A Donkey in the Meadow Page 5

  I watched her reach Penny, then frantically I called out to Jeannie. Lama, at that particular moment, was reaching a peak of her amiable confidence. And when Jeannie joined me I pointed to what was happening.

  Lama was gently rubbing her head against one of Penny’s hind legs; the loving, the embracing, the idiotic gesture of an idealist who had never been shocked into realism.

  We held our breath as Penny continued to munch. Rub, rub, rub. First the head and the ears, then the cheek and the chin, even from a distance we could sense the ecstasy that Lama was enjoying.

  ‘Shall I shout a warning?’

  ‘Better not,’ said Jeannie, ‘or Penny might be startled into realising what is happening.’

  But Penny knew all the time who was there, and she didn’t care. We saw her glance round, observe Lama for a second, then back again to her munching. And Lama continued her display of affection until suddenly she heard a rustle in the grass a little way off. Penny’s hind leg was forgotten. A mouse was on the move. A more important task lay ahead than displaying her trust in a donkey.

  We never tethered Penny again after her first night at Minack. We also learnt that it was even safe to take her for walks without a halter; and she would solemnly walk up the lane with us when we fetched the milk from the farm, requiring watchfulness on our part only when she passed a flower bed. Flowers, especially roses, had an irresistible attraction for her.

  The third week went by without any hint of the foal and, as the news had now circulated that we possessed a donkey which was expecting, we were subjected to an endless number of solicitous enquiries: ‘Any news yet?’

  In the middle of the fourth week we had taken Penny for a stroll before breakfast along one of the paths, and on returning to the cottage had put her in a small meadow nearby. We then went in for our breakfast.

  An hour or so later Jeannie went outside while I was at my desk writing a letter. Suddenly I heard her excited voice calling me. I dashed out of the door murmuring to myself: ‘It’s arrived!’

  I nearly trod on Lama on the way, came face to face with a hissing Boris waddling up the path, and then in amazement saw why it was that Jeannie was calling for me.

  A huge horse was standing in the small meadow with the donkey beside it.

  ‘Good God,’ I said, ‘where has it come from?’

  ‘Not the faintest idea.’

  Our reaction was a mixture of merriment, irritation and concern. It was absurdly incongruous standing there, a giant of a horse, a chestnut, and it glared at us; while we in the meantime were smiling to ourselves at its funny little ears.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked cautiously, ‘male or female?’

  ‘A mare.’

  ‘I’ll dash up to the farm. Jack will know where she comes from.’

  In due course the owner arrived, a very old man with watery eyes and a squeaky voice and no hat covering his bald head. I recognised him as a new arrival to the district, and owner of the cottages in one of which Jane Wyllie, the young girl who used to work for us, once lived with her mother.

  The mare took no notice of him except to edge away when he approached.

  ‘Judy, Judy,’ he coaxed on a high-pitched note.

  The mare replied by dashing through a gap in the hedge which surrounded the meadow. She was out on her own now and into another. The old man was already out of breath but he bravely followed her.

  ‘Judy, Judy.’

  When the mare ignored him again, he turned to me.

  ‘Bring the donkey out. It will quieten her down if she has the donkey with her.’

  ‘Hell, I won’t,’ I said, ‘that donkey is going to foal any time, any moment. I’m not going to bring her out within kicking distance of your monster.’

  It was perhaps the harshness of this sentence that inspired the mare to take the violent action which now took place. She ignored the old man, thundered past him, then over a hedge and into the stable meadow. Over another hedge which I had thought unjumpable and then a dash down the lane. To my horror Jeannie was in her way. As soon as she had sensed there was going to be more trouble than we had expected, she had hastened to look for Lama. There she was, without having found Lama, bang in the way of the mare.

  As if it were a circus trick, the mare jumped over her. And a few minutes later we watched the back of the old man panting up the lane, a galloping mare far far ahead and out of sight.

  He caught her, we heard later, three miles away.

  On the following Monday Jeannie and I and her mother, who was staying with us, went out for the day. When we returned to Minack, we met Jack Cochram, who had been digging potatoes in his cliff which lies beyond the cottage. He had to pass the field in which we had left Penny.

  He grinned when he saw us, a gay, amused grin.

  ‘It’s arrived!’ he said happily, ‘it’s waiting for you!’

  I have never gone down the lane so fast.

  8

  They were standing in the big field below the stable meadow, and beyond them the sun glinted on a still sea, disturbed only by the Stevenson fishing fleet out of Newlyn, their engines thumping, sailing like an Armada to distant fishing grounds.

  Penny paused in her munching, strands of grass hanging out of her mouth, a proud mother no doubt, but still looking careworn, bare patches still on her back and her coat dull in the sunlight. The toy donkey huddled close to her, looking up at us inquisitively but without fear.

  ‘It’s so pretty I can’t believe it’s true!’ laughed Jeannie.

  ‘To think it might have gone to a circus!’

  ‘Oh, Penny, you’re a clever girl!’

  We heard later from Jack Cochram that he had passed through the field at half past eleven with his little girl, Janet, and Penny was on her own. There was a cloudburst shortly afterwards which continued for half an hour; and he came back across the field with a load of potatoes at half past twelve. He looked towards Penny, and there was the foal.

  ‘Look out,’ I said, ‘it’s wobbling.’

  It wobbled, lost its balance, and collapsed on the grass. A ridiculous sight. All legs and fluffy brown coat, huge ears like old-fashioned motoring gloves, a tail like a fly whisk. I saw a comic eye, staring at me in surprise, and I had a feeling which made me smile, that it was furious. The indignity and the stupidity, just as it was introducing itself! It struggled, tiny hooves trying to get a grip on the grass, then a lurch, and it was upright again.

  ‘What do you think it is? I asked, ‘boy or girl?’

  ‘Shall we find out?’

  ‘Well,’ I said cautiously, ‘it’s a bit of a risk, isn’t it? We haven’t had any experience of this kind of thing.’

  The little toy donkey now moved unsteadily under Penny who lifted her head from the grass and waited patiently while it had a drink of milk. The legs were like four matchsticks propping a matchbox.

  ‘I think it would be wiser,’ I went on, ‘if we asked Jack Cochram to investigate. Foals and calves are his business after all.’

  ‘Seems a funny thing to have to ask him to do.’

  ‘Might be funnier if we tried to find out ourselves.’

  ‘I think you’re a coward!’

  ‘You said the other day if it were a girl you’d like to call her Marigold. You never mentioned what you’d call it if it were a boy.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Jeannie, ‘I thought we might call him Fred.’

  Marigold or Fred. I looked at the unchristened creature who was now gazing thoughtfully back at me. Its nose was white like its mother’s, and I noticed for the first time it had eyelashes which were absurdly long. As I watched it took a few uncertain steps towards me, pushed its head forward, and gently nuzzled its nose in my hand. A sweet moment of trust.

  ‘I think we had better get them up to the stables,’ I said, ‘the hay is spread on the floor.’

  ‘Shall I carry the foal or will you?’

  Jeannie was always so firm and yet so gentle when handling birds or animals. When she was
a child she had wanted to be a vet; she had the patience and the quiet courage and the intuition to have made a successful one.

  ‘You, of course,’ I said, ‘if it’s not too heavy.’

  Too heavy! She picked up Marigold or Fred as easily as if it had been an Alsatian puppy, holding it in her arms with its head drooping over her shoulder, and off we went across the field, then up the path to the stables. It was a gay procession. Jeannie leading the way murmuring sweet nothings to the foal, Penny in the middle snatching at succulent grasses as she passed them, exuding pride in her achievement, supremely confident that Jeannie ahead of her was taking her foal to safety. Here was her home. Nothing to fear now. Here at last was the foal she had carried with her on her journeys from Ireland, there in front of her, on the way to a warm stable, and time lay ahead together.

  As for myself, as I walked up the path behind them, I was pondering on the value of the moment. Had we ignored the call of the telegram, had we taken the night train to London, we would have returned to Minack with memories of many faces, lunches in hot restaurants, late nights and thirsty mornings, packed tubes and rushing taxis, a vast spending of money, much noise, and yet a feeling of satisfaction that we had at last pushed ourselves again into the circle of sophisticated pleasure; and it was over. Instead we possessed two donkeys; and the magic of this moment.

  It is a sickness of this mid-twentieth century that the basic virtues are publicised as dull. The arbiters of this age, finding it profitable to destroy, decree from the heights that love and trust and loyalty are suspect qualities; and to sneer and be vicious, to attack anyone or any cause which possesses roots, to laugh at those who cannot defend themselves, are the aims to pursue. Their ideas permeate those who only look but do not think. Jokes and debating points, however unfair, are hailed as fine entertainment. Truth, by this means, becomes unfashionable, and its value is measured only by the extent it can be twisted. And yet nothing has changed since the beginning. Truth is the only weapon that can give the soul its freedom.

  As we reached the stables I had a sudden sense of great happiness, foolish, childish, spontaneous like the way I felt when my parents visited me at school. Free from dissection. Unexplainable by logic. Here were these two animals which were useless from a material point of view, destined to add chains to our life, and yet reflecting the truth that at this instant sent my heart soaring.

  ‘Do you realise, Jeannie,’ I said, after we had put them safely in the stable and were leaning over the stable door watching them, ‘that people would laugh at us for being sentimental idiots?’

  ‘Of course I do. Some would also be angry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They are afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of facing up to the fact they are incapable of loving anything or anyone except themselves.’

  Guerrilla warfare continues ceaselessly between those who love animals and those who believe the loving is grossly overdone. Animals, in the view of some people, can contribute nothing to the brittle future of our computer civilisation, and therefore to love them or to care for them is a decadent act. Other people consider that in a world in which individualism is a declining status, an animal reflects their own wish to be free. These people also love an animal for its loyalty. They sometimes feel that their fellow human beings are so absorbed by their self-survival that loyalty is considered a liability in the pursuit of material ambition. Animals, on the other hand, can bestow dependable affection and loyalty on all those who wish to receive it.

  ‘It’s odd in any case,’ I said, ‘that whenever one uses the word sentimental it sounds like an insult. Sentimental, before it became a coin of the sophisticated, described a virtue.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It described kindness.’

  ‘Surely in excess?’

  ‘Only later, in the Victorian age. In those days people were nauseating in the way they fussed over animals, and this was reflected in those awful pictures we all know. Such an overflow of sickly superficiality became a middle-class curse to avoid. Animal haters like to keep alive the idea that Victorian sentiment is synonymous with animal loving. It eases their consciences.’

  ‘Anyhow, I’m sentimental,’ said Jeannie, ‘and I see no reason why I should be ashamed of it. I only wish human beings were as giving as animals.’

  ‘Don’t be so cynical!’

  ‘Well you know what I mean. Human beings can be so petty and mean and envious. You can’t say they are progressing in themselves as fast as the new machines they’re producing.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘One can rely on animals to give kindness when one needs it most.’

  ‘One has naturalness from animals and one is inclined to expect the same from human beings.’

  ‘And by that you mean we expect too much?’

  ‘Yes. Animals do not have income tax, status symbols, bosses breathing down their necks.’

  Penny came and pushed her nose at us over the door and below her, so that we had to lean over and stretch out an arm to touch it, was the absurd little foal.

  ‘Anyhow,’ I said, ‘I’m now very glad we’ve given a home to these two. They will amuse us, annoy us in a humorous way, trust us, and give others a great deal of pleasure.’

  ‘Silly things,’ said Jeannie, smiling.

  ‘And so let’s be practical. Let’s find Jack, and ask him to discover whether we have Marigold or Fred.’

  Jack Cochram, dark with wiry good looks, looked like a Cornishman but was born a Londoner. He was evacuated to Cornwall during the war, and has remained here ever since. His farm has fields spread round Minack, and he and his partner Walter Grose were neighbours who were always ready to help. Walter lived at St Buryan and came to the farm every day. Jack and his wife lived with their children Susan and Janet in the farmhouse at the top of Minack lane, an old stone-built farmhouse with windows facing across the fields towards Mount’s Bay.

  After a while in the stable Penny had made it quite plain that she wanted to move, and so we had taken her, Jeannie carrying the foal again, to the little three-cornered meadow where she had had her encounter with the mare. It was close to the cottage and we could keep an eye on them both.

  An hour later Jack Cochram arrived, and unfortunately I had been called away. Jeannie therefore led Jack to the meadow and showed him the foal on the other side of the barrier I had erected at the entrance. Jeannie said afterwards that as they stood there, Penny stared suspiciously at them. This was the first time a stranger had seen her foal, and she was on guard. It would have been wiser, therefore, had they waited, allowing Penny to become accustomed to Jack; or if Jeannie had fetched her a handful of carrots to bribe her into being quiet. But Jeannie had been lulled by Penny’s previous serenity, her placid nature, and she failed to understand that Penny might believe her foal was about to be stolen. Jack, in his kindness, jumped over the barrier, picked up the foal, and immediately faced pandemonium.

  Jeannie was terrified. She saw Penny rear up, bare her teeth, then advance on her hind legs towards Jack while pawing the air like an enraged boxer with her front legs. Jack quickly put the foal to the ground, but by this time Penny was in such a temper that she failed to see it, and she knocked it flat as she went for Jack. When she reached him she was screaming like a hyena, and he was standing with his back to a broken-down wall in a corner of the meadow. He put up an arm above his head as she attacked him, trying to punch his way clear; and then, seizing a split second, and also swearing I am sure never to investigate the sex of a donkey again, he jumped over the barrier to safety.

  Jeannie, meanwhile, was in the meadow herself, kneeling beside the foal which was lying on its side, eyes shut, tongue out, and breathing in gasps. She knelt there stroking its head, Penny somewhere behind her calm again, and thought it was dying. Then she heard Jack cheerfully call to her, unperturbed by his experience: ‘It’s a girl!’

  She told me later that Marigold, at this exact moment, open
ed an eye and flickered an eyelash. Jeannie said it looked so bewitching that she bent down and kissed it at which Marigold gave a deep sigh. Then a few minutes later she struggled to her feet and sturdily went over to Penny who licked her face, then waited as she had a drink of milk. When Jeannie left them they were standing together; and they may well have been laughing together. They had reason to do so.

  When our friend, the vet, arrived early in the afternoon, and after we had toasted the health and happiness of Marigold, we learnt that Jack had made a mistake.

  Marigold was Fred.

  Fred, outside the stable, wonders about taking his first walk . . .

  . . . and does so . . .

  and then has his first gallop

  9

  Jeannie’s mother was staying with us when Fred was born, and she was a participant in his first escapade. She it was who had connived with Jeannie to defeat my then anti-cat attitude by introducing Monty into our London household when he was a kitten; and now the happiness that Monty gave us, first in London and then at Minack, was to be repaid in part in the few months to come by Fred. Fred captured her heart from the first moment she saw him; and when she left Minack to return to her home, she waited expectantly for our regular reports on his activities.

  He was inquisitive, cheeky, endearing, from the beginning; and we soon discovered he had a sense of humour which he displayed outrageously whenever his antics had embroiled him in trouble. A disarming sense of humour; a device to secure quick forgiveness, a comic turn of tossing his head and putting back his floppy ears, then grinning at us, prancing meanwhile, giving us the message: ‘I know I’ve been naughty, but isn’t it FUN?’