Donkey Work

FOUR

Annabel and Friends

We learned quite a lot about donkeys in those first few days, and Annabel learned things too. To drink water, for instance, which was quite a feat for previously she'd only had Mum's milk. When I offered her bread and milk she sniffed and said it was Cow. When, after a whole day when she didn't drink anything and we wondered once more whether we should call the Vet, she suddenly got the hang of it and we found her with her nose blissfully in the bowl sucking water, our joy really knew no bounds.

Solomon, who was with us when we made the discovery, knew no bounds either. Gazing incredulously from the shrinking water to her fur-lined ears – Solomon, when he drank, lapped with the sound of high seas smacking on the pier at Brighton and he couldn't understand why Annabel did it so quietly – he was quite unprepared for the bit at the end when she lifted her head with an appreciative slurp. Solomon, about six inquisitive inches from her nose when it happened, gave one big leap and was gone.

Solomon was doing a lot of leaping just then. Sheba, pursuing her usual course when she wasn't too sure of a thing, pretended Annabel didn't exist. She could be found imperturbably thinking on the garden wall, talking to Charles from the coal house roof or, if it was absolutely necessary to pass the paddock, marching down the middle of the lane with eyes fixed straight ahead as if following a Cats' Guild banner. Solomon, drawn by his insatiable curiosity as to a lodestar, could be found approaching the paddock from all directions on his stomach like a Mohawk, peering at her through grass clumps and – on occasions which nearly turned our hair white – sitting in her bed.

After her first all-night shouting session Annabel had taken to her bed – which was straw laid in a small stone shed under an elder tree – like a duck to water and Solomon, to use Sheba's usual description of him, was being silly. It was evident from the jaunty way he sat there, yelling invitingly at us from the straw. It was evident from the way, when we went to get him out, he went dashing round the paddock with his ears flat saying he wasn't coming. It was evident from the way – when Annabel spotted him herself and went after him in a style that reminded us, as we rushed sweating to his aid, of a charge by a North American bison – he came shooting out shouting That was a Near Thing and the next moment went dashing back to sit in it again.

Wasn't it delightful to see them getting on like that? Asked our dear old friend Miss Wellington, who had appointed herself our mentor in animal-keeping from the time we had our first Siamese and was now supervising our guardianship of Annabel. As 'like that' constituted Solomon at that moment running like the clappers for the gate and Annabel going as hard as her hooves would travel after him we couldn't say. All we could do was hope.

Annabel by this time, of course, should have been out of temptation's way as far as Solomon was concerned – up on the hillside eating nettles round the fruit trees. She wasn't because, the way things have of happening with us, the night she arrived the man who brought her took one look round at the orchard and said he'd thought we meant grown fruit trees, not tiddling little things like that. Eat 'em down like sugar-sticks she would, he said, and we'd better build her an enclosure if she was to go in there. One with chicken-wire sides she couldn't get her head through, and move it round as she ate down the nettles.

That, of course, took some planning. And while we were planning it – going round with poles and tape-measures saying this bit was too steep for her to stand on and that bit was too much in shadow and she must have her quota of sun – Timothy turned up with his Curfew shall not ring Tonight expression on his face and informed us that she'd die if we put her in there.

He had, it seemed, looked it up in one of his nature books and discovered that bracken was bad for horses. It wasn't surprising because Timothy was always finding something dire in his nature books and arriving to announce it to us in the style of Hamlet. That hemlock was confusable with cow parsley, for instance, or that if Solomon ate Deadly Nightshade he'd die. Solomon wasn't in the least likely to eat Deadly Nightshade, but by the time Timothy had analysed the possible results of Solomon eating Deadly Nightshade berries, Solomon eating Deadly Nightshade flowers, Solomon eating Deadly Nightshade leaves, and finally Solomon merely sniffing Deadly Nightshade plants in passing, it gave me the willies to the extent where I went round pulling up Deadly Nightshade plants for miles.

It was the same about the bracken. When we looked it up ourselves it was to discover that it was when it was sharp and brittle that bracken was dangerous, not when it was young and tender. The question was, when did it become sharp and brittle? Not yet, one would have thought – in May, with the fern-fronds pale as peas and coolness in their depths. But Charles snapped some experimental stalks and said they seemed sharpish to him, I snapped a few myself and confessed they seemed sharpish to me... The upshot was that Annabel, bought to eat down the orchard, now looked like reposing in the paddock for months, till we had time to cut out the bracken by hand.

Meanwhile she'd begun to draw her audience. First, the morning after her arrival, there was the neighbour who drooped tiredly up the lane and said so that was what it was – his wife had been waking him up all night saying she could hear sea-lions. Next there were some workmen en route for a cottage they were renovating up the lane, going by while Charles was in the paddock with her and calling matily over the gate 'Got yerself a friend, then!' Next there was the owner of the corgi, gazing peacefully around him while his dog ate some grass and jumping practically out of his shooting breeches when Annabel greeted him from behind the hedge. And eventually there was the whole village.

They came to see Annabel even more than they'd come to see the cats. Perhaps, said Charles nostalgically, she reminded them of their childhood. Seen from the cottage garden, with her tufted ears, puff-ball fringe and white snub door-knocker of a nose gazing steadfastly at us over the wall, she reminded me more of the Abominable Snowman, but she certainly had what it took.

They commented on her size – the littlest they had ever seen, they said, and would she stay like that? They commented on her coat. Never – said the ones who asked us about it – had they seen a long-haired donkey before, while the ones who didn't ask us stood at her gate in droves and assured one another that she was a Shetland pony. They brought her carrots and peppermints and she began to develop tastes. Annabel, reported a neighbour on the phone one night, was certainly getting choosy. She'd given her some ginger-cake the first day she'd met her and she'd eaten it like a dream. Her husband had taken some things down this morning and she'd spat out the ginger cake, eaten the iced one, butted Donald with her head when he didn't have any more and then retrieved the ginger cake.

That wasn't the only way she was developing. Annabel, born and bred in an open field, slept in her house at night now as to the manner born. Trustfully on her side in the straw, with a preliminary period before she went to sleep when she lay in the doorway with her head out and her hooves crossed like a dog, peacefully contemplating the night. Gosh, she was intelligent! said Charles, who went up every night to look at her over the fence and came back to report the fact of her lying down as if she'd passed the Eleven Plus.

Annabel, like his other girl-friend, Sheba, only had to wiggle an ear-tip for Charles to think she was one of the world's wonders – but there was no doubt that she was intelligent.

When she'd emptied her water-bowl, for instance – a big, two-handled, white-enamelled pan holding a couple of bucketfuls – she didn't leave it just standing there waiting to be found by accident. She turned it upside down. Not only could we see it immediately from the cottage, but usually she didn't have to wait even that long. Annabel's bowl bottoms-up by the door of her house, and Annabel standing demurely by the side of it like a flower girl with big ears selling violets, had people leaping the fence like Commandos. Our rain-water barrel went down as if an elephant was draining it with people coming in saying we didn't mind, did we, but the donkey was thirsty, washing the bowl under the tap to get the bits out, and bearing it lovingly back to her again.

She took care of herself in other ways, too. When the donkey-man told us donkeys liked to roll, for instance, and we ought to provide her with an ash-patch, we said Oh yes and dismissed it. It was summer, we didn't have any ashes – and Annabel, we decided, would much sooner have nice fresh grass to roll on when she got used to it.

Annabel wouldn't. Annabel wanted ashes. As we didn't give them to her, first of all she scraped an ant-hill flat to the ground in her paddock with her hoof and rolled in that – with the obvious follow-up from Solomon that the moment her back was turned he rushed in and rolled as well and we knocked a few more years off our lives leaping in to snatch him out – and then, on about the fourth of our nightly promenades up the lane, she discovered the cement. A good half-sack of it, spilled in the lane in front of the cottage that was being renovated.

Then, and every night afterwards until it rained and at long last turned the stuff solid, Annabel not only returned from her walk at a gallop, she set out at one as well. Up the lane to the cottage, where we stood helpless in a cloud of cement dust holding her rope while she rolled. Praying nobody would see us, because our tale was how easily we managed her. Praying, too, that when she eventually stopped rolling we could get her home unseen because by this time, proud though she was of the result, she looked more like a dirty old goatskin rug than she did a civilised donkey. Praying quite in vain, of course. People came round the corner like pins to a magnet while Annabel lay there rolling or fanning cement over her rear with her tail. They passed up the lane, it seemed, in hordes when she was on her return journey, with her coat puffing cement dust like a pair of bellows at every step. What with that and Solomon's habit, when she was back in her paddock, of sitting bolt up-right on a stone outside the gate – Guarding his dear little Friend, said Miss Wellington, though if we knew anything of Fatso he was more likely to be shouting Sixpence for a Donkey-ride or playing trainer at a circus... what with one thing and another she was getting quite well known.

Notorious would perhaps be a better description. We were coming now to a week which we'd planned, with the cats safely under lock and key at Halstock, to spend resting from our labours down in Devon. We'd had Annabel in spite of these arrangements because we thought if we left it for a fortnight someone else might snap her up. Some friend or other, we reasoned, would undoubtedly have her in their orchard while we were away – or if not we could board her at a local riding school.

Some friend or other might have done if it weren't for the fact that most of them had young orchards like ourselves, two of them withdrew after hearing Annabel do her AAAAAAW-HOO-FRRRMPH, in case, they said, the neighbours com­plained, and Annabel nipped the remaining one on the shin. Only in fun, it could hardly have hurt at all, said Charles, and if the Molleys didn't understand donkeys better than that he'd rather they didn't have her.

He needn't have worried. They didn't intend to – which left the riding school as our last resort. We got round to deciding we'd rather leave her there anyway – with people who understood animals, we said, and we could, guess what a fuss they'd make of Annabel – grooming her, training her, taking her out with the riding procession like a little regimental mascot... and Annabel gummed that one up by frightening the horses.

She'd already done it once, it seemed, while we were away in town. The first we knew of it was the following Saturday when we were in the paddock with Annabel; her fringe was looking particularly fetching, the riding school was clopping up the lane towards us, and Charles said this was just the time to ask.

Before I could, the voice of the riding mistress was heard through the trees. 'Coat's too long. Wants clipping,' she commented as she approached. 'Isn't she hot?' she said to me as she passed. 'Mind the donkey!' she called commandingly rearwards in the same breath. At which Annabel bounced joyously forward to greet them, the horses at the end of the procession stood on their hind legs with fright, a shrimp-sized rider sitting adroitly on the top end of a whacking great chestnut said she'd done that on Thursday and Wufus had been tewwibly fwightened, and as the cavalcade moved on up the lane – 'Horses don't like donkeys' came the final verdict of the riding mistress.

Cows don't like them either, apparently, until they are used to them. Annabel spent her holiday eventually on the local farm where the farmer, who fell for the fringe on sight, first of all said she could go in with the cows and the bull and then – in case, he said on second thoughts, the bull should chase her – put her in a little half-field to herself, with a ladder closing the gap into the big main field where the cattle were.

You can guess what happened there. No sooner was his back turned than Annabel, filled with joy at seeing a field full of friends all ready for her to play with, got on her knees, crawled under the ladder, and began to chase the herd.

Nobody remembers noticing the bull. All they saw was a tide of cows surging across the field followed at a gallop by Annabel; the Rector's wife coming unwittingly along the lane; the moment of impasse when the parties met at the farmyard entrance – the Rector's wife staring aghast at the leading cow, which in its alarm had its front feet over the gate, and the leading cow, with its escape blocked, staring equally aghast back at her – and finally the moment of relief when, with the farmer leading Annabel firmly away by the scruff, everybody could relax again.

After that, and a further scare when they found her halfway through the hedge one afternoon – looking, she said, for buttercups – they put her on a tether. After that one might have thought they'd be glad to see the back of her.

There was, we decided as we led her home on our return – unrepentant, kicking her heels blithely as she went, threatening to butt the farm-dog under the milk-chum stand as she passed – no accounting for tastes. They said she could come again.