Raining Cats and Donkeys

NINE

Getting Things Moving

Charles wasn't the only one affected by the Rector's departure. Father Adams had been cutting the Rectory lawn for years and when the new man, the Reverend Morgan, moved in bringing with him a motor mower and the announcement that he liked using it himself, for exercise, our neighbour was very put out indeed.

He pretended not to recognise Mr Morgan when they met. Ours being a quiet village, there were times when the only figures visible in the entire place were the stocky, betrilbied outline of Father Adams crossing the Green to the Rose and Crown and the tall thin black one of the Rector emerging on some errand from the Rectory, but still Father Adams affected not to see him.

He sentimentalised about his predecessor over his nightly pint until Mr Holcombe, whose most errant sheep Father Adams had ever been, would never have recognised himself. He passed the Rectory gate as though even to glance at it would turn him immediately to a pillar of salt. It was a situation ripe for Siamese exploitation and at an opportune moment Father Adams's own Siamese, Mimi, exploited it.

We didn't see much of Mimi these days. She, and the picture painted of her incredible attributes by Father Adams, had been responsible for our going in for Siamese in the first place, but by the time Solomon and Sheba had grown up she'd given up coming down to us. Our two had told her on too many occasions what would happen if she did. She never normally went near the Rectory either, being content – being a lady, and on her own, which has a more sobering effect when cats grow older than keeping them in pairs – to sit on her own home gatepost and study the passers-by.

There she was now, however, on the Rectory wall as large as life, bawling to Father Adams to see where she was, and he, sweating frantically with the embarrassment of it, trying to get her down. She wouldn't jump on his shoulder. She liked it up there, she said. She wasn't interested in a wiggled twig. Remember where she was, she intimated with dignity. She sat there playing the part of the Squire's lady, as the Squire's lady might play it if she held her At Homes on top of the Rectory wall. Father Adams got exasperated and eventually threw his hat at her to try to move her. Mimi stopped playing at visiting and was down, across the Green and sitting on her own home gatepost with the speed of a Derby winner. Which was why the hat, instead of bouncing off her, went over the wall; Father Adams wouldn't go in and ask for it; and for the first time in living memory... at least for fifty years, we gathered from the discussion that went on about it afterwards... he stumped self-consciously home through the village, hatless.

He might as well have come through it trouserless. Faces appeared at the windows as he passed. Somebody asked him if 'twere cold up top. Miss Wellington rose slowly from the gnome she was painting, stared incredulously after him and, paintbrush in hand, disappeared immediately through the next-door gate to spread the news.

Actually it was a blessing in disguise. The hat (nobody could have mistaken that battered coal-scuttle effect as anybody but Father Adams's even if it had been found on the railings of Buckingham Palace) appeared, tilted at a rakish angle, on the Adams's front gatepost an hour later. The Rector grinned so knowingly at Father Adams next time they met that Father Adams couldn't help grinning back. The next we heard, Mr Morgan had decided that he couldn't, after all, manage all that grass by himself and the familiar outline of Father Adams was once more seen progressing importantly over the Rectory lawn on Saturday afternoons – this time, to his intense satisfaction, behind a large and exceedingly noisy motor mower. Them cats certainly got things moving, he remarked, leaning reflectively on our gate one night.

So, if it came to that, did donkeys. We'd recently been given permission to graze Annabel on the adjoining Forestry Commission land, the only stipulation being that we should tether her to prevent her eating the trees. Surrounded by all the lush green grass that was a welcome change from her own moth-eaten paddock, Annabel wasn't the slightest bit interested in the trees, but we tethered her all the same. It prevented her from chasing horse-riders as they rode up the Forestry tracks.

It also, since one can't have everything in this world, presented us with an entirely new set of problems. Tether her to a tree and within minutes, having walked round it determinedly in circles, she'd be bound to it like Joan of Arc, bawling for help. Tether her on what appeared to be open land and in no time she'd be roped, head down and unable to move, round an ant-hill. Tether her, as we did once, on a piece flat as a billiard table with her rope tied to a last-war bayonet left behind by the previous owner of the cottage – she couldn't wind her rope round that, said Charles, and it made a jolly good portable anchor... the next thing we knew, a posse of round-eyed children were coming in to report that Annabel had a sword, and when we scurried out, sure enough there was Annabel running round in the lane with the bayonet clanking behind her.

We dared not try that one again. We went back to tethering her to trees. It meant we had to keep going out to unwind her, but it was safer. Until, that was, we tethered her to a felled Scots pine, high on the Valley skyline, in the belief that she couldn't move that one in a hundred years. Five minutes later Annabel, complete with pine tree to which she was still attached, was down in the Valley bottom. Right by our back gate, where our immediate problem was to get the tree up again double quick, before the Forestry people thought we were stealing it.

It was sooner said than done. At that point the hillside was practically perpendicular. The tree weighed at least a ton. Sweatingly we tugged and strained – with Annabel tied to the front end ostensibly helping us but a fat lot of help that donkey gave, if I knew anything about it. At last we got it up. It would have been better if we'd untied Annabel from it before we sat down to rest, of course, but one can't think of everything. In any case we were too worn out. So we sat there panting, with the sweat dripping off our brows, Annabel said that was fun, wasn't it, and started trotting down the hill again log and all. We got up and chased her...

It wasn't my day that day. I had got past the log and was close behind her when Annabel swerved and the rope tripped me up. While I was sitting there swearing soundly the log, which I had forgotten, came bouncing down the hillside on the end of the rope and caught me a thud on the bottom. I wished that donkey to Hades.

Perhaps she ought to be mated, Charles said later that evening. Transportation in ball and chain was more to my way of thinking at the moment, but there was something, when one considered it, in his suggestion. She was old enough now. It was springtime and the sap was rising. Not only might a foal be perhaps what she was wanting to steady her... but the idea of a foal, wobbly-legged among the buttercups... a foal, smaller even than Annabel, nestled in the straw in the stable... Wonderful, I said with dewy eyes. So we set about looking for a mate.

It was August before we found him and he wasn't quite what we'd planned. Our chief difficulty had been transport. There was a donkey named Gentleman at Maidenhead, for instance – handsome, well-bred and a tremendous success with the ladies. He was out of the running because to hire a horsebox to take Annabel to him would have cost – at a shilling a mile for two return journeys, one to take her and one to fetch her back – an absolute fortune. There was a donkey named Benjamin at the Siamese hotel at Halstock where Solomon and Sheba went for their holidays – dark he was, with a coat like plush, and when he'd first arrived to brighten their lives the two elderly jenny donkeys owned by the Francises had come galloping into season almost before he was through their paddock gate. Unfortunately there and back to Halstock with the cats was one thing; there and back twice, in a hired horse box, was again another.

A stallion eight miles away at the seaside was suggested white he was, and he'd sired some splendid foals. When his owner said Annabel would have to go over and run with the other donkeys to achieve results, however, Charles turned that down too. Annabel trotting to the sands in a posse harem... Annabel being jostled by the other donkeys... Annabel standing up in a field all night, and she used to a comfortable bed... He paled at the very thought. 'Do her good', I said with feeling, but Charles wouldn't hear of it. At which point I spotted an advertisement in a paper for horses for sale and a Shetland pony at stud some fifteen miles away and, thinking it might be a dealer, I rang the number at once. Had they by any chance a donkey at stud as well? I enquired.

They hadn't. Actually it was a breeding establishment for racehorses. But the owner had recently bought a black Shetland mare for his daughter, aged four, and being in the business he hadn't been able to resist a black Shetland stallion to go with her. Peter, having got Gilly successfully in foal, was now at stud for other Shetland mares. What about crossing him with our donkey? The breeder suggested helpfully.

Charles said no to that, too. Then I reminded him of Henry. A jennet, yes. But beautiful, gentle – and, when one considered it, with a definite advantage. We wanted to keep this foal as a companion for Annabel. She wouldn't tolerate a filly when it grew up, that was certain. No competition was Annabel's motto. Equally certain was that we couldn't keep a jack donkey with us for ever – mating back with Annabel and Miss Wellington being scandalised; breaking out to visit the local mares and little mules being born like ninepins... A jennet, I said, was the answer.

After he'd consulted the nearest Veterinary school and been assured that there was nothing wrong about the proposal... Annabel wouldn't have a Frankenstein... just a small black jennet with a mane and tail like a Shetland, a temperament like Mum's and the general appearance of a Thelwell pony, Charles thought maybe it was the answer too. If we could bring it off, the experts warned him. They wouldn't like to bet on our chances. Ponies didn't always take to donkeys, particularly if they had mares of their own. Any pony would take to Annabel, Charles informed them. And so the match was arranged.

We took her over one afternoon. We'd already met Peter ourselves and decided that she'd like him. When we'd gone to the stud-farm previously, however, it had been evening, and Peter, penned in a small enclosure for our inspection, had been the only animal we'd seen. Now, as we unlatched the horsebox, we looked around us. At mares with foals in the paddock, yearlings galloping like Pegasus across a field, a palomino watching us haughtily over a gate... Thoroughbreds, every one of them. Pretty small we felt, unloading a pint-sized donkey from a horsebox in the middle of that lot.

So did the Irish groom detailed to take charge of Annabel. 'Me?' he exclaimed with horror when the breeder, saying we might as well try her now, told him to take her into the yard. 'Groom to a donkey!' he declared tragically to the onlookers as he led her through the gate. 'If they hear of this at Newmarket!' he lamented as Peter was brought out of his stall.

There was no inferiority complex about Annabel. We'd noticed before how she could assume dignity to suit the occasion, and she was certainly dignified now. She stood there like a queen. A distinctly affronted queen, we gathered from the rigidity of her attitude. In front of all these People! Signified the disapproving angle of her ears. What was going on behind was nothing to do with her, declared the determinedly detached expression on her face.

That being her outlook, there was in fact nothing going on at all. Peter was keen enough, but nobody can love an ice-maiden.

'Bit fat, of course', commented the breeder poking her speculatively in the stomach. Annabel didn't move an inch, but she'd noted it, I knew from her ears. I hoped, for his own sake, the breeder wouldn't turn his back to her while she was there.

'We'll try her again tomorrow', he finally decided. So we went home and left her there. We drove, with a noticeably silent horse box behind us, telling ourselves that she'd be back with us by the weekend. But that was where we were wrong.