Seagulls in the Attic

by Tessa Hainsworth

  A consultation with Edna and Hector informs me that I’ve got red mites, or rather the hens do. This is a particularly nasty parasite that gets onto a chicken’s skin and sucks their blood. In haste I phone Pete who brings me a supply of anti-red-mite powder which I have to put on all the hens, rubbing it onto their feathers and underneath them as best I can. I’m itching myself the whole time I do it and, of course, the hen house has to be cleaned thoroughly and powdered everywhere. It’s a huge job and I’ve got to do it on my own. It’s half term, Ben is working triple time at the café and the children have gone away for a few days with some friends and their parents.

  When the work is done I feel as bedraggled as my sweet hens, who are scratching indignantly after being covered with the powder. They didn’t like it one bit. That’s the trouble with creatures whose language we don’t speak, I think as I finish clearing up after the awful job – you can’t explain that what you’re doing to them is for their own good.

  When the mites have gone and the hens are clean again, I tell them they have a wonderful surprise in store. I’ve at last found them a cockerel, through an advert in the local weekly gazette. He’s a little strutting Ancona cockerel, black with white spots, and he makes himself at home quickly amongst the other chickens. We’ve called him Pavarotti because he’s like a little Italian opera singer. Already he’s bossing the hens about the place and I love the way they let him, although you can see they’re merely humouring him and that they are the ones who truly rule the roost.

  I’m spending more time than I should sitting on my lawn chair watching the antics in the chicken orchard and communicating with the birds. It’s marvellous to watch how they follow the sun around their enclosure, grouping together on one side to get the morning beams and then gravitating like the earth itself to bask in the afternoon light. In fact I’m so mesmerised by the chickens that one evening at the end of the month when Ben is working, the children are still away and I’ve had a satisfying afternoon in the allotment, I take a half bottle of chilled white wine left in the fridge, and a glass, and drink it in the garden to enjoy every moment of this long day, this fantastic light. The sky is cloudless and the blue is deepening as I take my first sip, though the sun is still far from setting. There’s something about the quality of the light that tells you night is approaching, though it’s coming slow and lazily, as befits this warm, perfect day. The hens and the cockerel are still out but you can sense, by the way their busy scratching has slightly slowed, that they’ll be thinking of going in soon and hunkering down for the short night. In the distance the sea changes colour with each passing moment. Until we moved here I never knew that there could be so many shades of green and blue.

  I sit for ages, drinking wine, watching the hens, the lowering sun and the sea in the distance. I’m thinking, as I often do these days, that life really can’t get any better than this.

  Chapter 7

  An Englishman’s (second) home is his castle

  I’m out on my rounds on an early June morning when I’m confronted by a customer I hardly know, not only talking to himself but punching his fist into his hand so hard that I’m afraid he’s going to break a finger or two. As my van pulls up a short distance from him, he turns and sees me. Now he looks embarrassed rather than raving mad and I smile and wave at him in relief.

  I grab my bag of post and we walk towards each other. Mr Armstrong is one of the newcomers who have taken over Trescatho. When I first began delivering here, this isolated village, set in a cul-de-sac at the end of a rickety narrow road a couple of miles from the nearest amenities, was a sleepy Cornish village, tiny and rural. I used to fantasise that Trescatho was another Brigadoon, a hidden place frozen in time that only appeared every hundred years. But sadly not any more. In the last year nearly the entire village has been taken over by holiday homes and the old stone houses have been repaired, renovated and painted up like an illustration for country living in a stylish Sunday supplement. The result is disquieting. I can’t help remembering the lovely old village as it was.

  Now the place is bustling back to life again, after the early months of the year when it looked not sleepy but completely dead. Even at this early hour, I can see people at windows, or outside staring over their back gardens across a lush field to the sea beyond. But Mr Armstrong, normally a happy sort of man, does not seem to be enjoying either the beautiful morning or the view.

  He and his wife, both retired civil servants, are one of the few people in Trescatho who actually live here all year long. Most of the local inhabitants have succumbed to the temptation of the ludicrously high prices being paid for property in Cornwall and have sold up and moved away to less salubrious towns and villages inland, though even these now are beyond the reach of most of the Cornish. It’s good to see permanent residents like the Armstrongs settling here, making Cornwall their first home not their second.

  Mr Armstrong looks deeply troubled. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. ‘Sorry, I don’t usually talk to myself. But I was so furious I had to get out of the house, as I didn’t want to worry my wife unduly. She’s been so happy here; it’s been a dream we’ve had all our married lives, moving to Cornwall. And now—’ This normally placid man suddenly makes a fist with his right hand and plunges it again into his left.

  ‘Has something happened?’ It’s a daft question.

  He unclenches his fist and sighs. ‘It’s our neighbours again. The Carsons. At 7.30 a.m. this man is phoning me from London, ranting on about his wall.’ Mr Armstrong points to a low stone wall next to the driveway that goes to his garage. On the other side is the Carson’s drive.

  This wall, causing so much rage, looks like an ordinary Cornish dry stone wall that has been patched up here and there over the past few years with bits of concrete to stop total erosion. A few stones are still falling out as I can see by the holes in the wall but other than that it looks no different from thousands of other such constructions in Cornwall.

  Both of us stand staring at the wall. Above us the morning sky is radiating warmth and the promise of another perfect day, and a hawk is circling, looking for prey in the fields on edge of the cliff. In a beech tree nearby several birds are singing all at once. In the distance the sea is frisky with little whitecaps under a slight breeze. The sky is such a clear blue it hurts to look at it for too long.

  I hate to break the silence of birdsong but Mr Armstrong is looking so glum I have to speak. I don’t like to be in the middle of a neighbourhood war but since I’d already been told about the phone call, I know he wants to tell me more. ‘So, what is Mr Carson upset about?’

  ‘The fact that I tried to mend his wall. Well, I had to do something. As you can see it’s practically falling down, and the way it’s built, it’s leaning towards my drive. I’ve already had a tyre ruined by driving my car over a sharp stone that fell out as I drove in,’ his face darkens.

  ‘I don’t understand why he doesn’t want you to mend it. Surely he doesn’t want a tumbledown wall separating the two driveways any more than you do.’

  Now we both turn our heads simultaneously to stare at the neighbouring house. This is a second home for the Carsons, who are in early middle age, prosperous, and whose Cornish house has been painted an expensive but lurid pinkish colour. Mr Carson is a banker in the City and Mrs Carson’s profession is anyone’s guess. She tells everyone, on her visits, that she is a professional woman but never gives a hint of what she does.

  Mr Armstrong looks away as if he can’t bear the sight of the Carson house. ‘I can’t repair the wall because he says that I can then try to claim it as my own. The deeds are a bit hazy on where the boundary is but Carson insists the wall is inside his property. I’m quite happy about that: I’ve got my dream house, what do I care about a wall, for God’s sake? But that man won’t believe me, though I tried to tell him when he was here at Easter.’

  Mr Armstrong is getting so agitated that he’s practically jumping up and down in fron
t of the postal van where we’re standing. A few more villagers come out of their houses and are looking at their gardens or the sea, or taking deep breaths and listening to the birdsong. You can tell this is a village of holidaymakers and retired people; in other places still inhabited by locals, everyone is rushing to work or getting children to school and beginning their day.

  This reminds me that I’d better get on with mine, but I can tell the poor man still wants to talk. ‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.

  He sighs. ‘Every time a stone falls out of his wretched wall, I have been putting it carefully on his side of the wall. Right against it, I will add. I have no desire to rip his tyres out as well, though he deserves it.’

  I think this is a sensible solution and say so. Mr Armstrong shakes his head. ‘Carson didn’t. That’s what the phone call was about. His wife saw the stones when she was here on her own last weekend and told him. He phoned and shouted at me to leave his property alone and not to touch one stone of it.’

  I don’t like taking sides but this to me sounds totally unreasonable. I make sympathetic noises which seem to calm him down. Before we part he says, ‘Don’t mention any of this to my wife. She is easily upset.’

  As I do my rounds in this idyllic little village, I think how sad it is that even here, where most people have been fortunate enough to acquire their perfect homes whether first or second, there is still bickering and pettiness.

  From there I go to my next round, a village much larger than Trescatho which still has a shop, a couple of pubs and even a small garage. There’s a thirteenth-century church here which has not been kept up as most of the others in the area have been but I see there is some scaffolding about so perhaps it is being restored. The locals greet me warmly and we talk mostly about gardening, this being the time of year when nearly everyone is at it. We compare the size of our runner bean plants and the state of our lettuce. We rejoice that the month looks to be a fine one, according to the long-range forecast, forgetting how often it is wrong.

  As everywhere, there are second-homers in this village too, and one of my stops is at the home of Marmalade. I still call it Marmalade’s place in my mind even though that is the name of a cat I accidentally killed when it jumped out in front of me on a dreary winter’s day when I was still new on the job. The cat belonged to a London couple called Adam and Elizabeth who have a twin boy and girl around seven or eight. I can’t help liking the parents, despite the fact that I had to dispose of the dead cat after they had asked me to hold the corpse in my freezer so that the terrible twins could give it a proper burial. By the time the family had come back for spring break they’d lost interest in Marmalade, having replaced him with a new feline pet. But that was last year’s adventure. Since then I’d seen them a few times. They are always friendly but rather vague, as if they don’t quite know how to treat a rural postal deliverer. Sometimes they are overly friendly, sometimes they are intolerably rude, without meaning to be.

  Today Elizabeth greets me with a cry of delight, as if I were a treasured friend long lost to her. ‘Tessa, how lovely to see you. We missed you at Easter, but we just couldn’t get away. The children had so many activities they couldn’t get out of. And then there was that wonderful children’s play at the National Theatre; of course we had tickets for that. Such amazing acting.’

  Once, during our first winter here when we were going through a particularly hard patch, I used to be consumed with envy when I was around this couple. They are so confident, so stylish, so sure of their place in life. It reminds me of what Ben and I were like years ago, before we began to yearn for something more than a lucrative job and an exciting life in the city. Going to the theatre now is a luxury we can no longer afford; we can barely take the children to the cinema except for the special two for one tickets that are sometime available, but we’ve got so much else that I truly feel richer than I ever used to.

  While Elizabeth tells me in detail about her children’s activities, Adam comes out and asks if I want a cold drink. Elizabeth cries, ‘I was just about to offer Tessa an elderberry cordial. Darling, could you get us one? We’ll sit here in the front garden; it’s far too splendid to be indoors.’

  I’m longing to get home to my garden on a day like today but they have both assumed I’ll say yes and Adam was already gone to fetch the drink. We sit on brand-new striped lawn chairs, the expensive retro wooden kind, and I have a private little chuckle when I think of the real one I found in the Humphreys’ shed which I use every day. Adam comes out with tall iced glasses filled with ice cubes and a bottle of fancy Waitrose Elderflower cordial. It tastes delicious; but I don’t tell them that I’m now making my own and it’s ten times as good.

  In moments Anna and Jamie, the twins, come squabbling out. They are cross because they can’t take Bronco, their soppy Bassett hound, on most of the beaches in Cornwall after Easter. Bronco has replaced Marmalade as the main creature in their young lives and now the twins are insisting that he goes with them on their outing to the seashore later today.

  Elizabeth and Adam, modern parents that they are, explain patiently why they cannot. They talk about hygiene, dog mess on beaches where children play, the dangers inherent on a crowded summer’s beach filled with dogs. The more reasonable they are, the more the twins whine. Elizabeth and Adam dither, try to find solutions and fail. The few, tiny, secluded beaches that do permit dogs during the season are not acceptable ones for the twins.

  Elizabeth says to me in despair, ‘Do they really enforce that law? Bronco is such a sweet thing and we’re responsible dog owners.’

  Adam nods, ‘We always clean up after him.’

  The twins, sensing victory, become even shriller, as if raising their voices can ensure a total surrender from their parents. Maybe it can, as they are looking quite at a loss. I have to tell them gently that yes, the rule is enforced, and the twins glare at me malignantly. Now Adam and Elizabeth are starting to dither aloud about what to do and at once they are disagreeing, but in an oh-so-civilised manner, doing it with a bright look my way every now and again as if assuring me that it’s all in playful fun. As the twins now begin to take sides I decide it’s time to go, especially as Bronco, who has wandered onto this minefield, is drooling all over my Royal Mail baggy shorts trying to get at one of the dog biscuits I keep in my pocket for the canines on my round. I give him one and wave a hasty goodbye as he starts jumping up and barking madly for another, outdoing the twins with his raucous antics. Adam and Elizabeth wave me off as if they’ve forgotten who I am.

  ‘God, I wish I were back in London,’ I hear Adam say as I hop into my van.

  ‘You’re not the only one who wishes you were there!’ cries Elizabeth.

  Oh dear, I think, it’s home away from home, even with second-homers.

  It’s another weekend and Annie and Pete are coming to dinner at our house tonight. Luckily Ben is cooking the meal and Pete’s helping him in the kitchen, so Annie and I get a chance to talk wedding plans together.

  She says, ‘The wedding will definitely be in Creek church, but I need to find the perfect place for a reception. Loads of my London friends and colleagues will come down, so it needs to be fairly big.’

  I tell her I’ll have a look around. The wedding is planned for October, less than six months away.

  She goes on, ‘Tessa, you’ll help, won’t you? It’s so hard, me being in London and the wedding here. Pete’s parents are darling but it’s not up to them and anyway I said they wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Pete will help at this end but I need a woman’s hand.’

  I assure her I’d love to. We spend a wonderful half hour discussing wedding invitations, food, flowers, church decoration and of course wedding dresses before Ben and Pete join us.

  ‘Dinner’s almost ready,’ Ben says.

  ‘Oh great. Did you make a salad? I brought in the first lettuce from our allotment for tonight.’

  The men admit they forgot the salad so Annie and I take our turn in the kitch
en. She’s at the sink washing the lettuce when suddenly she shrieks and drops it on the kitchen floor.

  ‘Annie, what is it, is it your allergy? Has something bitten you?’ I remember the time we had to rush her to the hospital in Truro after she had a severe allergic reaction to some grasses. I’m sure now that she’s in some state of anaphylactic shock, the way she looks.

  She shakes her head. ‘It’s that,’ she says, her voice weak. ‘I was washing the lettuce and put my finger on that.’ She points to my beautiful lettuce now sitting forlornly on the kitchen floor. I pick it up gingerly, look closely and then it’s my turn to gasp. Curled amongst its outer leaves is the biggest, ugliest slug I’ve ever seen.

  ‘Oh dear.’ I pick up the lettuce again and examine it closely. There are so many slugs crawling around it that there seems to be more holes than green stuff. So much for my lettuce being the crowning glory I’d imagined it to be at my dinner table tonight. We’ll have to make do with rocket.

  Annie says ruefully, ‘Guess I’ll have to get used to that sort of thing when I embrace the rural life. That and the tree pollen.’ She dosed herself up on anti-allergy tablets before she came so Jake wouldn’t set her off but she still sneezed a few times when she first came in. She is pleased, though, that the more she visits Cornwall, the more her allergies are tolerated. Certainly she isn’t as bad as she was when she first began to visit. Now she says, ‘Shouldn’t we get rid of that compost bucket? What if the nasty slimy thing crawls out at night and into your bed when you’re asleep?’ The thought makes her shudder. Even pale and shuddering she looks great. She’s wearing comfortable jeans and a light summer cardigan buttoned tightly at her waist, showing off her fantastic figure.

  ‘Annie, that’s ridiculous, the slug is probably more frightened than you are. And yes, city girl, you’ll have to get used to all sorts of creepy crawly things lurking outside in the Cornish dark.’