'We'd have Jake but he seems to be happy driving about with Susie,' Emma says. 'We saw them both when Susie did your round yesterday.'
'Strange to be seeing Jake and not her cat,' Martin adds.
I nod, remembering that of course Susie's cat often goes out with her in the van. Poor thing, brought into early hibernation because of Jake. Typical Susie not to mention it but to sort it out smoothly.
The Rowlands press me to come back to lunch, or dinner, but I explain I'll be at the hospital till late. Emma runs inside and comes back with a brown ceramic ovenproof dish. 'A lasagne. Just heat it up,' she says as she hands it to me.
As I try to thank her she interrupts me, 'Soon as Ben's out of hospital and recovered, you two come over for a meal. We were going to mention it at Hallowe'en, after we'd met Ben, but then we somehow got sidetracked.'
I smile at her, 'You know, I was thinking the same thing that night.'
'Well, let's hope it's soon. We've been wanting to meet Ben for ages, thinking he must be a great guy, if you chose him. I can't tell you how often you've cheered us up, coming up the drive with a smile whatever the weather. Especially when we'd had a bad day with the paying guests.'
The unforeseen compliment unnerves me and I get out of there quickly before I start to cry again.
Ben is in the hospital for nearly a week and during that time, our neighbours and new friends take over my life, helping to keep it running smoothly. Amy and Will, once they've seen Ben and know he's going to be all right, are thrilled to be spending each night at different friends' houses so that I can do my round in the morning. I could take compassionate leave but I'd like to save it until Ben is home, as he'll need rest and recuperation for some time. He had a very nasty acute attack of diverticulitis, the consultants told us, and though they don't think now that an operation is necessary, he'll still have to take care, keep an eye on his health, on what he eats.
Annie is on the phone every day, gutted that she can't get down to help. It's not just her job that is keeping her away, but the fact that she's ill too with a nasty bout of flu and can hardly get out of bed herself she's so weak. Her Cornishman, Pete, now the love of her life, is actually in London looking after her, having taken off a few days work to spend a long weekend making her tasty soups to get her eating again.
'Pete's wonderful,' Annie sighs on the phone after we've talked about Ben. 'I'm crazy about him, Tessa.'
'But . . . look, Annie, I hate to be the one to burst your balloon, but don't get too involved, OK? He'll never leave Cornwall and you're a Londoner through and through. I don't want to see you hurt.'
'Oh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now it's bliss, and oh Tessa, it must be love, if I can feel blissful with a raging temperature and aching joints.'
'Maybe the fever is making you hallucinate.'
She ignores my last remark, 'Isn't love terrific, Tessa? Pete has seen me sweaty, smelly, feverish and disgusting, and he still cares. Amazing, isn't it.'
Her words come back to me when Ben gets home, thinner but less pale and definitely on the mend now. Yes, love is amazing, I think, for nothing in the world could make me happier than having him home safe with me again.
I take a week's holiday to stay home with Ben. The weather blesses us with autumnal sun and a splendid showing of autumn leaves. We take slow ambles along the beach and the sea fronts, sit over long lunches at home, talking and talking.
Some days it's even warm enough to have a picnic, so we pack sandwiches and a flask and go down to the church on the estuary at Creek. As usual, we grin when we pass the sign on the road that leads to the sea. BAR, it says. I've lost count of the times I've met hikers wandering around down the track, asking where the pub is. I have to explain to them that BAR here means sand bar and if they want something to eat or drink they'll have to go back up the steep hill to the village centre. The look on their faces is always one of such dismay that I feel sorry for them sometimes and offer them a lift when I go back up.
When we visit, there's no one around, not even a local dog walker. Only a few ducks are waddling about on the wet sand, and a grey heron standing in the stream leading to the water's edge. The sea is still and so are the trees around the old church. It's rare that there's no wind at all this time of year. The sky is as blue and cloudless as a perfect summer's day.
Wrapped in warm jackets, we sit on the sea wall, eat our sandwiches, drink tea from the flask. When it gets too cold to stay still, we walk along the sand bar, giving our leftovers to the ducks.
Mostly we're silent, but when we talk, it's about the kindness of our neighbours, the kindness of this whole Cornish community to us when Ben got ill. 'I still can't get over it,' I say, throwing a last bit of crust to a tiny duck who seems to have been left out of the scrum for food. 'I know I've said this a dozen times, but I'm still so overwhelmed.'
We walk silently for a time, thinking of all the visitors we're still having, bringing warm wishes, get well cards, sometimes a cake or scones, often with an invitation to come and have tea, or a drink, or even a meal with them when Ben is well.
'I feel like I should cross my fingers and my toes, saying this, but it seems like we've been accepted at last,' I say after a time.
Ben nods, 'I suppose it sometimes takes an accident or illness to pull people together. The kindness is there but maybe doesn't have a chance to come out, unless something drastic happens.'
It is Susie who explains things to me, the way things happen in Cornwall.
We're sitting in the Sunflower Café after work, having a coffee and a gab, and I'm talking to her about how our lives seem to have been turned around by Ben's illness. I finish by saying, 'I was despairing, y'know, of ever being accepted here. You Cornish are hard to get to know sometimes.'
I grin as I say it, but I'm serious. I can talk to Susie like this now. That invisible boundary that I felt I couldn't step over is gone. And not just with Susie but also with Daphne and Joe, and Emma and Martin, and others like Clara in the village.
Susie ponders my last remark. 'I suppose we are, bird, but we got a reason for it. Cornwall be changing fast, has been changing fast these last ten years. So many folk like you movin' in, wanting the good life here, then not stickin' it and going back Up Country for good.'
She stops, remembering, before she goes on, 'We be wary, now, of befriending strangers too soon, for some of us got burnt, bringin' people to our homes, sharing our lives, only to have them suddenly leaving with no word from 'em again.'
She looks away from me, out at the harbour. Millie and Geoff at the bakery are sitting outside at their tiny table, basking in the precarious November sun while waiting for customers. They're wearing identical heavy navy fleeces and their faces, turned upwards, have an identical small smile.
We watch for a few minutes: the ferry about to leave, the gulls eyeing an old man eating a pasty, a lone lad fishing on the end of the harbour. The sea is a deep green, the rolling waves as undulating as a Cornish hillside.
Turning back to Susie I say, 'So I guess people believe now that Ben, the kids and I are going to stay put.'
She grins at me. 'Well, you've stuck it over a year now. I'd say the odds are pretty good that you be settled here.'
A year. 'Susie, do you know it's a year almost to the day that I've been in this job?'
'I do, my bird, and that's why I be buying you a slap-up dinner soon. You name the date.'
'Because I'm such a great addition to the South Cornwall postal service?' I say jokingly.
'Because I won fifty quid off Eddie. He said you wouldn't be stickin' six months and I bet 'im fifty quid you'd stick it a year.'
Laughing, I tell her that she has more faith in me than I did, a year ago. Then I get serious, try to thank her for all she's done for me. Brushing me off in her usual brusque way, she says, 'Look, my bird, I only did it to get my fifty quid off Eddie.'
I let her have the last word. That's another trait I've found more than once in the Cornish
, they hate to admit that under all that tough, rugged individualism, there's a rich seam of kindness and compassion.
December
'I can't believe it's only three weeks till Christmas,' I say to Archie and Jennifer Grenville as I sit in their kitchen again overlooking the sea. It's the first time I've stopped at their place for a proper chat since before Ben was ill.
After they've asked about him, and I tell them he's fine now and has had no recurrence of the illness, we talk about Christmas in Morranport. The town council has decided it's time to buy new lights for the village but the problem is, the old ones will have to be taken down. No one, it seems, got around to it last year, and January turned into February and February into March and so on, until someone said, Why bother? So all that's needed is for the lights to be turned on.
'It's only the second homers in the town that think we need new lights,' Archie says.
'I thought it was the village council.'
He taps the side of his nose knowingly, 'The second homers infiltrate everything, maid. Remember that.' He nods sagely, solemnly, but at the same time, his left eye drops in an exaggerated wink.
The talk turns to the weather. A fierce wind has been blowing for two days now and the seas are treacherous. As we crunch biscuits and drink tea, watching the foamy sea and the horizontal rain, Archie says, 'There was a horrendous shipwreck here one December, in a southeast gale just like this one. In the early 1800s – a French brig, loaded with sugar from the West Indies. If 'tweren't for the bravery of a young fellow from a nearby village, all the crew would've drowned for sure.'
'What happened?'
'He swam out through the rough sea to the boat where the crew threw him a line, then managed to swim back to the shore with the rope. The onlookers were fearful he'd drown in that horrendous sea, but he made it, and one by one the Frenchmen were pulled along the road to safety.'
'He must have been a strong swimmer,' I say.
Jennifer says, 'Amen,' as the three of us look out of the window at the wild sea, the breakers pounding the shoreline not that far from the Grenville's house though it's built high above the water.
'And a brave man,' Archie adds. 'Even if I were fifty years younger, I wouldn't have a hope in that sea.'
We sit peacefully silent for some time, watching the furious sea and thinking of all the brave men and women who risked their lives, and sometimes lost them, in that foaming, turbulent water.
I can't help comparing this run-up to Christmas to last year's. The weather might be just as bad, with westerly storms now thrashing the coastline, but my spirits are way up above the dark skies and the bruised clouds.
Ben and I have a social life as lively as any we've had in London, going out to dinner at Emma and Martin's place, or to the cinema with Susie and Eddie and some of their friends, or meeting Daphne and Joe, and Clara and her husband at the pub, or having them to our house for a meal. One of the best things about it is that I can enjoy it, not being stressed and agitated over work problems. When my day's work is over, that's it, it's finished. No bringing it home, no brooding over it. I love this new peace of mind I've found here.
Amy and Will have helped me make dozens of little Christmas cards to give to my customers. I'm grateful to so many of them, for all the gifts of fresh produce throughout the year, for the hot drinks in winter and the cold ones in summer, and especially for all the support when Ben was ill. What's so amazing and heart warming, are all the cards I'm getting back from them as I deliver mine. Many of them have notes inside thanking me for the year of 'smiling' postal deliveries, as more than one has put it. Gifts are pouring in too, wine and chocolates, and cash tips tucked into cards, but it's the written notes that please me most.
On the last day of postal deliveries before Christmas, I'm dragged inside nearly every other house, offered coffee and mince pies, brandy and even cider though it's still only morning. I decline the alcohol but accept so much coffee that I'm zizzing as I drive.
The morning goes by in a whirl. The only place where I'm not invited in is Trescatho, my hidden village that's no longer a secret. The made-over cottages are shiny and new looking, with their tasteful Farrow & Ball coatings of paint, their smart new doors, windows and roofs. But every one is closed up and dark. The second homers will be here for New Year, no doubt, but now it looks desolate.
When I first delivered here, the isolated village seemed abandoned too, but the emptiness today is different. Then, it was mysterious, with the filmy lights in the windows, the dark, morning starlight touching old stone walls and ancient slate roofs. The atmosphere was eerie but vibrant, as if the whole village was merely waiting for me, the intruder, to go before coming alive again. Now, the emptiness feels sad and lonely. Even the ghosts have gone.
I can't wait to put the few cards into the letterboxes of the two farms and get back into my van.
There's another emptiness too. Though I don't need to, for there's no post to deliver, I go to Mr Hawker's old house for the first time since he died. As I go up the lane and park the van next to the front garden gate, I get a strong feeling of vu. It doesn't look any different. The house and garden were a shambles when Mr Hawker lived here and though Martin, Dave and Marilyn when they've got some time off, are starting to clear the overgrown foliage, there's a long way to go before they make a visible difference to the property.
It's going to be a huge job, not just the garden but the house as well. It's practically a shell and will take years to do up. Though that will content Dave and Marilyn. The longer it takes, the longer they can live there for minimum rent. And because the cottage has an agricultural tie, second homers can't buy it. Perhaps there will one day be a chance for Marilyn and Dave. I hope so.
As I stand looking at the house, I feel a soft drizzle of rain on my hair and face. My waterproof is in the van but I don't bother to get it. I'll be off soon, homeward bound. Ben's waiting for me, and Amy and Will too.
Tonight we're having a Christmas party at our house, inviting all our new friends and some old ones too. Annie will be arriving in an hour or so from London, to spend Christmas with us, and Pete will be around most of the time, no doubt. But that's not for hours. First I want to pay my respects to the gentle, dignified man who gave me my first Christmas gift in my new job, that day when I was ill, distraught and ready to give it all up, admit defeat and abandon our Cornish dream.
A fifty pence piece wrapped in a sheet of lined paper. Better than any gold, frankincense or myrrh. I whisper to the dark house, Thank you, Mr Hawker. May you rest in peace.
Getting into the van and starting it up, I look back at the house one more time. And there, standing in the doorway, as I used to see him so many times, stands Mr Hawker. Call it a trick of the light, an illusion conveyed by the misty rain in the trees, or my over-active imagination, but there he is, just as I remember him.
'Merry Christmas, Mr Hawker,' I whisper through the window and then drive away slowly over the potholed track.
I don't look back. I've got goose bumps on my skin but I'm not afraid. I don't look back because I don't want him not to be there. I want to remember him always like this, standing in the doorway, hand raised in greeting, a half smile on his old wrinkled face as he waves me goodbye for the last time.
On my way home I pass the same church I'd driven by last year on my way back from Mr Hawker's house. Once again, the tree outside has been decorated by the locals. I don't see them this time as I did last year, stringing up the lights in a rough wind, but the tree is lit and gleaming this Christmas Eve morning. The fairy lights strangely reflect in the now heavy drizzle, glistening on every surface so that it looks as if everything – the grass of the churchyard, the few tombstones in front, the slate path – is a kaleidoscope of light and colour.
Dazzled, I stop the van, enjoy the sight for a few moments then rev up again and drive back to St Geraint to park the van in the boat yard where it will stay with the other Royal Mail vehicles till after Boxing Day.
T
he sea, like the Christmas lights, also sparkles in this misty rain despite the greyness of the day. But there's a wonderful, yellowish light across the horizon, cutting through the dark and lightening the whole sky. It's both dramatic and mysterious, and quite beautiful.
Not yet completely able to read the signs, I'm not sure if this strange amber light means another storm, or fair weather, or something in between, but it doesn't matter. The enormity of the sea, the vastness of the sky, makes speculation somehow pointless.
I take a last look at the seascape, a deep breath of the salty air, and jump into Minger. The old car starts at first go, for a change.
'Time to get going, Minger,' I say out loud, not caring how daft it is to talk to a car. 'Everyone's waiting.'
We roar up the hill towards Treverny, Minger chugging and puffing, and me singing Christmas carols at the top of my lungs, all the way home.
Up With the Larks Page 26
