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

chance. A minute later Fred appeared in Jeannie’s arms.
    ‘Not a scratch as far as we can see, and thoroughly ashamed. Aren’t you, Fred?’
    He had grown so fast in a week that Jeannie could no longer carry him, as she did at the beginning, like a puppy. It was an effort to hold him, and his legs dangled close to the ground.
    But he did not look ashamed to me. For here was the common denominator of all things young, the foolishness of enterprise before it is ready, the gusto of such foolishness, the bruised vanity after being found out, the genius of making the error appear inconsequential.
    I moved a trestle, shielding it against Penny so that Jeannie could drop Fred in the gap without fear of attack from his hysterical mother. She
was
hysterical. She was like a wild beast in her distress.
    ‘There you are, Penny,’ said Jeannie, putting Fred to the ground and pushing him through the gap, ‘nothing to worry about.’
    I fancy that Fred expected a joyous reunion, a pat on the back for being so original as to attack a newspaper, to startle an elderly lady, to cause consternation within a week of his arrival. He was mistaken. Penny was as angry as she was relieved at being united with Fred; and she chased him. She chased him with her nose, chastising his buttocks with her soft white nose as if for the moment she considered it a whip. She chased him round the yard and into the stable, and out again. She was so furious that she wanted to teach him a lesson he would never forget. Not on our behalf, but on hers.
    Fred’s reaction seemed to be a relish that he was loved on both sides of the barrier, a wonderful hint that if the imponderables went well, he would for ever and for ever have the most wonderful life imaginable. And so when Penny’s fury had subsided, when Fred found himself once again a young donkey freed from his mother’s strictures, he smiled, putting his ears back and shaking his head. I am certain he was saying that he enjoyed every minute of his escape, the fall didn’t matter, life was fun and mistakes didn’t count so long as there were years ahead in which to correct them. I feel sure that when he came rushing up to my hand that I held out to him, nuzzling it with his nose, he was telling me what a hilarious time lay ahead of us.
    ‘I have a feeling,’ said Jeannie’s mother later, ‘that this donkey is going to be a nuisance!’
    She did not mean, of course, this to be a reproach. Nor for that matter a waffling. It was a gentle joke, said in a soft voice with just the trace of a Scottish accent. I realise in retrospect that her affection for Fred stemmed from something deeper than a superficial enchantment for a Disney-like creature. He was to her, in the last few months of her life, a link with the future. Her intuition made her aware that time was against her, and so she was glad to find in this absurd little donkey a bridge. Jeannie’s uncle told Jeannie how a few weeks later he was with her mother waiting for a bus to take them from Gloucester Road to Hyde Park corner. They waited twenty minutes at the bus stop, not because there were no buses. Three went by; but Jeannie’s mother went on talking, and the subject was Fred. The poor man cursed the donkey as he stood there, listening patiently. He did not know the secret. Fred, at that very instant, running free on the Cornish cliffs, the skies and wild winds, sunny days and torrential rain, the sea lurching then calm, scents of the salt, wild grasses, pinks, meadowsweet, puzzling cries of gulls, woodpeckers laughing, badgers solidly plodding ageless paths, foxes alert, exultant chorus of the early morning, marsh warblers, summer larks, blackbirds trumpeting, wrens erupting; for all these Fred was the spokesman. These pleasures, enriched by the eyes and ears of centuries, projecting the kindness of permanence and security, dwelt there hopefully in her mind.
    And there were the incidents of which she had been a witness at Minack. Visits at