After her first all-night shouting session Annabel had taken to her bed – which was straw laid in a small stone shed under an elder tree – like a duck to water and Solomon, to use Sheba's usual description of him, was being silly. It was evident from the jaunty way he sat there, yelling invitingly at us from the straw. It was evident from the way, when we went to get him out, he went dashing round the paddock with his ears flat saying he wasn't coming. It was evident from the way – when Annabel spotted him herself and went after him in a style that reminded us, as we rushed sweating to his aid, of a charge by a North American bison – he came shooting out shouting That was a Near Thing and the next moment went dashing back to sit in it again.
Wasn't it delightful to see them getting on like that? Asked our dear old friend Miss Wellington, who had appointed herself our mentor in animal-keeping from the time we had our first Siamese and was now supervising our guardianship of Annabel. As 'like that' constituted Solomon at that moment running like the clappers for the gate and Annabel going as hard as her hooves would travel after him we couldn't say. All we could do was hope.
Annabel by this time, of course, should have been out of temptation's way as far as Solomon was concerned – up on the hillside eating nettles round the fruit trees. She wasn't because, the way things have of happening with us, the night she arrived the man who brought her took one look round at the orchard and said he'd thought we meant grown fruit trees, not tiddling little things like that. Eat 'em down like sugar-sticks she would, he said, and we'd better build her an enclosure if she was to go in there. One with chicken-wire sides she couldn't get her head through, and move it round as she ate down the nettles.
That, of course, took some planning. And while we were planning it – going round with poles and tape-measures saying this bit was too steep for her to stand on and that bit was too much in shadow and she must have her quota of sun – Timothy turned up with his Curfew shall not ring Tonight expression on his face and informed us that she'd die if we put her in there.
He had, it seemed, looked it up in one of his nature books and discovered that bracken was bad for horses. It wasn't surprising because Timothy was always finding something dire in his nature books and arriving to announce it to us in the style of Hamlet. That hemlock was confusable with cow parsley, for instance, or that if Solomon ate Deadly Nightshade he'd die. Solomon wasn't in the least likely to eat Deadly Nightshade, but by the time Timothy had analysed the possible results of Solomon eating Deadly Nightshade berries, Solomon eating Deadly Nightshade flowers, Solomon eating Deadly Nightshade leaves, and finally Solomon merely sniffing Deadly Nightshade plants in passing, it gave me the willies to the extent where I went round pulling up Deadly Nightshade plants for miles.
It was the same about the bracken. When we looked it up ourselves it was to discover that it was when it was sharp and brittle that bracken was dangerous, not when it was young and tender. The question was, when did it become sharp and brittle? Not yet, one would have thought – in May, with the fern-fronds pale as peas and coolness in their depths. But Charles snapped some experimental stalks and said they seemed sharpish to him, I snapped a few myself and confessed they seemed sharpish to me... The upshot was that Annabel, bought to eat down the orchard, now looked like reposing in the paddock for months, till we had time to cut out the bracken by hand.
Meanwhile she'd begun to draw her audience. First, the morning after her arrival, there was the neighbour who drooped tiredly up the lane and said so that was what it was – his wife had been waking him up all night saying she could hear sea-lions. Next there were some workmen en route for a cottage they were renovating up the lane, going by while Charles was in the paddock with her and calling matily over the gate 'Got yerself a friend, then!' Next there was the owner of the corgi, gazing peacefully around him while his dog ate some grass and jumping practically out of his shooting breeches when Annabel greeted him from behind the hedge. And eventually there was the whole village.
They came to see Annabel even more than they'd come to see the cats. Perhaps, said Charles nostalgically, she reminded them of their childhood. Seen from the cottage garden, with her tufted ears, puff-ball fringe and white snub door-knocker of a nose gazing steadfastly at us over the wall, she reminded me more of the Abominable Snowman, but she certainly had what it took.
They commented on her size – the littlest they had ever seen, they said, and would she stay like that? They commented on her coat. Never – said the ones who asked us about it – had they seen a long-haired donkey before, while the ones who didn't ask us stood at her gate in droves and assured one another that she was a Shetland pony. They brought her carrots and peppermints and she began to develop tastes. Annabel, reported a neighbour on the phone one night, was certainly getting choosy. She'd given her some ginger-cake the first day she'd met her and she'd eaten it like a dream. Her husband had taken some things down this morning and she'd spat out the ginger cake, eaten the iced one, butted Donald with her head when he didn't have any more and then retrieved the ginger cake.
That wasn't the only way she was developing. Annabel, born and bred in an open field, slept in her house at night now as to the manner born. Trustfully on her side in the straw, with a preliminary period before she went to sleep when she lay in the doorway with her head out and her hooves crossed like a dog, peacefully contemplating the night. Gosh, she was intelligent! said Charles, who went up every night to look at her over the fence and came back to report the fact of her lying down as if she'd passed the Eleven Plus.
Annabel, like his other girl-friend, Sheba, only had to wiggle an ear-tip for Charles to think she was one of the world's wonders – but there was no doubt that she was intelligent.
When she'd emptied her water-bowl, for instance – a big, two-handled, white-enamelled pan holding a couple of bucketfuls – she didn't leave it just standing there waiting to be found by accident. She turned it upside down. Not only could we see it immediately from the cottage, but usually she didn't have to wait even that long. Annabel's bowl bottoms-up by the door of her house, and Annabel standing demurely by the side of it like a flower girl with big ears selling violets, had people leaping the fence like Commandos. Our rain-water barrel went down as if an elephant was draining it with people coming in saying we didn't mind, did we, but the donkey was thirsty, washing the bowl under the tap to get the bits out, and bearing it lovingly back to her again.
She took care of herself in other ways, too. When the donkey-man told us donkeys liked to roll, for instance, and we ought to provide her with an ash-patch, we said Oh yes and dismissed it. It was summer, we didn't have any ashes – and Annabel, we decided, would much sooner have nice fresh grass to roll on when she got used to it.
Annabel wouldn't. Annabel wanted ashes. As we didn't give them to her, first of all she scraped an ant-hill flat to the ground in her paddock with her hoof and rolled in that – with the obvious follow-up from Solomon that the moment her back was turned he rushed in and rolled as well and we knocked a few more years off our lives leaping in to snatch him out – and then, on about the fourth of our nightly promenades up the lane, she discovered the cement. A good half-sack of it, spilled in the lane in front of the cottage that was being renovated.