Little Donkey Read online

  ‘Jenny.’

  ‘Too busy gestating.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Russ! You made me miss the footie for this?’

  In the end, the three of them did it together. Russell, Andrew, and Kevin. Worrying about her catching cold if they hosed her down in the yard, they brought her inside and carried her upstairs to the family bathroom.

  Before anyone wonders, Marilyn is tiny and very portable. Russell found her starving in a field, broke down the gate, and rescued her. I remembered him carrying her back to his Land Rover. She widdled on him in gratitude. Thomas was with us that day … Stop thinking about Thomas. He had said he would be here …

  Anyway, we’re not sure if Marilyn is so tiny because of her poor start in life or because she is actually an undocumented Mediterranean miniature donkey. It doesn’t matter – she’s Marilyn. She’s a lovely soft brown colour with a mane that looks like a toilet brush on steroids. She peers coyly from under her forelock, batting huge frond-like eyelashes – usually just prior to doing something completely outrageous. She’s insatiably curious, perpetually hungry, and harbours a requited passion for Boxer, Russell’s idiot horse. She’s an angel in donkey’s clothing.

  On the downside, she has the lung capacity of the European Wind Tunnel and she doesn’t hesitate to use it. On the rare occasions when things don’t go her way, she lets her ears droop, squeezes her eyes shut, inflates her lungs to maximum capacity, and lets rip. Russell swears her voice could knock satellites out of their near-earth orbits. And it’s not a pretty little hee-haw, either – it’s a supersonic bellow that rattles the glass in the windows, dying away to a kind of liquid gurgle that sounds like the last gasp of a cockerel having its throat cut. Our neighbour Martin Braithwaite once knocked at the door to enquire whether someone was being chainsawed.

  There was no way we could inflict that on our neighbours’ children, especially during a religious ceremony, so some sort of training plan would have to be implemented.

  Nothing fancy – we didn’t want her sitting up and begging.

  ‘No!’ said Andrew, forcibly, as Russell’s eyes sparkled at the suggestion. ‘She just needs to learn to walk slowly, stand still when she’s told, and not to eat the floral arrangements.’

  ‘Or … Baby Jesus,’ I said, quickly, because no one was paying any attention to my worst nightmare.

  ‘And,’ said Russell, ‘who better to teach her all this – after her bath, obviously – than our resident animal expert. It’s perfect.’

  ‘I have to sort out a sheep as well, you know,’ said Andrew, quickly.

  ‘No you don’t. I was talking to Martin yesterday and his wife has everything in hand there, leaving you free to concentrate on the star of the show.’

  So they lugged her upstairs and placed her in the bath prior to showering her gently with warm water.

  Mrs Crisp and I were on standby downstairs, with a pot of tea (for shock), a bottle of whisky (for secondary shock), a coffee and walnut cake (for us), and a chopped apple and carrot (for the young madam).

  It did not go well.

  We sat at the kitchen table and listened. We heard the faint metallic bong as her hooves made contact with the enamel bath. Followed by a pattern of skittery bongs as she ran up and down the bath looking for the way out. We heard the hiss of the shower, the shouts of warning, the screams of panic, the crash as something shattered on the floor, the frantic cry as Russell put his leg down the toilet, the chink as the shower curtain came down, the clatter as the curtain rod followed it, the cry of pain from Kevin, the toilet flushing (?), the shout of alarm from Russell, the clatter of tiny hooves along the landing, and Andrew demanding to know which idiot – Russell – had forgotten to shut the bathroom door.

  We listened to them careering overhead, from one bedroom to the next.

  Mrs Crisp rolled her eyes.

  I cut the cake.

  They all appeared in the kitchen some quarter hour later. A bone-dry and very unbathed Marilyn homed in on her apple and carrot, inhaled them in one breath, and stared fixedly at the cake. Russell, Andrew, and Kevin, soaked to the skin, bypassed the tea and went straight to the whisky without passing go or collecting £200. Kevin had a split lip. Something unpleasant was adhering to Andrew’s T-shirt. Russell had a blue leg. They all stank of donkey.

  We looked at them in silence.

  ‘Actually,’ said Andrew, topping up his glass, ‘now I come to think of it, I might have some sort of dry-cleaning dog shampoo that we could use instead. What? Why are you all looking at me like that?’

  The plan to bathe her having been quietly shelved, they had moved on to Phase 2. Russell had not-very-regretfully abandoned his painting that morning and was embracing his responsibilities as assistant to the star of the forthcoming nativity play very seriously. On this chilly, but bright morning, he, Kevin, and Marilyn had assembled in the yard for training. Although who would be training whom would be interesting.

  Russell and Marilyn regarded each other. Boxer hung over his stable door in his usual state of bemused confusion.

  ‘Right,’ said Russell, ‘it’s perfectly straightforward, Marilyn. You wear this pretty new halter we bought you and …’

  I never saw it happen, but suddenly she was at the other end of the yard and they were left blinking in the vacuum. ‘What just happened?’

  ‘I don’t think she liked the halter,’ said Mrs Crisp, crossing the yard to hang out the washing.

  ‘Surely not,’ said Russell, advancing towards her (Marilyn, I mean), and holding the halter behind his back. Sadly for him, she wasn’t born yesterday and again skipped nimbly out of his reach.

  ‘Right,’ said Russell, again, breathing heavily. ‘Time to box clever. Kevin, get some carrots. Make sure she sees you trying to hide them. Tip-toe across the yard in a suspicious manner and nip into her box.’

  There are no words to describe Kevin’s attempts to cross the yard clutching half a dozen surreptitious carrots while simultaneously appearing not to cross the yard clutching half a dozen surreptitious carrots. Sharon was in stitches, which didn’t help at all.

  Marilyn, however, immediately moved to investigate and in typical Frogmorton fashion, the three of them, Kevin, Russell, and Marilyn, all converged on the stable door together, which, in the best traditions of the proverb, was unbolted. There was a slight bottleneck as they all struggled to get through at the same time and then they disappeared from view.

  Mrs Crisp joined me. Sharon brought us a cup of tea, we made ourselves comfortable on the old bench by the back door, and waited for the next instalment.

  They appeared only a few minutes later, Marilyn wearing her smart new halter and a determined expression. There was no sign of the carrots.

  There were problems immediately. Marilyn, who, unhaltered, would follow anyone anywhere, especially if she thought there was food at the end of it, refused to budge now that she was condemned to a state of oppressed bondage. Assuming an expression similar to the Israelites as they were shunted off to Babylon in chains, she hung her head, heaving a heart-rending sigh.

  Russell twitched the leading rein gently. ‘Come on, Marilyn. Walkies!’

  She stood stock still, eyes tightly shut.

  He increased the pressure slightly.

  She leaned backwards.

  ‘My money’s on Marilyn,’ said Mrs Crisp.

  ‘Fifty pence on Mr Checkland,’ said Sharon, loyally. ‘He can be very … determined.’

  Russell increased the pressure. Marilyn leaned back further, now at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the ground. Russell pulled again. Slowly, but surely, her hooves began to slide across the yard. She opened her eyes in surprise, looked around her, judged her audience beautifully, and uttered a mournful cry that tore at the heartstrings.

  ‘This is no good,’ said Russell in exasperation. ‘We can’t heave her up the aisle like this. Her feet will leave grooves in the floor and there won’t be a dry eye in the house. Everyone will be on their phones repor
ting our cruelty to the RSPCA, who will arrest us all. Jenny will give birth in prison, handcuffed to a bed. Mrs Crisp will end up running the prison mafia. Kevin will be covered in prison tats. And because I’m so good looking, I’ll suffer a fate worse than death in the showers and become someone’s bitch. I watch TV. I know what happens in prisons. And it’s all your fault,’ he said accusingly to Marilyn, who was batting her eyelashes at Sharon in the hope that something edible would materialise on the spot.

  I put down my mug and crossed the yard into the stable. Boxer is Russell’s horse and has the brains of a pencil, but he and Marilyn are deeply attached. Pulling down his halter, I led him out into the theatre of operations. Marilyn watched closely. She’d seen this hundreds of times before. She was just being difficult. I walked slowly up and down with Boxer, which, with his mental capacity, was about all he was capable of anyway. Russell, getting the idea, followed on behind with Marilyn. Sharon and Mrs Crisp clapped and cheered. Thirty minutes later, we turned Boxer out into the field and Marilyn was so busy showing off her walking and standing still skills that she didn’t even notice.

  I resumed my seat and smirked.

  ‘Actually, I was just going to suggest that,’ muttered Russell.

  Andrew finished work early that afternoon and joined us as we watched Marilyn take Russell for a walk around the yard. He was carrying a package.

  ‘My contribution to our upcoming religious experience,’ he announced, displaying a tartan dog-coat. ‘It’s better than that scruffy old blanket she usually wears and it’ll be cold in the church.’

  Russell, who had watched all this, said, ‘And yet, apparently, it’s perfectly all right for me to freeze my boll– my feet off wearing just a tunic and sandals?’

  ‘No one cares about you,’ said Andrew heartlessly. ‘Let’s see if it fits.’

  Russell, obviously remembering his earlier struggles, said, ‘She’ll never wear it, you know.’

  ‘Of course she will. It’s Black Watch tartan.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Well she can’t wear Royal Stewart, can she? Not with her colouring. Use your loaf, Russ. This look is elegant and fashion-forward.’

  ‘You wear one-hundred-year-old jeans!’

  ‘Well, at least my T-shirts don’t look like paint charts!’

  ‘And your jacket has those stupid leather patches on the elbows. What do you know of fashion?’

  ‘More than you do. Face it, Russ, even Boxer’s better dressed than you.’

  Since Russell looked good in pretty well anything he chose to wear, and knew it, this was water off a duck’s back.

  I took Andrew back into the house before they started criticising each other’s underpants.

  ‘Have you heard from Tanya?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have. She’s on her way back from Germany. In time for Christmas. If the weather holds.’

  ‘Looking forward to seeing her again?’

  He smiled softly, ‘You know the answer to that one. And how are you today?’

  I sighed. ‘Big. Fat. Clumsy.’

  He smiled down at me. ‘No, you’re not. And thank you for asking me to stay, by the way.’ He jerked his head back over his shoulder where Marilyn had confounded all expectations by hurling herself into her new coat and was now parading around the yard rather in the manner of a model at the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. ‘I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Russell, bursting in through the back door at his usual speed.

  Andrew kissed my hand. ‘Expressing my gratitude to your lovely wife.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’ He regarded Mrs Crisp. ‘You do know I hold you to blame for all this moral laxity, don’t you? You and your gentlemen callers. I thought I’d made it perfectly clear to everyone that there is to be no canoodling during working hours. I’m going to speak to Mr Wivenhoe and enlist his support in my crusade to banish inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. It’s a bad example to set to young people, Mrs Crisp. I’m surprised at you. This is precisely the sort of thing that gives us a bad name in the ’hood. You can be sure this behaviour will be reflected in your pay packet at the end of the month.’

  Mrs Crisp, who had just the one gentleman caller, a discreet entity known to us as Bill the Insurance Man, reached casually for her steak hammer and Russell suddenly remembered he had to be somewhere else.

  The day of the nativity play probably dawned. The sky was so low and heavy it was difficult to say. Thick, dark clouds full of snow scudded in all directions. The wind had changed.

  Russell shot off after breakfast. ‘Martin Braithwaite rang. I’m off to help him bring his sheep down off the moor. I’ll take Boxer – I can cover more ground that way – and we’ll drive them down, so don’t be surprised if you look out of the window and our fields are full of sheep.’

  ‘Just make sure they’re the right sheep.’

  ‘Can’t make any promises. At this time of year they all look the same. Grey and pregnant.’

  I knew the feeling. ‘I just don’t want to have to testify at your sheep rustling trial. And please make sure you’re back by two this afternoon. You’re leading a donkey up the aisle.’

  But he was gone.

  And he didn’t come back.

  The clouds got lower. The day got darker. The odd snowflake drifted down. Mrs Crisp kept me busy in the kitchen but every time I looked out of the window, I could see Kevin crossing the yard to lean over the gate and peer up the lane.

  We had an early lunch and began to prepare Norma Jean for her first public appearance. She’d been brushed; her little hooves oiled; her mane tamed – but only temporarily. Thirty seconds later it all sprang back into vertical life again.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Sharon. ‘Look what I’ve brought.’

  She gathered up Marilyn’s forelock and tied it in a beautiful blue satin bow. Marilyn blinked and looked around in astonishment, possibly seeing clearly, for the first time, where she’d been living for the last two years.

  With a toot, Andrew pulled into the yard and Kevin quickly shut the gate behind him before he realised that Russell wasn’t back yet and he was first reserve.

  ‘Why can’t Kevin do it?’ he demanded indignantly, as he was bundled upstairs to change.

  ‘Escorting the ladies,’ said Kevin with a grin. A remark he would subsequently come to regret.

  Mrs Crisp and Sharon busied themselves in the kitchen, and at something of a loose end, I tried to relax. Seeking some distraction from worrying over Russell, adrift on the moors, accompanied only by a bunch of gormless sheep and a horse with the IQ of a banana, I wandered around the house, plumping cushions, straightening ornaments, and wiping the odd surface down with my sleeve. I straightened books. I put more blue stuff down the toilet. I tidied Russell’s shoes away. I took a magazine from the pile on the coffee table and sat down to read, only to get up almost immediately and arrange the pile into chronological order. I stared out of the window and wondered whether I should stay at home and wait for Russell. I rearranged the magazines into alphabetical order. From the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs Crisp and Sharon exchange glances.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ they said.

  ‘Are you sure you still want to go this afternoon, Mrs Checkland?’ asked Mrs Crisp. ‘It’s very cold today. Perhaps you should stay in the warm.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, immediately deciding not to stay at home after all. ‘Of course I’m going. I wouldn’t miss this for anything. And Russell will be back any minute now.’

  They nodded in that way people do when trying to reassure the simple-minded.

  Andrew was not happy.

  ‘I’m not happy,’ he announced.

  ‘I can’t think why not,’ I said. ‘You look adorable.’

  ‘I looked even more adorable before you draped me with some old blanket and a tea towel. My legs are cold. Can I wear socks?’

  ‘Seriously, san
dals and socks?’

  ‘It’s not a fashion parade, you know.’

  ‘Don’t you have thermal underwear?’

  ‘Yes, but not realising the hardships I would be expected to endure here, I didn’t bring it with me.’

  ‘Seriously? You … came to stay with Russell without bringing any … survival gear?’

  He subsided, muttering. I waited for him to demand to know why Russell hadn’t returned because this was all his fault. He didn’t. He was as worried as I was. And like me, he was putting on a brave face.

  The old church wasn’t much warmer inside than outside, but it was beautiful in its shabbiness. Soft, gentle lights glinted on the candlesticks on the altar. The flower-arranging teams had striven to outdo each other and four beautiful arrangements in red, gold, and green stood in each corner of the church, and most importantly, nowhere near Marilyn’s route to the stable. Straw bales made a snug little stable area and a low wooden manger filled with hay stood on the floor, ready for its occupant.

  Sadly it seemed the organist, Mrs McSweeney, had sprained her wrist while stuffing her Christmas turkey and was temporarily hors de combat. Her place had been taken by her eldest son, Colin, a shy, solitary lad and a music student. Soft chords drifted around the thick Norman pillars and was lost in the darkness above our heads. Let people believe it was Bach, if they wanted to. I was almost certain he was playing ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, which given the falling snow outside was quite appropriate, really.

  We seated ourselves. Mrs Crisp first; then me, taking up more than my fair share of pew; then Sharon, with Kevin on the end in case of Marilyn-related emergencies. He carried a backpack with a spare halter, a lifetime’s supply of carrots, and a hopefully not-to-be-needed first aid kit.

  I stared around anxiously. No Russell. I hadn’t thought he would be here, but I was pregnant and entitled to clutch at straws. On the other side of the aisle, Monica Braithwaite was looking for Martin. We caught each other’s eye, nodded, and smiled, each pretending we weren’t in the slightest bit worried. The gentle murmur of conversation rose up around us. I could smell the warm smell of straw, old hymn books, and hot dust as the heaters fought a losing battle with damp stone.