Alf listened in silence. He was receiving one of his first lessons in the art of veterinary practice.
Mac gave his young assistant a pat on the shoulder. ‘Cheer up, you’ve done a really good job!’ He paused and a half-smile played across his face. ‘Do you know, Fred,’ he continued, ‘there have been many occasions in the past where I have been manipulating calves inside cows, with the sweat pouring off me, holding the bloody things in!’ Mac finished his little lecture with a statement that Alfred Wight would never forget; something that he, himself, would repeatedly drill into the many young assistants who would work under his guidance in the years to come. ‘Remember this, Fred! It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it!’
Alf was beginning to realise, very quickly, that the acquisition of knowledge was, in itself, not enough to guarantee success in veterinary practice, but he was a willing listener, and he was learning fast. In those few months working in Sunderland, he learned a great deal about human nature, too, observing Mac’s many moods as well as those of a great variety of people who came to the surgery in Thornhill Terrace. He also learned that he could easily be brought down to earth with a jolt, just as he was beginning to think that he was one of the finest vets in the land. With Mac, he learned that the life of a veterinary surgeon was one long, unpredictable succession of triumphs and failures.
One day, while operating on a horse with Mac, and feeling a bit low after a day of little success, he was gratified to learn that even the most respected members of his profession can lose their cloak of dignity at times. They were being helped by a local man who was telling them that, at his last place of employment, the great Professor Mitchell had been called to operate on a couple of young horses. Willie Mitchell was regarded as one of the finest horse surgeons in the land, and Alf was deeply impressed.
‘It must have been a great experience to see him at work,’ he said, wishing that he could have had the opportunity to observe such a revered and dignified figure. ‘He must be a very impressive man.’
‘Aye,’ came the reply, ‘ ’e’s a clever feller, all right. ’E laid out them ’osses on the ground wi’ chloroform an’ ’e operated on ’em, smooth an’ fast as yer like.’
‘It must have been wonderful to see,’ Alf continued, ‘to watch a real artist at work, someone totally in control of the situation.’ The man thought for a second or two, before leaning forward. His face broke into a grin. ‘Mind yer, one o’ them ’osses stopped breathin’ – an’ yer should ’ave seen ’im dancin’ on the bugger’s ribs!’
Alf may have been lucky to have a job but he had to work for his money. He worked almost every night with only an occasional Sunday afternoon off. He once had to summon up the courage to request a day off at Easter as his mother was coming down from Glasgow to visit her relatives. Mac nearly had a fit. One whole day! He was so taken aback by such an audacious request that the wish was granted.
As well as mediocre pay, the young veterinary surgeons of the day were given cars of very dubious reliability in which to travel to their visits. Alf Wight’s car was no exception. To climb into his first car, a tiny Ford, was an adventure – a journey into the unknown. Each time he sat in its spartan interior, he weighed up the chances of arriving at his destination. On one occasion, he dented the wing of the car in a Sunderland street. Two men, who came to his assistance, lifted the whole car on to the pavement, gave the bodywork a mighty heave, and the damage was straightened out in a matter of seconds. The future James Herriot would have been just another statistic had he ever had a head-on collision in such a vehicle.
He gave a good description of life behind the wheel in one of his letters to his parents: ‘The car, using the word in its broadest sense, makes a colossal din and, in the country, the birds rise from the hedges in fright and the cows and horses in the fields look definitely startled. The vibration is terrific over 35 mph and my liver will be in splendid condition after a month or two at it.’
Alf would go on to spend a large proportion of his life behind the wheel of a motor car. Those very first days on the road ensured that he was always the first to appreciate the comforts of modern motoring, comforts that he would not experience until very many years later.
The thrill of savouring his first job in veterinary practice received some added but not entirely welcome impetus from several visits by the German Air Force. In these early days of the war, the Sunderland area received many such attacks, with the big shipyards on the River Wear being the prime targets. Alf described, in a letter dated 30 January 1940, the frightening experience of treating a cow in the middle of an air raid: ‘The enemy planes are giving our coast a lot of attention. Mac and I had a grandstand view of the whole show as we were at a farm on the water’s edge in South Shields, just opposite the ships over which the enemy planes were diving and swooping. We saw all the firing from the AA batteries and the ships, and the Nazi being chased off by our fighters. The poor old cow didn’t get much attention as we dashed out of the byre after every bang and left her!’
Nazi Germany may have removed a little of the gloss from Alf’s enjoyment of his days in Sunderland, but there was one aspect of his work that he thoroughly hated. Although he realised that it was the dogs’ very existence that had enabled him to keep his job, visits to the greyhound track at South Shields were ones he dreaded. His task of checking the animals before each race was an unenviable one. In those days, the track seemed to be patronised by many strange, furtive people who would stoop to any trick to win a race. Young Alf Wight, who had been brought up in such an honest and upright home, and could not identify with such devious behaviour, faced a barrage of abuse when he, rightly, would not allow dogs to race as the result of illness, or such practices as doping and overfeeding. He did not mind working hard for his money, but this was like threading his way through a minefield, with deceit and dishonesty shadowing his every move.
Many years after he became famous, with his financial status somewhat improved, he would recall those days at the dog track when he was a young vet with hardly a penny in the world. At the end of one of the meetings, he was downing a welcome cup of tea, seated opposite a bookmaker who was counting the takings for the day. Alf had never seen so much money in his life as the bookmaker continued to arrange notes and silver into huge piles on the table. He suddenly paused, taking in Alf’s frayed shirt and raggedy trousers. He raised one eyebrow, grinned, gave a curt nod and casually flicked half a crown across the table before returning to his counting. As Alf would write in Vets Might Fly, in which he transposed his experiences at the dog track from Sunderland to Yorkshire, he felt grateful to the man, not just for the money, but for the rare experience of a gesture of friendship towards him.
Those impecunious days, however, provided the future James Herriot with many rich memories that, years later, he would recall in his books, and Mac would be one of the earliest of his veterinary acquaintances to be portrayed in them – albeit loosely. In the first two books, an unpleasant character called Angus Grier appears, and some of the incidents involving this man were based upon Alf’s experiences in Sunderland. To be fair to Mac, he was in no way the disagreeable character that Angus Grier was. My father liked Mac and the two men developed a close friendship, but he was undoubtedly capable of displaying many different moods. He was not a man to be crossed and, when in a temper, it was wise to adopt a low profile.
Mac and his wife often invited Alf round for an evening meal, which was frequently followed by a game of table tennis or Monopoly. The sessions round the Monopoly board could be serious engagements. If Mac started to lose, tension soon sprang into the atmosphere, with any further deterioration in his fortunes inevitably leading to raised voices and the children running upstairs in tears to bed.