Every Living Thing Read online

  All became suddenly clear and I laughed. “And the face mask is a red-and-white spotted handkerchief?”

  “Aye! How the heck did you know?”

  “Because that’s the Cisco Kid you have there.”

  “What!”

  It would have taken a long time to explain to the sergeant but it all fitted in.

  Bernard was in his forties and he shared a smallholding with his redoubtable elder sister. It would be wrong to say that he ran the place, because he simply did as he was told, Miss Wain’s opinion of him being summed up in her favourite word, “useless.”

  For some years now I had become accustomed to her constant refrain on my visits. “Aye, well, you’ll ’ave to manage as best you can, Mr. Herriot. Bernard won’t be much good to you. He’s useless.”

  I recounted to the sergeant the events surrounding my visit to the Wains’ earlier that evening. It had been a ewe lambing. Miss Wain rang from the village kiosk. “She’s been on all afternoon. Bernard’s had ’is hand in and he says there’s summat far wrong but I don’t suppose you’ll ’ave much trouble. It doesn’t take much to flummox Bernard. He’s useless.”

  There were three gates on the rough track to the farm and, as I drove into the yard, Bernard was standing there in the headlights’ beam. Small, dark, perpetually smiling as I had always known him.

  He rubbed his hands and, ever anxious to please, bowed slightly as I got out of the car. “Now then, Mr. Herriot.” But he didn’t make any sort of move till his sister came strutting from the house, her bandy legs carrying her dumpy little frame rapidly over the cobbles.

  She was at least ten years older than her brother, and her jaw jutted as she looked at him. “Come on, don’t just stand there. Take this bucket and show Mr. Herriot where t’ewe is. Eee, I don’t know.” She turned to me. “We’ve got ’er in the stable, but I think he’s forgotten!”

  As I stripped off in the makeshift pen and soaped my arms, I looked at the ewe. She stood knee-deep in straw, straining occasionally, but she didn’t look unduly distressed. In fact, when Bernard made a clumsy grab at the wool of her neck she skipped away from him.

  “Oh, can’t you even hold the thing for Mr. Herriot?” his sister wailed. “Go on, get your arms round her neck properly and haud her in the corner. Eee, you’re that slow! Aye, that’s it, you’ve got ’er at last. Marvellous! And where’s that towel I gave you to bring? You’ve forgotten that, too!”

  As I slipped my hand into the ewe’s vagina, Miss Wain folded her arms and blew out her cheeks. “Ah don’t reckon you’ll have any problems, Mr. Herriot. Bernard can’t manage, but ’e’s got no idea about lambin’ a ewe, in fact ’e’s got no idea about anything. He’s useless.”

  Bernard, standing at the animal’s head, nodded and his smile widened as though he had received a compliment. He wasn’t really feeble-minded, he was just a supremely ineffectual, vague man, a gentle soul, totally unfitted for the rough farming life.

  Kneeling on the straw, I reached forward into the ewe and Miss Wain spoke again. “Ah bet everything’s all right in there.”

  She was right. Everything was fine. Sometimes this first exploration revealed a single, oversized lamb, maybe dead, with no room for the hand to move and everything dry and clinging; little wonder that the farmer was unsuccessful, however long he had tried doing the job himself. But on this occasion, there was all the room in the world, with at least two tiny lambs lying clean and clear and moist in the large uterus, beautifully lubricated by the placental fluid. The only thing that was stopping them from popping out was that two little heads and a bunch of legs were trying to enter the cervix at the same time. It was simply a case of repelling a head and relating the legs to the relevant lamb and I’d have them out, wriggling in the straw, in one minute flat. In fact I had corrected the legs with one finger while I was thinking about it, then I realised that if I did a lightning job Bernard was going to be in big trouble.

  He could, of course, have done the whole thing easily, but anything so earthy as guddling round inside a ewe was anathema to him. I could just imagine his single, shuddering exploration before he capitulated.

  I looked up and detected a trace of anxiety in the smiling face. There was no doubt about it; I was going to have to hold these lambs in for a little while.

  I gasped and grunted as I rotated my arm and the first lamb moved his tongue against my hand.

  “My word, Miss Wain, this is a right mix-up. Could be triplets in here and all tangled up together. It’s a tricky business, I can tell you. Now let’s see…which lamb does that leg belong to… no… no…gosh, it isn’t easy.” I gritted my teeth and groaned again as I fought my imaginary battle. “This is a real vet’s job, I can tell you.”

  As I spoke, Miss Wain’s eyes narrowed. Maybe I was overdoing it. Anyway, Bernard was in the clear now. I hooked a finger round the tiny legs that were first in the queue and drew out lamb number one. I deposited him in the straw and he raised his head and shook it vigorously; always a good sign, but possibly he was puzzled at the delay.

  “Now then, what else have we got?” I said worriedly as I reached back into the ewe. The job was as good as over now, but I was still making a meal of it for Bernard’s sake and I did a bit more panting and grunting before producing a second and then a third lamb. They made a pretty sight as they lay wriggling and snuffling in the straw. The first one was already making efforts to rise on wobbly legs. It would soon be on its way to the milk bar.

  I smiled up at Miss Wain. “There you are, then. Three grand lambs. I’ll put in a couple of pessaries and that’s that. It was a complicated business, though, with the legs all jumbled up together. It’s a good job you called me or you might have lost these three.”

  Arms still folded, her head sunk on her chest, she regarded me unsmilingly. I had the impression that part of her was sorry she had been deprived of another opportunity of castigating her brother. However, she had another line of attack.

  “Tell ye what,” she said suddenly. “There’s a cow been hanging her cleansin’ for five days. You might as well take it away while you’re here.”

  This was the kind of routine job that you didn’t usually do at nine o’clock at night, but I didn’t demur. It would save another visit.

  “Okay,” I said. “Will you bring me some fresh water, please?”

  It was then that I noticed the alarm flickering in Bernard’s eyes. I remembered that he couldn’t stand smells, and in the odoriferous trade of country vetting, removal of the bovine afterbirth is the smelliest. And he would have to hold the tail while I did it.

  When he came back with the steaming bucket he set it down and whipped out a large red-and-white spotted handkerchief from his pocket. Carefully he tied it round his face, knotting it tightly at the back of his neck, then he took up his place by the side of the cow.

  As I put my arm into the animal and looked at Bernard’s big eyes swimming above the mask I thought again how fitting was our nickname for him. It was Tristan who had first christened him the Cisco Kid because of his uncanny resemblance to the famous bandit. In all the unpleasant procedures that assailed Bernard’s nostrils—stinking carvings, autopsies, releasing the gas from tympanitic cows—the handkerchief came out, and, in fact, in every image I had of him he was wearing that mask.

  It seemed to give him a feeling of security, because he was able to make cheerful, if muffled, replies to my attempts at conversation, although occasionally he closed his eyes in a pained manner as though some alien whiff had got through to him.

  Fortunately it was an easy cleansing and it wasn’t long before Bernard was waving me goodbye as I drove away. In the darkness of the yard he still had the handkerchief round his face—the Cisco Kid to the life.

  I felt I had managed to put the police sergeant in the picture. However, he still wasn’t quite convinced.

  “But he still wouldn’t be wearing that mask when he came into Darrowby.”

  “Bernard would.”

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