It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet Read online

wondered.

  "What's the road like?" I asked.

  "Road? road?" Mr. Clayton's reaction was typically airy. Farmers in the

  less accessible places always brushed aside such queries. "Road's right

  enough. Just tek a bit o' care and you'll get here without any trouble."

  Siegfried wasn't so sure. "You'll certainly have to walk over the top

  and it's doubtful whether the ploughs will have cleared the lower road.

  It's up to you."

  "Oh, I'll have a go. There's not much doing this morning and I feel like

  a bit of exercise."

  In the yard I found that old Boardman had done a tremendous job in his

  quiet way; he had dug open the big double doors and cleared a way for

  the cars to get out. I put what I thought I would need into a small

  rucksack - some expectorant mixture, a tub of electuary, a syringe and a

  few ampoules of pneumonia serum. Then I threw the most important item of

  my winter equipment, a broad-bladed shovel, into the back and left.

  The bigger roads had already been cleared by the council ploughs which

  had been clanking past Skeldale House since before dawn, but the surface

  was rough and I had a slow, bumpy ride. It was more than ten miles to

  the Clayton farm and it was one of those iron days when the frost piled

  thickly on the windscreen blotting out everything within minutes. But

  this morning I was triumphant. I had just bought a wonderful new

  invention - a couple of strands of wire mounted on a strip of bakelite

  and fastened to the windscreen with rubber suckers. It worked from the

  car batteries and cleared a small space of vision.

  No more did I have to climb out wearily and scrub and scratch at the

  frozen glass every half mile or so. I sat peering delightedly through a

  flawlessly clear semicircle about eight inches wide at the countryside

  unwinding before me like a film show; the grey stone villages, silent

  and withdrawn under their smothering white cloak; the low, burdened

  branches of the roadside trees.

  I was enjoying it so much that I hardly noticed the ache in my toes.

  Freezing feet were the rule in those days before car heaters, especially

  when you could see the road flashing past through the holes in the floor

  boards. On long journeys I really began to suffer towards the end. It

  was like that today when I got out of the car at the foot of the Pike

  Edge road; my fingers too, throbbed painfully as I stamped around and

  swung my arms.

  The ploughs hadn't even attempted to clear the little side road which

  wound its way upwards and into the valley beyond. Its solid, creamy,

  wall-to-wall filling said "No, you can't come up here', with that

  detached finality I had come to know so well. But as always, even in my

  disappointment, I looked with wonder at the shapes the wind had sculpted

  in the night; flowing folds of the most perfect smoothness tapering to

  the finest of points, deep hollows with knife-edge rims, soaring cliffs

  with overhanging margins almost transparent in their delicacy.

  Hitching the rucksack on my shoulder I felt a kind of subdued elation.

  With a leather golf jacket buttoned up to my neck and an extra pair of

  thick socks under my wellingtons I felt ready for anything. No doubt I

  considered there was something just a bit dashing and gallant in the

  picture of the dedicated young vet with his magic potions on his back

  battling against the odds to succour a helpless animal.

  I stood for a moment gazing at the fell, curving clean and cold into the

  sullen sky. An expectant hush lay on the fields, the frozen river and

  the still trees as I started off.

  I kept up a good pace. First over a bridge with the river white and

  silent beneath then up and up, picking my way over the drifts till the

  road twisted, almost invisible, under some low cliffs. Despite the cold,

  the sweat was beginning to prick on my back when I got to the top.

  I looked around me. I had been up here several times in June and July

  and I could remember the sunshine, the smell of the warm grass, and the

  scent of flowers and pines that came up the hill from the valley below.

  But it was hard to relate the smiling landscape of last summer with this

  desolation.

  The flat moorland on the fell top was a white immensity rolling away to

  the horizon with the sky pressing down like a dark blanket. I could see

  the farm down there in its hollow and it, too, looked different; small,

  remote, like a charcoal drawing against the hills bulking smooth and

  white beyond. A pine wood made a dark smudge on the slopes but the scene

  had been wiped clean of most of its familiar features.

  I could see the road only in places - the walls were covered over most

  of their length, but the farm was visible all the way. I had gone about

  half a mile towards it when a sudden gust of wind blew up the surface

  snow into a cloud of fine particles. Just for a few seconds I found

  myself completely alone. The farm, the surrounding moor, everything

  disappeared and I had an eerie sense of isolation till the veil cleared.

  It was hard going in the deep snow and in the drifts I sank over the

  tops of my wellingtons I kept at it, head down, to within a few hundred

  yards of the stone buildings. I was just thinking that it had all been

  pretty easy, really, when I looked up and saw a waving curtain of a

  million black dots bearing down on me. I quickened my steps and just

  before the blizzard hit me I marked the position of the farm. But after

  ten minutes' stumbling and slithering I realised 1

  I had missed the place. I was heading for a shape that didn't exist; it

  was etched only in my mind.

  I stood for a few moments feeling again the chilling sense of isolation.

  I was convinced I had gone too far to the left and after a few gasping

  breaths, struck off to the right. It wasn't long before I knew I had

  gone in the wrong direction again. I began to fall into deep holes, up

  to the arm-pits in the snow reminding me that the ground was not really

  flat on these high moors but pitted by countless peat haggs.

  As I struggled on I told myself that the whole thing was ridiculous. I

  couldn't be far from the warm fireside at Pike House - this wasn't the

  North Pole. But my mind went back to the great empty stretch of moor

  beyond the farm and I had to stifle a feeling of panic.

  The numbing cold seemed to erase all sense of time. Soon I had no idea

  of how long I had been falling into the holes and crawling out. I did

  know that each time it was getting harder work dragging myself out. And

  it was becoming more and more tempting to sit down and rest, even sleep;

  there was something hypnotic in the way the big, soft flakes brushed

  noiselessly across my skin and mounted thickly on my closed eyes.

  I was trying to shut out the conviction that if I fell down many more

  times I wouldn't get up when a dark shape hovered suddenly ahead. Then

  my outflung arms touched something hard and rough. Unbelievingly I felt

  my way over the square stone blocks till I came to a corner. Beyond that

  was a square of light - it was the kitchen window of the farm.

  Thumping on the door, I leaned agai