Tovey, Doreen - Raining Cats and Donkeys

Exist it did, though. Four days it took for the fieldfares, in such numbers as we'd never seen before, to clear our part of the country. 'Twas the sign of a long hard winter, said Father Adams sagely. And a long hard winter it was too – though not for a while yet. It didn't snow till Christmas. Which was why, that year, we didn't have a Christmas tree. A week before Christmas we had such a fine, sunny Sunday that we took our status symbol through the Forestry estate for an afternoon walk. At that time of year the Commission organises night patrols on its estates, to guard against gangs coming out from town with lorries to steal trees in bulk for the Christmas market. At weekends they patrol during the day as well, to contend with family parties out for a drive in the car with Grandma who are liable, if not watched, to return with Grandma sitting innocently on a pilfered Christmas tree cut down with a pruning saw.

This particular afternoon Annabel, who normally runs freely with us like a dog, was on her halter for the first part of the walk. The riding school was out and we didn't want her deciding to play with the horses, which was apt to result in people falling off in all directions. It was some time before we actually met up with the school, however, and performed our usual ritual of turning Annabel's face to a tree, as in the song about the smugglers, while the riding mistress trotted her lot past like a troop of US cavalry in the hope that they wouldn't spot her. In consequence it was some time before we could let Annabel off her halter, and Annabel was annoyed.

She loitered behind when we freed her, just to show us.

At first we didn't worry. She always caught up with us sooner or later. Then it began to get dark, and we decided perhaps we'd better round her up, otherwise, not liking to be on her own when daylight went, she might follow one of the Forestry patrol men who all this time had been passing us at regular intervals like Officers of the Watch.

Charles went back for her while I, idly swinging her halter, stood looking at the scenery. A few seconds later another of the Forestry patrol passed me and eyed me curiously. Only then did I realise how suspicious I must look – lingering there in the dusk eyeing the plantation of spruce trees, swinging in my hand what was actually a donkey halter but what, to the patrol man, must have looked very much like a rope brought to haul home a Christmas tree.

I wished him a weak good afternoon and, when he'd passed me, began to follow back behind him, hoping to meet up with Charles and Annabel and thus prove I wasn't loitering with intent. Alas, when I got to the corner where they should have been, there was no sign of either of them. I guessed at once where they were. Just beyond the corner was a deserted Forestry cottage. When people lived in it Annabel was always embarrassing us, if we didn't remember to put her on her halter first, by running through their back gate and galloping round their garden. She hadn't done it for ages, but I had no doubt that that was where she was now – and that Charles, not realising how suspicious it looked, had disappeared in there after her.

I called to him – frightening the Forestry man, who hadn't realised how close I was behind him, practically out of his wits. Placatingly I explained that my husband had gone back to look for our donkey and now they'd both disappeared. Presumably into the cottage garden, I said, and I'd better go in and look for them.

'I can see a bloke dodging about in the garden', was the reply. 'But I can't see no donkey'. I couldn't see no donkey either, until – yelling my head off to Charles and (which looked even more suspicious) getting not one peep in reply – I went round behind the cottage and there he was, too breathless to speak, chasing Annabel round and round the garden.

Eventually, after a great deal of running, we rounded her up; I pantingly enquiring of Charles why on earth he had to go in there just when there was a patrol man about who no doubt thought he was concealing a stolen tree, while Charles panted back how the Devil else was he going to get her out?

Things weren't improved meanwhile by my noticing the patrol man crouched behind the hedge and periodically peering over the top of it, undoubtedly checking on whether there really was a donkey in the garden with us.

It was a very docile Annabel we led on her halter for the remainder of the trip – during which, needless to say, we met no further patrol men at all. Charles said of course we couldn't have looked suspicious. All I knew was that I hadn't seen that particular Forestry man before. He obviously didn't know us, either, or that we owned a donkey. And for safety's sake – though we always buy it from the greengrocer anyway – I insisted that we didn't have a tree that year. I had no wish to have my Christmas festivities interrupted – undoubtedly just when the Rector was with us, having an after-church sherry on Christmas morning by the local constable and Forestry chief coming to uproot it from its pot to check on its identity.

SIX

When Winter Comes

The snow started on Boxing night. We were on our way home from Charles's brother's party when the first few flakes began to fall. Congratulating ourselves that we'd got Christmas over before it started and there were still two days yet before we need think of getting through it to town, we swept down to the valley, put the car into the garage, and couldn't get it out again for a fortnight. Even after that we were only able to take advantage of a break in the weather to get it towed up to the farm at the top of the hill and use it, when practicable, from there. Six weeks in all we were snow-bound in the valley, and as a study in character it was fascinating.

There were the Hazells, for instance, who lived up the lane beyond us. This was their first winter in the valley and Jim Hazell absolutely revelled in it. Every time we looked out of the window he was trudging past dressed like a prospector in the Yukon. Up the hill to get the groceries, which he towed back down to the valley on a sledge. Up the hill to get a film – three miles it was to the nearest chemist's shop, but it was worth it, he said, to get the scenery. Up the hill to the Rose and Crown, where Father Adams encouraged him nightly by prophesying that it would be worse than ever tomorrow.

True to the pioneering spirit Jim was first, after the night when it drifted ten feet deep by the church, to climb over the top to the road. First, when it was obvious that the lane would be blocked for days, to have his car towed out by tractor across the fields. As a result he was also first to break his back axle on a frozen furrow and, pushing the car down the main road to the garage for repair, he slipped and hurt his knee. He passed our window at breakfast time like Jack London en route for Alaska. At lunch time he limped past in the other direction like Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow. But still he pioneered on.

A few nights later he prospected up to the Rose and Crown for his usual discussion about the weather and, while he was there, a blizzard sprang up. Half an hour later he came out into the night and headed homewards. A hundred yards along the top lane his knee gave way and he fell into the snow. The wind howled, the snow lashed like driven needles against his face, but still he got up and staggered on. He must have fallen a dozen times, he told us later, and when we asked why he hadn't come into us for help he said, in the best pioneering tradition, that he'd had to get home to Janet.

Actually he got as far as his gateway, where his wife, hearing faint cries for help above the play she was listening to on the radio, opened the door and found him practically frozen rigid on the path. She dragged him in, laid him in front of the fire to thaw him out, and bandaged his recalcitrant knee. Jolly tough stuff was Jim. Next day he was pioneering up the hill again as hard as ever and when, a while later, we heard that Janet was expecting in the autumn Father Adams said he weren't a bit surprised. Give some folk energy, the cold weather, he said.