Seagulls in the Attic Read online

  The weather gets better, the sun finally appears and our tent dries. As the days progress I find I’m learning all sorts of new tricks. I’ve learned that you have to think outside of the box, be inventive and creative to survive. Simple things like clothes pegs are an absolute necessity. Now that the rain has stopped I’m for ever pegging up clothes, blankets and towels to dry or to air. Ben has rigged up a makeshift clothesline between the tent and Minger. I’ve also learned to always carry a torch after tripping over the guy ropes while stumbling about in the dark one night.

  Our air bed seems fine now and we never do find out why it deflated so mysteriously that night of heavy rain. As a precaution we make sure it’s pumped up before dark and that our beds are all ready. I learn all sorts of tricks that seasoned campers know, like keeping a stock of 20p pieces for the shower, sticking wet clothes in the dryer next door so that when I jump out of the shower, I can jump straight into warm, dry clothes if I judge it right and there’s no one around as I madly dash with just a towel wrapped around me from the shower to the laundry room.

  The early mornings on a campsite are magic. Since becoming a postie I’ve learned to love this part of the day so still and silent, with the rest of the world asleep, or so it seems in that pre-dawn calm. On this campsite we have a wake-up call from the nearby cockerels who are vying with each other to produce the loudest cry. The dawn chorus seems louder on a campsite somehow and it’s pure bliss, hearing it first thing in the morning. The only part of camping I haven’t mastered yet is getting the right sleeping temperature. It’s too cold at night to keep arms and legs outside the sleeping bag but too hot if it’s zipped up. It’ll probably take a few more camping trips for me to master the art of sleeping-bag comfort.

  In the evenings we sit around the fire pit under the stars, talking, sharing stories, jokes and songs. It feels primeval, as if we’re a part of a human chain that has been doing this for centuries. The fire sparks and smokes, the adults drink jugs of Scrumpy from the farmhouse and the children play games around the campsite with the new friends they’ve made.

  On our last night I manage to make a seafood risotto on our camp stove, a feat I’m very proud of. With it we have lightly steamed marsh samphire, which I found growing in a muddy bit of ground near an estuary on our morning walk. I couldn’t believe my eyes, when I spotted the bright green patch in the middle of the marshy ground; I’d never found it before. It was growing plentifully and I picked enough for a delicious accompaniment to our risotto for this last meal.

  After everyone has drifted off to their tents except Ben and me, we sit watching the embers of the dying fire, a half moon and starry sky above us and the sound of the sea not far away.

  ‘Home tomorrow,’ I say contentedly.

  And for the first time on holiday, home is not London and a completely different life but a short distance away on the other side of Cornwall.

  Chapter 14

  Wedding plans and a funeral

  Annie is down here often now as she and Pete plan their wedding. The four of us have a hilarious night at Pete’s house over many bottles of wine while they write out their invitation list.

  ‘I really should invite my mother’s second cousin once removed,’ Annie giggled at one point. ‘Or is it her first cousin twice removed? Oh dear, I’ve only met her a couple of times and she’s quite dotty. Her husband’s dotty too, and lately apparently he’s become confused, lost his memory or so my mum says.’

  ‘Well if he’s lost his memory, he won’t remember if you invited him or not so don’t bother,’ I giggle with her.

  The talk rambles happily on like this for ages. There are Annie’s dozens of London friends as well as Pete’s many Cornish ones. Annie’s parents are in New Zealand and unfortunately have health problems, which it impossible for them to travel long distances. They’ve given Annie and Pete their blessings, though, and the couple are going to visit Annie’s parents on their honeymoon.

  We are sitting outside in Pete’s back garden, a small, partly terraced plot just big enough for a scruffy, but comfortable, picnic table with chairs. As we lounge around the table looking at the stars, Annie says, ‘I’ve got this great designer and printer I know doing the invitations; he’s terrific, they’re going to be stunning.’ Her face is shining with enthusiasm and wine and I realise she hasn’t sneezed once all evening.

  Pete comments wryly, ‘I’m sure all my farmer friends will be impressed.’

  Annie just giggles again but Ben asks Pete, ‘Are a lot of your friends farmers?’

  ‘Some. I work with them, you know, spend a lot of time with them, sitting in their kitchens talking about whether they need me to do a lime test on their fields to see what the soil’s like, or whether they need to order in more silage or straw for the winter. There’re two or three who have become good friends.’

  While Annie and I discuss flowers for the tables, the bouquets and headdresses for bride and bridesmaids, buttonholes for groom, best man, family and ushers, Ben and Pete are mostly silent, looking up at the full moon and clear, starry sky.

  The scent of some flower or blossom I can’t identify wafts through the air as Annie says, ‘I’ve got this great photographer in London, he’s fantastic, takes natural shots of people throughout the day so the photos don’t come out all posed and stiff. He’s very funny so everyone in his pictures are captured laughing and happy.’

  Pete murmurs, ‘Shouldn’t they be anyway, at a wedding?’ His voice is low, as if he is talking to himself. ‘I didn’t think we needed a photographer to make us laugh and be happy on our wedding day.’

  Annie smiles at him endearingly, as if he’s said something wonderfully amusing, but I notice Pete’s answering smile is a bit half-hearted. Perhaps all this wedding talk is boring for him. Many men hate all that kind of fuss, even for their own wedding.

  And so the night wears on, getting later and later as the moon shifts in the sky and Annie, bright-eyed and animated, tells us about a great woman at the BBC who does make-up for television and is happy to do hers, as well as her hair, on the big day.

  ‘And my Aunt Ivy, she’s a professional cake maker and will make ours. Oh Pete, her cakes are gorgeous! And she’s promised me that she’ll put a good dollop of quality brandy in it.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fantastic,’ Pete says grinning. ‘And all that brandy will make us all even happier and smilier.’

  ‘Oh Pete, you’re not taking me seriously.’ Annie sits on his lap.

  ‘Of course I am, sweetheart.’ He kisses her lightly on the forehead. ‘It’s just that it seems this wedding is getting a bit much.’

  She hugs him. ‘Don’t be silly. Tessa and I have got everything very much in hand, so you don’t have to worry about a thing.’

  Annie’s wedding is far from my mind today for Joe tells us that he is taking one of his lambs, the same age as ours, to be slaughtered for their freezer. ‘I’ll take yours as well, if you like,’ he says to me. ‘It’s a good size, quite big now and ready to go.’

  I hesitate then steel myself. Of course Patch has to go. I know this, the children know this. We raised and bottle-fed him, knowing that this would be his end.

  I explain this to Will and Amy who know it all anyway; I’ve kept reminding them about Patch’s end throughout his short life. They want to say goodbye to him before he goes and so do I. I’ve suggested we thank him for the meat he is about to give us. We all troop over to the farm and as usual, Patch comes running, frolicking and nuzzling for food.

  Amy bursts into tears. ‘I don’t want to eat Patch,’ she howls. ‘I can’t. If you kill him I’ll become a vegetarian.’

  ‘Me too,’ Will says, too upset to add more.

  Now I’m teary, too, but try to hold them back and be sensible, calming the children and telling them that Patch has had a good life, that he’s going to be humanely killed, that Joe knows the man who does the job decently and without pain. I point out that we’ve known all along that this would happen. They
don’t want to know. They just want their pet lamb.

  I finally realise, after twenty minutes of this, that I can’t do it. And the relief I feel is so great that I feel like letting out a huge whoop of joy. I don’t quite understand it, I’m not a vegetarian and I meant every word I said to the children. I should be delighted to have our own animal humanely slaughtered; at least we know where it came from, know what went into its feed, its life. I finally decide that you can’t kill something you’ve named. My family can’t at any rate. I haven’t given up on this idea of raising our own meat and perhaps one day we’ll try it again but we can’t kill Patch.

  Later, when the children are in bed, I phone Daphne to try to explain. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know what to do with him now,’ I say. ‘Amy and Will want to keep him for ever, as a pet. They want to take him home to our back garden, but it’s far too small.’

  Daphne understands. ‘I had the same thing, years ago. The children had a pet lamb they raised that was supposed to go into our freezer and they couldn’t bear it, so we kept it on with the rest of our flock until it finally died of old age. We’ll keep Patch. Our own kids are fond of him too, you know, so they’ll be over the moon.’

  The next day when I’m feeding the hens, I know I could never eat them either. I’d vaguely thought I would one day, since that is what this entire grow-find-and-raise-your-own-food project is all about. Hector told me that long ago when they kept hens, he’d wring their necks when they were old and stopped laying. Edna would boil up the plucked bird. ‘Delicious, maid,’ he’d told me. ‘You best get Edna’s recipe for chicken stew when your hens get past it.’

  As the chickens come running and clucking to me I say soothingly to them, ‘Y’know, you silly old things, I think you’ve been saved too. If we can’t eat Patch, we certainly can’t eat you.’

  Next day I’m at the ShelterBox warehouse again. Though volunteers come and go, today there seems to be a particular influx of people.

  I look around me as I fill the boxes. Next to me is a young girl who is a college student in Falmouth whom I’ve talked to before. There’s also an elderly man who works slowly but steadily; he used to be a fisherman, he told me once. As he tenderly places an item in the box I imagine him being as tender with his catch, putting each fish carefully in the hold of his boat. The woman who lost her husband in the Argentine isn’t here today but I recognise a friend she’s sometimes arrives with, another well-dressed, middle-aged woman. Though we are all ages, from all walks of life, there is a camaraderie in the group that is special.

  The unsettled weather of the greater part of August has calmed and the days are mostly balmy. Everything is madly hectic from delivering the post, what with all the holidaymakers clogging up the roads and towns, to keeping up with my work on the allotment. The courgettes are rampant and even Hector and Edna won’t take any more, so I’m making all sorts of soups, quiches and everything else with them. My leeks are great too: huge, long and succulent. It makes up for the spring cabbage which is riddled with tiny green caterpillars. Will, Amy and I spend a whole afternoon picking the bugs off one by one and it’s back-breaking work which doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference although it’s satisfying to work together for our food.

  My potatoes aren’t looking good and Daphne says it might be blight, but I’ve got more spinach, some fantastic radishes and cucumbers, so I’m thrilled, especially as I’ve got some fine parsnips coming along. I’ve also been preparing for winter, growing some purple sprouting and cabbage in my makeshift cold frame which I plant out now. I also have some Swiss chard and kale. I’ve got pumpkins, which should be ready for Halloween and delicious pumpkin soup.

  Thinking about soups, I tell Edna about my sorrel soup. ‘I remembered what you said about putting in whatever you had to hand. Well I had some cream I poured in and it all curdled. Had to throw the whole lot away.’

  ‘Oh you would, dear.’ Edna leans down to pet the Venerable Bede who is sprawled out under her feet. I hold my breath, making myself stay still and not grab on to Edna’s shoulder as I did once when she bent over the cat. I was afraid she’d topple right over, she seemed so frail, but she shook me off as if I’d scalded her. Her and her husband’s fierce and fiery independence is terrifying sometimes.

  She goes on, ‘Anything milky, any dairy produce, will curdle a sorrel dish. They must never be mixed together.’

  Ah. Now she tells me. ‘Well, live and learn,’ I say. ‘I seem to be doing a lot of that these days. Anyway, despite the disaster of the soup, I found some amazing marsh samphire when we were camping. It was delicious steamed.’

  ‘Oh, now that is tasty. You can eat it raw too, has a lovely, salty taste. We practically lived off it one summer when we were roughing it up north.’ She adjusts her Chinese coolies’ hat which has gone a bit lop-sided on her head, nearly covering those owl glasses she wears.

  Meanwhile I’ve got a cucumber crisis on my hand. I’ve got a glut and I don’t know what to do with them all. It happened because I planted two seed packets of them, about a thousand too many. We’ve had cucumber salads till we’re sick of them and I can’t give them away, so I’m trying to make cucumber cosmetics having googled a recipe for face masks and a skin cream on the net. I remember the products at The Body Shop, the nettle shampoo especially. I’ve been making my own with the surplus of nettles around the countryside.

  One morning on my round I talk to Mr Eyton, an elderly man I often stop to have a chat with. He lives halfway around a relief round I sometimes do so it fits in nicely. One of the wonderful things about Mr Eyton is that he loves cucumbers and doesn’t grow his own, so I’m able to pass quite a few of my surplus to him. Talking to him one day recently, I realised what a small world this is, as we found to our mutual surprise that he employed my father-in-law decades ago when Ben’s dad test drove cars for Jowett in the Yorkshire Dales. They’d lost contact, but when Ben’s dad came to visit last year, they had a surprise reunion. I always seem to be finding connections between people and I rather like the idea that we’re all somehow linked in this strange, wonderful, turbulent world.

  Mr Eyton not only takes my cucumbers but insists on giving me a bowl of blackberries he’s picked during one of his walks. The children and I have already gathered quite a few and I’ve been making blackberry and apple pies for the freezer. Now, out on a quick walk with Jake by a nearby creek, I discover a mass of damsons growing in hedgerow. I pick them eagerly, storing them in my rucksack that I’m never without these days. My gloves go in there for the nettles and also a Swiss Army knife to cut stems. I never take anything by the roots but am careful how I cut the plants I find, so that I don’t destroy them.

  My rucksack filled with damsons, I decide that maybe the quick walk I intended should be drawn out a bit. After all, my work for the day is finished and Ben is back working at the Sunflower Café for the summer. The children have gone off to play with friends. That’s another important perk of living here, the fact that they can wander about the village and I don’t have to worry. I would never dream of letting them do that in London.

  I’m in a beech woodland, carpeted with emerald green moss, lush soft grass and a tiny gurgling stream running through it. Though I love the magnificence of the coastline, I also love these secret copses and the creeks, rivers and estuaries you find here. This woodland is like something from a fairy tale. Past the beech trees there are gnarled scrub oak, small and craggy, covered in lush moss that looks so tempting and luxurious that I wrap my arms around one of the trunks, leaning my face lightly against the moss. It smells divine, all earthy and rich. Somewhere I am sure I hear the warble of a wren which blends with the gurgling stream to make a perfect melody. Unable to resist, I lie down on my back on some thick, soft grass, a mossy bank for a pillow and before I know it, I’ve fallen asleep. A blackbird’s call wakes me shortly and reluctantly I get up and head for home to make damson jam. Hopefully I’ll have enough not just for us but to give as Christmas presents.


  Feeling both tranquil and energised from my walk and catnap, I’m practically bouncing down the road towards home when a familiar voice hollers, ‘Hey, my lover, you be full of beans today. You been working in your allotment? I ain’t forgot what you said about competing with me in the harvest show.’

  ‘Oh hi, Doug,’ I grin. ‘I didn’t say competing with you, I said I’d be joining you by entering a vegetable.’

  He’s fairly close now and I notice he’s staring at me, looking at me up and down. Never having taken much interest in what I’ve looked like before, I’m wondering what he’s looking at. I’m wearing my usual digging in the garden and foraging clothes, nothing startling.

  ‘What’s up, Doug? You’re looking like you’ve never seen a woman before.’

  He leaps back as if I’ve bitten him, ‘Oh, uh, I never, I wasn’t . . . I didn’t mean nothing. I mean, you ain’t a woman.’

  ‘What?’ Now I’m the one looking at him oddly. Has he flipped? I mean, I know I’m not a pretty sight right now, blond hair dark with sweat and pulled back with a clip, pale blue cotton trousers, eons old, loose and baggy, the better to dig and pick things in and old white T-shirt, but it’s obvious I’m female. Well, I hope so anyway.

  His jowly face has turned bright red and I see he’s writhing with embarrassment. He’s a bachelor, I remember, still living with his mum though middle-aged, and I realise that other than her and Daphne, he probably doesn’t have much contact with women.

  He’s mumbling on, ‘I mean, course you be a woman, but I wasn’t looking at you like that. I be staring at you because you’ve gone all green and twiggy.’

  ‘What?’ Now I’m disconcerted and it shifts the balance.

  He’s no longer embarrassed but has regained his smug composure. I look down and see that I’m covered with grass stains, bits of foliage and quite a lot of moss stuck to my trousers and T-shirt. While Doug shakes his head and tuts as if I were some recalcitrant child, I put my hand to my hair and pull away bits of twigs and blades of grass.