All Things Bright and Beautiful Read Free Page A

weathered brick towards our window, and the high walls with their old stone copings stretching away to the cobbled yard under the elms. Every day I went up and down that path to the garage in the yard but it looked so different from above.
    “Wait a minute, Helen,” I said. “Let me sit on that chair.”
    She had laid the breakfast on the bench where we ate and this was where the difficulty arose. Because it was a tall bench and our recently acquired high stool fitted it but our chair didn’t.
    “No, I’m all right, Jim, really I am.” She smiled at me reassuringly from her absurd position, almost at eye level with her plate.
    “You can’t be all right,” I retorted. “Your chin’s nearly in among your corn flakes. Please let me sit there.”
    She patted the seat of the stool. “Come on, stop arguing. Sit down and have your breakfast.”
    This, I felt, just wouldn’t do. I tried a different tack.
    “Helen!” I said severely. “Get off that chair!”
    “No!” she replied without looking at me, her lips pushed forward in a characteristic pout which I always found enchanting but which also meant she wasn’t kidding.
    I was at a loss. I toyed with the idea of pulling her off the chair, but she was a big girl. We had had a previous physical try-out when a minor disagreement had escalated into a wrestling match and though I thoroughly enjoyed the contest and actually won in the end I had been surprised by her sheer strength. At this time in the morning I didn’t feel up to it. I sat on the stool.
    After breakfast Helen began to boil water for the washing-up, the next stage in our routine. Meanwhile I went downstairs, collected my gear, including suture material for a foal which had cut its leg and went out the side door into the garden. Just about opposite the rockery I turned and looked up at our window. It was open at the bottom and an arm emerged holding a dishcloth. I waved and the dishcloth waved back furiously. It was the start to every day.
    And, driving from the yard, it seemed a good start. In fact everything was good. The raucous cawing of the rooks in the elms above as I closed the double doors, the clean fragrance of the air which greeted me every morning, and the challenge and interest of my job. The injured foal was at Robert Corner’s farm and I hadn’t been there long before I spotted Jock, his sheep dog. And I began to watch the dog because behind a vet’s daily chore of treating his patients there is always the fascinating kaleidoscope of animal personality and Jock was an interesting case.
    A lot of farm dogs are partial to a little light relief from their work. They like to play and one of their favourite games is chasing cars off the premises. Often I drove off with a hairy form galloping alongside and the dog would usually give a final defiant bark after a few hundred yards to speed me on my way. But Jock was different.
    He was really dedicated. Car chasing to him was a deadly serious art which he practised daily without a trace of levity. Corner’s farm was at the end of a long track, twisting for nearly a mile between its stone walls down through the gently sloping fields to the road below and Jock didn’t consider he had done his job properly until he had escorted his chosen vehicle right to the very foot. So his hobby was an exacting one.
    I watched him now as I finished stitching the foal’s leg and began to tie on a bandage. He was slinking about the buildings, a skinny little creature who without his mass of black and white hair would have been an almost invisible mite, and he was playing out a transparent charade of pretending he was taking no notice of me—wasn’t the least bit interested in my presence, in fact But his furtive glances in the direction of the stable, his repeated criss-crossing of my line of vision gave him away. He was waiting for his big moment.
    When I was putting on my shoes and throwing my Wellingtons into the boot I saw him again. Or rather part of