The Lord God Made Them All Read online

  Looking into the pen, I saw with some apprehension that the animal was a Calloway—black and shaggy with a fringe of hair hanging over bad-tempered eyes. She lowered her head and switched her tail as she watched me.

  “Couldn’t you have got her tied up, Mr. Binns?” I asked.

  The farmer shook his head. “Nay, I’m short o’ room, and this ’un spends most of ’er time on the moors.”

  I could believe it. There was nothing domesticated about this animal. I looked down at my daughter. Usually I lifted her into hayracks or onto the tops of walls while I worked, but I didn’t want her anywhere near the Galloway.

  “It’s no place for you in there, Rosie,” I said. “Go and stand at the end of the passage, well out of the way.”

  We went into the pen, and the cow danced about and did her best to run up the wall. I was pleasantly surprised when the farmer managed to drop a halter over her head. He backed into a corner and held tightly to the shank.

  I looked at him doubtfully. “Can you hold her?”

  “I think so,” Mr. Binns replied, a little breathlessly. “You’ll find t’place at the end of her back, there.”

  It was a most unusual thing—a big discharging abscess near the root of the tail. And that tail was whipping perpetually from side to side—a sure sign of ill nature in a bovine.

  Gently I passed my fingers over the swelling, and, like a natural reflex, the hind foot lashed out, catching me a glancing blow on the thigh. I had expected this, and I got on with my exploration.

  “How long has she had this?”

  The farmer dug his heels in and leaned back on the rope. “Oh, ’bout two months. It keeps bustin’ and fillin’ up over and over again. Every time I thought it’d be the last, but it looks like it’s never goin’ to get right. What’s t’cause of it?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Binns. She must have had a wound there at some time, and it’s become infected. And, of course, being on the back, drainage is poor. There’s a lot of dead tissue which I’ll have to clear away before the thing heals.”

  I leaned from the pen. “Rosie, will you bring me my scissors, the cotton wool and that bottle of peroxide?”

  The farmer watched wonderingly as the tiny figure trotted to the car and came back with the three things. “By gaw, tlittle lass knows ’er way around.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, smiling. “I’m not saying she knows where everything is in the car, but she’s an expert on the things I use regularly.”

  Rosie handed me my requirements as I reached over the door. Then she retreated to her place at the end of the passage.

  I began my work on the abscess. Since the tissue was necrotic, the cow couldn’t feel anything as I snipped and swabbed, but that didn’t stop the hind leg from pistoning out every few seconds. Some animals cannot tolerate any kind of interference, and this was one of them.

  I finished at last with a nice wide, clean area onto which I trickled the hydrogen peroxide. I had a lot of faith in this old remedy as a penetrative antiseptic when there was a lot of pus about, and I watched contentedly as it bubbled on the skin surface. The cow, however, did not seem to enjoy the sensation because she made a sudden leap into the air, tore the rope from the farmer’s hands, brushed me to one side and made for the door.

  The door was closed, but it was a flimsy thing, and she went straight through it with a splintering crash. As the hairy black monster shot into the passage I desperately willed her to turn left, but to my horror she went right and, after a wild scraping of her feet on the cobbles, began to thunder down towards the dead end where my little daughter was standing.

  It was one of the worst moments of my life. As I dashed towards the broken door, I heard a small voice say, “Mama.” There was no scream of terror, just that one quiet word. When I left the pen, Rosie was standing with her back against the end wall of the passage and the cow was stationary, looking at her from a distance of two feet.

  The animal turned when she heard my footsteps, then whipped round in a tight circle and galloped past me into the yard.

  I was shaking when I lifted Rosie into my arms. She could easily have been killed, and a jumble of thoughts whirled in my brain. Why had she said, “Mama”? I had never heard her use the word before—she always called Helen “Mummy” or “Mum.” Why had she been apparently unafraid? I didn’t know the answers. All I felt was an overwhelming thankfulness. To this day I feel the same whenever I see that passage.

  Driving away, I remembered that something very like this had happened when Jimmy was out with me. It was not so horrific because he had been playing in a passage with an open end leading into a field, and he was not trapped when the cow I was working on broke loose and hurtled towards him. I could see nothing, but I heard a piercing yell of “Aaaagh!” before I rounded the corner. To my intense relief, Jimmy was streaking across the field to where my car was standing and the cow was trotting away in another direction.

  This reaction was typical because Jimmy was always the noisy one of the family. Under any form of stress he believed in making his feelings known in the form of loud cries. When Dr. Allinson came to give him his routine inoculations, he heralded the appearance of the syringe with yells of “Ow! This is going to hurt! Ow! Ow!” He had a kindred spirit in our good doctor, who bawled back at him, “Aye. You’re right, it is! Oooh! Aaah!” But Jimmy really did scare our dentist because his propensity for noise appeared to carry on even under general anaesthesia. The long quavering wail he emitted as he went under the gas brought the poor man out in a sweat of anxiety.

  Rosie solemnly opened the three gates on the way back, then she looked up at me expectantly. I knew what it was—she wanted to play one of her games. She loved being quizzed, just as Jimmy had loved to quiz me.

  I took my cue and began. “Give me the names of six blue flowers.”

  She coloured quickly in satisfaction because, of course, she knew. “Field Scabious, Harebell, Forget-me-not, Bluebell, Speedwell, Meadow Cranesbill.”

  “Clever girl,” I said. “Now, let’s see—how about the names of six birds?”

  Again the blush and the quick reply. “Magpie, Curlew, Thrush, Plover, Yellowhammer, Rook.”

  “Very good indeed. Now, name me six red flowers.” And so it went on, day after day, with infinite variations. I only half realised at the time how lucky I was. I had a demanding, round-the-clock job, and yet I had the company of my children at the same time. So many men work so hard to keep the home going that they lose touch with the families who are at the heart of it, but it never happened to me.

  Both Jimmy and Rosie, until they went to school, spent most of their time with me round the farms. With Rosie, as her school days approached, her attitude, always solicitous, became distinctly maternal. She really couldn’t see how I was going to get by without her, and by the time she was five she was definitely worried.

  “Daddy,” she would say seriously, “how are you going to manage when I’m at school? All those gates to open and having to get everything out of the boot by yourself. It’s going to be awful for you.”

  I used to try to reassure her, patting her head as she looked up at me in the car. “I know, Rosie, I know. I’m going to miss you, but I’ll get along somehow.”

  Her response was always the same. A relieved smile, and then the comforting words, “But never mind, Daddy, I’ll be with you every Saturday and Sunday. You’ll be all right then.”

  I suppose it was a natural result of my children seeing veterinary practice from early childhood and witnessing my own pleasure in my work that they never thought of being anything else but veterinary surgeons.

  There was no problem with Jimmy. He was a tough little fellow and well able to stand the buffets of our job, but somehow I couldn’t bear the idea of my daughter being kicked and trodden on and knocked down and covered with muck. Practice was so much rougher in those days. There were no metal crushes to hold the big struggling beasts; there were still quite a number of farm horses around, and they