All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  “Now then, laddie,” he cried at length, putting a heaped plate at my elbow. “Get yourself round that lot.” He took his own supply and collapsed with a sigh into another chair.

  He took a gargantuan bite and spoke as he chewed. “You know, Jim, this is something I enjoy—a nice little snack. Zoe always leaves me plenty to go at when she pops out.” He engulfed a further few inches of sandwich. “And I’ll tell you something, though I say it myself, these are bloody good, don’t you think so?”

  “Yes indeed.” Squaring my shoulders I bit, swallowed and held my breath as another unwanted foreign body slid down to the ferment below.

  Just then I heard the front door open.

  “Ah, that’ll be Zoe,” Granville said and was about to rise when a disgracefully fat Staffordshire Bull Terrier burst into the room, waddled across the carpet and leaped into his lap.

  “Phoebles, my dear, come to daddykins!” he shouted. “Have you had nice walkies with mummy?”

  The Staffordshire was closely followed by a Yorkshire Terrier which was also enthusiastically greeted by Granville.

  “Yoo-hoo, Victoria, Yoo-hoo!”

  The Yorkie, an obvious smiler, did not jump up but contented herself with sitting at her master’s feet, baring her teeth ingratiatingly every few seconds.

  I smiled through my pain. Another myth exploded; the one about these specialist small animal vets not being fond of dogs themselves. The big man crooned over the two little animals. The fact that he called Phoebe “Phoebles” was symptomatic.

  I heard light footsteps in the hall and looked up expectantly. I had Granville’s wife typed neatly in my mind; domesticated, devoted, homely; many of these dynamic types had wives like that, willing slaves content to lurk in the background. I waited confidently for the entrance of a plain little hausfrau.

  When the door opened I almost let my vast sandwich fall. Zoe Bennett was a glowing warm beauty who would make any man alive stop for another look. A lot of soft brown hair, large grey-green friendly eyes, a tweed suit sitting sweetly on a slim but not too slim figure; and something else, a wholesomeness, an inner fight which made me wish suddenly that I was a better man or at least that I looked better than I did.

  In an instant I was acutely conscious of the fact that my shoes were dirty, that my old jacket and corduroy trousers were out of place here. I hadn’t troubled to change but had rushed straight out in my working clothes, and they were different from Granville’s because I couldn’t go round the farms in a suit like his.

  “My love, my love!” he carolled joyously as his wife bent over and kissed him fondly. “Let me introduce Jim Herriot from Darrowby.”

  The beautiful eyes turned on me.

  “How d’you do, Mr. Herriot!” she looked as pleased to see me as her husband had done and again I had the desperate wish that I was more presentable; that my hair was combed, that I didn’t have this mounting conviction that I was going to explode into a thousand pieces at any moment.

  “I’m going to have a cup of tea, Mr. Herriot. Would you like one?”

  “No-no, no, no, thank you very much but no, no, not at the moment.” I backed away slightly.

  “Ah well, I see you’ve got one of Granville’s little sandwiches.” She giggled and went to get her tea.

  When she came back she handed a parcel to her husband. “I’ve been shopping today, darling. Picked up some of those shirts you like so much.”

  “My sweet! How kind of you!” He began to tear at the brown paper like a schoolboy and produced three elegant shirts in cellophane covers. “They’re marvellous, my pet, you spoil me.” He looked up at me. “Jim! These are the most wonderful shirts, you must have one.” He flicked a shining package across the room on to my lap.

  I looked down at it in amazement. “No, really, I can’t…”

  “Of course you can. You keep it.”

  “But Granville, not a shirt…it’s too…”

  “It’s a very good shirt.” He was beginning to look hurt again.

  I subsided.

  They were both so kind. Zoe sat right by me with her tea cup, chatting pleasantly while Granville beamed at me from his chair as he finished the last of the sandwiches and started again on the onions.

  The proximity of the attractive woman was agreeable but embarrassing. My corduroys in the warmth of the room had begun to give off the unmistakable bouquet of the farmyard where they spent most of their time. And though it was one of my favourite scents there was no doubt it didn’t go with these elegant surroundings.

  And worse still, I had started a series of internal rumblings and musical tinklings which resounded only too audibly during every lull in the conversation. The only other time I have heard such sounds was in a cow with an advanced case of displacement of the abomasum. My companions delicately feigned deafness even when I produced a shameful, explosive belch which made the little fat dog start up in alarm, but when another of these mighty borborygmi escaped me and almost made the windows rattle I thought it time to go.

  In any case I wasn’t contributing much else. The alcohol had taken hold and I was increasingly conscious that I was just sitting there with a stupid leer on my face. In striking contrast to Granville who looked just the same as when I first met him back at the surgery. He was cool and possessed, his massive urbanity unimpaired. It was a little hard.

  So, with the tin of tobacco bumping against my hip and the shirt tucked under my arm I took my leave.

  Back at the hospital I looked down at Dinah. The old dog had come through wonderfully well and she lifted her head and gazed at me sleepily. Her colour was good and her pulse strong. The operative shock had been dramatically minimised by my colleague’s skilful speedy technique and by the intravenous drip.

  I knelt down and stroked her ears. “You know, I’m sure she’s going to make it, Granville.”

  Above me the great pipe nodded with majestic confidence.

  “Of course, laddie, of course.”

  And he was right Dinah was rejuvenated by her hysterectomy and lived to delight her mistress for many more years.

  On the way home that night she lay by my side on the passenger seat, her nose poking from a blanket. Now and then she rested her chin on my hand as it gripped the gear lever and occasionally she licked me lazily.

  I could see she felt better than I did.

  18

  BEN ASHBY THE CATTLE dealer looked over the gate with his habitual deadpan expression. It always seemed to me that after a lifetime of buying cows from farmers he had developed a terror of showing any emotion which might be construed as enthusiasm. When he looked at a beast his face registered nothing beyond, occasionally, a gentle sorrow.

  This was how it was this morning as he leaned on the top spar and directed a gloomy stare at Harry Sumner’s heifer. After a few moments he turned to the farmer.

  “I wish you’d had her in for me, Harry. She’s too far away. I’m going to have to get over the top.” He began to climb stiffly upwards and it was then that he spotted Monty. The bull hadn’t been so easy to see before as he cropped the grass among the group of heifers but suddenly the great head rose high above the others, the nose ring gleamed, and an ominous, strangled bellow sounded across the grass. And as he gazed at us he pulled absently at the turf with a fore foot.

  Ben Ashby stopped climbing, hesitated for a second then returned to ground level.

  “Aye well,” he muttered, still without changing expression. “It’s not that far away. I reckon I can see all right from here.”

  Monty had changed a lot since the first day I saw him about two years ago. He had been a fortnight old then, a skinny, knock-kneed little creature, his head deep in a calf bucket.

  “Well, what do you think of me new bull?” Harry Sumner had asked, laughing. “Not much for a hundred quid is he?”

  I whistled. “As much as that?”

  “Aye, it’s a lot for a new-dropped calf, isn’t it? But I can’t think of any other way of getting into the Newto