Seagulls in the Attic Read online

  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.

  I check the chickens on the way home and throw them some of the stale bread one of my customers always gives me. I squat down, letting them eat from my hand. They cluster around and as usual Pavarotti thrusts out his feisty little chest and struts about importantly. Then I get a shock when I realise there are only five hens. I rush up to the nest boxes, to see if one is in there laying an egg but it’s empty. It’s one of the brown Rhode Islands that’s missing. I rush about the orchard, afraid that she’s ill or that a fox has got her. I doubt that she could have got out as their area is well fenced with chicken wire, but if she were all right, she’d be bustling around me like the others.

  The hens and rooster follow me as I go searching under and around the tufts of long grass growing about the trunks of the gnarled, old apple trees. I’m clucking all the time, calling to her. The hens join in, like some feathered Greek chorus. Before I know it, Edna and Hector, hearing the commotion, have joined me as well, and the three of us, plu
s five hens and one cockerel, are all madly scrabbling about the place making ridiculous chicken noises.

  ‘No sign of her,’ Hector says finally.

  ‘She must have got out,’ I wail. ‘But where?’

  We circle the perimeter of the fence, trying to find where she could have got out but there’s nowhere we can see. I cry, ‘A fox must have got in somehow and dragged her away.’

  ‘There’d be feathers everywhere. Sign of a struggle. Let’s have a look outside the compound.’

  So off we go, searching and calling throughout the overgrown old garden but after twenty minutes, we give up. I’m still convinced a fox got her, or even a stoat – I saw one not far from my allotment a few weeks ago – but the Humphreys are adamant that if something had got her, there would be some sign of a struggle with feathers everywhere.

  Despondently, I return to the henhouse to collect the eggs while the Humphreys, as they often do, chat to the chickens, calling them ‘gorgeous girls’ and ‘you handsome old cock, you’. It soothes me, picking up the eggs from the clean straw, feeling the warm roundness in my hand. I put them in a basket and join the Humphreys, still upset about my hen but resigned to my loss.

  Edna says mildly, ‘Look at your chickens, my dear.’

  I do and can’t believe my eyes. There’s the prodigal hen, scratching away at the ground with the others, feathers intact, looking as if she hasn’t moved an inch. ‘But where was she?’

  Edna shrugs as Hector says, ‘It’s a mystery. Life’s one continuous mystery, even with chickens.’

  With this sage pronouncement we drop the subject, though I do check the fence once more. There is no way that hen could have got out but somehow she did. And got back in, too. I decide not to worry about it, to let it go, to accept Hector’s philosophy.

  Before I go I take a quick look at my allotment. I’m pleased to see that the vegetables survived the recent storms and though the earth was soggy for days, the hot sun has efficiently dried everything out. My beetroot are getting bigger; I thought they’d never grow larger than a ping-pong ball but they’ve surprised me.

  I tell the Humphreys, ‘Doug keeps reminding me that I promised I’d put in an entry in the Treverny show and I guess I must, since I said so, but I don’t want to compete, vegetables are for eating not for showing, I feel. But I’ll have to do something.’

  Edna says, ‘I’m sure you could win a prize for the tastiest carrots. Yours are delicious.’

  I pull one up for the Humphreys’ dinner that night. It’s a weird shape, sort of curled one way then backing up onto itself to curve another way. Still it’s edible, though it might be a bit hard to peel.

  As I’m brushing the earth away from it Hector says, ‘Is there a category for the oddest-looking vegetable? If so, that carrot would surely win a prize.’

  With a giggle I agree it would and wonder if perhaps that’s how I’ll keep my promise and enter the autumn show.

  It’s hot today and so warm that I need to open all the windows in the house when I get home. I can’t leave them wide open when no one’s inside as Google gets in and causes havoc, guano everywhere and food stolen. I wonder if you can house train seagulls, though somehow I doubt it.

  Going into Will’s bedroom I open the window wide to get a cool breeze and turning around get a nasty shock. The snake cage is empty. No snake. I freeze, unable to move. For what seems like hours but can only be a few minutes I stand there petrified. After a time I try to calm down, telling myself that this is a corn snake, totally common, the favourite pet of little boys and weird adults who actually like snakes. Elvis will not hurt me, I say like a mantra, over and over. He slithers and slides up and down Will’s arms and if he slithered and slid up my leg – but I can’t imagine it and shudder just thinking about it. However, I can’t stand here until Will comes home and finds his snake gone. How did he get out anyway? From where I stand I peer at the vivarium. He must have got into the thin glass shelf inside it and from there manoeuvred the sliding glass lid open. Where is he now?

  Finally I force myself to move, taking each step slowly, watching where I tread, my eyes darting around like a feral beast looking for any sign of Elvis, though God knows what I’d have done if I’d spotted him – run hollering out of the house, no doubt. Will is devastated when he hears the news and runs upstairs to check if I’m mistaken. For a few seconds I harbour a wild hope that Elvis has returned to his happy home but Will’s cry of anguish shatters that hope. He and Amy start searching the house while I try to prepare a meal. Every saucepan I get out, every cupboard I go into, I’m looking for signs of a snake.

  By the time we all go to bed there is still no Elvis. My recurring nightmare is to share a house with a three-or four-foot snake on the loose. My sleep is troubled and I wake in the middle of the night needing the loo but I’m too nervous to move. I know that snakes are more active at night so Elvis might at this moment be roaming about doing whatever snakes do right under my bed. Finally I have to get up. Every step I take is torment. I turn put on the lights but every shadow I see is ominous.

  The next day I phone the reptile centre to ask if they have any tips for finding a missing snake. The woman on the phone says brightly, ‘Just make sure all of you check your beds before you get in at night. It could be under the blankets, or even tucked in between a duvet and its cover . . . Sorry, did you say something?’

  ‘Uh, no, please go on,’ I try not to make any more strangled noises to distract her.

  ‘Snakes like warm, dark places. Your snake could be behind the fridge or television, or even inside the video machine.’

  ‘But he’s huge. Well, long, anyway.’

  ‘Snakes can curl up into quite small places. Look for it in anywhere unlikely you can think of. But don’t worry if you don’t find it immediately. You’ve said that your snake is a young healthy snake with quite a bit of weight on him. It could live happily on the loose in your house for months.’ I shudder.

  The next thing we do is contact the RSPCA, in case Elvis gets out and goes walkabout in the village or beyond. If he’s found, he’ll be returned to Will. When I tell Susie at the post office, she says I should tell all my customers.

  ‘Goodness,’ I say, ‘he’s not going to wander that far.’

  ‘You never know, my bird. You just never know. Cunning, snakes are.’

  ‘Well quite honestly I hope he does go walkabout and ends up far away.’

  ‘Aw, poor Will.’

  ‘I mean far away so that someone will find him and bring him back to Will,’ I say hastily. ‘I want Will to have his snake back but I don’t want to be the one to find it in my duvet one night. Or to find it anywhere. I want someone else to find Elvis.’

  But no one does. Elvis becomes the favourite conversation amongst my customers, with many of them having tales to tell of their own pet snakes or those of their children/nephews/ nieces/cousins/uncles/grandparents. Everyone has a story about everything, in Cornwall. One elderly man tells me about stepping into his wellie boots one morning to find his grandson’s pet snake curled up inside and someone else mentions a snake found in her handbag.

  By the time I get to the village where Elizabeth and Adam, my favourite dotty second-homers, live, I don’t want to hear another snake story ever again. But as freak coincidence would have it, the first thing Elizabeth says to me is, ‘Oh Tessa, I’m so glad you’re here. Our cat has brought a dead snake into the house and I don’t know what to do with it. Adam isn’t here, not that he’d know what to do. And the twins won’t go near it. It’s not very long, it’s just a grass snake, or it must be, that’s what Adam said on the phone when I rang him in London. He says there are no poisonous snakes in Cornwall only adders but he didn’t think our cat would try to catch an adder. Anyway if it is an adder it wouldn’t hurt would it? I mean, it’s quite dead.’

  She tells me all this in a rush, her voice breathless. As usual she’s looking country-smart with a fine patterned skirt, definitely not from a charity shop, wi
th a cute summery top. Even her flip-flops are a world away from my own tatty ones at home: hers are clean new leather with some trendy intricate design etched in.

  She is looking at me appealingly. I grin and say, ‘Sorry, Elizabeth, I don’t do snakes, but how about I tell the people next door when I deliver. I’m sure they’ll help.’

  ‘Oh would you? I feel such a fool asking myself.’

  Luckily the neighbour next door, a dour local woman in her late fifties, is in and I tell her about Elizabeth’s dead snake. The woman sighs mournfully. ‘That woman do be missing a bolt or two in her head. The snake be dead. You pick it up and toss it out. I swear she’s two shillings short of a pound, like my gran used to say.’

  ‘She’s just not used to the country, that’s all. She’s got quite a responsible job in London.’

  ‘Hah, fat lot of good it does her here,’ the woman snorts then sighs again. ‘Well, poor dear, she can’t be helping it if our ways be strange to her. I’ll get along over there right now and rid her of the vermin.’

  I tell her that it’s kind of her and she brushes me off. ‘’Tisn’t kind, ’tis neighbourly. Besides, they two aren’t a bad sort. Simple but well meaning. Poor sods, must have a dreadful life Up Country, to keep running away from it like they do.’

  The next few days are nerve-wracking. There is no sign of Elvis anywhere but that doesn’t mean he’s not in the house. Like the woman at the reptile centre said, he’s probably hiding out in some warm, dark place and roaming our house at night when everyone is asleep. I’m careful to shake out my clothes every morning before getting dressed and open cupboards slowly with great trepidation. Going to bed is a nightmare as I take my duvet cover off then put it back on again after I’ve made sure nothing alive is lurking there. Because all our duvet covers have poppers at the end rather than a zipper, Elvis could easily crawl between them and snuggle inside.