Read Online A Donkey in the Meadow by Derek Tangye - Free Book Online

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 ?’
    He was a week old when he had this first escapade, a diversion, a mischievous exploration into tasting foal-like independence. Perhaps his idea was to prove to us that he could now walk without wobbling, that he was a sturdy baby donkey who could dispense with the indignity of being carried from one place to another. If this was so it was a gesture that was overambitious; and though the result caused us much laughter, Penny on the other hand was distraught with alarm at her son’s idiotic bravado.
    I had guarded the open side of the little yard in front of the stables, the side which joined the space in front of the cottage, with a miscellaneous collection of wooden boxes, a couple of old planks, and a half-dozen trestles that during the daffodil season supported the bunching tables. It may have been a ramshackle barrier but I certainly thought it good enough to prevent any excursions by the donkeys, and in particular by Fred. I had omitted, however, to take into account that there was a gap between the legs of one of the trestles suitably large enough for an intelligent foal to skip through. Suitably large enough? It was the size of half the windscreen of a small car, and only after the escape had been made could I condemn myself for making a mistake.
    The first to be startled by what had happened was Jeannie’s mother, who was sitting on the white seat beside the verbena bush reading a newspaper. She was absorbed by some story, when suddenly the paper was bashed in her face.
    ‘Good heavens,’ she said, ‘Fred! You cheeky thing!’
    She explained afterwards that Fred appeared as surprised as herself by what he had done, though he quickly recovered himself, danced a little fandango, then set off like a miniature Derby runner down the lane in the direction of Monty’s Leap. Meanwhile there had developed such a commotion in the yard behind the barrier where Penny was snorting, whinnying and driving herself like a bulldozer at the trestles, that Jeannie and I, who were in the cottage, rushed out to see what was happening.
    We were in time to see Fred waver on his course, appear to stumble, then fall headlong into a flower bed.
    ‘My geraniums!’ cried Jeannie. The reflex cry of the gardener. Only flowers are hurt.
    ‘Idiot!’ I said.
    Penny by now was frantic and as I dashed down the path I saw that the battering ram of her shoulders was just about to break a way clear for her. I left Jeannie to join her mother who had already reached Fred, and set about calming a rampaging donkey which looked prepared to eat me if I gave her a