Seagulls in the Attic Page 6

  After he’s handed me the drink he says, ‘Has your son brought the snake home yet?’

  ‘Goodness, Nell just asked me the same thing.’ I’m feeling embarrassed. Have I been obsessing over this snake to everyone? No, I remember, I only mentioned it to a couple of people, but the rural grapevine is in full growth as usual. I tell him what I told Nell, about my phobia. ‘It’s only a harmless corn snake,’ I finish. ‘But that doesn’t make me like it more.’

  Archie nods, ‘Snakes are rare in Cornwall, but we do have some. There’s the adder, of course, and the snakes in legend. All those pre-Christian sites were known as dragons’ dens, or serpents’ lairs. And there’s the legend of St Michael slaying the poisonous serpent on St Michael’s Mount. The story goes that he put great stones on the body of the huge reptile and that’s how the stone circles got there.’

  ‘Well, thank God for St Michael then. A poisonous serpent on my rounds is just what I need.’

  Archie smiles, ‘And then there’s the Morgawr.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Morgawr. Haven’t you heard of him? The name means “sea giant” in Cornish. He’s the giant sea serpent of many local legends.’

  ‘You mean like our own Cornish Loch Ness monster?’

  He nods, ‘There have been many sightings around Falmouth Bay, you know. The first recorded one was in 1876 when a fisherman claimed to have caught a twenty-foot sea serpent. The more recent eye-witness accounts describe a great prehistoric snake rearing out of the sea.’

  I make a face. ‘Yuck. Could put you off swimming for life.’

  ‘Poor serpent, he’s blamed for everything, or has been in the past. Bad luck, bad weather, bad catches when the boats go out.’ I start to leave, ‘Well, it makes little Elvis seem harmless anyway.’

  I can’t get away just yet though. Archie, the Cornish historian, is still talking and I love his stories. He’s told me so many about local people both past and present, as well as the myths and legends of the county. ‘Snakes were also thought to slither under the earth in Celtic times, symbols of the mysterious forces of the underworld,’ he begins.

  ‘Oh dear. Prehistoric serpents in the sea I can just about cope with since I’m not a fisherman and don’t have to go out on boats every day. But snakes slithering under my feet as I walk? No thanks, Archie. I don’t want to hear another thing.’ I grin then go on, ‘Just teasing, you know I love your stories. But I’ve got to get on now. Give my love to Jennifer.’

  Archie walks me to the door. Before I leave I ask him about his godson Wayne who has just joined the crew of the Falmouth lifeboat. Wayne’s a fisherman and works on one of the big boats now as his father had to give up fishing; there’s no money in it anymore for the little boats. The couple are like second parents to the lad and are as close to them as any son. Proud though Archie and Jennifer are of Wayne volunteering to be on the lifeboat crew, I know they worry. It’s a dangerous job.

  ‘Wayne’s fine. He had his first call out the other day, a yacht in trouble. They took out the inshore lifeboat.’

  Archie has told me that the inshore lifeboat is called out for rescues closer to shore as the name suggests. It’s a big inflatable boat that rights itself if it tips over. With more and more pleasure craft out on the seas these days, the inshore lifeboat is used often. The all-weather lifeboat is bigger, can hold up to thirty survivors, and is used in gales and storms, whatever the weather to help those in trouble further out to sea. The boats are manned by volunteers and I’m in complete awe of all those who risk their own lives to save those of strangers. I’ve always had a lot of time for the RNLI, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, but even more now after talking to Archie and Jennifer, learning about the Falmouth Station.

  The rest of the day passes smoothly. As usual I succumb to the short cuts taught to me by the other posties who have been doing the job for years, the short cuts that save time and a great deal of effort. Since there are sections of the route on the walking rounds which entail climbing up and down long drives to private estates and walking through hilly gardens, I straddle hedges, cut across tennis courts and climb over walls to save myself time and energy. These antics are not appreciated by the Royal Mail because of health and safety implications, but a blind eye is usually turned as it gets the job done quicker. However, every postie knows that no compensation would be given if an accident happened when she was not following the correct procedure.

  Trying to be a good little postie, I did try to do it properly at first, but a few wet and rainy walking rounds quickly changed my mind, and I now take the short cuts without a second thought. In the van too, I’ve learned to use every tiny back lane in south Cornwall, which is why I’m one of the world’s ace reversers now.

  Another trick I’ve learned is how to cope with loo stops. This was a bit of a pain when I started, as I soon realised. For the chaps it was no problem, they could hide behind a hedgerow for a quick pee but for me it meant taking a ten-minute diversion in a van, or a long hike of fifteen to twenty minutes back to the village, just to find a public loo. So I had to learn to start the day with half the amount of tea I was used to and then make sure I had a loo stop at the sorting office before setting off. Finally, I’ve learned the whereabouts of every building site and house that have extensive renovations going on – in an emergency, the workmen can always be relied upon to let me use their loo if I’m caught short.

  After Morranport I go to St Geraint where Margaret, who runs the post office there, asks me how I’m getting on with the new snake in the house. I know I never mentioned Elvis to Margaret either, but by telling one or two people, most of south Cornwall seems to know within twenty-four hours. What is endearing to me is how open and up front everyone is about it. The news isn’t whispered, no one pretends they’re not going to tell everyone else and nearly everyone is sure that you’ll be delighted to know that word of your business has got around so satisfactorily.

  Well, maybe not quite endearing. When I get back to St Geraint, Eddie is behind the counter with Margaret. It’s barely large enough for two let alone three, so I only stay briefly to check out my rounds for the next few days and have a quick chat with a mate of mine, Harry, who has come in to buy a newspaper.

  I’m about to leave when Eddie, passing by, says, ‘Hold on a minute, Tessa. What’s that on your foot? Stop, you’re treading on it!’

  I look down to see my foot about to step on a snake nearly a metre long. ‘Aaargghhh!’ My scream is heard throughout the shop and the customers freeze. All Archie’s tales of giant sea serpents and snakes slithering under the earth crowd my imagination as I leap away from the snake and hide behind Harry who came rushing up to me when he heard me cry out. He looks at the snake, at me, then back at Margaret and Eddie.

  I’m still shaking. ‘Get it away please,’ I mutter. I can’t bear to even look at it again.

  Margaret shrugs her shoulders at Harry and shakes her head. ‘Nothing to do with me. Ask Eddie.’

  Eddie says sheepishly, ‘It’s only a joke.’

  I say, ‘Joke or not, Eddie, please get it out of here, you know how I feel about snakes.’

  Now all three are looking at me. Harry says, ‘Tessa, it’s not real. It’s made of rubber or something.’ He picks it up to show me.

  It looks so alive that I leap away and bump hard into Eddie who says, ‘Sorry, maid, ’twas only a bit of fun. Belongs to a mate of mine. He went as a snake charmer to a Halloween party last year. Looks real, don’t it?’

  While I try to calm my pounding heartbeat, Eddie takes the snake around the shop to show admiring customers. ‘Well, I never seen nuthin’ so life-like,’ says one, and ‘You be a right tease, Eddie me handsome,’ sniggers another.

  Finally Eddie, seeing my pale face, says, ‘Sorry, my bird, I’m truly sorry. ’Twas only a joke. Didn’t know you’d take it to heart like that.’

  I take a deep breath, ‘That’s okay, Eddie.’ I give him a wobbly grin.

  Harry says, ‘Tessa,
do you have time to share a pot of tea? You look like you could do with one. Besides, I haven’t seen you for a proper talk for ages.’

  There’s only one small table outside but there’s no one at it. It’s warm enough to sit in the sun so I plop down while Harry goes inside to order. ‘I feel a bit of fool, making such a spectacle of myself,’ I say with a rueful grin, when Harry returns. ‘But goodness, that thing looked real.’

  He grins back. ‘Best entertainment I’ve had all week. I wish Charlie could have seen it.’

  Charlie is Harry’s partner, the son of a Cornish fisherman. Harry, like me, had a high-powered and stressful job in London. He worked at one of the top accountancies in the country and moved here around the same time I did. Charlie’s parents, fisherfolk all their lives, were more upset about Charlie giving up the sea than they were about the fact that he is gay, but they’ve come around now. Charlie is doing well selling his artworks based on the sea and the Cornish landscape, while Harry has settled into a small accountant’s office in St Geraint.

  We watch a couple of cormorants diving down into the bluegreen water of the undulating sea. It’s not long before our tea is brought out by Millie and Geoff, the owners of the café. Millie carries the brown pot of tea and Geoff the cups and saucers, and they stop to talk to us for some time. Geoff in fact, after about five minutes or so, pulls up a seat at our table, and before long Millie joins him.

  We catch up on all our news and goings-on then Millie says, ‘There now, Geoff, fancy us sitting here cavorting with the customers. They be wanting to talk on their own now.’

  We assure them that we’re happy to share our table but Millie takes Geoff off and goes back into the shop, coming back almost at once with some saffron cakes she has just baked.

  The sea is wrinkly today, tiny delicate ruffles that hardly move the boat just sailing out past the harbour. Seabirds fly and call to each other, suddenly diving down to snatch a small fish. The sky, reflecting the sea, is ruffled too with little urchin clouds speckling it, like a dog’s fur ruffled the wrong way around. The sun’s warmth is soporific. I could fall asleep sitting here, but I rouse myself to ask Harry about Charlie’s new art gallery which he’s opening soon to show not only his own art work but also that of other Cornish artists and craftsmen and women. It’s going to be in Poldowe, where Charlie is renting some space which used to be a grocery store until it could no longer compete with the supermarkets.

  ‘We’re having a big opening in a month’s time,’ Harry says. ‘Loads of my old friends from London are coming.’

  ‘Let me know the date and I’ll make sure Annie is here that weekend. She can spread the word about Charlie’s talent to all her colleagues at the BBC.’

  ‘How is Annie? I’d love to see her again. Since she’s got involved with that Cornish bloke I’ve hardly seen her.’

  Harry met Annie, my dearest London friend, a few months ago when she was visiting us and they discovered they had actually met before, a year or two earlier in London. Last summer at the Royal Cornwall Show Annie met Pete, an agricultural merchant, and on her Cornish weekends she spends most of her time with him.

  ‘I don’t see Annie as often either these days,’ I tell Harry. ‘She and Pete are quite the item. If she’s not in Cornwall, he’s in London.’

  ‘Well, tell her to call around to see me and Charlie. She can bring her man, he seems a nice guy. I’ve met him now and again at the pub in his village, it’s one of our favourites.’

  We leave soon afterwards. As Harry says goodbye to Millie and Geoff, I can’t help watching him. He’s enormously good-looking and charismatic, especially when he smiles. There have been plenty of young women in St Geraint who have sighed over Harry and bemoaned the fact that he’s gay. As he walks towards his office I notice how he’s changed since moving to Cornwall, how relaxed he looks these days, how contented. It affects all of us, I think. Maybe you have be from Up Country to realise what extraordinary changes this place can make in a person.

  By the time I get to the allotment that afternoon, my car is filled with courgette, runner bean and broad bean plants that my customers have given me. Knowing I’ve begun my very first attempt at vegetable growing, my customers have been vying with each other to see who can offer me the most. Their kindness as usual overwhelms me. So does their produce, actually, as I have far too much and end up trying to offload it on others. It’s like the old system of bartering. Maybe one day we can all live like this and not need money at all. What bliss that would be!

  I park my car by the gate near the road but don’t have time to unload my plants before Hector is standing in front of me waving his arms like a demented scarecrow with his straw hat perched on his bald head, baggy trousers and a yellowing white dinner shirt which must have been purchased around 1949.

  ‘Stop, maid, do stop, I say!’ He’s got an old cane which he seldom uses but he’s waving it at me now.

  I jump out of the car and he’s so excited he nearly thumps me with it. ‘Steady on, Hector. What’s the matter? Is it Edna?’

  He gives me a perplexed look as if to say, Now why should I be worried about her? and shouts, ‘No, no, it’s the Venerable Bede! Oh do come quickly, Tessa.’

  The Venerable Bede was an Anglo-Saxon monk, born around 673 AD who lived in the wilds of Northumbria in monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow. He wrote an Ecclesiastical History of the English People and his tomb is in Durham Cathedral, or so Edna told me ages ago. However the Venerable Bede Hector is referring to at this moment is not a dead monk but a live cat. An ancient, fluffy grey cat that lives in winter on Edna and Hector’s bed, coming downstairs only to eat, go outside for a few minutes to do his business, and then return to bed. One day every year, either in spring or summer, depending on the weather, the Venerable Bede (even the villagers refer to him by his full name), deigns to come outdoors and if all is to his liking, he then stays either under the garden bench until late autumn, or in the front garden.

  I am now filled with foreboding. Hector is hassling me to hurry. Has the Venerable Bede keeled over from too much fresh air and dropped dead? Has he been hit by a car? I know the Humphreys have had him for ever; in cat age he is even older than they are.

  Hector is too breathless to answer my questions and I’m now worried that he’s the one who will incur sudden death. ‘Hector, do slow down. Whatever has happened, I’ll deal with it. Do stay calm, please.’ Once again I get that look as if I’m the one that’s gone loopy.

  By now we’ve made it to the front garden where to my horror I see Edna halfway up a short ladder propped dangerously against the old pear tree that stands near the house. On a fat limb just above the top of the ladder sits the Venerable Bede, his venerable, grey, scruffy tail waving majestically back and forth.

  I did ask the Humphreys once why they named a cat after a long dead monk but, as with everything else, they were vague in their answers. ‘The Venerable Bede once made a brief visit to Lindisfarne, the Holy Island, in the seventh century,’ Hector said by way of explanation. Edna had nodded and added, ‘And we were there in the twentieth.’ End of story. They both beamed at me as if I had a clue what they were on about. That’s what always happened when you asked either one of them a question.

  Right now I’m not thinking of how the cat came to be named after a monk but how I’m going to get to Edna before she kills herself. She has climbed up another step and is wobbling precariously. The ladder is as ancient as Edna herself, the cat and the pear tree. The rungs are rotting and even as I watch the one she is on starts to splinter. I rush to catch her but she somehow manages to get down to the rung below, shaking me off as if I were an annoying fly.

  ‘Never mind me, dear, just help poor old Beedy.’ Despite her cool I know she’s distraught, she hardly ever uses a nickname for the cat. She goes on, ‘Hector and I tried but he is just beyond our reach. You’re much taller than we are.’

  She steps down the last rung. The ladder has only four. They both look at me expectantly. I
look at the sad, old ladder. Not even the first rung would take my weight which is quite normal for my medium height. It’s a wonder Edna got up two rungs without the whole thing collapsing, even though she’s light as a butterfly. She looks like one today too, a Red Admiral perhaps with the blowsy red and black Chinese-style outfit she’s wearing. It comes down to her ankles which are shod in plain worn green wellies. I shudder when I think of every health and safety rule she’s broken – that long dress, a rotten ladder so unevenly propped that even now as she steps off it topples over and nearly hits Hector over the head. Her owl-like glasses have fallen off and I grabbed them before she can tread on them.

  Someone has to take these two in line. It’s a wonder they’ve survived all this time. I grab the ladder before it knocks Hector flying and with the other hand I reach out to steady Edna. The look she gives me is similar to Hector’s when I called out to him to stop rushing and calm down.

  Edna says, ‘I nearly had him. Oh the poor Venerable Bede. Look at him, terrified out of his dear pussycat wits.’

  We all look at the cat. His emerald eyes are glaring at us, his grey fur standing all over his head like the ghost of a mad monk. He looks far more cross than frightened.

  ‘Maybe if we leave him alone for a time he’ll come down on his own. He’s not that high up,’ I suggest.

  Edna and Hector look at me with exactly the same expression as their cat. Hector says, ‘Maid, for a cat as old as the Venerable Bede, it is very high indeed. He is well over twenty years old.’