The Lord God Made Them All Read online

  With their colleague writhing on the floor behind me, I could not relax until we had turned off the square, out of sight and sound. Hubert, when allowed to get up, seemed to have lost a lot of his belligerence. In fact he was reaching the sleepy stage and when he arrived at his home, he walked quietly and fairly steadily up his garden path.

  Back in Skeldale House, I went up to our bedroom. The big room with the double bed, wardrobe and dressing table was eerily empty without Helen.

  I opened the door to the long, narrow apartment that had been the dressing room in the great days of the old house. It was where Tristan had slept when we were all bachelors together, but now it was Jimmy’s room, and his bed stood in exactly the same place as my old friend’s.

  I looked down on my son as I had often looked down on Tristan in his slumbers. I used to marvel at Tristan’s cherubic innocence, but even he could not compete with a sleeping child.

  I gazed at little Jimmy, then glanced at the other end of the room where a cot stood to receive Rosie.

  Soon, I thought, I would have two in here. I was becoming rich.

  Chapter

  18

  November 2, 1961

  WE LEARNED THIS MORNING that we would not start unloading the sheep until this evening as the Ubbergen was still occupying the berth, so this gave me plenty of opportunity to explore the town.

  Shortly after breakfast an important person came aboard, the head director of “Inflot,” which deals with the movement of all ships in the harbour.

  He was a kindly-looking man of about fifty, with an attractive smile. He wore very thick glasses, and he told me that his weak eyesight had been caused by hours of studying at night. His English was very good.

  Maybe it was because he was so pleasant that I was emboldened to broach the question of the school. Another reason, of course, was that I was somewhat puffed up by my own importance. When I was recently elected chairman of the Darrowby Parent-Teachers’ Association, it gave my ego a definite boost, and when our headmaster expressed an interest in Russian education, he started an idea in my mind.

  Anyway, whatever the cause, I was about to do another of my daft things.

  “Do you think I could possibly see inside a Russian school?” I asked him.

  The eyes behind the glasses stopped twinkling, and he gave me a long, thoughtful stare. After a few moments he nodded. “I think it will be all right if you ask permission when you get to the school. As it happens, my wife is a teacher, and if you go to Skola Number Two, you could ask for Madame Juowskaya.”

  I could hardly wait to get ashore, but again I couldn’t find any volunteers to come with me. When I finally approached the captain, he probably felt like throwing me over the side. He was short of sleep after our stormy voyage and weary with his long negotiations with the officials but still he had the goodness to humour me.

  He smiled and said, “Of course, Mr. Herriot.” As he settled his peaked hat on his silvery head and pulled on a smart navy-blue coat, I thought how very distinguished he looked.

  Down the gangway again, past the unsmiling soldiers and along the railway tracks towards the gate. But I just had to solve the mystery of the man-eating dog. As we passed the wagon of last night I caught the captain’s arm.

  “Just a minute,” I said. “I want to have a peep behind here.”

  For a moment he lost his poise and his eyes widened. “Mr. Herriot, no! What are you doing?”

  “It’s all right.” I smiled reassuringly. “I only want a quick look.”

  With the greatest care I edged my way behind the wagon, but the dog was gone. There was only an empty kennel. Then I noticed there was a kennel about every fifty yards and a chain attached by a ring to a wire that stretched along the entire length of the fence.

  As I re-emerged, to the obvious relief of the captain, I saw in the distance groups of dogs being led towards us. We passed them on the way to the gate house; large, stringy creatures loping along on the end of their leads, looking neither to right nor left. They were of the Alsatian type but taller, and they certainly had a lean and hungry look.

  I looked around at the soldiers by the water’s edge and in the watch towers, and back again at the dogs. Best of luck, I thought, to anybody who tried to get in or out of here after dark.

  As we walked along, loudspeakers blared at us from all directions. This has gone on all the time the ship has been in Klaipeda; it is not music, but talking. Talk, talk, talk, all day. I do not know if it is political indoctrination or news of Soviet achievements, but it goes on without stopping, and I am getting tired of it.

  Once outside the harbour, we began to make our way through the streets. Klaipeda is a town of 100,000 inhabitants, and we headed for what we thought was the centre of the place.

  The streets on the outskirts were simply packed-down earth, and this applied also to the footpaths. Great muddy puddles stood everywhere, and there were holes, sometimes three-or four-feet-deep, dug in the footpaths and apparently just left with the heap of soil beside them.

  Apart from the tenements there were the old Lithuanian houses, and these were in a very poor state of repair, with the paint flaking and roof tiles loose or missing. Many of the houses had little balconies in front of the upper windows.

  There were quite a few people about, picking their way over the reddish clay.

  We walked until we reached the main street, Montes Street. This had a cobbled surface and proper pavements, and there were shops on either side.

  The book shops seemed to sell only technical literature. There was a store full of bicycles, scooters and mopeds and a sports shop with roller skates—of a different type from ours—fencing foils and table-tennis sets in the window. One shop was apparently devoted entirely to chessmen and chessboards.

  We saw what looked like one of our licenced grocers, with lots of tinned and bottled goods and bottles of wine on show, but the place that really intrigued me was the fish shop. Its window was filled with large imitation fish of all colours. These models were covered with dust and were enough to put one off fish for life. Inside, I could see a high counter, with white enamel bowls filled with the real things.

  A characteristic of all the shops was their general dinginess. The windows were all dirty and unwashed, and there was no attempt to display their wares attractively.

  There was very little traffic—mainly commercial vehicles, with an occasional private car or taxi.

  There were a lot of people in the town centre, most of the women in head scarves and undistinguished clothes. It occurred to me then that I had not seen a single smartly dressed woman since my arrival. In fact, women seemed to do a lot of the rough jobs. Back in the harbour, women, dressed in cloaks and hoods, operated some of the mighty cranes that served the ships. I noticed, too, on a building site a group of girls throwing bricks from one to another, as our bricklayers do. Their hands must have been hard and rough.

  A column of youngsters marched by, led by a tall man, probably a teacher. They were laughing and singing and looked very like English children, except that many of the boys had peaked army-style caps and the little girls without exception wore long, brown woollen stockings of the sort girls used to wear in our country in my early schooldays. All the children looked healthy and happy.

  I stopped a young man in the street and showed him the slip of paper with the name of the school written in Russian. Again there was the polite response. He went out of his way and led us to the door of the school.

  It was a large, old-fashioned type of building set flush on the roadside, with no sign of a playground. It looked more like a big block of offices.

  The man from Inflot had told me to ask permission, but there didn’t seem to be anybody about, so I did my second daft thing of the trip: I just barged inside, followed dutifully by the captain.

  Once through the door there was something I noticed immediately—the intense silence, unusual in a school. We were in a long passage, with walls hung with brightly coloured pain