Let Sleeping Vets Lie Read online

  appreciatively observing me gawping at their sister.

  "That's enough, you two," Auntie Lucy reproved. "Anyway you can go now,

  we're going to clear the table."

  Helen and she began to move the dishes to the scullery beyond the door

  while Mr. Alderson and I returned to our chairs by the fireside.

  The little man ushered me to mine with a vague wave of the hand. "Here

  ... take a seat, er ... young man."

  A clattering issued from the kitchen as the washing-up began. We were

  alone.

  Mr. Alderson's hand strayed automatically towards his Farmer and

  Stockbreeder, but he withdrew it after a single hunted glance in my

  direction and began to drum his fingers on the arm of the chair,

  whistling softly under his breath.

  I groped desperately for an opening gambit but came up with nothing. The

  ticking of the clock boomed out into the silence. I was beginning to

  break out into a sweat when the little man cleared his throat.

  "Pigs were a good trade on Monday," he vouchsafed.

  "They were, eh? Well, that's (the - jolly good."

  Mr. Alderson nodded, fixed his gaze somewhere above my left shoulder and

  started drumming his fingers again. Once more the heavy silence

  blanketed us and the clock continued to hammer out its message.

  After several years Mr. Alderson stirred in his seat and gave a little

  cough. I looked at him eagerly.

  "Store cattle were down, though," he said.

  "Ah, too bad, what a pity," I babbled. "But that's how it goes, I

  suppose, eh?"

  Helen's father shrugged and we settled down again. This time I knew it

  was hopeless. My mind was a void and my companion had the defeated look

  of a man who has shot his conversational bolt. I lay back and studied

  the hams and sides of bacon hanging from their hooks in the ceiling,

  then I worked my way along the row of plates on the big oak dresser to a

  gaudy calendar from a cattle cake firm which dangled from a nail on the

  wall. I took a chance then an] stole a glance at Mr. Alderson out of the

  corner of my eye and my toes curled as I saw he had chosen that precise

  moment to have a sideways peep at me. We both looked away hurriedly.

  By shifting round in my seat and craning my neck I was able to get a

  view of the other side of the kitchen where there was an old-fashioned

  roll top desk Surmounted by a wartime picture of Mr. Alderson looking

  very stern in the uniform of the Yorkshire Yeomanry, and I was

  proceeding along the wall from there when Helen opened the door and came

  quickly into the room.

  "Dad," she said, a little breathlessly. "Stan's here. He says one of the

  cows is down with staggers." ~i Her father jumped up in obvious relief.

  I think he was delighted he had a sick cow and 1, too, felt like a

  released prisoner as I hurried out with him.

  Stan, one of the cowmen, was waiting in the yard.

  "She's at t'top of t'field, boss," he said. "I just spotted 'er when I

  went to get ~ them in for milkin"." .".!

  Mr. Alderson looked at me questioningly and I nodded at him as I opened

  the car door.

  "I've got the stuff with me," I said. "We'd better drive straight up."

  The three of us piled in and I set course to where I could see the

  stretched out form of a cow near the wall in the top corner. My bottles

  and instruments rattled and clattered as we bumped over the rig and

  furrow.

  This was something every vet gets used to in early summer; the urgent

  call to milk cows which have collapsed suddenly a week or two after

  being turned out to grass. The farmers called it grass staggers and as

  its scientific name of hypomagesaemia implied it was associated with

  lowered magnesium level in the blood. An alarming and highly fatal

  condition but fortunately curable by injection of magnesium in most

  cases.

  Despite the seriousness of the occasion I couldn't repress a twinge of

  satisfaction. It had got me out of the house and it gave me a chance to

  prove myself by doing something useful. Helen's father and I hadn't

  established anything like a rapport as yet, but maybe when I gave his

  unconscious cow my magic injection and it leaped to its feet and walked

  away he might look at me in a different light. And it often happened

  that way; some of the cures were really dramatic.

  "She's still alive, any road," Stan said as we roared over the grass. "I

  saw her legs move then."

  He was right, but as I pulled up and jumped from the car I felt a tingle

  of apprehension. Those legs were moving too much.

  This was the kind that often died; the convulsive type. The animal,

  prone on her side, was pedalling frantically at the air with all four

  feet, her head stretched backwards, eyes staring, foam bubbling from her

  mouth. As I hurriedly unscrewed the cap from the bottle of magnesium

  lactate she stopped and went into a long, shuddering spasm, legs stiffly

  extended, eyes screwed tightly shut; then she relaxed and lay inert for

  a frightening few seconds before recommencing the wild thrashing with

  her legs.

  My mouth had gone dry. This was a bad one. The strain on the heart

  during these spasms was enormous and each one could be her last.

  I crouched by her side, my needle poised over the milk vein. My usual

  practice was to inject straight into the bloodstream to achieve the

  quickest possible effect, but in this case I hesitated. Any interference

  with the heart's action could kill this cow; best to play safe - I

  reached over and pushed the needle under the skin of the neck.

  As the fluid ran in, bulging the subcutaneous tissues and starting a

  widening swelling under the roan-coloured hide, the cow went into

  another spasm. For an agonising few seconds she lay there, the quivering

  limbs reaching desperately out at nothing, the eyes disappearing deep

  down under tight-twisted lids.: Helplessly I watched her, my heart

  thudding, and this time as she came out of the rigor and started to move

  again it wasn't with the purposeful pedalling of, before; it was an

  aimless laboured pawing and as even this grew weaker her eyes slowly

  opened and gazed outwards with a vacant stare.

  I bent and touched the cornea with my finger, there was no response.

  The farmer and cowman looked at me in silence as the animal gave a final

  jerk then lay still.

  "I'm afraid she'd dead, Mr. Alderson," I said.

  The farmer nodded and his eyes moved slowly over the still form, over

  the graceful limbs, the fine dark roan flanks, the big, turgid udder

  that would give no more milk.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm afraid her heart must have given out before

  the magnesium had a chance to work."

  "It's a bloody shame," grunted Stan. "She was a right good cow, that

  'un."

  Mr. Alderson turned quietly back to the car. "Aye well, these things

  happen," he muttered.

  We drove down the field to the house.

  Inside, the work was over and the family was collected in the parlour. I

  sat with them for a while but my overriding emotion was an urgent desire

  to be elsewhere Helen's father had been silent before but no