All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  I towelled myself, put on my jacket and gathered up my bottle of antiseptic and the tube of cream which had served me so well.

  Mr. Kitson preceded me along the stable and on the way out he glanced over the door in the corner.

  “By gaw, she’s goin’ fast,” he grunted.

  I looked over his shoulder into the gloom. The panting had stopped and was replaced by slow, even respirations. The eyes were closed. The sheep was anaesthetised. She would die in peace.

  “Yes,” I said. “She’s definitely sinking. I don’t think it will be very long now.” I couldn’t resist a parting shaft. “You’ve lost this ewe and that lamb back there. I think I could have saved both of them for you if you’d given me a chance.”

  Maybe my words got through to Mr. Kitson, because I was surprised to be called back to the farm a few days later to a ewe which had obviously suffered very little interference.

  The animal was in a field close to the house and she was clearly bursting with lambs; so round and fat she could hardly waddle. But she looked bright and healthy.

  “There’s a bloody mix-up in there,” Mr. Kitson said morosely. “Ah could feel two heads and God only knows how many feet. Didn’t know where the ’ell I was.”

  “But you didn’t try very hard?”

  “Nay, never tried at all.”

  Well, we were making progress. As the farmer gripped the sheep round the neck I knelt behind her and dipped my hands in the bucket. For once it was a warm morning. Looking back, my memories of lambing times have been of bitter winds searing the grass of the hill pastures, of chapped hands, chafed arms, gloves, scarves and cold-nipped ears. For years after I left Glasgow I kept waiting for the balmy early springs of western Scotland. After thirty years I am still waiting and it has begun to dawn on me that it doesn’t happen that way in Yorkshire.

  But this morning was one of the exceptions. The sun blazed from a sky of soft blue, there was no wind but a gentle movement of the air rolled the fragrance of the moorland flowers and warm grass over and around me as I knelt there.

  And I had my favourite job in front of me. I almost chuckled as I fished around inside the ewe. There was all the room in the world, everything was moist and fresh and unspoiled, and it was child’s play to fit the various jigsaws together. In about thirty seconds I had a lamb wriggling on the grass, in a few moments more a second, then a third and finally to my delight I reached away forward and found another little cloven foot and whisked it out into the world.

  “Quadruplets!” I cried happily, but the farmer didn’t share my enthusiasm.

  “Nowt but a bloody nuisance,” he muttered. “She’d be far better wi’ just two.” He paused and gave me a sour look. “Any road, ah reckon there wasn’t no need to call ye. I could’ve done that job meself.”

  I looked at him sadly from my squatting position. Sometimes in our job you feel you just can’t win. If you take too long you’re no good, if you’re too quick the visit wasn’t necessary. I have never quite subscribed to the views of a cynical old colleague who once adjured me: “Never make a lambing look easy. Hold the buggers in for a few minutes if necessary,” but at times I felt he had a point.

  Anyway, I had my own satisfaction in watching the four lambs. So often I had pitied these tiny creatures in their entry into an uncharitable world, sometimes even of snow and ice, but today it was a joy to see them trying to struggle to their feet under the friendly sun, their woolly coats already drying rapidly. Their mother, magically deflated, was moving among them in a bemused manner as though she couldn’t quite believe what she saw. As she nosed and licked them her deep-throated chuckles were answered by the first treble quaverings of her family. I was listening, enchanted, to this conversation when Mr. Kitson spoke up.

  “There’s t’ewe you lambed t’other day.”

  I looked up and there indeed she was, trotting proudly past, her lamb close at her flank.

  “Ah yes, she looks fine,” I said. That was good to see but my attention was caught by something else. I pointed across the grass.

  “That ewe away over there…” As a rule all sheep look alike to me but there was something about this one I recognised…a loss of wool from her back, a bare strip of skin stretched over the jutting ridge of her spinal column…surely I couldn’t be mistaken.

  The farmer followed my pointing finger. “Aye, that’s t’awd lass that was laid in the stable last time you were here.” He turned an expressionless gaze on me. “The one you told me to get Mallock to fetch.”

  “But…but…she was dying!” I blurted out.

  The corner of Mr. Kitson’s mouth twitched upwards in what must have been the nearest possible approach to a smile. “Well that’s what you tellt me, young feller.” He hunched his shoulders. “Said she ’adn’t long to go, didn’t you?”

  I had no words to offer. I just gaped at him. I must have been the picture of bewilderment and it seemed the farmer was puzzled too because he went on.

  “But I’ll tell tha summat. Ah’ve been among sheep all me life but ah’ve never seen owt like it. That ewe just went to sleep.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Aye, went to sleep, ah tell you and she stayed sleepin’ for two days!”

  “She slept for two days?”

  “She did, ah’m not jokin’, nor jestin’. Ah kept goin’ into t’stable but she never altered. Lay there peaceful as you like all t’first day, then all t’second, then when I went in on t’third morning she was standin’ there lookin’ at me and ready for some grub.”

  “Amazing!” I got to my feet. “I must have a look at her.”

  I really wanted to see what had become of that mass of inflammation and tumefaction under her tail and I approached her carefully, jockeying her bit by bit into the bottom corner of the field. There we faced each other for a few tense moments as I tried a few feints and she responded with nimble sidesteps; then as I made my final swoop to catch her fleece she eluded me effortlessly and shot past me with a thundering of hooves. I gave chase for twenty yards but it was too hot and Wellingtons aren’t the ideal gear for running. In any case I have long held the notion that if a vet can’t catch his patient there’s nothing much to worry about.

  And as I walked back up the field a message was tapping in my brain. I had discovered something, discovered something by accident. That ewe’s life had been saved not by medicinal therapy but simply by stopping her pain and allowing nature to do its own job of healing. It was a lesson I have never forgotten; that animals confronted with severe continuous pain and the terror and shock that goes with it will often retreat even into death, and if you can remove that pain amazing things can happen. It is difficult to explain rationally but I know that it is so.

  By the time I had got back to Mr. Kitson the sun was scorching the back of my neck and I could feel a trickle of sweat under my shirt. The big man was still watching the ewe which had finished its gallop and was cropping the grass contentedly.

  “Ah can’t get over it,” he murmured, scratching the thin bristle on his jaw. “Two whole days and never a move.” He turned to me and his eyes widened.

  “Ah’ll tell tha, young man, you’d just think she’d been drugged!”

  31

  I FOUND IT DIFFICULT to get Mr. Kitson’s ewe out of my mind but I had to make the effort because while all the sheep work was going on the rest of the practice problems rolled along unabated. One of these concerned the Flaxtons’ Poodle, Penny.

  Penny’s first visit to the surgery was made notable by the attractiveness of her mistress. When I stuck my head round the waiting room door and said “Next please,” Mrs. Flaxton’s little round face with its shining tight cap of blue-black hair seemed to illumine the place like a beacon. It is possible that the effect was heightened by the fact that she was sitting between fifteen stone Mrs. Barmby who had brought her canary to have its claws clipped and old Mr. Spence who was nearly ninety and had called round for some flea powder for his cat but there was no doubt she was