Mr Doubler Begins Again Read online

  Doubler sat at the desk watching the silent telephone. He thought he might wander out and take a look at the animals but didn’t want to be away from his post if the phone rang or a visitor arrived. He sat quietly, forcing himself to wait for at least thirty minutes before he made himself a cup of tea. He wondered, as he twiddled a pencil between his fingers, what Mrs Millwood would do while it was her shift. He couldn’t imagine her sitting still or quietly. In fact, he had instead imagined that he would be coming into a hive of activity in which Mrs Millwood would be the wise and rather magisterial leader, inspiring them all to rehouse and defend the weak, the sick and the unwanted.

  Still the phone remained silent, so Doubler moved himself to the steps, where he could keep an eye on the farmhouse, look for signs of life other than his own breath in the air and listen out for the phone. He looked at the farm buildings around him and across to the farmhouse itself. He was tempted to go and explore, but unsure if he should abandon his post so soon, he went back inside to make a cup of tea. He opened the box of teabags and sniffed the contents suspiciously. Shaking his head sadly, he closed up the box. With mild disappointment evident on his face, he appraised the scant facilities available to him, finding no evidence of either a pot or a tea strainer. Sighing, he took from his inside pocket a small twist of paper. From his other pocket, he took a clean cotton handkerchief. While the kettle boiled, he carefully tipped the tea leaves into the centre of the handkerchief and this he knotted into a makeshift teabag. He poured the boiling water slowly into the cup, allowing the tea leaves to steep for the requisite three minutes before adding milk. He sipped at his drink slowly, while making a note in his pocketbook of the items he’d need to bring with him next time.

  The minutes ticked by slowly, and after a long period of unbroken silence, he started to wonder whether there would even be a next time. It seemed to him that there was no point staffing the office constantly. Perhaps the drop-in clinic for potential new owners could just be a day or two a week. He thought about the inefficiencies of trying to run a charity that could not predict when they might be required. But just as he was beginning to think he would have to talk himself out of the role, he heard the rumble of an arrival and he hurried down the steps to see an old pickup truck pulling up, dragging a horsebox behind it.

  Doubler walked out to meet the visitor, excited to be useful for the first time in his shift. To his surprise, a tiny woman with a headscarf knotted tightly under her chin slid out of the cab of the truck and bounced her way down to the ground, wincing with pain as she landed. She retrieved a walking stick from within the car and then used it to point at Doubler.

  ‘You the new chap?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Doubler.’

  ‘Then you’ll be expecting me.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Should have been in the file. I’m here to pick up a donkey. Giving it a new home. You’ll have to help me catch it, though.’

  Doubler looked at her and the horsebox she was trailing, which to his inexpert eye certainly seemed like an adequate vehicle in which to safely transport a donkey.

  Doubler cast his mind back over the notes he’d flicked through earlier, trying to recall the protocol and wondering whether there was anything else he ought to do other than express some gratitude and give her all the help and encouragement he could manage. This seemed like the best course of action, and emboldened by the series of changes he’d already undertaken in his life, he adopted the persona of a man comfortable in his own skin and with all matters pertaining to animal welfare.

  ‘You’re giving it a new home? How marvellous. We need more like you!’ said Doubler, rather proud that this transaction was going to take place under his watchful eye. ‘But I’m new here, as you know. So you’ll have to lead the way.’

  The woman, as yet unintroduced, looked a little hesitant but walked off, using her stick to steady herself over the deeply rutted farmyard. They passed through a gate into a small empty field and started making their way diagonally towards the next field, which was separated from the first by a thick hedge of hawthorn.

  ‘My knee’s playing up. You’ll have to take it from here.’ She handed Doubler a halter and rope, and turned to walk back to the farm, looking really quite sprightly.

  Doubler watched her retreat. ‘But I might need your help!’ he called, worried that he’d never handled a donkey before and concerned, too, that he might not be able to identify the animal in a field of many.

  She did not look back but shouted into the wind, ‘I’ll prepare the truck.’

  Doubler didn’t want to let anyone down so made his way cautiously to the gate, not knowing what he might find the other side. His immediate concern turned out to be completely unfounded. There was just one donkey there, a small thing with a beautiful thick charcoal-grey coat. Doubler opened the gate and held up the halter. The donkey looked at him nervously and started to back away.

  ‘Here, boy. I’ve got some rather good news for you – you’re going to a lovely new home.’

  The donkey took some more steps in the wrong direction. If it could have glanced over its shoulder, it would have.

  ‘Come on, you. I’m not surprised you’ve got the jitters. Probably been mistreated before in your time. That’s what you’re doing here in the first place, isn’t it?’

  The donkey responded to his low, gentle voice by locking his eyes on Doubler.

  Doubler talked some more. ‘But this is an exciting new chapter. A new home to go to, somebody to love you for ever. You’ll never feel lonely again! Come on, boy. You know how awful it is, day after day after day with no prospect of love in sight. And here it is – another chance. Come on, boy. This is too good an opportunity.’

  The donkey was lured by Doubler’s patience and came slowly to him to investigate Doubler’s outstretched hand. As he got closer, Doubler could see the fear in the animal’s eyes, and signs of scars, nicks and tears pocked his old face. From afar, he had looked like a young animal, but up close, he looked quite worn out. Once he was close enough, Doubler gently leant forward and wriggled the halter over his nose and behind his ears, doing up the strap under his chin. The donkey submitted at this point and fell into an easy walk beside him as Doubler led him back towards the farm, being careful to close both gates behind him.

  He led the obedient animal slowly to the yard, murmuring all the time of the many wonderful things that companionship might have in store for him and feeling rather proud that he had navigated a number of hurdles for which he was ill prepared. There was no sight of the woman, but the ramp was down on the trailer and there was a thick bed of straw inside that made the horsebox look very inviting. Doubler led the donkey carefully to the ramp, but with his front two hooves barely on the ramp, the beast then refused to budge. Doubler kept up his hushed monologue, giving the animal every little bit of encouragement, but the donkey was stuck firm. He wouldn’t move forwards or backwards. Doubler was stymied and ashamed by his helplessness. He couldn’t let go of the donkey: it felt irresponsible. He couldn’t call for the new owner, either, as that might startle the donkey, who though rooted to the spot, was, at least, quite calm. But either with a tug at the halter or a firm shove on his hind, Doubler could not move him. He looked around anxiously, hoping the woman would appear at any moment to give him a hand.

  As he waited, he heard the sound of a car approaching quite quickly up the drive. It was the complaining engine of the Renault 4 and it came to a grinding halt in the gateway, blocking the access. Colonel Maxwell jumped out.

  ‘Schoolboy error. You didn’t read the notes, old man!’ said the Colonel. It was difficult to tell from his tone whether he was angry or not.

  Doubler looked around him, both alarmed and perplexed, hoping to find support from the absent woman, who would be able to clear this up with a simple explanation. ‘I read the notes. Did I miss something?’

  ‘The addendum. We’ll review it shortly, but in the meantime, let’s get Percy back to his field, sh
all we?’ Maxwell came and scratched the donkey behind the ears and led him gently away from the trailer. The donkey broke into a trot and happily headed into the long grass of the first field.

  ‘We’ll leave him here and sort him out later. He’ll be absolutely fine for the moment. Right now, we’d better go and deal with the old dear, shall we?’

  Doubler was baffled but found comfort in the Colonel’s certainty. He trailed a couple of steps behind the Colonel, whose quick thinking by parking his car directly in front of the gate had ensured the visitor could not leave the yard. She was there in plain sight now, trying to heave up the ramp to the trailer all on her own.

  ‘Don’t struggle with that alone,’ said Doubler, worry breaking out on his face.

  ‘Oh, don’t fall for that,’ muttered Maxwell. ‘She’s as strong as an old ox.’ He approached her, speaking sternly. ‘Now, Mrs Mitchell. I’ll say it one more time. You can’t have the donkey. You haven’t got any grass for him. He needs looking after, food and water, and proper care. He needs all of these things to live.’

  The woman had wrestled the trailer closed and was now trying to scramble up into the cab of the truck as if to make a getaway. She reached in behind the driver’s seat and tugged out a plastic milk crate, which she upturned to use as a step.

  ‘Looking for these, Mrs Mitchell?’

  Maxwell waved the truck keys, a weighty-looking bottle-cap opener acting as the keyring.

  ‘You can’t drive that truck any further. It’s theft. But the owner has promised not to press charges if we return the truck and the trailer back to him in one piece.

  ‘You’ll never guess what she did,’ said the Colonel, turning to Doubler with a wry smile on his face. ‘She stole it off the forecourt of the petrol station. The owner had gone to pay and the next thing he knew, she was driving it off at breakneck speed. As soon as the police took the call, they gave me a holler. Knew where she’d be heading.’

  ‘She’s done this before, then?’

  ‘Oh, has she! Many times. The RSPCA removed the donkey from her care a long time ago. She was keeping him in her garage, would you believe it? And now she tries to steal him back at every opportunity. She doesn’t even have a driving licence. She just waits to see an appropriate vehicle and commandeers it. Once, she turned up in a piano removal company’s HGV. The piano was still in it.’

  Mrs Mitchell was glowering at the Colonel but seemed quite uninterested by this discussion of her past misdemeanours. Nonplussed, she turned and leant against the vehicle, looking off in the direction of the fields beyond.

  Doubler lowered his voice to ensure Mrs Mitchell couldn’t hear their conversation. He nodded in her general direction. ‘So why doesn’t she come at night? She could probably just walk out with him, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Well, that’s it – the donkey won’t go to her. Won’t go anywhere near her. She has to wait until she can rope in a newcomer or a stranger to give her a hand.’

  They stopped as the sound of a police siren interrupted their conversation, but the siren faded as it passed the farm, racing elsewhere.

  ‘Will they arrest her?’

  ‘Heavens, no. No point. I’ll take her home now and I’ll explain to her all over again why she can’t keep the donkey. She thinks he has been stolen from her. Gone a bit soft in the head, this one.’

  Doubler looked carefully at Mrs Mitchell but could detect no softness in her scowl. Her elbows were askance, her pointed chin was jutting out beneath thin, pursed lips, and her eyes shot hatred in his direction. No, no softness, just hardness and angles. And yet, something tender spoke to him from beneath her frame because he felt a surge of pity and sadness wash over him, catching him completely off guard. Rather than feeling humiliated that she had compromised him on his first day at the job, he felt like he had glimpsed humankind for the first time in his life. He turned, confused and oddly ashamed, and headed into the Portakabin, leaving Maxwell, who clearly had a better grip on the situation than Doubler had, to return the trailer to its rightful owner and Mrs Mitchell to her home, where no doubt Maxwell would give her a stern rebuke.

  As he was about to leave, with Mrs Mitchell safely buckled into his passenger seat, Maxwell returned to the Portakabin, poking his head round the door to address Doubler.

  ‘We have regular get-togethers. Means we can have some off-the-record discussions – you know, keep each other abreast of developments. Avoid this sort of kerfuffle. Might be a good idea for you to join?’

  ‘Well, of course. It would be my pleasure, and I’m very keen to meet the rest of the team.’

  ‘Good. That’s settled, then. We take it in turns to host – you can see the logic in that?’

  ‘Yes, wonderful. Makes perfect sense.’ Doubler was thrilled by the Colonel’s conciliatory tone and was at pains to ensure his own was equally positive after such a poor start.

  ‘So, next up is you. Would have been Gracie so it makes sense for you to take her place. Can’t really deviate from the rota without all sorts of further repercussions. I assume that’s fine?’

  Doubler swallowed and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said, assessing the Colonel’s brusque manner and deciding the request was probably issued as an honour.

  ‘Don’t thank me – thank Gracie. It was her suggestion.’

  Doubler swallowed and nodded, processing several complicated feelings of gratitude and shame. A kind parting gesture from the Colonel rescued him from complete despair, but it wasn’t quite enough to stop him wondering if he’d been made a fool of by not one person but two. ‘Or three if you count the donkey,’ he mumbled. He consoled himself a little with the knowledge that Mrs Millwood would surely find this story entertaining and he locked into his memory the finer details that would help bring the tale alive when they next spoke.

  He listened to the sound of Maxwell’s car retreat once again and the silence of the Portakabin surrounded him. His heart had been racing, he realized, and now he steadied his breathing in the silence. He replayed the last couple of hours in his mind. Three moments stood out in his memory: the Colonel’s bombastic introduction, the donkey’s terror and his own short-lived pride. But it was Mrs Mitchell’s hateful glare that had wormed its way into his long-term memory and found a little unused pocket of his brain in which to fester and brood. And to top it off, he’d just agreed to entertain the whole team at Mirth Farm. Doubler sighed heavily and wondered whether this was what Mrs Millwood had in mind when she and Midge had coerced him into this nonsense.

  Chapter 13

  Once again Doubler was pacing in the general vicinity of the telephone, having cut short his morning rounds for fear of getting delayed. This morning, for the first time in decades, he’d made his tea in a mug, without bothering to prepare a pot, and he’d eaten a biscuit standing by the Aga, unable to commit to sitting down for a break. He pounced on the telephone as it rang.

  ‘So, how did you get on, Mr Doubler?’

  Mrs Millwood sounded mischievous, as if she might already have heard of Doubler’s misfortune, but he launched into his account enthusiastically, nonetheless.

  ‘I think it would be fair to say it went as terribly as you could possibly imagine. An utter disaster.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Doubler, I turn my back for one moment and it’s complete chaos! What on earth could have happened?’

  ‘I nearly allowed Mrs Mitchell to steal the donkey.’

  ‘Nearly? But she didn’t actually take him?’

  ‘No, fortunately the Colonel returned in the nick of time and was there to stop her.’

  ‘Well, then you didn’t utterly fail. It could have been much worse.’

  ‘That’s a very generous and positive viewpoint,’ acknowledged Doubler gratefully. ‘But I don’t think the Colonel was impressed.’

  ‘It’s not his job to be impressed,’ countered Mrs Millwood. ‘It’s his job to impress you. And I certainly wouldn’t worry about it: a close shave with Mrs Mitchell has happened to most of us. Consider it part of the
initiation.’

  ‘That does seem to be the case, though why the risk she poses isn’t spelt out more clearly seems a bit of a mystery to me. There’s a whole manual in the office dedicated to the fair disbursement and replenishment of sugar lumps, carefully worked out on the basis of numbers of hours volunteered. Effectively I am entitled, if I am to follow the manual to the letter of the law, to one sugar lump per hour worked, which if I were to take sugar in my tea, almost certainly wouldn’t be enough.’

  ‘Oh, you’re making that up!’

  ‘I am not – it’s there in a file on the shelf. Sugar has its own ring folder. Believe me, I read every single word in every single file and Mrs Mitchell barely gets a mention. The Colonel’s behind the sugar-lump legislation, of that I’m certain. It’s just a shame he wasn’t so thorough when it came to the welfare of the donkey or the threat posed by the utterly daft Mrs Mitchell.’

  ‘Ah well, I suspect that’s the crux of it. Is Mrs Mitchell actually mad? Clinically insane? Because nobody in the team would want to prejudice a mad person. We’re all either a bit mad ourselves or we are capable of becoming so in the very near future. Perhaps we are all putting off the moment we contemplate Maddie Mitchell’s mental state and therefore our own. I like to apply the mad, bad or sad rule of thumb. I’d only be concerned about the “bad”.’

  ‘Well, I’m not really asking for a clinical diagnosis. I just think a notice on the wall – maybe each wall – saying, “Under no circumstances give Mrs Mitchell the donkey,” would suffice. More useful than the “Manual of Fair Sugar Disbursement”. Would have saved me and everyone else a spot of bother.’

  ‘Well, it sounds like they left you to it, did they? If no one else was there to show you the ropes, then I don’t think you can accept personal responsibility, can you?’

  ‘That’s very true, Mrs Millwood. I’m not a psychic. And I consider it a great shame that no one was there to show me the ropes. It would have been nice to meet the team.’