James Herriot's Dog Stories Read online

  Stewie seemed to read my thoughts. ‘It’s nothing great, Jim. I haven’t a smart practice and I don’t make a lot, but we manage to clear the housekeeping and that’s the main thing.’

  The phrase was familiar. ‘Clear the housekeeping’ – that was how he had put it when I first met him at Brawton races. It seemed to be the lodestar of his life.

  The end of the room was cut off by a curtain which my colleague drew to one side.

  ‘This is what you might call the waiting-room.’ He smiled as I looked in some surprise at half a dozen wooden chairs arranged round the three walls. ‘No high-powered stuff, Jim, no queues into the streets, but we get by.’

  Some of Stewie’s clients were already filing in: two little girls with a black dog, a cloth-capped old man with a terrier on a string, a teenage boy carrying a rabbit in a basket.

  ‘Right,’ the big man said, ‘we’ll get started.’ He pulled on a white coat, opened the curtain and said, ‘First, please.’

  The little girls put their dog on the table. He was a long-tailed mixture of breeds and he stood trembling with fear, rolling his eyes apprehensively at the white coat.

  ‘All right, lad,’ Stewie murmured, ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ He stroked and patted the quivering head before turning to the girls. ‘What’s the trouble, then?’

  ‘It’s ’is leg, ’e’s lame,’ one of them replied.

  As if in confirmation the little dog raised a fore leg and held it up with a pitiful expression. Stewie engulfed the limb with his great hand and palpated it with the utmost care. And it struck me immediately – the gentleness of this shambling bear of a man.

  ‘There’s nothing broken,’ he said. ‘He’s just sprained his shoulder. Try to rest it for a few days and rub this in night and morning.’

  He poured some whitish liniment from a Winchester bottle into one of the odd-shaped bottles and handed it over.

  One of the little girls held out her hand and unclasped her fingers to reveal a shilling in her palm.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Stewie without surprise. ‘Goodbye.’

  He saw several other cases, then as he was on his way to the curtain two grubby urchins appeared through the door at the other end of the room. They carried a clothes basket containing a widely varied assortment of glassware.

  Stewie bent over the basket, lifting out HP sauce bottles, pickle jars, ketchup containers and examining them with the air of a connoisseur. At length he appeared to come to a decision.

  ‘Threepence,’ he said.

  ‘Sixpence,’ said the urchins in unison.

  ‘Fourpence,’ grunted Stewie.

  ‘Sixpence,’ chorused the urchins.

  ‘Fivepence,’ my colleague muttered doggedly.

  ‘Sixpence!’ There was a hint of triumph in the cry.

  Stewie sighed. ‘Go on then.’ He passed over the coin and began to stack the bottles under the sink.

  ‘I just scrape off the labels and give them a good boil up, Jim.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s a big saving.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The mystery of the strangely shaped dispensing bottles was suddenly resolved.

  It was six thirty when the last client came through the curtain. I had watched Stewie examining each animal carefully, taking his time and treating their conditions ably within the confines of his limited resources. His charges were all around a shilling to two shillings and it was easy to see why he only just cleared the housekeeping.

  One other thing I noticed: the people all seemed to like him. He had no ‘front’ but he was kind and concerned. I felt there was a lesson there.

  The last arrival was a stout lady with a prim manner and a very correct manner of speech.

  ‘My dog was bit last week,’ she announced, ‘and I’m afraid the wound is goin’ antiseptic.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Stewie nodded gravely. The banana fingers explored the tumefied area on the animal’s neck with a gossamer touch. ‘It’s quite nasty, really. He could have an abscess there if we’re not careful.’

  He took a long time over clipping the hair away, swabbing out the deep puncture with peroxide of hydrogen. Then he puffed in some dusting powder, applied a pad of cotton wool and secured it with a bandage. He followed with an antistaphylococcal injection and finally handed over a sauce bottle filled to the rim with acriflavine solution.

  ‘Use as directed on the label,’ he said, then stood back as the lady opened her purse expectantly.

  A long inward struggle showed in the occasional twitches of his cheeks and Bickerings of his eyelids but finally he squared his shoulders. ‘That,’ he said resolutely, ‘will be three and sixpence.’

  It was a vast fee by Stewie’s standards, but probably the minimum in other veterinary establishments, and I couldn’t see how he could make any profit from the transaction.

  As the lady left, a sudden uproar broke out within the house. Stewie gave me a seraphic smile.

  ‘That’ll be Meg and the kids. Come and meet them.’

  We went out to the hall and into an incredible hubbub. Children shouted, screamed and laughed, spades and pails clattered, a large ball thumped from wall to wall and above it all a baby bawled relentlessly.

  Stewie moved into the mob and extracted a small woman. ‘This,’ he murmured with quiet pride, ’is my wife.’ He gazed at her like a small boy admiring a film star.

  ‘How do you do,’ I said.

  Meg Brannan took my hand and smiled. Any glamour about her existed only in her husband’s eye. A ravaged prettiness still remained but her face bore the traces of some tough years. I could imagine her life of mother, housewife, cook, secretary, receptionist and animal nurse.

  ‘Oh, Mr Herriot, it is good of you and Mr Farnon to help us out like this. We’re so looking forward to going away.’ Her eyes held a faintly desperate gleam but they were kind.

  I shrugged. ‘Oh, it’s a pleasure, Mrs Brannan. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it and I hope you all have a marvellous holiday.’ I really meant it – she looked as though she needed one.

  I was introduced to the children but I never really got them sorted out. Apart from the baby, who yelled indefatigably from leather lungs, I think there were three little boys and two little girls, but I couldn’t be sure – they moved around too quickly.

  The only time they were silent was for a brief period at supper when Meg fed them and us from a kind of cauldron in which floated chunks of mutton, potatoes and carrots. It was very good, too, and was followed by a vast blancmange with jam on top.

  The tumult broke out again very soon as the youngsters raced through their meal and began to play in the room. One thing I found disconcerting was that the two biggest boys kept throwing a large, new, painted ball from one to the other across the table as we ate. The parents said nothing about it – Meg, I felt, because she had stopped caring, and Stewie because he never had cared.

  Only once when the ball whizzed past my nose and almost carried away a poised spoonful of blancmange did their father remonstrate.

  ‘Now then, now then,’ he murmured absently, and the throwing was resited more towards the middle of the table.

  Next morning I saw the family off. Stewie had changed his dilapidated Austin Seven for a large rust-encrusted Ford V Eight. Seated at the wheel he waved and beamed through the cracked side windows with serene contentment. Meg, by his side, managed a harassed smile, and at the other windows an assortment of dogs and children fought for a vantage-point. As the car moved away a pram, several suitcases and a cot swayed perilously on the roof, the children yelled, the dogs barked, the baby bawled, then they were gone.

  As I re-entered the house the unaccustomed silence settled around me, and with the silence came a faint unease. I had to look after this practice for two weeks and the memory of the thinly furnished surgery was not reassuring. I just didn’t have the tools to tackle any major problem.

  But it was easy to comfort myself. From what I had seen this wasn’t the sort of place where dr