Doreen Tovey - Donkey Work

We examined her feet. One of the things we'd been told in our travels was that you had to be careful of soft spots in donkeys' hooves – spongy places which you can press in like sodden leather, caused in the case of imported donkeys by too much standing in the Irish peat bogs and for which, we were told, there is no remedy. We looked quite professional examining her feet, though there was really no need. She had been born in England, she was only ten months old, and her small polished hooves, the size of half-crowns, were as black and hard as ebony. We looked at her teeth – we still didn't know what we were looking for but they were apparently all there. We looked at her eyes. We couldn't see those at all. When we lifted the silky top-knot that covered her head like a floor-mop in reverse she had them modestly closed and all we could see was a sweep of long black eyelashes.

We bought her on the spot. Twenty pounds we paid without a murmur. Think, said her owner as he signed the receipt with a look of sorrow on his face, what he'd be losing by way of her attracting the children. Think, I said, struck by a fleeting attack of common sense on the way home, of how far that would have gone towards a cultivator. Think, said Charles, gazing happily at the sunset, of the fun we'd be having with a donkey.

THREE

She Doesn't Care for Carrots

The fun began the very next night when Annabel arrived by van, pattered demurely down the backboard, took one look round and immediately tried to patter up again. She didn't like us, she said from under her fringe. She was going back to Mum.

She looked smaller than ever standing there in the lane, with her shaggy brown coat, ears like a big toy rabbit and a set of sturdy little long-furred legs which, ending abruptly in those minute hooves, made her look as if she was wearing pantaloons. She was about the size of a sheepdog. She looked, said the Rector's wife who happened along just then and immediately went into ecstasies over her, as if you could have wheeled her along on her dear little feet like a toy on castors.

She might have looked like that, but there was good solid donkey under that winsome exterior. She wouldn't be led, and when Charles and the donkey-man tried to push her she planted her hooves firmly in the lane, settled her rear practisedly against their hands, and pushed back. They looked, said the Rector's wife, watching rapturously from the garden gate, like a group by Rodin. They did indeed. The Boulder-pushers in granite.

People who believe you can move a donkey by dangling a carrot in front of its nose are, I can assure them, quite wrong. I didn't just dangle it. On account of her possibly not being able to see it because of her fringe, which was particularly bouffant that evening, I put it actually in her mouth, let her take a bite, and started walking enticingly backwards with it towards the gate. Only I moved. The Rodin group stayed exactly as it was. Nothing happened at all except for a couple of village men who cycled past with ostentatiously rigid backs and said to one another as they turned the bend 'Didst thee see that?' Annabel didn't care for carrots.

When, by dint of practically carrying her, we finally got her into the paddock next to the cottage where she was to stay till we put her out on the hillside, Annabel didn't care for that either.

She was going now, she said, determinedly following the donkey-man to the gate where, with a last sad fondle of her ears and instructions that that was car oil on her bottom through rubbing against the van and we could wash it off with Omo when we had a fine day, he left her. She was going now, she reminded him when he started up the engine. She couldn't believe he was leaving her behind. She stood with her ears pointed incredulously after him as he drove off up the hill and when we lifted her fringe and bent down to speak to her there was no doubt about it at all. Annabel was crying.

We did everything we could to comfort her. We fetched the cats. Far from consoling her they spent the rest of the evening on the garden wall, alternately craning their necks at her over the brambles like a pair of Indian scouts and beating it for the cottage like a pair of Indian arrows when she brayed.

We fed her with bread and a piece got stuck. We'd have called the vet within her first hour with us if it hadn't been that while we were deliberating how we were going to break it to him that we had a donkey – he was already, as we knew, inclined to lean his head against the wall and groan when we phoned him about the cats – Annabel got it up herself, drop­ping a soggy piece of crust into my hand with a thankful gasp.

Eventually, having provided her with water that she wouldn't drink and straw that she wouldn't lie down on, we went to bed. Not to sleep. Our idea of animals at night was the cats curled comfortably in the spare room armchair with a hot water bottle, or the squirrel we used to have who slept in our wardrobe; not a forlorn little donkey in a field crying for its mother. What, we wondered – while Charles kept interrupting our train of thought with the suggestion that perhaps we should put her in the conservatory for the night so she'd feel closer to us, and I kept saying she'd break the glass – had we let ourselves in for?

One thing we'd let ourselves in for was the loudest voice in Christendom shouting unremittingly for Mum. Annabel didn't, to correct another fallacy about donkeys, say hee-haw. She went AAAAAAW – HOO – AAAAAAW – HOO – AAAAAAW – HOO – FRRRMPH at approximately half-hour intervals. Long enough to allow for listening for a reply from Mum in between. Long enough for the neighbours to drop off into a fitful sleep from which they must be leaping galvanised in their beds by the next AAAAAAW – HOO – FRRRMPH as if Gabriel was sounding the last trump. And in a voice which, if they didn't know there was a baby donkey in the valley, they might well mistake for a jungle elephant's.

We shuddered when she did shout. We worried when it was time for the next bray and she didn't. At one time instead of a bray a sort of gulping noise came through the night. What, enquired Charles anxiously, did it sound like to me? A strangled gasp I said as we bounded out of bed. Annabel was tethered on the advice of the donkey-man who said if we didn't, until we got the place wired she'd be on her knees and through the gaps in the hedge bottoms as soon as our backs were turned and we imagined her with her rope wrapped round a hawthorn bush choking herself to death.

We were saved from tearing up the lane in our dressing-gowns by the fact that Charles, who was only half awake, insisted on putting on his socks as well and while he was fastening his suspenders Annabel let out such a fanfare – probably at hearing him move, for she seemed to have very good hearing – that it was obvious there was nothing wrong with her. Charles took off his socks, rolled back into bed and started snoring with exhaustion. Annabel, hearing him from the paddock, sent forth an answering call which if it once more roused the neighbourhood at least roused Charles as well and stopped him snoring. From the cats' room came a succession of bumps and padding noises as they kept getting up to look out of the window. And so the night wore on.

We'd had nights like that before, of course. The night we acquired the squirrel. The night we acquired our first Siamese. The time we tried to add Samson the kitten to the household and Solomon and Sheba stayed up all night threatening to take him apart. Life always seemed more liveable the next morning and apart from the fact that when Charles opened the spare-room door this particular next morning the cats, instead of tumbling down the stairs with enthusiastic demands to be let out, filed silently past him into our room and got into bed with me – Tired through being up all night, said Solomon, subsiding heavily across my neck; got a Headache, said Sheba, vanishing crossly beneath the bedclothes – things weren't too bad at all.