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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 4
    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 companion I wanted most was a woman.
    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 “Wakey-wakey!” 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 Darrowby 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 … a certain amount of flatus.”
    “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 … windiness.” The voice had begun to tremble.
    I thought I could see a gleam of light “You mean his stomach …?”
    “No, not his stomach. He passes … er … a 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.”
    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