Seagulls in the Attic Read online

  ‘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.

  I remember how in London I never even knew my postman’s name and saw him only occasionally, fleetingly, on a rare Saturday. Yet all over rural England there are others like me, performing all those services that have sadly
been abandoned as we plunge into a frantic modern world. This is, I think, the best part of my job, getting to know my customers, giving help when I can, and having the time and space to be able to do it.

  Chapter 3

  Snakes and ladders

  A snake has entered our household. If there’s one creature in the animal world I cannot bear, it’s a snake.

  ‘Elvis is a reptile, not an animal,’ Will says.

  ‘Besides,’ Amy adds, ‘You’ve gone off rabbits after they ate your lettuce.’ She doesn’t much like snakes either but she’s siding with her brother on this one. Solidarity between siblings, it’s the only way to outwit the parents.

  ‘You know I haven’t gone off rabbits, I adore them. I was only cross that day when all my lettuces were eaten in one night. It’s nature. It was my fault for not protecting my plants. I’ve learned my lesson now.’

  ‘You’ll get used to Elvis,’ Will says philosophically and wanders off to play with his pet.

  I’ll never get used to snakes, I think disconsolately. I not only can’t bear snakes, I also have an irrational fear of them. I mentioned it to my doctor once, years ago just in passing while talking about other things, telling him about this fear.

  His answer didn’t exactly inspire confidence. ‘It’s not irrational, Tessa. The world is full of poisonous snakes that kill people. Your fear is perfectly rational.’ Thanks, I thought to myself, that’s a big help!

  How did I let myself get talked into this? It all began when Will started saving his pocket money and doing extra jobs around the house to buy his ‘very own pet’. Ben and I thought it was a good idea; it would give him a sense of responsibility, looking after what I assumed would be a small furry creature. We have Jake, of course, but our dear Spaniel is a family pet, not Will’s alone. So we agreed.

  Will spent hours on the Internet, researching various sites to find the kind of pet he wanted most. Unfortunately, the one he fell in love with was not a cute fuzzy kitten, or a tiny sweet bunny, but a snake.

  I begged, pleaded, bribed. All to no avail. Will stood his ground. ‘You promised I could choose my own pet,’ he said over and over.

  So I had to give in. ‘All right, Will, but only on the proviso that you assume full responsibility for it. I want nothing to do with it, ever.’

  Off we trotted to a garden centre which is also a reptile centre. I tried not to run screaming from the place as we kneeled down in between twenty odd plastic boxes the size of a sandwich. The ‘snake lady’ took out one reptile at a time to introduce Will to the various hatchlings while I looked about for the nearest exit should one of them escape and begin slithering towards me. All the hatchlings looked horrifically alike to me, but Will knew immediately which one was special, the best looking, the best personality, the one that would live up to its name.

  ‘This is the one,’ he said proudly, holding up this six inch long horror. ‘This is the king. I’m going to call him Elvis.’

  Thinking of that day, the day a snake entered our household, I say to Ben as we’re preparing dinner together, ‘Why did I agree to it? Why did I ever permit it?’

  Ben carries on chopping onions. He’s heard me say this a dozen times since Elvis became ensconced in his glass cage, called a vivarium I soon learn, in Will’s bedroom.

  ‘We agreed because in the end we had to. We couldn’t persuade him that a rabbit or guinea pig or even a rat might be better, if he wanted a pet in his room.’

  I shudder. At least I’ve been spared a rat. But my fear of snakes is so ingrained that even a horrid rat would have been better than Elvis. I peek through the door of Will’s bedroom, watch him as he takes his baby snake out of its home, holds and strokes it. The look on his face is rapturous, and despite the fact that even seeing it from this distance makes me shudder, I’m glad my son has his snake.

  The next day I’m on my walking round in Morranport, stopping first at the tiny post office/shop perched on the edge of the sea. The tide is out and the few boats anchored on the sand look as if they’re snoozing in the sun. Little water birds are pecking amongst the rock pools and so are a few toddlers, their mums and dads fondly hovering over them. You can tell these are second homers from their brand new pink, green and blue polka-dotted Wellington boots, their smart pushchairs and designer clothes. Most likely they own one of the sweet Georgian fishermen’s cottages just up the road, the ones with the wrought-iron balconies, facing the sea. All of them are owned by out-of-towners now, used only for holidays. They were packed and bustling over Easter which has just passed, and it was a joy to see the houses come to life for a brief week or two. A few of them will be occupied off and on now throughout the summer, by couples who are either childless or whose children are still under school age. In winter it’s a different scene and it saddens me to see the houses empty and desolate, the soul gone out of them.

  Nell, the perky eighty-something-year-old who runs the shop and post office, greets me with a huge grin. ‘You look like the Cheshire Cat,’ I say.

  Her smile gets wider. While Delia at the same age looks over ninety, Nell looks no more than sixty. Delia also acts how one used to expect old people to act, while Nell refuses to be pigeonholed as a pensioner. How weird this age thing is, I think not for the first time since I became a postwoman. I adore Nell, as does everyone, especially the men of all ages who know her. Though she doesn’t suffer fools and gives short shrift to anyone she thinks deserves it, she’s got a warm heart despite her sometimes gruff manner.

  ‘You’d be grinning too, my maid, if you’d just sold out of all your kiddies’ beach toys. They was all a’standing there waiting for me to open up the shop, they was that keen. Bought fishing nets, balls, toy boats, the lot. And you be telling me I shouldn’t be grinning?’

  I start to protest that I never said anything of the sort then remember that’s just Nell’s way of speaking, often ending sentences on a challenge. I shake my head to indicate that she should go on.

  ‘Made all me day’s profits in ten minutes,’ she points through the window at the family outside. The two little ones are clutching nets on sticks and poking them into rock pools. ‘Me favourite folk from Up Country are parents who spend far too much money on their spoiled offspring, so long as they spend it in my shop.’ She gives me a fierce look, ‘And I reckon now you be telling me I be getting too consumer-oriented?’

  I laugh. ‘Nell, I wouldn’t dream of telling you anything like that.’

  She offers me a cup of tea from the kettle in the back of the post office and I accept. Though sunny, there’s a chilly breeze outside. The sea looks ruffled, rather like Nell’s hair which is thick and white, standing up all over her head. That and her solid, no-nonsense bosom, huge on her rather small frame, are her most prominent features, along with the clothes she wears – ordinary old cord jeans topped with a marvellous array of jumpers, all vividly coloured, form-fitting and usually of some kind of fuzzy material, mohair, angora, or indescribable home-knitted wear.

  As I take my post bag and get ready to go, Nell asks, ‘So how’s the snake then? Has Will brought it home?’

  I groan. ‘Yep, two days ago. Its name is Elvis. Because he’s The King, like Elvis was. Elvis, King of Snakes.’

  Nell looks dreamy. ‘Good name, that. I did fancy Elvis something fierce, when I was a girl.’ She sighs then pulls herself together. ‘So what d’you feed it? What do they eat?’

  ‘Oh Nell, it’s awful! It has to be fed mice. Tiny newborn baby mice, poor hairless things, they look like pink jelly babies. We have a bag of them in our freezer next to the ice trays. And it gets worse. As the snake gets bigger, so do the mice. There will be the fluffies next, a bit bigger, with hair. Ugh! Later it’ll be big mice or small rats. All in my freezer.’

  Nell grimaces, ‘Well, my handsome, mebbe you could write a recipe book, one of them new-fangled ones for folk who like to try something different. How to use leftover snake food. Mice mince, stuffed mouse.’ She cackles away, delighted with her joke.
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  With a slight shudder I say, ‘Nothing about snakes makes me laugh.’

  ‘So you still be nervous of the creature, even though you’ve seen your boy handling it? Can’t be that frightening, can it? ’Tis only a baby, you said.’

  ‘It still gives me the creeps. I’ve tried to rationalise the whole thing, tell myself logically it’s only tiny, can’t hurt me, can’t get out of the cage, but I’m still terrified. I’ve got a snake phobia, not uncommon apparently.’

  ‘Well, mebbe having your own snake in your own house will cure it once and for all. Though I reckon you be telling me now that I don’t know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘It hasn’t cured me yet, Nell, but you’re right, maybe it will. I can hardly bring myself to go into Will’s room but I take a deep breath, tell myself it’s only a poor harmless creature, and plunge in there. I’m determined to get over this.’

  ‘Good luck to you then, my lover.’

  Walking along the seafront is a joy, as usual. The breeze has not turned into a howling gale as predicted but is gently being warmed by the sun. I pass the happy little family but they’re not so happy now, the toddlers are squabbling and throwing sand at each other and their parents are trying to reason with them, explain why the oldest child should not throw things back at her younger brother even though he started it. You can tell the explanations don’t mean a thing to the little ones: they keep slinging sand even as the parents talk and plead.

  Happy holidays, I think as I smile to them as I walk past. They don’t even notice me, they look too fraught. God help them if it starts to rain for a week, as it can do at times. But not today. I saunter along, delivering my post, and because it’s just that kind of day, I stop for a cold drink at the old stone house at the end of the seafront, one perched overlooking the sea. It’s the home of another older couple, Archie and Jennifer Grenville. Though a retired teacher, Archie comes from a couple of generations of fishermen and this house, once a fisherman’s cottage, has been in his family for decades. Jennifer is upstairs having a lie-in, Archie tells me. ‘She had a restless night, couldn’t sleep.’ I follow him into the kitchen, warm and cosy, and with a window overlooking the sea. Around the walls are Jennifer’s paintings; she’s a talented artist, doing mostly portraits. I accept a glass of apple juice and sit down at the table with Archie for a few moments. Books cover it, some opened, some with pages marked with Post-it Notes. He’s an amateur historian and knows everything there is about Cornish life both past and present.