SIXTY-ONE
RHEUMATISM IS A TERRIBLE thing in a dog. It is painful enough in humans but an acute attack can reduce an otherwise healthy dog to terrified, screaming immobility.
Very muscular animals suffered most and I went carefully as my fingers explored the bulging triceps and gluteals of the little Staffordshire bull terrier. Normally a tough little fellow, afraid of nothing, friendly, leaping high in an attempt to lick people’s faces; but today, rigid, trembling, staring anxiously in front of him. Even to turn his head a little brought a shrill howl of agony.
Mercifully it was something you could put right and quickly too. I pulled the Novalgin into the syringe and injected it rapidly. The little dog, oblivious to everything but the knife-like stabbing of the rheumatism did not stir at the prick of the needle. I counted out some salicylate tablets into a box, wrote the directions on the lid and handed the box to the owner.
“Give him one of those as soon as the injection has eased him, Mr. Tavener. Then repeat in about four hours. I’m pretty sure he’ll be greatly improved by then.”
Mrs. Tavener snatched the box away as her husband began to read the directions. “Let me see it,” she snapped. “No doubt I’ll be the one who has the job to do.”
It had been like that all the time, ever since I had entered the beautiful house with the terraced gardens leading down to the river. She had been at him ceaselessly while he was holding the dog for me. When the animal had yelped she had cried: “Really, Henry, don’t grip the poor thing like that, you’re hurting him!” She had kept him scuttling about for this and that and when he was out of the room she said: “You know, this is all my husband’s fault. He will let the dog swim in the river. I knew this would happen.”
Half-way through, daughter Julia had come in and it was clear from the start that she was firmly on Mama’s side. She helped out with plenty of “How could you, Daddy!” and “For God’s sake, Daddy!” and generally managed to fill in the gaps when her mother wasn’t in full cry.
The Taveners were in their fifties. He was a big, floridly handsome man who had made millions in the Tyneside shipyards before pulling out of the smoke to this lovely place. I had taken an instant liking to him; I had expected a tough tycoon and had found a warm, friendly, curiously vulnerable man, obviously worried sick about his dog.
I had reservations about Mrs. Tavener despite her still considerable beauty. Her smile had a switched-on quality and there was a little too much steel in the blue of her eyes. She had seemed less concerned about the dog than with the necessity of taking it out on her husband.
Julia, a scaled-down model of her mother, drifted about the room with the aimless, bored look of the spoiled child; glancing blankly at the dog or me, staring without interest through the window at the smooth lawns, the tennis court, the dark band of river under the trees.
I gave the terrier a final reassuring pat on the head and got up from my knees. As I put away the syringe, Tavener took my arm. “Well, that’s fine, Mr. Herriot. We’re very grateful to you for relieving our minds. I must say I thought the old boy’s time had come when he started yelling. And now you’ll have a drink before you go.”
The man’s hand trembled on my arm as he spoke. It had been noticeable, too, when he had been holding the dog’s head and I had wondered; maybe Parkinson’s disease, or nerves, or just drink. Certainly he was pouring a generous measure of whisky into his glass, but as he tipped up the bottle his hand was seized by an even more violent tremor and he slopped the spirit on to the polished sideboard.
“Oh God! Oh God!” Mrs. Tavener burst out. There was a bitter note of oh no, not again, in her cry and Julia struck her forehead with her hand and raised her eyes to heaven. Tavener shot a single hunted look at the women then grinned as he handed me my glass.
“Come and sit down, Mr. Herriot,” he said. “I’m sure you have time to relax for a few minutes.”
We moved over to the fireside and Tavener talked pleasantly about dogs and the countryside and the pictures which hung on the walls of the big room. Those pictures were noted in the district; many of them were originals by famous painters and they had become the main interest in Tavener’s life. His other passion was clocks and as I looked round the room at the rare and beautiful timepieces standing among elegant period furniture it was easy to believe the rumours I had heard about the wealth within these walls.
The women did not drink with us; they had disappeared when the whisky was brought out, but as I drained my glass the door was pushed open and they stood there, looking remarkably alike in expensive tweed coats and fur-trimmed hats. Mrs. Tavener, pulling on a pair of motoring gloves, looked with distaste at her husband. “We’re going into Brawton,” she said. “Don’t know when we’ll be back.”
Behind her, Julia stared coldly at her father; her lip curled slightly.
Tavener did not reply. He sat motionless as I listened to the roar of the car engine and the spatter of whipped-up gravel beyond the window; then he looked out, blank-faced, empty-eyed at the drifting cloud of exhaust smoke in the drive.
There was something in his expression which chilled me. I put down my glass and got to my feet. “Afraid I must be moving on, Mr. Tavener. Thanks for the drink.”
He seemed suddenly to be aware of my presence; the friendly smile returned. “Not at all. Thank you for looking after the old boy. He seems better already.”
In the driving mirror, the figure at the top of the steps looked small and alone till the high shrubbery hid him from my view.
The next call was to a sick pig, high on Marstang Fell. The road took me at first along the fertile valley floor, winding under the riverside trees past substantial farmhouses and rich pastures; but as the car left the road and headed up a steep track the country began to change. The transition was almost violent as the trees and bushes thinned out and gave way to the bare, rocky hillside and the miles of limestone walls.
And though the valley had been rich with the fresh green of the new leaves, up here the buds were unopened and the naked branches stretched against the sky still had the look of winter.
Tim Alton’s farm lay at the top of the track and as I pulled up at the gate I wondered as I always did how the man could scrape a living from those few harsh acres with the grass flattened and yellowed by the wind which always blew. At any rate, many generations had accomplished the miracle and had lived and struggled and died in that house with its outbuildings crouching in the lee of a group of stunted, wind-bent trees, its massive stones crumbling under three centuries of fierce weathering.
Why should anybody want to build a farm in such a place? I turned as I opened the gate and looked back at the track threading between the walls down and down to where the white stones of the river glittered in the spring sunshine. Maybe the builder had stood here and looked across the green vastness and breathed in the cold, sweet air and thought it was enough.
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.