled in a chair by the Ross’s fireside. I had just finished one of Ginny’s lunches; something with the unassuming name of fish pie but in truth a magical concoction in which the humble haddock was elevated to unimagined heights by the admixture of potatoes, tomatoes, eggs, macaroni and things only Ginny knew. Then the apple crumble and the chair close to the fire with the heat from the flames beating on my face.
The thoughts I had were slumberous ones; that this house and the people in it had come to have a magnetic attraction for me; that if this had been a big successful practice the phone would have been dinging and Ewan would be struggling into his coat as he chewed his last bite. And an unworthy thought as I glanced through the window at the white garden and the snow-burdened trees; that if I didn’t hurry back to Darrowby, Siegfried might do double the work and finish the lot before I got home.
Playing with the soothing picture of the muffled figure of my boss battling round the farms I watched Ginny placing a coffee cup by her husband’s elbow. Ewan smiled up into her face and just then the phone rang.
Like most vets I am bell-happy and I jumped, but Ewan didn’t. He began quietly to sip his coffee as Ginny picked up the receiver and he didn’t change expression when his wife came over and said, “It’s Tommy Thwaite. One of his cows has put its calf bed out.”
These dread tidings would have sent me leaping round the room but Ewan took a long swallow at his coffee before replying.
“Thank you, dear. Will you tell him I’ll have a look at her shortly.”
He turned to me and began to tell me something funny which had happened to him that morning and when he had finished he went into his characteristic laugh—showing nothing apart from a vibration of the shoulders and a slight popping of the eyes. Then he relaxed in his chair and recommenced his leisurely sipping.
Though it wasn’t my case my feet were itching. A bovine prolapsed uterus was not only an urgent condition but it held such grim promise of hard labour that I could never get it over quickly enough. Some were worse than others and I was always in a hurry to find out what was in store.
Ewan, however, appeared to be totally incurious. In fact he closed his eyes and I thought for a moment he was settling down for a post prandial nap. But it was only a gesture of resignation at the wrecking of his afternoon’s repose and he gave a final stretch and got up.
“Want to come with me, Jim?” he asked in his soft voice.
I hesitated for a moment then, callously abandoning Siegfried to his fate, I nodded eagerly and followed Ewan into the kitchen.
He sat down and pulled on a pair of thick woolen over-socks which Ginny had been warming by the stove, then he put on his Wellingtons, a short overcoat, yellow gloves and a check cap. As he strolled along the narrow track which had been dug through the garden snow he looked extraordinarily youthful and debonair.
He didn’t go into his dispensary this time and I wondered what equipment he would use, thinking at the same time of Siegfried’s words: “Ewan has his own way of doing everything.”
At the farm Mr. Thwaite trotted over to meet us. He was understandably agitated but there was something else; a nervous rubbing of the hands, an uneasy giggle as he watched my colleague opening the car boot.
“Mr. Ross,” he blurted out at last, “I don’t want you to be upset, but I’ve summat to tell you.” He paused for a moment. “Duke Skelton’s in there with my cow.”
Ewan’s expression did not flicker. “Oh, right. Then you won’t need me.” He closed the boot, opened the door and got back into the car.
“Hey, hey, I didn’t mean you to go away!” Mr. Thwaite ran round and cried through the glass. “Duke just happened to be in t’village and he said he’d help me out.”
“Fine,” Ewan said, winding down the window, “I don’t mind in the least. I’m sure he’ll do a good job for you.”
The farmer screwed up his face in misery. “But you don’t understand. He’s been in there for about an hour and a half and he’s no further forward. He’s not doin’ a bit o’ good and he’s about buggered an’ all. I want you to take over, Mr. Ross.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Ewan gave him a level stare. “I couldn’t possibly interfere. You know how it is, Tommy. He’s begun the job—I’ve got to let him finish.” He started the engine.
“No, no, don’t go!” shouted Mr. Thwaite, beating the car roof with his hands. “Duke’s whacked, I tell ye. If you drive away now ah’m going to lose one of ma best cows. You’ve got to help me, Mr. Ross!” He seemed on the verge of tears.
My colleague looked at him thoughtfully as the engine purred. Then he bent forward and turned off the ignition. “All right, I’ll tell you what—I’ll go in there and see what he says. If he wants me to help, then I will.”
I followed him into the byre and as we paused just inside the door Duke Skelton looked up from his work. He had been standing head down, one hand resting on the rump of a massive cow, his mouth hanging open, his great barrel chest heaving. The thick hair over his shoulders and ribs was matted with blood from the huge everted uterus which dangled behind the animal. Blood and filth streaked his face and covered his arms and as he stared at us from under his shaggy brows he looked like something from the jungle.
“Well now, Mr. Skelton,” Ewan murmured conversationally, “How are you getting on?”
Duke gave him a quick malevolent glance. “Ah’m doin’ all right.” The words rumbled from deep down through his gaping lips.
Mr. Thwaite stepped forward, smiling ingratiatingly. “Come on, Duke, you’ve done your best. I think you should let Mr. Ross give you a ’and now.”
“Well ah don’t.” The big man’s jaw jutted suddenly. “If I was lookin’ for help I wouldn’t want ’IM.” He turned away and seized the uterus. Hoisting it in his arms he began to push at it with fierce concentration.
Mr. Thwaite turned to us with an expression of despair and opened his mouth to lament again, but Ewan silenced him with a raised hand, pulled a milking stool from a corner and squatted down comfortably against a wall. Unhurriedly he produced his little pouch and, one-handed, began to make a cigarette; as he licked the paper, screwed up the end and applied a match he gazed with blank eyes at the sweating, struggling figure a few feet from him.
Duke had got the uterus about half way back. Grunting and gasping, legs straddled, he had worked the engorged mass inch by inch inside the vulva till he had just about enough cradled in his arms for one last push; and as he stood there taking a breather with the great muscles of his shoulders and arms rigid his immense strength was formidably displayed. But he wasn’t as strong as that cow. No man is as strong as a cow and this cow was one of the biggest I had ever seen with a back like a table top and rolls of fat round her tail-head.
I had been in this position myself and I knew what was coming next. I didn’t have to wait long. Duke took a long wheezing breath and made his assault, heaving desperately, pushing with arms and chest, and for a second or two he seemed to be winning as the mass disappeared steadily inside. Then the cow gave an almost casual strain and the whole thing welled out again till it hung down bumping against the animal’s hocks.
As Duke almost collapsed against her pelvis in the same attitude as when we first came in I felt pity for the man. I found him uncharming but I felt for him. That could easily be me standing there; my jacket and shirt hanging on that nail, my strength ebbing, my sweat mingling with the blood. No man could do what he was trying to do. You could push back a calf bed with the aid of an epidural anaesthetic to stop the straining or you could sling the animal up to a beam with a block and tackle; you couldn’t just stand there and do it from scratch as this chap was trying to do.
I was surprised Duke hadn’t learned that with all his experience; but apparently it still hadn’t dawned on him even now because he was going through all the motions of having another go. This time he
got even further—a few more inches inside before the cow popped it out again. The animal appeared to have a sporting streak because there was something premeditated about the way she played her victim along before timing her thrust at the very last moment. Apart from that she seemed somewhat bored by the whole business; in fact with the possible exception of Ewan she was the calmest among us.
Duke was trying again. As he bent over wearily and picked up the gory organ I wondered how often he had done this since he arrived nearly two hours ago. He had guts, there was no doubt. But the end was near. There was a frantic urgency about his movements as though he knew himself it was his last throw and as he yet again neared his goal his grunts changed to an agonised whimpering, an almost tearful sound as though he were appealing to the recalcitrant mass, beseeching it to go away inside and stay away, just this once.
And when the inevitable happened and the poor fellow, panting and shaking, surveyed once more the ruin of his hopes I had the feeling that somebody had to do something.
Mr. Thwaite did it. “You’ve had enough, Duke,” he said. “For God’s sake come in the house and get cleaned up. Missus’ll give you a bit o’ dinner and while you’re having it Mr. Ross’ll see what he can do.”
The big man, arms hanging limp by his sides, chest heaving, stared at the farmer for a few seconds then he turned abruptly and snatched his clothes from the wall.
“Aw right,” he said and began to walk slowly towards the door. He stopped opposite Ewan but didn’t look at him. “But ah’ll tell you summat, Maister Thwaite. If ah can’t put that calf bed back this awd bugger never will.”
Ewan drew on his cigarette and peered up at him impassively. He didn’t follow him with his eyes as he left the byre but leaned back against the walk puffed out a thin plume of smoke and watched it rise and disappear among the shadows in the roof.
Mr. Thwaite was soon back. “Now, Mr. Ross,” he said a little breathlessly, “I’m sorry about you havin’ to wait but we can get on now. I expect you’ll be needin’ some fresh hot water and is there anything else you want?”
Ewan dropped his cigarette on the cobbles and ground it with his foot. “Yes, you can bring me a pound of sugar.”
“What’s that?”
“A pound of sugar.”
“A pound of…right, right…I’ll get it.”
In no time at all the farmer returned with an unopened paper bag. Ewan split the top with his finger, walked over to the cow and began to dust the sugar all over the uterus. Then he turned to Mr. Thwaite again.
“And I’ll want a pig stool, too. I expect you have one.”
“Oh aye, we have one, but what the hangment…?”
Ewan cocked a gentle eye at him. “Bring it in, then. It’s time we got this job done.”
As the farmer disappeared at a stiff gallop I went over to my colleague. “What’s going on, Ewan? What the devil are you chucking that sugar about for?”
“Oh it draws the serum out of the uterus. You can’t beat it when the thing’s engorged like that.”
“It does?” I glanced unbelievingly at the bloated organ. “And aren’t you going to give her an epidural…and some pituitrin…and a calcium injection?”
“Och no,” Ewan replied with his slow smile. “I never bother about those things.”
I didn’t get the chance to ask him what he wanted with the pig stool because just then Mr. Thwaite trotted in with one under his arm.
Most farms used to have them. They were often called “creels” and the sides of bacon were laid on them at pig-killing time. This was a typical specimen—like a long low table with four short legs and a slatted concave top. Ewan took hold of it and pushed it carefully under the cow just in front of the udder while I stared at it through narrowed eyes. I was getting out of my depth.
Ewan then walked unhurriedly out to his car and returned with a length of rope and two objects wrapped in the inevitable brown paper. As he draped the rope over the partition, pulled on a rubber parturition gown and began to open the parcels I realised I was once again watching Ewan setting out his stall.
From the first parcel he produced what looked like a beer tray but which I decided couldn’t possibly be; but when he said, “Here, hold this a minute, Jim,” and I read the emblazoned gold scroll, “John Smith’s Magnet Pale Ale” I had to change my mind. It was a beer tray.
He began to unfold the brown paper from the other object and my brain reeled a little as he fished out an empty whisky bottle and placed it on the tray. Standing there with my strange burden I felt like the stooge in a conjuring act and I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if my colleague had produced a live rabbit next.
But all he did was to fill the whisky bottle with some of the clean hot water from the bucket.
Next he looped the rope round the cow’s horns, passed it round the body a couple of times then leaned back and pulled. Without protest the big animal collapsed gently on top of the milk stool and lay there with her rear end stuck high in the air.
“Right now, we can start,” Ewan murmured, and as I threw down my jacket and began to tear off my tie he turned to me in surprise.
“Here, here, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Well I’m going to give you a hand, of course.”
One corner of his mouth twitched upwards. “It’s kind of you, Jim, but there’s no need to get stripped off. This will only take a minute. I just want you and Mr. Thwaite to keep the thing level for me.”
He gently hoisted the organ, which to my fevered imagination had shrunk visibly since the sugar, on to the beer tray and gave the farmer and me an end each to hold.
Then he pushed the uterus back.
He did literally only take a minute or not much more. Without effort, without breaking sweat or exerting visible pressure he returned that vast mass to where it belonged while the cow, unable to strain or do a thing about it, just lay there with an aggrieved expression on her face. Then he took his whisky bottle, passed it carefully into the vagina and disappeared up to arm’s length where he began to move his shoulder vigorously.
“What the hell are you doing now?” I whispered agitatedly into his ear from my position at the end of the beer tray.
“I’m rotating each horn to get it back into place and pouring a little hot water from the bottle into the ends of the horns to make sure they’re completely involuted.”
“Oh, I see.” I watched as he removed the bottle, soaped his arms in the bucket and began to take off his overall.
“But aren’t you going to stitch it in?” I blurted out.
Ewan shook his head. “No, Jim. If you put it back properly it never comes out again.”
He was drying his hands when the byre door opened and Duke Skelton slouched in. He was washed and dressed, with his red handkerchief knotted again round his neck and he glared fierce-eyed at the cow which, tidied up and unperturbed, looked now just like all the other cows in the row. His lips moved once or twice before he finally found his voice.
“Aye, it’s all right for some people,” he snarled. “Some people with their bloody fancy injections and instruments! It’s bloody easy that way, isn’t it!” Then he swung round and was gone.
As I heard his heavy boots clattering across the yard it struck me that his words were singularly inapt. What was there even remotely fancy about a pig stool, a pound of sugar, a whisky bottle and a beer tray?
22
“I WORK FOR CATS.”
That was how Mrs. Bond introduced herself on my first visit, gripping my hand firmly and thrusting out her jaw defiantly as though challenging me to make something of it. She was a big woman with a strong, high-cheekboned face and a commanding presence and I wouldn’t have argued with her anyway, so I nodded gravely as though I fully understood and agreed, and allowed her to lead me into the house.
I saw at once what she meant. The big kitchen-living room had been completely given over to cats. There were cats on the sofas and chairs and spilling in cascades on to the f
loor, cats sitting in rows along the window sills and right in the middle of it all, little Mr. Bond, pallid, wispy-moustached, in his shirt sleeves reading a newspaper.
It was a scene which was going to become very familiar. A lot of the cats were obviously uncastrated Toms because the atmosphere was vibrant with their distinctive smell—a fierce pungency which overwhelmed even the sickly wisps from the big saucepans of nameless cat food bubbling on the stove. And Mr. Bond was always there, always in his shirt sleeves and reading his paper, a lonely little island in a sea of cats.
I had heard of the Bonds, of course. They were Londoners who for some obscure reason had picked on North Yorkshire for their retirement. People said they had a “bit o’ brass” and they had bought an old house on the outskirts of Darrowby where they kept themselves to themselves—and the cats. I had heard that Mrs. Bond was in the habit of taking in strays and feeding them and giving them a home if they wanted it and this had predisposed me in her favour, because in my experience the unfortunate feline species seemed to be fair game for every kind of cruelty and neglect. They shot cats, threw things at them, starved them and set their dogs on them for fun. It was good to see somebody taking their side.
My patient on this first visit was no more than a big kitten, a terrified little blob of black and white crouching in a corner.
“He’s one of the outside cats,” Mrs. Bond boomed.
“Outside cats?”
“Yes. All these you see here are the inside cats. The others are the really wild ones who simply refuse to enter the house. I feed them of course but the only time they come indoors is when they are ill.”
“I see.”
“I’ve had frightful trouble catching this one. I’m worried about his eyes—there seemed to be a skin growing over them, and I do hope you can do something for him. His name, by the way, is Alfred.”
“Alfred? Ah yes, quite.” I advanced cautiously on the little half-grown animal and was greeted by a waving set of claws and a series of open-mouthed spittings. He was trapped in his corner or he would have been off with the speed of light.