All Creatures Great and Small Read online

  Mr. Worley grinned as I turned to him in surprise.

  “Didn’t expect to see this lot, did you? Well, I’ll tell you, the real drinkers don’t come in till after closing time. Aye, it’s a rum ’un—every night I lock front door and these lads come in the back.”

  I pushed my head round the door for another look. It was a kind of rogue’s gallery of Darrowby. All the dubious characters in the town seemed to be gathered in that room; the names which regularly enlivened the columns of the weekly newspaper with their activities. Drunk and disorderly, non-payment of rates, wife-beating, assault and battery—I could almost see the headings as I went from face to face.

  I had been spotted. Beery cries of welcome rang out and I was suddenly conscious that all eyes were fixed on me in the smoky atmosphere. Above the rest a voice said “Are you going to have a drink?” What I wanted most was to get back to my bed, but it wouldn’t look so good just to close the door and go. I went inside and over to the bar. I seemed to have plenty of friends there and within seconds was in the centre of a merry group with a pint glass in my hand.

  My nearest neighbour was a well-known Darrowby worthy called Gobber Newhouse, an enormously fat man who had always seemed able to get through life without working at all. He occupied his time with drinking, brawling and gambling. At the moment he was in a mellow mood and his huge, sweating face, pushed close to mine, was twisted into a comradely leer.

  “Nah then, Herriot, ’ow’s dog trade?” he enquired courteously.

  I had never heard my profession described in this way and was wondering how to answer when I noticed that the company were looking at me expectantly. Mr. Worley’s niece who served behind the bar was looking at me expectantly too.

  “Six pints of best bitter—six shillings please,” she said, clarifying the situation.

  I fumbled the money from my pocket. Obviously my first impression that somebody had invited me to have a drink with them had been mistaken. Looking round the faces, there was no way of telling who had called out, and as the beer disappeared, the group round the bar thinned out like magic; the members just drifted away as though by accident till I found myself alone. I was no longer an object of interest and nobody paid any attention as I drained my glass and left.

  The glow from the pig pen showed through the darkness of the yard and as I crossed over, the soft rumble of pig and human voices told me that Mr. Worley was still talking things over with his sow. He looked up as I came in and his face in the dim light was ecstatic.

  “Mr. Herriot,” he whispered. “Isn’t that a beautiful sight?”

  He pointed to the little pigs who were lying motionless in a layered heap, sprawled over each other without plan or pattern, eyes tightly closed, stomachs bloated with Marigold’s bountiful fluid.

  “It is indeed,” I said, prodding the sleeping mass with my finger but getting no response beyond the lazy opening of an eye. “You’d have to go a long way to beat it.”

  And I did share his pleasure; it was one of the satisfying little jobs. Climbing into the car I felt that the nocturnal visit had been worth while even though I had been effortlessly duped into buying a round with no hope of reciprocation. Not that I wanted to drink any more—my stomach wasn’t used to receiving pints of ale at 2 a.m. and a few whimpers of surprise and indignation were already coming up—but I was just a bit ruffled by the offhand, professional way those gentlemen in the tap room had handled me.

  But, winding my way home through the empty, moonlit roads, I was unaware that the hand of retribution was hovering over that happy band. This was, in fact, a fateful night, because ten minutes after I had left, Mr. Worley’s pub was raided. Perhaps that is a rather dramatic word, but it happened that it was the constable’s annual holiday and the relief man, a young policeman who did not share Mr. Dalloway’s liberal views, had come up on his bicycle and pinched everybody in the place.

  The account of the court proceedings in the Darrowby and Houlton Times made good reading. Gobber Newhouse and company were all fined £2 each and warned as to their future conduct. The magistrates, obviously a heartless lot, had remained unmoved by Gobber’s passionate protestations that the beer in the glasses had all been purchased before closing time and that he and his friends had been lingering over it in light conversation for the subsequent four hours.

  Mr. Worley was fined £15 but I don’t think he really minded; Marigold and her litter were doing well.

  THIRTY-NINE

  THIS WAS THE LAST gate. I got out to open it since Tristan was driving, and looked back at the farm, a long way below us now, and at the marks our tyres had made on the steep, grassy slopes. Strange places, some of these Dales farms; this one had no road to it—not even a track. From down there you just drove across the fields from gate to gate till you got to the main road above the valley. And this was the last one; ten minutes’ driving and we’d be home.

  Tristan was acting as my chauffeur, as my left hand had been infected after a bad calving and I had my arm in a sling. He didn’t drive up through the gate but got out of the car, leaned his back against the gate post and lit a Woodbine.

  Obviously he wasn’t in any rush to leave. And with the sun warm on the back of his neck and the two bottles of Whitbread’s nestling comfortably in his stomach I could divine that he felt pretty good. Come to think of it, it had been all right back there. He had taken some warts off a heifer’s teats and the farmer had said he shaped well for a young ’un, (‘Aye, you really framed at t’job, lad’) and asked us in for a bottle of beer since it was so hot. Impressed by the ecstatic speed with which Tristan had consumed his, he had given him another.

  Yes, it had been all right, and I could see Tristan thought so too. With a smile of utter content he took a long, deep gulp of moorland air and Woodbine smoke and closed his eyes.

  He opened them quickly as a grinding noise came from the car. “Christ! She’s off, Jim!” he shouted.

  The little Austin was moving gently backwards down the slope—it must have slipped out of gear and it had no brakes to speak of. We both leaped after it. Tristan was nearest and he just managed to touch the bonnet with one finger; the speed was too much for him. We gave it up and watched.

  The hillside was steep and the little car rapidly gathered momentum, bouncing crazily over the uneven ground. I glanced at Tristan; his mind invariably worked quickly and clearly in a crisis and I had a good idea what he was thinking. It was only a fortnight since he had turned the Hillman over, taking a girl home from a dance. It had been a complete write-off and the insurance people had been rather nasty about it; and of course Siegfried had gone nearly berserk and had finished by sacking him finally, once and for all—never wanted to see his face in the place again.

  But he had been sacked so often; he knew he had only to keep out of his way for a bit and his brother would forget. And he had been lucky this time because Siegfried had talked his bank manager into letting him buy a beautiful new Rover and this had blotted everything else from his mind.

  It was distinctly unfortunate that this should happen when he, as driver, was technically in charge of the Austin. The car appeared now to be doing about 70 m.p.h. hurtling terrifyingly down the long, green hill. One by one the doors burst open till all four flapped wildly and the car swooped downwards looking like a huge, ungainly bird.

  From the open doors, bottles, instruments, bandages, cotton wool cascaded out onto the turf, leaving a long, broken trail. Now and again a packet of nux vomica and bicarb stomach powder would fly out and burst like a bomb, splashing vivid white against the green.

  Tristan threw up his arms. “Look! The bloody thing’s going straight for that hut.” He drew harder on his Woodbine.

  There was indeed only one obstruction on the bare hillside—a small building near the foot where the land levelled out and the Austin, as if drawn by a magnet, was thundering straight towards it.

  I couldn’t bear to watch. Just before the impact I turned away and focused my attention on the end