Henry was big and black and sleek with a tail that fell like a waterfall. Henry's mane had been clipped like a horse's but, presumably to take some sort of trapping, a stiff black tuft had been left on top like the scalp lock of a Mohawk Indian. Henry was a jennet all right – you could see it, though only faintly, in the sturdiness of his legs and the slightly long black ears. But Henry was very handsome. That Annabel realised it too was obvious from the way she was standing by his side. Coyly; femininely; emphasising with unmistakable deliberation the fact that she indeed only came up to his middle. Helen and Paris, said Charles, forgetting his apprehension in his admiration of the scene. Annabel and Henry, I said with equal pride. I put out my hand to pat him, and Annabel immediately kicked Henry.
Annabel kicked Henry a lot. Determinedly but coquettishly, obviously fully aware of her feminine prerogative. She kicked him when we tried to stroke him. She was our donkey – he wasn't Allowed, she said, pushing imperiously between us and Henry and giving a few sharp back-kicks to emphasise the fact. She kicked him when we gave him titbits. She was our donkey and everything was Hers, she said, interposing her bottom in so many directions at once to fend him off that at times she appeared to be doing the Charleston. We evolved a system of holding sugar or a piece of bread close to the fence for her and then, while she was eating it, surreptitiously handing another piece over her back to Henry. Henry, reaching equally surreptitiously over her to get it, soon cottoned on. So, unfortunately, did Annabel. Following a trick or two like that she only had to see the shadow of a hand pass over her head and Annabel kicked capriciously behind and clocked Henry on principle. She knew he was there and that'd teach him not to Sneak, she snorted into her bread and honey.
It wasn't that she didn't like Henry. She just intended to be boss. The first night he was there, for instance, Henry moved into the shelter at dusk as if it was his right. It was too small for him, being only Annabel size, so he stood up all night as if he was in a sentry box with his rump inside and his head and forefeet out. Annabel, presumably under the impression he was standing there on guard and had his eye on her, didn't attempt to throw him out that evening. She stood up too, under a nearby tree, looking warily across at him, pretending she was grazing, and working out a plan. There must have been a plan because the next night it was Annabel who got there first and stood Horatio-like in the doorway while Henry loitered under the tree. And the next night and the next night, till Henry got the idea it was Annabel's shelter and stopped trying to go in there himself, Annabel Frrmphed triumphantly and said she should think so, too – and the next thing we saw, going out one night with a torch to check on the position to date, was Henry standing under his tree and no sign of Annabel at all. Annabel, ascendancy established, had given up keeping guard. Annabel, when we looked inside her house, was back where she belonged. Asleep flat out in the straw with her hooves crossed, her cowlick over her eyes and a pout of triumph on her small white mouth. The only concession to watchfulness being that she had her head towards the door.
Banned from the shelter, kicked when he spoke to us – kicked, according to the neighbours, even when he spoke to them and the people up the lane said the way Annabel ate ginger-cake now was a revelation – Henry might have been excused for developing a temper. He did in fact kick me a couple of times. On account of their jealousy we fed them separately – oats and hay for Annabel outside her shelter, oats and hay for Henry under his tree – and still they squabbled. Annabel marched over to Henry's heap and said it was better than hers, Henry moved over to Annabel's heap and said very well he'd eat that, Annabel charged back in a towering temperament snorting That was hers as well, she'd have the Law on him... Feeding time in the paddock was less a matter of eating than of Annabel and Henry playing musical chairs and, when they stopped, Annabel standing truculently over whichever pile she fancied at the moment, snorting and threatening to kick Henry off.
At first Henry, being a gentleman, gave in to the lady and went. Eventually Henry, goaded beyond endurance, began to kick back in retaliation. Never, even then, to land. Simply thrashing out in a powerful arc to show her he could, if he wanted to, kick her over the cottage; missing her deliberately on account of she was a girl by a good six inches; and having no effect on Annabel the Wilful at all. Only on me, whom he kicked by accident in the stomach.
I thoughtlessly went too close behind him; he, lashing out in what was meant to be a warning to Annabel, caught me amid-ships and laid me flat; and Charles (it was one of my more off-moments in donkey-keeping) picked me winded from the grass and cheerily said No Harm Done. Fortunately not, as Henry didn't wear shoes. I only had a bruise the size of a plate on my stomach, and an assurance from Charles that he'd had that many a time playing cricket. Which I took leave to doubt because I used to play cricket myself at school and we never caught balls on our stomachs. Though, as Sidney said when he heard about it, you never knew with the Gaffer.
After that I stood carefully on one side when I was with Henry. Even then I got caught one night when I patted him on the rump at dusk; he thought it was Annabel up to her tricks and kicked out, and the bag of bread I was holding soared straight into the middle of the field. A magnificent, arching goal-kick, with the top of the bag still left in my hand. I ought to be more careful, said Charles reprovingly. Silly playing at donkeys when I didn't know how to kick, said Annabel, standing watching me from outside her house with a wisp of hay in her mouth. Wooooh! said Solomon apprehensively from his post by the fence. Which was how I felt myself.
Henry seemed liable to put me into orbit any day but there was no question of his hurting Annabel. That, illustrated by the way he carefully kicked to miss her and turned a paternal eye on the cats, was why we kept him. Not only did we have a feeling that, jealousies apart, Henry liked Annabel. We had no doubt about the fact that Annabel liked Henry.
We watched sometimes in the paddock when there was neither food nor us on their minds. Wherever Henry grazed, Annabel grazed as well. Not kicking now because the grass was free, but standing like a prim small toy at his side. Wherever Annabel wandered Henry followed, trailing amiably after her like a clumsy guardian giant. Occasionally we even saw them in a corner rubbing noses.
She kicked him, she grazed with him. She kicked him, she rubbed noses with him. The paddock grass vanished like snow in summer before Henry's formidable hooves and Henry's enormous mouth. The hay and oats vanished like snow in summer, too, what with Henry eating three times as much as Annabel and the pair of them eating twice as much as they normally would on account of rivalry. One moment we wondered whether we should ever have taken Henry. The next, smoothing his big black nose when Annabel wasn't looking, we assured him we wouldn't be without him. The one thing we could congratulate ourselves on was – as we were only agreeing with Miss Wellington one weekend when we'd had Henry with us for a fortnight – that Annabel was no longer lonely, and that she'd not since run away. I can see us saying it now, leaning on the paddock gate with Henry and Annabel plodding companionably towards us. Like Dignity and Impudence, said Miss Wellington ecstatically.
I can see us a little later. Taking Annabel for her first walk since we'd had Henry. Leaving him regretfully behind because we weren't quite certain how he'd handle on a walk with Annabel as yet, but assuring him that we'd take him, too, before long. Touched to the heart by the way he ran up and down the fence at being parted from Annabel, calling to her from the gate and watching her anxiously till she was out of sight. Quite unlike Annabel, who capered skittishly up the lane, never looked back at him once, and greeted him on her return with a vastly superior snuffle.