An evil-smelling cascade erupted all over him

new jacket with a flat stick. It didn’t make much difference.

The colonel was hearty and full of congratulations. ‘Come in, my dear chap. Come in and have a drink.’

But the invitation had a hollow ring and he took care to stand at least ten feet away from his friend.

Siegfried threw his bedraggled jacket over his shoulder. ‘No thank you, Hubert. It’s most kind of you,

EVEN though it was only my second year of practice, I was already formulating my own theories about the reaction of our clients to the sight of blood, guts and general mess such as we’d just witnessed. One was that it was always the biggest, strongest, super-confident ones who went down first.

(I had, by this time, worked out a few other unscientific theories, e.g. big dogs were kept by people who lived in little houses and vice versa. Clients who said ‘spare no expense’ never paid their bills, ever. When I asked my way in the Dales and was told ‘you can’t miss it’, I knew I’d soon be hopelessly lost.)

I had begun to wonder if perhaps country folk, despite their closer contact with fundamental things, were perhaps more susceptible than city people. Ever since Sid Blenkhorn had staggered into Skeldale House one evening, his face ghostly white.

‘Have you got a drop o’ whisky handy, Jim?’ he quavered, and when I had guided him to a chair and Siegfried had put a glass in his hand he told us he had been at a first aid lecture given by Dr Allinson, a few doors down the street.

‘He was talking about veins and arteries and things,’ groaned Sid, passing a hand across his forehead. ‘God, it was awful!’ Apparently Fred Ellison the fishmonger had been carried out unconscious after only ten minutes. It had been a shambles.

Only once did I discover a means of immediate resuscitation, and that was by accident.

It was when Henry Dickson asked me to show him how to castrate a pig. Henry was going in for pigs in a big way and had a burning ambition to equip himself with veterinary skills.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said on a visit to his farm one day. ‘How about if I do this one as a demonstration for you, and see what you think?’

‘Right, that’s a good idea. What’ll you charge me to do ’im?’ ‘Seven and six.’ ‘Well, I suppose you have to have your pound of flesh. Let’s get on.’

I injected a few ccs of Nembutal into the little pig and he rolled over in the straw and lay still. Henry had rigged up a table in the yard and we laid the animal on it.

I was preparing to start when Henry pulled out a ten-shilling note. ‘Better pay you now before I forget.’

‘All right, but my hands are clean now — push it into my pocket and I’ll give you the change when we finish.’

I rather fancied myself as a teacher and soon warmed to my task. I carefully incised the skin. ‘See there, Henry,’ I began. ‘I am taking the spermatic cord now and winding it in its coverings tightly down to the . . .’

But my audience was no longer with me. My student had sunk down on an upturned oil drum and lay slumped across the table. Doing the rest of the job was a sad anti-climax.

I put the pig back in his pen and gathered up my gear: then I remembered I hadn’t given Henry his change. I don’t know why I did it, but instead of half-a-crown, I slapped down a shilling and sixpence on the wood a few inches from his face.

The noise made him open his eyes and he gazed dully at the coins for a few seconds, then with almost frightening suddenness he snapped upright, ashen-faced but alert and glaring.

‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘I want another shillin’!’ AFTER I had finally plucked up the courage to ask Helen Alderson for a date, I seemed to drift into the habit of dropping in to see her on an occasional evening.

And before I knew what was happening I had developed a pattern: at around eight o’clock my feet began to make their way of their own accord to her father’s farm, Heston Grange.

We went to the little dances in the village institutes, we walked for miles along the old grassy mine tracks in the hills, or sometimes she came on my evening calls. There wasn’t anything spectacular to do in Darrowby but there was a complete lack of strain, a feeling of being self-sufficient in a warm existence of our own that made everything meaningful and worthwhile.

Things might have gone on like this indefinitely, but for a conversation I had with Siegfried. We were sitting in the big room at Skeldale House as we often did before bedtime, talking and laughing over the day’s events.

‘Tell me this,’ he said suddenly. ‘Are you or are you not courting Helen Alderson?’

‘Well, I’m . . . I’ve been . . . oh I suppose you could call it that.’ Siegfried settled back comfortably on his chair, put his fingertips together and assumed a judicial expression. ‘Good, good. You admit you’re courting the girl.

‘Now let us take it a step further. She is, from my own observation, extremely attractive — in fact, she nearly causes a traffic pile-up when she walks across the cobbles on market day. It’s common knowledge that she is intelligent, equable and an excellent cook. Perhaps you would agree with this?’

‘Of course I would,’ I said, nettled at his superior air. ‘But what’s this all about? Why are you going on like a high court judge?’

‘I’m only trying to establish my point, James, which is that you seem to have an ideal wife lined up and you are doing nothing about it. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I wish you’d stop playing around and let us see a little action.’

I don’t suppose I am the first person to have had his life fundamentally influenced by one of Siegfried’s chance outbursts. I thought his opinions ridiculous at the time, but he planted a seed which germinated and flowered almost overnight.

There is no doubt he is responsible for the fact that I was the