As a result of the electroconvulsive therapy he was receiving, his memory began to desert him. On the occasion of Rosie’s birthday, we all went to the cinema in Ripon to see a Walt Disney film, The White Wilderness. My father seemed to enjoy the film but when I mentioned it to him next morning over breakfast, he looked at me as if in a dream. His eyes appeared to be focused on a point several miles behind my head.
‘Film? What film?’ he said. He had no recollection of the previous evening.
It has been suggested that repeated attacks of ‘undulant fever’ were responsible for Alf’s depression. This was contracted through treating cattle with Brucellosis, a disease that was rife in the dairy herds of Britain in those days – causing abortion and stillbirths in cows and heifers. In common with many others in his profession, Alf removed diseased afterbirths from hundreds of affected animals, which resulted in his developing, on more than one occasion, symptoms of high fever and delirium. At such times, he took to his bed for days.
This disease has been described as a depressive one but it seemed to have the opposite effect on Alf. He became light-headed and happy, lying in bed while cracking jokes to which he, himself, would respond with wild and hysterical laughter, often listened to with ill-concealed amusement by his children. Years later, he was to write a chapter in Every Living Thing, in which he described the unusual symptoms that he experienced. These attacks were very short-lived and he always returned to work quickly. Fortunately, he did not suffer any long-term effects from the disease – unlike many of his professional colleagues who developed such symptoms as crippling arthritis or severe and lasting depression. It is difficult to disregard Brucellosis entirely as a contributory factor towards Alf’s illness, but it cannot be held solely responsible for pitching his emotions into such a grievous turmoil. The causes were far more complex than that.
Despite his marked deterioration following Pop’s death, he managed to hide his depression from others, with his colleagues at work having little idea that there was anything wrong. He put a brave face on everything but there were times when even he could not conceal the effects of his illness from his family.
In October 1960, he took Rosie with him to visit his mother in Glasgow. As they approached the city, quite suddenly he seized his young daughter’s hand and held it tightly to the gearstick of the car. She was only thirteen years old at the time but she can still remember the look of tension on her father’s face, holding her hand in a vice-like grip as he approached his mother’s home. Was the memory of his father’s death too much to bear or was there an inherent fear of his mother that was coming to the surface? After he recovered from his breakdown, he was to adopt a far more relaxed approach to his mother but as he drew near to his old home that day, Rosie’s hand firmly in his own, there were certainly some very powerful and devastating emotions within him.
To his eternal credit, however, he kept his feelings from us as much as he could and, reading the letters he sent to his mother, there is no hint of the upheaval within his mind. He fought his illness in the only way he knew – he kept working. The practice was thriving and, thanks to the increase in TB Testing work, three assistants were working there through most of 1960. In the spring of 1961, however, two of them left. It was at a time when my father was very low and he found himself having to revert to night work again, working as hard as he had ever done in his life. This was probably therapeutic and helped take his mind off his escalating worries.
In a letter to his mother in March 1961 he wrote: ‘This morning I was out on a sunny hillside outside Ampleforth lambing a ewe and just thinking what other job in the world could be so wonderful.’ The ability to still appreciate his good fortune in having a job that he loved must have been a great comfort to him in those difficult times.
Despite his high work rate, he made time for his hobbies of gardening, tennis and playing the violin – and he never forsook his family. In 1960 we went on our annual holiday as usual, staying with Alex and Lynne Taylor who, by this time, were in Glenlivet in north-east Scotland. Nor did he forget his mother in Glasgow, continuing to write weekly letters to her, supplying advice and support during a period when she felt so low at the loss of her husband. He was still the caring father to us, and the loyal son to his mother.
In October 1960, Eddie Straiton, while on a visit to Thirsk to speak to the local veterinary clinical club, had noticed that his old friend was not well. Six months later, having heard that there was little improvement, he offered to come to Thirsk to work as a locum in the practice while sending Alf and Joan to his holiday house in Banalbufar on the island of Majorca – all of this at his expense. This generous gesture was one Alf would never forget.
That restful holiday in June 1961 was Alf and Joan’s very first trip abroad. The complete change of surroundings, with the wonderful scenery and the warm hospitality of the local people, provided a turning point in his recovery.
I remember collecting my parents from Thirsk railway station on their return from Majorca. Having not seen my father for three weeks, I was shocked at his appearance. He had lost a great deal of weight, his inability to resist the delicious Majorcan fruit and vegetables having had a stimulating effect upon his digestive system. He was wearing a large white sun hat which seemed to dwarf his scrawny body.
I walked up to him and shook his hand. ‘How was your holiday, Dad? Great to see you back!’
The sunken eyes in the white face looked at me for a moment. He must have been thinking how well I looked. We had had a heat wave in Yorkshire and I had been playing tennis with Eddie as well as accompanying him around the practice in his open-topped sports car. I looked like the one who had been to sun-drenched Majorca, not the pale figure standing before me.
‘Marvellous, Jim!’ he said, and his gaunt face broke into a smile. I knew then that he was on the road to recovery. The eyes, though tired, had lost their distant look and there was a twinkle of that old glow of humour and affection that I used to know. He looked ghastly but I knew he was turning the corner.
He returned from holiday to discover that one of the assistants in the practice was ill and unable to work and, weak though he was, he returned to the time-honoured therapy for nervous illness – hard work. As the weeks went by, however, there were occasions when he lapsed back into his quiet moods, and this prompted us to persuade him to take another holiday.
He could afford to be away from the practice, as two more young assistants had been recruited by this time, and Rosie and I, together with one of her schoolfriends, accompanied him on a walking holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. This holiday, during which I watched him getting better every day, has remained one of my most memorable.
The exercise in the fresh air was a tremendous tonic. Instead of worrying about everything, he had to concentrate on the physical challenge of keeping up with younger people. We walked through Wensleydale, Swaledale and Dentdale. We climbed over high fells and marched along green river valleys. We stayed in Youth Hostels, where we slept the deep and refreshing sleep that follows days of exercise in the open air and, despite suffering pain from blisters and developing a swollen knee while descending Great Shunner Fell, he enjoyed every minute of it. As I watched him improve, mentally as well as physically, it was as though the pure Yorkshire air was cleansing his mind and washing away the worries that had plagued him for so long.