Mr Harler was very nice about it. Said Poor Little Man to Solomon and we'd soon have a couple of stitches in that. But as he worked away, with Charles and I holding Solomon and poor little Fatso looking pleadingly at us for assurance, as he always did at the Vet's, that we weren't going to leave him there, were we, honestly he was as good as new... 'Odd, isn't it', said Mr Harler musingly, 'that it's always your lot who get into trouble, and always at such peculiar times?'
Actually Solomon wasn't any more anxious to see him than he was to see Solomon. Some while previously we'd found Fatso sitting on the settee surreptitiously examining one of his paws, which was swollen like a fat brown boxing glove. A sting of some sort, obviously – but before we could get a look at it Solomon had seen us watching him and tucked it out of sight beneath him. Nothing wrong with him, he assured us airily – knowing from experience that if there was he was set for an immediate visit to the Vet's. Everything all right. All paws correct. He was just sitting there having a rest. The moment he thought we were out of sight, however, out came the paw again, with Solomon, who always worried about himself, looking at it anxiously, obviously wondering whether it was going to stay like that forever.
Oddly enough – or maybe not so oddly seeing that we were forever snatching him away from some grounded bee or wasp that he'd cornered in the garden and was either poking experimentally with his paw or about to eat when we belted up – not long after he was chased through the cloches he got stung again. On his chin this time. I was in the living-room when he dashed through the door, batted a stray piece of paper round the carpet, leapt to the top shelf of the bookcase and then, with a roar, to the back of my chair, where he poised like a ballet dancer with his tail raised demanding that I chase him... throw things for him... anything, yelled Solomon, to liven the place up and let a fit cat get a bit of exercise.
I wondered at his sudden exuberance. Even more so when I noticed the peculiarity of his profile. Fatso was getting a double chin. He must, I decided, be putting on weight...
Only later, by which time Solomon had enough chins for a dowager duchess but was still bounding determinedly about the place like a kitten, did I realise what had happened. Solomon had been stung, and this sudden display of athletics was to put us off. To conceal the fact that his chin was swelling, or, if we did happen to notice it, to convince us that it was nothing. Just a trick of our imagination. No need, on any account, for anybody to call the Vet.
Nobody did. His chin went down again. His leg, after the episode with the mastiff, healed perfectly. Just to prove it he had a fight with a large ginger tom he found sitting in the yard one day, who forthwith went up the garden like a rocket and was last seen three feet in the air outside the garage, with Solomon up there with him, kicking him in the stomach as they went – and then it was September, and we went on holiday.
Usually we went to the Mediterranean, to lie in the sun and relax after a year of arduous endeavour. That year, thanks to our dear little donkey, we went horse-riding. In the rain, in the wilds of Scotland.
The thing was, people were always coming past the cottage with horses. Sometimes the horses liked Annabel and refused to go on till they'd put their heads over her fence and had a word with her. Sometimes they were afraid of her and we had to go out and help their owners get them past. Either way, sooner or later we got talking to their riders and they assumed that if we were donkey-minded we must be horse-minded – which we were to a degree, but not to the extent of actually getting upon one and riding it.
Before we knew where we were, however, one or two of them had mentioned that any time we wanted to ride we might like to help exercise their horses – perhaps little Annabel could come too, they said, with a pat on her buff Beatle fringe – and there we were. Carried away by a vision of ourselves on a couple of show-jumpers, far across the hills, with Annabel, her minute golden mane flying in the breeze, galloping at our sides... Oh yes, we said. We'd love to.
Fortunately I had enough sense to say we were rather busy at the moment and could we leave it till after the holidays. Privately I said to Charles that, not having been on a horse for nearly twenty years, if I was going to fall off it was going to be miles from the village – not somewhere where Father Adams would immediately appear round a corner to enquire whether my backside was sore, or Miss Wellington go shrieking up the lane that I was dead and it wasn't her fault.
So that was how we came to go to Scotland. To a place where, for a solid week, we could ride, look after the horses ourselves (if we exercised them for people, said Charles, we should also know how to feed and groom them – not just ride them and hand them over to someone else as we'd done in our youth at riding school), and at the end of it, we hoped, we'd be fighting fit. Ready to ride anything. Galloping along the lanes with a touch of our riding hats to Father Adams and a nonchalant wave to Miss Wellington...
Which was how, by Tuesday afternoon, we came to be sheltering in a wet Scottish wood. Aching in every muscle. Soaked to the skin. And dealing, by way of holiday relaxation, with another case of colic.
It was my pony Pixie who was the patient. Charles was leading her up and down while I held his mount, a horse the size of a battle charger who was appropriately called Warrior. Pixie – a grey Highland pony not much larger than Annabel and with, from what I had seen of her, much the same temperament – was groaning, rolling her eyes and leaning heavily on Charles with an air of not having long to live.
With our usual optimism it occurred to us that perhaps she hadn't. It was only our diagnosis that it was colic. She wasn't our pony. We were miles from a Vet. We had never been wetter in our lives...
Had it, panted Charles, struggling determinedly to hold up Pixie while Pixie strove equally determinedly to sink to the ground and get her gut twisted... Had it occurred to me that this was the result of owning that donkey?
THREE
To Horse! To Horse!
As a matter of fact it had been occurring to me ever since we arrived at the riding centre the previous weekend. After dinner on Saturday night for a start, when, instead of the drink in some small Continental cafe with which we usually celebrated the first night of our holiday, we sat in a circle in the harness room with a dozen other eager beavers, industriously tying knots.