All Creatures Great and Small Read online

  The farmer lifted it as if it were a whippet dog and laid it by its mother’s head. Candy nosed the little animal over, rumbling happily in her throat, then she began to lick it. I watched Mr. Alderson. He was standing, hands clasped behind him, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, obviously enchanted by the scene. Any time now, I thought. And I was right; the toneless humming broke out, even louder than usual, like a joyful paean.

  I stiffened in my Wellingtons. There would never be a better time. After a nervous cough I spoke up firmly.

  “Mr. Alderson,” I said and he half turned his head. “I would like to marry your daughter.”

  The humming was switched off abruptly and he turned slowly till he was facing me. He didn’t speak but his eyes searched my face unhappily. Then he bent stiffly, picked up the buckets one by one, tipped out the water and made for the door.

  “You’d better come in the house,” he said.

  The farmhouse kitchen looked lost and forsaken with the family abed. I sat in a high-backed wooden chair by the side of the empty hearth while Mr. Alderson put away his buckets, hung up the towel and washed his hands methodically at the sink, then he pottered through to the parlour and I heard him bumping and clinking about in the sideboard. When he reappeared he bore a tray in front of him on which a bottle of whisky and two glasses rattled gently. The tray lent the simple procedure an air of formality which was accentuated by the heavy cut crystal of the glasses and the virgin, unopened state of the bottle.

  Mr. Alderson set the tray down on the kitchen table which he dragged nearer to us before settling in the chair at the other side of the fireplace. Nobody said, anything. I waited in the lengthening silence while he peered at the cap of the bottle like a man who had never seen one before then unscrewed it with slow apprehension as though he feared it might blow up in his face.

  Finally he poured out two measures with the utmost gravity and precision, ducking his head frequently to compare the levels in the two glasses, and with a last touch of ceremony proffered the laden tray.

  I took my drink and waited expectantly.

  Mr. Alderson looked into the lifeless fireplace for a minute or two then he directed his gaze upwards at the oil painting of the paddling cows which hung above the mantelpiece. He pursed his lips as though about to whistle but appeared to change his mind and without salutation took a gulp of his whisky which sent him into a paroxysm of coughing from which it took him some time to recover. When his breathing had returned to normal he sat up straight and fixed me with two streaming eyes. He cleared his throat and I felt a certain tension.

  “Aye well,” he said, “it’s grand hay weather.”

  I agreed with him and he looked round the kitchen with the interested stare of a total stranger. Having completed his inspection he took another copious swallow from his glass, grimaced, closed his eyes, shook his head violently a few times, then leaned forward.

  “Mind you,” he said, “a night’s rain would do a lot o’ good.”

  I gave my opinion that it undoubtedly would and the silence fell again. It lasted even longer this time and my host kept drinking his whisky as though he was getting used to it. And I could see that it was having a relaxing effect; the strained lines on his face were beginning to smooth out and his eyes were losing their hunted look.

  Nothing more was said until he had replenished our glasses, balancing the amounts meticulously again. He took a sip at his second measure then he looked down at the rug and spoke in a small voice.

  “James,” he said, “I had a wife in a thousand.”

  I was so surprised I hardly knew what to say. “Yes, I know,” I murmured. “I’ve heard a lot about her.”

  Mr. Alderson went on, still looking down, his voice full of gentle yearning.

  “Aye, she was the grandest lass for miles around and the bonniest.” He looked up at me suddenly with the ghost of a smile. “Nobody thought she’d ever have a feller like me, you know. But she did.” He paused and looked away. “Aye, she did.”

  He began to tell me about his dead wife. He told me calmly, without self-pity, but with a wistful gratitude for the happiness he had known. And I discovered that Mr. Alderson was different from a lot of the farmers of his generation because he said nothing about her being a “good worker.” So many of the women of those times seemed to be judged mainly on their working ability and when I had first come to Darrowby I had been shocked when I commiserated with a newly-widowed old man. He had brushed a tear from his eye and said “Aye, she was a grand worker.”

  But Mr. Alderson said only that his wife had been beautiful, that she had been kind, and that he had loved her very much. He talked about Helen, too, about the things she had said and done when she was a little girl, about how very like her mother she was in every way. He never said anything about me but I had the feeling all the time that he meant it to concern me; and the very fact that he was talking so freely seemed a sign that the barriers were coming down.

  Actually he was talking a little too freely. He was half way down his third huge whisky and in my experience Yorkshire-men just couldn’t take the stuff. I had seen burly ten-pint men from the local pubs keel over after a mere sniff at the amber fluid and little Mr. Alderson hardly drank at all. I was getting worried.

  But there was nothing I could do, so I let him ramble on happily. He was lying right back in his chair now, completely at ease, his eyes, alight with his memories, gazing somewhere above my head. In fact I am convinced he had forgotten I was there because after one long passage he dropped his eyes, caught sight of me and stared for a moment without recognition. When he did manage to place me it seemed to remind him of his duties as a host. But as he reached again for the bottle he caught sight of the clock on the wall.

  “Well dang it, it’s four o’clock. We’ve been here long enough. It’s hardly worth goin’ to bed, but I suppose we’d better have an hour or two’s sleep.” He tipped the last of the whisky down his throat, jumped briskly to his feet, looked around him for a few moments in a business-like sort of way then pitched head first with a sickening clatter among the fire irons.

  Frozen with horror, I started forward to help the small figure scrabbling on the hearth but I needn’t have worried because he bounced back to his feet in a second or two and looked me in the eye as if nothing had happened.

  “Well, I’d better be off,” I said. “Thanks for the drink.” There was no point in staying longer as I realised that the chances of Mr. Alderson saying “Bless you, my son,” or anything like that were remote. But I had a comforting impression that all was going to be well.

  As I made my way to the door the farmer made a creditable attempt to usher me out but his direction was faulty and he tacked helplessly away from me across the kitchen floor before collapsing against a tall dresser. From under a row of willow pattern dinner plates his face looked at me with simple bewilderment.

  I hesitated then turned back. “I’ll just walk up the stairs with you, Mr. Alderson,” I said in a matter-of-fact voice and the little man made no resistance as I took his arm and guided him towards the door in the far corner.

  As we creaked our way upstairs he stumbled and would have gone down again had I not grabbed him round the waist. As I caught him he looked up at me and grunted “Thanks, lad,” and we grinned at each other for a moment before restarting the climb.

  I supported him across the landing to his bedroom door and he stood hesitating as though about to say something. But finally he just nodded to me a couple of times before ducking inside.

  I waited outside the door, listening in some anxiety to the bumps and thumps from within; but I relaxed as a loud, tuneless humming came through the panels. Everything most certainly was going to be all right.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  CONSIDERING WE SPENT OUR honeymoon tuberculin testing it was a big success. It compared favourably, at any rate, with the experiences of a lot of people I know who celebrated this milestone in their lives by cruising for a month on sunny sea