To the two young vets, the next hour or so seemed like days as this man produced a decomposing calf, bit by bit, out of the cow until, finally, the result of his labours lay in shreds on the cow byre floor, relieving the exhausted cow of her unwanted burden. He had succeeded where the veterinary surgeons had failed.
Eddie and Alf muttered their thanks before slinking out of the byre and rattling off down the country road back to Thirsk. The shame was overwhelming. They were so demoralised that nothing was said for a long time, but eventually Eddie broke the silence with a remark that my father would never forgot.
‘The ruin of two promising careers, Alf!’ he said, staring gloomily out of the old cracked windscreen.
‘Aye, Eddie, you’re probably right,’ he replied. ‘News travels fast round here – especially bad news. Oh, they’re going to love this! The farmer had to do the vet’s job! They’ll be shouting it from the roof tops! This’ll be all over Yorkshire by tomorrow!’
The following few days were misery as they waited for some reaction from the farming community – but there was none. They began to think that the whole episode had been just a terrible nightmare, but they still dreaded a call to anywhere within a mile or two of the disaster. They soon got one. They were called to a neighbouring farm to see a cow and they braced themselves for an uncomfortable visit.
It was not long before the farmer resurrected the painful incident. ‘Me neighbour was tellin’ me about you two young fellers,’ he said.
‘Oh yes?’ replied Alf, ready to hear the worst.
‘’E’s right upset about that calvin’ job ’e ’ad done t’other night, Ah can tell yer!’
‘I bet he is!’
‘Aye, ’e’s right brassed off about it, like.’
There was an embarrassing silence before the farmer spoke again. ‘’E should never a’ let that daft bugger kill ’is cow wi’ cuttin’ that calf away wi’ that knife!’
Alf and Eddie stared at the farmer. Alf broke the silence. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Aye,’ continued the farmer. ‘’E wished ’e’d listened to you lads! If ’e’d ’ad’t cow slaughtered like you said, ’e’d a’ made a bit o’ money on’t carcass. Cow died afore you lads were out o’ t’ yard. Now ’e ’as nowt. ’E’s right upset ower’t job Ah can tell ther! ’E thinks a bit about you lads! ’E’ll listen to’t vet in future!’
A warm feeling began to flow over the two young men. They had had a taste of the fluctuating emotions experienced by every veterinary surgeon. They both told me that story in my student years, and each gave me the same words of encouragement. ‘Whenever you think that all is gloom and despair, never forget that there is always another day!’
The ability to make a decision was one of Alfred Wight’s strengths as a veterinary surgeon. He made the right decision in that cow shed all those years ago, and he would continue to make many more throughout his professional life.
In November 1940, Sinclair and Wight were reunited. Donald suddenly returned from the Royal Air Force which meant that Eddie had to leave but, before he did, Alf wrote, on his behalf, letters of application for various jobs that were advertised. Even way back in those early years, Eddie was grateful for his friend’s flair as a writer of letters; he was offered a job in Colne very soon afterwards.
Eddie Straiton was immensely grateful and the opportunity to repay his friend’s generosity would, in fact, arise more than twenty years later.
Although Donald had, in fact, been thrown out of the Royal Air Force, he had half expected it. In order to join, he had lied about his age, but it was his less than satisfactory reflexes while undergoing flying instruction that had been his undoing. When the authorities discovered he was approaching thirty, they reviewed his case and decided to send him home. The fact that he was a veterinary surgeon, a profession regarded as a ‘reserved occupation’, had done little to help his cause.
His response to this rejection was to attack the work in the practice like a man possessed. It was as well that he was in this mood as the practice was becoming busier by the day, with both men working flat out. Some ‘help’, however, was soon to be on the way.
Eddie Straiton’s father had a car for sale which Donald decided to buy. He turned to Alf one day. ‘Alfred, I want you to go up to Glasgow to get that car. While you are there, take a day or two off to see your mother and father and, on the way back, will you pick up my brother from the veterinary college and bring him here for the Christmas vacation? The young bugger is in his third year now and has probably failed his exams again! God help him if he has!’
Alf Wight was about to meet Brian Sinclair, a man who would become a dear and lifelong friend. The man he would immortalise, many years later, as Tristan Farnon, was about to enter into the life of Alfred Wight.
CHAPTER NINE
Brian Sinclair strode into Alf Wight’s life like a breath of fresh air. Photographs taken of him in the 1940s reveal a lively, humorous face, one that must have been a great tonic to the over-worked and poverty-stricken young vet. Alf had been in Thirsk only a few months but already he was beginning to feel like a veteran; Brian’s arrival added a refreshing twist to his daily routine.
Brian was not at all like his elder brother in appearance. He was shorter and plumper with an oval face that looked as though it was about to crack with laughter at any moment. This open and honest face portrayed the true character of the man behind it; Brian Sinclair spent a large proportion of his life laughing and Alf would spend many an hour laughing with him.
The descriptions of Brian and his escapades in the early James Herriot books give a vivid account of life in 23 Kirkgate at that time. Alf, Donald and Brian, when he was on vacation from veterinary college, all lived together in the Kirkgate house, placing Alf in the company of two of the richest characters he had ever met. The ongoing love-hate relationship between the brothers would provide wonderful material for his books, with the antics of the pair of them figuring prominently in the early volumes.
It was all the funnier as Donald very rarely saw the amusing side of the tense exchanges between himself and Brian – and with good reason. He felt a responsibility towards the welfare of his younger brother. This included the funding of his education, but Brian was not the world’s most diligent student; he failed his exams regularly, leaving Donald severely out of pocket. The explosive and, in many cases, justified blasts at Brian from his frustrated brother, are accurately chronicled in the early Herriot books.
When Alf was writing his first book in the 1960s, he consulted with Brian at length to ensure that these incidents were authentically reproduced. A draft typescript of the first book, If Only They Could Talk, contains several inserts and rough scribblings on many of the pages, one chapter of which caught my eye.
It was the one describing the episode when Tristan wrecked his brother’s car, despite dire warnings to be careful from Siegfried who was prostrate in bed with flu. Tristan eventually summoned up the courage to explain to Siegfried that his beloved Bentley had had a ‘minor’ accident, resulting in a smashed wing and the complete absence of two of its doors. There was a terrible silence while the elder brother absorbed the bad tidings. Suddenly, and with a superhuman effort, he sat bolt upright and screamed wildly into Tristan’s face, before collapsing back exhausted on the bed.