All Creatures Great and Small Read online

  He had conquered, but to some people it seemed that he had himself been conquered in the process. He had battled against the odds for so many years and driven himself so fiercely that he couldn’t stop. He could be enjoying all kinds of luxuries now but he just hadn’t the time; they said that the poorest of his workers lived in better style than he did.

  I paused as I got out of the car and stood gazing at the house as though I had never seen it before; and I marvelled again at the elegance which had withstood over three hundred years of the harsh climate. People came a long way to see Dennaby Close and take photographs of the graceful manor with its tall, leaded windows, the massive chimneys towering over the old moss-grown tiles; or to wander through the neglected garden and climb up the sweep of steps to the entrance with its wide stone arch over the great studded door.

  There should have been a beautiful woman in one of those pointed hats peeping out from that mullioned casement or a cavalier in ruffles and hose pacing beneath the high wall with its pointed copings. But there was just old John stumping impatiently towards me, his tattered, buttonless coat secured only by a length of binder twine round his middle.

  “Come in a minute, young man,” he cried. “I’ve got a little bill to pay you.” He led the way round to the back of the house and I followed, pondering on the odd fact that it was always a “little bill” in Yorkshire. We went in through a flagged kitchen to a room which was graceful and spacious but furnished only with a table, a few wooden chairs and a collapsed sofa.

  The old man bustled over to the mantelpiece and fished out a bundle of papers from behind the clock. He leafed through them, threw an envelope on to the table then produced a cheque book and slapped it down in front of me. I did the usual—took out the bill, made out the amount on the cheque and pushed it over for him to sign. He wrote with a careful concentration, the small-featured, weathered face bent low, the peak of the old cloth cap almost touching the pen. His trousers had ridden up his legs as he sat down showing the skinny calves and bare ankles. There were no socks underneath the heavy boots.

  When I had pocketed the cheque, John jumped to his feet. “We’ll have to walk down to t’river; ’osses are down there.” He left the house almost at a trot.

  I eased my box of instruments from the car boot. It was a funny thing but whenever I had heavy equipment to lug about, my patients were always a long way away. This box seemed to be filled with lead and it wasn’t going to get any lighter on the journey down through the walled pastures.

  The old man seized a pitch fork, stabbed it into a bale of hay and hoisted it effortlessly over his shoulder. He set off again at the same brisk pace. We made our way down from one gateway to another, often walking diagonally across the fields. John didn’t reduce speed and I stumbled after him, puffing a little and trying to put away the thought that he was at least fifty years older than me.

  About half way down we came across a group of men at the age-old task of “walling”—repairing a gap in one of the dry stone walls which trace their patterns everywhere on the green slopes of the Dales. One of the men looked up. “Nice mornin’, Mr. Skipton,” he sang out cheerfully.

  “Bugger t’mornin’. Get on wi’ some work,” grunted old John in reply and the man smiled contentedly as though he had received a compliment.

  I was glad when we reached the flat land at the bottom. My arms seemed to have been stretched by several inches and I could feel a trickle of sweat on my brow. Old John appeared unaffected; he flicked the fork from his shoulder and the bale thudded on to the grass.

  The two horses turned towards us at the sound. They were standing fetlock deep in the pebbly shallows just beyond a little beach which merged into the green carpet of turf; nose to tail, they had been rubbing their chins gently along each other’s backs, unconscious of our approach. A high cliff overhanging the far bank made a perfect wind break while on either side of us clumps of oak and beech blazed in the autumn sunshine.

  “They’re in a nice spot, Mr. Skipton,” I said.

  “Aye, they can keep cool in the hot weather and they’ve got the barn when winter comes.” John pointed to a low, thick-walled building with a single door. “They can come and go as they please.”

  The sound of his voice brought the horses out of the river at a stiff trot and as they came near you could see they really were old. The mare was a chestnut and the gelding was a light bay but their coats were so flecked with grey that they almost looked like roans. This was most pronounced on their faces where the sprinkling of white hairs, the sunken eyes and the deep cavity above the eyes gave them a truly venerable appearance.

  For all that, they capered around John with a fair attempt at skittishness, stamping their feet, throwing their heads about, pushing his cap over his eyes with their muzzles.

  “Get by, leave off!” he shouted. “Daft awd beggars.” But he tugged absently at the mare’s forelock and ran his hand briefly along the neck of the gelding.

  “When did they last do any work?” I asked.

  “Oh, about twelve years ago, I reckon.”

  I stared at John. “Twelve years! And have they been down here all that time?”

  “Aye; just lakin’ about down here, retired like. They’ve earned it an’ all.” For a few moments he stood silent, shoulders hunched, hands deep in the pockets of his coat, then he spoke quietly as if to himself. “They were two slaves when I was a slave.” He turned and looked at me and for a revealing moment I read in the pale blue eyes something of the agony and struggle he had shared with the animals.

  “But twelve years! How old are they, anyway?”

  John’s mouth twisted up at one corner. “Well you’re t’vet. You tell me.”

  I stepped forward confidently, my mind buzzing with Galvayne’s groove, shape of marks, degree of slope and the rest; I grasped the unprotesting upper lip of the mare and looked at her teeth.

  “Good God!” I gasped, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” The incisors were immensely long and projecting forward till they met at an angle of about forty-five degrees. There were no marks at all—they had long since gone.

  I laughed and turned back to the old man. “It’s no good, I’d only be guessing. You’ll have to tell me.”

  “Well she’s about thirty and gelding’s a year or two younger. She’s had fifteen grand foals and never ailed owt except a bit of teeth trouble. We’ve had them rasped a time or two and it’s time they were done again, I reckon. They’re both losing ground and dropping bits of half chewed hay from their mouths. Gelding’s the worst—has a right job champin’ his grub.”

  I put my hand into the mare’s mouth, grasped her tongue and pulled it out to one side. A quick exploration of the molars with my other hand revealed what I suspected; the outside edges of the upper teeth were overgrown and jagged and were irritating the cheeks while the inside edges of the lower molars were in a similar state and were slightly excoriating the tongue.

  “I’ll soon make her more comfortable, Mr. Skipton. With those sharp edges rubbed off she’ll be as good as new.” I got the rasp out of my vast box, held the tongue in one hand and worked the rough surface along the teeth, checking occasionally with my fingers till the points had been sufficiently reduced.

  “That’s about right,” I said after a few minutes. “I don’t want to make them too smooth or she won’t be able to grind her food.”

  John grunted. “Good enough. Now have a look at t’other. There’s summat far wrong with him.”

  I had a feel at the gelding’s teeth. “Just the same as the mare. Soon put him right, too.”

  But pushing at the rasp, I had an uncomfortable feeling that something was not quite right. The thing wouldn’t go fully to the back of the mouth; something was stopping it. I stopped rasping and explored again, reaching with my fingers as far as I could. And I came upon something very strange, something which shouldn’t have been there at all. It was like a great chunk of bone projecting down from the roof of the mouth.

&n