Seagulls in the Attic (6 page)

I’m dazed, stunned, not knowing how to react to this wholly unexpected disaster as I can’t begin to understand how it happened. Edna and Hector appear at the gate. Hector says, ‘You look distressed, maid. Is something wrong?’

‘My lettuce,’ I cry. ‘All gone.’

They come through the gate and peer into the cold frame, then nod sagely. ‘Rabbits,’ Edna says.

‘Plenty of them around this year,’ Hector adds.

‘Rabbits? They ate my lettuce? All of it?’

Hector points to some little black things that look like small marbles. ‘You see? Rabbits for sure.’

‘But how did they get in?’ Then I remember, ‘I left the top off last night but it was so warm . . .’ my voice trails off sadly.

‘It’s not very high, you see, dear,’ Edna says as if explaining things to a child.

‘Quite easy for a bunny to jump over,’ Hector agrees.

A
bunny
? He calls that creature which ate my prized lettuces a
bunny
? I’m so crestfallen that suddenly Edna and Hector are on either side of me, holding on to my arms and steering me out of the gate, through their front garden and into their vast kitchen.

‘A cup of tea is what you need,’ Edna says as she fills an old brown teapot with an even older kettle which has been boiling on an ancient Aga. ‘Nice old-fashioned ordinary tea.’ I’m relieved at this. Though I often drink various herbal teas myself sometimes at home, the kind Edna makes are really off the wall. I’ve never heard of half the herbs she uses. Most of the time they are completely heavenly but at other times the taste is either bitter or rusty, like drinking water that’s been sitting in an old iron trough for a decade or two. ‘I like to experiment with my brews,’ she’s said to me more than once. ‘I’m always trying something new.’ My pioneer spirit does respond to Edna’s concoctions and I usually enjoy them, but after rabbits have eaten all your lettuce plants, a good strong cup of PG Tips is just what you need.

Though it’s still warm and sunny outside, it’s cold inside despite the Aga in the kitchen. The long corridor leading to the other rooms is lined with books. Some are in massive old wooden bookcases but many more are on the floor, piled in great rows lining each side of the hallway. Some are ancient hardbacks, others have shiny new covers that look as if they came out recently. There are paperbacks too, all sizes and shapes. All the books look well read.

The floors in both the corridor and the kitchen are slate, and the few wool rugs lying about in the kitchen look lethal, frayed and loose, an invitation to be tripped over. They take
turns fussing over me, bringing me tea and digestive biscuits from a tin, and I get this weird feeling that I’m the doddering one and they’re the carers, when it should be the other way around.

I feel much cheerier after tea with the Humphreys and go back to my garden. At least the peas are beginning to come up, which is something. The onion sets were dug up a second time, this time by pigeons, Hector told me. He’d seen them on my garden and ran to shoo them away but it was too late. I shudder to think of Hector running anywhere. I hope the birds stay away, not only for my sake but for his and Edna’s.

As I leave by the other gate, I see not one rabbit but two staring at me from the other side of the field. I used to love watching the little creatures playing in the meadows in the evening. First blackbirds, then rabbits – once friends, now enemies – how ambivalent nature is, I’m beginning to realise!

I make a face at those cheeky predators, stick my tongue out in a half playful, half serious gesture. Poor things, I chide myself, a rabbit’s got to do what a rabbit’s got to do. But then again, my poor lettuce. Oh dear, who ever thought gardening would be such a battle? I go home wondering what other hitherto beloved little furry or feathered creature will turn out to be another Enemy of the Allotment.

It’s gratifying how sympathetic all my customers are about the rabbits. Losing not just one lettuce plant but the whole lot is certainly discouraging, as all the gardeners amongst my customers agree.

My colleagues are less inclined to sympathy. ‘A garden’s hard work, bird,’ Susie says, ‘and if you will insist on growing, when there be loads of food in shops, you’ll find they be lots more setbacks yet, believe me.’

Eddie goes a step further. Creeping up on me in the
St Geraint post office, he shouts, ‘Catch, Tessa!’ The next thing I know he’s thrown what I think is a pale green ball at me but as I catch it, I see it’s an iceberg lettuce from the Spar shop, still wrapped in plastic.

He grins. ‘I was going to get to your allotment, stick the lettuce in your garden, but I got up too late this morning. T’would’ve been a right laugh, seeing your face.’

I can’t help grinning back at him as I juggle the lettuce in one hand, some post I’m sorting in the other. ‘But you wouldn’t have seen my face when I found the lettuce, Eddie.’

‘Mebbe not, but I’d have seen it as you told us next day how one sturdy lettuce plant survived the rabbits against all odds.’

I laugh. I know he’s teasing me but sometimes I wonder just how naïve and gullible they think I am about country matters.

Later, I’m up at Poldowe, the village above Morranport, talking to a fiery middle-aged woman named Ginger. It’s not a nickname either; apparently her parents were great Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers fans and she was conceived after a night at one of their films. Or so she told me once with a rueful grin. Her hair isn’t ginger but brown with silvery grey streaks and she wears it pulled back in a ponytail high on top of her head, which makes her look like a high-spirited pony. Her manner is gingery, though. Widowed at an early age – her husband was a fisherman who died at sea many years ago – she raised their two kids on her own and then had a series of live-in partners but none of them lasted more than a year or two, according to local history. The story goes that there was nothing wrong with them that the locals could see, they just couldn’t live up to her husband. The children are gone now, neither lad became a fisherman but live way Up Country somewhere.

Ginger talks tough and looks tough, but I have a feeling it
hides something vulnerable and soft inside her. I don’t often see her as she works in Truro as a receptionist in a dentist’s office, but today she’s home and comes to the door for her post. ‘Hey, Tessa,’ she says, taking her mail. ‘Nell down at the Morranport post office says the rabbits ate all your lettuce plants.’

‘Goodness, word gets round! I only mentioned it to Nell because she asked how my garden was growing.’

Ginger, dressed in jeans and a faded denim shirt, puts her hand in her back pocket and extracts a rather squashed-looking packet which she thrusts into my hand. ‘Here, take these,’ she says gruffly. ‘I bought ’em last year but never got around to planting them in my tiny patch. You might as well have ’em.’

I take a look. It’s a packet of lettuce seeds. Before I can thank her she says hurriedly, ‘Not too late, to try again. Shouldn’t give up, y’know. Keep trying.’

She’s shut the door and I haven’t been able to get in a heartfelt thank you.

It’s not until the next day that I’m back at the Yellands’ cottage again. Strongly resisting stealing any more garlic mustard, or for that matter his dandelion leaves and hawthorn shoots, I knock at the door clutching a half dozen eggs. I’m feeling so guilty for foraging in their garden without permission that I’m giving the Yellands some of my precious eggs. The hens are all starting to lay again which is brilliant, but we seem to be eating as many as they lay. I use them in everything – quiches, cakes, Spanish omelettes, Italian frittatas – you name it, I’ve probably put eggs in it. I’ve had to curb myself to have enough to give away.

Mr Yelland opens the door, pipe in his mouth. I say, ‘These are for you and Mrs Yelland, for giving me the garlic mustard the other day.’ He looks a bit bemused, as if wondering how
two paltry leaves warranted a half dozen fresh, free-range eggs. Perhaps he didn’t see me stuff the rest into my bag, before he came out. I’ll never know.

‘By the way,’ he says now. ‘Thanks for putting us on to that mustard stuff. The missus has been using it in her Oxo gravy for the Sunday roast, and ’tis smashing, it is. Isn’t that right, Mrs Yelland?’

She appears beside him, as if waiting for his call, ‘Oh yes, it’s so flavoursome. I wish we had more of it growing.’

So much for me cadging some more from them, as was on my hidden agenda. I haven’t been able to find another cache of it, not so far, anyway.

I’m hoping I can get away before he remembers the roses, but no such luck. ‘Mrs Hainsworth, now tell me, what is your favourite rose? Or do you have several favourites?’

I’m tempted to ask him again to call me Tessa, especially as we now seem to be rose buddies, but the time I did before he seemed offended so I guess I’d better let it go. Really, they seem to live in a 1950s’ time warp, these two.

I say, ‘Oh, uh, I love climbing roses.’ I never had time to google roses so I can’t think of anything else to say. This seems to satisfy him though.

‘Ah yes. Climbing roses. Come out in the back garden, I’ve got a prize one there. It’s called Bright Fire and is about to come into bloom. Look at all those buds! It’s a heavy spring bloomer as I’m sure you know.’

He shows me some of his other roses, his pipe juddering up and down at the side of his mouth as he speaks. Mrs Yelland, in her usual pristine apron, follows us about, beaming.

As I leave Mr Yelland says, ‘Mrs Hainsworth, I wonder if you could do us a favour. When we first moved here, we had a daily newspaper delivery but that has since been stopped. Mrs Yelland and I feel quite deprived without the local paper.
Would it be too inconvenient if you picked one up for us every day and delivered it with our post? We could take George, of course, but he’s getting on now and we don’t like to take him out too often.’

George? Who’s George? I’m about to ask when I see that the Yellands have turned away from me and are looking fondly at their old car which has been taken out of the garage, surrounded by chamois cloths and other equipment indicating it is in the middle of being lovingly cleaned and polished. I’ve seen it before and it certainly is ancient, an old Morris Minor Traveller, a tiny white estate car with wooden window frames. George is in immaculate condition.

Mr Yelland turns back to me. ‘We would pay you in advance for the newspapers, of course, and add something for your trouble.’

‘Goodness, of course I’ll do it, no problem at all, but I wouldn’t hear of accepting anything but the price of the newspaper. And no need to give it to me in advance.’

The look of gratitude on their faces is matched by their effusive thanks which I brush away quickly. As a matter of fact, the Yellands aren’t the only couple I deliver goods for. So many local services have stopped – milk and newspaper deliveries, the fishmonger calling once a week – that many people, especially the elderly or those without vehicles, feel cut off. I take a few pints of milk every week to more than one customer, and often I deliver fresh vegetables to folk without transport. As one of them said, some things you can stock up with but others need to be fresh.

As social services become scarcer and scarcer, I know I’m not the only postal deliverer who has taken on the mantle of a social worker. Just recently I’ve had to change the bandages on a woman with a sprained ankle, help a pensioner down his stairs when his hip went ‘wonky’ and he couldn’t get down,
and chase a wasp from the kitchen of a woman who was highly allergic to the stings.

In fact I’m going now to a woman called Delia Davenport, and taking, along with her post, a warm, freshly baked Cornish pasty that someone in Poldowe had made that morning. ‘I did an extra for poor Delia,’ the woman said. ‘I know she do love her pasties.’

Delia, though an octogenarian, is unlike many of the other tough old octogenarians I deliver to who live independent and active lives. Though Delia lives alone in one of the villages, she’s fragile, in delicate health, and never leaves her house. Her neighbours think there’s nothing terribly wrong physically with her, but that she just gave up on life when her husband died ten years ago. Now she just sits, watches television, and relies on the neighbours to do her shopping, and Meals-on-Wheels to provide a hot dinner. And on her postie to light a fire for her every morning. It started last autumn, when Delia had a little fall getting her tiny bucket of coal into the house to start her morning fire. Though the house has storage heaters, Delia likes, and needs, her small coal fire every day but after the fall, has been afraid to light it. I volunteered one day as I was delivering her post and I’ve carried on doing it. Like the neighbours, I don’t mind helping out. Delia’s self-imposed helplessness is so sweet-natured that I can’t help but like her.

She’s sitting in her armchair as I come in, greeting me with her wispy smile. She looks old, older even than Edna Humphrey. ‘Morning, Delia,’ I say as I take the empty coal bucket, fill it up from the supply at the back of the house and begin to light the fire. ‘You’ve got a fresh pasty for your dinner today.’

The coal bucket hardly holds much but it’s enough to keep the fire glowing in the tiny fireplace all day. It’s so warm now it’s not needed at all, but Delia likes it burning winter and
summer. ‘It’s the comfort of it,’ she told me once. ‘Warms the heart as well as the hands and feet.’

Delia is so delighted with the pasty that she writes a little note then and there, asking me to give it to the pasty baker when next I see her. Then she says, ‘Oh, and I wonder, could you please give this newspaper clipping to Sally down the road? There’s a photo of her little boy in the local paper, on a school trip, and I know she’d like an extra copy.’ She hands me a carefully cut out photo then spends another five minutes looking for an envelope to put it in. I take it and promise to pass it on.

As I leave I think how this job has escalated since I started. As my customers have got to know me, they’ve begun to trust me, and for many I’m not only a confidante but someone they can rely on for help if necessary. I get asked both big or little questions folk might once have asked a doctor, in the days when home visits were a norm, or there are requests to buy items they’d get from the tiny village shops if so many hadn’t closed.