Seagulls in the Attic (11 page)

Hector goes on, ‘Yes, it is a very fascinating game. So much so that we get completely engrossed in it. That’s no doubt why we didn’t hear you knock.’

‘We are completely absorbed when we play,’ Edna adds.

‘Ah. Yes. I see.’
And I interrupted you
, are the words that have not been spoken aloud but are silently flitting around the room.

I’m about to apologise and slink off when I remember why I called in the first place. I look down at the cold, stone kitchen floor with its threadbare rugs and say, ‘I wanted to see you as a matter of fact because I brought you these.’ I hold out a packet of rug fasteners I’d picked up at a shop in Truro a day or so ago. ‘I saw these and, uh, bought some for my rugs at home.’ This is a little fib but a necessary one, I feel. ‘And I suddenly thought you might find them useful too. I know how easy it is to skid on a loose rug. Will and Amy do it all the time, and so do I, Ben, too, and even our dog Jake, and really it’s quite dangerous.’ I’m waffling I know, but they are looking
at me with totally blank faces. Perhaps they haven’t seen anything like this before? I rip the packet open and start putting them on the rusty-coloured rug in front of me. It’s thin and slippery, worn with age. ‘You see? It works like this. One side sticks to the rug and the other to the floor. It prevents the rug from slipping out from under you.’

I work feverishly then demonstrate how much more secure the rug is now. Neither Edna nor Hector has said a word. I’ve bought enough of the things to do all the rugs they could possibly have in the house and now I lay them on the table next to the chess set.

Finally Edna says, ‘Thank you, dear.’ Her voice is polite but not enthusiastic. Hector still has that blank look on his face. I remind myself that they’re old, set in their ways, and that they will need time to adjust to even something as simple as rug fasteners. But they’ll come around.

I say, ‘I’d be happy to do all your rugs, next time I’m here. I’d do it now but you’re in the middle of your game.’

Hector finally speaks, ‘That’s kind of you, but it won’t be necessary. Now how much do we owe you for these?’ His voice is distant.

Neither of them have made a move to even look at the rug fasteners and I realise, far too late and to my extreme mortification, that far from being helpful, I’ve offended them by implying that they need help, need an outsider like me to come in with my health and safety rules, my busybody attempt to organise their lives. Oh dear, I think, what do I do now? Finally I manage to stutter something about the items being merely a few extra we had left over that we have no need for.

Edna says, ‘We really don’t need them either, to be honest. Our rugs have never given us trouble.’ She pauses then adds politely, ‘Though it’s kind of you to think of us.’ The way she says it, I can tell she is fibbing too.

Hector is nodding in agreement. I say, as nonchalantly as possible, ‘That’s fine, if you don’t need them. Just thought I’d ask.’ I pick up the rug fasteners that are on the table and put them in my pocket. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted your chess game.’

And now they are themselves again, that awful distance between us gone. Walking me to the door they talk in unison, offer to lend me an umbrella for the rain and see me out.

Despite the storm I walk home slowly, getting drenched but not noticing. I think wryly that my efficient, organised, managerial ways that stood me in such good stead in London, are not just useless here but sometimes positively detrimental. Well, live and learn, I think as I put on dry clothes and make tea. I’m on my own in the house again and suddenly I hear that same scrabbling rat-like sound in the attic. Ben is going to go upstairs and look tonight when he gets home from work. I’ll be glad when he does as that constant scratching is unnerving. And then I remember – I’ve got a box in the attic of some family photographs, old ones left to me by my parents before they died, and I don’t want any horrid rat chewing on them. The photographs are special, precious. How could I have forgotten they were there?

I sit with my tea and listen to the noise coming from the attic. Am I imagining it or does it sound louder? Perhaps there are dozens of rats up there, all having a romping great feast on my family photos. The thought upsets me so much that before I know what I’m doing, I grab the stepladder, position it below the attic opening, and get myself up there before I can think.

I’ve not been here since we moved. There’s the usual stuff, a couple of crates of things we brought from London that we didn’t quite know what to do with but were reluctant to throw away. They are still there, looking untouched. Next to the crates is a small cardboard box with a few albums, including the one
from my parents. I make my way to it noisily, thinking that any self-respecting rat will hide when it hears me coming. All I want to do is grab the irreplaceable album and get out of the attic.

Luckily it looks untouched. I’m tempted to take the whole box downstairs but I remember Edna on her ladder against the pear tree. I’m more or less half her age, and my ladder is in excellent shape, but I don’t fancy coming down on my own carrying an entire box. Sensibly, I decide to wait until Ben gets home before doing anything more than rescuing the album. I’m halfway down the ladder again when I hear the scratching noise. I yelp, thinking a rat is about to land on my head which is now on a level with the opening. Then there are more scrabbling sounds and I’m petrified, frozen to the ladder for a second or two until I hear another sound, more like the caw of a bird than the squeak of a rat.

The noise comes again. It’s definitely a bird. Slowly I poke my head back into the attic’s opening and look around, noticing for the first time, some feathers near the crates. I scramble down the ladder with the album and go up again, no longer afraid. I like birds, and I don’t like the thought of one trapped in my attic. Slowly, so as not to frighten it, I creep over to the crates and peer behind one of them. There, looking up at me, is a baby seagull. I haven’t a clue how old it is but it still has fluff instead of feathers. And it can’t fly either, because as I approach it starts flapping about in a panic but doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

I’m not quite sure what to do. Making soothing noises, I try to get a better look to see if it’s injured. It seems only to be frightened. I back off down the ladder, grab some bits of bread and cheese from the kitchen and go back to the attic. I make myself comfortable, sitting on the floor behind the crate, and try to pop some food around to the bird as unobtrusively as
possible. The gull looks up at me and opens its mouth, whether in shock or in an instinctive gesture, I’m not sure, but I take the opportunity to pop a tiny piece of crumbled cheddar in its beak which he swallows ravenously. Then he opens it again and this time I try some bread. I know from experience that seagulls eat anything – Cornish ice cream, pasties, fish and chips – so I’m not worried about feeding it correctly.

When the bread and cheese is gone, I go down for a bowl of water which I place not far from the bird. I’m not sure about their drinking habits so this will have to do. Its beak is still wide open but I decide it’s had enough, for now. ‘Go to sleep, little thing, have a rest,’ I say softly. ‘We’ll figure out what to do with you later.’

For the next hour or so I listen for more sounds but all is quiet in the attic. I vacillate between feeling good that the baby is now having a peaceful slumber and being terrified that I killed it off with the wrong kind of cheese or something. I remind myself how the seagulls are thriving in St Geraint, Morranport and all the other seaside places, living on the rubbish from restaurants and food dropped by tourists, so they must have cast-iron stomachs.

Ben and the children arrive home at the same time and I tell them about the seagull. Ben goes up straightaway to investigate. When he gets down he says, ‘It obviously got through from the attic next door. There are seagulls nesting there and one of the babies must somehow have scuttled into our attic.’ That makes sense. Our cottage is a semi and the one next door has been a rented for years. It’s now up for sale and the owners haven’t bothered to do a thing to it despite a hole in the roof and other problems. I say, ‘Oh Ben, we’ll have to put the baby back into the nest, at once.’

The children are all for this idea, identifying with the poor baby bird separated from its mum, dad and siblings. But by
now it’s not only raining hard, a gale has started to blow. Though the nights are pulling back and the days getting longer, it’s like late autumn this evening with the black storm clouds and lashing rain.

‘Tomorrow,’ Ben says firmly. ‘We’ll do it tomorrow morning.’

And so I soak some more bread in water and take it to the gull which devours it hungrily. Then we leave it for the night, and when I’m woken by scrabbling noises I’m reassured rather than frightened, knowing that the sound is not a rat noise and knowing, too, that our baby bird is still alive.

Ben wakes early to see to the gull before he goes off to work. Luckily, I have a day off. I’m not about to let him climb up a ladder with a baby gull in one hand without me to steady it. He takes our tallest ladder from the shed and marches with it to the next-door chimney, doing a recce before trying to restore the bird to its home.

When he comes down he says, ‘It’s no use. There’s no way we can get to the nest. I can’t just drop the little thing down the hole, the nest must be quite a way down. I can’t even see it. I’ve checked if there are any places I can get into the attic but there aren’t. And the house is well locked up.’

I know the owner lives in London and there’s no way he’d drop everything and come down to open up the house for a baby seagull. I say, ‘Ben, we’ll have to look after it. First we must get him out of our attic. He’ll die up there.’

I find a box and put an old, soft cushion in it, as Ben brings down the gull. It flaps about in panic but seems to settle when placed in the box, standing there calmly looking at us as if to say, ‘Well, here I am. So what’re you going to do about me?’

What indeed. Ben leaves for work and the children, after making a fuss of the bird and insisting on feeding it, go off to school, leaving me alone with the seagull. We stare at each other. It looks about a week old, the size of a chick, maybe a
bit bigger, and covered with soft grey down. It has a few black spots on its head and looks gawky and pitiable. I feel a fool, but my maternal instincts are coming to the fore. I need to take care of this baby.

First of all, I need advice. I try to phone the RSPB but can’t get through for some reason. So I think; what do gulls eat when they are in the wild? I mean, really wild, not along the seafront at Morranport or St Geraint. I recall seeing them swooping out over the water, plucking things from the sea.
Fish.
Of course. But I haven’t any fish in the house and I also know that none of us will have time to buy fish regularly or cut it into tiny pieces to feed to the seagull. Somehow I see that this is going to be a long-term project. I decide to go to the village shop and see what ready-made foods I can find that contain fish but that would be easy to feed a baby bird. I might also be able to glean some information about the habits of seagulls from the locals.

Last night’s wind has died and there’s now a bright sun, drying the tree branches that were blown down in the night. The churchyard and woodland are alive with colour, the vivid pale green of early spring leaves and foliage, the white of the garlic flowers now beginning to be taken over by the deep colour of the bluebells which are everywhere, looking fresh and bright after the storm, the scent divine. I cut through the path between the church and churchyard, noting the fresh lilies on a couple of the gravestones. It’s an ancient church and used to be part of a much wider parish so some of the old plots are still carefully attended to by new generations. The church warden has forbidden plastic flowers so that there are always masses of freshly cut flowers here, but as always they seem pale and insipid next to the living growing ones. The rhododendrons are everywhere and, have been for a while, their colour spectacular. The neglected garden at Poet’s Tenement is a mass of purple and red as the huge
rhododendron bushes that have been there for years flower at once. Azaleas abound too, their colours adding to the glow. There are times that I feel I’ve moved to a Technicolor world after living in a black and white film for years. Up above me in the trees the rooks have built their nests and are feeding their young. In the mornings and evenings their noise and chattering fill the whole village with caws and cries. There’s been a rookery in Treverny for four hundred years, apparently.

Our one and only local shop is tiny but well stocked. There are five people in there and it’s crowded. The sun is so lovely and warm on my face that I decide to wait outside until one or two people leave. The first to come out is Doug, the farm worker. Jake, who is with me, yaps at him gleefully. To Jake, every person he meets is a possible candidate for a doggie game. ‘Oh Doug, hello, great day, isn’t it?’ I call to him.

He peers around him then at the sky before saying noncommittally, ‘Might be.’

‘I was wondering, Doug, what you might know about seagulls.’

He snorts. ‘They should all be shot, that’s what I know, me lover. Why d’ya ask?’

‘Oh, uh, no reason.’ He’s looking at me suspiciously so I add, ‘Many about, that’s all.’

‘You telling me? Should be blasted outa the sky, every last one of them,’ he shakes his head, glowers, then makes another snorting sound. Doug has the largest repertoire of snorts of anyone I know.

The shop is almost empty now. I look around at the shelves for fishy things. There’s tuna, sardines, pilchards. All of them will do but will they be a bit messy to feed? And how much do young gulls eat? Maybe I should just stick to bread. The gull seemed to like the softened bread we’ve been feeding it. While I’m thinking I decide to get a treat for Jake so I look at
the pet food section. And there it is, right in front of me – dried cat food with salmon in it. What could be better? I don’t have to waste a whole tin if the bird eats only a little and if it’s soaked in warm water it’ll have the texture of bread, plus it’s got fish in it. What more could a baby gull want?