Seagulls in the Attic (2 page)

‘Reminds me of the old days,’ Hector had mused as the hens arrived at their new home.

‘Ah, to be sure,’ Edna had sighed and nodded her head. ‘We had all sorts of wayward creatures sharing our place in the old days.’

Despite my eagerness to get started on my garden, I can’t help slowing down as I walk, stopping here and there to look and admire. The entire village is a rainbow of colour, the daffodils still determined to bloom on despite arriving here long before anywhere else. Primroses stare out from every hedgerow and garden, as do other wild flowers whose names I don’t know. Colours assail me: indigo blues, sunset pinks and oranges, wine reds. Last month the camellias were in full bloom and we were treated to a month-long carnival of pink, red and white petals floating through the air like confetti. That, plus the blissful scent of the magnolias beginning to stir, made February, usually the dreariest, most tiresome month in London, a joyful delight in south Cornwall.

‘Why are you sounding so bubbly?’ asked my best friend Annie in London during one of our frequent phone conversations. ‘It’s February. Cold, slushy, grey, dark, endless.’

‘Oh really?’ I replied. ‘Actually today I ate my lunch outside. I parked the post van on the estuary at Creek and sat on the sea wall with a seagull. Bliss.’ She nearly hung up on me.

I forget about Annie, about London, as I cut through the churchyard on my way to the Humphreys’ place. The church squats in the centre of Treverny, like a great fat hen, with the houses surrounding it her little chicks. There are bouquets of fresh hothouse flowers on the tombstones but to my mind they are not a patch on the wild profusion of blooms and colour everywhere else in the village.

Glutted with all these delights, I saunter past the Humphreys’ house, a large, rambling farmhouse which was originally medieval but with bits added on as parts of the old building disintegrated over the centuries. Most of it is now Victorian
shabby, rather like Edna and Hector themselves who seem to live in layers of clothes bought decades ago on their many travels, or else dug out from musty, old trunks stored in their attic. Somehow they manage to look both bizarre and elegant in their odd assortment of clothing, which is especially interesting to me as I too am trying to manage on clothes from charity shops or hand-me-downs from friends and family. Since moving to Cornwall money has been scarce, and though I’m lucky enough to have a full-time job, the salary of a postal deliverer is not huge. With the debts we still have from the move, the work on the house, and all the expenses of those early days when neither Ben, my husband, nor I could find work, money is scarce. Things have eased a bit, as Ben, an actor, is ‘resting’ with several part-time jobs locally, but we still have to watch every penny.

One thing I do have now that I didn’t have in London is peace of mind, tranquillity and time. When my post deliveries are finished, I don’t have to stress about my work as I did in London, I can totally forget about it. There’s also no more stressing about things I’ve left undone, no more worrying that the children aren’t getting enough quality time with their mother, no more tears because Ben and I seem never to have a chance to sit down and talk. My off-duty hours are mine alone, not the Royal Mail’s.

And as an added bonus, my time actually at work is mine too. As long as the post gets delivered at more or less the usual hours, I’m free to stop for a moment or two and stare at a sunrise coming over the water when I deliver to one of the seaside villages, or wait until a blackbird has finished its song before moving on to my next delivery. I remember the crazy wonder of seeing newborn lambs in December and stopping to watch them play in the still green fields as I delivered van loads of Christmas cards and parcels. The milder weather of
this part of the world jumbles the seasons in the best possible way, and still manages to spring delightful surprises on me every month.

But today is my day off, it’s all mine. Though it’s not even ten o’clock the morning sun is strong. The name of the Humphreys’ house is still etched on a wooden plaque nailed onto the ancient oak tree at the entrance, looking as if it has been there for as many years as the owners. ‘Poet’s Tenement’ is what it says and when I first read it I got quite excited, loving the romantic idea that generations of poets had lived here in poetic squalor, existing on words alone as they penned their verses in this rural idyll.

Hector put me right when I asked him about it. ‘Don’t be daft, maid,’ he said smiling kindly at me. ‘The deeds may say what they like but my father looked up the history when he bought this place as a young man. Seems decades ago some feller called Pote, or Poat lived here, and the name got corrupted through the generations.’

‘Oh. So no real poets then?’

‘Well, maid, not that I’ve heard tell. But my father’s brother used to tell limericks at the local in his day, so I suppose you could consider him a poet,’ he smiled enigmatically.

‘But Hector, what about the tenement part? It’s such a fantastic house, with such massive gardens. How could it ever be called a tenement?’

Edna, who had joined us during this exchange, said, ‘It’s an old English word, used to mean a few acres, a smallholding, something like that. So hence the name, my dear. Someone called Pote, or Poot, or whatever owned a bit of farmland to go with his house and there you are.’

I must have looked crestfallen for she added, ‘You’d have preferred a Cornish Wordsworth, wouldn’t you? I must say, so would I, once. Until I went to Japan with a poet many years ago.’

As usual, Edna changed the subject after this cryptic remark, and I shall never know a thing more about her Japanese poet. Always curious about people, I’ve asked numerous folk in Treverny about the Humphreys, but no one seems to know much about them, even though they are certainly Cornish and have lived here off and on since they married. Hector was born in Poet’s Tenement and Edna came ‘from the north somewhere’, a local told me once, which I took to mean the north of England until I found out later that he meant north Cornwall. It’s taken me some time to realise that anywhere north of the Tamar River is referred to as ‘Up Country’, just as I thought an ‘emmett’ was some kind of Cornish insect until I realised that that was the local word for tourists.

Hector is sitting on the bench outside Poet’s Tenement so I stop to say hello. He is totally bald, has been since he was young, according to those who knew him then. He usually wears an assortment of hats but today he’s got his shiny head exposed to the sun, ‘airing it out after the winter’, he chuckles to me as I sit beside him for a chat. His face is as wrinkly as dried fruit and as sweet; his smile, like Edna’s, is genuine and warm despite a missing tooth or two.

Hector and I look out over the front garden as we chat. An ancient stone wall, crumbling in spots, surrounds the jumble of flowers and plants all crammed together every which way. The wild daffodils are mixed with heather and rosehips alongside a bit of gorse and all sorts of things whose name I couldn’t begin to even guess. Once a week a local man, Doug, comes out to clear the path which runs around the inside of the wall so that it doesn’t disappear beneath the foliage, but that’s all the help they have.

After I’ve admired the colourful chaos of the garden, Hector says, ‘I see you’re all spruced up to start sowing.’ He’s noted
my wellie boots, my gardening gloves, my basket full of seeds and some tiny plants.

‘Yes, I’m all set to go. Joe up the road brought his rotivator and prepared the ground for me. I’d never have been able to dig it all up, and nor would Ben with his bad back.’

‘How is he?’

‘Oh much better and back at work, but he’s not supposed to do any heavy lifting for a while.’ Ben had been hurt in a fall down the stairs a month or so ago and had only just recovered, which is why I didn’t want him near the garden. He would try to do too much and injure himself again. Besides, the garden, for this year anyway, is my project. Ben is juggling such odd and long hours at his part-time jobs that he’s got no time to take on anything else.

I ask Hector about Edna, worried that she might be ill. Usually the two sit together on the semi-rotten wooden bench in the front garden on a sunny morning, winter or summer.

‘Edna? Couldn’t be better. She’ll be out by and by. Had a spot of bother getting out of bed this morning. Says she wants to take her time getting dressed and I wasn’t to fuss but to warm the bench for her.’

I’m immediately concerned. The woman is in her nineties after all. ‘Oh goodness, is there anything I can do? Do you want me to look in on her, check she’s all right?’

He is indignant. ‘’Twould make her madder than a March Hare, maid. She likes her independence, that one.’

I’m reluctant to leave when for all I know, Edna could have fallen down those long stairs in the house, or slipped on one of the rugs scattered indiscriminately on the old slate floors of the hall and kitchen. But Hector is the picture of ease, having closed his eyes again and lifted his face to the sun, politely but soundly dismissing me. Worried though I am about Edna, there’s nothing I can do but say goodbye and carry on.

I pass through the tangled front garden and on through a gate into ‘my’ piece of land. I can get there from the road as well, but I decided, when I took on part of the field next to the house, that it would be good to check on the Humphreys when I go by. I’ve learned that they have no relatives in the area – their one son emigrated to New Zealand years ago. He visits when he can, but it’s not often. He’s nearly seventy and is in very poor health apparently. I assume from the way they live that Edna and Hector have to be careful about their money. They won’t take any cash for the allotment though and from the look of them, they can’t eat much so they won’t be taking many eggs or vegetables. I know I’ve got a very good deal and I’m so grateful that I’m hoping I can repay the couple by doing whatever odd jobs they might need done. At least with my hens here, I have to come everyday so I’ll be around to keep an eye on them.

But now I’ve got my own job to do. I stand still for a few moments taking in the rich earth, dug and waiting to be planted. Birds are giddy with song on this first real spring morning – there are skylarks, robins and thrushes singing their little hearts out, with the blackbird joining in lustily and blue tits twitter away, a kind of background sound to the others. A song keeps coming into my head, the old nursery rhyme I used to croon to the children, ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockleshells . . .’ Well, I don’t know about bells and shells, but how about, ‘With spinach, beans and lettuces, and pretty leeks all in a row.’

The earth smells lush and rich, as if it’s so full of secret growing things, you can almost feel it humming with life. Beyond my allotment is a field of ewes and new lambs, the grass they’re grazing on a dazzling contrast to the blue of the sky. There’s not a trace of March wind in the air, and in fact it’s so warm I take off my old patched jacket and sit down on a flat stone
by the side of the gate to the field, for no other reason than to gaze at my garden-to-be. ‘Postie, postie, warm as toastie, how does your garden grow?’ I sing to myself. ‘With parsnips beet and more to eat, and runner beans all in a row’.

I’m about to go into a third verse when I hear a voice. ‘Tessa m’dear, are you all right?’ I turn to see Edna peering at me through her huge, round, old-fashioned specs with the tortoiseshell frames. She’s standing on her side of the gate into the field which is my allotment.

‘Oh fine, thanks, just fine.’

‘That’s good, dear. I thought I heard you talking to yourself; it worried me slightly. You don’t want to start that at your young age.’

I make some kind of gurgling noise in reply, indicating that I appreciate her little joke even though I’m not sure it is a joke. ‘But what about you? Hector said you weren’t feeling well this morning.’

She looks cross at this. ‘Hector talks rubbish sometimes, I’m right as rain. Now, can I do anything to help you with that? You look a trifle flummoxed. Hot and bothered, my dear.’

I assure her that everything is fine, that I’m just about to begin planting. I show her my basket with the onion sets, the dried pea seeds ready to go straight into the ground and the tiny leek plants I got from Daphne, who lives and farms with her husband, Joe, just outside the village.

Edna looks at my prize specimens solemnly through her owl glasses that cover half her face. I’ve never seen such enormous ones. She is like a tiny bespectacled wren with her little legs encased in old sheepskin boots, her wisp of feathery hair, her small beak-like nose. She’s wearing something brown and non-descript but instead of a jacket or coat, she’s put on a waist-length, blue velvet cape with a silver clasp at the neck. It looks like something her great-grandmother might have worn to a ball.

After she’s examined my seeds and plants, she says, ‘If you’re sure you don’t need help, I’ll leave you to it. But do call Hector or me if you get into any difficulty, dear.’

She walks away, stately as an ancient queen and I’m left feeling rather bemused – isn’t it supposed to be
me
helping
her
? But I’ve got work to do, and it’s time I began. I start with the five leek plants, diligently making a hole for each one and tenderly putting it in. I’ve taken off my gardening gloves as I love the feel of the earth between my fingers. Bliss, I think, sheer bliss.

Next the onion sets. I plant out each one separately and lovingly cover it with dirt. A robin perches on the ash tree next to the gate to watch and I stop what I’m doing to gaze back, admiring its rosy little breast and perky face. Finally, I plant the peas. I’ve bought a packet and put them right into the ground. I hope it’s not too early, but the weather forecast is good for the next week and by then March will be nearly over. At least I’ll have made a start.

When I finish, I sit back down again to admire my work. Admittedly, all I can see is a cultivated field and five little leek plants, but hey, it’s my very first vegetable garden. I can’t count the window box I had in London where I tried to grow herbs. The basil died before its life even began, no doubt because of the cold, and the coriander was a nonstarter. Only the chives survived. We used them in everything.