All Things Bright and Beautiful Read online

  It was simply a six foot strip of earth and rock and it wound and twisted for an awful long way. The trouble was that to get to the farm you had to descend into a deep valley before climbing through a wood towards the house. I think going down was worse because the vehicle hovered agonisingly on the top of each ridge before plunging into the yawning ruts beyond; and each time, listening to the unyielding stone grating on sump and exhaust I tried to stop myself working out the damage in pounds, shillings and pence.

  And when at last, mouth gaping, eyes popping, tyres sending the sharp pebbles flying, I ground my way upwards in bottom gear over the last few yards leading to the house I was surprised to see Arnold waiting for me there alone. It was unusual to see him without Benjamin.

  He must have read my questioning look because he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  “He’s in t’house,” he grunted, and his eyes were anxious.

  I got out of the car and looked at him for a moment as he stood there in a typical attitude, wide shoulders back, head high. I have called him “old” and indeed he was over seventy, but the features beneath the woollen tammy which he always wore pulled down over his ears were clean and regular and the tall figure lean and straight. He was a fine looking man and must have been handsome in his youth, yet he had never married. I often felt there was a story there but he seemed content to live here alone, a “bit of a ’ermit” as they said in the village. Alone, that is, except for Benjamin.

  As I followed him into the kitchen he casually shooed out a couple of hens who had been perching on a dusty dresser. Then I saw Benjamin and pulled up with a jerk.

  The big dog was sitting quite motionless by the side of the table and this time the eyes behind the overhanging hair were big and liquid with fright. He appeared to be too terrified to move and when I saw his left fore leg I couldn’t blame him. Arnold had been right after all; it was indeed sticking out with a vengeance, at an angle which made my heart give a quick double thud; a complete lateral dislocation of the elbow, the radius projecting away out from the humerus at an almost impossible obliquity.

  I swallowed carefully. “When did this happen, Mr. Summergill?”

  “Just an hour since.” He tugged worriedly at his strange headgear. “I was changing the cows into another field and awd Benjamin likes to have a nip at their heels when he’s behind ’em. Well he did it once ower often and one of them lashed out and got ’im on the leg.”

  “I see.” My mind was racing. This thing was grotesque. I had never seen anything like it, in fact thirty years later I still haven’t seen anything like it. How on earth was I going to reduce the thing away up here in the hills? By the look of it I would need general anaesthesia and a skilled assistant.

  “Poor old lad,” I said, resting my hand on the shaggy head as I tried to think. “What are we going to do with you?”

  The tail whisked along the flags in reply and the mouth opened in a nervous panting, giving a glimpse of flawlessly white teeth.

  Arnold cleared his throat. “Can you put ’im right?”

  Well it was a good question. An airy answer might give the wrong impression yet I didn’t want to worry him with my doubts. It would be a mammoth task to get the enormous dog down to Darrowby; he nearly filled the kitchen, never mind my little car. And with that leg sticking out and with Sam already in residence. And would I be able to get the joint back in place when I got him there? And even if I did manage it I would still have to bring him all the way back up here. It would just about take care of the rest of the day.

  Gently I passed my fingers over the dislocated joint and searched my memory for details of the anatomy of the elbow. For the leg to be in this position the processus anconeus must have been completely disengaged from the supracondyloid fossa where it normally lay; and to get it back the joint would have to be flexed until the anconeus was clear of the epicondyles.

  “Now let’s see,” I murmured to myself. “If I had this dog anaesthetised and on the table I would have to get hold of him like this.” I grasped the leg just above the elbow and began to move the radius slowly upwards. Benjamin gave me a quick glance then turned his head away, a gesture typical of good-natured dogs, conveying the message that he was going to put up with whatever I thought it necessary to do.

  I flexed the joint still further until I was sure the anconeus was clear, then carefully rotated the radius and ulna inwards.

  “Yes…yes…” I muttered again. “This must be about the right position…” But my soliloquy was interrupted by a sudden movement of the bones under my hand; a springing, flicking sensation.

  I looked incredulously at the leg. It was perfectly straight.

  Benjamin, too, seemed unable to take it in right away, because he peered cautiously round through his shaggy curtain before lowering his nose and sniffing around the elbow. Then he seemed to realise all was well and ambled over to his master.

  And he was perfectly sound. Not a trace of a limp.

  A slow smile spread over Arnold’s face. “You’ve mended him, then.”

  “Looks like it, Mr. Summergill.” I tried to keep my voice casual, but I felt like cheering or bursting into hysterical laughter. I had only been making an examination, feeling things out a little, and the joint had popped back into place. A glorious accident.

  “Aye well, that’s grand,” the farmer said. “Isn’t it, awd lad?” He bent and tickled Benjamin’s ear.

  I could have been disappointed by this laconic reception of my performance, but I realised it was a compliment to me that he wasn’t surprised that I, James Herriot, his vet, should effortlessly produce a miracle when it was required.

  A theatre-full of cheering students would have rounded off the incident or it would be nice to do this kind of thing to some millionaire’s animal in a crowded drawing room, but it never happened that way. I looked around the kitchen, at the cluttered table, the pile of unwashed crockery in the sink, a couple of Arnold’s ragged shirts drying before the fire, and I smiled to myself. This was the sort of setting in which I usually pulled off my spectacular cures. The only spectators here, apart from Arnold, were the two hens who had made their way back on to the dresser and they didn’t seem particularly impressed.

  “Well, I’ll be getting back down the hill,” I said, and Arnold walked with me across the yard to the car.

  “I hear you’re off to join up,” he said as I put my hand on the door.

  “Yes, I’m away tomorrow, Mr. Summergill.”

  “Tomorrow, eh?” he raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes, to London. Ever been there?”

  “Nay, nay, be damned!” The woollen cap quivered as he shook his head. “That’d be no good to me.”

  I laughed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well now, I’ll tell ye.” He scratched his chin ruminatively. “Ah nobbut went once to Brawton and that was enough. Ah couldn’t walk on t’street!”

  “Couldn’t walk?”

  “Nay. There were that many people about I ’ad to take big steps and little ’uns, then big steps and little ’uns again. Couldn’t get goin’.”

  I had often seen Arnold stalking over his fields with the long, even stride of the hillman with nothing in his way and I knew exactly what he meant. “Big steps and little ’uns.” That put it perfectly.

  I started the engine and waved and as I moved away the old man raised a hand.

  “Tek care, lad,” he murmured.

  I spotted Benjamin’s nose just peeping round the kitchen door. Any other time he would have been out with his master to see me off the premises but it had been a strange day for him culminating with my descending on him and mauling his leg about. He wasn’t taking any more chances.

  I drove gingerly down through the wood and before starting up the track on the other side I stopped the car and got out with Sam leaping eagerly after me.

  This was a little lost valley in the hills, a green cleft cut off from the wild country above. One of the bonuses in a country vet’s life