All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  I turned as in a dream to Mrs. Dalby.

  “They’ve got husk.” Even as I said it it sounded a grimly inadequate description of the tragedy I was witnessing. Because this was neglected husk, a terrible doom-laden thing.

  “Husk?” the little woman said brightly. “What causes it?”

  I looked at her for a moment then tried to make my voice casual.

  “Well it’s a parasite. A tiny worm which infests the bronchial tubes and sets up bronchitis—in fact that’s the proper name, parasitic bronchitis. The larvae climb up the blades of grass and the cattle eat them as they graze. Some pastures are badly affected with it.” I broke off. A lecture was out of place at a time like this.

  What I felt like saying was why in God’s name hadn’t I been called in weeks ago. Because this wasn’t only bronchitis now; it was pneumonia, pleurisy, emphysema and any other lung condition you cared to name with not merely a few of the hair-like worms irritating the tubes, but great seething masses of them crawling everywhere, balling up and blocking the vital air passages. I had opened up a lot of calves like these and I knew how it looked.

  I took a deep breath. “They’re pretty bad, Mrs. Dalby. A mild attack isn’t so bad if you can get them off the grass right away, but this has gone a long way beyond that. You can see for yourself, can’t you—they’re like a lot of little skeletons. I wish I’d seen them sooner.”

  She looked up at me apprehensively and I decided not to belabour the point. It would be like rubbing it in; saying what her neighbours had said all along, that her inexperience would land her in trouble sooner or later. If Billy had been here he probably would never have turned his young cattle on to this marshy field; or he would have spotted the trouble right at the start and brought them inside. Charlie would be no help in a situation like this; he was a good willing chap but lived up to the Yorkshire saying, “Strong in t’arm and thick in t’head.” Farming is a skilful business and Billy, the planner, the stocksman, the experienced agriculturist who knew his own farm inside out, just wasn’t there.

  Mrs. Dalby drew herself up with that familiar gesture.

  “Well what can we do about it, Mr. Herriot?”

  An honest reply in those days would have been, “Medicinally nothing.” But I didn’t say that.

  “We’ve got to get them all inside immediately. Every mouthful of this grass is adding to the worm burden. Is Charlie around to give us a hand?”

  “Yes, he’s in the next field, mending a wall.” She trotted across the turf and in a minute or two returned with the big man ambling by her side.

  “Aye, ah thought it were a touch of husk,” he said amiably, then with a hint of eagerness. “Are ye goin’ to give them the throat injection?”

  “Yes…yes…but let’s get them up to the buildings.” As we drove the cattle slowly up the green slope I marvelled ruefully at this further example of faith in the intratracheal injection for husk. There was really no treatment for the condition and it would be another twenty years before one appeared in the shape of diethylcarbamazine, but the accepted procedure was to inject a mixture of chloroform, turpentine and creosote into the windpipe. Modern vets may raise their eyebrows at the idea of introducing this barbaric concoction directly into the delicate lung tissue and we old ones didn’t think much of it either. But the farmers loved it.

  When we had finally got the stirks into the fold yard I looked round them with something like despair. The short journey had exacerbated their symptoms tremendously and I stood in the middle of a symphony of coughs, grunts and groans while the cattle, tongues protruding, ribs pumping, gasped for breath.

  I got a bottle of the wonderful injection from the car, and with Charlie holding the head and little Mrs. Dalby hanging on to the tail I began to go through the motions. Seizing the trachea in my left hand I inserted the needle between the cartilaginous rings and squirted a few c.c.’s into the lumen and, as always, the stirk gave a reflex cough, sending up the distinctive aroma of the medicaments into our faces.

  “By gaw, you can smell it straight off, guvnor,” Charlie said with deep satisfaction. “Ye can tell it’s gettin’ right to t’spot.”

  Most of the farmers said something like that. And they had faith. The books spoke comfortably about the chloroform stupefying the worms, the turpentine killing them and the creosote causing increased coughing which expelled them. But I didn’t believe a word of it. The good results which followed were in my opinion due entirely to bringing the animals in from the infected pasture.

  But I knew I had to do it and we injected every animal in the yard. There were thirty two of them and Mrs. Dalby’s tiny figure was involved in the catching of all of them; clutching vainly at their necks, grabbing their tails, pushing them up against the wall. William, the eldest son, aged eight, came in from school and he plunged into the fray by his mother’s side.

  My repeated “Be careful, Mrs. Dalby!” or Charlie’s gruff “Watch thissen, Missis, or you’ll get lamed!” had no effect. During the melee both she and the little boy were kicked, trodden on and knocked down but they never showed the slightest sign of being discouraged.

  At the end, the little woman turned to me, her face flushed to an even deeper hue. Panting, she looked up, “Is there anything else we can do, Mr. Herriot?”

  “Yes there is.” In fact the two things I was going to tell her were the only things which ever did any good. “First, I’m going to leave you some medicine for the worms which are in the stomach. We can get at them there, so Charlie must give every stirk a dose. Secondly, you’ll have to start giving them the best possible food—good hay and high protein cake.”

  Her eyes widened “Cake? That’s expensive stuff. And hay…”

  I knew what she was thinking. The precious hay safely garnered for next winter’s feed; to have to start using it now was a cruel blow, especially with all that beautiful grass out there; grass, the most natural, most perfect food for cattle but every blade carrying its own load of death.

  “Can’t they go out again…ever?” she asked in a small voice.

  “No, I’m sorry. If they had just had a mild attack you could have kept them in at nights and turned them out after the dew had left the grass in the mornings. The larvae climb up the grass mainly when it’s wet. But your cattle have got too far. We daren’t risk them picking up any more worms.”

  “Right…thank you, Mr. Herriot. We know where we are, anyway.” She paused. “Do you think we’ll lose any of them?”

  My stomach contracted into a tight ball. I had already told her to buy cake she couldn’t afford and it was a certainty she would have to lay out more precious cash for hay in the winter. How was I going to tell her that nothing in the world was going to stop this batch of beasts dying like flies? When animals with husk started blowing bubbles it was nearly hopeless and the ones which were groaning with every breath were quite simply doomed. Nearly half of them were in these two categories and what about the rest? The pathetic barking other half? Well, they had a chance.

  “Mrs. Dalby,” I said. “It would be wrong of me to make light of this. Some of them are going to die, in fact unless there’s a miracle you are going to lose quite a few of them.” At the sight of her stricken face I made an attempt to be encouraging. “However, where there’s life there’s hope and sometimes you get pleasant surprises at this job.” I held up a finger. “Worm them and get some good grub into them! That’s your hope—to help them to fight it off themselves.”

  “I see.” She lifted her chin in her characteristic way. “And now you must come in for a wash.”

  And of course there it was in its usual place in the kitchen; the tray with all the trimmings.

  “Really, Mrs. Dalby. You shouldn’t have bothered. You have enough to do without this.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, the smile back on her face. “You take one spoonful of sugar don’t you?”

  As I sat there she stood in her habitual position, hands clasped in front of her, watching me while the mi