There were the Hazells, for instance, who lived up the lane beyond us. This was their first winter in the valley and Jim Hazell absolutely revelled in it. Every time we looked out of the window he was trudging past dressed like a prospector in the Yukon. Up the hill to get the groceries, which he towed back down to the valley on a sledge. Up the hill to get a film – three miles it was to the nearest chemist's shop, but it was worth it, he said, to get the scenery. Up the hill to the Rose and Crown, where Father Adams encouraged him nightly by prophesying that it would be worse than ever tomorrow.
True to the pioneering spirit Jim was first, after the night when it drifted ten feet deep by the church, to climb over the top to the road. First, when it was obvious that the lane would be blocked for days, to have his car towed out by tractor across the fields. As a result he was also first to break his back axle on a frozen furrow and, pushing the car down the main road to the garage for repair, he slipped and hurt his knee. He passed our window at breakfast time like Jack London en route for Alaska. At lunch time he limped past in the other direction like Napoleon on the retreat from Moscow. But still he pioneered on.
A few nights later he prospected up to the Rose and Crown for his usual discussion about the weather and, while he was there, a blizzard sprang up. Half an hour later he came out into the night and headed homewards. A hundred yards along the top lane his knee gave way and he fell into the snow. The wind howled, the snow lashed like driven needles against his face, but still he got up and staggered on. He must have fallen a dozen times, he told us later, and when we asked why he hadn't come into us for help he said, in the best pioneering tradition, that he'd had to get home to Janet.
Actually he got as far as his gateway, where his wife, hearing faint cries for help above the play she was listening to on the radio, opened the door and found him practically frozen rigid on the path. She dragged him in, laid him in front of the fire to thaw him out, and bandaged his recalcitrant knee. Jolly tough stuff was Jim. Next day he was pioneering up the hill again as hard as ever and when, a while later, we heard that Janet was expecting in the autumn Father Adams said he weren't a bit surprised. Give some folk energy, the cold weather, he said.
Father Adams pioneered too, but more slowly. Mornings he trudged up the hill in his balaclava and war surplus overcoat, with an additional woollen scarf over the balaclava and, on particularly slippery days, old sacks tied for foot grip over his boots. He was helping the Council workmen clear the roads – the usual expedient of the countryman when the land itself is out of commission. When Jim complained that they hadn't got round to clearing the snowdrift by the church Father Adams said no, nor they hadn't fallen down nor broken their axles, neither, which kept Jim quiet for quite a while.
Miss Wellington was in her element. She had a thing about snow and every year she rang the Council at the sight of the first snowflake demanding that they come out and grit the lane. The Council having more vital matters to attend to, it was usually some days before they got round to us, and the next step was Miss Wellington attending to it herself up and down she bustled with her buckets of ashes, ladling them carefully with a hearth shovel not only on the part of the lane that led outwards to the main road, but backwards, down the hill to us. Why she wanted to get down to the valley – as far as he was concerned he wouldn't mind being cut off from she till Whitsun twelvemonth was Father Adams's comment when he saw her – goodness only knows. But there she was. Scraping away at the snow till the under-part shone like an ice-rink. Hacking, one bitter day, a series of steps down the side of the hill with a coal hammer, down which steps Father Adams, not knowing they were there, slid like a seal on his way home at night and wished Miss Wellington to eternity as he sat at the bottom in the snow.
Undaunted, she exhorted the rest of us to follow her example. She rang Charles one night about the drift by the church. People couldn't get through it, she explained to him earnestly. She couldn't ask the Hazells to work on it, she said. Mr Hazell had already got his car out across the fields and it wouldn't be fair to ask him. She couldn't ask the people down the lane. Their car was stuck in a snowdrift with its battery flat and quite unusable. She couldn't ask Father Adams. When Charles asked why she said she wouldn't demean herself and passed on to the upshot of her idea, which was that Charles, whom she was sure was anxious to get his car out, should dig his way through the snowdrift for the benefit of the community.
Apart from being ten feet deep, the snowdrift was a good fifty yards long. Charles said if he dug his way through that lot he'd be no benefit to anybody, he'd be in hospital, and after that Miss Wellington didn't demean herself by speaking to him for a week or two, either.
Meanwhile, until the snow-plough got to us, the drift was one of the local sights. People climbed it until there was a hard-packed track across it like a mountain path. We took Annabel over it one Sunday, by way of experiment, and she crossed it as sure-footedly as a goat. Single file – with Charles in front, me behind and Annabel in the middle – Annabel, we discovered, would go anywhere in the snow.
She was doing a Sarah Siddons again, of course. Annabel Crossing the Snowdrift... Annabel Doing King Wenceslas (which involved treading carefully in Charles's footsteps, head demurely bent, taking no notice whatsoever of the plaudits of passers-by)... Annabel Coming Down From The Snowdrift (a sort of Conquest of Everest in reverse in which, back to ground level but still with modestly downcast eyes, Annabel accepted apples and bullseyes from anybody who had them, allowed herself to be petted, and snorted deprecatingly to show how simple it had been)... We had all her acts in turn, but at least she got some exercise.
So – at times rather more than we expected – did we.
There was the day, for instance, when, exhilarated by the way she'd gone over the church drift, we decided to bring her back via another. Through the drift on this occasion, for it was in a lane unused by anyone, but it was only about two feet deep and as we forged our way through the virgin snow – Annabel behind us this time, while we broke the trail ahead of her – we felt like Yukon prospectors ourselves. Unfortunately it got deeper as we went on. Soon we were pushing through it more than waist-deep, Annabel obediently behind us – until, in a particularly stubborn spot, I happened to look back to see her standing with her head laid resignedly on the snowdrift, her eyes closed, and her nose a peculiar indigo blue.
We'd read that a donkey in a tight corner can make up its mind to die and do so, but this was the first time we'd experienced it ourselves. By the colour of her nose Annabel had decided to die pretty fast, too. We scooped the snow panic-strickenly away from her with our hands, pivoted her on her hind legs and carried her, stiff as a ramrod, back to open country as fast as we could stagger. She recovered as quickly as she'd wilted, of course. Ten yards out from the drift her nose was back to normal and she was capering happily in the snow trying to bite our ankles. Only we, having, in our extremity, lifted a small fat donkey who for years we hadn't even been able to push, were feeling the worse for wear. Didn't run about and enjoy ourselves very much, did we? enquired Annabel disappointedly when we refused to play.