Every Living Thing Read online

  “Yes…yes…” he murmured without changing expression, then he turned to the young man. “Would you slip into the house now and get us a bucket of hot water, soap and a towel. I want to do a rectal.”

  As Lumsden hurried out, Siegfried swung round. “By God, I don’t like this, James. Lousy, weak pulse—can hardly detect it—brick-red conjunctiva and temperature one hundred three. I don’t want to put the wind up this young chap, but I think we’re on a loser here.” His eyes widened. “And Mottram again! Is there such a thing as a jinx?”

  I didn’t say anything as I hung on to the struggling animal. A weak pulse is a particularly ominous finding in a horse and the other things pointed to a complicating bowel inflammation.

  When the young man came back, Siegfried rolled up a sleeve and pushed his arm deep into the rectum. “Yes…yes…bad impaction, as you say.” He whistled softly for a few moments. “Well, first, we’ve got to relieve his pain.”

  He injected the sedative into the jugular vein, speaking gently to the horse all the time, “That’ll make you feel better, old lad. Poor old chap,” and followed this with a long saline infusion intravenously to combat the shock, and antibiotic for the enteritis. “Now we’ll get a gallon of liquid paraffin into him to try to lubricate that lot in there.” Quickly he pushed a stomach tube up the nostril and into the stomach and held it there as I pumped in the oil.

  “Next, a muscular relaxant.” Again he gave an intravenous injection.

  By the time he had cleaned and rolled up the stomach tube the horse looked a lot happier. Colic is a frightful agony and I always felt that horses seemed to suffer pain more deeply than any other animal, a suffering at times almost unbearable to watch. It was a relief to see the big animal calming down, stopping his repeated attempts to collapse, clearly finding a blessed release.

  “Well,” said Siegfried quietly. “Now we wait.”

  Lumsden looked at him questioningly. “Are you sure? I feel very guilty about you losing your sleep. It’s after two o’clock—maybe I could manage now.”

  My partner gave him a wan smile. “With respect, laddie, it’s going to need a combined operation. That horse is only doped for now, and I don’t have to tell you that he is in very serious condition. If we can’t get his bowels moving I’m afraid he’ll die. He’s going to need more of everything, including the stomach tube. We’ll all see it through, one way or another.”

  The young man sat down on a pile of hay and gazed dully at his boots. “Oh, God, I hope it’s not the other. Mr. Mottram’s last words to me were, ‘Now you’ll look after Match.’ ?

  “Match?”

  “Match Box. That’s the horse’s name. My boss is devoted to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Siegfried said. “You’re in an awkward position. I shouldn’t think Mottram would be the easiest man to explain things to.”

  Lumsden ran his hands through his hair. “No…no…” He looked up at us. “Mind you, he’s not a bad bloke. He’s always treated me right. It’s just his personality…When he gives me one of his looks I feel about six inches high.”

  “I know the feeling,” I said.

  Siegfried gazed at the young man for a moment. “What’s your name? What does your mother call you?”

  “Harry.”

  “Well, Harry. You’re probably right. And I like your loyalty. Maybe it’s just his way, but James and I both seem to have caught him at the wrong time. Anyway, can you fetch us a pot of coffee? It could be a long night.”

  It was indeed a long night. We took turns at walking the horse when he showed signs of going down. Siegfried repeated his injections, varying the treatment between sedatives and muscular relaxants with another cautious shot of arecoline, and at five o’clock he used the stomach tube again to give magnesium sulphate. And all the time as we dosed and yawned, slumped on the hay, we looked for a genuine easing of the pain, a raising of the animal’s depression and most of all for a movement of the bowels.

  For my part as I watched Match Box’s lolling head and trailing steps my dominating worry was the knowledge that horses die so easily. Cattle and most other species could survive things so much better, and the old saying among the farmers mat “ ’Osses don’t stand much” was so true. As the night wore on and my metabolism slowed down, my spirits drooped with it. At any moment I expected the horse to halt in his painful circling of the box, pitch forward onto his side and groan his last few breaths away. Then we would drive miserably back to Darrowby.

  Over the half-door of the box I could see the gradual disappearance of the stars and a lightening of the eastern sky. At around six o’clock, as the birds began to sing in the chestnut trees and the grey light of dawn crept into the box, Siegfried stood up and stretched.

  “The big world has started to turn again out there, chaps, so what are we going to do? We’ve got to see to both our practices so who’s going to stay with Match Box? We can’t leave him.”

  We were looking at each other, bleary-eyed, when the horse suddenly cocked his tail and deposited a small heap of steaming faeces on the floor.

  “Oh, what a lovely sight!” cried Siegfried as our weary faces broke into smiles of relief. “That makes me feel a lot better, but we mustn’t get too cocky yet. He’s still got a touch of enteritis, so I’ll give him another shot of antibiotic before we go. Harry, I think it’s safe to leave him now, so we’ll be on our way, but don’t hesitate to ring us if he doesn’t go on right.”

  Out in the yard we shook hands. The young man was blinking with tiredness but he looked happy. “I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled. “I’m so grateful to both of you. You’ve got me out of a terrible fix and I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Not at all, my boy,” Siegfried sang out. “Only too glad to be able to help. Get in touch with us any time—but not about colicky horses for the next day or two, if you don’t mind.”

  We all laughed and waved as Siegfried started the engine and drove out of the yard.

  There was no word from Lumsden until the following day when I answered the phone. “Match Box is absolutely fine. Bowels normal, nibbling hay, just great,” he said. “Thanks—thanks again!”

  Three weeks passed and in the rush of work the Scanton episode began to recede into all the other memories, but one morning Siegfried looked up from his perusal of the day-book.

  “You know, James, I do think Mottram might have made some acknowledgement of our bit of assistance with his horse. I’m not looking for fulsome thanks, but I think he might have said something.”

  With an irritable gesture, he scribbled something in the book. “I expect the toffee-nosed bugger can’t unbend even as far as that.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Siegfried. Maybe he’s still on holiday. We don’t know that.”

  “Hmm.” My partner looked at me doubtfully. “Possibly. Could be I’m doing him an injustice, but anyway, we’ve got the satisfaction of helping to pull that grand horse round.” His face softened. “Lovely sort.”

  Next day I came in from my morning round and found my partner bending over an open crate, from whose depths a row of gold-topped bottles protruded.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Champagne. A dozen.” He pulled out a bottle and looked at the label. “Bollinger, no less!”

  “Gosh, where’s that come from?”

  “No idea. Delivered this morning while we were out, and there’s no message inside. But don’t worry, it’s for us, all right. Look. Messrs. Farnon and Herriot, Skeldale House.”

  “Wonderful. I wonder…”

  As I spoke, there was a knock on the office door and Mottram walked in.

  We didn’t say anything—just stared at him.

  He glanced at the crate. “Ah, I see you got the champagne.”

  We both spoke in unison. “You sent it?”

  “Yes…yes…a small gesture of thanks. I returned from holiday only last night and…er…Lumsden told me what you did for Match.”

  “Oh, really, there’s