As the sun rose and the first daylight outlined the silhouette of the little range of hills to the north-east, we saw the lights of a car turning off from the main road. Those headlamps pointed our way. Hurray! At last. Our saviour was turning up and parking on the end of the row of vehicles – two panda cars, my van, a Ferguson tractor and a couple of Series 1 Land-Rovers which, in most other parts of the world, would have been at the back of the farmyard with chickens living in them.
The good doctor – young, blonde hair, anorak with fur-trimmed hood – had a Datsun Bluebird, a vehicle much favoured at the time by the medical profession for its reliability, though scorned by the fashionable for its anagram ‘durable dustbin’. Up the garden path she came, in a businesslike manner.
‘Morning, everyone. Right. Are we ready?’
I could see a war going on in Minnie’s mind. The policeman’s natural respect for the professions was battling with the evidence of his eyes and ears. Here was a girl who looked as though she should be working Saturday mornings in Boots the Chemist, who sounded like Angela Rippon, yet who claimed to be a doctor in the ancient Ridings of Yorkshire.
‘Er, we can’t go in yet, Miss, er, I mean Doctor,’ said Minnie. ‘There’s a dog.’
The doc looked baffled but took a pace or two back with the officers. It was time for Super Furry Animal Man to do his stuff. I leaned my patent grasper against the wall. This was a hollow pole with a braided wire running through double, making a noose at one end which I could pull tight at the other, very useful for keeping a dangerous beast away from one’s trouser turn-ups.
As soon as my hand touched the door, the dog started barking again. The police had broken the lock in their earlier assault so I just kept going, and when I saw my quarry I knew I’d have no trouble. No need for the grasper. This was a fat, short-haired, brown and white Jack Russell with bulging eyes, getting on in years, and it was absolutely terrified.
Barking its lungs out but wagging its tail furiously at the same time, the poor thing knew there was something dreadfully wrong. After days, I didn’t know how many, with its beloved Alf dead, no food, no water, it was utterly confused by life, me and the police. This anxious, troubled, tubby little animal wasn’t going to hurt anyone.
I shouted to the throng outside that I’d found the biggest and fiercest specimen of the Japanese Mouse Hound ever seen, and called to it in soothing and encouraging tones, feeling in my pocket for my dog lead. A police officer is never without handcuffs; an RSPCA inspector is never without a dog lead. At the sight of mine the terrier, perhaps of the view that leads implied long and strenuous walks over the hills and far away, turned and bolted into the sitting room, where it hid under the chair that Alf was seemingly asleep in. I’d never seen a dead person before. He looked rather grey but otherwise exactly like any bloke who’d had a few pints on a Sunday lunchtime and, after the roast beef and Yorkshire pud, was taking his customary afternoon nap in front of the fire.
I crawled on my knees towards the dog, held it by the collar and pulled it out from under with no resistance. As I stood, keeping the dog firmly in the crook of my arm and stroking it, I heard myself starting to explain to Alf what I was doing and why, and apologising for taking his dog away.
The name on the collar was Buster, and chubby little Buster was still quivering with fright but definitely getting calmer when I walked from the house. As ever, the constables expressed their admiration openly for someone who can deal with a barking dog. They parted before me like the waters of the Red Sea before Moses, or the waters of Whitby harbour before the good ship Lollipop. I nodded my acceptance of their esteem, all in a day’s work don’t you know, and said I’d be back later for the cats.
It was after nine by the time I got to the building designated as the RSPCA dog pound. This was an old lean-to greenhouse and potting shed where, in days gone by, municipal gardeners employed by Scorswick Urban District Council had pricked out their geraniums and transplanted their begonias for the floral clock at the entrance to the park. My inspector predecessor had picked up two mortuary slabs from somewhere, a mortuary I supposed, which he’d set up on sturdy plinths, for the purpose of examining animals and putting them down if he had to. We called it euthanising. The stuff we used, pentobarbitone sodium, trade name Euthatal, gave an animal a humane, painless and quick end but we were still killing it, and we didn’t do it without a very, very good reason. I had no expectations of that kind for Buster.
In my shed I only had accommodation for up to three dogs, plus cages and baskets for cats and birds. My dog pound was a staging post only. The Jack Russell and the cats would have to go to York, where we had substantial facilities and where we’d put the animals up for adoption. This would be difficult for Buster, I knew, because of his age, but we’d try our hardest. I went back to Alf’s for the cats.
Seeing the inside of the house in daylight was a bit of a shock. It was truly filthy. My shoes stuck to the carpet as I walked and made that squishy, suction noise. And the whole place stank to high heaven of cat pee. My, how it stank. How I’d missed the smell before, I don’t know. Must have been the excitement. Anyway, it was as near to overpowering as you could get without actually fainting to the floor. Never mind, I had to get on and find these cats.
I’d been told there were fifteen but I’d brought cat baskets for twenty. I would have to make sure there were no animals left behind and I knew that if there was the tiniest secret hidey-hole inaccessible to an RSPCA man, a cat would find it. In my time I have retrieved cats from up chimneys, under floorboards, behind the skirting, in the airing cupboard, under the kitchen sink. One of my colleagues once had to take the panelling off a bath to get a cat out, and there was absolutely no hint of how a cat could have wriggled in there. Here I was relatively lucky. On the tops of wardrobes and under beds was the extent of it and, after an hour and a half, I was sure I’d got them all, and fifteen it was.
Despite the wintry weather I was sweating buckets when I’d finished, so I threw my jacket and jumper in the back of the van with the last cat and set off for Scorswick in my short-sleeved shirt. I was debating whether to make the trip to York later today or tomorrow as I joined the dual carriageway into town. I flicked the indicator, turned the steering wheel and happened to catch sight of my arms.
You’ve seen those Tom and Jerry cartoons, where the cat puts his paw in the light socket and the shock makes him do a flying star jump with every hair standing on end, his tongue shooting out, his ears flashing on and off and his eyes whizzing around and around. That was me on the dual carriageway as I saw ten thousand fleas crawling about on my bare skin.
I must have been like a walking oasis when I went into Alf’s house, a mobile flea banquet for the starving, and there were so many I could hardly see a patch of myself. I did what I think most people would have done in such a circumstance. I panicked.
In trying to slap both my arms with both my hands at once, my attention strayed from the road. When it strayed back again I saw the rear window and boot of a gold Rolls-Royce about six feet away. I braked of course but it was no good. I clattered right into the back of him. I thought, ‘You must not release ten thousand fleas into the environment. Don’t get out.’ I also thought ‘Oh bugger,’ as I reversed ten yards and heard the sound of metal parting from metal.
The owner of the Roller got out all right, with some difficulty as he was the wrong shape for sharp movement. He cut more of a portly than a lithe and lissom figure, and very bristly he looked. I watched him stomp towards me and I could see he was no got-rich-quick barrow boy, flashing his wealth with a fancy motor. Rather, he was a retired major general, or a fourteenth earl, or Goldfinger. Those folk unfortunate enough to live in regions other than Yorkshire, and those who know it not, may believe that we’re all flat ’ats and whippets and frothy beer, but I can assure you that we do have gentry, and this was gentry all right.
His chestnut-brown Oxford brogues, polished to that deep lustre only possible with the finest hand-cured leathers, pure beeswax and a valet, thumped the tarmac with the sureness of a thousand years of superior breeding.