Every Living Thing (33 page)

And having got it he wasn’t going to let go. Eyes closed, teeth bared, he pulled until the elusive foot appeared at the vulva. His sweating face broke into a delighted grin. “That’s a lovely sight!”

It was indeed. We had two legs and a head now, although nearly everything was still inside. I slapped the heifer’s rump. “Come on, old girl. This is when we need you. You can push as much as you like now.”

As if in reply, the heifer gave us enthusiastic help as we pulled on the legs and soon the muzzle appeared, nostrils twitching, the big, wide brow and the eyes—which, I imagined, held a glimmer of disapproval at the delay—then the rest of the head and body till we had a fine calf wriggling on the straw.

I felt good—I always did, but on this occasion something else was crowding in my mind—Calum’s bombshell about his impending nuptials.

I could hardly wait to see what kind of girl Calum would bring back. He was such an unusual chap, with ideas far different from the ordinary man, that the new woman could be anything—plain, eccentric, fat, skinny—my mind played restlessly with the possibilities.

I was put out of my pain quite soon. I opened the sitting room door one afternoon and my young colleague was there with a girl at his side. “This is Dierdre,” he said.

She was quite tall, and the first words that came to me were “kind” and “motherly.” But I would like to banish any thought that being kind and motherly meant that she wasn’t attractive. Dierdre was very attractive indeed and now, nearly forty years later, when I think of her wonderful family of six young Buchanans I feel I deserve full marks for intuition.

As we shook hands, her smile was wide and warm, her voice gentle, and it struck me that Calum had done it again—with all his funny ways he seemed to get the fundamental things right, and now, when it came to choosing a wife, he had found the kind of girl any young man would be glad to see first thing every morning.

Any notion we may have harboured of celebrating an exciting wedding was soon quashed, and in a way that I realised was typical of them. They slipped away quietly to Keeler church and the ceremony was carried out there without fuss.

I have never in my travels through Britain seen anything quite like Keeler. It is an ancient church of great beauty built by the Normans around 1100, standing quite alone among surrounding fields. There is a farm nearby but the nearest village is two miles away. It is on the borders of our practice area, but it can be clearly seen from the main road, and whenever I drive past I always slow down to look yet again at that lovely building, solitary among the fields with the hills rising behind. To me, it is a romantic, thrilling sight.

Throughout the centuries, services have been conducted regularly there with a small congregation drawn from the surrounding farms and nearby villages, so that the church has been preserved in all its glory. Its beauty is a stark beauty of massive stone with nothing like the traceried battlements and buttresses of Darrowby’s splendid church, which is famed to such an extent that it is often referred to as a little cathedral. Helen and I were married there and have never ceased to be enthralled by its sheer magnificence.

However, Calum and Dierdre went to Keeler in its wild and lonely setting and I could understand that its appeal would reach out to them. There was a brief honeymoon and that was all.

Whenever I pass the old church standing in its solitary dignity, looking over the empty fields and the long line of hills as it has done for nine centuries, I think again how fitting it was that those young Buchanans should pledge their future life within its walls.

I had the good feeling that Dierdre would add the woman’s touch to Calum’s flat—introduce a little more comfort in the way of her own individual furniture and decorations— but it was not to be. Dierdre didn’t care any more about that side of life than Calum—her interests were all outside. Like his, in the creatures, the plants and flowers of north Yorkshire.

The flat stayed spartan—no chintz covers on the furniture or anything like that—but she seemed perfectly happy as she padded around up there, very often in slacks and bare feet, her mind completely in tune with her new husband’s.

When they had time off together they spent it in rambling and observation in the woods and hills, and if Calum’s work prevented him from doing something important in his world of exploration Dierdre would happily stand in for him. I saw an example of this one balmy summer evening around dusk when I had to send the young man to a call.

“Calum,” I said, “there’s a colic at Steve Holdsworth’s— will you get there as soon as you can?”

“Certainly,” he replied. “Just give me a few minutes to put Dierdre up a tree and then I’ll be on my way.”

I
T WAS AROUND THE
time when Calum’s third badger arrived that an uncanny sense of the inevitable began to settle on me.

The new badger was called Bill and Calum didn’t say much about his unheralded advent. He did mention it in an off-hand way to me, but prudently failed to take Siegfried into his confidence. I think he realised that there wasn’t much point in upsetting my partner further—it seemed only reasonable to assume that Siegfried was getting a little punch-drunk with the assorted creatures milling around and wouldn’t even notice.

I was discussing the day’s work with my colleagues in the doorway of the dispensary when Siegfried ducked his head. “What the hell was that?” he exclaimed as a large feathery body whizzed past, just missing our heads.

“Oh, it’s Calum’s owl,” I said.

Siegfried stared at me. “That owl? I thought it was supposed to be ill.” He turned to our assistant. “Calum, what’s that owl doing here? You brought it in days ago and it looks fit enough now, so get it back where it came from. I like birds, as you know, but not rocketing round in our surgery like bloody eagles—could frighten the life out of the clients.”

The young man nodded. “Yes…yes…she’s almost recovered. I expect to take her back to the wood very soon.” He pocketed his list of visits and left.

I didn’t say anything, but it seemed certain to me that once Calum had got his hands on an owl of his very own he wasn’t going to part with it in a hurry. I foresaw some uncomfortable incidents.

“And listen to those fox cubs!” Siegfried went on. “What a racket they’re making!” The yapping, snarling and barking echoed along the passage from the back of the house. There was no doubt they were noisy little things. “What does Calum want them in here for?”

“I’m not sure… he did say something, but I can’t quite recall…”

“Well,” Siegfried grunted, “I just hope he’ll remove them as soon as the problem is over. It’s like living in a bloody zoo.”

Later in the day, Siegfried and I were setting a dog’s fractured radius when Calum walked into the operating room. Marilyn, as usual, was on his shoulder, but today she had company; seated comfortably in the crook of the young man’s arm was a little monkey.

Siegfried looked up from his work. He stopped winding the plaster of Paris bandage and his mouth fell open. “Oh, my God, no! This is too much! Not a bloody monkey now!”

“Yes,” replied Calum with a pleased smile. “His name is Mortimer.”

“Never mind his name! What the hell is he doing here?”

“Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t a pet—in a way, he’s a patient.”

Siegfried’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean—in a way? Is he ill?”

“Well, not exactly…Diana Thurston has asked me to look after him while she’s away on holiday.”

“And you said yes, of course! No hesitation! That’s just what we need here—bloody monkeys roaming the place on top of everything else!”

Calum looked at him gravely. “Well, you know, I was in a difficult position. Colonel Thurston is a very nice man and one of our biggest clients—large farm, hunting horses and umpteen dogs. I couldn’t very well refuse.”

My partner recommenced his winding. The plaster was setting and I could see he wanted time to think. “Well, I see your point,” he said after a few moments. “It wouldn’t have looked so good.” He glanced up at Calum. “But it’s definitely just while Diana’s on holiday?”

“Oh, absolutely, I promise you.” The young man nodded vigorously. “She’s devoted to the little chap and she’ll pick him up as soon as she returns.”

“Oh, well, I suppose it’ll be all right.” Siegfried shot a hunted look at the monkey, which, open-mouthed, teeth bared and chattering, was apparently laughing at him.

We lifted the sleeping dog from the table and carried him to one of the recovery kennels. My partner seemed indisposed to speak and I didn’t break the silence. I had no desire to discuss Calum’s latest acquisition because I happened to know that Diana Thurston wasn’t just going to Scarborough for a fortnight—she was off to Australia for six months.

I had a call that evening and went to the surgery for extra drugs. As I walked along the passage, I could hear a babel of animal sounds from the end of the house, and on opening the door to the back room I found Calum among his friends. The three badgers were nosing around the food bowls, the owl flapped lazily onto a high shelf. Storm, vast and amiable, waved his tail in welcome, while the Dober-manns regarded me contemplatively. Mortimer the monkey, clearly already under Calum’s spell, leaped from a table into the young man’s arms and grinned at me. In a corner the fox cubs kept up their strange yapping and growling and I noticed two cages containing a couple of rabbits and a hare—apparently new arrivals.

Looking round the room, I realised that Siegfried had been right from the very beginning. The menagerie was now firmly installed. And as I opened the door to leave, I wondered just how big it was going to grow.

I had stepped into the passage when Calum turned from the table, where he was stirring some nameless comestible in a large bowl.

“Before you go, Jim, I’ve got some good news!” he cried.

“Oh, what’s that?”

He pointed to one of the Dobermanns. “Anna’s having pups next month!”

A
S
I
GOT OUT
of my car to open the gate to the farm, I looked with interest at the odd-looking structure on the grass verge standing in the shelter of the dry-stone wall and overlooking the valley. It seemed as though sheets of tarpaulin had been stretched over metal hoops to make some kind of shelter. It was like a big black igloo, but for what?

As I wondered, the sacking at the front parted and a tall, white-bearded man emerged. He straightened up, looked around him, dusted down his ancient frock coat and donned the kind of high-crowned bowler hat that was popular in Victorian times. He seemed oblivious of my presence as he stood, breathing deeply, gazing at the heathery fell-side that dropped away from the roadside to the beck far below, then after a few moments he turned to me and raised his hat gravely.

“Good morning to you,” he murmured in the kind of voice that could have belonged to an archbishop.

“Morning,” I replied, fighting with my surprise. “Lovely day.”

His fine features relaxed in a smile. “Yes, yes, it is indeed.” Then he bent and pulled the sacking apart. “Come, Emily.”

As I stared, a little cat tripped out with dainty steps, and as she stretched luxuriantly the man attached a leash to the collar round her neck. He turned to me and raised his hat again. “Good day to you.” Then man and cat set off at a leisurely pace towards the village whose church tower was just visible a couple of miles down the road.

I took my time over opening the gate as I watched the dwindling figures. I felt almost as though I were seeing an apparition. I was out of my usual territory, because a faithful client, Eddy Carless, had taken this farm almost twenty miles away from Darrowby and had paid us the compliment of asking our practice if we would still do his work. We had said yes even though it would be inconvenient to travel so far, especially in the middle of the night.

The farm lay two fields back from the road and as I drew up in the yard I saw Eddy coming down the granary steps.

“Eddy,” I said. “I’ve just seen something very strange.”

He laughed. “You don’t have to tell me. You’ve seen Eugene.”

“Eugene?”

“That’s right. Eugene Ireson. He lives there.”

“What!”

“It’s true—that’s ’is house. He built it himself two years ago and took up residence. This used to be me dad’s farm, as you know, and he used to tell me about ’im. He came from nowhere and settled in that funny place with ’is cat and he’s never moved since.”

“I wouldn’t have thought he would be allowed to set up house on the grass verge.”

“No, neither would I, but nobody seems to have bothered ’im. And I’ll tell you another funny thing. He’s an educated man and the brother of Cornelius Ireson.”

“Cornelius Ireson, the industrialist?”

“The very same. The multimillionaire. Lives in that estate you pass about five miles along the Brawton road. You’ll have seen the big lodge at the gates.”

“Yes…I know it…but how…?”

“Nobody knows the whole story, but it seems Cornelius inherited everything and his brother got nowt. They say that Eugene has travelled the world, living rough in wild countries and havin’ all kinds of adventures, but wherever he’s been he’s come back to north Yorkshire.”

“But why does he live in that strange erection?”

“It’s a mystery. I do know he has nowt to do with ’is brother and vice versa and anyway ’e seems happy and content down there. Me dad was very fond of ’im and the old chap used to come up to the farm for the odd meal and a bath. Still does, but he’s very independent. Doesn’t sponge on anybody. Goes down to the village regularly for his food and ’is pension.”

“And always with his cat?”

“Aye.” Eddy laughed again. “Allus with his cat.”

We went into the buildings to start the tuberculin test, but as I clipped and measured and injected over and over again I couldn’t rid my mind of the memory of that odd twosome.

When I drew up at the farm gate three days later to read the tuberculin test, Mr. Ireson was sitting on a wicker chair in the sunshine, reading, with his cat on his lap.

When I got out of the car, he raised his hat as before. “Good afternoon. A very pleasant day.”