A Drake at the Door (6 page)

Such an attitude, however, breeds on occasion a violent reaction. The easy way out of letting things slide, the lack of courage or conviction to state your views clearly suddenly comes up against a brick wall; for suddenly some incident, on top of all those others you have failed to face up to, stings you into fury. You explode, and the victim is surprised. He has underestimated you.

The official, of course, was surprised when I exploded. I put up for an hour with his taunts and then could not restrain myself any longer. My politeness suddenly turned into rage. The anger which I had felt as soon as I first saw him had simmered into an outburst in which my words tumbled out so fast that they stumbled over each other. I finished by saying:

‘And anyway, what damn right have you got to speak to me like this? I’m asking for a grant, not a lecture!’

He was amazed. It was as if a gale had blown him fiat. He grinned at me sheepishly. He fingered the peak of his cap and shuffled his foot round an imaginary stone. I was amused to see how suddenly he had become deflated.

‘Now, now, now,’ he said soothingly, ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude. I’ve a difficult job to do. I can’t recommend grants for everybody. I must make sure . . . I promise I will do my best in your case.’

We shook hands after that.

And we secured our grant.

The lorry was now advancing on the trickiest part of the lane. The miniature causeway covered the section which was filled with quickthorn and elm tree saplings when we first came to Minack; and in the winter it used to become a swamp, collecting the water which drained down the valley. Hence the contractor whom we employed to build the lane raised up this section, leaving ditches on either side to act as drains. There was not an inch to spare. The driver had to keep the wheels plumb straight or else the lorry with its enormous load, a load of such high hopes for Jeannie and myself, would topple over.

Slowly, slowly . . . it was now halfway across and I could see the driver in the cabin grimly holding the steering wheel. Never had a greenhouse been delivered in such dangerous circumstances. Why on earth was I courting disaster? This was only the beginning. Had not somebody warned me that a greenhouse would never stand up to the gales that lashed Minack?

‘Come on, come on.’

I was standing a few yards in front of the bonnet. I could see the fat tyres of the back wheels riding the lane’s edges as if on two tightropes. Another three feet . . .

The lorry was safe.

It took a fortnight to erect the greenhouse; and when it was completed Jeannie and I used to stand inside for an hour on end, gazing in wonderment. It was our personal Crystal Palace. The expanse of it, the heat of the sunshine despite the cold winds outside, the prospect of now being able to grow crops without the endless threat of the elements, produced such excitement that we bought a bottle of champagne and christened it.

‘To the greenhouse and its crops!’ And we stood in the middle with glasses raised.

It was a pity, therefore, that the sweet peas behaved as they did. With such a beginning they might have responded by flowering. Even a few flowers.

But we did not know that sweet pea plants become sterile if the roots are in wet soil; because that winter, while we proudly watched the lush green climbing up the strings, the roots had found their way to the drainpipes.

And so our first crop had been doomed before it started to grow.

Hubert when he was king of the roof

In the summer Jane once again disappeared into the greenhouse, tending the tomatoes.

We had seven hundred plants of a variety called Moneymaker in eight long rows. Each had a string attached, like the sweet peas, around which the stem had to be twisted as the plant grew; and each had to have their shoots continually pinched out so that the main stem was left to grow on its own. Then at a later stage the plants were defoliaged.

It was easy to teach Jane what to do. As with Shelagh, Jeannie or I had only to show her something once for her to grasp the idea, and probably improve on it. She watched plants, any plants she was looking after, as if they were individuals; and so if a tomato plant, for instance, showed signs of a fault, she was quick to notice it.

‘Mr Tangye?’

‘Yes, Jane?’

I would be standing at the greenhouse door and from somewhere in the green foliage in front of me piped her small voice.

‘The thirty-first plant in the third row from the right shows signs of botrytis on its stem.’

Sometimes I have noticed among people who work on market gardens a certain pleasure in reporting some disease or other misfortune to a crop. Not so Jane. I always found she was as upset as myself that something was wrong.

When it was fine she worked barefooted, looking like a child peasant, blue jeans and loose shirt, with the summer sun bleaching her hair fairer and fairer. There was something of a pagan about her. She was unlike Shelagh, who was to be as tidy at the end of the day as at the beginning, however dirty the work she had been doing. Instead Jane, within an hour of arriving, would have smudges on her face which would remain there until she went home. She was quite unconcerned.

It was particularly dirty among the tomato plants, and so Jane was an inevitable victim. Tomato plants ooze a green stain-like dye. I had only to walk the length of the greenhouse between two rows for my shirt to be touched with green. And so Jane, who spent the whole day there, would finish up with green hands, a green face and, for that matter, green hair.

She had an unreliable sense of time. Both her mother and herself had a strange effect on watches. I believe this sometimes happens when people have a surfeit of electricity in their bodies; but whatever the reason no watch would keep correct time for these two. Hence Jane would occasionally arrive for work at unconventional hours. Sometimes very early, sometimes very late.

Of course, it did not matter her being late because she could make up the time at the end of the day. Indeed, she was never a clock-watcher. She always stayed on until the job was finished. But in the beginning, when she was late, when she did not know what our reaction might be, she used to creep along like a Red Indian, keeping out of sight behind hedges, reaching Minack by a roundabout route; and hoping that she could begin work without her absence having been noted. She did it out of adventure, not out of guile. She always told us in the end.

At first we used to water the tomato plants in the old-fashioned way with a hose; and it was Jane’s job to spend hour after hour dragging the length of the hose down the path behind her, thrusting the nozzle towards the base of the plants on either side. Jane performed the boring task without complaint but when I, at weekends, took her place, I soon found myself wondering why I should waste my time in such a way. My time, and Jane’s, could be better employed doing something else.

So here was the old evergreen problem. Money had to be spent to save money. Sense seemed to be on the side of extravagance for if the watering was made automatic not only would hours be saved, but also it would be distributed more accurately. The arguments seemed wonderfully convincing. My only hesitation sprang from my impatience that the price of efficiency should be a bottomless pit.

I always hesitate. I have never bought a piece of horticultural equipment with the élan that others, for instance, buy a car they cannot afford. I never enjoy that feeling of wild abandon that comes to people who have had a burst of extravagance. I have been extravagant, I have spent money I cannot spare, but the equipment which is the result gives me no joy. Its only attraction is its necessity.

Salesmen are quickly aware of my lack of enthusiasm so they tempt me by the hook of sound sense. As I am not buying for pleasure, as I look as if I am the gloomiest buyer imaginable, they set out to pierce my resistance by likening the piece of offered equipment to someone I might be employing. It is a persuasive trick.

‘Now if you pay £12 a month for this tractor you can’t say that’s an agricultural wage,’ a salesman will say to me, ‘and yet you’ll have a machine doing five times an ordinary man’s work in a week. Five times? . . . I should have said twenty times!

‘And the money paid to a workman is gone . . . you’ll never see it again. Look at it this way . . . you pay the hire-purchase as if it’s a wage. Then . . .’ and this was always the telling moment in the sales talk . . . ‘then in twelve months you’ve got a workman for free!’

I have fallen so often for this patter. It subtly appeals to my progressive ambitions. It even suggests that I am getting something for nothing. So I yield. And as a result I have had many an inanimate workman at Minack on hire-purchase pay rolls. The automatic irrigation was to be another.

It consisted of rubber tubing, the thickness of my forefinger, which ran the length of the greenhouse alongside the base of each row of plants. Opposite each plant was a nozzle and, when the tap was turned on, all the plants began to receive by drips an equal amount of water.

It had a still further advantage. The top end of the tubes was connected to a larger tube which, in turn, was hitched to the water tap; but, and this was the cunning part, the tube on its way to the tap was fastened to a contraption in a two-gallon glass jar. In this jar was tomato feed concentrate, and by turning the dial on the contraption, one could control the feed for the plants as soon as the tap was turned on. It could be a strong feed or a weak feed, and all the plants got the same.

Such standardised feeding naturally contains certain snags. Not all the plants have the same appetites, nor do they desire identical meals; some want more nitrogen than others, some more potash. But I have learned now to forget the odd men out. If the bulk is all right, and I now grow thousands of plants, I am only too thankful that I have an inanimate workman to look after them.

The water came from the well up the lane, a surface well that now belonged to us. This water was unsuitable, as far as we were concerned, for human consumption; and so we continued to use the well above the cottage, which we sank ourselves, for domestic purposes.

This well remains a shining example of how expensive it can be if you set out to do a thing cheaply. I had been assured that the spring lay so near the surface that it would cost only £30 to reach it. I watched the £30 disappear, and saw no sign that the hole was even damp. I should, of course, have cut my losses and fetched the firm who find water by boring a hole. But their charges at the time seemed enormous. I was not impressed by their guarantee of a huge column of water. I could not afford to be.

Instead I urged the two miners I had engaged from the mines at St Just to dig on. And on and on they dug. It was a beautiful hole, if a hole in the ground can be beautiful, the sides plumb straight, the granite sliced like a knife by their skilful hand-drilling and dynamiting; but never a sign of water. The hole was so deep that I dared not stop. So much of my money was now down the hole that it was too late to seek the help of the others. Perhaps another foot, or another, or another . . .

My persistency never gained its true reward. The miners got thirty feet down then a man with a compressor and special drilling equipment tried drilling twenty-foot holes. Water was found in the end; but it was a lazy trickle of water taking its time to fill the bottom of the well. It still takes its time. And in October, when springs fall low, it can only pump seventy gallons before it is dry.

Our tomatoes, therefore, were dependent on the well up the lane; and we were lucky to secure the water without the expense of pumping for it. The reason was simple, though, to my kind of mind, it was difficult to understand. It was a question of gravity. The well up the lane was so much higher than the level of the greenhouse that, having dropped a copper pipe with perforated holes in the well and then, patiently filled the alkathene pipe between the well and the greenhouse with water, a stream came out of the tap by the greenhouse like a main.

It was not, however, always as clean as a main. This did not matter because part of the equipment for the automatic irrigation was a filter and this prevented even the smallest build-up of dirt from blocking the nozzles attending each plant. But the filter, of course, had periodically to be cleaned.

I noticed, however, in late June of this particular summer, that Jane was spending an inordinate amount of time attending to this filter. I could not feel such attention was justified; I liked Jane very much but I could not allow her to dally. I was particularly irked when I saw she was emptying the dirt from the filter into the pail. This was really foolish. I could not understand how she could justify her time in doing this. The filter needed only be rinsed. There was nothing more to it than that.

It was not so important that I had to make a fuss. Indeed it was only when I was in a worrying mood that I thought anything about it. She worked hard enough. If she slipped up by being slow on the filter, it balanced all the other good work she did. It was trivial. It was one of those small situations which only erupt when a boss seeks a quarrel.