All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  Gingerly I drew it out through the incision and dropped it in the straw. It wasn’t till I had closed the stomach wound with the gut, stitched up the muscle layer and had started on the skin that I realised that the sweat was running down my face. As I blew away a droplet from my nose end Harry broke the silence.

  “It’s a hell of a tricky job, isn’t it?” he said. Then he laughed and thumped my shoulder. “I bet you felt a bit queer the first time you did one of these!”

  I pulled another strand of suture silk through and knotted it. “You’re right, Harry.” I said. “How right you are.”

  When I had finished we covered Monty with a horse rug and piled straw on top of that leaving only his head sticking out, I bent over and touched a corner of the eye. Not a vestige of a corneal reflex. God, he was deep—had I given him too much anaesthetic? And of course there’d be surgical shock, too. As I left I glanced back at the motionless little animal. He looked smaller than ever and very vulnerable under the bare walls of the pen.

  I was busy for the rest of the day but that evening my thoughts kept coming back to Monty. Had he come out of it yet? Maybe he was dead. I hadn’t the experience of previous cases to guide me and I simply had no idea of how a calf reacted to an operation like that. And I couldn’t rid myself of the nagging consciousness of how much it all meant to Harry Sumner. The bull is half the herd, they say, and half of Harry’s future herd was lying there under the straw—he wouldn’t be able to find that much money again.

  I jumped suddenly from my chair. It was no good, I had to find out what was happening. Part of me rebelled at the idea of looking amateurish and unsure of myself by going fussing back, but, I thought, I could always say I had returned to look for an instrument.

  The farm was in darkness as I crept into the pen. I shone my torch on the mound of straw and saw with a quick bump of the heart that the calf had not moved. I dropped to my knees and pushed a hand under the rug; he was breathing anyway. But there was still no eye reflex—either he was dying or he was taking a hell of a time to come out.

  In the shadows of the yard I looked across at the soft glow from the farmhouse kitchen. Nobody had heard me. I slunk over to the car and drove off with the sick knowledge that I was no further forward. I still didn’t know how the job was going to turn out.

  Next morning I had to go through the same thing again and as I walked stiffly across to the calf pen I knew for sure I’d see something this time. Either he’d be dead or better. I opened the outer door and almost ran down the passage. It was the third pen along and I stared hungrily into it.

  Monty was sitting up on his chest. He was still under the rug and straw and he looked sorry for himself but when a bovine animal is on its chest I always feel hopeful. The tensions flowed from me in a great wave. He had survived the operation—the first stage was over; and as I knelt rubbing the top of his head I had the feeling that we were going to win.

  And, in fact, he did get better, though I have always found it difficult to explain to myself scientifically why the removal of that pad of tangled fibres could cause such a dramatic improvement in so many directions. But there it was. His temperature did drop and his breathing returned to normal, his eyes did stop staring and the weird stiffness disappeared from his limbs.

  But though I couldn’t understand it, I was none the less delighted. Like a teacher with his favourite pupil I developed a warm proprietary affection for the calf and when I happened to be on the farm I found my feet straying unbidden to his pen. He always walked up to me and regarded me with friendly interest; it was as if he had a fellow feeling for me, too.

  He was rather more than a year old when I noticed the change. The friendly interest gradually disappeared from his eyes and was replaced by a thoughtful, speculative look; and he developed a habit of shaking his head at me at the same time.

  “I’d stop going in there, Mr. Herriot, if I were you,” Harry said one day. “He’s getting big and I reckon he’s going to be a cheeky bugger before he’s finished.”

  But cheeky was the wrong word. Harry had a long, trouble-free spell and Monty was nearly two years old when I saw him again. It wasn’t a case of illness this time. One or two of Harry’s cows had been calving before their time and it was typical of him that he should ask me to blood test his entire herd for Brucellosis.

  We worked our way easily through the cows and I had a long row of glass tubes filled with blood in just over an hour.

  “Well, that’s the lot in here,” the farmer said. “We only have bull to do and we’re finished.” He led the way across the yard through the door into the calf pens and along a passage to the bull box at the end. He opened the half door and as I looked inside I felt a sudden sense of shock.

  Monty was enormous. The neck with its jutting humps of muscle supported a head so huge that the eyes looked tiny. And there was nothing friendly in those eyes now; no expression at all, in fact, only a cold black glitter. He was standing sideways to me, facing the wall, but I knew he was watching me as he pushed his head against the stones, his great horns scoring the whitewash with slow, menacing deliberation. Occasionally he snorted from deep in his chest but apart from that he remained ominously still. Monty wasn’t just a bull—he was a vast, brooding presence.

  Harry grinned as he saw me staring over the door. “Well, do you fancy popping inside to scratch his head? That’s what you allus used to do.”

  “No thanks.” I dragged my eyes away from the animal. “But I wonder what my expectation of life would be if I did go in.”

  “I reckon you’d last about a minute,” Harry said thoughtfully. “He’s a grand bull—all I ever expected—but by God he’s a mean ’un. I never trust him an inch.”

  “And how,” I asked without enthusiasm, “am I supposed to get a sample of blood from him?”

  “Oh I’ll trap his head in yon corner.” Harry pointed to a metal yoke above a trough in an opening into the yard at the far side of the box. “I’ll give him some meal to ’tice him in.” He went back down the passage and soon I could see him out in the yard scooping meal into the trough.

  The bull at first took no notice and continued to prod at the wall with his horns, then he turned with awesome slowness, took a few unhurried steps across the box and put his nose down to the trough. Harry, out of sight in the yard, pulled the lever and the yoke crashed shut on the great neck.

  “All right,” the farmer cried, hanging on to the lever, “I have ’im. You can go in now.”

  I opened the door and entered the box and though the bull was held fast by the head there was still the uneasy awareness that he and I were alone in that small space together. And as I passed along the massive body and put my hand on the neck I sensed a quivering emanation of pent up power and rage. Digging my fingers into the jugular furrow I watched the vein rise up and poised my needle. It would take a good hard thrust to pierce that leathery skin.

  The bull stiffened but did not move as I plunged the needle in and with relief I saw the blood flowing darkly into the syringe. Thank God I had hit the vein the first time and didn’t have to start poking around. I was withdrawing the needle and thinking that the job had been so simple after all when everything started to happen. The bull gave a tremendous bellow and whipped round at me with no trace of his former lethargy. I saw that he had got one horn out of the yoke and though he couldn’t reach me with his head his shoulder knocked me on my back with a terrifying revelation of unbelievable strength. I heard Harry shouting from outside and as I scrambled up and headed for the box door I saw that the madly plunging creature had almost got his second horn clear and when I reached the passage I heard the clang of the yoke as be finally freed himself.

  Anybody who has travelled a narrow passage a few feet ahead of about a ton of snorting, pounding death will appreciate that I didn’t dawdle. I was spurred on by the certain knowledge that if Monty caught me he would plaster me against the wall as effortlessly as I would squash a ripe plum, and though I was clad in a long oi