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  And there indeed he was. A tiny red and white calf half concealed by the long herbage. He was curled comfortably in his grassy bed, his nose resting on his fore legs.

  When the little creature saw his mother he staggered to his feet and clambered shakily up the side of the ditch, but no sooner had he gained the level of the field than the big cow, released now from her halter, lowered her head and gently nudged him back in again.

  Bob waved his arm. “There y’are, she’s hiding it isn’t she?”

  Mr. Rogers said nothing and I merely shrugged my shoulders, but twice more the calf managed to scramble from the ditch and twice more his mother returned him firmly with her head.

  “Well it teks a bit o’ believin’,” the farmer murmured, half to himself. “She’s had five calves afore this and we’ve taken ’em straight away from ’er as we allus do. Maybe she wants to keep this ’un for ‘erself? I dunno … I dunno …” His voice trailed away.

  Later, as we rattled down the stony track, David turned to me. “Do you think that cow really hid her calf … so that she could keep it for herself?”

  I stared helplessly through the glass of the windscreen. “Well, anybody would tell you it’s impossible, but you saw what happened. I’m like Mr. Rogers, I just don’t know.” I paused as the car dipped into a deep rut and sent us bobbing about. “But you see some funny things at our job.”

  The schoolboy nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, it seems to me that yours is a funny life altogether.”

  CHAPTER 40

  THE DOCTOR PUT DOWN the folder containing my case history and gave me a friendly smile across the desk.

  “I’m sorry, Herriot, but you’ve got to have an operation.”

  His words, though gentle, were like a slap in the face. After flying school we had been posted to Heaton Park, Manchester, and I heard within two days that I had been graded pilot. Everything seemed at last to be going smoothly.

  “An operation … are you sure?”

  “Absolutely, I’m afraid,” he said, and he looked like a man who knew his business. He was a Wing Commander, almost certainly a specialist in civil life, and I had been sent to him after a medical inspection by one of the regular doctors.

  “This old scar they mention in your documents,” he went on. “You’ve already had surgery there, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, a few years ago.”

  “Well, I’m afraid the thing is opening up again and needs attention.”

  I seemed to have run out of words and could think of only one.

  “When?”

  “Immediately. Within a few days, anyway.”

  I stared at him. “But my flight’s going overseas at the end of the week.”

  “Ah well, that’s a pity.” He spread his hands and smiled again. “But they’ll be going without you. You will be in hospital.”

  I had a sudden feeling of loss, of something coming to an end, and it lingered after I had left the Wing Commander’s office. I realised painfully that the fifty men with whom I had sweated my way through all those new experiences had become my friends. The first breaking-in at St. John’s Wood in London, the hard training at Scarborough ITW, the “toughening course” in Shropshire and the final flying instruction at Winckfield; it had bound us together and I had come to think of myself not as an individual but as part of a group. My mind could hardly accept the fact that I was going to be on my own.

  The others were sorry, too, my own particular chums looking almost bereaved, but they were all too busy to pay me much attention. They were being pushed around all over the place, getting briefed and kitted out for their posting and it was a hectic time for the whole flight—except me. I sat on my bed in the Nissen hut while the excitement billowed around me.

  I thought my departure would go unnoticed but when I got my summons and prepared to leave I found, tucked in the webbing of my pack, an envelope filled with the precious coupons with which we drew our ration of cigarettes in those days. It seemed that nearly everybody had chipped in and the final gesture squeezed at my throat as I made my lonely way from the camp.

  The hospital was at Creden Hill, near Hereford, and I suppose it is one of the consolations of service life that you can’t feel lonely for very long. The beds in the long ward were filled with people like myself who had been torn from their comrades and were eager to be friendly.

  In the few days before my operation we came to know each other pretty well. The young man in the bed on my left spent his time writing excruciating poetry to his girl friend and insisted on reading it out to me, stanza by stanza. The lad on the right seemed a pensive type. Everybody addressed him as “Sammy” but he replied only in grunts.

  When he found out I was a vet he leaned from the sheets and beckoned to me.

  “I get fed up wi’ them blokes callin’ me Sammy,” he muttered in a ripe Birmingham accent. “Because me name’s not Sammy, it’s Desmond.”

  “Really? Why do they do it, then?”

  He leaned out further. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. You bein’ a vet—you’ll know about these things. It’s because of what’s wrong with me—why I’m in ’ere.”

  “Well, why are you here? What’s your trouble?”

  He looked around him then spoke in a confidential whisper. “I gotta big ball.”

  “A what?”

  “A big ball. One of me balls is a right whopper.”

  “Ah, I see, but I still don’t understand …”

  “Well, it’s like this,” he said. “All the fellers in the ward keep sayin’ the doctor’s goin’ to cut it off—then I’d be like Sammy Hall.”

  I nodded in comprehension. Memories from my college days filtered back. It had been a popular ditty at the parties. “My name is Sammy Hall and I’ve only got one ball …”

  “Oh, nonsense, they’re pulling your leg,” I said. “An enlarged testicle can be all sorts of things. Can you remember what the doctor called it?”

  He screwed up his face. “It was a funny name. Like vorry or varry something.”

  “Do you mean varicocele?”

  “That’s it!” He threw up an arm. “That’s the word!”

  “Well, you can stop worrying,” I said. “It’s quite a simple little operation. Trifling, in fact.”

  “You mean they won’t cut me ball off?”

  “Definitely not. Just remove a few surplus blood vessels, that’s all. No trouble.”

  He fell back on the pillow and gazed ecstatically at the ceiling. “Thanks, mate,” he breathed. “You’ve done me a world o’ good. I’m gettin’ done tomorrow and I’ve been dreadin’ it.”

  He was like a different person all that day, laughing and joking with everybody, and next morning when the nurse came to give him his pre-med injection he turned to me with a last appeal in his eyes.

  “You wouldn’t kid me, mate, would you? They’re not goin’ to …?”

  I held up a hand. “I assure you, Sammy—er—Desmond, you’ve nothing to worry about. I give you my word.”

  Again the beatific smile crept over his face and it stayed there until the “blood wagon,” the operating room trolley pushed by a male orderly, came to collect him.

  The blood wagon was very busy each morning and it was customary to raise a cheer as each man was wheeled out. Most of the victims responded with a sleepy wave before the swing doors closed behind them, but when I saw Desmond grinning cheerfully and giving the thumbs-up sign I felt I had really done something.

  Next morning it was my turn. I had my injection at around eight o’clock and by the time the trolley appeared I was pleasantly woozy. They removed my pyjamas and arrayed me in a sort of nightgown with laces at the neck and pulled thick woollen socks over my feet. As the orderly wheeled me away the inmates of the ward broke into a ragged chorus of encouragement and I managed the ritual flourish of an arm as I left.

  It was a cheerless journey along white-tiled corridors until the trolley pushed its way into the anaesthetics room. As I entered, the doo