Donkey Work

by Doreen Tovey

  It was fortunate, the Vet assured us, that, spectacular as it looked, the illness wasn't dangerous and lots of other cats around had had it, because Solomon said he was dying. Freezing, he said, huddling up to the fire for warmth. Couldn't See, he wailed, raising his sad veiled eyes to us for sympathy. When he ate it was even sadder. His appetite was unimpaired, but when he bent his head the effort set the tears running down his cheeks and into his food, and poor old Fatso ate them willy-nilly with his rabbit. On and off he had stomach-ache as well which was why, of course, his eyelids were up; as a sign of intestinal disturbance. Poisoned! he would yell, leaping violently to his feet whenever a pang struck him and frightening us into a sweat.

  A fortnight later Sheba appeared one evening with her third eyelids up, announcing that she was poisoned as well, and we started all over again. Six weeks the infection took from start to finish. Eight in all for the pair of them, allowing for the fact that Sheba developed it a fortnight later. At the end of that time, save for the fact that they were considerably thinner and their whiskers had whitened under the strain they were as fit as ever while we, after what we'd been through, were a good deal nearer Colney Hatch. A few weeks later we had Annabel. The fact that the cats could be seen so often after that sitting soberly on her paddock wall had, as may now be appreciated, nothing to do with age but was a sign that they were waiting for us to arrive. So that they could pursue their latest interest, of being Donkey Owners.

  Being donkey owners meant patrolling our side of the fence, while we fed her, with superior looks on their faces. Our side of the fence because it showed they belonged to the boss class, could rub possessively round our legs, stroll out to the lane when they liked, and walk importantly back to the cottage with us when we'd finished. Annabel's side of the fence was reserved for Solomon's racing sorties – when he tore madly into the lion's den to show how brave he was, sat in her bed and had to be hauled out again. Annabel's side of the fence, as far as Sheba was concerned, was reserved for strolling nonchalantly through when we were on hand, sitting down with her back to Annabel, and looking around.

  Nice in here, she would announce, her back a study in sublime, pale blue indifference. Better before we had a donkey of course. She remembered it then. She remembered it Always. In here now, she would comment, ambling innocently through the grass towards Annabel's sleeping house while Annabel raised her head to look after her, we used to have... At which Annabel would stop eating and chase her and Sheba would dash through Annabel's bed, leap smartly on to the wall and shout for Charles to rescue her. Not that she needed rescuing. It was just a tradition of having to be saved by Charles at every opportunity that Sheba had kept up since kittenhood. Left to herself, as we discovered on the odd occasions when Charles was in sandals and had to fetch his gumboots from the cottage before wading through the nettles to get her out, Sheba would pass the time of waiting rolling blissfully in the slack of Annabel's tarpaulin roof, a scant two inches above Annabel's vengeful ears, as nonchalantly as you liked.

  SEVEN

  As Sure as a Siamese Cat

  Time passes swiftly in the country. Sheba's nose began to turn blue again. Solomon's whiskers, to our great relief, started to grow out spotted. Up the hill the bungalow was finished; the people, who were very nice, were living in it; the only snag, by way of one of those situations that are typical of village life, was that the doctor was now more involved about his septic tank than ever.

  Initially he'd worried in case the builder damaged it. After that he'd worried because it was now officially inside the new people's boundary and how, he said, was he going to get in to examine it? In order to be obliging the new people had accordingly fenced off the land under which the tank lay into a sort of little lane so that he could examine it whenever he liked. On reference to the maps it had in any case been discovered that the doctor's predecessor had, twenty years before, unwittingly put the tank under a right of way to a disused quarry, and nobody in their senses would have a right of way through their garden in a village for a moment longer than they could help. And now the doctor was worried about that.

  Tradesmen's vans, seeing a convenient turning lane suddenly opened up to them, started to reverse in it. Twice the doctor had gone out at night and found a courting couple parked in a car in it. Supposing they went through the concrete cover, he demanded, and was not one whit comforted by Father Adams' observation that he didn't suppose they'd like it very much either.

  The doctor said it ought to be barricaded to protect his tank. The village said he couldn't block a right of way, he couldn't, 'twas against the law, and watched hopefully from its windows to see if he did. The doctor put a couple of boulders pillar-wise in the entrance and, confident on the one hand that the tank was safe while people could still walk the right of way if they wanted to, was now worrying on the other in case a car backed into the boulders, as everybody predicted, and claimed on him for damage. Made life interestin', din' it? commented Sidney.

  Down in the valley life was equally interesting. Annabel was growing up. She was, which we very much regretted, beginning to lose her coat. She'd rubbed a good two inches off her fringe on the paddock wire and now we could see her eyes. Beautiful eyes they were. Dark, demure, slanted with a doe-eyed softness that was quite enchanting. Except when she was feeling stubborn about something and showed the whites of them at us.

  Charles said she'd probably been doing that under cover of her fringe ever since we'd had her. Maybe she had. All I know is that Annabel rolling her eyes at me incognito was one thing. Annabel rolling her eyes so I could see them, with what remained of her fringe sticking rakishly up on top like the comb of a rebellious cockatoo, was very definitely another. When we went for walks for the next few weeks, even though it was summer and people stared, I wore a duffle coat, gum boots and gardening gloves, kept a weather eye open when she was behind me, and felt a whole lot safer.

  Meanwhile Annabel was beginning to evolve at the other end, too. By dint of industriously rubbing her rear on a convenient ash tree she'd worn down her coat until from her woolly brown pantaloons there were beginning to emerge the smooth grey rump and slender legs of a young she-donkey. A little odd-looking when one viewed her from behind. Rather on the lines of a statue appearing inch by inch from a block of somewhat woolly stone. Far more graceful than we would have expected – she was, we told each other with pride, while yet we regretted the passing of her baby Shetland look, going to be a very attractive filly donkey. And at the same time strangely touching.

  Touching in that when we walked behind her and watched those sturdy young legs trudging along with the typical forward-leaning stance of the donkey, as though already she was pulling some heavy load, we could see all the donkeys through the ages in her small but powerful gait. Plodding the deserts and the mountain tracks. Young and strong and eager when they started; weary, beaten and defeated when they were old. The donkey, which has been –and in some countries still is – the worst-treated of all animals by man.

  That, we said at such poignant moments, hastening to fondle her ears and rub her nose while Annabel stood demurely between us contriving to look Worse Treated than Anybody by reason of the fact that we now put a halter on her when she went out, would never happen to our little donkey. Our little donkey was going to stay with us for ever.

  You bet she was. Our little donkey, in a few short weeks, had us where she wanted us as surely as if she was a Siamese cat. She wouldn't even wear her halter the way it was meant to go, which was round her nose and behind her ears. When we put it on like that she stood stock still, closed her eyes, and refused to budge. She didn't, we were given to understand from her coy but firm expression, like things on her nose.

  We thought it rather sweet the first time, when we lifted her fringe to reason with her and there underneath was Annabel with her eyes shut. We didn't think it nearly so sweet when we tried it after she lost her fringe and she still closed her eyes the moment we put the halter on. Now her objection was o
bvious to the world and while we were trying to reason with her invariably somebody would come along and say, Look at that donkey with its eyes shut, and somebody else would say, Poor little thing, fancy treating it like that, and then they'd glare at us and we would sigh and take the halter off and put it on again the way which Annabel approved. Round her neck in a big loose loop, as she'd worn her rope when she came to us. Making her look – seeing that we'd bought her a show halter which was wide and white and noticeable – as if she was to be shot at dawn. And so we would set forth. Annabel trudging meekly between us like a miniature Burgher of Calais, people looking compassionately at her as we passed – and he hoped, Charles informed Annabel grimly, that she was happy.

  She was. She was even happier when, unable to stand being looked at as if we were executioners any longer, we decided the time had come to try her without a halter at all.

  Annabel following us freely round the countryside was like a dream. True it was offset by intermittent nightmares when we went near traffic roads or through the village and Annabel had to go on her rope for safety. Then – by way of rebellion even at that slight restriction now that for most of the time she ran free – she drooped and wilted on the end of it in a way that turned us hot and cold with embarrassment. Usually outside people's cottages, where we reached a state of complete impasse because the only form of persuasion that worked with Annabel in circumstances like these was to smack her bottom.

  If we smacked it by hand a cloud of cement dust rose from her coat, our hands went numb, and Annabel, her nose sunk dreamily in a clump of toadflax on somebody's wall, informed us via the stolid set of her rump that she hadn't felt a thing. If we smacked it with the halter-end Annabel moved at once, but with such a downcast droop of her head and a tucking-in of her tail – in case, we understood, we Beat Her Again – that we hated ourselves on the spot.

  Whichever we did we could depend on somebody appearing immediately in a doorway with a look that indicated one finger more on that dear little donkey and they'd call the police. And there, while Annabel Frrrmphed friendlily at them between mouthfuls, lowered her eyes so they could see her eyelashes and generally indicated that this was the first time we'd let her stop for days, we waited. Sometimes for what seemed like days too, until Annabel, with a final sad farewell Frrmph that doubtless meant See them in the Salt Mines if she lasted that long, ambled slowly on down the road. We'd read about Stevenson using a pin on Modestine. We couldn't, under any circumstances, have done it ourselves. But, as Charles remarked many a time and oft as we stood there waiting for our own particular donkey to develop a glimmer of conscience and get a move on, he knew how Stevenson felt.

  Twenty yards round the corner, away from the traffic roads, away from cottages and the need to impress their inhabitants and minus her rope, Annabel was a different donkey altogether. She still lingered to eat when she came to a particularly tasty patch, but with the air now of an independent deer stopping to graze, not a captive grabbing a last few mouthfuls en route for the hulks. And there was no need to cajole her to follow us. We only had to walk on round the bend and, with a drumming of hooves and the flash of a familiar pair of ears, Annabel was with us. Only for a second, mind you. A kick of a heel in our direction as she went to show that she wasn't really following us – she happened to be going this way herself and we'd better jump for the ditch Or Else – and Annabel was past us. Zooming round the bend ahead, whence she would either appear a second or so later coming like an express train in the other direction or else – if it was dusk and she was wondering whether we meant to go much further – peering cautiously back at us round the corner.

  Annabel didn't like the dusk. She was frightened of the shadows and refused point blank to pass the cement patch in the dark because it shone whitely at her and she thought it was a ghost. Annabel wasn't as tough as she pretended in many ways. She knew our usual route through the forest – up the valley, across the stream, over the moor-top and down the hill behind the cottage – like the back of her hoof. She galloped that, in daylight, practically non-stop – backwards and forwards as we walked; leaping the stream like a steeplechaser now, not wading it with tremulous fear; and all this in a size so small it was like seeing a rocking-horse come to life.

  We watched her, scarcely able to believe it. That a donkey could move like this, as fast and graceful as a colt. That she had this desire to stay with us even when she was free and full of spirit. And that if we did stop en route, to sit by the stream in the valley or admire the view across the river from the top, fast though she might be galloping when we halted, Annabel would stop too, and draw quietly nearer in the background. Close enough to keep an eye on us. Far enough, according to her lights, for us not to know she was doing it. And there, till we moved, she would wait. Our donkey of two months' standing.

  On unfamiliar ground her determination to stay with us was even more noticeable. We would perhaps come up a track with a minor one leading from it and, calling Annabel, who in strange surroundings was apt to stop and gawk around her with the air of a tourist taking in the Grand Canyon, we would turn off along the side one. Annabel, wresting her interest a second or two later from an intriguing rustle in the undergrowth or a speculation as to whether it was worth going the other way to see what it was like up there, would look round, see that the main path was empty, and start galloping. Past the turning we'd taken, on till she came to the next bend and then, when she found we weren't around it, her hoofbeats would stop.

  Sometimes she would gallop back. Sometimes she apparently crept back on tiptoe, because the first we knew of her being in the vicinity was a pair of ears poked antennaewise round a nearby bush. For quite a second or two until, having satisfied herself that she'd found us but we couldn't see her, could we? back she would come with a snort and a gallop, to pass us and start grazing a few feet ahead.

  There were snags, of course, to letting her run free. One was that we didn't imagine this business of her creeping around on tiptoe. Sometimes she caught us up at a gallop. Other times, when the sense of humour took her, she came up behind us so quietly that the first I knew of it was a yell from Charles as she nipped him in the rear, I jumped yards with fright – and there, when we looked round, was Annabel right behind us, head demurely bent, eyelashes fetchingly lowered, and with an unmistakable wobble to her underlip which meant she was being funny. Guess who did that? she would enquire, looking coyly at us with her big brown eyes.

  That was why – though I agreed with Charles indubitably that she was joking and it was only a pinch and it showed how much she liked us – that I usually walked ahead of him. That was why for quite a while, as an extra precaution, I always went out in a duffle coat. If Charles liked having his pants bitten by a donkey by way of affection I most certainly didn't. And that was why, on these long, free walks with her, we couldn't take the cats.

  She might have nipped one of them on the tail – only in fun, but the result would have been two cats up the nearest pine tree and ourselves ringing up the fire brigade. She might have kicked them as she galloped. Again quite by accident. Annabel's kicks, light-hearted as a breeze; were never calculated to land. We'd long noticed that when she passed us in a wide track her kick was wide, too – exuberant, outflung as an arabesque and apparently missing us by a mere hair's breadth – but that when she passed us on a narrow path her kick was narrow to match. A mere slight sideways tipping of a hoof as she passed, and the surest proof she could give that we were friends and she was only playing.

  But Solomon, when she galloped, got excited and galloped too. He and Annabel were doing Agincourt, he would roar, pelting along at her heels, his ears streamlined with excitement, filled with his old ambition to be a horse. So, just in case she kicked Henry the Fifth by accident, not knowing he was there, we entered on a new department of the daily routine whereby we took them for walks separately. Usually – for the sake of variety – in opposite directions. With the result that people doing circular tours in the neighbourhood would
quite often meet us going up the valley accompanied, to their interest, by a pair of Siamese cats – up trees like monkeys, complaining that the lane was Wet or pretending to be courting – and then, coming back an hour or so later in the opposite direction, they'd meet us going along with a donkey.

  They stared like mad the second time. They eyed us from beneath their eyebrows as if we were not quite all there – which, when we stopped to consider that we now quite voluntarily owned two Siamese and a donkey, we sometimes wondered about ourselves. If we turned to look at them we found they were invariably standing in the lane looking incredulously back at us.

  One day, going out initially with Annabel, we passed a man on horseback who, after he'd got his frightened mare down on to all four feet again, said Funny little pet to have wasn't she, ha! ha! and rode on. An hour later, going the opposite way with Solomon and Sheba, we met him again. Hearing him coming, afraid that his horse might rear once more in the narrow lane, we grabbed the cats and jumped into the ditch. There, as he passed, we stood. Sheba scrambling over Charles's head with her back up. Solomon, who liked horses, complacently on my shoulder but with his tail anchored round my face so that it looked as if I was wearing a big black moustache. The man looked quite alarmed. Then, pulling himself together and probably assuring himself that if he humoured us he might make it even yet – 'Taking them for a walk?' he said.