Doreen Tovey - Donkey Work

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.

FIVE

Miss Wellington is Worried

Things settled down quite quietly for a while after that. As quietly as things could settle, that is, with a donkey with a voice like Annabel's.

She rarely cried at night now. She slept peacefully in her house beneath the elder tree until our alarm woke her up at half-past six. It meant, of course, all the neighbours waking up at half-past six as well because the moment she heard it, thinking we were greeting her from our bed, Annabel immediately shouted back at us from hers. But nobody minded that. Either they went to sleep again, thankful that she'd let them stay that long, or else, if they had to go to town themselves, it was a useful aid to getting up.

They didn't even mind the odd occasions when she did shout at night. She did it now only when she was disturbed and it imparted either the interesting knowledge that we'd come home in the early hours and Annabel was greeting us – whereupon they would mention the next day that they'd heard her kicking up at two this morning and we had naturally to admit where we'd been and what we'd been up to – or else it meant that somebody else had come home late and we could all, in the time-honoured way of villages, having a rattling good time working out who that must have been instead.

She shouted during the day, of course, but only by way of talking. To us, when she saw us in the garden. To people (anticipatorily) who came to pet and feed her and to people (reprovingly) who jolly well didn't.

We learned to tell the difference between her calls in no time. A semi-silent AAW-HOO-AAAAW, performed almost to herself with an excited intake of breath and much running up and down the fence, meant we were coming, perhaps to take her out. A louder, more sustained AAW-HOO-AAAAW, like a rusty saw being worked at top speed, meant the Rector was coming down the hill with an apple, or his wife with a biscuit, or somebody else Annabel recognised with a piece of cake.

A raucous, trumpeted AAAW-HOO-AAAAW – ear-splitting and ending in a snorted FRRRRMPH! – meant that Annabel was indignant. Charles, perhaps, had gone into the garage without bringing her a peppermint, or the baker had gone past the paddock without stopping to cluck at her, or worst of all and producing the most reproachful FRRRRMPH of the lot – the riding school had come into view. Not passing her gate as in the old days but crossing at a cautious distance over the side of the hill, with the riding mistress circling the group like a sheep-herder.

Annabel stood watching hopefully from her paddock when they appeared, quite unconscious of the fact that she was being avoided. Down Here She Was, she trumpeted as soon as she spotted them. Down HERE, she shouted as they plodded heedlessly onwards. They were going the WRONG WAY, she yelled at them after an unbelieving pause. ROTTEN LOT OF SNOBS JUST BECAUSE THEY WERE HORSES, she bawled when it became obvious that they weren't going to take any notice. FRRRRMPH! she sniffed disgustedly as she turned away and began to eat ash-leaves to show how little she cared,

She shouted at cars when they stopped and cars when they took off. She bawled pleasantries at the builders' men till she got them bringing her cake and apples too. One day an extra-large delivery van arrived with the bath for the cottage that was being modernised, backed up the lane on the advice of a villager who said they'd never get out again if they didn't, and got the top hooked on the branch of an elm tree outside Annabel's paddock. Hung up like a hat on a hall-stand said Father Adams, who'd watched them with interest from his gate. And while the driver and his mate were debating whether to borrow a saw, turn the van round and try again or leave the bath at the roadside, Annabel stuck her head through the hedge behind them, enquired at point-blank range whether they happened to have any sandwiches they didn't want and thick old townies, said Father Adams, slapping his knees with joy at the recollection, went up as if they'd taken Kruschens.

That was all very well, but Annabel's voice carried. Up the hill and round the bend till it reached Miss Wellington, busily working in her cottage garden. And Miss Wellington, hearing that voice like everyone else for a good two miles around, echoing up the valley in strong competition with the cuckoo, immediately began to worry.

It was fatal when she did that. She worried once about Father Adams' pig being on its own and for weeks she spent an hour each evening doing her knitting by its pigsty. Standing bolt upright by the pigsty gate, which produced a much more urgent effect than if she'd done it sitting down, and saying it was company for Daisy. Which was more than it was for he, said Father Adams, who when he saw her nipped smartly out of the back gate and up to the Rose and Crown.