Seagulls in the Attic (23 page)

‘Your phone, quick, dial 999. It’s Perkins.’

To her credit she asks no questions, doesn’t hesitate, but runs straight into her house. I go back to Perkins, who is still breathing but in a bad way. I hold on to him, willing him to stay alive, praying that the ambulance will get here soon. Within minutes Eleanor is with us, taking his pulse, wrapping a blanket she’d brought with her loosely around his chest and legs. We don’t say anything as we stay there with him until rescue comes.

The paramedics are gentle, efficient and get him away quickly, taking him to the hospital in Truro. Perkins is awake but in considerable pain and each breath he takes seems to make the agony worse.

When they’ve gone, Eleanor and I look at each other for the first time. I’ve not seen her for ages, ever since she put up that ridiculous plastic box in the tree at the end of her drive for the post. She looks older now, drawn and unhappy. It can’t be nice, battling with your only close neighbour, falling out with old friends.

She says now, ‘Come over to my place. We need a cup of tea.’ We hardly speak as she makes tea in her pristine kitchen. We’re both still stunned. Only after we’ve drunk some of the tea does she say, ‘I’ll let the Yellands know. They’ll have the numbers of Perkins’ kinfolk, though I don’t think he’s got many. They had no children, he and his wife.’

It’s only when I’m about to leave that she says, suddenly, ‘I knew he was poorly. People up the road told me.’

I don’t know what to say. She goes on, ‘I should have looked in on him. I regret not doing so.’

Still I’m wordless but she’s not expecting a reply. As I head towards the van she says, almost to herself, ‘He’s been as stubborn as I have, but that’s no excuse.’ The look she gives me is sad and forlorn. I leave feeling not only terribly sorry for Perkins but for Eleanor Gibland as well.

News of Perkins travels quickly and next day I have to make numerous pronouncements on his condition. Luckily I’m able to say that it wasn’t a stroke or heart attack as everyone feared at first, but a fall, hitting the side of the low table near his chair and breaking a couple of ribs. It must have happened a couple of hours before I arrived and the poor man was lying there all that time, the pain too great for him to call out for help, though it’s doubtful Eleanor would have heard him. He’s now recovering well.

And on the rural grapevine I hear that Eleanor Gibland has actually gone to the hospital to visit him. Not only that, she stayed a half hour and told him in her usual brisk manner that she’d keep an eye on his house and garden until he returned, and, as she put it to him, ‘If you’re not too stubborn as usual, Perkins, I would be happy to keep an eye on you, too, until you’ve fully recovered.’

‘The wonder of it, Mrs Hainsworth,’ says Mr Yelland to me a few days later, ‘is that Mr Perkins seems happy to let her do it.’ He shakes his head, plunges his nose into a magnificent orange rose nearly dislodging his unlit pipe. ‘Wonders will never cease.’

Summer storms have hit our area. Delivering the post is more hazardous than on some winter days, especially when the wind blows and I can hardly walk against the south-easterly gales.

‘It’s been going on for days,’ I tell Ben during one of our daily phone calls, after we’ve talked about all the other things we want to share. ‘My Royal Mail wet weather gear is useless in this, the rain gets into all the zipped-up crevices you never thought it could. The door of the postal van is nearly ripped off every time I open it and there’s flooding too.’

He’s immediately concerned, warning me to be careful. Not wanting to worry him I say lightly, ‘It can’t carry on like this. I’m sure tomorrow will see the sun out again.’

There are a few near-disasters at sea. Archie’s godson, Wayne, is called out twice, once with the all-weather lifeboat when a big Spanish fishing trawler is in difficulty and not long ago with the inshore boat.

‘Last one was frightening,’ Archie is telling me now as we talk outside his house.

We look out over the sea which today seems blissfully unaware of any trouble it might have caused, it is so innocently tranquil. The storms have at last stopped. The tide is far out, as if it’s distancing itself from the fury of the high tide a few days ago. The sand and shingle which was churned up so ferociously is now back in place and the seabirds are placidly patrolling the shores and peeking in the calm rock pools.

Archie goes on, ‘A yacht, ’twas taken out when it shouldn’t have been, the storm was already brewing. Went down but luckily the two men on it radioed for help. They were in the water with their life jackets on by the time my godson and the crew got there and it was dead lucky they found them. The waves were enormous.’ He shakes his head. ‘Y’know, I hate that, when folk disregard gale warnings, think they know better, or that they’re such good sailors they can weather any storm. Puts the whole lifeboat crew in danger.’

Archie tells me more about the crew, their bravery and dedication. ‘Cornwall has a long history of heroic rescues from the wrath of the sea,’ he says with pride, the teacher he once was coming out in his speech. ‘And for every massive lifeboat rescue, there are hundreds of stories of individual courage. I’ve been hearing them all my life. Wayne told me how one of the men battled tremendous waves to be roped and winched onto the trawler, so that the crew of the ship in trouble could be pulled to safety.’

I go away thinking about the brave lifeboat crews over the years but as I go on my round, I’m reminded, too, of all the other kinds of bravery especially in the face of personal misfortune. So many people have confided in me of their troubles, yet afterwards they brush the problem away, on the outside
anyway, and chide themselves for self-pity, or for not ‘getting on with it’.

My thoughts stop abruptly as I approach Trehallow, or my doggie hamlet as I call it. There are loads of dogs in all the villages but Trehallow seems to have double the amount of most. When I first started delivering here it was a nightmare to remember which dog liked a particular kind of biscuit.

The largest, fiercest dog in the hamlet is one called Batman, a huge black and brown German Shepherd that terrorised me when I first delivered here. I’ve since then found that he’s a cuddly puppy if he hears the word
ham,
stopping his ferocious barking and lying down, his tongue out and salivating, waiting for a morsel. So now I have to make sure I bring a slice of ham with me every time I go to the hamlet. This irritates the other dogs, which get upset when they’re only offered a biscuit after smelling the ham. I can’t afford to give all the dogs ham, so it’s yet another problem for a rural postie, one they don’t tell you about in the Rules and Regulations of a Postal Deliverer.

Batman’s owner is a young lad I’ve never seen, the greatgrandson of a cherubic rolypoly woman who is as old as the hills apparently, looks decades younger and is spry as a young lamb. The lad seems always to be off surfing somewhere. There is a fisherman father but for some reason he can’t keep Batman, so this tiny, ancient, round, old woman lives alone with the biggest German Shepherd I’ve ever come across.

Her name, I’ve discovered, is Belle. She comes out to greet me as a docile Batman scoffs a thick slice of ham from my fingers. His teeth, which could maim an elephant, gently pick up the ham before that great mouth devours it. Even a Gruffalo would quake if it came face to face with Batman. But now he’s wagging his tail, looking for more.

‘That’s your lot, Batman,’ I tell him.

‘Go sit in your place,’ Belle orders. The dog meekly trots over to the mat outside the front door and lies down.

I ask her how she is and we talk of the damage the recent storms have wrought. I tell her how it was so bad one day as I was delivering that I found myself having to seek shelter in a customer’s garage, there were so many objects flying about including dustbins, tree branches and gravel. Finally I decided enough was enough and rang the Truro manager to ask when it was considered too dangerous for us posties to go out, only to get the textbook reply: ‘Your safety is of the utmost importance but you do need to complete your round so the decision is up to you.’

We shake our heads and smile ruefully at this. Then Belle tells me about her grandson Blake who is also a volunteer on the lifeboat crew, at the same station as Wayne. He was at both rescues over the last month and she tells me more or less the same story as Archie did. She too is cross with the yachtsmen who insisted on taking their boat out after being warned.

‘’Tis me grandson’s very life them folk be trifling with when they go out in dangerous seas. They’ve got no right, no right at all.’

Her sweet face looks so concerned and anxious that I remind her that the weather has changed now and the forecast for the next few days is good. She brightens up, offers me tea but I need to get on. My last stop today is Trescatho, the once sleepy village which is now a showpiece for Farrow and Ball paint as it’s been restored and tarted up by incomers and second-homers. I’ve not seen Mr Armstrong since the day he told me about the row with his neighbour over the wall between their two drives.

‘How’s it going?’ I ask him now, seeing him working in his front garden. ‘I see the wall has finally been mended.’

He beams. He looks a changed man, serene and calm. ‘Yes,
all sorted, thank the good Lord. My wife nearly had a nervous breakdown over it.’

‘So Mr Carson next door relented? Let you patch up his wall?’

‘Oh, far from it. I had several more nasty phone calls, but then he discovered how house prices have shot up this year so he quickly put it on the market.’

Mrs Armstrong comes out to join us, smiling and placid, looking the least likely candidate for a nervous breakdown. It makes me realise how horrid life can be when neighbours don’t get on. For months this couple have lived in a state of constant anxiety.

She says, ‘We met the couple who have made an offer. Apparently it’s been accepted. Incomers like us but they’ve been coming to Cornwall for the last thirty years, looking forward to taking early retirement and moving down just like us.’

That’s a happy ending, then. I thought it would be the Armstrongs who would end up moving, which would have been a pity. There’s another happy ending too, for the foul weather has ended in time for the Falmouth Tall Ships weekend. The Russian Tall Ship
Mir
is moored in the harbour. She’s magnificent, the second-largest sail training vessel in the world, with three tall wonderful masts and a length of 364 feet. It takes a crew of 198 to man her and to see her sail is a breathtaking sight. Other tall ships have joined her in port for the festival and it’s a fantastic experience, seeing all those ships in full mast sailing into harbour.

I catch my first glimpse of the
Mir
sailing out of Falmouth at the end of my round. I’ve got my camera with me as I often have, and try to get a shot but it’s too far away. Then I have a eureka moment and rush back to St Geraint to the harbour office where there is a CCTV camera. I know the harbour master and he’s happy to zoom in on the ship and we can see
it clearly on the screen. Best of all it’s near a yacht, so we get a brilliant perspective of how big the ship is next to the yacht which looks like a dinky bath toy beside the splendid
Mir
.

I love this time of the Falmouth festival when the tall ships arrive. As I go on my round I’m invited in to customers’ balconies, patios and hilly gardens where the views of the ships are fantastic. I’m introduced to guests who are staying and treated to a variety of drinks and nibbles. It’s a wonderful party atmosphere everywhere I go. I can get used to this, I think as I finish my round. Sun, sea, breathtaking views of some of the world’s most magnificent tall ships, and happy people everywhere. What a life.

Today I’ve come down to earth, for after my round I’m off to Truro, to browse around the summer sales, especially the surfer shops end-of-season lines. I’ve found some amazing vintage clothes in charity shops so they are my next stop. Although Christmas is still a long way away, I’m always on the lookout for presents, as this year we’re either going to make our own or find them in second-hand shops, having set a limit of five pounds for each present. I find a lovely bracelet with green stones in it that is unusual and just right for Annie. There’s also a fairly new hardback in the book section that Ben would love, a memoir of one of his favourite actors who has had a long life in the theatre.

Happy with my finds, I go on to the next charity shop to find some shirts for Ben. I’m lucky here too as there are several his size that I know he’d like. He’s managed to get home a few times since he started the tour, although only for a couple of days and a night, but he’ll be back in August for good. Luckily it’s working out fine with the children. On days I have to be up early for work I take them over to the farm after dinner and homework, where they have some quiet time either reading or watching television with Daphne and Joe’s children, then
go to bed in the spare room. Daphne gets all four to school and I’m home when they get back. Daphne is so delighted with the arrangement that she’s planning all sorts of minibreaks for her and Joe in the near future, as I keep telling her how much I owe her, much more than just one weekend away.