I couldn't sit down holding her tail, however. It wasn't long enough. I had visions of it coming off in my hand. The ground was so muddy I didn't fancy being dragged across it on the seat of my pants, anyway, so I compromised by squatting. This resulted in Annabel slowing down but still making headway, and my following along in her wake as if I was doing a Cossack dance. The thought of what this must look like, up there in that lonely field at dusk, reduced me to such helpless laughter that Annabel stopped eventually from sheer astonishment. She looked round at me, still clinging to the end of her tail, snorted to indicate that if I was still there after that lot she might as well give in, and allowed me to work myself hand over hand along her back and put her halter on.
Well over an hour we'd been, but time means nothing to the craftsman. Charles was still treadling blissfully away when we got back. Another five minutes and he was coming to help me, he assured me. But he knew I wouldn't have any trouble...
Fortunately, before Charles's treadling leg grew as long as a stork's – as it must surely have done, over twenty-one or not, with all the practice he put in on the lathe in the next few weeks – winter set in early that year, and as it became too cold to work in the woodshed some of his initial enthusiasm wore off.
It was obvious there was something special about that winter. One afternoon we were bringing Annabel down a neighbouring valley at dusk and such an upsurge of birds flew up from the bushes as we passed – fieldfares resting in their hundreds on their migratory flight south – that Annabel, the rest of the winter, said there were ghosts along there and refused to go that way after dusk. A few nights later we were taking the cats for a walk by moonlight in our own valley and the same thing happened. One moment all was stillness and silver and shadow, and the next, up went such a rush of fieldfares they must have been roosting fifty to a tree. The cats, surprisingly, took no notice at all. Perhaps, with memories of little birds they'd ambushed singly in the past, they thought it wiser to pretend this army didn't exist. Not by so much as a twitch of her ears did Sheba show recognition, while Solomon, marching like a Colonel at the head of his troops through the Khyber Pass, looked neither to right nor to left.
Exist it did, though. Four days it took for the fieldfares, in such numbers as we'd never seen before, to clear our part of the country. 'Twas the sign of a long hard winter, said Father Adams sagely. And a long hard winter it was too – though not for a while yet. It didn't snow till Christmas. Which was why, that year, we didn't have a Christmas tree. A week before Christmas we had such a fine, sunny Sunday that we took our status symbol through the Forestry estate for an afternoon walk. At that time of year the Commission organises night patrols on its estates, to guard against gangs coming out from town with lorries to steal trees in bulk for the Christmas market. At weekends they patrol during the day as well, to contend with family parties out for a drive in the car with Grandma who are liable, if not watched, to return with Grandma sitting innocently on a pilfered Christmas tree cut down with a pruning saw.
This particular afternoon Annabel, who normally runs freely with us like a dog, was on her halter for the first part of the walk. The riding school was out and we didn't want her deciding to play with the horses, which was apt to result in people falling off in all directions. It was some time before we actually met up with the school, however, and performed our usual ritual of turning Annabel's face to a tree, as in the song about the smugglers, while the riding mistress trotted her lot past like a troop of US cavalry in the hope that they wouldn't spot her. In consequence it was some time before we could let Annabel off her halter, and Annabel was annoyed.
She loitered behind when we freed her, just to show us.
At first we didn't worry. She always caught up with us sooner or later. Then it began to get dark, and we decided perhaps we'd better round her up, otherwise, not liking to be on her own when daylight went, she might follow one of the Forestry patrol men who all this time had been passing us at regular intervals like Officers of the Watch.
Charles went back for her while I, idly swinging her halter, stood looking at the scenery. A few seconds later another of the Forestry patrol passed me and eyed me curiously. Only then did I realise how suspicious I must look – lingering there in the dusk eyeing the plantation of spruce trees, swinging in my hand what was actually a donkey halter but what, to the patrol man, must have looked very much like a rope brought to haul home a Christmas tree.
I wished him a weak good afternoon and, when he'd passed me, began to follow back behind him, hoping to meet up with Charles and Annabel and thus prove I wasn't loitering with intent. Alas, when I got to the corner where they should have been, there was no sign of either of them. I guessed at once where they were. Just beyond the corner was a deserted Forestry cottage. When people lived in it Annabel was always embarrassing us, if we didn't remember to put her on her halter first, by running through their back gate and galloping round their garden. She hadn't done it for ages, but I had no doubt that that was where she was now – and that Charles, not realising how suspicious it looked, had disappeared in there after her.
I called to him – frightening the Forestry man, who hadn't realised how close I was behind him, practically out of his wits. Placatingly I explained that my husband had gone back to look for our donkey and now they'd both disappeared. Presumably into the cottage garden, I said, and I'd better go in and look for them.
'I can see a bloke dodging about in the garden', was the reply. 'But I can't see no donkey'. I couldn't see no donkey either, until – yelling my head off to Charles and (which looked even more suspicious) getting not one peep in reply – I went round behind the cottage and there he was, too breathless to speak, chasing Annabel round and round the garden.
Eventually, after a great deal of running, we rounded her up; I pantingly enquiring of Charles why on earth he had to go in there just when there was a patrol man about who no doubt thought he was concealing a stolen tree, while Charles panted back how the Devil else was he going to get her out?
Things weren't improved meanwhile by my noticing the patrol man crouched behind the hedge and periodically peering over the top of it, undoubtedly checking on whether there really was a donkey in the garden with us.
It was a very docile Annabel we led on her halter for the remainder of the trip – during which, needless to say, we met no further patrol men at all. Charles said of course we couldn't have looked suspicious. All I knew was that I hadn't seen that particular Forestry man before. He obviously didn't know us, either, or that we owned a donkey. And for safety's sake – though we always buy it from the greengrocer anyway – I insisted that we didn't have a tree that year. I had no wish to have my Christmas festivities interrupted – undoubtedly just when the Rector was with us, having an after-church sherry on Christmas morning by the local constable and Forestry chief coming to uproot it from its pot to check on its identity.
SIX
When Winter Comes
The snow started on Boxing night. We were on our way home from Charles's brother's party when the first few flakes began to fall. Congratulating ourselves that we'd got Christmas over before it started and there were still two days yet before we need think of getting through it to town, we swept down to the valley, put the car into the garage, and couldn't get it out again for a fortnight. Even after that we were only able to take advantage of a break in the weather to get it towed up to the farm at the top of the hill and use it, when practicable, from there. Six weeks in all we were snow-bound in the valley, and as a study in character it was fascinating.