All Creatures Great and Small Read online

  Bees were at work among the flowers and the song of blackbirds and thrushes competed with the cawing of the rooks high up in the elms.

  Life was full for me. There were so many things to find out and a lot I had to prove to myself. The days were quick and challenging and they pressed on me with their very newness. But it all stopped here in the garden. Everything seemed to have stopped here a long time ago. I looked back before going through the door into the yard and it was like suddenly coming across a picture in an old book; the empty, wild garden and the tall, silent house beyond. I could never quite believe it was there and that I was a part of it.

  And the feeling was heightened when I went into the yard. It was square and cobbled and the grass grew in thick tufts between the stones. Buildings took up two sides; the two garages, once coach houses, a stable and saddle room, a loose box and a pigsty. Against the free wall a rusty iron pump hung over a stone water trough.

  Above the stable was a hay loft and over one of the garages a dovecot. And there was old Boardman. He, too, seemed to have been left behind from grander days, hobbling round on his lame leg, doing nothing in particular.

  He grunted good morning from his cubby hole where he kept a few tools and garden implements. Above his head his reminders of the war looked down; a row of coloured prints of Bruce Bairnsfather cartoons. He had stuck them up when he came home in 1918 and there they were still, dusty and curled at the edges but still speaking to him of Kaiser Bill and the shell holes and muddy trenches.

  Boardman washed a car sometimes or did a little work in the garden, but he was content to earn a pound or two and get back to his yard. He spent a lot of time in the saddle room, just sitting. Sometimes he looked round the empty hooks where the harness used to hang and then he would make a rubbing movement with his fist against his palm.

  He often talked to me of the great days. “I can see t’owd doctor now, standing on top step waiting for his carriage to come round. Big, smart-looking feller he was. Allus wore a top hat and frock coat, and I can remember him when I was a lad, standing there, pulling on ’is gloves and giving his hat a tilt while he waited.”

  Boardman’s features seemed to soften and a light came into his eyes as though he were talking more to himself than to me. “The old house was different then. A housekeeper and six servants there were and everything just so. And a full-time gardener. There weren’t a blade of grass out of place in them days and the flowers all in rows and the trees pruned, tidy-like. And this yard—it were t’owd doctor’s favourite spot. He’d come and look over t’door at me sitting here polishing the harness and pass time o’ day, quiet like. He were a real gentleman but you couldn’t cross ’im. A few specks o’ dust anywhere down here and he’d go nearly mad.

  “But the war finished it all. Everybody’s rushing about now. They don’t care about them things now. They’ve no time, no time at all.”

  He would look round in disbelief at the overgrown cobbles, the peeling garage doors hanging crazily on their hinges. At the empty stable and the pump from which no water flowed.

  He was always friendly with me in an absent way, but with Siegfried he seemed to step back into his former character, holding himself up smartly and saying “Very good, sir,” and saluting repeatedly with one finger. It was as though he recognised something there—something of the strength and authority of t’owd doctor—and reached out eagerly towards the lost days.

  “Morning, Boardman,” I said, as I opened the garage door. “How are you today?”

  “Oh, middlin’, lad, just middlin’.” He limped across and watched me get the starting handle and begin the next part of the daily routine. The car allotted to me was a tiny Austin of an almost forgotten vintage and one of Boardman’s voluntary duties was towing it off when it wouldn’t start. But this morning, surprisingly, the engine coughed into life after six turns.

  As I drove round the corner of the back lane, I had the feeling, as I did every morning, that this was where things really got started. The problems and pressures of my job were waiting for me out there and at the moment I seemed to have plenty.

  I had arrived in the Dales, I felt, at a bad time. The farmers, after a generation of neglect, had seen the coming of a prophet, the wonderful new vet, Mr. Farnon. He appeared like a comet, trailing his new ideas in his wake. He was able, energetic and charming and they received him as a maiden would a lover. And now, at the height of the honeymoon, I had to push my way into the act, and I just wasn’t wanted.

  I was beginning to get used to the questions: “Where’s Mr. Farnon?”—“Is he ill or something?”—“I expected Mr. Farnon.” It was a bit daunting to watch their faces fall when they saw me walking on to their farms. Usually they looked past me hopefully and some even went and peered into the car to see if the man they really wanted was hiding in there.

  And it was uphill work examining an animal when its owner was chafing in the background, wishing with all his heart that I was somebody else.

  But I had to admit they were fair. I got no effusive welcomes and when I started to tell them what I thought about the case they listened with open scepticism, but I found that if I got my jacket off and really worked at the job they began to thaw a little. And they were hospitable. Even though they were disappointed at having me they asked me into their homes. “Come in and have a bit o’ dinner,” was a phrase I heard nearly every day. Sometimes I was glad to accept and I ate some memorable meals with them.

  Often, too, they would slip half a dozen eggs or a pound of butter into the car as I was leaving. This hospitality was traditional in the Dales and I knew they would probably do the same for any visitor, but it showed the core of friendliness which lay under the often unsmiling surface of these people and it helped.

  I was beginning to learn about the farmers and what I found I liked. They had a toughness and a philosophical attitude which was new to me. Misfortunes which would make the city dweller want to bang his head against a wall were shrugged off with “Aye, well, these things happen.”

  It looked like being another hot day and I wound down the car windows as far as they would go. I was on my way to do a tuberculin test; the national scheme was beginning to make its first impact in the Dales and the more progressive farmers were asking for survey tests.

  And this was no ordinary herd. Mr. Copfield’s Galloway cattle were famous in their way. Siegfried had told me about them. “The toughest lot in this practice. There’s eighty-five of them and none has ever been tied up. In fact, they’ve scarcely been touched by hand. They live out on the fells, they calve and rear their calves outside. It isn’t often anybody goes near them so they’re practically wild animals.”

  “What do you do when there’s anything wrong with them?” I had asked.

  “Well, you have to depend on Frank and George—they’re the two Copfield sons. They’ve been reared with those cattle since they were babies—started tackling the little calves as soon as they could walk, then worked up to the big ones. They’re about as tough as the Galloways.”

  Copfield’s place was one of the bleak ones. Looking across the sparse pastures to the bald heights with their spreading smudges of heather it was easy to see why the farmer had chosen a breed hardier than the local shorthorns. But this morning the grim outlines were softened by the sunshine and there was a desert peace in the endless greens and browns.

  Frank and George were not as I expected. The durable men who helped me in my daily jobs tended to be dark and lean with stringy muscles but the Copfields were golden haired and smooth skinned. They were good-looking young men about my own age and their massive necks and wide spread of shoulder made their heads look small. Neither of them was tall but they looked formidable with their shirt sleeves rolled high to reveal wrestlers’ arms and their thick legs encased in cloth gaiters. Both wore clogs.

  The cattle had been herded into the buildings and they just about filled all the available accommodation. There were about twenty-five in a long passage down the side of