Read Online Every Living Thing by James Herriot - Free Book Online Page A

farmer slapped his thigh.
    “Okay, okay,” I said, and as I went out to the car for the penicillin tubes I wondered how many other little wrinkles my son had absorbed in his journeys with me.
    Later, as we drove back along the gated roads, I congratulated him.
    “Well done, old lad. You know a lot more than I think!”
    Jimmy grinned. “Yes, and remember when I couldn’t even milk a cow?”
    I nodded. Milking-machines were universal among the bigger farms, but many of the smallholders still milked by hand and it seemed to fascinate my son to watch them. I could remember him standing by the side of old Tim Suggett as he milked one of his six cows. Crouched on the stool, head against the cow’s flank, the farmer effortlessly sent the white jets hissing and frothing into the bucket held between his knees.
    He looked up and caught the boy’s eager gaze.
    “Does tha want to ’ave a go, young man?” he asked.
    “Oh, yes, please!”
    “Awright, here’s a fresh bucket. See if ye can fill it.”
    Jimmy squatted, grasped a teat in each hand and began to pull away lustily. Nothing happened. He tried two other teats with the same result.
    “There’s nothing coming,” he cried plaintively. “Not a drop.”
    Tim Suggett laughed. “Aye, it’s not as easy as it looks, is it? I reckon it ’ud take you a long time to milk ma six cows.”
    My son looked crestfallen, and the old man put a hand on his head. “Come round sometime and I’ll teach ye. I’ll soon make a milker out of ye.”
    A few weeks later, I returned from my round one afternoon to find Helen standing worriedly on the doorstep of Skeldale House.
    “Jimmy hasn’t come back from school,” she said. “Did he tell you he was going to any of his friends?”
    I thought for a moment. “No, not that I can remember. But maybe he’s just playing somewhere.”
    Helen looked out at the gathering dusk. “It’s strange, though. He usually comes home to tell us first.”
    We telephoned round among his school friends without result, then I began a tour of Darrowby, exploring the little winding “yards,” calling in at people we knew and getting the same reply, “No, I’m sorry, we haven’t seen him.” My attempt at a cheerful rejoinder, “Oh, thanks very much, sorry to trouble you,” became increasingly difficult as a cold hand began to grip at my heart.
    When I got back to Skeldale House, Helen was on the verge of tears. “He hasn’t come back, Jim. Where on earth can he have got to? It’s pitch black out there. He can’t be playing.”
    “Oh, he’ll turn up. There’ll be some simple explanation, don’t worry.” I hoped I sounded airy but I didn’t tell Helen that I had been dredging the water trough at the bottom of the garden.
    I was beginning to feel the unmistakable symptoms of panic when I had a thought. “Wait a minute, didn’t he say he’d go round to Tim Suggett’s one day after school to learn to milk?”
    The smallholding was actually in Darrowby itself and I was there in minutes. A soft light shone above the half-door of the little cow house and as I looked inside there was my son, crouched on a stool, bucket between his knees, head against a patient cow.
    “Hello, Dad,” he said cheerfully. “Look here!” He displayed his bucket, which contained a few pints of milk. “I can do it now! Mr. Suggett’s been showing me. You don’t pull the teats at all. You just make your fingers go like this.”
    Glorious relief flooded through me. I wanted to grab Jimmy and kiss him, kiss Mr. Suggert, kiss the cow, but I took a couple of deep breaths and restrained myself.
    “It’s very good of you to have him, Tim. I hope he hasn’t been any bother.”
    The old man chuckled. “Nay, lad, nay. We’ve had a bit o’ fun, and t’young man’s cottoned on right sharp. I’ve been tellin’ him if he’s goin’ to be a vitnery he’ll have to know how to get the milk out of a cow.”
    It is one of my vivid memories, that night when Jimmy