‘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.
On the relevant page of this manuscript, Brian’s unmistakable scrawl is next to my father’s description of the incident. It reads: ‘He said, “You bloody fool! You’re sacked!” ’
When Brian returned from Glasgow on that day in December 1940 to break the news to his brother that he had failed Pathology and only ‘done all right’ in Parasitology, he received the verbal battering from Donald that he was expecting. Brian’s fun-loving and carefree approach to life continued unabated despite suffering considerable discomfort while under the lash from Donald who treated him at times with complete disdain.
Alf remembered seeing a curt message on the mantelpiece once that simply read, ‘Brian! Go home! Donald.’ On another occasion, Alf and Brian walked into the kitchen one morning where Donald was frying three eggs for breakfast. He turned casually to his brother with the words, ‘ Youregg’s broken!’
Shortly after meeting Brian Sinclair for the first time, Alf began to wonder what his contribution would be towards the running of the practice. Donald, who tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to instil the work ethic into his young brother, took it out on Brian by giving him all the worst deals that were going. It soon became clear that he was a factotum – somebody who was supposed to dispense and deliver medicines, wash the cars, dig the garden, answer the phone, keep the books and even, in an emergency, go to a case.
At least, this was how Donald saw his function, but Brian had other ideas. He devoted his whole time to enjoying himself, regarding all kinds of physical activity with abhorrence; in fact, his whole life seemed to be geared to the cause of doing as little as possible. This, he largely achieved – spending many long and happy hours sitting in a chair doing crosswords, smoking interminable numbers of Woodbines, or simply snoozing peacefully. He was rousted into activity by his brother on occasion but, by and large, Brian had a pretty easy time in the old house. When not reclining in his favourite chair, he could be found conversing effortlessly in the local public houses or carrying out practical jokes on anyone who was unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity at the time. This frequently happened to be Alf and very few weeks went by without his being the victim of one or two mischievous pranks.