The last thing he ever wrote was the foreword to a small booklet about the White Horse Association. It was at the request of one of his friends, a farming client called Fred Banks, who was president of the association. The famous White Horse, which had been cut into the hillside above the village of Kilburn in 1857, is a vivid landmark which, together with the Whitestone Cliffs, formed a majestic background to Alf’s work in veterinary practice for almost fifty years. He wrote the foreword only three days before he died, saying in it:
I had spent only a few days in Thirsk when … I had one of my most delightful surprises – my first sight of the White Horse of Kilburn. I find it difficult to describe the thrill I felt at the time and it is something which has remained with me over the years. As a young man, it was one of my favourite outings to take my young children to sit up there on the moorland grass and savour what must be one of the finest panoramic views in England; fifty miles of chequered fields stretching away to the long bulk of the Pennines.
Alf’s love of writing, and his willingness to cooperate with so many requests, had lasted up until his final days.
In late January 1995, on one of my visits to his house, I was alarmed at his appearance. He was always a man who hid his pain from others, but he could not conceal it this time. He told me that he had an excruciatingly sore point in his back. There was little to see, but to touch the area provoked an agonised response.
The last time that I had seen something similar was many years before, when I had visited my old Chemistry master, John Ward, who was suffering from lung cancer that had finally spread to his spine. He was in tremendous pain and died only a day or two after my visit.
As I spoke to my father that day, I could not help but notice the similarity and I knew that the end was near. I left his house with one thought on my mind – a fervent hope that he would not have to suffer for much longer. He had been through some bad days and it could only get worse.
I did not have to wait long. On the evening of Tuesday, 21 February, unable to remain on his feet, he was confined to his bed. A syringe pump, delivering morphine into his system, helped to ease the pain.
I visited him that evening but his usually lively conversation was absent. Heavily drugged, he could only talk slowly and unsteadily but still managed a smile or two as Alex Taylor reminded him of some of the countless funny times they had shared in their youth.
He deteriorated steadily throughout the following day and soon could no longer speak coherently. I remember, having at one point sat gently on the side of his bed, being startled to see him gasp and grimace with pain. Knowing how stoically he had borne his disease for so long, I wondered what sort of horrendous assault his body had endured to generate such a reaction.
I saw him alive for the last time on the evening of 22 February and I knew the end was very close. I shot out to a farm visit the following morning before visiting him again, but he was dead before I arrived at the house. My mother, Rosie and Emma were by his side when he died.
As I looked at him that morning, I felt utterly alone. The shock of his death was not as severe as the one I had received over three years earlier when I first knew he had cancer; instead, I felt nothing but an overwhelming sorrow, and I knew that my life would never be quite the same again. On that morning of 23 February 1995, the world lost its best-loved veterinary surgeon. His family, and those close to him, lost a great deal more.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Within twenty-four hours of my father’s death, letters of condolence began to arrive on his family’s doorsteps. My mother received literally thousands, while Rosie and I had hundreds to read. They came not only from close friends, but from clients of the practice, local people who had felt privileged to know him personally, former assistants who had worked at 23 Kirkgate, many members of the veterinary profession and, of course, admirers of his work from all over the world. With so many, including those who knew him only through his writing, feeling that they, too, had lost a great friend, we were not alone with our thoughts at that time.
As he would have wished, the funeral – conducted one week later by the Reverend Toddy Hoare in the nearby village of Felixkirk – was a quiet family affair. As well as the immediate family, only Donald Sinclair, his daughter Janet, Alex and Lynne Taylor, their daughter, Lynne, too, and Eve Pette, Denton’s widow, were present. A small service was conducted afterwards at the crematorium in Darlington.
On the day after he died, the James Herriot Library was due to be opened at the Veterinary School in Glasgow. I had agreed, at the time that it was proposed to him three months before, to accept the honour on his behalf.
When they heard the sad news, the Veterinary School suggested that the ceremony be postponed, but I felt that it was something that I had to do. This was the last honour he had received – and one that had meant so much to him. It presented me with an emotionally challenging task but I had a feeling of great pride when I saw my father’s portrait looking, almost poignantly, across the library and out of the window to the Campsie Fells where he had spent so many happy hours in his youth.
On either side of the plaque in the James Herriot Library there are two photographs, one of Alfred Wight and the other of Sir William Weipers – two very famous graduates who made enormous contributions to their profession. I have often wondered what my father would have thought, all those years ago as an insignificant student at Glasgow Veterinary College, had he known that one day he would be pictured alongside the man he had so admired? I feel sure that he would have been a very proud man had he lived just those few more days to have seen it.
My low spirits following my father’s last days were not improved by the death, shortly afterwards, of Donald Sinclair. Donald had had an emotionally turbulent few months. The death of my father had hit him so hard that he could not summon up the courage to speak to me until a full week later. When he did, it was in typical fashion. The telephone rang in my house and when I lifted the receiver, a voice said, simply, ‘Jim?’
‘Yes, Donald?’ I replied.
There was a long pause, which was unusual for such an impatient man. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady. ‘I’m fed up about your dad.’
I had no chance to respond. The telephone went dead. It had been the briefest of conversations but I knew how he felt – and what he had tried to say.
Worse was to come Donald’s way. His wife, Audrey, who had been failing for some time, died that June, three and a half months after my father. Donald had been totally devoted to her throughout their fifty-two years together and, following this devastating blow, he seemed like a lost person, drained of all his humour and vitality.
One day not long after Audrey’s death, he walked into the surgery in Kirkgate and stood beside me as I operated on a dog. He had always been a startlingly thin man but, on that day, he seemed to have shrunk to almost nothing. That gloriously volatile aura of eccentricity was absent as he stood quietly, observing me at work. The wonderful character I had known for so many years bore little resemblance to the old man at my side, and I felt a pang of sympathy as I glanced at his face – one that betrayed an air of loneliness and hopelessness.
Suddenly, he broke his silence. ‘Jim, do you mind if I come and live here?’ he asked quietly.
‘These premises belong to you,’ I said, ‘so you can do what you like.’
‘I have always wanted to live in that top flat. Looking over Thirsk to the hills – the one where your mother and father had their first home,’ he continued.
‘Yes, there is something very nice about the flat,’ I replied. Although I knew that Donald had become depressed living alone in Southwoods Hall, I hardly expected him to move house at such an advanced age.