A Gull on the Roof (22 page)

And then, just as we gloomily reached the old stone stable and the slope which led up to the cottage, Jeannie suddenly said in a voice that sounded as if our problems had been solved: ‘Look! There’s a gull on the roof!’

The gull on the roof is called Hubert. He joined Monty as a witness of our endeavour and the pleasure that has come with it. He watched us fight back at Minack, working for a year on our own. He saw us beginning to succeed then rushed by the elements into retreat, then forward again. He is old now, his feathers have lost their sheen, and when he gathers himself to fly away he is like a rheumaticky old man shuffling to rise from an armchair.

He was old when he arrived, or so we thought. ‘They come to man when they’re ailing,’ Joe had told us, ‘you won’t see him for long.’ But the years have passed and he is still with us, and it is only on days when a gale is raging that he fails to spread his wings over the cottage and alight on the roof. Then when I see him again I will say, ‘The gale is over. Hubert’s back.’

A. P. Herbert came to stay a few days after his first appearance, and A.P.H. was the instrument which gave him his name. We were in the main street of Penzance one morning when first one person then another asked A.P.H. for his autograph. A little crowd gathered among whom was a young girl who, we noticed, was pushed forward by a friend. ‘Can I have your autograph?’ she asked, holding out notebook and pencil. A.P.H. bowed ceremoniously, then asked kindly, ‘And whose autograph are you expecting?’ The girl looked at him doubtfully, ‘Sir Hubert . . . or something.’ And for that slight reason Hubert became Hubert.

A.P.H. has always remained Hubert’s admirer and on this occasion he bought a gaily painted toy bucket with the idea of filling it with limpets for Hubert’s benefit. He would clamber down the cliffs to the rocks, spend an hour or two unclamping the limpets, then return to the cottage where he would spend another hour cleaning them from the shells . . . so that Hubert could gobble them in a few seconds.

One evening we were listening to a broadcast performance of Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D Minor conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent when Hubert began to cry like a baby screaming for attention. A.P.H. went to the door and looked up to the roof. ‘Shush, Hubert,’ he said, ‘or I’ll tell Sir Malcolm.’ Hubert miraculously remained silent for the remainder of the performance, and the following morning A.P.H. wrote to Malcolm Sargent to inform him of the incident. A few days later there came a solemn reply. ‘I’m delighted to hear of my new and unusual fan. Tell him I hope he enjoys Tchaikovsky’s Fifth next Monday.’

Hubert provided us not only with the jest of his companionship but also, in this period of defeat, he showed us the prize of our way of life. This attention from the untamed was an antidote to loss of confidence. It revealed that eyes in the sky watched our comings and goings and now accepted our presence as shadows on the landscape. We were no longer strangers. We had nudged our way into a kingdom that had the passage of time as its passport; no easy short cuts, no synthetic substitutes, no man-made device can breed the trust of the wild. You have to wait.

Others followed Hubert. He remained king of the roof and he would savagely attack any usurper, but during the hours he was absent strangers began to call until they too became friends. They came singly, wary of rivals, plummeting down on the ridge of the roof, then peering into the garden to see if we had noticed their approach. They flew out of the anonymity of the sky, from the vast gatherings on the rocks along the coast, and became in their own way rebels against conformism. We know them now as one knows animals on a farm; and if we are a field or two away and a gull is winging towards the cottage we can often name it by the manner of its flight; or if we are on the other side of the valley and we see a silhouette below the chimney the size of a fist we are quite likely to be right when one of us says: ‘Knocker’s waiting for us.’

Knocker, Peter, Philip, Squeaker, Gregory, these join Hubert as our regular visitors and, although sometimes they are away for a month or two, they return and are easily recognised. Knocker announces his arrival by rapping on the roof with his beak, so loudly and briskly that time and again we are deceived into thinking someone is at the door. He has an uncanny sense of knowing when we are in, or perhaps it is that after alighting on the roof he waits to hear our voices before he begins to knock; for we have watched him arrive from afar off and he perches, head erect, waiting; but when we return and go indoors, a minute later the knocking begins.

Peter is shy, he stretches his neck this way and that eyeing us nervously, as if he felt guilty of trespassing. Philip has a confident, lazy, ‘no harm can come to me’ kind of attitude, and when he is in the mood he will follow us on our walks. Squeaker is a silly bird who has never grown up. He still makes the same piping, wheedling noise that he made when he first began visiting us as a first-year bird in mottled grey plumage. He sits on the roof endlessly squeaking, bending his head up and down in the same manner as a nestling demands food from its parents. We throw up a piece of bread, hope for silence, then when the whine continues I am driven to shout: ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ And afterwards, when he has flown away, I am sorry I have been so abrupt.

Gregory has one leg, the other presumably lost long ago in a trap; and because the source of his strength is unbalanced he has become barrel-chested like a plump duck. He is the easiest to recognise when in flight because his chest seems to protrude like the front cone of an aircraft. He is a lonely gull. I have often seen him attacked by others and driven twisting and turning across the moorland to the sea; and there was one occasion when he was caught unawares on the roof and bullied screaming off it so that he fell in the garden. Hubert was the villain and I rushed out and stood by, until Gregory had recovered sufficiently to hop away to the path and take flight. Usually he calls about an hour before dusk but if someone else is still on the roof I see him waiting and watching in a field across the valley, a white speck against the soil. Then, when the roof is bare, he is with us.

I am wondering now whether I should not have written about Gregory in the past tense. We have not seen him for months. He has been absent before now for several weeks on end, usually in the summer, and we have mocked him on his return. ‘You’ve been cadging from the visitors,’ we have accused him, ‘you’ve been hopping on the beach luring them to say “we must feed that poor bird with one leg”.’ But he has never been away for so long and we are worried. Has a fox caught him as he hopped in a field? Or has his own kind swooped and battered him into the sea?

I wonder, too, whether Hubert is nearing the end of his reign as king of the roof; age becomes driftwood wherever it may be. Once he had only to bellow a screeching warning for any gull on the roof to flee at his approach. But the other day I watched him being himself attacked, pounced upon by a newcomer as he was warming himself on the chimney; and the newcomer, a brash, bossy gull who, without being friendly, greedily demands his food, unbalanced poor Hubert in such a manner that he fell like an untidy parachute to the grass below.

Hubert is fussy. He dislikes shop bread, tosses it in disgust in the air if he is given it, and insists instead on Jeannie’s home-made variety. He loves cheese, but his favourite dish is bacon rinds. ‘Let me know when Hubert arrives,’ Jeannie will say, ‘I’ve got bacon rinds for him today.’ In wintry weather his visits are brief, long enough to have a meal, then he flies majestically away towards the sea, sloping his flight down the valley to the rocks below the cliffs which are his home. In normal weather he may stay with us for most of the day, announcing his arrival with a squeak; then he will squat on the wide rugged stones of the chimney as if on a nest, or he will stand looking bored and disconsolate on the ridge of the roof, or walk to and fro along it like a sentry on a parapet. He observes us. We are always aware of his scrutiny.

In the beginning Monty was irritated rather than jealous of him. Monty would doze in the garden, look up when Hubert started to cry, then curl his upper lip in a soundless snarl. Or if we were having breakfast on the white seat below the cottage and Hubert was strutting within throwing distance of a piece of toast, Monty would lie and stare; then, as if he thought some gesture of defiance were required on his part, he would gently growl like a dog. In time they became friendly enough to ignore each other.

Monty was indifferent to birds and we were never made anxious by the sight of him stalking. He once caught a wren but it was hardly his fault. He was lying somnolent on the grass by the apple tree while a covey of baby wrens flew around him, teasing him as if they were flies and he a tired old horse. I saw him flick his tail in impatience, then pounce, and a wren was in his mouth; but his actions were so gentle that when I rushed to the rescue, shouting at him, he let it go and it flew away unharmed.

He had other temptations but there was a placid quality in his nature that helped him to ignore them. We had, for instance, the usual company of tomtits, bluetits, dunnocks, buntings and sparrows flitting about the garden in expectation of crumbs, and he took no notice of any of them; but in particular we had Charlie the chaffinch and Tim the robin.

Charlie attached himself to us soon after the arrival of Hubert, and like Tim he is still with us. He is a bird with a dual character; that of the spring and summer when he is resplendent in plumage of slate-blue, pink, chestnut, black and white wings and tail, is boastful and demanding; that of the winter when his feathers have the drabness of faded curtains is apologetic, as if surprised he was worthy of any attention. In spring and summer his call is as loud as a trumpet, in winter it is that of a squeak. He has an endearing personality. We may be anywhere in the environment of Minack and suddenly find him hopping about beside us or flitting in the trees as we walk through the wood. We seldom see him any distance from the cottage though once I found him on the edge of the Pentewan meadows. I said: ‘Hello Charlie, what are you doing here?’ in the tone of voice that might have greeted a friend I thought was in London. Then, when I started back to the cottage, he came with me.

There was one winter, however, when he disappeared for four or five months and we sadly concluded he was dead. But one March morning when Jeannie was in the chicken run which we had moved to a clearing in the wood, she suddenly heard ‘cheep, cheep’ from a branch above her head. It was Charlie; and she rushed back to the cottage to tell me. ‘Charlie’s back!’ she said excitedly, ‘I must get him a biscuit!’ And by that time Charlie had followed her and was sitting on the bird-table cheeping away like a dog barking a welcome. Where had he been? In the autumn hordes of migrating chaffinches sweep along the coast past Minack on the way to Southern Ireland, so perhaps Charlie went along with a group. It does not seem the trip was a success. He has never gone away for the winter again.

Charlie is a diffident character compared with Tim. Charlie never comes inside the cottage whereas Tim will perch on the back of a chair and sing us a song. Charlie, when we are bunching flowers, will cheep on the doorstep of the flower house while Tim is inside hopping about on the shelves. Charlie shies away if you put out a hand, Tim will stand on my outstretched palm until my arm aches.

One November, Tim, like Charlie, disappeared. Tim’s territory consisted of the cottage, about forty yards of the lane beyond Monty’s Leap, and a field bordering it. One morning a few days after we had noticed Tim’s disappearance we observed another robin, a nervous robin, flying about the same territory. Robins, of course, compete with each other for desirable territories, so we looked at this robin and wondered whether he had driven Tim away or moved into the territory because Tim was dead. We did not look with favour; for whatever had happened was distressing.

It was a fortnight later that we saw Tim again. We were strolling along a cliff path a half-mile from the cottage when suddenly, perched on a twig of quickthorn, I saw Tim. There was no mistaking him. He was perched with his feathers fluffed out, motionless, watching us. ‘Tim!’ Jeannie said with delight, ‘what are you doing here?’ I had a few crumbs in my pocket which I held out on the palm of my hand. A second later I felt the touch of his legs, as if two matchsticks were standing upright.

The following day we returned to the same place. There was no Tim. We pushed our way through the brush calling his name, walking in ever widening circles. At Minack he always used to answer his name. We would stroll a few steps down the lane calling, ‘Tim!’ – and a few moments later he would be with us. But this time there was no sign of him, nor the next day, nor the day after. ‘Well,’ I said to Jeannie, ‘I hope that hawk which has been around hasn’t had him.’ Jeannie did not like the casual way I spoke. Tim was as much a friend as any human could be.

You can, of course, always win the attention of birds by throwing them crumbs, and you reap the pleasant reward of watching them; but it is when an individual bird enters the realm of companionship that the soul is surprised by a gossamer emotion of affection. Tim was not greedy. He did not call on us just because he was hungry. I have seen him time and time again flutter at the window of the flower house, then, when we have let him in, mooch around for a couple of hours among the jars full of flowers, warble a little, perch on a bloom with feathers fluffed out watching us at work.