"I'm sure I can explain. There's been some mistake . . ."
"Yes . . . yes . . ." he murmured, filling the syringe before my
eyes and sending a few playful spurts into the air.
"There's just a bit of enamel off it, and Mr Grover said . . ."
The WAAF suddenly wound the chair back and I found myself in the
semi-prone position with the white bulk looming over me.
"You see," I gasped desperately.
"I need that tooth. It's the one that holds my ' A strong finger was
on my gum and I felt the needle going in. I resigned myself to my
fate.
When he had inserted the local the big man put the syringe down.
"We'll just give that a minute or two," he said, and left the room.
As soon as the door closed behind him the WAAF tiptoed over to me.
"This feller's loopy!" she whispered.
Half Lying, I stared at her.
"Loopy . . . ? What d'you mean?"
"Crackers! Round the bend! No idea how to pull teeth!"
"But . . . but . . . he's a dentist isn't he . . . ?"
She pulled a wry face,
"Thinks he is! But he hasn't a clue!"
I had no time to explore this cheering information further because the
door opened and the big man returned. : He seized a horrible pair of
forceps and I closed my eyes as he started flexing his muscles.
I must admit I felt nothing. I knew he was twisting and tugging away
up there but the local had mercifully done its job. I was telling
myself that it would Soon be over when I heard a sharp crack.
I opened my eyes. The Butcher was gazing disappointedly at my
broken-off tooth in his forceps The root was still in my gum.
Behind him the WAAF gave me a long
"I told you so' nod. She was a pretty little thing, but I fear the
libido of the young men she encountered in here would be at a low
ebb.
' Oh!" The Butcher grunted and began to rummage in a metal box. It
took me right back to the McDarroch days as he fished out one forceps
after another, opened and shut them a few times then tried them on
me.
But it was of no avail, and as the time passed I was the unwilling
witness of the gradual transition from heartiness to silence, then to
something like panic.
The man was clearly whacked. He had no idea how to shift that root.
He must have been gouging for half an hour when an idea seemed to
strike him. Pushing all the forceps to one side he almost ran from the
room and reappeared shortly with a tray on which reposed a long chisel
and a metal mallet.
At a sign from him the WAAF wound the chair back till I was completely
horizontal. Seemingly familiar with the routine, she cradled my head
in her arms in a practised manner and stood waiting.
This couldn't be true, I thought, as the man inserted the chisel into
my mouth and poised the mallet; but all doubts were erased as the metal
rod thudded against the remnants of my tooth and my head in turn shot
back into the little WAAF's bosom. And that was how it went on. I
lost count of time as The Butcher banged away and the girl hung on
grimly to my jerking skull.
The thought uppermost in my mind was that I had always wondered how
young horses felt when I knocked wolf teeth out of them. Now I knew.
When it finally stopped I opened my eyes, and though by this time I was
prepared for any thing I still felt slightly surprised to see The
Butcher threading a needle with a length of suture silk. He was
sweating and loo king just a little desperate as he bent over me yet
again.
"Just a couple of stitches," he muttered hoarsely, and I closed my eyes
again.
When I left the chair I felt very strange indeed. The assault on my
cranium had made me dizzy and the sensation of the long ends of the
stitches tickling my tongue was distinctly odd. I'm sure that when I
came out of the room I was staggering, and instinctively I pawed at my
mouth.
The first man I saw was Simkin. He was there where I had left him but
he looked different as he beckoned excitedly to me. I went over and he
caught at my tunic with one hand.
"What dyer think, mate?" he gasped.
"They've changed me round and I've got to go into room four." He
gulped.
"You looked bloody awful com in' out there.
What was it like?"
I looked at him. Maybe there was going to be a gleam of light this
morning.
I sank into the chair next to him and groaned.
"By God, you weren't kidding! I've never met anybody like that he's
half killed me. They don't call him The Butcher for nothing!"
"Why . . . what . . . what did 'e do?"
"Nothing much. Just knocked my tooth out with a hammer and chisel,
that's "Garn! You're 'avin' me on!" Simkin made a ghastly attempt to
smile "Word of honour," I said.
"Anyway, there's the tray coming out now. Look for yourself.
He stared at the WAAF carrying the dreadful implements and turned very
pale.
"Oh blimey! What . . . what else did 'e do?"
I held my jaw for a moment.
"Well he did something I've never seen before.
He made such a great hole in my gum that he had to stitch me up
afterwards."
Simkin shook his head violently.
"Naow, I'm not 'avin' that! I don't believe yer!"
"All right," I said.
"What do you think of this?"
I leaned forward, put my thumb under my lip and jerked it up to give
him a close-up view of the long gash and the trailing blood-stained
ends of the stitches.
He shrank away from me, lips trembling, eyes wide.
"Gawd!" he moaned.
"Oh Gawd . . . !"
It was unfortunate that the WAAF chose that particular moment to call
out "AC2 Simkin' piercingly from the doorway, because the poor fellow
leaped as though a powerful electric current had passed through him.
Then, head down, he trailed across the room. At the door he turned and
gave me a last despairing look and I saw him no more.
This experience deepened my dread of the five fillings which awaited
me. But I needn't have worried; they were trivial things and were
efficiently and painlessly dealt with by RAF dentists very different
from The Butcher.
And yet, many years after the war had ended, the man from room four
stretched out a long arm from the past and touched me on the shoulder.
I began to feel something sharp coming through the roof of my mouth and
went to Mr Grover, who X-rayed me and showed me a pretty picture of
that fateful root still there despite the hammer and chisel. He
extracted it and the saga was ended.
The Butcher remained a vivid memory because, apart from my ordeal, I
was constantly reminded of him by the dangerous wobbling of my pipe at
the edge of that needless gap in my mouth.
But I did have a small solace. I finished my visit to room four with a
parting shaft which gave me a little comfort. As I tottered away I
paused and addressed the big man's back as he prepared for his next
victim.
"By the way," I said.
"I've knocked out a
lot of teeth just like you did there."
He turned and stared at me.
"Really? Are you a dentist?"
"No," I replied over my shoulder as I left.
"I'm a vet!"
Chapter Four My impression that I had been hurled into a coarser world
was heightened at the beginning of each day, particularly one morning
when I was on fire picket duty and had the sadistic pleasure of
rattling the dustbin lids and shouting 'wa key-wa key!" along the
corridors. It wasn't the cursing and the obscene remarks which struck
deepest, it was the extraordinary abdominal noises issuing from the
dark rooms. They reminded me of my patient, Cedric, and in an instant
I was back in Darrow by answering the telephone.
The voice at the other end was oddly hesitant.
"Mr Herriot . . . I should be grateful if you would come and see my
dog." It was a woman, obviously upper class.
"Certainly. What's the trouble?"
"Well . . he . . . er . . . he seems to suffer from . . .
"I beg your pardon?"
There was a long pause.
"He has . . . excessive flatus."
"In what way, exactly?"
"Well . . . I suppose you'd describe it as ..
to tremble.
I thought I could see a gleam of light.
"You mean his stomach .
"No, not his stomach. He passes . . . era considerable quantity of .
. .
wind from his . . . his . . ." A note of desperation had crept in.
"Ah, yes!" All became suddenly clear.
"I quite understand. But that doesn't sound very serious. Is he
ill?"
"No, he's very fit in other ways."
"Well then, do you think it's necessary for me to see him?"
"Oh yes, indeed, Mr Herriot. I wish you would come as soon as
possible. It has become quite . . . quite a problem."
"All right," I said.
"I'll look in this morning. Can I have your name and address,
please?"
"It's Mrs Rumney, The Laurels."
certain amount of flatus."
.` windiness." The voice had beau..
I like women better than men.
Mind you, I have nothing against men after all, I am one myself but in
the RAF there were too many of them. Literally thousands, jostling,
shouting, swearing; you couldn't get away from them. Some of them
became my friends and have remained so until the present day, but the
sheer earthy mass of them made me realise how my few months of married
life had changed me.
Women are gentler, softer, cleaner, altogether nicer things and I, who
always considered myself one of the boys, had come to the surprising
conclusion that the com panion I wanted most was a woman.
The Laurels was a very nice house on the edge of the town standing back
from the road in a large garden. Mrs Rumney herself let me in and I
felt a shock of surprise at my first sight of her. It wasn't just that
she was strikingly beautiful; there was an unworldly air about her. She
would be around forty but had the appearance of a heroine in a
Victorian novel tall, willowy, ethereal. And I could understand
immediately her hesitation on the 'phone. Everything about her
suggested fastidiousness and delicacy.
"Cedric is in the kitchen," she said.
"I'll take you through."
I had another surprise when I saw Cedric. An enormous Boxer hurled
himself on me in delight, clawing at my chest with the biggest,
horniest feet I had seen for a long time. I tried to fight him off but
he kept at me, panting ecstatically into my face and wagging his entire
rear end.
"Sit down, boy!" the lady said sharply, then, as Cedric took
absolutely no notice, she turned to me nervously.
"He's so friendly."
"Yes," I said breathlessly,
"I can see that." I finally managed to push the huge animal away and
backed into a corner for safety.
"How often does this ... excessive flatus occur?"
As if in reply an almost palpable sulphurous wave arose from the dog
and eddied around me. It appeared that the excitement of seeing me had
activated Cedric's weakness. I was up against the wall and unable to
for a few moments before speaking.
"Is that what you meant?"
Mrs Rumney waved a lace handkerchief under her nose and the faintest
flush crept into the pallor of her cheeks.
"Yes," she replied almost inaudibly
"Yes . . . that is it."
"Oh well," I said briskly.
"There's nothing to worry about. Let's go into the other room and
we'll have a word about his diet and a few other things."
It turned out that Cedric was get ting rather a lot of meat and I drew
up a little chart cutting down the protein and adding extra
carbohydrates. I prescribed a kaolin antacid mixture to be given night
and morning and left the house in a confident frame of mind.
It was one of those trivial things and I had entirely forgotten it when
Mrs Rumney 'phoned again.
"I'm afraid Cedric is no better, Mr Herriot."
"Oh I'm sorry to hear that. He's stiller . . . still . . . yes . .
. yes . ." I spent a few moments in thought.
"I tell you what I don't think I can do any more by seeing him at the
moment, but I think you should cut out his meat completely for a week
or two. Keep him on biscuits and brown bread rusked in the oven.
Try him with that and vegetables and I'll give you some powder to mix
in his food. Perhaps you'd call round for it."
The powder was a pretty strong absorbent mixture and I felt sure it
would do the trick, but a week later Mrs Rumney was on the 'phone
again.
"There's absolutely no improvement, Mr Herriot." The tremble was back
in her voice.
"I . .. I do wish you'd come and see him again." .
I couldn't see much point in viewing this perfectly healthy animal
again but .
I promised to call. I had a busy day and it was after six o'clock
before I got round to The Laurels. There were several cars in the
drive and when I went into the house I saw that Mrs Rumney had a few
people in for drinks; people like herself upper class and of obvious
refinement. In fact I felt rather a lout in my working clothes among
the elegant gathering.
Mrs Rumney was about to lead me through to the kitchen when the door
burst open and Cedric bounded delightedly into the midst of the
company.
Within seconds an aesthetic-loo king gentleman was frantically beating
off the attack as the great feet ripped down his waistcoat. He got
away at the cost of a couple of buttons and the Boxer turned his
attention to one of the ladies.
She was in imminent danger of losing her dress when I pulled the dog
off her.
Pandemonium broke out in the graceful room, The hostess's plaintive
appeals rang out above the cries of alarm as the big dog charged
around, but very soon
I
realised that a more insidious element had crept into the situation.
The atmosphere in the room became rapidly charged with an unmistakable
effluvium and it was clear that Cedric's unfortunate malady had
reasserted itself.
I did my best to shepherd the animal out of the room but he didn't seem
to know the meaning of obedience and I chased him in vain. And as the
embarrassing.
minutes ticked away I began to realise for the first time the enormity
of the problem which confronted Mrs Rumney. Most dogs break wind
occasionally but Cedric was different; he did it all the time. And
while his silent emanationS were perhaps more treacherous there was no
doubt that the audible ones were painfully distressing in a company
like this.
Cedric made it worse, because at each rasping expulsion he would look
round, enquiringly at his back end then gambol about the room as though