It was simply a six foot strip of earth and rock and it wound and twisted for an awful long way. The trouble was that to get to the farm you had to descend into a deep valley before climbing through a wood towards the house. I think going down was worse because the vehicle hovered agonisingly on the top of each ridge before plunging into the yawning ruts beyond; and each time, listening to the unyielding stone grating on sump and exhaust I tried to stop myself working out the damage in pounds, shillings and pence.
And when at last, mouth gaping, eyes popping, tyres sending the sharp pebbles flying, I ground my way upwards in bottom gear over the last few yards leading to the house I was surprised to see Arnold waiting for me there alone. It was unusual to see him without Benjamin.
He must have read my questioning look because he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
“He’s in t’house,” he grunted, and his eyes were anxious.
I got out of the car and looked at him for a moment as he stood there in a typical attitude, wide shoulders back, head high. I have called him “old” and indeed he was over seventy, but the features beneath the woollen tammy which he always wore pulled down over his ears were clean and regular and the tall figure lean and straight. He was a fine looking man and must have been handsome in his youth, yet he had never married. I often felt there was a story there but he seemed content to live here alone, a “bit of a ’ermit” as they said in the village. Alone, that is, except for Benjamin.
As I followed him into the kitchen he casually shooed out a couple of hens who had been perching on a dusty dresser. Then I saw Benjamin and pulled up with a jerk.
The big dog was sitting quite motionless by the side of the table and this time the eyes behind the overhanging hair were big and liquid with fright. He appeared to be too terrified to move and when I saw his left fore leg I couldn’t blame him. Arnold had been right after all; it was indeed sticking out with a vengeance, at an angle which made my heart give a quick double thud; a complete lateral dislocation of the elbow, the radius projecting away out from the humerus at an almost impossible obliquity.
I swallowed carefully. “When did this happen, Mr. Summergill?”
“Just an hour since.” He tugged worriedly at his strange headgear. “I was changing the cows into another field and awd Benjamin likes to have a nip at their heels when he’s behind ’em. Well he did it once ower often and one of them lashed out and got ’im on the leg.”
“I see.” My mind was racing. This thing was grotesque. I had never seen anything like it, in fact thirty years later I still haven’t seen anything like it. How on earth was I going to reduce the thing away up here in the hills? By the look of it I would need general anaesthesia and a skilled assistant.
“Poor old lad,” I said, resting my hand on the shaggy head as I tried to think. “What are we going to do with you?”
The tail whisked along the flags in reply and the mouth opened in a nervous panting, giving a glimpse of flawlessly white teeth.
Arnold cleared his throat. “Can you put ’im right?”
Well it was a good question. An airy answer might give the wrong impression yet I didn’t want to worry him with my doubts. It would be a mammoth task to get the enormous dog down to Darrowby; he nearly filled the kitchen, never mind my little car. And with that leg sticking out and with Sam already in residence. And would I be able to get the joint back in place when I got him there? And even if I did manage it I would still have to bring him all the way back up here. It would just about take care of the rest of the day.
Gently I passed my fingers over the dislocated joint and searched my memory for details of the anatomy of the elbow. For the leg to be in this position the processus anconeus must have been completely disengaged from the supracondyloid fossa where it normally lay; and to get it back the joint would have to be flexed until the anconeus was clear of the epicondyles.
“Now let’s see,” I murmured to myself. “If I had this dog anaesthetised and on the table I would have to get hold of him like this.” I grasped the leg just above the elbow and began to move the radius slowly upwards. Benjamin gave me a quick glance then turned his head away, a gesture typical of good-natured dogs, conveying the message that he was going to put up with whatever I thought it necessary to do.
I flexed the joint still further until I was sure the anconeus was clear, then carefully rotated the radius and ulna inwards.
“Yes…yes…” I muttered again. “This must be about the right position…” But my soliloquy was interrupted by a sudden movement of the bones under my hand; a springing, flicking sensation.
I looked incredulously at the leg. It was perfectly straight.
Benjamin, too, seemed unable to take it in right away, because he peered cautiously round through his shaggy curtain before lowering his nose and sniffing around the elbow. Then he seemed to realise all was well and ambled over to his master.
And he was perfectly sound. Not a trace of a limp.
A slow smile spread over Arnold’s face. “You’ve mended him, then.”
“Looks like it, Mr. Summergill.” I tried to keep my voice casual, but I felt like cheering or bursting into hysterical laughter. I had only been making an examination, feeling things out a little, and the joint had popped back into place. A glorious accident.
“Aye well, that’s grand,” the farmer said. “Isn’t it, awd lad?” He bent and tickled Benjamin’s ear.
I could have been disappointed by this laconic reception of my performance, but I realised it was a compliment to me that he wasn’t surprised that I, James Herriot, his vet, should effortlessly produce a miracle when it was required.
A theatre-full of cheering students would have rounded off the incident or it would be nice to do this kind of thing to some millionaire’s animal in a crowded drawing room, but it never happened that way. I looked around the kitchen, at the cluttered table, the pile of unwashed crockery in the sink, a couple of Arnold’s ragged shirts drying before the fire, and I smiled to myself. This was the sort of setting in which I usually pulled off my spectacular cures. The only spectators here, apart from Arnold, were the two hens who had made their way back on to the dresser and they didn’t seem particularly impressed.
“Well, I’ll be getting back down the hill,” I said, and Arnold walked with me across the yard to the car.
“I hear you’re off to join up,” he said as I put my hand on the door.
“Yes, I’m away tomorrow, Mr. Summergill.”
“Tomorrow, eh?” he raised his eyebrows.
“Yes, to London. Ever been there?”
“Nay, nay, be damned!” The woollen cap quivered as he shook his head. “That’d be no good to me.”
I laughed. “Why do you say that?”
“Well now, I’ll tell ye.” He scratched his chin ruminatively. “Ah nobbut went once to Brawton and that was enough. Ah couldn’t walk on t’street!”
“Couldn’t walk?”
“Nay. There were that many people about I ’ad to take big steps and little ’uns, then big steps and little ’uns again. Couldn’t get goin’.”
I had often seen Arnold stalking over his fields with the long, even stride of the hillman with nothing in his way and I knew exactly what he meant. “Big steps and little ’uns.” That put it perfectly.
I started the engine and waved and as I moved away the old man raised a hand.
“Tek care, lad,” he murmured.
I spotted Benjamin’s nose just peeping round the kitchen door. Any other time he would have been out with his master to see me off the premises but it had been a strange day for him culminating with my descending on him and mauling his leg about. He wasn’t taking any more chances.
I drove gingerly down through the wood and before starting up the track on the other side I stopped the car and got out with Sam leaping eagerly after me.
This was a little lost valley in the hills, a green cleft cut off from the wild country above. One of the bonuses in a country vet’s life
is that he sees these hidden places. Apart from old Arnold nobody ever came down here, not even the postman who left the infrequent mail in a box at the top of the track and nobody saw the blazing scarlets and golds of the autumn trees nor heard-the busy clucking and murmuring of the beck among its clean-washed stones.
I walked along the water’s edge watching the little fish darting and flitting in the cool depths. In the spring these banks were bright with primroses and in May a great sea of bluebells flowed among the trees but today, though the sky was an untroubled blue, the clean air was touched with the sweetness of the dying year.
I climbed a little way up the hillside and sat down among the bracken now fast turning to bronze. Sam, as was his way, flopped by my side and I ran a hand over the silky hair of his ears. The far side of the valley rose steeply to where, above the gleaming ridge of limestone cliffs, I could just see the sunlit rim of the moor.
I looked back to where the farm chimney sent a thin tendril of smoke from behind the brow of the hill, and it seemed that the episode with Benjamin, my last job in veterinary practice before I left Darrowby, was a fitting epilogue. A little triumph, intensely satisfying but by no means world shaking; like all the other little triumphs and disasters which make up a veterinary surgeon’s life but go unnoticed by the world.
Last night, after Helen had packed my bag I had pushed Black’s Veterinary Dictionary in among the shirts and socks. It was a bulky volume but I had been gripped momentarily by a fear that I might forget the things I had learned, and conceived on an impulse the scheme of reading a page or two each day to keep my memory fresh. And here among the bracken the thought came back to me; that it was the greatest good fortune not only to be fascinated by animals but to know about them. Suddenly the knowing became a precious thing.
I went back and opened the car door. Sam jumped on to the seat and before I got in I looked away down in the other direction from the house to the valley’s mouth where the hills parted to give a glimpse of the plain below. And the endless wash of pale tints, the gold of the stubble, the dark smudges of woods, the mottled greens of the pasture land were like a perfect water colour. I found myself staring greedily as if for the first time at the scene which had so often lifted my heart, the great wide clean-blown face of Yorkshire.
I would come back to it all, I thought as I drove away; back to my work…how was it that book had described it…my hard, honest and fine profession.
But tomorrow I would be far from here; in London pushing my way through the crowds. Taking big steps and little ’uns.
48
I HAD TO CATCH the early train and Bob Cooper was at the door with his ancient taxi before eight o’clock next morning.
Sam followed me across the room expectantly as he always did but I closed the door gently against his puzzled face. Clattering down the long flights of stairs I caught a glimpse through the landing window of the garden with the sunshine beginning to pierce the autumn mist, turning the dewy grass into a glittering coverlet, glinting on the bright colours of the apples and the last roses.
In the passage I paused at the side door where I had started my day’s work so many times since coming to Darrowby, but then I hurried passed. This was one time I went out the front.
Bob pushed open the taxi door and I threw my bag in before looking up over the ivy-covered brick of the old house to our little room under the tiles. Helen was in the window. She was crying. When she saw me she waved gaily and smiled, but it was a twisted smile as the tears flowed. And as we drove round the corner and I swallowed the biggest ever lump in my throat a fierce resolve welled in me; men all over the country were leaving their wives and I had to leave Helen now, but nothing, nothing, nothing would ever get me away from her again.
The shops were still closed and nothing stirred in the market place. As we left I turned and looked back at the cobbled square with the old clock tower and the row of irregular roofs with the green fells quiet and peaceful behind, and it seemed that I was losing something for ever.
I wish I had known then that it was not the end of everything. I wish I had known that it was only the beginning.
A Biography of James Herriot
James Herriot (1916–1995) was the pen name of James Alfred “Alf” Wight, an English veterinarian whose tales of veterinary practice and country life have delighted generations. Many of Herriot’s works were bestsellers and have been adapted for film and television. His stories rely on numerous autobiographical elements taken from his life in northern England’s Yorkshire County, and they depict a simple, rustic world deeply in touch with the cycles of nature.
Wight was born on October 3, 1916, in Sunderland, in the northeast corner of England. Shortly after his birth, his parents moved to Glasgow, Scotland, where his father worked as a shipbuilder and as a pianist in a local cinema. His mother was a seamstress and professional singer. At age twelve, Wight adopted his first pet, an Irish setter named Don. The bond he formed with his dog led to his interest in veterinary medicine.
Wight graduated from the Glasgow Veterinary College in 1939 at the age of twenty-three. After working briefly in Sunderland, the town where he was born, he moved to the town of Thisk in Yorkshire County, England, where he settled down. In Yorkshire, he met Joan Danbury, whom he married in 1941. The couple had two children. Son James Alexander, born 1943, would go on to become a vet and partner in his father’s practice, and daughter Rosemary, born 1947, became a family physician.
Though he’d always had literary ambitions, Wight got a late start as a professional writer. Starting a family, serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and then establishing his own busy veterinary practice all delayed his literary debut. In 1966 at the age of fifty, he finally began writing regularly with the encouragement of his wife. After trying his hand unsuccessfully in areas such as sportswriting, Wight found modest success with the publication of If Only They Could Talk in 1970 and It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet in 1972. He adopted the pen name James Herriot because self-promotion for doctors and veterinarians was frowned upon in England at that time. In the United States, his first two books were combined by his New York publisher and released as All Creatures Great and Small (1972), the volume that would make the name James Herriot famous. Within a couple of years, All Creatures Great and Small had been adapted as a successful film starring Simon Ward and Anthony Hopkins and as a long-running BBC program.
Throughout the seventies, Wight released several writing collections in England as James Herriot. In the States, these volumes would be paired up and released under new titles as omnibuses, including All Things Bright and Beautiful (1974) and All Things Wise and Wonderful (1977). Wight declared his intentions to retire from writing life after publication of The Lord God Made Them All in 1981, but released a final volume, Every Living Thing, in 1992.
Wight passed away in 1995 at the age of seventy-eight at his home in Thirlby, near Thisk, Yorkshire.
Wight with his first dog, Don, a beautiful, sleek-coated Irish setter, as a puppy.
Wight while he was at Hillhead High School. It was the strong discipline and fine standards of Hillhead that helped develop his optimism, work ethic, and ambition.
Wight (center row, left) matriculated at Glasgow Veterinary College in 1933, qualifying as a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1939. While there, he played on the football team.
Wight at work with his son, James, who followed in his father’s footsteps, first training as a vet in Glasgow, then at the practice of Sinclair and Wight in Thirsk, England, and finally as an author, penning a biography of his father, The Real James Herriot, which was published in 2000.
Wight with his two favorite driving buddies, Hector, a Jack Russell terrier, and Dan, a Black Labrador. He dedicated his book All Things Wise and Wonderful “To my dogs, Hector and Dan, faithful companions of the daily round.” (Photo courtesy of Life Magazine.)
Wight and his wife, Joan, with Hector and Dan. Joan was as fond of the dogs as her husband
was. (Photo courtesy of Daily Express.)
Wight with his dog Bodie. After the deaths of Hector and Dan, who passed away within a year of each other, Wight was hesitant to get another dog. But soon his car rides began to feel lonely, and when a litter of Border Terriers was born nearby, Bodie joined the Wight household.
The brass plates outside 23 Kirkgate, announcing Mr. D. V. Sinclair and Mr. J. A. Wight, veterinary surgeons.
The brass plates outside Skeldale House, announcing S. Farnon and J. Herriot, veterinary surgeons.
Wight with his wife, Joan. Wight would write his books on a portable typewriter in front of the television in the evenings. (Photo courtesy of Life Magazine.)
Wight signing books on the BBC TV set of All Creatures Great and Small. Part of this set is on permanent display at the World of James Herriot museum in Thirsk, North Yorkshire.
Wight signing books at WHSmith, Harrogate, in 1977.
Wight with granddaughters Zoe and Katrina. (Photo courtesy of Ian Cook/People magazine.)
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