Doreen Tovey - Donkey Work

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'?'

ELEVEN

Two's Company

It was in October that our moment of truth caught up with us. All the summer Miss Wellington had been campaigning for a companion for Annabel. All the summer we'd been assuring her, first that Annabel didn't need a companion, and then, as summer drew to its close, that maybe we'd think about one for the winter.

A borrowed one, we said as the idea grew upon us. One from the local seaside, just to stay with Annabel through the desolate months when there weren't so many of her friends about. A donkey mare, we firmly informed Miss Wellington who, with stars in her eyes, was already envisaging Annabel roaming a wintry paddock cheek to cheek with a he-donkey and in due course – in the Spring, said Miss Wellington romantically, disregarding the fact that donkeys take a lot longer than that – having a little donkey foal. Maybe we could have Annabel's Mum, said Charles one day with inspiration – and what, when one thought of it, could be nicer? A touching reunion; the pair of them nuzzling secrets together in their stable on winter nights; Mum, a trained and conscientious beach donkey, teaching Annabel to be obedient, which was more than we looked like achieving ourselves in a month of Sundays...

Without more ado it was arranged. We drove over to see her owner. Sure he remembered us, he said. Sure we could have Mum for the winter. We liked donkeys, did we? he enquired, entering us efficiently on the back of an envelope and promising she'd be over in October. We went off on holiday with the idea of Mum still a comforting figure in the future. Came back and looked for the tortoises. Annabel, with memories of the oats they'd given her at the farm, got through her fence twice in a week and was found each time, with her trunk metaphorically packed, waiting hopefully outside the Purseys' gate.

Mum wouldn't have that, we scolded her as we brought her captively home. Mum wouldn't have that, we assured her as we avoided a donkey making camel-mouths at us while we mended her fence. Mum certainly wouldn't have that, we said, when a day or so later she deliberately rolled on a bucket of ashes and squashed it. Her ashes, weren't they? snuffled Annabel, rolling determinedly backwards and forwards like a rolling pin. And so they were, and perhaps we should have been quicker at emptying them on her rolling patch, and maybe it was our fault that when we got the bucket out from under her it was flatter, said Charles regarding it with awe, than a water-lily leaf. But the next day, quite without excuse, she rolled the watering-can flatter than a water-lily leaf too. Too many oats, we said. Not enough discipline, we said. Where, said Miss Wellington like the voice of Nemesis, was Annabel's mother?