Donkey Work

TEN

Time to Take the Pledge

Ours, though sometimes we queried the fact, weren't the worst Siamese in the world. They didn't get drunk, for instance. Like the cat belonging to one of our friends who, enjoying a sherry one night before dinner, put it down by her chair while she read the paper and, when she picked up the glass a moment or two later, found it empty. It gave her the shock of her life, she said, particularly as she was alone in the house. It gave her an even bigger one when she looked apprehensively round and there behind her chair, regarding her from behind the paw he'd used to dip the sherry from the glass and was now licking to extract the last lingering flavour, was her seal-point Siamese Pinocchio. He absolutely leered at her, she said. When she tried to make him stand upright he couldn't. She laid him on her bed. He leered at her again she said, awestruck at the memory, and then he passed out for two solid hours.

They didn't push people in pianos, like a Siamese we knew called Soraya. She, a complete disgrace to her name, leapt on the back of a tuner one day when he was looking into a Bechstein Grand, laid him flat with surprise in the works, and fled. The worst of that was that when the tuner came out again he wouldn't believe a cat was responsible. He'd heard a terrible Yell, he kept insisting. And as there was nobody else in the house at the time but Soraya's owner, undoubtedly she went down in his works report as having done it. Had a sudden mad moment and pushed him in the piano.

Ours weren't particularly temperamental, either. Sheba wouldn't eat if you were looking at her, Solomon created hell and howled if, summer and winter, I didn't wear a particular skirt he liked at night so that he could sit on it, but that was normal Siamese behaviour. Not, for instance, like a cat we knew called Sabre, who had such attacks of nerves when people rang the doorbell that his owners disconnected it. After that people used the knocker. That made him nervous too, so they took the knocker off. A rather drastic step, but the alternative was a cat who spent most of his time hiding traumatically under the gas-stove. So, following complaints from callers who now couldn't make themselves heard at all, they'd connected the doorbell button to a series of lights placed strategically in the hall, the kitchen and over the television set. Red they were, going on and off in ghostly silence. An ingenious invention it was, too. Save for the fact that, apart from their effect on human beings, the last we heard of him Sabre was staring trauma­tically at the lights as well.

Annabel, similarly, wasn't a particularly wicked donkey, compared with the tales we heard of donkeys who bit, donkeys who kicked carts out of shafts and the donkey who lay at the roadside and pretended to be dead. Father Adams told us that one, and if we'd thought we were unique in introducing a donkey into the valley that, we understood, was where we were wrong. William his name were, Father Adams informed us reminiscently, and sixty years earlier William had been a familiar sight plodding up and down the hill with his little ironmonger's cart. Until the day when, it seemed, William had stumbled at the bottom of the hill, sagged dramatically to his knees and lain down, saucepans and all, in the gutter.

Considerable fuss had been made of William. Once they'd discovered he wasn't dead he'd been lifted wiltingly from the shafts, given whisky in hot water, led gently up the hill when he recovered while the villagers hauled up his cart. The Vet could find nothing wrong with him. He'd lived for another twenty years. What had caused him to collapse initially no one knew. Except that thereafter William collapsed so often at the same spot, to be revived only by whisky and water or the sound of his cart being dragged up the hill by volunteers, that in the end his owner gave up bringing him down. William waited seraphically at the top, the ironmonger trudged blisteringly up and down with a basket, and William never fainted again. You couldn't put one over on a donkey, Father Adams advised us repeatedly when he saw us with Annabel.

We'd learned that for ourselves. Annabel's gate, for instance, fastened with a strap. Annabel playing with the strap when we were there was one thing – nuzzling at the end, tossing her head good-humouredly at us through the fence, indicating that she knew this was the way out and what about a walk. Annabel going at it when our backs were turned was another. We spotted her one day when, in leisurely mood, we were watching swallows on our telephone wire through binoculars. Four swallow fledglings they were, sitting obediently in a row while their parents hunted for food. There was an obvious pattern to the business. Absolute silence while Mum and Dad hunted; a fluttering of wings like a Parisian chorus as Mum and Dad returned; shrieks, gaping beaks and clamours for more as Mum and Dad stuffed the food down their throats; and finally, quiet again as Mum and Dad took off for the next instalment. What intrigued us was the bird sitting on the wire alongside them – fluttering his wings, opening his beak, stretching out his neck at the appropriate moments but quite obviously not a swallow. He, announced Charles, inspecting him knowledgeably through the binoculars, was a whitethroat and obviously one of the valley's wide boys. Trying to horn in on feeding time but the parent birds weren't having any. Wasn't Nature marvellous? demanded Charles enthusiastically. Weren't these creatures characters? Whereupon he brought the glasses downwards from the telephone wire, swept them by way of interest across the paddock, and lit quite by accident upon another character. Annabel – with no one, so she thought, to see her working doggedly away at her strap.

There was nothing playful about this effort. Teeth bared, head jerking purposefully from side to side, Annabel was tugging away like Houdini. We confined her with chain and padlock after that. To offset any feeling of frustration that might give her – she must, said Charles, have wanted to be with us otherwise she wouldn't have been doing it – we gave her longer walks and time in the garden.

What Annabel wanted was to be out. Initially, at any rate, her one idea when she achieved that object was to dash past the cottage, half-way up the hill, and hover. Feeding blissfully on the roadside, lifting her head occasionally to see if we were watching, running a skittish few steps when we tried to approach her, and coming back like the clappers when a car came round the corner.

Time in the garden altered that, however. Time in the garden – beginning with half an hour on the days we went to town, when she was allowed at the kitchen door in the early morning, given bread and honey as a treat, and usually had to be pushed Atlas-fashion back to her paddock while we sweated on the top line about the hour – rapidly became the criterion of Annabel's existence.

It grew, when occasion permitted, to be several hours. Any time she got out of the paddock now, either by crawling under the wire or the more direct method of meeting us at the gate as we opened it and pushing past us like a steam-roller and Annabel was chez nous. Wheeling smartly up the drive. Chewing familiarly at one of Charles' plum trees. Rubbing her bottom appreciatively on a Cox's Orange – a low one under which her back fitted perfectly and it wasn't just that she pushed it from side to side, said Charles despairingly; it went up and down as well. And finally, Mecca of Meccas, achieving the kitchen.

When Annabel first discovered the existence of the kitchen she was quite overawed by it. All that Food, you could see her thinking as she stood, overwhelmed, outside. The place where the bread and honey came from, and the apples and chocolate biscuits. Even when she'd come down the garden like a tornado – a nip at the plum tree, a boomps-a-daisy on the apple and three times round the lawn for luck – she still, when she reached the kitchen door, sobered down to respectful silence.

Not for long, however. Within a day or so a small white nose was cautiously nudging the door open. Soon a familiar head was coming tentatively inside. Within a short time after that the Winged Mercury attitude with flattened-back ears, eyes like marbles and outstretched neck as, ready to run, she reached round the corner to the kitchen table, had changed to a sort of vacuum-sweeping action as, as nonchalantly as you liked, she nosed appraisingly over its surface. And eventually, to Charles' delight, she was coming right into the kitchen. Looking knowledgeably for apples in the dish, hunting familiarly for carrots in the vegetable rack, hitting the refrigerator a resounding thwack with her bottom as she turned. Who, said Charles gazing proudly upon her, would believe we'd tamed a donkey to that extent?

Nobody, said Sidney decidedly. 'Twas bad enough when everywhere you went you was tailed by a couple of cats. When you opened a kitchen door and came face to face with a donkey, 'twas time to take the pledge.

Some people apparently felt that way when they saw her wearing a sou'wester – an innovation of Charles, who put it on her one day for a joke, discovered that she liked it, and when it rained Annabel could now be seen plodding happily round the garden like Grace Darling. We felt like taking it ourselves when as the next item on Annabel's list of achievements with which to surprise us, she came boundingly into season.

We didn't know much about donkeys. Only that we'd been told she shouldn't be ridden till she was three, shouldn't be bred from till she was three, and in our innocence we naturally assumed she wouldn't grow up till she was three either. The discovery, after our Arcadian interlude of prancing on the lawn and dallying in the kitchen, that she was marriageable at a year and we didn't have a seraglio ready to put her in was one of our tenser moments in donkey keeping.

Charles went round strengthening the fence as if for an attack by Indians. Annabel followed him with a coy swish of her tail saying Funny if one came over from Weston, wouldn't it be. Father Adams said he wouldn't worry if he was us, his father never locked 'em up, and countered it immediately with the recollection of a cart-horse that had come clattering down the lane one night, jumped a six-foot hedge and given his father's mare twins. And at two in the morning we were roused by a mysterious noise up the valley.

We were expecting it, of course. A jack! cried Charles, who'd been lying there listening for one since midnight. Quick! I said, having been lying there with even deadlier visions of a carthorse coming down the hill. Even so Annabel was up before us. She had heard it too and wasn't it exciting? she demanded, coming to meet us at her gate.

As a matter of fact it was a cow. Bellowing for its calf in a field up the valley, as we realised when it called again. It might have been a boy though, Annabel snuffled happily. One might be coming any moment now and she was going to stay up and Wait for him, she called after us as we plodded back to the cottage. One might indeed. Half an hour on our sleepless pillows imagining jacks creeping down the lane every time a branch creaked and we were up again. Getting out the car. Locking Annabel in the garage. And twenty minutes later getting up once more because she was up there banging paint tins around.

Twice since then she'd been in season. No jack had so far materialised. On the strength of the opinion of the Vet who said he didn't suppose one would either at that time of year after a hard day's work on the sands, we no longer locked her in the garage at such times; we just lay awake and worried instead. Annabel had achieved a lot one way and another. What we hadn't got her to do was work.

We'd made one or two attempts. We'd failed to get the bracken off the orchard in time for her to graze up on our own land. Charles was building his fishpond and perpetually anticipating getting round to the orchard next week. Sidney said the snakes was worse than ever this year and we could count he out. I went up there with a hook and disturbed a wasp's nest, reporting it to Charles who thereupon completed the circuit by saying he'd deal with the wasp's nest next week too. But we'd lent her out to the neighbours.

Only for an hour or so, we stipulated, as they led her pleasurably away to eat down their weeds. We couldn't let our donkey go for long... She usually went for considerably less. Hardly, it seemed at times, had her demure little rump disappeared round the comer of the lane accompanied by a jovial neighbour than her demure little nose was coming back round it in the other direction accompanied by a neighbour who held her rigidly at arm's length, and was cool towards us for days after a recital of what she'd done.

Knocking down a rockery was one of the charges laid against her. Scratching her bottom on it, said its owner. The more he'd pulled her away and showed her the dandelions the more she'd backed stubbornly against a big loose stone and scratched, the rockery had come down like a pack of cards and she, he said, his voice rising indignantly at the thought of it, had looked reprovingly at him.

Eating an asparagus bed had been another accusation. Four years to grow and gone like a row of candles, announced her borrower on that occasion, handing her rope to us and depart­ing as if he were sleep-walking, with never a backward glance.

Jumped off a five-foot bank was another report and when we enquired worriedly had she hurt herself, were her legs all right, had she fallen, Mr Smithson said bitterly not on his nelly. Took off like a ruddy chamois, he said. Straight off the ruddy bank-top, straight into the air, and straight down into the cucumbers.

Privately we thought she'd been frightened. Donkeys didn't jump, we said, examining her anxiously for damage when he'd gone. Annabel wouldn't leap off a bank. Annabel underlined every word we said with downcast eyes and intimated that Mr Smithson had pushed her. Only a day or two later did she forget herself and not only leapt off another bank just to show us but jumped a gate as well. A broken-down gate admittedly, only two feet high in the middle, but – seeing us shut it to keep her out of somebody's garden – she soared over it and into the garden like a hunter. Ought to put she in for the National, said the postman, and to let he know when we did it.

Annabel didn't eat down the nettles, didn't work – looked like never working so far as I could see, since Farmer Pursey said she wouldn't be obedient till she had a bridle. At the same time he patted her head and said we couldn't put one on her yet though could we, her little mouth was too tender; and Charles nearly fainted at the thought. It seemed a wonderful idea, therefore, when she was asked to help at the village fête. The forerunner, we forecast happily, of her being asked to help at lots of fêtes when people heard of it. Carrying the lucky dips, giving little rides to toddlers, going round with a box on her back collecting money for good causes. No need for a bridle for that, we assured ourselves. Not on the Rectory lawn.

We were always assuring ourselves of something and discovering our mistake. There we were a fortnight later, stopped in the middle of the village, late already for the fête and with Annabel looking down the drains. Not – as we remembered too late – having been in that part of the village before she'd never seen a drain, and drains, she said, were Interesting. She peered down every one she came to; it looked, said Charles, as if we were stopping at lamp-posts with a dog; to combat anybody getting the impression that that was why we were stopping with a donkey we gathered round and peered intently down the drains as well... Looking for Christmas? enquired Sidney, whizzing precipitously past on his bike.

There we were at a later stage outside the telephone box on the village green while Annabel ate some bread. On the ground where someone had thrown it for the birds, but she couldn't waste it, she said decidedly. Not when she was Hungry, she protested, pulling stubbornly back on her lead when we tried to get her away. Not while there was somebody in the telephone box either, with the receiver in her hand, glaring furiously at us through the glass. She glowered at us, we smiled embarrassedly in return… Heard anything interesting lately? called Sidney, as he sailed exuberantly back.

There we were, eventually, at the fête. Annabel, at the Rector's suggestion, wearing her sou'wester. The sun incongruously shining. The children milling round for the lucky dips which she carried in a sack on either side. The Rector beaming happily upon the festive scene.

He didn't beam for long. Five minutes or so of standing still while people fussed around her and Annabel moved off on a tour of inspection. Determinedly, carrying the dip bags, and accompanied by a trail of children. Nothing Charles or I could do could stop her. She met up with Miss Wellington, who was running a competition with a bucket of water with a half-crown in it. (You dropped in a penny. If you covered the half-crown you won it. If you didn't the penny went to the organ fund and Miss Wellington, with the doctor muttering darkly about her rheumatism every time he passed, skittishly fished it out.) Annabel drank the water.

She wandered to the handwork stall and, while we struggled to turn her away, looked inexorably over the contents. Nothing of interest there, said Annabel. But there was when we moved on. Water from her whiskers on a set of embroidered doileys. She found the home-made cake stall, regarded it steadfastly till someone gave her one and then the stall had to be cleared in a hurry because Annabel wanted the lot.

Nothing serious in any of it, mind you, unless you counted her making a camel-mouth at the lady who removed the walnut cake she particularly fancied, and Annabel wouldn't really have bitten her. Just, said the Rector, that she was a little young for a fete perhaps, and excited by the crowds. Just, said Charles, as we trudged deflatedly home with her long before the end of the fete, that she did it purposely, like the cats… Annabel's trouble really, of course, was that, like the Elephant's Child, she was filled with curiosity. En route for home, near Sidney's cottage, we met a cat sitting on a garden wall. Blue Persian as it happened, as against the Siamese to which Annabel was accustomed.

She stopped and gravely studied it. Why was it blue, why didn't it have points, why was it round instead of gawky like the ones we had at home... you could see Annabel's ears whipping about like semaphore flags while she thought it out. Cars came past and stopped. People looked out and clucked at her. Sidney came out to see what the fuss was about. 'Lumme,' he said, seeing us posed like pillars of salt for the third time that afternoon. 'Thee'st been struck by lightnin' or somethin'?'